Hardboiled American Crime and Worldwide Noir Fiction discussion

Which hardboiled book or short story shall we read for June 2024? Please make up to two nominations by May 15, 2024. I want to run the poll starting May 16.

I nominate Silent Are the Dead (1942) by George Harmon Coxe. This is the first novel with Jack "Flashgun" Casey. Coxe had already written 21 stories in Black Mask featuring this protagonist character, a crime photographer who gets into dangerous situations.

These novels were popular, eventually becoming a series of five novels, the last of which was written in 1964. They also spawned a popular radio show, Casey, Crime Photographer. That show began on the air on July 7, 1943 and lasted until April 22, 1955. A total of 431 episodes were broadcast. Here is a link to some of the radio shows, if you're interested, including the first episode: https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Case...

There are two 1930s films we can watch featuring the character. Timely Comics (Marvel's precursor) even gave him his own comic book series. More on all this here at the character's Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey,_...

Since we so far have no more nominations than mine, I'm going to extend the deadline for new nominations to June 15, 2024. I want to run the poll starting June 16 for our July group read.