FREE/BARGAIN — Mystery, Suspense & Thrillers

[ZodWallop]

There's a fair number of Hard Case Crime books for $2 each.

No links. Sorry. There were just too many.

Call Me A Cab by Donald E. Westlake
Top of the Heap by Erle Stanley Gardner
So Many Doors by Oakley Hall
Brother's Keeper by Donald E Westlake
The Last Stand by Mickey Spillane
Later by Stephen King
Killer, Come Back To Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury
Thieves Fall Out by Gore Vidal
The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates
Little Girl Lost by Richard Aleas
Are Snakes Necessary? by Brian DePalma
So Nude, So Dead by Ed McBain
Blood Sugar by Daniel Kraus
A Bloody Business by Dylan Struzen
Charlesgate Confidential by Scott Von Doviak
The Hot Beat by Robert Silverberg
Choke Hold by Christa Faust
SoHo Sins by Richard Vine

There may be more. I couldn't figure out a filter to get Amazon to just show me the Hard Case Crime titles.

[gunbad]

Thanks ZodWallop,

I needed six of these from your list. You made it easy for me.

[Byrdie]

And there goes my resolve not to buy any more books until I've made a hefty dent in my already-bought-but-haven't-read-yet pile. (No, that is not the same as the TBR list, which is also loaded with freebies and fanfic and KU/library loans that don't count as purchases.) I also stumbled across Gerald Hammond's Keith Calder mysteries in some very cheap sets or read for free with Kindle Unlimited and snapped those up. Thanks!

[ZodWallop]

Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler is $2 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo US.

This is the last of the Vintage/Black Lizard Raymond Chandler books I have to read. A collection of Philip Marlowe long shorts rather than a novel.

There's a bunch of sketchy Chandler out there (in the US at least, he is still in copyright). The Vintage/Black Lizard books are legit (though I think the new covers are horrible).

This collection by crime fiction master Raymond Chandler features four long stories in which private eye Philip Marlowe is hired to protect a rich old guy from a gold digger, runs afoul of crooked politicos, gets a line on some stolen jewels with a reward attached, and stumbles across a murder victim who may have been an extortionist.

[Critteranne]

It's Read an Ebook Week at Smashwords, and there are a lot of mysteries and thrillers on sale -- ranging from free to as much as 75% off. There are also deals on boxed sets.

Does anyone have recommendations from the Mystery and Thriller category on Smashwords?

https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/879/any/any

[Critteranne]

Found one!

Any fans of 1970s and 1980s men's adventure series? Some of them are now being reprinted. I'm including Smashwords link, but I'm sure they're available on Amazon, B&N, etc.

The reprints of The Rat Bastards men's adventure series are $1.99 each.

The reprints of the Soldier of Fortune series by Peter McCurtin are $1.99. each.

Reprints of The Revenger series by Joseph Hedges are $1.99 each.

If only someone could obtain the rights to the Richard Blade books. And the hard-to-find Bronson books from Manor Books.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Critteranne

Any fans of 1970s and 1980s men's adventure series? Some of them are now being reprinted. I'm including Smashwords link, but I'm sure they're available on Amazon, B&N, etc.

The reprints of The Rat Bastards men's adventure series are $1.99 each.

The reprints of the Soldier of Fortune series by Peter McCurtin are $1.99. each.

Reprints of The Revenger series by Joseph Hedges are $1.99 each.

Those are all being reprinted by Piccadilly Publishing, a small press that specializes in reprinting old westerns, detective novels and men's adventure stuff. I'm a big fan of theirs.

You might contact them about the old Richard Blade and Bronson books.

[sufue]

If you waited, Pastime is now $1.99 in the US. The links below are still good.

Originally Posted by sufue

Pastime is the eighteenth in the Spenser series by Robert B Parker. It's $2.99 right now in the US.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005F4CGA8
{edited Smile link}
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/pastime

[Critteranne]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Those are all being reprinted by Piccadilly Publishing, a small press that specializes in reprinting old westerns, detective novels and men's adventure stuff. I'm a big fan of theirs.

You might contact them about the old Richard Blade and Bronson books.

The Richard Blade books were produced by Pinnacle Books, which is now part of Kensington. So Kensington might own the rights -- or might not. Hmm. That might be a possibility...

The Bronson books came out from Manor Books, which is defunct -- so the rights are probably in limbo. According to this review, there were three Bronson books, but it seems the "Bronson" character was different in each book. No one even knows who wrote the first one.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Critteranne

The Richard Blade books were produced by Pinnacle Books, which is now part of Kensington. So Kensington might own the rights -- or might not. Hmm. That might be a possibility...

The Bronson books came out from Manor Books, which is defunct -- so the rights are probably in limbo.

It's still worth the ask. They specialize in reprinting old books from defunct publishers and work with a lot of these writers, including Len Levinson, who wrote Bronson #2.

