brand serpent's tail (17 results)

Softcover. Condition: Good. Hardboiled in Hollywood tells the story of the tangled relations between the great crime novelists, from Dashiell Hammett to Elmore Leonard, and the Hollywood machine. Haut begins by showing the huge debt Hollywood owed to writers like Hammett, Chandler and James M. Cain, as the film versions of novels like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep and Double Indemnity came to define film noir. Almost every significant American crime novelist since has served their time in Hollywood, some, like W.R. Burnett or Donald Westlake, with great success, more often, as with the likes of Jim Thompson and David Goodis, with great disillusion. Haut weaves in anecdote and analysis along with original interviews to provide an invaluable companion for moviegoers and crime fiction fans alike.Born in Detroit in 1945, Woody Haut has been a cinema programmer and, as journalist, was the Labour Editor for Rolling Stock magazine. He is the author of Neon Noir and Pulp Culture, published by Serpents Tail and now lives in London.Also available by Woody HautPulp CultureTP $15.99, 1-85242-319-6 CUSANeon NoirTP $16.99, 1-85242-547-4 CUSA.

Softcover. Condition: Good. The year is 1977. The Yorkshire Ripper is on the loose murdering prostitutes in the Yorkshire city of Leeds. Two men-a journalist and cop-find their own lives turned over in the desperate race against time to stop the murders. The second volume of a quartet which covers a period of ten years, Nineteen Seventy Seven confirms the promise of Nineteen Seventy Four, David Peace's first novel.o Ad in Mystery Sceneo Flyer to mystery storeso Advance reading copies availableBorn in Leeds, Yorkshire, David Peace now lives in Tokyo where he teaches English as a foreign language.Also available from David PeaceNineteen Seventy FourPB $14.00, 1-85242-634-9 o CUSA.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Translated by Adriana HunterWhen you moved to France to a picturesque hamlet in the Dordogne no one said it would be like this in February: freezing cold, dark by mid-afternoon and so quiet. Members of the Caminade family keep dying in suspicious circumstances, and the doctor knows more about it than he's prepared to reveal. Slyly funny and delightfully laconic, Death in the Dordogne is the perfect accompaniment for anyone thinking about a holiday in France!An editor at a publishing house, Louis Sanders now lives in rural France in the Dordogne with his English wife.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Everything about I Was Dora Suarez shrieks of the joy and pain of going too far.-The New York Times"For those who want some truly dark noir that will make most wince, you won't find a much darker ride through the human condition than this one."-Bookgasm.comAn ax-wielding psychopath cares young Dora Suarez into pieces. On the same night in London, a firearm blows the top off the head of Felix Roatta, part-owner of the seedy Parallel Club. The unnamed narrator, a police sergeant, becomes fixated on Dora and is determined to solve her murder. Then a photo links Suarez to Roatta, and inquiries at the club reveal how vile and inhuman exploitation can become.Derek Raymonds real name was Robin Cook. He died in London in 1994.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Product Description "Montalbïż½n writes with authority and compassion-a Le Carrïż½-like sorrow."-Publishers WeeklyAs Barcelona prepares for the Games, the city is turned over to make way for new roads, a new stadium, and the giant prawn sculptures of Mariscal. PI Pepe Carvalho now finds himself forced to work for the Olympic entrepreneurs. As Montalbïż½ns overweight hero finds dead bodies and broken socialist promises, he discovers an older, seedier Barcelona hidden behind the shiny new Olympic City. About the Author Manuel Vïż½zquez Montalbïż½n was born in Barcelona in 1939. He was a journalist, novelist and creator of Pepe Carvalho, a fast-living, gourmet private detective. Montalbïż½n won both the Raymond Chandler Prize and the French Grand Prix of Detective Fiction for his thrillers, which are translated into all major languages. He died in October 2003.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Cult novel about French Generation X. Book sold 40000 copies in France and won may prizes for the author who is a poet and father figure of new school of writing and literary magazine Perpendiculare.

Softcover. Condition: New. Lau, Grace.

