Death of an innocent

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Brett Battles

Jonathan Quinn has a few rules. He'll get rid of bodies that have to disappear; nothing ever gets traced back to him. But when Quinn is called to a busy Los Angeles port where a shipping container has just come in from the sea, it's clear his rules have been violated. Inside the crate is a dead man--a man who once saved Quinn's life. And while no one knows how CIA agent Steven Markoff died, Quinn has to do more than clean. He has to find Markoff's girlfriend, Jenny. To tell her that Markoff is dead. To find out why--and why someone sent Markoff's body to him? Until a week ago, Jenny Fuentes was an assistant to an ambitious congressman. Now Jenny is missing, too, and a lot of man power is making sure she isn't found.

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James Ellroy

The author of *The Black Dahlia* presents the powerful second novel in his L.A. Quartet. In *The Big Nowhere*, three men are caught up in a massive web of ambition, perversion and deceit. A remarkably vivid portrait of a remarkable time and place.

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Joseph Hansen

'After forty years, Hammett has a worthy successor' The Times Dave Brandstetter stands alongside Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade and Lew Archer as one of the best fictional PIs in the business. Like them, he was tough, determined, and ruthless when the case demanded it. Unlike them, he was gay. Joseph Hansen's groundbreaking novels follow Brandstetter as he investigates cases in which motives are murky, passions run high, and nothing is ever as simple as it looks. Set in 1970s and 80s California, the series is a fascinating portrait of a time and a place, with mysteries to match Chandler and Macdonald. John Oats is dead; drowned in the treacherous waves of the Pacific. But was it accident, suicide, or murder? Between the mysteriously absent son, the bitter ex-wife and the current lover, there are plenty of people with reason to lie to Dave about what really happened that night - and why.

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Georges Simenon

Pietr the Lett had for years been clocked across the European frontiers by Interpol. Who was he, this international swindler with the skin of a chameleon? Was he Oswald Oppenheim, friend of multi-millionaires? Or Olaf Swann, a Norwegian merchant officer down at Fécamp? Or Fédor Yurovich, a down-and-out Russian drunk? Or could he have been the twisted corpse they found on the Pole Star express when it drew into Paris? It cost Maigret one of his best inspectors — and a ducking in the sea — to unravel one of the most tortuous puzzles of identity he had ever handled.