Twenty-Twenty

Twenty Private Eye Novels from Hard Case Crime’s First Twenty Years

In 2024, feisty little Hard Case Crime , founded by Charles Ardai and Max Phillips back in 2004, celebrated its twentieth anniversary, but its mission statement remains the same, to bring you “the best in hard-boiled crime fiction, ranging from lost noir masterpieces to new novels by today’s most powerful writers, featuring stunning original cover art in the grand pulp style.”

Authors of their books and (comics) over the last two decades have included include award-winning modern masters like Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Max Allan Collins, Lawrence Block, Megan Abbott, and Donald E. Westlake, Golden-Age giants like Erle Stanley Gardner, James M. Cain, Mickey Spillane and Ray Bradbury, old pulp faves like David Dodge, Ed McBain, Brett Halliday and out-there choices like film directors Brian de Palma and Samuel Fuller, as well as “newcomers we predict will be the next generation of hardboiled bestsellers.”  They ain’t kidding’–among the authors I first encountered  through Hard Case include Christa Faust, Cynthia von Buhler, and David J. Schow.

And those covers! Done by legendary artists like Robert McGinnis and Robert Maguire, and a roster of newer artists inspired by them, the covers are a treasure trove of “grand pulp style” tropes: pointed weapons, come-hither babes, steely-eyed heroes, bewildered patsies, menacing thugs and strong-jawed gumshoes.

Hell, they even make Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s The Valley of Fear (originally printed in 1915) look like the “the first real hard-boiled detective story.” (Which, admittedly, some–including  Holmes expert Leslie Klinger–could certainly make a case for).

Of course, not all their books (and comics) have featured private eyes, but any fan of this site will enjoy most of Hard Case’s output–they’re soaking in hard-boiled attitude and dripping in noir, and there have been plenty of P.I. (or P.I-adjacent) novels and comics published by Hard Case over the last two decades.

Here are, appropriately enough, twenty of them, both originals and reprints, listed in order of publication:

1. Little Girl Lost (2004) by Richard Aleas
   Featuring John Blake.
2. Plunder of the Sun (2005; reprint) by David Dodge
   Featuring Al Colby.
3. The Gutter and the Grave (2005; reprint) by Ed McBain.
   Featuring Matt Cordell.
4. The Guns of Heaven (2006; reprint) by Pete Hamill
   Featuring Sam Briscoe.
5. Bill Now, Pay Later (2007; reprint) by Robert Terrall
   Featuring Ben Gates.
6. Deadly Beloved (2007) by Max Allan Collins
   Featuring Ms. Tree.
7. The Murderer Vine (2008) by Shepard Rifkin
   Featuring Joe Dunne.
8. Shooting Star (2008; reprint) by Robert Bloch
   Featuring Mark Clayburn.
9. Gun Work (2008) by David J. Schow
   Featuring Barney.
10. Losers Live Longer (2009) by Russell Atwood
    Featuring Payton Sherwood.
11. The Valley of Fear (2009; reprint) by A.C. Doyle
    Featuring Sherlock Holmes.
12. House Dick by (1965, reprinted 2009) by E. Howard Hunt
    Featuring Pete Novack.
13. Murder is My Business (2010; reprint) by Brett Halliday
    Featuring Mike Shayne.
14. False Negative (2012) by Joseph Koenig.
    Featuring Adam Jordan.
15. The Twenty Year Death (2014) by Ariel Winter
    Featuring Dennis Foster.
16. A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014; reprint) by Lawrence Block
    Featuring Matt Scudder.
17. The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes (2015) by Lawrence Block
    Featuring Doak Miller.
18. The Knife Slipped (2016) by Erle Stanley Gardner
    Featuring Bertha Cool and Donald Lam.
19. Understudy for Death (2018; reprint) by Charles Willeford
    Featuring Richard Hudson.
20. Too Many Bullets (2023) by Max Allan Collins
    Featuring Nate Heller.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.