Softcover. Condition: Good. A sulphurous mixture of ferocious violence and high-fl own philosophy.-ProspectThe third novel in the acclaimed Factory crime series sees Derek Raymonds nameless detective leave London for a remote village, where hes meant to be investigating the disappearance of a local doctors wife.A fitting successor to classic noir writers such as Jim Thompson and David Goodis, with an introduction by Will Self. High-profile fans include Ian Rankin and James Sallis.Robin Cook was born in 1931. He reinvented himself as Derek Raymond and died in London in 1994.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Bruges-La-Morte, originally published in 1892, was immediately acknowledged, by Huysmans and Mallarme among others, as one of the greatest achievements of the Decadent movement in French literature. Ostensibly it is the account of a doomed love affair which culminates in a bizarre murder. As important, however, is its dream-like evocation of the "dead city": Bruges, a city of silence, ennui and of desolation, whose "shadows lengthen across the text", and which dictates the inevitably fatal events of the narrative.A peerless poetic novel in a fine contemporary translation which has been carefully revised, this edition also reprints the photographs chosen by the author to illustrate the first edition.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Surreal, disturbing, frequently brilliant. Nobody like him.-Time OutDavid Goodis is the mystery man of hardboiled fictionhe wrote of winos and bar-room piano players and small-time thieves in a vein of tortured lyricism all his ownHe was the poet of the losers.-Geoffrey OBrienIts winter in Philadelphia. Hart is broke, freezing, looking for a place to lay low from the cops. If he cant find somewhere soon he might do something rash-like accept a wallet containing $11,000 from a man dying from gunshot wounds in the street. Whoever killed him might have a bed, though, even if that means hanging out with a bunch of thieves and drifters. Lucky for Hart hes handy with his fists. And if he can use his looks and smarts to get in with the gang, maybe he can ride this out and score big on his own.Originally published in 1954, Black Friday is one of David Goodis leanest, meanest melancholy thrillers. In this edition, the novel is combined with the best of Goodis short stories, first written for pulp magazines in America over 50 years ago and published for the first time in book form.One of the greatest an American crime writers, David Goodis was born in Philadelphia in 1917, and wrote his first novel, Retreat from Oblivion, in 1938. He died in 1967.

Softcover. Condition: Good. English (translation)Original Portugese.

Softcover. Condition: Good. A depiction of bohemian life in London, New York and Paris, the outlandish schemes that often ended in prison, and a series of strange friendships and celebrities from Coward to Cocteau to Lennon and Bob Marley. Over 100 illustrations.

Softcover. Condition: Good. With enervating experimentation but touching directness, postmodern novelist Acker (Portrait of an Eve, 1992; My Mother: Demonology, 1993; etc.) explores art, politics, and being in her first essay collection. Subjects are various, ranging from William Burroughs to Goya to San Francisco; many of the pieces have been published previously (prefaces to books, articles in Marxism Today, the Critical Quarterly, etc.). Despite the variety of subjects and sources, the collection is neatly structured: Essays are grouped agreeably by subject-'On Art and Artists,' 'The City,' 'Bodies of Work.' Though Acker says she aims to 'destroy' the essay form, she does more of what the form openly invites--to tinker and confess. For example, she interweaves stories into a piece on artist Nayland Blake and applies Wittgenstein's 'language games' to bodybuilding: 'In a gym, verbal language or language whose purpose is meaning occurs, if at all, only at the edge of becoming lost.' But she also reveals her current weightlifting goals and describes a childhood desire to be a pirate. Not surprisingly, her most accessible works are those written for a wide audience, particularly an illuminating essay for the Village Voice on film director Peter Greenaway and a moving piece for the MMLA on copyright in the age of the Internet. In all, these essays are serious and reflective of a discontented mind bent on deconstruction. Some may find dreary her tale of patriarchy, dualism, and linearity of time; her elliptical tales and stark sentences may lack immediate clarity. For sure, her essays aren't casually authoritative like Updike's or reassuringly religious like Dillard's. Read Acker when you're patient and don't want to be comforted--or even satisfied. An unthreatening introduction to a vexing writer.-Kirkus.