Recommended reading - The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories (1988)

 

The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories (1988).

Edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg.

 
Published by Running Press.
This revised edition published in 2004.
Paperback.
 
ISBN-10: 0786713712
ISBN-13: 978-0786713714
 
Description:
 

The very best in hardboiled fiction, from such masters as Ross Macdonald, Raymond Chandler, Marcia Muller, Michael Collins, Ed McBain, William Campbell Gault and many more.

With its roots in the American private detective fiction of the 1920s but traceable back as far as Sherlock Holmes, the private eye story remains as popular as ever. 

Here are 24 of the finest short novels and stories from the hardboiled world of the private eye. The characters in this collection range from the tough, cynical, hard-drinking Philip Marlowe type to hard-hitting female private eyes and the one-armed intellectual Dan Fortune – from masters of the genre past and present.

Recommended reading - Hardboiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (1995):

 

Hardboiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories (1995).

Edited by Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian.

Description:

Compellingly and compulsively readable, Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories is a page-turner no mystery lover will want to be without.

Included are thirty-six superbly suspenseful stories that chronicle the evolution of this quintessentially American art form, from its earliest beginnings during the Golden Age of the legendary pulp magazine Black Mask in the 1930s, to the arrival of the tough digest Manhunt in the 1950s, and finally leading up to present-day hard-boiled stories by such writers as James Ellroy.

Here are eight decades worth of the best writing about betrayal, murder, and mayhem: from Hammett's 1925 tour de force "The Scorched Face," to Ed Gorman's 1992 "The Long Silence After," Other contributors include Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Jim Thompson, Helen Nielsen, Margaret Maron, Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, and Lawrence Block.

Containing many notable rarities, Hard-Boiled celebrates a genre that has profoundly shaped not only American Literature and film, but how we see our heroes and ourselves.