Paul Dogolov, divorced Vietnam War hero and novelist, teaches a writing class in a maximum security prison. Convinced that one of his students, serving a life sentence for brutal murder, is innocent, he sets out to find the real killer. The search leads him to a remote, dust-blasted California desert town and a scorpion's nest of bizarre and vicious characters. The result is a tale of intrigue, corruption, and savage humor, in which Dogolov, through his encounter with the horrific, yet wildly comic, Fat Lady of the title, learns about terror, degradation, and ultimately, love in a funhouse-mirror world where illusion is reality, reality, a chimera. "David Scott Milton is certainly one of the most talented, uncompromising prose writers of his generation, and The Fat Lady Sings is perhaps his best and also most appealing novel." — Peter Bogdanovich

An unidentifiable body is found in an Indianapolis park, deliberately arranged so that police know it's not just a random crime. Former cop Frank Behr, now a P.I. with no cases, no money and no options, finds himself chasing down the disappearance of a wayward young woman who's been missing for months in a futile attempt to collect a reward. With assistance from his few remaining contacts on the force, Behr follows the tenuous thread of his case into the world of small-time prostitution-and discovers a possible connection to the body in the park. When another murder victim turns up, it's clear there's a serial killer at work, but this predator seems to be invisible, camouflaged by his perfectly normal-looking life. Behr's relentless quest for the missing girl and his parallel pursuit of the killer become entangled with the official police investigation. Ultimately, Behr's obsession with the truth will lead him into the darkest places, and force him to make an unavoidable and devastating decision.

"Celebrating 50 years of Hard Case Crime! Okay, not really. But what if, instead of having been founded 50 books ago, Hard Case Crime had been founded 50 years ago, by a rascal out to make a quick buck off the popularity of pulp fiction? Such a fellow might make a few enemies -- especially after publishing a supposed non-fiction account of a heist at a Mob-run nightclub, actually penned by an 18-year-old showgirl with dreams of writing for The New Yorker. With both the cops and the crooks after them, our heroes are about to learn that reading and writing pulp novels is a lot more fun than living them..." --

So I'm a Heel It's just a lucky break the way Ed Hawkins gets a look at that police blotter that tips him off on the arrest-and-release of his rich neighbor, Otto Weylin, for molesting a minor. Nobody ever gave Hawkins a break, and he doesn't intend to give Weylin a break either. He figures that Weylin is good for ten grand to keep this little bit of information out of the papers, and maybe he's right. But why all of a sudden is his 10-year-old son becoming so friendly with Weylin? What is the secret that Weylin's sex-starved wife keeps hinting at? The blackmail scheme is rapidly backfiring and Hawkins can't trust anyone, even his own wife--and now his own boy has gone missing Flint Flint took a bullet in the lung during that last job, a hole that just won't seem to plug itself. But hired killers don't get to retire, and Flint is called out to Colorado for one more job. A rancher named Mr. Good wants his competition removed, and he's got a pretty plan how to get away with it. So Flint rides out and meets the local sheriff, a man so fat he spends all his time in his office--should be easy to work around. He meets his victim, Thomason, a poor but honest man, who naively hires him on the spot. And then he meets Thomason's wife, Cora, who seems....very friendly--but is she all that she seems? And can Mr. Good really be trusted? This is supposed to be Flint's last job, but it's funny how a simple plan can soon get so complicated. The Big Out Brick Palmer, catcher for the Blues, gets a call after the game. His kid brother Johnny is in trouble again. Johnny is the brilliant one, the one who's going to be a doctor, but he's forged Brick's name on a $10,000 Syndicate debt. So Brick does what he has to do, he pays off the Syndicate punk, then busts his nose. Randy York of the Herald sees the payoff and reveals the meeting in his column the next day. Unable to rat out his brother, Brick is thrown out of the league. All he can do is play for one of the outlaw leagues. So he and wife Cathy move to Montreal and try to start over. But they're all out to get him--the fans and players for selling out, the Umps for dirtying the game. They're all out for blood. But for the Syndicate punk it's personal--he plans to make it murder.

