Holy Toledo, after living with The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps for nearly three months I finally made it to the end!!!



It’s tempting to give this beast of a book five stars for sheer volume alone. Containing two full-length novels alongside dozens of novellas and short stories (53 tales in all!), it's a wide-ranging survey of the taut, gritty style of hard-boiled crime story pioneered by Black Mask magazine in the 1920s and ’30s. All the greats are here: Hammett, Chandler, Woolrich, along with

Holy Toledo, after living with The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps for nearly three months I finally made it to the end!!!



It’s tempting to give this beast of a book five stars for sheer volume alone. Containing two full-length novels alongside dozens of novellas and short stories (53 tales in all!), it's a wide-ranging survey of the taut, gritty style of hard-boiled crime story pioneered by Black Mask magazine in the 1920s and ’30s. All the greats are here: Hammett, Chandler, Woolrich, along with many other penny-a-word writers, famous and obscure.



Honestly, it’s too much. I reached the saturation point twice while reading and had to put the book away for a few weeks. And with so many writers represented, the contents are very much a mixed bag. There were a few smoothly written, deeply haunting stories that I really loved and will certainly read again. But there were also a large number that were entertaining but forgettable, several others I couldn’t finish quickly enough, and a few I gave up on completely. The Kindle edition also suffers from some annoying OCR errors, on some stories more than others.



Pulp (the name comes from the cheap woodpulp paper the original magazines were printed on) isn’t for everybody. These are tough-guy stories from another era, and they had no literary pretensions. They were meant to be candy for the masses, completely disposable — after all, a whole new crop of stories would be out in a few weeks. So modern readers may find it cheap, cliched, or hackneyed (or blatantly sexist and racist). But if you enjoy noir movies and other early 20th century entertainment, you’ll find the pulps easy to love despite their many flaws.



Many of the stories here were first published in Black Mask, then and now regarded as the pinnacle of the crime pulps, although editor Otto Penzler also dredges the archives of seedier titles like Gun Molls and Spicy Detective. Compared to those half-cent-a-word rags, the Black Mask stories read like Shakespeare.



Of course, there was a lot more to the pulp phenomenon than crime stories. Nearly all of what we today call “genre fiction” was nurtured in the pages of pulp magazines, from high adventure to horror, sci-fi to westerns to romance. But no aspect of the pulps endures quite like the hard-boiled world of private dicks, gangsters, and murderous mayhem explored here. So The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps is a wonderful sampler to get lost in, for veteran pulp fans and neophyte readers alike. Just don’t try to consume it all at once.



My story-by-story ratings follow...



PART ONE - THE CRIME FIGHTERS



1. One Two Three - Paul Cain ***

Hard-boiled double-crosses in LA. Written with great, breezy style.



2. The Creeping Siamese - Dashiell Hammett ****

A tightly-written tale of San Francisco's Continental Op.



3. Honest Money - Erle Stanley Gardner ***

A Perry Mason prototype stands tall amongst the filth of corruption.



4. Frost Rides Alone - Horace McCoy ***

Something different: a Texas Air Ranger takes to the sky and goes after a kidnapped dame.



5. Double Check - Thomas Walsh ****

Tough cops, a tough broad, extortion, and a bomb. What's not to like?



6. Stag Party - Charles G Booth *

Fast moving, fast talking and nearly incomprehensible. I gave up.



7. The City of Hell! - Leslie T White ****

Four crusty old cops go rogue to clean up their rotten town. Dark and badass.



8. Red Wind - Raymond Chandler *****

A twisty Philip Marlowe novella. Taut writing and fantastic atmosphere: there's no mistaking Chandler.



9. Wise Guy - Frederick Nebel ****

Tough-as-nails police captain MacBride and cynical reporter Kennedy investigate a nightclub murder. Lots of ethnic slurs, but solid.



10. Murder Picture - George Harmon Coxe ***

Hard-nosed photojournalist Flash Casey finds plenty of trouble after covering a raid.



11. The Price of a Dime - Norbert Davis **

Far too much plot for a story this short; it just seems silly.



12. Chicago Confetti - William Rollins, Jr. ***

A fast-talking dick walks into a trap or two and nabs a killer.



13. Two Murders, One Crime - Cornell Woolrich *****

An obsessed cop seeks vengeance when a killer walks free. Has that unsettling Woolrich magic.



14. The Third Murderer - Carroll John Daly **

Rambling, full-length Race Williams novel has some good characters, but the dialogue annoyed me and the plot kept chasing its own tail. This could have been so much tighter as a novella!



PART TWO - THE VILLAINS



15. The Cat-Woman - Erle Stanley Gardner ****

Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, smells a rat when he receives a strange commission.



16. The Dilemma of the Dead Lady - Cornell Woolrich *****

White-knuckle suspense as a crook's getaway from Paris becomes complicated... VERY complicated.



17. The House of Kaa - Richard Sale **

London smugglers run afoul of The Cobra, an American masked avenger based in India. Just weak.



18. The Invisible Millionaire - Leslie Charteris **

A murder tale starring Simon Templar, a.k.a. The Saint. I know he's popular, but I couldn't get into the overblown style.



19. You'll Always Remember Me - Steve Fisher ***

Chilling first-person tale of a psychopathic teen.



