Hardcase and hard boiled

When Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch arrive in Appaloosa, they find a small, dusty town suffering at the hands of renegade rancher Randall Bragg, a man who has so little regard for the law that he has taken supplies, horses, and women for his own and left the city marshal and one of his deputies for dead. Cole and Hitch, itinerant lawmen, are used to cleaning up after opportunistic thieves, but in Bragg they find an unusually wily adversary-one who raises the stakes by playing not with the rules, but with emotions.

"Barry Gerber, one of the most hated and powerful men in Hollywood, is a no-show for a red carpet event. The next morning he turns up dead in a trash can, killed in such a bizarre way that neither Detectives Mike Lomax nor Terry Biggs nor anyone in Forensics has ever seen anything like it before. Two days later, the prime suspect another despised show-business bad boy is found murdered in the same sadistic manner. "The list of suspects then becomes as long as the credits in a summer blockbuster. Everyone hated the murdered men. Biggs jokes that this could be an elaborate public service effort to make Hollywood a better place to live and work. But the two detectives soon find that all jokes are off as they wade through a daunting number of leads to uncover the identity of the next victim. What they stumble upon is a motive far more primal than they had ever imagined. -BOOK JACKET.

Everett Hitch and Virgil Cole track down Virgil's sweetheart Allie and the three head north to start over in the town of Brimstone. Given their reputations as guns for hire, Everett and Virgil are able to secure positions as the town's deputies. But a sanctimonious leader of a local church stirs up trouble at the local saloons, and as the violence escalates into murder, the two struggle to keep the peace.

Hiding a secret life as an assassin while working as a murder analyst for the Miami police, Dexter Morgan is intrigued by the work of a new serial killer whose style mimics his own.

Deadwood, South Dakota, during the Black Hills gold rush of the 1870s, becomes the colourful backdrop for this novel populated by Wild Bill Hickok, his sidekick Charley Utter, Calamity Jane, and other famous Old West characters.

Dexter Morgan has been under considerable pressure. In trying to avoid the deep suspicions of the dangerous Sergeant Doakes-who believes Dexter is a homicidal maniac (which, of course, he is) Dexter has had to slip further into his foolproof domestic disguise. While not working as a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department, he now spends nearly all his time with his girlfriend, Rita, and her two children. But how long can Dexter play Kick the Can instead of Slice the Slasher? How long before his Dark Passenger forces him to drop the charade of family life and let his inner monster run free?

"After his surprisingly glorious honeymoon in Paris, life is almost normal for Dexter Morgan. Married life seems to agree with him: he's devoted to his bride, his stomach is full, and his homicidal hobbies seem nicely under control. But old habits die hard-and Dexter's work as a blood spatter analyst never fails to offer new temptations that appeal to his offbeat sense of justice. .and his Dark Passenger still waits to hunt with him in the moonlight. Luckily for Dex, there's someone out there with particularly twisted tastes. Dexter may have never been a big fan of art but the discovery of a corpse (artfully displayed as a sunbather relaxing on a beach chair) naturally piques his curiosity. Miami's finest soon realize they've got a terrifying new serial killer on the loose. And Dexter, of course, is back in business" www.orionbooks.co.uk.

"Five cops. Drinking beer, playing cards, busting balls. I'll never forget that Sunday night. It was the happiest time the five of us would ever spend together again. A group of women, including Mike Lomax's girlfriend and Mrs Terry Biggs, have partnered with a bestselling mystery author for a lucrative side gig where the author writes in a death in an actual Hollywood home. Once the gossipmongers and ghoulish followers interest is piqued, the girls sell the house on for a tidy profit. Then one of the women and the famous author are both found dead and the rest of the women start worrying. Is there a serial killer on the loose? For Lomax and Biggs, this case has just become personal. -Publisher.

