Tough Guys Dangerous Dames

An omnibus edition of The Plutonium Blonde and The Doomsday Brunette Double your pleasure, double the laughs with this omnibus edition featuring Zachary Nixon Johnson, the last freelance PI on Earth. It's 2057, and Zach is partnered with an experimental A.I. named HARV. In what is both an homage to and parody of the great heyday of pulp fiction, they solve cases involving androids, future tech wizards, and of course, the occasional nuclear-powered, genocidal fembot...

The complete collection of fifteen stories starring one of pulp fiction’s most hardened PIs, with accompanying illustrations It’s hot in St. Louis, and Donahue is looking for a hired gun. An ex–New York cop who got canned from the NYPD after raiding the wrong gambling joint, Donahue has spent four years on the job as a private detective—punishing work that’s turned him from a tough customer into one of the most hard-boiled operatives in the country. A killer named Micky Shane has skipped New York for St. Louis, and Donahue has come to find him. When he does, it won’t be good for Donahue—but it’ll be a whole lot worse for Shane. In his days writing Donahue stories for Black Mask magazine, Frederick Nebel was as popular and well respected as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Although his name is no longer widely known, these classic tales of two-fisted justice have lost none of their grit or their bite.

A roleplaying game of mystery and hardboiled action in a city that never sleeps. I woke with a start, my mouth tasting like an old glove and my head pounding from the events of the previous evening, though I wasn't sure if it was the beating from Benny's boys or the half bottle of drugstore whiskey that had done the most damage. I lifted my eyelids like stubborn blinds to find my gaze fall on a dame with a hundred-dollar purse in one hand and a cheap bean-shooter in the other. I groaned and cursed myself for ever getting involved in this mess... In Hard City, character creation is swift and simple, generating competent yet flawed individuals and focusing on what sets them apart as they walk the fine line between right and wrong. Fast action resolution places the emphasis on the momentum of the plot, while the sandbox setting provides evocative hooks for adventures – fight crooks, rescue the innocent, thwart blackmail plots (or start them!), or uncover corruption in the Mayor's office. Stalk the mean streets of a world filled with two-bit thugs, hard-nosed gumshoes, intrepid reporters, gangsters, and femme fatales, all doing what they must to survive in the concrete jungle. With trouble around every corner, a secret on every lip, and a gun in every pocket, danger is never far away in the hard city.

The hard-boiled style of detective fiction emerged in America in the years after the First World War. In the late 1940s, following the Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War, a new generation of young writers revisited the conventions governing the fictional private eye, and began to move him (the tough detective was still always male) and his world in new directions. This book examines the work of the four most important writers of this second generation of hard-boiled fiction. It offers the first substantial literary analysis of the Max Thursday novels of Wade Miller and the Carney Wilde novels of Bart Spicer, and it develops new perspectives on the well-known Mike Hammer novels of Mickey Spillane and the Lew Archer novels of Ross Macdonald. A particular focus is upon the theme of the detective's status as a loner who succeeds in discovering truth and achieving justice because he works outside organized social structures.

Robert E. Howard published primarily in pulp magazines, creating memorable characters like Conan of Cimmeria. After his suicide at the age of 30, pulps continued publishing Howard material posthumously. His first hardcover book appeared in 1937, a year after his death. That book, A Gent from Bear Creek, is the holy grail for Howard collectors--only 12 original copies are known to exist. This invaluable resource for Howard collectors has information for every known published work. Initial chapters provide a biography, discuss Howard's literary legacy, and give basic tips about book collecting and selling. The main body of the work is a bibliography of Howard's published works from 1925 through 2005. A thorough index locates the publication of every Howard story or poem.

Since the late 1960s, the novels of Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck detective series, along with the works of Henning Mankell, Håkan Nesser and Stieg Larsson, have sparked an explosion of Nordic crime fiction—grim police procedurals treating urgent sociopolitical issues affecting the contemporary world. Steeped in noir techniques and viewpoints, many of these novels are reaching international audiences through film and television adaptations. This reference guide introduces the world of Nordic crime fiction to English–speaking readers. Caught between the demands of conscience and societal strictures, the detectives in these stories—like the heroes of Norse mythology—know that they and their world must perish, but fight on regardless of cost. At a time of bleak eventualities, Nordic crime fiction interprets the bitter end as a celebration of the indomitable human spirit.

Prepared by renowned Howard scholar Paul Herman with the assistance of Glenn Lord, this is the first new bibliography of Robert E. Howard since 1976. This massive volume contains more than twice as much information as the preceding biblio, The Last Celt. Robert E. Howard is considered the Godfather of Sword and Sorcery, and the creator of the international icon, Conan the Cimmerian, yet wrote successfully in numerous genres. The Neverending Hunt lists every story, poem, letter and publication in which a Howard work has appeared. It's more than you might think . . .