Gift Guide: Crime fiction

The Comedy is Finished
The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam. 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. And not the five remaining members of the People’s Revolutionary Army, who’ve decided that kidnapping Koo  would be the perfect way to bring their cause back to life…



The Twenty-Year Death
A breathtaking first novel written in the form of three separate crime novels, each set in a different decade and penned in the style of a different giant of the mystery genre. Three complete novels that, taken together, tell a single epic story, about an author whose life is shattered when violence and tragedy consume the people closest to him. An ingenious and emotionally powerful debut work.

The Cocktail Waitress
Following her husband’s death in an accident, beautiful young widow Joan Medford is forced to take a job serving drinks in a cocktail lounge to make ends meet. At the job she encounters two men who take an interest in her, a handsome young schemer and a wealthy but unwell older man who rewards her for her attentions with a $50,000 tip and an unconventional offer of marriage…

Mike Hammer - Lady, Go Die!
Hammer and Velda go on vacation to a small beach town on Long Island after wrapping up the Williams case (I, the Jury). When a woman turns up naked—and dead—astride the statue of a horse in the small-town city park, how she wound up this unlikely Lady Godiva is just one of the mysteries Hammer feels compelled to solve…