The air was cold - thin and clawing like an animal in an iron trap. The other day I heard a blonde call the snow "pretty as a postcard." It was as pretty as a postcard, if the postcard had a secret message on the back written in blood, or ink as ashen as the frostbitten feet of bodies at the morgue, and it was asking you to walk in it. I needed a drink. What I had was a book.
This long winter is enough to make anyone as cynical as a hard-boiled sleuth. Take a day in with one of these titles and read about someone else doing the legwork.
A Long Walk Up the Water Slide by Don Winslow
After Polly Paget, a ditzy actress from Brooklyn, is assaulted by her old boss, a motley assortment of sleazoids, paparazzi, and psychotic assassins are out to get Paget to either talk or shut up permanently. PI Neal Carey is used to uncovering people trying to hide, but this time he has to help his mark stay lost. A Long Walk Up the Water Slide is part of Don Winslow's five-book Neal Carey Series.
Even as a young cop, Freddy Underhill knows sunshine alone isn't enough to make L.A. a nice place. Patrolling one of L.A.'s roughest districts with his partner Wacky Walker (a morbid, alcoholic WWII vet with a Medal of Honor), he sees all of its lust, its rage, its madness - and the murder of an old flame. Clandestine by James Ellroy follows the investigation as it takes Freddy deep into the shadiest parts of the city, where he will have to embrace the darkness if he wants to emerge with his life.
Skinflick is book five of the David Brandsetter Mysteries starring street-smart insurance investigator Dave Brandsetter. In this mystery, crusading evangelist Gerald Dawson has taken to vigilante justice in his local skid row, ransacking pornography shops and intimidating their owners. But when Gerald is found with his neck snapped, Brandsetter digs into the holy man’s nighttime activities, only to find a collection of sins that would make even the devil blush.
The first book in the Aden Vanner trilogy, Sleep No More by Jeff Gulvin zeroes in on a Detective Chief Inspector's obsessive search for the elusive Watchman, a case so frustrating that it drives him to beat a prisoner during questioning. Suspended from the police force, Vanner navigates London's dark alleyways using his own brand of justice because even without the Bureau's support, capturing the Watchman is the only way to clear his name.
Never Bet Your Life by George Harmon Coxe
Dave Barnum had one job - to keep his friend John from committing suicide. What he didn't think to watch for was murder. Never Bet Your Life by George Harmon Coxe details Barnum's hair-raising pursuit of a killer that escaped him once but won't escape him again.