Tough guys carring big guns Great action!!!!!!
Tough guys carrying big guns take center stage in this explosive reading list of hard-boiled crime and action fiction. From the classic noir of Dashiell Hammett's *The Maltese Falcon* and Raymond Chandler's *The Long Goodbye* to the gritty modern thrillers of Dennis Lehane's *Gone, Baby, Gone* and Michael Connelly's *The Black Ice*, these curated picks deliver non-stop gunfights, brutal justice, and unforgettable heroes. Perfect for fans of pulp fiction, detective mysteries, and graphic novels like *5 Shots*, this collection is packed with intense action books starring the toughest guys in literature.
Book
The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
by Otto Penzler
The biggest, the boldest, the most comprehensive collection of Pulp writing ever assembled. Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train—a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best. Including: • Three stories by Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Dashiell Hammett. • Complete novels from Carroll John Daly, the man who invented the hard-boiled detective, and Fredrick Nebel, one of the masters of the form. • A never before published Dashiell Hammett story. • Every other major pulp writer of the time, including Paul Cain, Steve Fisher, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy, and many many more of whom you’ve probably never heard. • Three deadly sections–The Crimefighters, The Villains, and Dames–with three unstoppable introductions by Harlan Coben, Harlan Ellison, and Laura Lippman Featuring: • Plenty of reasons for murder, all of them good. • A kid so smart–he’ll die of it. • A soft-hearted loan shark’s legman learning–the hard way–never to buy a strange blonde a hamburger. • The uncanny “Moon Man” and his mad-money victims.
Book
5 Shots
by Jemir Johnson
What you do in the dark is your business ... keeping it there is hers. Jay Nova is a private eye ... a "fixer" ... the right one to call at the wrong time. Armed with a semi automatic and mind reading abilities she goes where others won't, to do what they can't ... if the money;s right. But when jobs get nastier and clients with things to hide plot her death, she'll need more than a strong hustle and good aim to make it through. 5 Shots - a graphic novel collection about crime, murder and a mind reader caught in the middle - shows what happens when violence isn't the best answer ... but the only one
Book
Gone, Baby, Gone
by Dennis Lehane
“Powerful and raw, harrowing, and unsentimental.” —Washington Post Book World “Chilling, completely credible….[An] absolutely gripping story.” —Chicago Tribune “Mr. Lehane delivers big time.” —Wall Street Journal In Gone, Baby, Gone, the master of the new noir, New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island), vividly captures the complex beauty and darkness of working-class Boston. A gripping, deeply evocative thriller about the devastating secrets surrounding a little girl lost, featuring the popular detective team of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, Gone, Baby, Gone was the basis for the critically acclaimed motion picture directed by Ben Affleck and starring Casey Affleck, Ed Harris, and Morgan Freeman.
Book
High Profile
by Robert B. Parker
Struggling with a high-profile case involving the murders of a controversial talk-show host and a young woman, Paradise police chief Jesse Stone becomes increasingly frustrated by the lack of interest on the part of the victims' families.
Book
Sacred
by Dennis Lehane
A dying billionaire hires private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro to retrieve his beautiful, grieving daughter from an exploitative cult, luring them into a world of ubiquitous deception and danger. Reprint.
Book
The Black Ice
by Michael Connelly
L.A.P.D. detective Harry Bosch investigates the mysterious death of a narcotics officer who was reportedly selling a new drug called black ice.
Book
Bangkok 8
by John Burdett
A thriller with attitude to spare, Bangkok 8 is a sexy, razor-edged, often darkly hilarious novel set in one of the world’s most exotic cities. Witnessed by a throng of gaping spectators, a charismatic Marine sergeant is murdered under a Bangkok bridge inside a bolted-shut Mercedes Benz. Among the witnesses are the only two cops in the city not on the take, but within moments one is murdered and his partner, Sonchai Jitpleecheep—a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I.—is hell-bent on wreaking revenge. On a vigilante mission to capture his partner’s murderer, Sonchai is begrudgingly paired with a beautiful FBI agent named Jones and captures her heart in the process. In a city fueled by illicit drugs and infinite corruption, prostitution and priceless art, Sonchai’s quest for vengeance takes him into a world much more sinister than he could have ever imagined.
Book
A Drink Before the War
by Dennis Lehane
A novel about the search for a missing woman who had stolen secret documents.
Book
The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett
FEATURING THE CHARACTER THAT INSPIRED THE AMC SERIES MONSIEUR SPADE STARRING CLIVE OWEN ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME Detective Sam Spade is a private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. When his partner is killed during a stakeout, he is drawn into the hunt for a fantastic treasure with a dubious provenance—a golden bird encrusted with jewels. Also on the trail are a perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, an oversized adventurer named Gutman, and Spade’s new client Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted generations of readers. *With a new introduction by Richard Russo*
Book
The Long Goodbye
by Raymond Chandler
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • The renowned novel from crime fiction master Raymond Chandler, with the "quintessential urban private eye" (Los Angeles Times), Philip Marlowe • Featuring the iconic character that inspired the film Marlowe, starring Liam Neeson. In noir master Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, Philip Marlowe befriends a down on his luck war veteran with the scars to prove it. Then he finds out that Terry Lennox has a very wealthy nymphomaniac wife, whom he divorced and remarried and who ends up dead. And now Lennox is on the lam and the cops and a crazy gangster are after Marlowe.