Books about noir

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.

Sam Spade is hired by Miss Wonderley to track down her sister, who has eloped with a louse called Floyd Thursby. But Miss Wonderley is in fact the beautiful and treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, and when Spade's partner is shot while on Thursby's trail, Spade finds himself both hunter and hunted.

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.

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.

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.

Los Angeles is a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals. Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. For the three L A P D detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers.

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.

First published in 1934, The Postman Always Rings Twice caused a scandal with its explosive mix of violence and sex, and immediately became a bestseller. The torrid story of Frank Chambers, the amoral drifter, Cora, the sullen and brooding wife, and Nick Papadakis, the amiable but inconvenient husband, has become a classic of its kind, and established Cain as a major novelist with a spare and ...

Sin City is the place-tough as leather and dry as tinder. Love is the fuel, and the now-infamous Marv has the match... not to mention a 'condition'. He's gunning after Goldie's killer, so it's time to watch the city burn! This title features a psychotic killer, a crime-drenched town, and a corrupted diocese.

A classic novel from one of America's most famous detective writers, now available in Penguin's Read Red series.

Mankind is strung out across interstellar space, and human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies, but some things never change, so when Takeshi is downloaded into the body of an ex-thug and presented with a catch-22 offer he shouldn't be surprised.

'An acknowledged literary landmark' Robert Graves

The classic tale of an evil woman motivated by greed who corrupts a weak man motivated by lust. Walter Huff is an insurance investigator like any other until the day he meets the beautiful and dangerous Phyllis Nirdlinger and falls under her spell. Together they plot to kill her husband and split the insurance.

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.

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

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.