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The roads that made up the new Diamond Estate were all named after gems. There was Emerald Avenue, Ruby Close, Garnet Crescent . . . and Bloodstone Street.

It started on the day the Peters family moved in. Patty was lying in the road and when her farther made her get up her body left a damp imprint on the asphalt.
“Look, Daddy,” she said, “the street is crying.”

But within days the tarmac was bubbling with a malevolent will of its own, sucking at the feet of unwary pedestrians, chopping at the arms of maintenance workers and redirecting the wheels of speeding cars.

The residents of Bloodstone Street had moved into open plan suburbia – only to find themselves trapped in a cul-de-sac of terror . . .

For years Colin Harpur’s dubious boss, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles, ran an ‘arrangement’ with Mansel Shale and Panicking Ralph Ember, owner of the Monty Club: Iles would protect their drug businesses if they ensured peace on the streets.

But when a small-time crook’s house is firebombed and he and his daughter are both killed the pact is knocked sideways and gang war erupts. With the relaxation of drugs law legislation, Shale and Ember have serious competition. Their profits slide and an all-out battle for survival begins.

‘Most other British Police writers are foam rubber truncheons to James’ iron riot baton’ Time Out

The Los Angeles Homicide Department is a revolving door of crime where Lieutenant Luis Mendoza has hardly time to grab a sandwich between the serial muggings of seven senior citizens, the disappearance of a wheelchair-bound man, and the killing of one of two runaway girls.

All this and Mendoza also has to deal with his ever-growing family. Already the father of twins, his wife Alison is pregnant again and juggling work and home proves a tall order.

The sinister business of counter-espionage is played out by an array of magnificent characters. Quayle, compounded of wisdom, administrative genius and the ability to live without sleep, wine or women; Shaun O’Mara, who loves all those things, looks like an actor and is an aristocrat, and works with subtlety, artistry and distinction; and Ricky Kerr, a cleverly drawn portrait of a man who is not quite able to stand the pace.

The women, of course, dress superbly, move like angels, are as beautiful as diamonds and, with one notable exception, behave abominably.

‘If there are better thrillers it is hardly possible to think of them while under the spell of this one’ Times Literary Supplement

Welfare worker Paul Gunther is killed when he looks into the blackmailing of some of his cases. Lieutenant George Shaw leads the murder investigation, which touches on the jazz community and beatnik culture of Oakland in the early 1960’s.

The House on Lily Street is the story of a corrupt and narcissistic young man, born to privilege, who dallies among the poor-and gets in over his head.

In 1955, aged twenty-three and fresh from a Master’s in English Literature, Joe Gores knew he wanted to be a writer. In the meantime, he had to pay the bills.

He became a repo man for L. A. Walker, later going into partnership with Walker’s San Francisco manager, Dave Kikkert. The inspiration for Gores’s DKA Files series was born.

Gores fictionalises his repo man days in these twelve ‘cases’. Some of the stories were published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and were written throughout a distinguished career. Gores won an Edgar Award in 1969 for A Time for Predators, and wrote TV scripts for Columbo, Kojak and Magnum, PI among others.

The set of a Sherlock Holmes film is disrupted by a murder even the great detective would find hard to solve.

‘Delightful … A surprise on every page’ NEW YORK TIMES

The Baker Street Irregulars are a group of Sherlock Holmes experts, and when they get word that a Hollywood studio has plans to produce a tough, hard-boiled interpretation of the Great Detective, written by an author who dislikes both the group and Conan Doyle’s original work, they make their feelings abundantly clear.

To placate them, the studio invites them to visit the set. But as soon as they arrive, things start to get strange. There are a series of ominous warnings, each one referencing one of Holmes’s famous cases, warnings which are soon followed by murder …

Horror stalked the streets of Paris.

As a child Etoile had run with the wolves and killed with the wolves. Then he was brought to civilization and his past was forgotten. But not when the moon shone full! Then he could not fight the bestial urges his body felt. The wolves called Etoile and the animal within responded, compelling him to stalk the streets of Paris, thirsting with vulpine ferocity for the taste of blood.

