Showing results for "Noir" in Historical

New Orleans, 1919. As a dark serial killer - The Axeman - stalks the city, three individuals set out to unmask him. As Michael, Luca and Ida each draw closer to discovering the killer's identity, the Axeman himself will issue a challenge to the people of New Orleans: play jazz or risk becoming the next victim. And as the case builds to its crescendo, the sky will darken and a great storm will loom over the city.

It's 1958. America is about to emerge into a bright new age - an age that will last until the 1,000 days of John F. Kennedy’s presidency. Three men move beneath the glossy surface of power, men allied to the makers and shakers of the era. Peter Bondurant, Howard Hughes’ right-hand man, Jimmy Hoffa’s hit man. Kemper Boyd, employed by J. Edgar Hoover to infiltrate the Kennedy clan. Ward Littell, a man seeking redemption in Bobby Kennedy’s drive against organised crime.

Dallas, November 2, 1963. Wayne Tedrow, Jr., has arrived to kill a man. The fee is $6,000. He finds himself instead in the middle of a cover-up following JFK’s assassination. There follows a hellish five-year ride through the sordid underbelly of public policy via Las Vegas, Howard Hughes, Vietnam, CIA dope dealing, Cuba, sleazy showbiz, racism and the Klan. This is the 1960s under Ellroy’s blistering lens, the icons of the era mingled with cops, killers, hoods and provocateurs.

Resourceful Bingo Riggs and his partner, Handsome Kusak, are in the sucker-bait business, snapping candid pics of tourists off Central Park. Their fly-by-night enterprise can be irresistible to souvenir lovers, but with one camera in a pawnshop and their developing room in the bathtub of a two-room dump near Hell’s Kitchen, their venture is wretchedly underexposed - until they stumble upon an insurance fraud scheme between the allegedly dead eccentric Mr. S. S. Pigeon and his business partner and beneficiary.

Northern Finland, 1952, at the height of the Cold War with its neighbour the Soviet Union. A misunderstood, flawed, whip-smart Finnish woman police detective, Hella Mauzer, while fighting against prejudice and political interference, investigates a murder on the Finno-Russian border. But that is just the beginning of her involvement. In fact, the locals have been the victims of a crime so evil it is beyond anything any of them could have ever imagined.

Moscow, 1936. In a deconsecrated church, a young woman is found dead, her mutilated body displayed on the altar for all to see. Captain Alexei Dimitrevich Korolev is asked to investigate. But when he discovers that the victim is an American citizen, the NKVD - the most feared organisation in Russia - becomes involved. Soon, Korolev’s every step is under close scrutiny and one false move will mean exile to the frozen camps of the far north. Committed to uncovering the truth, Korolov enters the realm of the Thieves, who run Moscow’s underworld.

When successful mystery novelist and fledgling private detective Marius Quin is invited to speak at the Mystery and Detection Society he jumps at the chance of a luxurious weekend away on the English coast. But arriving at Torquay’s Grand Hotel with his sleuthing partner Lady Bella Montague, there is the definite sense that all is not well. When they wake the next morning to discover the body of a cantankerous local in the hotel pool, the things go from bad to worse. But how can the duo catch a killer when every piece of evidence they uncover is contradicted by two more?

California, 1949. Aloysius Archer is on his way to start a new job with a renowned private investigator in Bay Town. Feeling lucky, he stops off at a casino in Reno, where he meets an aspiring actress, Liberty Callahan. Together, they head west on a journey filled with danger and surprises—because Archer isn’t the only one with a secretive past. Arriving in a town rife with corruption, Archer is tasked with finding out who is doing everything they can to disrupt the appointment of a top official.

Los Angeles. August 4, 1962. The city broils through a mid-summer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker's looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash. The freewheeling Freddy O. Tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim "Opportunity is Love." Freddy gets to work.

Following a previous investigation, which implicated those at the very top in Soviet Russia, Captain Alexei Korolev finds himself hailed as an example to all. But Korolev lives in an uneasy peace - if it is discovered what his real actions were during the case, he will face deportation to Siberia. Instead, Colonel Rodinov of the NKVD security service asks the detective to look into the suspected suicide of a young woman on a film set in the Ukraine. The feared commissar for State Security, Ezhov, wants the matter looked into.

