"Fans of Bruen...will enjoy seeing the Keystone Crooks get picked off one by one." - Kirkus Reviews. Brady, our narrator, Is fifty, gay, and a manic-depressive professional criminal of Irish descent, strung out on lithium and excessive drinking. Tod

Increasingly, society questions the connection between violence in entertainment and violence in life. Moralists and censors would reply resoundingly that media violence and social violence are directly linked, but others ask the deeper question: Why do people feel the need to create images of violence, and why do audiences continually watch them? In this thought-provoking and insightful study of American violent cinema, author Jake Horsley attempts to answer these questions by tying together the multiple disciplines of psychology, criminology, censorship, and anthropology. Horsley divides the forty years of his study into two volumes: American Chaos: From Touch of Evil to The Terminator, and Millennial Blues: From Apocalypse Now to The Matrix. These volumes aim to provide both a critical overview of the films themselves and a cultural study of the social and psychological factors relating to the demand for screen violence. By doing so, Horsley raises a new dialogue between scholars and movie buffs to examine the need to portray and the need to watch violent films.

Clean and sober now that his dealer is in jail, Jack Taylor is stunned when the imprisoned man asks him to investigate the mysterious death of his sister, only to find himself caught up in a shocking scheme with deadly consequences for all concerned. By the author of The Magdalen Martyrs.

An Edgar Award Nominee for Best Novel. Praised by authors and critics around the globe, The Guards is the first novel in the Jack Taylor series and heralded the arrival of prominent Irish writer Ken Bruen as an essential voice in contemporary crime fiction. Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda Siochana--The Guards, Ireland's police force--and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack Taylor is stuck in Galway with nothing to look forward to. In his sober moments Jack aspires to become Ireland's best private investigator, not to mention its first--Irish history, full of betrayal and espionage, discourages any profession so closely related to informing. But in truth Jack is teetering on the brink of his life's sharpest edges, his memories of the past cutting deep into his soul and his prospects for the future nonexistent. Nonexistent, that is, until a dazzling woman walks into the bar with a strange request and a rumor about Jack's talent for finding things. Odds are he won't be able to climb off his barstool long enough to get involved with his radiant new client, but when he surprises himself by getting hired, Jack has little idea of what he's getting into. Stark, violent, sharp, and funny, The Guards is an exceptional novel, one that leaves you stunned and breathless, flipping back to the beginning in a mad dash to find Jack Taylor and enter his world all over again. It's an unforgettable story that's gritty, absorbing, and saturated with the rough-edged rhythms of the Galway streets.

A great recurring character in a series you love becomes an old friend. You learn about their strange quirks and their haunted pasts and root for them every time they face danger. But where do some of the most fascinating sleuths in the mystery and thriller world really come from? What was the real-life location that inspired Michael Connelly to make Harry Bosch a Vietnam vet tunnel rat? Why is Jack Reacher a drifter? How did a brief encounter in Botswana inspire Alexander McCall Smith to create Precious Ramotswe? In The Lineup, some of the top mystery writers in the world tell about the genesis of their most beloved characters -- or, in some cases, let their creations do the talking.

In the next book in Ken Bruen's legendary private investigator series, Jack Taylor faces his most challenging opponent yet in this noir masterpiece, The Devil. America—the land of opportunity, a place where economic prosperity beckons: but not for PI Jack Taylor, who's just been refused entry. Disappointed and bitter, he thinks that an encounter with an overly friendly stranger in an airport bar is the least of his problems. Except that this stranger seems to know much more than he should about Jack. Jack thinks no more of their meeting and resumes his old life in Galway. But when he's called to investigate a student murder—connected to an elusive Mr. K—he remembers the man from the airport. Is the stranger really who he says he is? Jack struggles to make sense of it all, and the Jameson isn't helping. After several more murders and too many coincidental encounters, Jack believes he may have met his nemesis. But why has he been chosen? And could he really have taken on the devil himself? Suspenseful, haunting, and totally unique, The Devil is Bruen at his very best.

In The Gay Male Sleuth in Print and Film (2005), scholar Drewey Wayne Gunn examined the history of gay detectives beginning with the first recognized gay novel, The Heart in Exile, which appeared in 1953. In the years since the original edition's publication, hundreds of novels and short stories in this sub-genre have been produced, and Gunn has unearthed many additional representations previously unrecorded. In this new edition, Gunn provides an overview of milestones in the development of gay detectives over the last several decades. Also included in this volume is an annotated list of novels, short stories, plays, graphic novels, comic strips, films, and television series with gay detectives, gay sleuths of secondary importance, and non-sleuthing gay policemen. The most complete listing available--including the only listing of early gay pulp novels, present-day male-to-male romances, and erotic films--this new edition brings the work up to date with publications missed in the first edition, particularly cross-genre mysteries, early pulps, and some hard-to-find volumes. The Gay Male Sleuth in Print and Film: A History and Annotated Bibliography lists all printed works in English (including translations) presently known to include gay detectives (such as amateur sleuths, police detectives, private investigators, and investigative reporters), from the 1929 play Rope until the present day. It includes all films in English, subtitled or dubbed, from the screen version of Rope in 1948 and the launch of the independent film Spy on the Fly in 1966 through the end of 2011. Complete with two appendices--a bibliography of sources and a list of Lambda Literary Awards--and indexes of titles, detectives, and actors, this extensively revised and updated reference will prove invaluable to mystery collectors, researchers, aficionados of the subgenre, and those devoted to GLBTQ studies.