A planet’s destiny trembled in the balance.Waiting, quiet and as dangerous as a timber-wolf, Vickery heard another faint slither of foot on stone. A dark shape flitted past the lighted shop front on the opposite side of the street and vanished into the doorway. Vickery’s heard gave one gigantic lunge, and a wolfish smile creased his face. He fired at the shadows and the brilliance of the exploding charge threw everything out in the street into garish highlights…

The third title in the popular Harpur and Iles series.

Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur is disconsolate: his mistress, the widow of a fellow officer, has recently married another cop; and Ray Street, the young policeman that Colin sent undercover to infiltrate a druglord’s gang, is recklessly endangering himself.

When Street is murdered, Harpur plants evidence implicating the druglord, but a clever barrister sways the jury, and the druglord goes free – free, as it turns out, to meet an altogether more basic kind of justice.

An extraordinary collection of short stories from the award-winning author of Sarah Canary. Including “Praxis”, the story about a theater where the real and unreal collide; “The Poplar Street Study”, Fowler’s darkly comic account of an alien invasion; and “The Gates of Ghosts”, in which a child journeys to a strange and deadly world, this anthology of 13 tales also features a new foreword by the author.

The lake was full of artificial things – The Poplar Street study – Face value – The dragon’s head – The war of the roses – Contention – Recalling Cinderella – Other planes – The gate of ghosts – The bog people -Wild boys: variations on a theme – The view from Venus – Praxis

‘Why would anyone hire a girl with the figure of a stripteaser and pay her $100 a week to put on weight?’ Perry Mason asked Della Street.

‘In the course of my secretarial career,’ Della said demurely, ‘I’ve seen quite a few approaches, but this is a new one.’

‘According to the letter of this contract,’ Mason mused, ‘if Dianne Alder should marry a millionaire and her husband should die, the party of the first part would be entitled to fifty percent.’ Suddenly Mason snapped his fingers.

‘You’ve got it?’ Della Street asked.

‘I have an explanation. I don’t know whether it’s the explanation, but it’s quite an explanation’.

Spinrad examines one of his most compelling obsessions – the possible “futures” of America.
Street Meat: In New York City, streeties, zonies and subway cannibals are locked in a nighmarish scrabble for rat meat, sex – and survival.
The Lost Continent: group of African tourists visit the ruins of Space Age America – a surreal landscape of abandoned skyscrapers, empty streets and dead, rusted machinery.
World War Last: The hashish-smoking Sheik of Koram has a plan to trick America and Russia into war.
La Vie Continue: In Paris exiled science-fiction author Norman Spinrad ignores a lucrative – but dangerous – bidding war between the KGB and the CIA for the film rights to his story “Riding the Torch”.

‘One of British crime writing’s hidden jewels’ Time Out

At 19 years old Denise Prior knew little about criminals and even less about the law. In hindsight only her innocence was to blame for her affair with Detective Inspector Colin Harpur. That same innocence led to a friendship with ballet student Helen Surtees – live-in lover of Harpur’s number one informer, Jack Lamb.

It wasn’t until later that the guns came out for the raid on the Link Street sub-post office. The tip-off had come from Jack Lamb and Harpur wanted to be there . . . but the Link Street shoot out changed everything, and Harpur’s actions made Denise the only possible victim for a cruel and terrible revenge.

In this thrilling conclusion to the ColSec Trilogy, five young outcasts return from exile to free Earth from an authoritarian government. In the savage streets, they rally the Earth’s people to fight for freedom.

Look down into the streets, the buildings, the parks.

There is your battleground. Down there is the enemy – an enemy who wears no uniform.

He walks behind you in the street, sits with you when you eat, and perhaps swims beside you in a public pool. He may ask you for a light, bow you into a hotel, sell you a flyer, or in another form, leave the smell of perfume on your pillow.

The enemy is young and old, male and female, and he is everywhere. Could such a situation arise – or has it arisen? In this exciting story of the future, the author depicts a world at war. An undercover war, so skilfully manipulated that sixty per cent of the population is unaware of its existence. Yet, daily, the casualty figures climb higher and higher.

Can you say that such a war is impossible? Can you say when you have this all-action novel, that it has not already begun?

The year is 1998, and the nightmare is close at hand.

The world economy has gone into a mega-crash. Most of the population has been plunged into abject poverty. Anarchy and violence stalk the streets. All power is in the hands of Dryco, headed by paranoid tycoon Thatcher Dryden, and his monstrous wife, Susie.

