by Kenneth Fearing (2006)
George Stroud is a hard-drinking, tough-talking, none-too-scrupulous writer for a New York media conglomerate that bears a striking resemblance to Time, Inc. in the heyday of Henry Luce. One day, before heading home to his wife in the suburbs, Stroud has a drink with Pauline, the beautiful girlfriend of his boss, Earl Janoth. Things happen. The next day Stroud escorts Pauline home, leaving her off at the corner just as Janoth returns from a trip. The day after that, Pauline is found murdered in her apartment. Janoth knows there was one witness to his entry into Pauline’s apartment on the night of the murder; he knows that man must have been the man Pauline was with before he got back; but he doesn’t know who he was. Janoth badly wants to get his hands on that man, and he picks one of his most trusted employees to track him down: George Stroud, who else?
Ed Dee
A robbery at New York's JFK airport leads to the death of a baggage handler who was wearing a police jacket belonging to his father, a retired policeman. Detective Joe Gregory, the policeman's old partner, goes after the killers, but so does the victim's grandfather, a trigger-happy individual, complicating the hunt. By the author of Bronx Angel.
Jeffery Deaver
Rhyme's cousin has been arrested for murder. The evidence clearly shows he did it, but Rhyme agrees to check things out. It turns out he has been wrongly convicted because the killer knows every single details of the lives of both his victims and the men he sets up to take the fall.
Andrew Vachss
The time, 1959 America. The place-a small, entirely corrupt Midwestern burg named Locke City, currently owned top to bottom by homegrown Royal Beaumont. Crippled by a childhood disease, Royal rules from a wheelchair-throne; few, though, have ever doubted that his power is absolute. Or not until now, when rival mobs-one Irish, one Italian-suddenly sense windows of opportunity. They lurk at Locke City's perimeter and sniff around Royal's honey-pots-prostitution, gambling, protection-in a way calculated to cause maximum anxiety. In response, Royal sends for outside help in the form of Walker Dett, a man with the sort of "stillness" to him. Dett is a killer, a hired gun with the war smarts of a Clausewitz. There's plot and counterplot as hard guys maneuver for position and form unlikely alliances. Dett, however, is always in charge, a dodge ahead of his enemies. He schemes, lures and, when at last he pounces, few are left standing. But Dett has a softer side and it catches him unaware. One night, the Angel of Death meets an Earth Angel and, to his astonishment, he falls in love. Life altering for Dett; for thereader unexpectedly moving. A bit of a slow coach in the middle, but it recovers well.
John Clarkson
"Olivia Sanchez--smart, driven, and beautiful--started at the bottom and worked her way up the ranks of a brokerage firm only to be unjustly, brutally fired, then blackballed. With no place else to go, she turns to her cousin, Manny Guzman, ex-con and ex-gang leader, for help. Manny's first instinct is to hit back. Hard. But his partner, James Beck knows that out in the real world, things aren't done that way. Beck, with a tight group of three other ex-cons, works out of a discreet base of operations in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook. To help Manny, he and his partners, along with a network of close "associates," offer to look into what happened to Olivia, and fix it. But nothing is as simple as it first appears, and Beck and his men end up going to war against a formidable list of enemies: the politically connected CEO of a Manhattan brokerage firm; a Russian arms dealer; a small army of Bosnian war criminals; a ruthless gang of Russian mobsters; and, last but not least, the NYPD. With too many foes coming at them from too many angles, Beck and his men are going to have to survive against impossible odds, avoid being sent back to prison, and in the process, steal $116 million dollars"--