SO A WAR VET, A PSYCHOPATH, AND A HOT BABE WALK INTO WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK...

...and years later they tell us what Greenwich Village was like in the 1950s. Lawrence Block was on the scene, just starting to find himself as a writer, and A Diet of Treacle was his attempt to get it all down on paper.

It was published by a low-rent paperback house, with a tacky title and a pen name, and disappeared from view until Hard Case Crime found

...

"Quarry doesn't kill just anybody these days. He restricts himself to targeting other hitmen, availing his marked-for-death clients of two services: eliminating the killers sent after them, and finding out who hired them--and then removing that problem as well. So far he's rid the world of nobody who would be missed. But this time he finds himself zeroing in on the grieving family of a missing cheerleader. Does the hitman's hitman have the wrong...

"Jailed for a joke. It isn't easy going to jail for a practical joke. Of course, this practical joke left 20 cars wrecked on the highway and two politicians' careeers in tatters - so jail is where Harold Künt landed. Now he's just trying to keep a low profile in the Big House. He wants no part of his fellow inmates' plan to use an escape tunnel to rob two banks. But it's too late; he's in it up to his neck. And that neck may just wind up in a noose..."...

When a true crime novelist announces he's the subject of her next book, Quarry, a professional hitman, must journey into his bloody past to settle old scores as killers come out of the woodwork bent on revenge.

From award-winning authors Ken Bruen and Jason Starr comes Bust, an original new noir novel by two of the world's finest crime writers. Five valuable lessons you can learn by listening to Bust:When you hire someone to kill your wife, don't hire a psychopath. Don't use Drano to get rid of a dead body. Those locks on hotel room doors? They're not very secure. A curly blond wig isn't much of a disguise. Secrets can kill.

"Even the enigmatic hit man called Quarry had to start somewhere. And for him that was the day he returned stateside from Nam to find his young wife cheating. He'd killed plenty overseas, so killing her lover was no big deal. And when he was recruited to use his skills as a contract killer, that transition was easy, too. He survived in this jungle as he had in that other one--by expecting trouble. What he didn't expect was ever running into her again..."--from...

"Newspaperman Adam Jordan's byline ran above two big articles in the early editions. One of them got him fired. The other landed him in a job writing true crime pieces for Real detective magazine. The story he's working on now-- a beauty queen found strangled on an Atlantic City beach-- is one that boardwalk power brokers would rather see covered up than covered. And if Adam keeps digging, he may find that he's digging his own grave"-- [P. 4] of cover....

Fugitive Angel Petrakos hooks up with a serial killer in Ireland, while her ex-lover and partner, Max Fisher, a failed New York businessman, reinvents himself as a crack dealer.

After years behind bars, Roy Nash never thought he'd walk the mean streets of Chicago again let alone see his beloved one last time. But when the city's Mafia elite spring the notorious gun-for-hire, Roy once again finds himself thrown headfirst into a life of bloodshed and bullets as he sprints a breathless race to save the girl he left behind.