WINNER OF THE SPINETINGLER AWARD! Spring 1981. Northern Ireland. Belfast on the verge of outright civil war. The Thatcher government has flooded the area with soldiers, but nightly there are riots, bombings, and sectarian attacks. In the midst of the chaos, Sean Duffy, a young, witty, Catholic detective in the almost entirely Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, is trying to track down a serial killer who is targeting gay men. As a Catholic policeman,...

The morning starts like any other. Rachel Klein drops her daughter, Kylie, at the bus stop and heads into her day. But then a cell phone call from an unknown number changes everything. On the line is a woman informing Rachel that she has Kylie bound and gagged in her back seat, and the only way Rachel will ever see her again is if she pays a ransom. And if she kidnaps another child. The caller is a mother herself, whose son has also been abducted,...

"The early 1980s. Belfast. Sean Duffy, a conflicted Catholic cop in the Protestant RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), is recruited by MI5 to hunt down Cormac McCann, an IRA master bomber who has made a daring escape from the notorious Maze Prison. In the course of his investigations Sean discovers a woman who may hold the key to Cormac's whereabouts; she herself wants justice for her daughter who died in mysterious circumstances in a pub locked from...

"Colonial New Guinea-1906: a small group of mostly German nudists live an extreme back-to-nature existence on the remote island of Kabakon. Eating only coconuts and bananas, they purport to worship the sun. One of their members-Max Lutzow-has recently died, allegedly from malaria. But an autopsy on his body in the nearby capital of Herbertsh.

Readings of excerpts from and critical analysis of Hammett's The Maltese falcon, a novel about greed, lust, and betrayal and the story of San Francisco detective Sam Spade and a case involving treasure housed in a falcon-shaped sculpture.