Murder strikes a New England village in this mystery by the Edgar Award–winning author who wrote the Peter Duluth Mysteries as Patrick Quentin. Patrick Quentin, best known for the Peter Duluth puzzle mysteries, also penned outstanding detective novels from the 1930s through the 1960s under other pseudonyms, including Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. Anthony Boucher wrote: “Quentin is particularly noted for the enviable polish and grace which make him one of the leading American fabricants of the murderous comedy of manners; but this surface smoothness conceals intricate and meticulous plot construction as faultless as that of Agatha Christie.” It begins with the residents of a rustic New England village finding animals brutally slaughtered over a period of weeks, casting a sinister pall over the town of Grindle Oak. Then, a young girl goes missing, and her father—not trusting the police—asks local doctor Douglas Swanson to help him find her. But when Swanson turns up to begin the search, he finds the man dead with his hands bound in animal traps and his body mutilated. It appears the madman behind the abominable acts has moved on to more evolved prey. As more depraved crimes are discovered, a wave of suspicion and distrust sweeps through the town, with outright vigilantism threatening to break out. The good doctor finds himself cast as an unlikely sleuth who must discover what demented desires are driving a killer whose bloodlust is growing greater every day . . . This haunting mystery “maintains the suspense and atmosphere of terror to the very end” (The New York Times).

Soon to be a major motion picture from Academy Award–winning director Guillermo del Toro and starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Toni Collette. Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a carnival-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him. And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough he’s going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute assistant (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan’s for the taking. At least for now.

Before the 1969 Stonewall Riots, LGBTQ life was dominated by the negative image of "the closet"--the metaphorical space where that which was deemed "queer" was hidden from a hostile public view. Literary studies of queer themes and characters in crime fiction have tended to focus on the more positive and explicit representations since the riots, while pre-Stonewall works are thought to reference queer only negatively or obliquely. This collection of new essays questions that view with an investigation of queer aspects in crime fiction published over eight decades, from the corseted Victorian era to the unbuttoned 1960s.

A dapper detective tracks a high-society killer in Manhattan—from the Edgar Award–winning author who wrote the Peter Duluth Mysteries as Patrick Quentin. Patrick Quentin, best known for the Peter Duluth puzzle mysteries, also penned outstanding detective novels from the 1930s through the 1960s under other pseudonyms, including Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. Anthony Boucher wrote: “Quentin is particularly noted for the enviable polish and grace which make him one of the leading American fabricants of the murderous comedy of manners; but this surface smoothness conceals intricate and meticulous plot construction as faultless as that of Agatha Christie.” After tumbling from the Park Avenue set to penurious widowhood, the resilient Clara Van Heuten has started her own business offering counsel to aspiring writers. When it comes to advice, she’s full of it. Maybe that’s why she ends up with a knife in her back. Timothy Trant, once the pride of Princeton, now one of New York’s finest, uses his IQ to figure out a killer’s MO. This time all the lieutenant has to work with is a stack of unpublishable manuscripts and the hoity-toity guest list of Van Heuten’s last get-together—until he discovers that the widow had reason to believe she was going to be murdered . . .

“Go to school, learn hard, get your degree, and life will treat you well”. This is the golden advice that every person is hearing daily, to do, to adequately secure a great job, participate in society and gain an upper hand in the job market, and meet all financial obligations; including the vain and lofty ones. Billions of people, no matter their background, follow this simple counsel with religious commitment. So does our four young, idealistic and hopeful friends who do everything they can, including getting loans, to attend the university. The friends bond over their shared aims to be successful and end up becoming fantastic friends. Reality hits when they get their degrees and leave their university bubble, and experience the harsh reality of life. Broke, in debt and living on the poverty line, they each put their heads and skills together to create the most ingenious and money-making business venture - Grindle. But the boys have a big handicap; none of them has any experience handling the business. Before they can agree on a solution to their problem, they get their first business. The friends failed their first contract. “What happened yesterday?” “We are not killers! That is what happened.” But fate had other plans, and allowed a freak accident to lead them further and deeper into the world seemingly unknown to them. It will expose their inner workings and bring the friendship to a catastrophic crash. -- Note: The story tells a subtly dark humour. It is a violent, fun, sexy, and even-paced urban crime story.

Classic film noir offers more than pesky private eyes and beautiful bad girls—it explores the quest for the not-so-attainable American dream. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Desperate young lovers on the lam (They Live by Night), a cynical con man making a fortune as a mentalist (Nightmare Alley), a penniless pregnant girl mistaken for a wealthy heiress (No Man of Her Own), a wounded veteran who has forgotten his own name (Somewhere in the Night)—this gallery of film noir characters challenges the stereotypes of the wise-cracking detective and the alluring femme fatale. Despite their differences, they all have something in common: a belief in self-reinvention. Nightmare Alley is a thorough examination of how film noir disputes this notion at the heart of the American Dream. Central to many of these films, Mark Osteen argues, is the story of an individual trying, by dint of hard work or, more often, illicit enterprises, to overcome his or her origins and achieve material success. In the wake of World War II, the noir genre tested the dream of upward mobility and the ideas of individualism, liberty, equality, and free enterprise that accompany it. Employing an impressive array of theoretical perspectives (including psychoanalysis, art history, feminism, and music theory) and combining close reading with original primary source research, Nightmare Alley proves both the diversity of classic noir and its potency. This provocative and wide-ranging study revises and refreshes our understanding of noir's characters, themes, and cultural significance.

Watching the screen version of a classic mystery novel can be disappointing. By necessity or artistic license (or possibly just ego) changes are often made by the filmmakers--many of them ineffective or even detrimental. This book focuses on the screen adaptations of 65 famous mysteries and examines how the filmmakers either succeeded or failed in the telling of the story. Interviews with several famous mystery writers are included, with their comments on how filmmakers treated their work.

In honor of the 70th birthday of Professor Douglas G. Greene, mystery genre scholar and publisher, this book offers 24 new essays and two reprinted classics on detective fiction by contributors around the world, including ten Edgar (Mystery Writers of America) winners and nominees. The essays cover a myriad of authors and books from more than a century, from J.S. Fletcher's The Investigators, originally serialized in 1901, to P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley, published at the end of 2011. Subjects covered include detective fiction in the Edwardian era and the "Golden Age" between the two world wars; hard-boiled detective fiction; mysteries and intellectuals; and pastiches, short stories and radio plays.