For all of you who have asked about what books we’re reading now, thanks to the good folks at Hard Case Crime who generously supplied us with free copies of some of their latest, we’re reading…

BLOOD ON THE MINK by Robert Silverberg

A federal agent goes undercover, impersonating a Mob lieutenant to destroy a counterfeiting ring from within.

FALSE NEGATIVE by Joseph Koenig

In 1953 Atlantic City, a former newspaper reporter uncovers a series of murders of beauty pageant contestants and doggedly digs in, even when it puts his own life in danger.

THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH by Ariel S. Winter

An amazing first novel that’s really three novels in one, each set in a different decade and each told in the style of a different famous mystery writer.

THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by James M. Cain

Who knew that the guy who wrote MILDRED PIERCE and DOUBLE INDEMNITY had an unpublished book? Well, he did, and 35 years after his death it’s finally coming out.

And from last summer…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GETTING OFF by Lawrence Block

A young woman living in New York makes a list of all the men she’s ever slept with and decides to track down the only five men on the list who are still alive.  (Why are all the others dead? Well, she has this bad habit, see, of killing men after she has sex with them. And robbing them, too, but it’s the killing part she really enjoys.  That and the sex part.)

So anyway, she’s got five former lovers to track down, and to kill, but it’s easier said than done…

CHOKE HOLD by Christa Faust

Angel Dare started as a performer in adult films and then went on to manage other women in the business, but when a sex trafficking ring tried to kill her, she turned into a remorseless vigilante with just two things on her mind: her own safety, and getting revenge. That story was told in MONEY SHOT, which got nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award.  In this new book, Angel’s spent a year in the Witness Protection Program, but has to go on the run again when the only survivor of her earlier campaign of revenge somehow gets on her trail.  Meanwhile, an old co-star of hers makes her promise, as he’s dying, that she’ll get his son—a hotheaded 18-year-old MMA fighter—to a TV reality show tryout in Vegas. Needless to say, the trip to Vegas isn’t a smooth or peaceful one…

QUARRY’S EX by Max Allan Collins

How does a guy become a professional killer? Well, for Quarry it started when he came back from a tour of duty overseas to find his wife in bed with another man. The next day, he killed the man, and a new career was born. A decade later, Quarry’s making a good living in the killing business, when who do you suppose he stumbles across while doing a job? Yeah, the book’s title gives it away. But it’s a great story, about a man and a woman with a shared past but no love lost between them.