"Ça faisait un an que Cathy m'avait quitté et je n'avais plus entendu parler d'elle. Mais un soir, elle est revenue. Il fallait qu'elle soit dans un sérieux pétrin. À peine arrivée, elle s'est effondrée. Sa robe était couverte de sang. Pour tenter de découvrir l'assassin, j'ai dû faire la connaissance de certaines de ses relations. Des plus recommandables. Jeunes malfrats, musiciens camés qui finissent à la broche et autres beaux spécimens de Greenwich Village. Pour ses fredaines freudiennes, elle était vraiment gâtée, la garce !"

Early noir title from experimental author David Markson.

Before achieving critical acclaim as a novelist, David Markson paid the rent by writing several crime novels, including two featuring the private detective Harry Fannin. Together here in one volume, these works are now available to a new generation of readers. In Epitaph for a Tramp, Fannin isn't called out to investigate a murder—it happens on his doorstop. In the sweltering heat of a New York August night, he answers the buzzer at his door to find his promiscuous ex-wife dying from a knife wound. To find her killer, Fannin plies his trade with classic hard-boiled aplomb. In the second novel, Epitaph for a Dead Beat, Fannin finds himself knee-deep in murder among the beatniks and bohemians of the early 1960s, where blood seems to flow as readily as cheap Chianti. Intricately plotted and rife with wisecracks, David Markson offers suspenseful and literary crime novels.