Books by Richard Armstrong

The Mafia comes to Comic-Con and outrageousness ensues, in the new fast-paced suspense caper The Don Con. A hilarious comic crime thriller in the tradition of Carl Hiaasen and Janet Evanovich, The Don Con mixes suspense, razor-sharp pop culture satire and author Richard Armstrongs dry comic style into a delightful cocktail of pure entertainment. Joey Volpe hit the high watermark of his acting career when he played a small role as a mobster on The Sopranos. If you blinked, you missed it. But now hes unemployed, broke and forced to make a living by signing autographs at pop-culture fan conventions, or Fan-Cons, for $35 a pop. His lack of income, along with his chronic womanising, has put his marriage at risk, too. Joeys life gets even worse when real mobster Tony Rosetti shows up in the autograph line with a plan to rob the next Fan-Con an offer Joey cant refuse. When the heist goes awry, Joey is left with a beef with Rosetti and two long years to plan. Partnered with a smooth-talking con man, Joey is using all his acting skills on new projects: Revenge. Money. And saving his marriage. Combining the intrigue of Oceans 11 and The Bank Job with pointed comic takes on The Sopranos, The Godfather, Comic-Con, Star Trek, The Sting and nerd culture. A crime thriller / screwball comedy that will leave readers breathless with excitement and laughter.

The first in-depth study of its subject, this book seeks to historically account for a type of modernist film that revolves around bereavement. Identifying the roots of the genre in classical melodrama and horror cinema, and tracing perennial themes and aesthetic devices through to the European and American 'intellectual melodramas' of the postwar decades, the book provides a taxonomy of characteristics.