[Critteranne]

Originally Posted by Critteranne

The Richard Blade books were produced by Pinnacle Books, which is now part of Kensington. So Kensington might own the rights -- or might not. Hmm. That might be a possibility...

The Bronson books came out from Manor Books, which is defunct -- so the rights are probably in limbo. According to this review, there were three Bronson books, but it seems the "Bronson" character was different in each book. No one even knows who wrote the first one.

Update!

I contacted them. They tried to get the rights to reprint the Blade series but were ignored. (This sort of thing has happened to Valancourt as well. Sigh.)

Reprinting the Bronson books is even more unlikely. But one of the three (or four?) Bronson books was written by Len Levinson -- one of their writers. So at least we can buy other things by Len Levinson.

[sufue]

A while back, I had a review copy of Murder at the Willows, which is the next-to-most-recent in the Rina Martin series by Jane Adams. And I liked it pretty well - kind of a cozy, but with a little grit here and there. So I am happy to see that the first in the series, Murder on Sea, is the Joffe Free Friday mystery this weekend. And even though it's Sunday, it's still free at Kindle US and UK. But probably not for too much longer!

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09L4Z4YLN
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09L4Z4YLN

This was originally published by Severn House as A Reason to Kill, so if it weren't free, I'd advise you to check carefully before you buy . I do like Joffe's free/discount books, but wish they wouldn't change the titles so often. Perhaps there is a way that the original publisher somehow retains the right to the title, but not the text, at least for e-books, so they have to change them...

Spoiler:

Meet Rina Martin, a retired actress with a taste for tea, gardening and crime solving.

She played a TV sleuth for years, but now she has to do it for real.

She retires to the sleepy town of Frantham-on-Sea. Here on the Dorset coast, she runs her own immaculate guest house and life is blissfully quiet.

Until . . .

A few doors down, harmless old Mrs Freer is bludgeoned to death, and Rina can’t help but be drawn into the mystery.

Mrs Freer’s home was ransacked, but this was no ordinary burglary.

Who knew the old lady kept a gun stashed under her pillow?
And who wanted it badly enough to kill?

Detective Sebastian McGregor is called in to solve this baffling case.

But with her neighbours’ safety at stake, Rina knows she needs to give him a helping hand.

[sufue]

This is almost certainly a pricing error, so who knows how long it will last...

At the End of a Dull Day is the second and last in Massimo Carlotto's short two-book Giorgio Pellegrini series. It's priced at $0.10 (not a typo, by me, at least) at Kindle US right now.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079MGXRGG

Spoiler:

An explosive crime thriller from the author of The Goodbye Kiss, “the reigning king of Mediterranean noir” (Boston Phoenix).

Giorgio Pellegrini, the hero of The Goodbye Kiss, has been living an “honest” life for eleven years. But that’s about to change. His lawyer has been deceiving him and now Giorgio is forced into service as an unwilling errand boy for an organized crime syndicate. At one time, Giorgio wouldn’t have thought twice about robbing, kidnapping, and killing in order to get what he wanted, but these days he realizes he’s too long in the tooth to face his enemies head-on. To return to his peaceful life as a successful businessman he’s going to have to find another way to shake off the mob. Fortunately, Giorgio’s circumstances may have changed, but deep down he’s still the ruthless killer he used to be.

“Carlotto . . . provides a machine-gun pace, a jaundiced eye for political corruption and a refreshing absence of anything approaching a moral vision.” —Kirkus Reviews

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

There's a fair number of Hard Case Crime books for $2 each.

No links. Sorry. There were just too many.

Call Me A Cab by Donald E. Westlake
Top of the Heap by Erle Stanley Gardner
So Many Doors by Oakley Hall
Brother's Keeper by Donald E Westlake
The Last Stand by Mickey Spillane
Later by Stephen King
Killer, Come Back To Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury
Thieves Fall Out by Gore Vidal
The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates
Little Girl Lost by Richard Aleas
Are Snakes Necessary? by Brian DePalma
So Nude, So Dead by Ed McBain
Blood Sugar by Daniel Kraus
A Bloody Business by Dylan Struzen
Charlesgate Confidential by Scott Von Doviak
The Hot Beat by Robert Silverberg
Choke Hold by Christa Faust
SoHo Sins by Richard Vine

There may be more. I couldn't figure out a filter to get Amazon to just show me the Hard Case Crime titles.

This sale is still going, by the way, and I just spent quite a bit of 1.99's.

Then I found another sale non-related, and a creepshow comic, and went down a spending rabbit hole.

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by sufue

This is almost certainly a pricing error, so who knows how long it will last...

At the End of a Dull Day is the second and last in Massimo Carlotto's short two-book Giorgio Pellegrini series. It's priced at $0.10 (not a typo, by me, at least) at Kindle US right now.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079MGXRGG

Well, could not resist grabbing just now at that price. Still on 10 cents sale