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CIS: A classic revisited - Red Harvest

Along with Sam Spade, there is hardly a more iconic character in crime fiction history than the aloof yet resolute private eye The Continental Op. And both are the creation of Dashiell Hammett, best known internationally as the author of the Maltese Falcon. Hammett, along with fellow pulp…
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Little Green

Written by Walter Mosley — At the end of the 2007 novel Blonde Faith, the battle-scarred and world-weary Ezekiel ‘Easy’ Rawlins plunged to almost certain death as his car went over a cliff. After 11 books, the first being set in 1948, Easy Rawlins fans…
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Voodoo Eyes

Written by Nick Stone — PI Max Mingus has settled into his routine of investigating cheating spouses when what would usually be a fairly standard case turns decidedly not-so-standard. However, that case takes a swift back seat when Max gets a call from his old…
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Smile of the Viper

Written by Harry Dunn — Take one downbeat gumshoe, add a beautiful damsel in distress and all you need is a bad impression of Humphrey Bogart to create the recipe for a cliched fictional view of the life of a private detective. Thankfully, Harry Dunn…
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Dog in the Manger

Written by Mike Resnick –– Ex-cop Eli Paxton is an honest to goodness hero. Fat lot of good it’s done him though. It did get him into the pages of Newsweek and even a biography that he never even saw on the bookshelf. Unfortunately, as a…
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In Pursuit of Spenser

Edited by Otto Penzler – In Pursuit of Spenser will certainly shed some light on its titular iconic PI. But Otto Penzler’s edited collection of essays is even more informative about Spenser’s creator. And through Bob Parker (as contributors always refer to him), we learn…
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Seduction of the Innocent

Written by Max Allan Collins — As a writer of crime fiction, Max Allan Collins has many strings to his bow. The Quarry series of novels features a hardboiled antihero similar to Richard Stark’s Parker. His long running series about Chicago PI Nathan Heller is…
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Femme and Kinsmen

Written by Bill Pronzini — Of all the long-running private eye series out there, Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective series must be one of the longest ones still going. It spans more than 30 years and 36 novels. I’ve read a couple of those novels and the…
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