Recommended reading - Sleuths of the Century

 

Sleuths of the Century

Sleuths of the Century
Edited by Ed Gorman and John L. Breen.
 
Published in 2000.
Published by Carroll & Graf.
First Edition.
Hardcover.
 
ISBN-10: 0786707097
ISBN-13: 978-0786707096
 
Description:
 

Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, Lord Peter Wimsey and Hercule Poirot, Matt Scudder and Easy Rawlins, Spenser and Dalgliesh - they stand among the most popular of twentieth-century heroes. And now the award-winning mystery novelist Ed Gorman and novelist-critic Jon L. Breen present a full century of the world's favorite sleuths in tales by such classic writers as G. K. Chesterton, Ellery Queen, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie as well as contemporary giants like Sharyn McCrumb, Walter Mosley, Ed McBain, Lawrence Block, P. D. James, and Ruth Rendell. A hefty, handsome volume, Sleuths of the Century also offers serious suspense from Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Highsmith, Tony Hillerman, Rex Stout, Donald E. Westlake, and John D. MacDonald. Crossing the decades with a gallery of sleuths impeccably styled for every generation, this collection provides exciting, literate tales of detection and danger that will keep the reader on tenterhooks well into the next century.

Recommended reading - Pulp Masters (2001).

 

Pulp Masters (2001).

Edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg.

 
Published by Carroll & Graf.
First Edition.
Paperback.
 
ISBN-10: 0786708735
ISBN-13: 978-0786708734
 
Description:
 
A pulp-packed volume of hard-boiled crime fiction from the writers who made the mold and mastered the form.
 

John MacDonald, James M. Cain, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Mickey Spillane, and Harrington Whittington – these six masters of pulp fiction at its suspenseful best distinguish this new anthology compiled by the award-winning editors of its two popular predecessors, American Pulp and Pure Pulp. Like its two popular predecessors, Pulp Masters culls its tales – in this case, five classic “novelettes” and one complete novel – from the golden age of magazine fiction in the first half of the twentieth century.

 

All six writers included in Pulp Masters in time emerged as giants in the field of crime fiction, and the stories in this volume demonstrate why. Their voices fresh, their talents raw and original, with titles like "Ordo," “College-Cut Kill,” "Stag Party Girl," "The Embezzler," and "Everybody's Watching Me," Westlake, Block, Cain, and Spillane heralded and shaped the crime story as we know it today. So did "the King of the Paperback Original" – Harrington Whittington – represented here by the novel based on his pulp short story "So Dead, My Love."

 

Recommended reading - The Big Book of Noir (1998)

 

The Big Book of Noir (1998).

Edited by Ed Gorman, Lee Server, and Martin H. Greenberg.

 
ISBN-10: 0786705744
ISBN-13: 978-0786705740
 
Description:
 
THE BIG BOOK OF NOIR
 
Noir is big. It was born in the hard-boiled detective story of Depression-era America. It flourished in the black-and-white B movies of the forties and fifties. And it’s been ingeniously reinvented in the film and fiction of the nineties.
 
Etched on our cultural memory by writers like Raymond Chandler, directors like Alfred Hitchcock, screen stars like Robert Mitchum and Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott and Gloria Graham, noir is big.
 
Noir is big, so The Big Book of Noir jam-packs its pages with articles, interviews, excerpts, opinion, and gossip that chronicle its history and explore noir in all its forms: movies, detective stories, television and radio shows, comic books, and graphic novels.
 
The Big Book of Noir pays homage to the big names in noir – John Huston, Fritz Lang, Mickey Spillane, John D. MacDonald, Ross MacDonald, Donald E. Westlake – as well as less familiar figures like Phil Karlson, Peter Rabe, Charles Williams, Harry Whittington, and Gil Brewer. It also includes two rare pieces: Stephen King writing about Jim Thompson in one and in the other Dulcy Brainard writing about Sara Paretsky, Marcia Muller, and Wendi Lee.
 
The evidence is in. The Big Book of Noir amasses fascinating and informative exhibits that amply illustrate one of America’s most significant cultural contributions.
 
Because noir is big.