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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.
