Features

A classic revisited: Death of a Citizen

By
Published in 1960, Death of a Citizen marked the beginning of the story Donald Hamilton’s counter agent/assassin Matt Helm. It would eventually spread over 27 novels, concluding with The Damagers, which came out in 1993. Books in the series have sold more than 20 million…
Read more
Features

Serial killer novels: 10 of the best

By
The traditional definition of a serial killer is a person who has killed three or more people. Individuals who can single-handedly spread this kind of death and destruction have been a terrifying part of our collective conscience for centuries. Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer,…
Read more
Features

CIS: The Grifters revisited

By
Classics in September — Most people probably associate The Grifters with the 1990 film directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Cusack, Anjelica Huston and Annette Bening. But the script, penned by veteran crime writer Donald E Westlake, was adapted from a story by Jim…
Read more
Features

CIS: The top five women of noir

By
Classics in September — Several months ago we discussed five of the best American novelists currently writing in the hardboiled tradition. All of the writers featured in that piece are top-notch crime authors – but they also had something else in common: they were all…
Read more
PrintReviews

A Private Venus

By
Written by Giorgio Scerbanenco – Giorgio Scerbanenco was an important figure in postwar Italian crime fiction, but is little known to English-speaking audiences because his novels were never translated into English. Hersilia Press is seeking to rectify our ignorance of Scerbanenco and other Italian crime…
Read more
Features

Interview: Ariel S Winter

By
Ariel S Winter’s first novel The Twenty-Year Death is bound to appeal to fans of the mid-20th century noir and hardboiled crime fiction we often cover on the site. Formerly a librarian, a bookseller and even a pie man, he’s now the published author he…
Read more