Are Snakes Necessary? by Brian De Palma and Susan Lehman is a new Hard Case Crime thriller with three disparate threads propelling the fast-paced plot towards its explosive ending. Full disclosure: Brian De Palma is one of my favorite filmmakers ever, someone whose films I’ve been watching since I saw Carrie in 1976 as a…
Years before Max Allan Collins wrote Road to Perdition—the eponymous source for the Oscar-winning movie starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, and Jude Law—before his Quarry novels were turned into a Cinemax original series, before Collins was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America or took over writing the Mike Hammer novels from…
To read Donald E. Westlake at the top of his game is to attend a master class in fun, fast-paced pulp. In Double Feature, the latest Westlake release from Hard Case Crime, we get two chances of seeing Westlake in action. While one the narratives is superior to the other, both showcase the wit, knack…
Killing Quarry is the newest book in the Quarry series by Max Allan Collins. Collins has written several other Quarry novels for Hard Case Crime, a Quarry graphic novel, and his Quarry character was the focal point of Cinemax’s eponymous series. It is not the most recent novel, in terms of series chronology, as Collins…
Unavailable for 40 years, The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates is an eloquent, terrifying, heartbreaking exploration of madness, which pairs the original novel with a never-before-collected companion novella. Yes, they loved him. He was never to blame. They cringed and writhed for him, they squealed, pressed themselves against him accidentally in…
So Many Doors by Oakley Hall is the legendary lost crime novel from the Pulitzer Prize-finalist and instructor of Ann Rice, Amy Tan, Richard Ford, and Michael Chabon. Pulp has always had a heart, but when a talented author makes it a point to bridge the gap between the violence and sexiness of pulp and…
A breathtakingly clever, twist-filled narrative that moves from 1946 to 1988 to 2014 and back again, Charlesgate Confidential establishes Scott Von Doviak as a storyteller of the first order. Hard Case Crime is known for delivering pulpy, entertaining narratives from some of the best authors crime fiction has to offer. Scott Von Doviak’s Charlesgate Confidential…
Help I Am Being Held Prisoner by Donald E. Westlake is a rediscovered crime classic from the MWA Grand Master returning to stores for the first time in three decades (available February 13, 2018). Hard Case Crime has done well in reissuing lost Donald Westlake classics. Westlake’s 361 and Memory are among the more enjoyable…
Turn on the Heat by Erle Stanley Gardner is considered one of the best Cool and Lam novels in the acclaimed series, now made available from Hard Case Crime. Love old-school suspense yarns? Yes? Then you’ll love Erle Stanley Gardner’s (writing as A. A. Fair) California-set Turn on the Heat. This was originally supposed to…
The James Bond I prefer, the “real” James Bond, is the one that exists outside of the bloated, by-the-numbers films. The highly profitable franchise produced few faithful adaptations, the genuine articles being Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), the loyal-in-gritty-spirit For Your Eyes Only (1981), and Casino Royale (2006). Otherwise, cinema JB is…
