Fiction has been looked down on as a guilty pleasure, but it offers the perfect form of entertainment: the very best storytelling filled with action, surprises, sound and fury. In short, all the exhiliration of a roller-coaster ride. The 1920s in America saw the proliferation of hundreds of dubiously named but thrillingly entertaining pulp magazines in America ? Black Mask, Amazing, Astounding, Spicy Stories, Ace-High, Detective Magazine, Dare-Devil Aces. It was in these luridly-coloured publications, printed on the cheapest pulp paper, that the first gems began to appear. The one golden rule for writers of pulp fiction was to adhere to the art of storytelling. Each story had to have a beginning, an end, economically-etched characters, but plenty going on, both in terms of action and emotions. Pulp magazines were the TV of their day, plucking readers from drab lives and planting them firmly in thrilling make-believe, successors...
Contents
открыть
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION - Maxim Jakubowski
THE DIAMOND WAGER - Samuel Dashiell
FLIGHT TO NOWHERE - Charles Williams
THE TASTING MACHINE - Paul Cain
FINDERS KILLERS! - John D. MacDonald
THE MURDERING KIND! - Robert Turner
CIGARETTE GIRL - James M. Cain
THE GETAWAY - Gil Brewer
PREVIEW OF MURDER - Robert Leslie Bellem
FOREVER AFTER - Jim Thompson
THE BLOODY TIDE - Day Keene
DEATH COMES GIFT-WRAPPED - William P. McGivern
THE GIRL BEHIND THE HEDGE - Mickey Spillane
ONE ESCORT-MISSING OR DEAD - Roger Torrey
DON'T BURN YOUR CORPSES BEHIND YOU - William Rough
A CANDLE FOR THE BAG LADY - Lawrence Block
BLACK PUDDING - David Goodis
A MATTER OF PRINCIPAL - Max Allan Collins
CITIZEN'S ARREST - Charles Willeford
SLEEPING DOG - Ross Macdonald
THE WENCH IS DEAD - Fredric Brown
SO DARK FOR APRIL - Howard Browne
WE ARE ALL DEAD - Bruno Fischer
DEATH IS A VAMPIRE - Robert Bloch
THE BLUE STEEL SQUIRREL - Frank R. Read
A REAL NICE GUY - William F. Nolan
STACKED DECK - Bill Pronzini
SO YOUNG, SO FAIR, SO DEAD - John Lutz
EFFECTIVE MEDICINE - B. Traven
NICELY FRAMED, READY TO HANG! - Dan Gordon
THE SECOND COMING - Joe Gores
PALE HANDS I LOATHED - William Campbell Gault
THE DARK GODDESS - Schuyler G. Edsall
ORDO - Donald E. Westlake