I love noir fiction and the hard-boiled detective novels that often best exemplify the genre. Both Dashiel Hammet’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chander’s Marlowe are two men who will sacrifice everything for the truth, no matter the cost. There is a stark beauty in that. Fantasy, the genre of myth, carries the deepest, most poignant truths. These are the hard truths that can break a hero’s heart, as in Gilgamesh, or give you the bittersweet ending of The Lord of the Rings. Blending them produces some of my favorite stories, stories I love to read as the fog rolls in, listening to the music of heartbreaking jazz.
The spirits, sorcerers, and truly desperate in San Francisco’s seedy neighborhoods know Johnny Talon, a PI who can solve impenetrable cases. His use of lucid dreams and subconscious insights leads him to the truth.
Talon has his work cut out for him when he’s hired by Inanna, a sex worker, to find and free the soul of her deceased wife from a sorcerer who hopes to entrap Inanna. The closer he gets to finding her, the more Talon’s life may be on the line. When his investigation leads him into hell, Talon has an epiphany: if he’s going to free Inanna’s wife, he has to uncover Inanna’s true identity. The things a gumshoe does to pay the rent.
A brilliant detective story set in three cities, the city you live in, the city you know about but must not see, and the city that will destroy you if you trespass unknowingly.
The detective must navigate the seen, the unseen, and the unseeable in trying to track down and hold responsible a murderer.
This story gets us to rethink what we see and deliberately overlook in our own lives and the price we pay for choosing not to see the truth. I was enthralled at how Mieville cracked open reality and the price paid for understanding.
With shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, the multi-award winning The City & The City by China Mieville is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.
'You can't talk about Mieville without using the word "brilliant".' - Ursula Le Guin, author of the Earthsea series.
When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to…
Not all noir fiction are detective stories, and this is one of the best.
Dolly is a thief with a past who has promised to turn over a hard to acquire a magical mask to pay her debts. As she tightens her noose on her mark for the con she’s going to use to pull off the theft, she must face the biggest danger any con artist must face, getting emotionally involved. The price of failure will be more than just her life, but the lives of people she wishes she didn’t care about.
I was on the edge of my seat and couldn’t put this book down.
Marion Deeds's Comeuppance Served Cold is a hard-boiled historical fantasy of criminality and magic, couched in the glamour of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries.
"[A] beautifully constructed magical heist in turn-of-the-century Seattle."-Mary Robinette Kowal
Seattle, 1929-a bitterly divided city overflowing with wealth, violence, and magic.
A respected magus and city leader intent on criminalizing Seattle's most vulnerable magickers hires a young woman as a lady's companion to curb his rebellious daughter's outrageous behavior.
The widowed owner of a speakeasy encounters an opportunity to make her husband's murderer pay while she tries to keep her shapeshifter brother safe.
Mixing elves and eldridge powers into the gang warfare of prohibition Chicago, this book is a fast-paced wild ride into the dark and seedy lives of those who use violence to hold on to power.
The key to a good noir story is that it forces the protagonist to confront something they’d rather not know and to survive, they must find a way to live with that dark truth. This is a journey too many of us face, and Ford writes just such a brilliant journey for his protagonist, Doc.
Once I started reading this, it gripped me like cold iron until I was done.
When Danny Holman leaves the cornfields of Iowa for the bright lights of Chicago, he expects his life to change. He just can't guess how much and how fast. A violent incident on the road brings Danny the favor of a man known only as Mr. Patrise, who gives Danny a job, a home, and a new identity.
The City is a different world from the one Danny--now called Doc--knew, and literally so. Long-vanished powers have returned, and more is going on in the streets than nightlife and street warfare. Power is gathering: a power rooted in terror, madness, and…
Polk’s Helen is damned by her own choice and is offered a chance to undo that. A chance to live with the love of her life for what years may come. Who wouldn’t take that chance to have hope and love again instead of the certainty of damnation and the hell of no longer seeing the woman you love forever more?
This heartbreakingly beautiful tale of love and hard choices wrapped in the search for a killer brought me to tears multiple times.
C. L. Polk turns their considerable powers to a fantastical noir. A magical detective dives into the affairs of Chicago's divine monsters to secure a future with the love of her life. This sapphic period piece will dazzle anyone looking for mystery, intrigue, romance, magic, or all of the above.
An exiled augur who sold her soul to save her brother's life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one payment she can't resist - the chance to have a future where…
In this noir story with a philosophical bent, Miles has been hired to track the reincarnation of a demonic guardian by a Tibetan monk on the eve of a visit of the Dali Lama to New York, and Miles finds himself over his head as an apparent gang war erupts in Chinatown, killings that some on the force think he had a role in. He must avoid capture by the cops so that he can find the killer and the demon, if they are not the same, and avoid becoming the demon's next victim.
I loved the weaving of Tibetan myth into a story of gang warfare and revenge.
Miles Landry is trying to put violence behind him when he takes up work as a private detective focused on humdrum adultery cases. But when a Tibetan monk hires him to find a missing person, things get weird fast.
Charged with tracking down the reincarnation of a man possessed by a demonic guardian from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Miles is plunged into a world of fortune-tellers, gangsters, and tantric rituals. The year is 1991, and a series of grisly murders has rocked New York City in the run up to a visit from the Dalai Lama.
Dr Dee has designs for a British Empire that will dominate the world for ages to come ushering in Revelation, and with the aegis of the Angels, he has the power to make it a reality.
But, two elements are missing, and through blackmail and occult ritual, infamous swordswoman Captain Lament Evyngar and her giant Dutch comrade are forced to journey to the war-ravaged Spanish Netherlands on a quest that will reveal the truth about strange entities that use humans to fight out their eternal conflicts and in doing so alter Lament and the course of history forever.
Infamous swordswoman Captain Lament Evyngar awaits execution in the Tower of London, charged with heresy and attempted regicide, but all is not as it seems. Unwittingly entangled in the schemes of the Angels, she recounts her tale to the Queen's sorcerer, Dr Dee, who is more than a little responsible for her predicament.
Dr Dee has designs for a British Empire that will dominate the world for ages to come, and with the aegis of the Angels, he has the power to make it a reality. But, two elements are missing, and through blackmail and occult ritual, Lament and her…
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