The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
An unstoppable anthology of crime stories culled from Black Mask magazine the legendary publication that turned a pulp phenomenon into literary mainstream. \ \ Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like...
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An unstoppable anthology of crime stories culled from Black Mask magazine the legendary publication that turned a pulp phenomenon into literary mainstream. Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared. It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this. Featuring • Deadly Diamonds • Dancing Rats • A Prize Fighter Fighting for His Life • A Parrot that Wouldn’t Talk Including • Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon as it was originally published • Lester Dent's Luck in print for the first timePublishers WeeklyLet's put it straight, like a fist in the face: this treasure trove of more than 50 stories and novels offers the best value ever for fans of hard-boiled detective fiction. In the pulp magazine Black Mask (1920-1951), Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler made their bones, with Erle Stanley Gardner and other heavyweights at their heels. As Penzler (Agents of Treachery) notes in his intros to each selection, an amazing number of these writers moved on to movies and TV. Highlights include the complete The Maltese Falcon, the original version from the pulp, unreprinted for 80 years. (Hammett made a couple of thousand changes for the hardcover novel.) The novel Rainbow Diamonds, featuring Raoul Whitfield's Filipino detective Jo Gar, appears in a book for the first time. The iconic story "Sail" by Lester "Doc Savage" Dent shows up in a variant draft, preferred by the author. The only way Penzler can top this one--a bigger book of Black Mask! (Sept.)
Foreword Otto Penzler Introduction Keith Alan Deutsch Come and Get It Erle Stanley GardnerCry Silence Fredric BrownArson Plus Peter Collinson Fall Guy George Harmon CoxeDoors in the Dark Frederick Nebel Luck Lester Dent The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett Ten Carats of Lead Stewart Sterling Murder Is Bad Luck Wyatt Blassingame Her Dagger Before Me Talmadge Powell One Shot Charles G. BoothThe Dancing Rats Richard SaleBracelets Katherine Brocklebank Diamonds Mean Death Thomas Walsh Murder in the Ring Raoul Whitfield The Parrot That Wouldn’t Talk Walter C. Brown Let the Dead Alone Merle Constiner Knights of the Open Palm Carroll John DalyWaiting for Rusty William ColeRainbow Diamonds Ramon Decolta The Ring on the Hand of Death William Rollins Jr. Body Snatcher Theodore A. TinsleyMurder on the Gayway Dwight V. BabcockThe Key Cleve F. AdamsThe Bloody Bokhara William Campbell Gault A Taste for Cognac Brett Halliday Sauce for the Gander Day KeeneA Little Different W. T. Ballard The Shrieking Skeleton Charles M. GreenDrop Dead Twice Hank Searls The Sound of the Shot Dale ClarkFlaming Angel Frederick C. Davis Odds on Death Don M. Mankiewicz Those Catrini Norvell Page Smoke in Your Eyes Hugh B. Cave Blood, Sweat and Biers Robert Reeves The Black Bottle Whitman Chambers The Corpse Didn’t Kick Milton K. OzakiTry the Girl Raymond Chandler Don’t You Cry for Me Norbert Davis T. McGuirk Steals a Diamond Ray CummingsWait for Me Steve Fisher Ask Me Another Frank GruberDirty Work Horace McCoy Merely Murder Julius Long Murder in One Syllable John D. MacDonald Three Apes from the East H. H. Stinson Death Stops Payment D. L. Champion The Color of Honor Richard ConnellMiddleman for Murder Bruno Fischer The Man Who Chose the Devil Richard DemingBeer-Bottle Polka C. M. Kornbluth Borrowed Crime Cornell Woolrich
\ Publishers WeeklyLet's put it straight, like a fist in the face: this treasure trove of more than 50 stories and novels offers the best value ever for fans of hard-boiled detective fiction. In the pulp magazine Black Mask (1920-1951), Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler made their bones, with Erle Stanley Gardner and other heavyweights at their heels. As Penzler (Agents of Treachery) notes in his intros to each selection, an amazing number of these writers moved on to movies and TV. Highlights include the complete The Maltese Falcon, the original version from the pulp, unreprinted for 80 years. (Hammett made a couple of thousand changes for the hardcover novel.) The novel Rainbow Diamonds, featuring Raoul Whitfield's Filipino detective Jo Gar, appears in a book for the first time. The iconic story "Sail" by Lester "Doc Savage" Dent shows up in a variant draft, preferred by the author. The only way Penzler can top this one--a bigger book of Black Mask! (Sept.)\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalThough this is not the first collection drawn from the pages of yesteryear's Black Mask magazine, Edgar Award-winning mystery editor, publisher, and bookstore owner Penzler declares that "it is the biggest and most comprehensive." He's not kidding! Launched by H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan in the 1920s, Black Mask would springboard the careers of a handful of writers, raising the level of penny dreadful pulp mysteries to that of literature, while also publishing plenty of quickly hacked-out swill. This gathers the cream produced by legends like Dashiell Hammett (the godfather of hard-boiled detective fiction), Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, Carroll John Daly, Cornell Woolrich, and other aces. There are more than 50 stories in all, including "The Maltese Falcon" (the original serialized version, which differs from the published novel, is reproduced here for the first time since its initial 1929 publication), Chandler's "Try the Girl" (which, ultimately, became Farewell, My Lovely), and Horace McCoy's "Dirty Work." Each author receives a brief bio and the stories sport original artwork—it's a complete education on vintage crime mysteries between two covers. VERDICT A hefty hunk of hard-boiled heaven and a noir lover's dream, this will thrill the genre's many fans.—Mike Rogers, Library Journal\ \
