I'm shocked Robert Leslie Bellem was left out of this huge anthology. Bellem was one of the few pulp writers who appreciated the inherent humor of the genre--the polar opposite of the brittle, often old-womanish Chandler, who Penzler is so enamored of.Check out "The Pulps: Fifty Years of American Pop Culture Hardcover" by Tony Goodstone, a much more entertaining book.

This has been a very interesting read.To think that these stories were the start of the modern crime and detective novels. Authors were paid half a cent to two cents a word, depending on how much their work was in demand. I readily admit, I enjoyed the half cent per word authors just as much if not more than the two cent ones.

Man, what a time investment this was... A great compilation of 20s-40s crime pulps that are absolutely worth reading. I am actually surprised it took me so long to finish, even if it was jist shy of 1200 pages. The first of the three parts of this book is by far and away the weakest of the lot, and I feel should have been saved for the end of the book (the stories in this part are nowhere near as good as the rest, and it actually took me 2 months to read that part alone). By far THE worst in the...

Don't get me wrong, I love all of The Black Lizard Big Books and I think Otto Penzler does an amazing job at putting these collections together. While it was a good read and it featured many stories from many different pulp magazines (including a few from the risque, controversial, and sometimes poorly written magazine SPICY DETECTIVE), many of the stories in here were from repeat authors such as Raymond Chandler. Don't get me wrong, I love Raymond Chandler, but I'm sure there were other pulp fi...

I didn't read every story- the book is huge. It's amazing. It's overwhelming. All I will say is I love Cornell Woolrich. "I Married a Dead Man" was a mind-blowing novel for me, and his shorter works are just as amazing. His writing is tops.

Finally finished reading 1000 pager! I am a huge fan of the Noir genre. Chandler, Garner, Cain and the whole gang. I really enjoy watching Noir Alley on TCM. Eddie Muller is the host who is wonderfully informative in the filming, production, and casting of these movies. Watch it. Saturday night at 11.The book is loaded with stories that were written at the time when you could earn a penny a word and learn the craft of writting. The tough guy private eye or the uncorruptable cop populate these st...

Yeah this book is super long. I went to Otto Penzler's bookstore in NY this summer. I didn't see him there, but they mentioned him around the place a little. He's very much into this material and his passion shows through in all the section breaks and introductions. The shorter introductions written by the other writers are very distinct. Laura Lippman and Harlan Coben both take the assignment in straightforward ways and introduce their sections -- Dames and Crimefighters -- in earnest. Harlan E...

PART ONETHE CRIMEFIGHTERSHarlan Coben: IntroductionPaul Cain: One, Two, ThreeDashiell Hammett: The Creeping SiameseErle Stanley Gardner: Honest MoneyHorace McCoy: Frost Rides AloneThomas Walsh: Double CheckCharles G. Booth: Stag PartyLeslie T. White: The City of Hell!Raymond Chandler: Red WindFrederick Nebel: Wise GuyGeorge Harmon Coxe: Murder PictureNorbert Davis: The Price of a DimeWilliam Rollins, Jr.: Chicago ConfettiCornell Woolrich: Two Murders, One CrimeCarroll John Daly: The Third Murder...

I had been reading this book for several weeks, picking off stories and authors like a Dime Detective would pick off a cheap bottle of rye in his pocket. The genre is fascinating to me, so the book was a treasure from my library. Too big to read in one checkout cycle, so renewal was necessary. Too heavy to trudge along to work, so lunch hour reading behind the seclusion of my door and 80-some ‘way-back Year’s’ in my mind was not possible.In some stories, I can feel the dirt, grime and heat, the

This book offers a broad overview of pulp fiction. Some of the prose is uneven. And some is admittedly substandard. And then there are those stories by Woolrich--dark and moody, and then suddenly frenetic and fast paced. There are stories by masters of the genre: Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Gardner. The great stories sparkly and crackle with tension and suspense. And the not-so-great stories are forgiveable because the writers were only paid on the average a penny a word. So the idea was to churn s...

I love pulp fiction. Yeah, that’s right, I said pulp fiction: square-jawed tough guys, devilish dames and trouble with a capital “T”. The only thing I love more than pulp fiction is the lurid art that went along with it. When I saw The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps in the Vintage catalog my eyes lit up like the rep had just shown me the Maltese Falcon. What we have here is no less than a history of the mystery pulps in the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, the time of the ascendance of Black Mask and the

awesoem collection of very fast paced and fun Crime and Noir stories (which are all crime based of course.)this is classic stuff real great when America was the gem of the world.the Men were straight talkers and no nonsense, and the Dames were all fabulous be them good or bad.it is a hefty anthology but you breeze through it. and you keep looking for more.for the "PC" sensitive jerks out there, this is not PC.when every one was an American in this country, if they had something different it was

The Big Book of Pulps is a collection of dozens of noir stories from the 1920s through 1940s. The table of contents looks like a directory of the best authors in the genre. The book contains three stories each by Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich and Dashiell Hammett. Other authors include James. M. Cain; Carroll John Daly, credited with writing the first U.S. detective novel; and Earl Stanley Gardner. In one Gardner story, Ken Corning, precursor to Perry Mason, leaps on the running board of a...