It is the summer of 1987. It is three years away from the world wide web being inaugurated. It is 10 years before the first accessible mobile phone, and a whole 21 years before they launch the first iPhone. "It’s a Sin" by the Pet Shop Boys is number one in the charts, available on cassette and vinyl. The sun is rising on political correctness, yet news of this has yet to reach Nottingham CID. AIDS is rife. Hugging is for hippies, and the author of this book has recently been appointed a detective in the CID.

A startling panorama of Los Angeles in the '50s. New Year's Eve as 1949 turns to 1950, Los Angeles: The City of Angels has becomes the city of the Angel of Death. Communist witch hunts and insanely violent killings are terrorising the community. Three men are plunged into a maelstrom of violence and deceit when their lives become inextricably linked as each one confronts his own personal darkness.

In the dying days of 1850, the young detective Charles Maddox takes on a new case. His client? The only surviving son of the long-dead poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his wife Mary, author of Frankenstein. Charles soon finds himself being drawn into the bitter battle being waged over the poet's literary legacy. When a chance discovery raises doubts about the death of Shelley's first wife, Harriet, he starts to question whether she did kill herself—or whether what really happened was far more sinister…

When Joanna Hart came into his office, enquiry agent Dan Markham thought it would be an easy case. All the blonde with red lips and swinging hips wanted was to know if her husband was unfaithful. But when the man is killed, Markham's involvement makes him suspect number one. As the evidence piles against him, he realises someone has set him up. In a deadly game, Markham has to battle to keep his client and himself alive.

A mysterious woman pleads for the help of Inspectors Frey and 'Nine-Nails' McGray. Her son, illegitimate scion of the Koloman family, has received an anonymous death threat - right after learning he is to inherit the best part of a vast wine-producing estate. In exchange for their protection, she offers McGray the ultimate cure for his sister, who has been locked in an insane asylum after brutally murdering their parents: the miraculous waters that spring in a small island in the remote Loch Maree.

Freddy is an ex-LA cop on the skids. He snuffed a cop killer in cold blood—and it got to him bad. Now he's a sleazoid private eye, a shakedown artist, a pimp—and, most notably, the head strongarm goon for Confidential magazine. Welcome to the world of the malevolent monarch of the Hollywood underground—a tale of pervasive paranoia teeming with communist conspiracies, FBI finks, celebrity smut films and strange bedfellows. In Widespread Panic, we traverse the depths of '50s LA and dig on the inner workings of Confidential.

Murder is nothing new in the Depression-era city, especially to war veterans Inspector Jimmy Dreghorn and his partner ‘Bonnie’ Archie McDaid. But the dead man found in a narrowboat on the Forth and Clyde Canal, executed with a single shot to the back of the head, is no ordinary killing. Violence usually erupts in the heat of the moment – the razor-gangs that stalk the streets settle scores with knives and fists. Firearms suggest something more sinister, especially when the killer strikes again.

2002, Quebec. A former schoolteacher is accused of brutally stabbing her husband—a famous university professor—to death. Detective Maxine Grant, who has recently lost her own husband and is parenting a teenager and a new baby single-handedly, takes on the investigation. Under enormous personal pressure, Maxine makes a series of macabre discoveries that link directly to historical cases involving black magic and murder, secret societies and spiritism...and women at breaking point, who will stop at nothing to protect the ones they love.

In 1930, young Archie Goodwin comes to New York City hoping for a bit of excitement. In his third week working as a night watchman, he stops two burglars in their tracks - with a pair of hot lead slugs. Dismissed from his job for being “trigger-happy”, he parlays his newfound notoriety into a job as a detective’s assistant, helping honest sleuth Del Bascom solve cases like the Morningside Piano Heist, the Rive Gauche Art Gallery Swindle, and the Sumner-Hayes Burglary. But it’s the kidnapping of Tommie Williamson that introduces Goodwin to the man who will change his life.

Eddie's on his way back from a routine investigation when his horse almost runs down a half-naked blonde in serious trouble. Against his better judgment, he promises to protect the frightened young woman, only to find himself waylaid by unknown assailants and left for dead beside her mutilated body.