20. Faith - Dashiell Hammett ***

An odd little tale of faith and madness among migrant laborers.



21. Pastorale - James M. Cain ***

A short, grisly story of southern murder; strange ending.



22. The Sad Serbian - Frank Gruber ***

An amoral debt collector turns detective to bust a scam. Snappy writing.



23. Finger Man - Raymond Chandler ***

A gambling cheat drags Philip Marlowe into a rat’s nest of trouble.



24. The Monkey Murder - Erle Stanley Gardner ****

Gentleman thief Lester Leith solves a gruesome crime and makes a monkey of the police. Intentionally silly.



25. About Kid Deth - Raoul Whitfield ****

A hood gets framed and the bodies start piling up. Dark stuff.



26. The Sinister Sphere - Frederick C. Davis ****

Meet the mysterious Moon Man, a crusading thief who wears a spherical glass helmet!



27. Pigeon Blood - Paul Cain ***

The usual hard-boiled fare: fraud, double-crosses, and attempted murder.



28. The Perfect Crime - C.S. Montanye ***

A coke head/mastermind plots a robbery. Great character; I wish it had been a longer story.



29. You'll Die Laughing - Norbert Davis ****

Entertaining crime story about a good guy who goes out for hamburgers and gets in over his head.



30. The Crimes of Richmond City - Frederick Nebel ****

Presented as a full-length novel, this is actually a string of five linked novelettes featuring MacBride and Kennedy, who we first met in Part 1 of the book. The writing is hard-boiled as hell as MacBride fights his way through gang wars, mob terror, and political corruption to find the puppeteer behind it all, with each tale raising the stakes.



PART THREE - THE DAMES



31. Angel Face - Cornell Woolrich ***

A sassy slang slinger uses her assets to clear her brother of a murder rap.



32. Chosen to Die - Leslie T. White ***

Whenever private dick Duke Martindel gets in over his head, his lawyer wife is ready to save his bacon.



33. A Pinch of Snuff - Eric Taylor **

Melodramatic story of a woman seeking revenge in the slums of Montreal.



34. Killer in the Rain - Raymond Chandler ****

This story of sleaze and murder became the core of Chandler’s novel, “The Big Sleep.” But this version is a lot easier to follow.



35. Sally the Sleuth - Adolphe Barreaux **

A pair of naughty comic strips from the pages of “Spicy Detective” magazine.



36. A Shock for the Countess - C.S. Montanye *

A brief but unreadable purple prose theft caper. Ugh.



37. Snowbound - C.B. Yorke ****

Former mob boss Queen Sue (one of my favorite characters in this entire anthology) goes toe to toe with a dope racketeer. Hard-boiled.



38. The Girl Who Knew Too Much - Randolph Barr **

A reporter rescues a gangster's moll in distress. another "spicy" story full of torn dresses and heaving bosoms.



39. The Corpse in the Crystal - D.B. McCandless ****

Dowdy detective Sarah Watson helps a fly-by-night fortune teller escape a murderous gang. Light and humorous.



40. He Got What He Asked For - D.B. McCandless ***

Sarah Watson is hired to recover a stolen necklace. An extremely silly story, but entertaining.



41. Gangster's Brand - P.T. Luman ***

A gangster's moll faces a romantic triangle and a double-cross of her mob. Moves along nicely.



42. Dance Macabre - Robert Reeves ****

Scrawny pickpocket Firpo Cole swears vengeance when he's accused of murdering the woman he loves. Taut, tense, dark.



43. The Girl with the Silver Eyes - Dashiell Hammett ****

The Continental Op searches for a poet's missing fiancee and finds a murderous plot. Pure Hammett.



44. The Jane from Hell's Kitchen - Perry Paul ***

A gun moll revenge story... with airplanes! Overcooked writing but unique enough to be fun.



45. The Duchess Pulls a Fast One - Whitman Chambers ****

Reporter Katie Blayne outwits her buddies to get a scoop. Breezy and entertaining.



46. Mansion of Death - Roger Torrey ****

A little old rich lady hires a detective... and then does all the detecting herself. Great fun.



47. Concealed Weapon - Roger Torrey

Hard-boiled and quick paced, but the Kindle edition is riddled with OCR errors. I got annoyed and gave up.



48. The Devil's Bookkeeper - Carlos Martinez ****

Gang accountant "Clerical Clara" always collects her debts... This gawd-awful story from "Gun Molls" magazine reads like a parody, so I'm rating it for humor.



49. Black Legion - Lars Anderson **

The Domino Lady, a sexy masked avenger, is described in leering detail. She also fights a gang. Dreadful.



50. Three Wise Men of Babylon - Richard Sale ***

Wisecracking reporter Daffy Dill bandies words with his gal pal Dinah and stops a killing spree. Slangy and snappy.



51. The Adventure of the Voodoo Moon - Eugene Thomas **

Master criminal Vivian Legrand runs up against an amoral planter and voodoo rites in Haiti. Not exactly PC.



52. Brother Murder - T.T. Flynn *****

Private detectives Mike Harris and Trixie Meehan go undercover to investigate a Hollywood cult leader. Terrific, witty, suspenseful writing.



53. Kindly Omit Flowers - Stewart Sterling ***

A policewoman and plain-clothes man hunt a killer of mail-order brides. Grisly.