The greatest crime novel of the 20th century launches Orion's Crime Masterworks series

Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. Marlowe's got his work cut out. But that's before he stumbles over the first corpse.

A warm day on Central Avenue, and Philip Marlowe's hunch about the man beside him is as vague as the heat waves that dance above the sidewalk. Moose Malloy stands six five and one-half and weighs two hundred and sixty-four pounds. After eight years in the pen, he wants little Velma back, and no cops or mobsters are ready to stand in his way.

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He's willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty.

'An acknowledged literary landmark' Robert Graves

Published on the centenary of Jim Thompson's birth, THE KILLER INSIDE ME has been an underground classic since its first publication in 1952.

Philip Marlowe's on a case: his client wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. It becomes complicated when Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead.

An amazingly confident, action-and-violence packed thriller, and future classic noir SF novel.

Her name is Orfamay Quest and she's come all the way from Manhattan, Kansas, to find her missing brother Orrin. Or least ways that's what she tells PI Philip Marlowe, offering him a measly twenty bucks for the privilege. But Marlowe's feeling charitable though it's not long before he wishes he wasn't so sweet.

Published on the centenary of his Jim Thompson's birth, a classic crime novel from 'the best suspense writer going, bar none' New York Times

Derace Kingsley's wife ran away to Mexico to get a divorce and marry a Chris Lavery. Trouble is, when Philip Marlowe asks Lavery about it he denies everything and sends the private investigator packing with a flea lodged firmly in his ear. But when Marlowe encounters Lavery, he's denying nothing on account of the two bullet holes in his heart.

A title that was originally published in 1932.

A true crime masterpiece, and highly acclaimed 1940s movie

This collection brings together the very best of Dashiell Hammett's early stories featuring the Continental Op, the dispassionate fat man working for the Continental Detective Agency whose only interest is in doing his job in a world of violence, passion, desperate action and great excitement.

Reissue of 'One of the toughest crime novels ever' (Newsweek) published on the centenary of Jim Thompson's birth.

Phillip Marlowe is mixing business with pleasure - getting paid to follow a mysterious and lovely red-head named Eleanor King. And wherever Miss King goes, trouble seems to follow. But one dead body later and what started out as a lazy afternoon's snooping soon becomes a deadly cocktail of blackmail, lies, mistaken identity - and murder.

A beautiful young woman walked into the night and met her horrific destiny. Five days later, her tortured body was found drained of blood and cut in shelf. The newspapers called her 'The Black Dahlia'. Two cops are caught up in the investigation and embark on a hellish journey that takes them to the core of the dead girl's twisted life.

A combined edition of: March Violets , The Pale Criminal , and, A German Requiem .

'Dashiell Hammett is an original. He is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer' Boston Globe

'The most famous novel by 'the best suspense novelist going, bar none' New York Times