Free from the small-press re-publisher via KDP Select @
Amazon:
The Flower-Covered Corpse by the late Michael Avallone (
SYKM,
Wikipedia), 19th in his Ed Noon series of vintage pulp PI mystery adventures, this one originally out from Robert Hale/Curtis Books in 1969. We've previously gotten a few others in this series free a few years back, if you'd like to give a try to reading them in some semblance of order.
Startup imprint Story Merchant also offers a couple of other newer non-backlist freebies in various genres if you're interested:
linkage for the lot
The first bad vibration came when a famous Guru was found swinging on a Greenwhich Village meat hook. The next arrived when someone used a bomb to blow more than hippies minds. The summer of love was over, and the only trace of flower power was the scent of poppies. The only way Ed Noon could turn off a turned-on killer was to take the ultimate trip to the depths of the Underground, where speed, sex and Satanism ruled supreme, and everyone was cool. Especially the corpses.
The Adventures of Ed Noon, Private Eye, spanning over 30 novels written between 1953 and 1990. Noon starts out dirt poor with a tiny office in Midtown Manhattan (his “Mouse Auditorium”) but success moves him to better digs, a lovely secretary (Melissa Mercer) and, eventually, the most important client of all: the President of the United States. The series concludes with a daring turn towards science fiction in the last two novels. Through it all, the wisecracking Noon is consistent: a movie and baseball-obsessed romantic who always fights the good fight. And, more often than not, wins.
Free from the author via KDP Select @
Amazon:
The Wrong Thing by Barry Graham, 2nd in his Phoenix Noir series of literary fiction crime-exploring novels, originally out from specialty small publisher PM Press (who've given us story collection sf/fantasy freebies from moderately obscure award-winning authors in the past) in 2011.
NOMINATED FOR THE SPINETINGLER AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL OF 2011
They call him The Kid. He's a killer, a dark legend of the Southwest's urban badlands, "a child who terrifies adults." They speak of him in whispers in dive bars near closing time. Some claim to have met him. Others say he doesn't exist, a phantom blamed for every unsolved act of violence, a ghost who haunts every blood-splattered crime scene.
But he is real. He's a young man with a love of cooking and reading, an abiding loneliness and an appetite for violence. He is a cipher, a projection of the dreams and nightmares of people ignored by the economic boom…and a modern-day outlaw in search of an ordinary life. Love brings him the chance at a new life in the form of Vanjii, a beautiful, damaged woman. But try as he might to abandon the past, his past won't abandon him. The Kid fights back in the only way he knows – and sets in motion a tragic sequence of events that lead him to an explosive conclusion shocking in its brutality and tenderness.