Книги автора Alexander David

What are the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective story? “Savagery, style, sophistication, sleuthing, and sex,” said Ellery Queen. Often a desperate blond, a jealous husband, and, of course, a tough-but-tender P.I. the likes of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Perhaps Raymond Chandler summed it up best in his description of Dashiell Hammett’s style: “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it... He put these people down on paper as they were, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.” Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind, with over half of the stories never published before in book form. Included are thirty-six sublimely suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolution of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the golden age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1920s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy. Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett’s 1925 tour de force “The Scorched Face,” in which the disappearance of two sisters leads Hammett’s never-named detective, the Continental Op, straight into a web of sexual blackmail amidst the West Coast elite, to Ed Gorman’s 1992 “The Long Silence After,” a gripping and powerful rendezvous involving a middle class insurance executive, a Chicago streetwalker, and a loaded .38. Other delectable contributions include “Brush Fire” by James M. Cain, author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raymond Chandler’s “I’ll Be Waiting,” where, for once, the femme fatale is not blond but a redhead, a Ross Macdonald mystery starring Macdonald’s most famous creator, the cryptic Lew Archer, and “The Screen Test of Mike Hammer” by the one and only Mickey Spillane. The hard-boiled cult has more in common with the legendary lawmen of the Wild West than with the gentleman and lady sleuths of traditional drawing room mysteries, and this direct line of descent is on brilliant display in two of the most subtle and tautly written stories in the collection, Elmore Leonard’s “3:10 to Yuma” and John D. MacDonald’s “Nor Iron Bars.” Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block. Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without. Containing many notable rarities, it celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American literature and film, but how we see our heroes and ourselves.

If you don't shudder with every twist and sudden thrust of these 16 terror tales…

if you are able to turn off your bedside lamp after closing this volume and drift off to a deep, dreamless sleep…

if you can drink your morning coffee without thinking there just might be a peculiarly bitter taste to it, or turn your back on your spouse or best friend without feeling a funny itching between your shoulder blades…

then that lovable old master of menace, Alfred Hitchcock, apologizes and personally guarantees you your full payment in horror. All you have to do is meet him in the cemetery under the next murderer's moon…

There is a kind of disadvantage that might seem insurmountable—unless you’re willing and able to resort to a certain kind of trickery!

Iran is bracing for war and poised to make an armed grab for regional hegemony. Its leadership in Tehran is preparing to play a secret military trump card. Long in preparation, Iran's nuclear warfare program has yielded an array of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems to drop nukes onto targets in the Middle East and as far away as the continental reaches of the United States.

Shock and awe air strikes have so far failed to destroy Iran's hardened weapons development facilities, its protected missile launch sites, or its bomb-proof and hard-to-find aircraft hangars.

Iran's vast armies are also ready to march in human wave attacks against US bases in Iraq. Tehran is prepared to wage war and primed to win. Washington and the Pentagon have both proven utterly powerless to either negotiate a settlement or forestall Iran's aggression through effective military action.

But there is an answer. Lightning assault by joint, combined arms strategic forces leveraging America's next-generation combat systems and advanced warfighting tactics in order to prevail against otherwise impossible odds.

For Iran, the result is… Bloodbath

People are easily tempted by quick fixes—often forgetting that ultimate consequences are much slower to develop…

Somebody who helps solve a thorny problem deserves a little something in return…

Coming soon to a store near you—but use it with care!

Limits are comfortable, in a way—but seldom permanent.