An MWA Grand Master tells it straight: Fredric Brown: "When I read Murder Can Be Fun, I had a bottle of bourbon on the table and every time Brown's hero took a drink, I had a snort myself. This is a hazardous undertaking when in the company of Brown's characters, and, I've been given to understand, would have been just as dangerous around the author himself. By the time the book was finished, so was I." Raymond Chandler: "You have to wonder how he got it so right. He spent a lot of time in the house-working, reading, writing letters. He saw to his wife, who required a lot of attention in her...

Here's CHIP HARRISON-the second series character created by Lawrence Block, bestselling author of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES... Chip's debut in NO SCORE opens with the lad orphaned and cast adrift by the loathsome headmaster of his prep school. Thus unfolds a picaresque tale in which young Chip travels far and wide, determined to make his way in the world and somehow shrug off the awful cloak of virginity. This earnest and endearing Lecher in the Wry finds work as an assistant to Gregor the Pavement Photographer (whose wife keeps him forever on Third Base, and won't let him steal home) and...

Here's CHIP HARRISON-the second series character created by Lawrence Block, bestselling author of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES.. Chip's second adventure in CHIP HARRISON SCORES AGAIN begins when our lad finds a discarded wallet holding a bus ticket to Bordentown, South Carolina. Instead of cashing it in, he uses it-and winds up as an assistant manager in the hamlet's finest bordello. (Well, it's also the only bordello.) And that's just the beginning. While the virginity that plagued him in NO SCORE is no longer an issue, our Lecher in the Wry retains the irresistible innocence that makes him...

Here's CHIP HARRISON-the second series character created by Lawrence Block, bestselling author of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES... How can a series predicated on the hero's sexual innocence survive past a second book? How can our Chip remain the same age forever? Simple, Block decided, and put our Lecher in the Wry to work for a private detective, the remarkable Leo Haig. Haig believes that Nero Wolfe really exists, and that if he distinguishes himself professionally he may one day be invited to dine at the Great Man's table. And Chip hires on as Haig's eyes and ears-if not his nose and throat....

Die Sunden der Vater stellt Matthew Scudder vor, jenen New Yorker Privatdetektiv, der von Liam Neeson in Ruhet in Frieden auf der Leinwand verkorpert wurde. Eine junge Prostituierte wurde getotet und der mutmassliche Morder hat sich in seiner Gefangniszelle erhangt. Auf der Suche nach Antworten wendet sich der Vater des toten Madchens an Scudder. Dieser erste Band der preisgekronten Reihe wurde ursprunglich 1976 veroffentlicht, die deutsche Ausgabe ist aber bereits seit vielen Jahren vergriffen. Der Roman wurde nun fur heutige Leser von Stefan Mommertz neu ubersetzt, einschliesslich einer...

Alex Penn wakes up in a squalid Times Square hotel room. This is what he sees when he finally opens his eyes: "The floor was a sea of blood. A body floated upon this ocean. A girl-black hair, staring blue eyes, bloodless lips. Naked. Dead. Her throat slashed deeply. "It had to be a dream. It had to, had to be a dream. It was not a dream. It was not a dream at all. "I've done it again, I thought. Sweet Jesus, I've done it again." Years before, Alex Penn woke up in similar circumstances, called the police, went to prison. A technicality freed him-and now there's been another drunken blackout,...

"You may rape the bride..." David and Jill Wade wanted a properly traditional start to their marriage. For openers, they decided to delay its consummation until after the ceremony. They planned a perfect honeymoon at a secluded lakeside resort in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. Joe Carroll, the guest in the cabin next door, seemed friendly enough. They took his dinner suggestion, then returned to their cabin and prepared to retire-until a noise alerted them, and they went to the porch and watched a group of men descend on Joe Carroll's cabin. They dragged him out at gunpoint, then executed...

"The colonel was right. You had to draw a line through mankind, a wavy line but a line, and on one side you had Good and on the other side you had Evil. There was good and bad in everyone, sure, and every shitheel was some mother's son, and it was all well and good to know this, but when push came to shove, it was just words; there was Good and Evil with no shades of gray and Judgment Day came seven time a week." Meet the Specialists, five good men, Manso and Murdock and Simmons and Giordano and Dehn. They scattered when they took off their green berets and returned to civilian life, but now...

"If you're not part of the solution, you must be part of the problem." You heard that a lot in the early 1970s, when the country seemed to be teetering on the brink of revolutionary upheaval. Miles Dorn, living quietly in retirement in the U.S., had come a long way from his roots in Central Europe, leaving his past as an assassin and agent provocateur behind him. But as soon as he walks into his house and smells the smoke from a Turkish cigarette, he knows nobody can walk away from the past. It's always there, and it can reach out at any moment and get hold of you. He's recruited for a series...