Appie Knoll is the kind of suburb where kids grow up right. But something is wrong. Fourteen-year-old Kevin Bartlett disappears. Everyone thinks he's run away -- until the comic strip ransom note arrives. It doesn't take Spenser long to get the picture -- an affluent family seething with rage, a desperate boy making strange friends...friends like Vic Harroway, body builder. Mr. Muscle is Spenser's only lead and he isn't talking...except with his fists. But when push comes to shove, when a boy's life is on the line, Spenser can speak that language too...This is the first of a long series featuring Spenser and everyone is a gem of a read.

JoLayne Lucks lives in a town infamous for its suspicious miracles, but she's still elated when her lottery numbers finally pay off big- 28 million, to be exact. And she has great plans for her fortune: to save a rare piece of Florida paradise from the bulldozers. Only one problem: There's another winning Lotto ticket, and the people who've got it just never learned how to share. When the two militia wannabes swipe JoLayne's ticket, she enlists an off-the-rails newspaperman to help her track down the trigger-happy creeps and their bewildered hostage, a Hooters waitress. Getting rich quick is never easy.

Honey Santana, impassioned, willful, possibly bipolar, self-proclaimed queen of lost causes has a scheme to help rid the world of irresponsibility, indifference, and dinnertime sales calls. She's taking rude, gullible Relentless, Inc. telemarketer Boyd Shreave and his less-than-enthusiastic mistress, Eugenie, the fifteen-minute-famous girlfriend of a tabloid murderer into the wilderness of Florida's Ten Thousand Islands for a gentle lesson in civility. What she doesn't know is that she's being followed by her Honey-obsessed former employer, Piejack (whose mismatched fingers are proof that sexual harassment in the workplace is a bad idea) And he doesn't know he's being followed by Honey's still-smitten former drug-running ex-husband, Perry, and their wise-and-protective-way-beyond-his-years twelve-year-old-son, Fry. And when they all pull up on Dismal Key, they don't know they're intruding on Sammy Tigertail, a half white-half Seminole failed alligator wrestler, trying like hell to be a hermit despite the Florida State co-ed who's dying to be his hostage

The first book of a long series ...Stephanie's all grown up and out on her own, living five miles from Mom and Dad's, doing her best to sever the world's longest umbilical cord. Out of work and out of money, with her Miata repossessed and her refrigerator empty, Stephanie blackmails her bail bondsman cousin, Vinnie, into giving her a try as an apprehension agent. Stephanie knows zilch about the job requirements, but she figures her new pal, fearless bounty hunter Ranger, can teach her what it takes to catch a crook. Her first assignment: nail Joe Morelli, a former vice cop on the run from a charge of murder one. Morelli is also the irresistible macho pig who took Stephanie's virginity at age sixteen and then wrote the details on the bathroom wall of Mario's Sub Shop. There's still powerful chemistry between these two, so the chase should be interesting. It could also be extremely dangerous, especially when Stephanie encounters a heavyweight title contender who likes to play rough. Benito Ramirez is known for his brutality to women. At the very least, his obsession with Stephanie complicates her manhunt and brings terror and uncertainty into her life.

After the bloody confrontation in Appaloosa, Everett Hitch heads off to Resolution, an Old West town the kind of town that doesn't have much in the way of commerce, except for a handful of saloons and some houses of ill repute. Hitch takes a job as a lookout at Amos Wolfson's Blackfoot Saloon and quickly establishes his position as protector of the ladies who work the back rooms as well as a man unafraid to stand up to the enforcer sent down from the O'Malley copper mine. Though Hitch makes short work of hired gun Koy Wickman, tensions continue to mount, so that Hitch is relieved by the arrival of his friend Virgil Cole. When greedy mine owner Eamon O'Malley threatens the loose coalition of local ranchers and starts buying up Resolution's few businesses, Hitch and Cole find themselves in the middle of a makeshift war between O'Malley's men and the ranchers.