From legendary cult writer Jerry Stahl comes Plainclothes Naked, a breakout novel that jacks up crime fiction to new heights of twisted, sexy, mind-blowing brilliance. With searing wit and devastating detail, Stahl -- whose work, Jim Carroll has written, "fills the gap in American literature left void since the death of the late, great Terry Southern " -- takes us deep into the minds of addicts and detectives, fetishists and killers. It's a vision of American misfits in a world of violent crime, official corruption, drug-addled scheming, and -- perhaps strangest of all -- genuine, up-from-the-toes true love. In a wildly careening plot that can only be described as crack noir, two pipe-heads accidentally steal a photo of George W. Bush's presidential package with a happy face tattooed on it and decide to blackmail the Republican Party. Before the crack-crazed thieves can follow through, however, a gorgeous, whip-smart young nurse absconds with the goods. But Nurse Tina's got her own problems -- she's just offed her online "money swami" husband with a bowl of Drano-laced Lucky Charms. When Manny Rubert, a scarred ex-junkie turned codeine-popping detective, is called in to investigate the "foamer" hubby's untimely demise, love hits him like a wrench to the head. Soon Manny and Tina are making plans of their own for the presidential pic -- and for their future together. But the meddling police chiefs and motel room sex-change surgeons of the world just won't leave them alone. And then there are those killer crackheads, still out there and closing in... At once a scathing tale of contemporary insanity and a no-holds-barred, tour de force thriller, Plainclothes Naked forges violence and comedy into a criminal love story as shocking as it is transcendent.

“Moses Wine is a force to reckon with and to read with pleasure.” —Dick Lochte, Los Angeles Times Book Review “A fun detective novel you just don’t get enough of anymore...there is a certain style reminiscent of those 1950s Mickey Spillane novels when men were men and private investigators were ‘private dicks’...definitely recommended reading.” —West Coast Review of Books With a new introduction by Roger L. Simon A guided tour of the People’s Republic, Aunt Sonya had said: U.S.-China Friendship Study Tour Number Five, arranged by the China Friendship Society, an organization in which she was involved. Why not get away from it all? Moses Wine figured. At least it would get him away from personal injury cases, murder investigations, and the insistent feeling that boredom and alienation were about to become his constant companions in his middle age. But China has a way of springing surprises, and soon California's hippest ex-radical detective is chasing down the priceless Han Dynasty Peking Duck, falling for a gorgeous dragon lady in a Mao suit—and fighting for his life across a vast, mysterious land he barely knows...

WALK THE DARK STREETS The night maid finds Janice Morel's body lying in her blood-soaked bed, stabbed to death. Lieutenant Hagen assumes that Harry Chapel must be the murderer. After all, he was one of her lovers, and he had previously served time for killing his wife. Why look further? But Captain Birge is not one to jump to conclusions. Morel had been blackmailing a lot of men. Maybe one of them caught up with her. There's Joe Marco, the shady owner of Club Trinidad, where Morel worked. And the couple down the hall, Jean and Freddie-Freddie might be blind, but he gets around the building very well. Birge knows that Morel was no angel, but who hated her enough to plunge a knife into her self-serving heart? Black Gat #79

Times have certainly changed for Moses Wine since the days of his first case in “The Big Fix”—he’s gone from cheap detective to respected private investigator in just twenty-five years. Add in a beautiful girlfriend and a lucrative business with a roster of corporate clients, and he should be feeling on top of the world. But he’s not. In fact, he feels as though he’s lost touch with his roots, now “living the kind or bourgeois live I once reviled,”’ as he notes. Moses Wine of the sixties has been pushed aside by the lure of vacations at Lake Tahoe, expensive meals, and unlimited access to courtside seats at Los Angeles Lakers games. Now the shadow of Wine’s radical days has come back to haunt him. His college-age son, Simon, a radical environmentalist, has been accused of killing a logger in Northern California. Allying himself with his hostile ex-wife, Wine heads off to find the real killer whether it’s Simon or not! Laced with Roger L. Simon’s mordant wit, California politics and not-so-casual sex, The Lost Coast is vintage Wine at its best. Ever restless, ROGER L. SIMON has spent his life moving between books and movies, gaining distinction in both. In books, he is best known for the seven Moses Wine detective novels, which have won prizes in the U.S. and Great Britain and been published in over a dozen languages. In film, most prominent among his six produced screenplays—including his adaptation of The Big Fix—is Enemies, A Love Story, for which Simon was nominated for an Academy Award.