But on the desperate streets of the Lower East Side miracles are happening. A Messiah seems to have risen from the people and is healing the sick, teaching children, raising the dead.

Dryco’s New Projects Manager, Joanna, is sent to check him out. Thatcher’s got a plan for world domination, and a genuine Messiah could be the key he’s looking for. And even if he’s fake, he may have his uses.

But soon, Joanna finds herself trapped in a crisis of conscience, between the relative security of a Dryco job and the dream of healing a sick world.

Billy Byrne was a product of the streets and alleys of Chicago’s great West Side. From Halsted to Robey, and from Grand Avenue to Lake Street there was scarce a bartender whom Billy knew not by his first name. And, in proportion to their number which was considerably less, he knew the patrolmen and plain clothes men equally as well, but not so pleasantly. His kindergarten education had commenced in an alley back of a feed-store. Here a gang of older boys and men were wont to congregate at such times as they had naught else to occupy their time, and as the bridewell was the only place in which they ever held a job for more than a day or two, they had considerable time to devote to congregating. They were pickpockets and second-story men, made and in the making, and all were muckers, ready to insult the first woman who passed, or pick a quarrel with any stranger who did not appear too burly. By night they plied their real vocations. By day they sat in the alley behind the feedstore and drank beer from a battered tin pail. The question of labor involved in transporting the pail, empty, to the saloon across the street, and returning it, full, to the alley back of the feed-store was solved by the presence of admiring and envious little boys of the neighborhood who hung, wide-eyed and thrilled, about these heroes of their childish lives. Billy Byrne, at six, was rushing the can for this noble band, and incidentally picking up his knowledge of life and the rudiments of his education. By the time he became an adult, he was another thing entirely. . . .

Grace is green-eyed, beautiful, a psychic healer – and also a whore. She walks the streets of Black Church to make a living.

After years of horror and poverty as a brothel slave, Saul Anger was adopted into a life of ease, and now he has taken on the mantle of his dead uncle’s house, as well as the leadership of a secret society whose figurehead is Anubis, the jackal god of Egypt. Dedicated to justice and to retribution, this society will destroy those it deems evil. There must always be blood.

One midnight in the great clock-tower of the city, a man hangs himself – and secret desires are let loose. A demon now stalks the streets and alleys, slaying the wicked and the innocent alike. But can Saul locate the source of the destruction and tame it?

Or will beautiful Grace – who has fallen in love with him – be able to stem this tide of madness and primeval terror? For, aided by the goddess Pasht and by all the cats of the city, perhaps she alone can turn back the clock.

Emerging from the burned remains of their old home, the ancient, elegant Scarabae ready themselves for a new life of seduction and feasting, until little Ruth ignites a blaze of chaos through the streets of London that threatens them all.

This is book two in the Blood Opera series.

Corporate hatchetman Hubbard is on his way to an industry convention to carry out a termination – a fancy way of saying he’s about to toss a man and his family out in the street. But the convention is a modern Sodom of cheating husbands and ambitious wives, ready to put out as much as necessary to ensure their husbands’ jobs – and a plan is afoot to smear Hubbard …

An anonymous telephone call reports two murders and a bank robbery, and the following day an advertisement in the local paper reports that £10,000 in notes has been found in the street.

Chief Inspector Martineau believes that local Granchester mobster boss Dixie Costello is mixed up in the affair – and a woman known to police as ‘Annie the Acrobat’ is attracting a lot of attention.

A graveyard, sinister music, a small child’s nightmare…

A children’s tune played on a hurdy-gurdy
A small boy’s nightmare
The same tune played by an old blind beggar outside a foggy graveyard – and heard again by an old, bed-ridden woman
And heard again, at the dead of night on a London street corner

What is the connection – and why is this disturbing melody the prelude to a brutal crime …

They were fighting death.

Through their scientific breakthroughs, one of humanity’s oldest dreams could be coming true. With cryonics, the body could be preserved at superlow temperatures for future revival.

But Death was fighting back.

In the hospital there were senior staff determined to destroy careers and work.

And on the streets, Death’s Agent hears the whispered commands of the preacher and knew he must seek out and kill the blasphemers…