False Ransom by Ivan Infante
Mike Chance is what you might call a nasty piece of work. He has made his way from America’s East Coast to West, and has ended up in downtown Los Angeles in 1938. His first act is to dress up as cops, roust an illegal…
A Man's Head by Georges Simenon
Translated by David Coward — Having accrued an incomplete collection of dog-eared, yellowed and slightly foxed editions of Simenon’s Maigret novels by scavenging second hand bookshops, Penguin’s project to reprint all 75 of them was music to my ears. This set is being translated afresh…
Midnight in Europe by Alan Furst
World War II is yet to start, but fascist forces in Germany and Italy are making ominous declarations, and General Franco’s nationalist army is fighting a civil war with the Spanish Republic. The Republic maintains fragile control over Madrid and Barcelona, but they are starved…
Interview: Ari Marmell
Today we welcome the American author Ari Marmell to the site. The author of Hot Lead, Cold Iron, has a big reputation in horror and fantasy circles, and in his latest novel has blended Celtic mythology with crime fiction. His latest here, Mick Oberon, has…
Hot Lead, Cold Iron by Ari Marmell
Mick Oberon belongs to the classic school of the pulp PI. He works out of a cramped office with two chairs and a battered filing cabinet. His cases don’t bring in much money, and it sure isn’t glamorous traipsing the mean streets of 1930s Chicago…
Sugar Pop Moon by John Florio
It’s 1930 and Jersey Leo, aka Snowball, is a mixed-race albino working at the Pour House, a speakeasy in Hell’s Kitchen during Prohibition. He’s described as ‘…a walking cup of coffee with a splash too much milk.’ It doesn’t matter that his boss, Jimmy McCullough,…
CIS: Fatality in Fleet Street by Christopher St John Sprigg
Fatality in Fleet Street was first published in 1933, but is set several years later, on the eve of what history tells us was World War II. The supreme irony is that St John Sprigg could have predicted neither this nor his own untimely death…
Salazar by Seth Lynch
If you are looking for a dark, moody recreation of 1930s Paris, complete with dubious gangs and hard-hitting policemen, then this book is sure to appeal. Salazar is an English war veteran, traumatised by his experiences in World War I, who has chosen to set…