Down-and-out ex-cop and not-quite-reformed addict Manny Rupert accepts a job going undercover to find out if an old man locked up in a California prison is who he claims to be: the despicable - and allegedly dead - Josef Mengele, aka the Angel of Death. What if, instead of drowning thirty years ago, the sadistic legend whose Auschwitz crimes still horrify faked his own death and is now locked up in San Quentin, ranting and bitter about being denied the adulation he craves for his contribution to keeping the Master Race pure - if no longer masterful? After accidentally reuniting with ex-wife and love of his life, Tina, at San Quentin - they first met at the crime scene where Tina murdered her first husband with Drano-laced Lucky Charms - Manny spends a bad night imbibing boxed wine and questionable World War One morphine, hunched over a trove of photos showing live genital dissections that plant him in the middle of a conspiracy involving genocide, drugs, eugenics, human experiments, and America's secret history of collusion with German believers in Nordic superiority. Manny's quest sends him careening from one extreme of apocalypse-adjacent reality to the other: from SS-inked Jewish shotcallers to meth-crazed virgin hookers, from Mexican gangbangers to Big Pharma?financed prison research to an animal shelter that gasses more than stray dogs and cats . . .

"Warren Spooner was born after a prolonged delivery in a makeshift delivery room in a doctor's office in Milledgeville, Georgia, on the first Saturday of December, 1956. His father died shortly afterward, long before Spooner had even a memory of his face, and was replaced eventually by a once-brilliant young naval officer, Calmer Ottosson, recently court-martialed out of service. This is the story of the lifelong tie between the two men, poles apart, of Spooner's troubled childhood, troubled adolescence, violent and troubled adulthood and Calmer Ottosson's inexhaustible patience, undertaking a life-long struggle to salvage his step-son, a man he will never understand. -Publisher.

When a wealthy entrepreneur is accused of murdering his girlfriend in Los Angeles, wisecracking private eye Elvis Cole is hired to prove that the evidence was tampered with and becomes suspicious about the defense attorney's motivations.

Los Angeles, 3:58 A.M. Elvis Cole receives the phone call he's been waiting for since childhood. Responding to a gunshot, the LAPD has found an injured man in an alleyway. He has told the officer on the scene that he is looking for his son, Elvis Cole. Minutes later, the man is dead. Haunted throughout his life by a lack of knowledge about his father, Elvis turns to the one person who can help him navigate the minefield of his past his longtime partner and confidant, Joe Pike. Together with hard-edged LAPD detective Carol Starkey (who is harboring her own growing feelings for Cole) they launch a feverish search for the dead man's identity. Elvis, meanwhile, struggles between wanting to believe he's found his father at last and allowing his suspicions to hold him back. With each long-buried clue they unearth, a frightening picture begins to emerge about who the dead man might have been and the terrible secret he's been guarding. At the same time, Elvis has no way of knowing he has awakened a sleeping monster. The further he goes in his investigation, the closer he draws to a merciless killer who is violently connected to…

Impoverished attorney John Sutter and his wife find their world colliding with that of their new neighbour, Frank "The Bishop" Bellaros, when John is forced to defend Frank in a murder trial.

Welcome to Familyland, an offshoot of Lamaar Studios. Once a small, Southern California animation house, it has grown into an entertainment conglomerate encompassing movies, television, music, video games, and a sprawling theme park. When an actor portraying Familyland's beloved mascot, Rambunctious Rabbit, is brutally murdered on park grounds, Lamaar executives are worried that the idyllic image of America represented in Familyland will be shattered. They ask Mike Lomax and his partner Terry Biggs, the LAPD detectives assigned to solve the case, to keep the circumstances surrounding the death of their mascot quiet. When a second Lamaar employee is killed, Lomax and Biggs uncover a conspiracy to destroy Familyland and settle an unknown vendetta. Still under pressure to keep the case away from the public eye, the detectives are met with a third murder and an outrageous demand: Anyone who associates with Lamaar employees, customers, anyone will be killed.