Grifter's Game
by Lawrence Block
read by Alan Sklar
Part 1 of the Hard Case Crime series
Con man Joe Marlin was used to scoring easy cash off beautiful women. But that was before he met Mona Brassard and found himself facing the most dangerous con of his career, one that will leave him either a killer-or a corpse.
361
by Donald E. Westlake
read by L. J. Ganser
Part 9 of the Hard Case Crime series
The men in the tan-and-cream Chrysler came with guns blazing. When Ray Kelly woke up in the hospital, it was a month later, he was missing an eye, and his father was dead. Then things started to get bad. From the mind of the incomparable Donald E. Westlake comes a devastating story of betrayal and revenge, an exploration of the limits of family loyalty and how far a man will go when everything he loves is taken from him.
The Colorado Kid
by Stephen King
read by Jeffrey DeMunn
Part 13 of the Hard Case Crime series
On an island off the coast of Maine, a man is found dead. There's no identification on the body. Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspapermen and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues. But that's just the beginning of the mystery. Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand. Was it an impossible crime? Or something stranger still...? No one but Stephen King could tell this story about the darkness at the heart of the unknown and our compulsion to investigate the unexplained. With echoes of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and the work of Graham Greene, one of the world's great storytellers presents a surprising tale that explores the nature of mystery itself...
The Girl with the Long Green Heart
by Lawrence Block
read by Alan Sklar
Part 14 of the Hard Case Crime series
Johnny Hayden and Doug Rance had a scheme to take real estate entrepreneur Wallace Gunderman for all he was worth. But they needed a girl on the inside to make it work.
Enter Evelyn Stone: Gunderman's secretary, his lover – and his worst enemy. Gunderman had promised to marry her, but never came through. Now she's ready to make him pay…
The Gutter and the Grave
by Ed McBain
read by Richard Ferrone
Part 15 of the Hard Case Crime series
Detective Matt Cordell was happily married once, and gainfully employed, and sober. But that was before he caught his wife cheating on him with one of his operatives and took it out on the man with the butt end of a .45. Now Matt makes his home on the streets of New York and his only companions are the city's bartenders. But trouble still knows how to find him, and when Johnny Bridges shows up from the old neighborhood, begging for Matt's help, Cordell finds himself drawn into a case full of beautiful women and bloody murder. It's just like the old days-only this time, when the beatings come, he may wind up on the receiving end.
The Guns of Heaven
by Pete Hamill
read by Christian Conn
Part 24 of the Hard Case Crime series
On a visit to Northern Ireland, newspaper reporter Sam Briscoe meets with a mysterious IRA leader and agrees to deliver an envelope to his supporters in New York City. It's a decision with grave consequences-not just for Briscoe, but for his eleven-year-old daughter as well. Because the bloody Irish conflict is about to come to the streets of New York, and Briscoe is the only man standing in its way.
Lucky at Cards
by Lawrence Block
read by Alan Sklar
Part 28 of the Hard Case Crime series
At cards and with women, Bill Maynard knew how to cheat …On the mend after getting run out of Chicago, professional cardsharp Bill Maynard is hungry for some action … but not nearly as hungry as Joyce Rogers, the tantalizing wife of Bill's latest mark. Together they hatch an ingenious scheme to get rid of her husband. But in life as in poker, the other player sometimes has an ace up his sleeve. This classic pulp novel was originally released in 1964 as The Sex Shuffle under the pen name Sheldon Lord.
Dead Street
by Mickey Spillane
read by Richard Ferrone
Part 37 of the Hard Case Crime series
For twenty years, former NYPD cop Jack Stang has lived with the memory of his girlfriend's death in an attempted abduction. But what if she weren't actually dead? What if she somehow secretly survived-but lost her sight, and her memory, and everything else she had except her enemies? Now Jack has a second chance to save the only woman he ever loved-or to lose her for good.
A Diet of Treacle
by Lawrence Block
read by Christian Conn
Part 39 of the Hard Case Crime series
Anita Carbone was a good girl-and it bored her. That's why she took the long subway ride down to Greenwich Village, home of the Beats and the stoners, home to every kind of misfit and dropout and free spirit you could imagine. It was where she met Joe Milani, the troubled young war veteran with the gentle touch. But it was also where she met his drug-dealing roommate-a man whose unnatural appetites led to murder ...
Somebody Owes Me Money
by Donald E. Westlake
read by Stephen R. Thorne
Part 44 of the Hard Case Crime series
Cab driver Chet Conway was hoping for a good tip from his latest fare, the sort he could spend. But what he got was a tip on a horse race. Which might have turned out okay, except that when he went to collect his winnings, Chet found his bookie lying dead on the living room floor. Chet knows he had nothing to do with it-but just try explaining that to the cops, to the two rival criminal gangs who each think Chet's working for the other, and to the dead man's beautiful sister, who has flown in from Las Vegas to avenge her brother's murder...
Killing Castro
by Lawrence Block
read by Henry Leyva
Part 51 of the Hard Case Crime series
There were five of them, each prepared to kill, each with his own reasons for accepting what might well be a suicide mission. The pay? $20,000 apiece. The mission? Find a way into Cuba and kill Castro. This breathtaking thriller, originally published the year before the Cuban Missile Crisis under a pen name Lawrence Block never used before or since, is the rarest of Block's books-and still a work of chilling relevance all these years later, with Castro and Cuba once again commanding headlines.
The Cutie
by Donald E. Westlake
read by Stephen R. Thorne
Part 53 of the Hard Case Crime series
Some people will do anything for money.Mavis St. Paul had been a rich man's mistress. Now she was a corpse. And every cop in New York City was hunting for the two-bit punk accused of putting a knife in her. But the punk was innocent. He'd been set up to take the fall by some cutie who was too clever by half. My job? Find that cutie-before the cutie found me.
Memory
by Donald E. Westlake
read by Stephen R. Thorne
Part 64 of the Hard Case Crime series
Hospitalized after a liaison with another man's wife ends in violence, Paul Cole has just one goal: to rebuild his shattered life. But with his memory damaged, the police hounding him, and no way even to get home, Paul's facing steep odds-and a bleak fate if he fails. This final, never-before-published novel by three-time Edgar Award winner Donald E. Westlake is a noir masterpiece, a dark and painful portrait of a man's struggle against merciless forces that threaten to strip him of his very identity.
The Comedy Is Finished
by Donald E. Westlake
read by Peter Berkrot
Part 105 of the Hard Case Crime series
The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam and the national hangover that was the 1960s. But not everyone is ready to let it go. Not aging comedian Koo Davis, friend to generals and presidents and veteran of countless USO tours to buck up American troops in the field. And not the five remaining members of the self-proclaimed People's Revolutionary Army, who've decided that kidnapping Koo Davis would be the perfect way to bring their cause back to life. This is the final, previously unpublished novel from the legendary author Donald Westlake.