Bøger i Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Anniversary Edition serien

Raymond Chandler's first novel, published in 1939, introduces the now-immortal Philip Marlowe, archetypal hard boiled detective and weary knight of the seamy side of the City of Angels in the 1930s. Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out -- and that's before he stumbles over the first corpse.

A murder involves Sam Spade in a dangerous search for a valuable statue--

"When Frank, an amoral young drifter, gets thrown off a hay truck in the California desert, he ends up at a diner run by Cora and her inconvenient husband, Nick. This chance meeting puts them all on a sure path to perdition. First published in 1934 and banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence and eroticism, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic of the roman noir. It established James M. Cain as a major novelist with an unsparing vision of America's bleak underside and was acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger." -- provided by publisher.

"On Valentine's Day, four members of the Coverdale family were murdered in the space of fifteen minutes. Their housekeeper, Eunice Parchman, shot them one by one in the blue light of a televised performance of Don Giovanni. When the police arrest Miss Parchman two weeks later, they discover a second tragedy: the key to the Valentine's Day massacre, a private humiliation Eunice Parchman has guarded all her life"--

In a small college town south of Los Angeles, Lew Archer investigates three murders, two in the past, one in the present.

"For love of fine, wily Imabelle, hapless Jackson surrenders his life savings to a con man who konw the secret of turning ten-dollar bills into hundreds. On top of that, he steals from his boss, only to lose the stolen money at a craps table. But luckly for Jackson, he can turn to his savvy twin brother, Goldy, who earns a living - disguised as a Sister of Mercy - by selling tickets to heaven in Harlem. With Goldy on his side, Jackson is ready for payback." -- Back cover.

After strangling her husband, Masako Katori, a middle-aged wife and mother working the night shift at a Tokyo factory, enlists the aid of four co-workers to conceal the crime.