Robert Mitchum once commented to Arthur Lyons about his movies of the 1940s and 1950s: "Hell, we didn't know what film noir was in those days. We were just making movies. Cary Grant and all the big stars at RKO got all the lights. We lit our sets with cigarette butts." Film noir was made to order for the "B," or low-budget, part of the movie double bill. It was cheaper to produce because it made do with less lighting, smaller casts, limited sets, and compact story lines--about con men, killers, cigarette girls, crooked cops, down-and-out boxers, and calculating, scheming, very deadly women....

When Eddie Sands decides to blackmail a famous Hollywood star whose sex life could ruin his screen career, he sets off a chain of events that leads straight to the white-hot center of Las Vegas, and brings down on himself the attentions of Tony Parisi, the mob's kingpin of Las Vegas, and FBI agent John Novak. "Shakedown is a gem. Stopped writing to read it, something I have sworn I would never do, but couldn't help it." - Elmore Leonard

Detective Sergeant Jose Stepanovich and his elite tactical team were the toughest cops in the Los Angeles police force, handed the toughest jobs, like going up against the city's most vicious criminal element--the street gangs of East L.A. But somewhere along the line the cops broke a few rules, turning a job into a personal vendetta, and suddenly it wasn't only the gangs they were fighting, it was the community, the media and their own brass who decided they were expendable. Hard-boiled Detective Stepanovich--returning to the barrio where he grew up to battle the criminals he hates...loving...

From the author of To Die in Beverly Hills comes a harrowing tale of the dark underside of America's West Coast metropolis. Two U.S. Treasury agents, partners and antagonists, are drawn into a matrix of violence and corruption, southern California-style, that becomes a journey through a sunlit hell - at the end of which they become experts on the thin line between what it takes to live - and die - in L.A. To Live and Die in L.A., the book that inspired the major motion picture.

A White House Secret Service agent specializing in electronic surveillance has been blown away by a masked gunman. The Aryan Disciples, a neo-Nazi group, has taken credit. Secret Service Special Agent Pete Garrison fears it's more than a warning shot delivered by extremists. His first lead is an informant who claims that the Aryans have positioned one of their own in the White House. But it's the second lead that carries the most shattering and personal implications-a blackmailer who knows of Garrison's affair with the First Lady. He has the photos to prove it. Evidence that would frame...

A suicide is discovered in a top-secret White House file room. Rumors of a dangerous threat to the president have spread, and Secret Service agent Jack Powers is assigned to keep the brewing crises from the press. But death is just the tip of the iceberg --espionage is suspected of a beautiful woman who just may be the President's mistress. Acting on presidential orders, Powers follows a twisting trail that leads from the inner circle of the Oval Office to the outer fringes of international terrorism. But suddenly he finds himself trapped in a labyrinth of the deceit, murder, and betrayal...

US Treasury Agents Charlie Carr and Jack Kelly, investigating a counterfeiting ring, are tipped off by Detective Travis Bailey of the L.A. police - a cool ruthless cop with some strange tastes in sex and woman - who warns them of a plot to murder their prime witness. Unwittingly, they are involved in a phony stake-out in which Kelly is serious wounded. Deeply suspicious and determined to avenge his partner, Carr puts his life and career on the line in order to build a case against Bailey, and sets out to prove that he is the mastermind behind a series of robberies from the area's wealthy...

Charles Carr, T-Man, depends heavily on informants in his pursuit of pushers, passers and makers of "paper" - all those in the thriving business of counterfeiting. Informants are as much a part of the seamy, violent Los Angeles underworld as are the crooks they inform on, and they are crucial to Carr's effort to track down Paul LaMonica, a smooth thug whose skill at manufacturing paper is matched by his murderous amorality. There are a great many victims in the bloody chase LaMonica leads Carr on, a trail that runs from L.A. to Houston to San Diego to Ensenada, Mexico - and the informants are...

Charles Carr is a relentless, hardboiled Treasury Agent with a grim mission. A young agent gets violently gunned down during an undercover operation, and it's Carr's job to hunt down the counterfeiter who pulled the trigger. From the seamy sunset Strip to Chinatown's shadowy underworld, from a daring plot to steal counterfeit money from counterfeiters themselves, to facing brutal blood-drenched confrontations, Carr will stop at nothing to crack the depraved scheme that took his friend's life. In 1992, "Money Men" was released as the United Artists motion picture "Boiling Point," starring...

Charlie Carr is Petievich's brilliant creation - a bullish Treasury Agent in the street-smart, sad-eyed tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. In One-Shot Deal, Carr rips the lid off an intricate scheme to print ten million in U.S. Treasury notes on stolen government security paper - a scam that begins in the inner sanctum of the U.S. Mint and ends in a pool of blood beneath the smoking barrel of Carr's .357 magnum.