Welcome to Hard-Boiled-Books

The Continental Op -1925-26 – The seven Continental Op stories that Dashiell Hammett wrote during 1925 and 1926 for The Black Mask magazine.

Murder on the Soundstage – Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, gets caught in the middle of some jealous lovers and some double crossed deals and barely makes it out alive.

Monsieur Dupin – The Detective Tales of Edgar Allan Poe – With the stories in this collection, Edgar Allan Poe is considered to have founded the genre of detective fiction. These five stories introduced the character of Auguste Dupin and gave us the foundation of “Ratiocination” (or deductive reasoning) from which later detectives such as Sherlock Holmes would claim their fame.

The Screaming Mimi – Bill Sweeney is a down-and-out lush. He is also a top-notch reporter. Aroused by the naked beauty of the Ripper’s fourth victim — or near-victim — Sweeney pulls himself together and goes after the killer.

Phony Shakedown – four stories from the casebook of Dan Turner. Turner was a hard-boiled gumshoe who worked the mean streets and back lots of the film studios of Hollywood, encountering murderers, blackmailers, greedy producers, seductive starlets, desperate has-beens and immoral grifters.

Kennedy the Conman – A fraudulent scheme to search for Pizarro’s lost gold leads to disappearances and murders.

The Continental Op -1924 – The nine Continental Op stories written by Dashiell Hammett in 1924.

Seven Lies South – An American expat gets unwittingly drawn into a plot to hide an ex-Nazi’s corruption and dirty secrets. An ex-Nazi officer, a British grifter and a Canadian gold digger each want to use a broken American pilot to further their individual grafts.

My Brother’s Widow – For four years, Gevan Dean had refused to face Niki, the woman who’d hurt him. But now he had to—because her husband, Gevan’s brother, had been murdered.