Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard

Gentleman/banker-robber Jack Foley is back in prison doing a thirty-year sentence after a week-long escape. Brought in by Karen Sisco, US marshall, who got her man after being abducted with the escapees, Jack and Karen have a thing for each other, and Karen arrests him only after a meaningful ‘time’out’ together. Jack is resigning himself to doing time, lots of it, and he seems to have a friendly and easy control over the hardened criminals he is imprisoned with. This easiness is enhanced in the minds of others by his fame as a bank robber. It is this ease which impresses Cuando Rey, a Cuban refugee and criminal who is doing time for murder. Cuando arranges to have Foley’s sentence hugely reduced, but has favors aplenty to ask when they’re both released.Cuando’s wife, Dawn, is pretending to be saintly all the while (whilst quite the opposite) under the negligent eye of The Monk, a gay accountant similarly in thrall to Cuando. Foley is freed, and, as he fears, Cuando wants to use him on a job, just as his every move is being scrutinised by FBI detective Lou Adams. In an instant, though, Dawn has seduced him, and she has an agenda all of her own.

The Long Fall by Walter Mosley

Leonid McGill, a New York City private detective, tries to put his past life behind him. But it’s not that easy when someone like Tony “The Suit” Towers expects you to do a job; when an Albany PI hires you to track down four men known only by their youthful street names; and when your 16-year-old son, Twill, is getting in over his head with a suicidal girl.

Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen

Andrew Yancy, late of the Miami Police, soon-to-be-late of the Key West Police, has a human arm in his freezer. There is a logical explanation for that, but not for how and why it parted from its owner. Yancy thinks the boating-accident/shark-luncheon explanation is full of holes, and if he can prove murder, his commander might relieve him of Health Inspector duties, aka Roach Patrol. But first Yancy will negotiate an ever-surprising course of events, from the Keys to Miami to a Bahamian out island, with a crew of equally ever-surprising characters, including: the twitchy widow of the frozen arm; an avariciously idiotic real estate developer; a voodoo witch whose lovers are blinded-unto-death by her particularly peculiar charms; Yancy’s new love, a kinky medical examiner; and the eponymous Bad Monkey.

Coconut Cowboy : [a Novel] by Tim Dorsey

Embarking on a plan to finish the motorcycle journey of his Easy Rider heroes in the Florida panhandle, Serge Storms and his sidekick Coleman encounter corrupt politicians, homicides, and mind-altering drugs.

L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy

Three troubled cops — Ed Exley, desperately seeking glory; vengeful Bud White, a witness to his mother’s murder by his father; and Jack Vincennes, a shakedown artist with a dark secret — tread a fine line between right and wrong in 1950s Los Angeles.

Get Real by Donald E Westlake

When a TV producer convinces John Dortmunder and his merry gang to do a reality show that captures their next score, Dortmunder hatches an ingenious plan to outwit viewers glued to their television sets and end the shoot with money in his pockets.