Police Inspector Buck Safiotte is corrupt and cruel, ruthless and remorseless, ambitious and outrageous, ruling the streets of New York City like a monarch of the gutter. One early reader of Bodies Are Dust fretted that the book was too vicious for the library, but this almost-forgotten, impossible-to-find novel has become a classic, and noir fans consider their copies precious. Now, after more than 60 years out of print, Bodies Are Dust is available again, the first title from Staccato Crime, a new imprint of Stark House Press, which will resurrect noir classics, both novels and true crime, originally published 1899-1939.

Recently discovered and never before published, these two short novels were written in the early 1970s, at the beginning of Kathy Acker's writing career. Rip-off Red reads as a kind of Raymond Chandler for bad girls, as Acker's typical literary playfulness transforms the genre conventions of detective fiction into a book that is simultaneously a mystery and a personal, raunchy, and politically astute account of life in New York City. The Burning Bombing of America is a dystopian vision of the destruction of America, combining crypto-Socialist class critique with the visceral surreality of the Book of Revelation.

ANATOMY OF A KILLER Sam Jordan never lets emotion interfere with his work. He is a precise and ruthless killing machine, dealing out death for hire. But his last job had ended wrong for Jordan, and now Sandy is sending him out again--without a break, yet--to take care of someone named Kemp. Hell, he even has to case the job himself. The whole thing feels jinxed. That's when Jordan meets Betty, who works at the diner. To her he is Mr. Smith, a button salesman. But to Jordan, Betty is a sweet moment in his life, a safe haven. And that's where he makes his first mistake--he allows himself to feel human. A SHROUD FOR JESSO Jack Jesso knows that Gluck wants him out of the syndicate. Still, when Gluck sends him on an errand to find a missing guy named Snell for a shady client of his, Johannes Kator, Jesso doesn't figure it to be anything more than a test. He finds the guy alright--sick and rambling--but Gluck double-crosses him, and tosses Jesso onto a Europe-bound steamer with Kator's crew, their orders to kill him. Jesso quickly realizes that he holds the key to a big money deal in Snell's ramblings, information that Kator desperately needs. All he has to do to stay alive is keep Kator interested. It's a simple enough scheme--until Jesso meets Kator's beautiful sister, Renette.

Frank Kalinyak, disgraced ex-cop, returns to Pittsburgh, Pa., "Iron City", his hometown, from Tucson where he has been living a desperate existence since the death of his young daughter. He has been summoned home by Bobby Mack, an Assistant D.A., to find out who murdered an old high school friend. Kalinyak is swept into a whirlpool of bizarre killings, religious fanaticism, church duplicity, hustlers, cops, junkies, old friends gone bad. Amid the fractured landscape of Iron City, rusting mills, rotting industry, he struggles to find sense in his life. Ultimately he must ask: who is he and can he survive? "David Scott Milton can write like an angel... a writer hell bent on fulfilling the legacy of John Steinbeck, carrying on the tradition of James Jones and exploring his own heights." -- Alabama Journal "It was my misfortune to have missed 'The Quarterback', and thus be unaware of this fine, unflinching writer. He does not prettify, embroider, ornament of otherwise offend against the utter dignity of his hard, enduring characters; out of their meanness, and misery, he has made a story which I envy, in prose as clean and businesslike as a switchblade. Make sure everybody hears about this book; it's not about a gambler and a broad and a fighter at all-it's about the human condition, and it's beautiful." -- George V. Higgins, author of The "Friends of Eddie Coyle"

He was a tall, cleanly attractive young man, the kind you'd like to have for a neighbor. Press the wrong button and he'd mow you down with the ruthlessness of a Sherman tank. His name was Daniel Port. He was a gangster, the brain and spirit behind the machine that milked the dirty pennies from the city. Now Port wanted out. He had a bellyful of corruption, a one-way ticket to New York, and a dark, shining girl to go along with it. The problem was to get there alive, because the one way out for Daniel Port was over his own freshly dug grave...

Vera Caspary, the famed author of Laura , gives us another gripping crime drama, told through shifting points of view. John Ansell, young and idealistic editor of Truth and Crime magazine, wants to breathe new life into the stale and formulaic publication. Instead of rehashing a story that's already been proven popular elsewhere, he finds a fresh one: the murder of Warren G. Wilson, famed figurehead of a correspondence course. The murder itself isn't too remarkable--just a bullet in the back--but the victim is another case, as it becomes apparent that despite having a household name, nothing is known about him. Perhaps even more peculiar is how Ansell's boss absolutely refuses to run the story and, soon thereafter, Ansell is poisoned. Caspary masterfully allows the truth to slowly untangle in this incredibly woven mystery, finally available as an ebook.

SHANGHAI FLAME Alex Cloud knows he's being followed. He only has a short period of time to find Flame and bring her back to the ship in order to leave Shanghai alive. China has turned Red, and an American newspaperman's life has turned worthless. Dodging from one risky situation to the next, Cloud runs into Haigmann, a canny middle-man who seems to think Cloud has something of value. Eventually Cloud finds Flame, but she wants nothing to do with him. Undaunted, he's sworn to get her out of Shanghai, but now finds himself carrying a lethal pack of cards with a microfilm of names glued into them. Now they're both on the run, trying to stay one step ahead of the spies and thieves who want that film--ready and willing to kill anyone to get it. COUNTERSPY EXPRESS "Don't get ... mixed up with a woman. My mistake..." The dying words of Jim Cabot's European contact ring in his ears as finds himself being trailed by one woman and tempted by another. His mission is to locate Borsilov, a defected Russian scientist. His predecessor, Max Becker, died trying. And already Cabot has been knocked senseless and his life threatened by two gunmen as he tries to track down the missing scientist. Behind the threats is an Italian Red named Major Racasoli. Pitted against them all is an English opportunist, Sydney Jardine, who wants to sell Borsilov to the highest bidder. But those dying words of warning mean nothing to Cabot now, because he has met Pia--and all bets are off.

Pander wore dark glasses and fancy suspenders and he moved into the San Pietro rackets like a sandblaster gone berserk. Fell, the boss, was mysteriously away, and Pander grabbed the chance to bury his hands in the heavy money. Then Fell came back. At his side was Cripp, the human adding machine with the beautiful face and the twisted leg. With them came murder... wholesale.

WAR OF THE DONS The Guarda brothers run capo Messina's territory. Pepe, the oldest, is the muscle. Nuncio, the younger brother, is the accountant. And Marco, he's the wolf. Restless, hungry, he's through taking orders. It's his idea to get rid of Messina and take over. But to do that, the hit has got to look like an accident, or they risk the wrath of Messina's boss, Don Angelo. So Marco hires a twitchy drug addict with a penchant for danger, a guy who knows how to turn Messina's simple hospital visit into a fatality. It's all going so well, so smoothly. Then Don Angelo steps in to take control, and the Guarda brothers really go to war. BLACK MAFIA Cutter used to be part of the movement, but got busted for knocking over a bank. He did his time, now he's out. But things have changed. His former mentor is now a teacher, and wants nothing to do with him. It's all Cutter can do to stay one step ahead of the Man. And now some white guys are coming into the Belt to stir up trouble, busting the local action and making it look like a Perrini job. But Perrini is quite happy with the status quo. Sure he skims the Belt, but he's not looking for trouble. Trouble finds him anyway in the form of Don Santino's nephew, Angelo, who's got a hidden agenda all his own. And that's when Cutter figures it's time to make his move.

Charley's Rope was about frayed out. The caribinieri were after him, he had a bullet in his hip and no goddamn passport. Charley needed a passport bad. He needed that intricate piece of paper--signed, sealed, and innocent looking--the way only a G.I. in italy could need one. A G.I. deserter with a sweet fortune in blackmail lire and the carabinieri lusting to lay hands on him...

From the the Academy Award]-nominated screenwriter of "Breakfast at Tiffanys" and "The Manchurian Candidate" comes a story unavailable for almost 50 years. A New York literary agent in love with a Hollywood starlet risks his life to uncover the secret behind a Nobel Prize-winning authors lost final manuscript.

The Big Fix by Ed Lacy Author of the 1958 Edgar Award-winning novel Room to Swing! On the night Irish Tommy Cork's murder was planned, nothing very much out of the ordinary happened. Tommy was in the ring, taking a pasting-as usual. Back to the ropes, almost sitting on the second strand, Tommy crouched, gloved hands up in front of his face like a leather fence. He was fighting a strong youngster who was now whaling away with both hands in a moment of wild enthusiasm. Most of his blows were blocked, or ducked by Tommy's weaving head, but those few that didn't miss landed with loud thud sounds on the kidneys, head, or in the stomach, visibly shaking up the pale "old man."