A Century of Noir: Thirty Two Classic Crime Stories FROM THE PUBLISHER
Thirty-two stories of stunning ingenuity. Thirty-two writers of legendary genius. One hundred years of crime fiction in a one-of-a-kind collection. Edited by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins. Introduction by Max Allan Collins.
Featuring stories by:
Lawrence Block
Leigh Brackett
Gil Brewer
Fredric Brown
James M. Cain
Max Allan Collins
Carroll John Daly
Norbert Davis
Loren D. Estleman
William Campbell Gault
David Goodis
Edward Gorman
Chester Himes
Dorothy B. Hughes
Evan Hunter
John Jakes
Stuart M. Kaminsky
John Lutz
John D. MacDonald
Ross Macdonald
Stephen Marlowe
Lia Matera
William P. McGivern
Marcia Muller
Sara Paretsky
Talmage Powell
Richard S. Prather
Bill Pronzini
Robert Randisi
Benjamin M. Schutz
Mickey Spillane
Donald E. Westlake
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Shamus-winner Max Allan Collins and crime-novel king Mickey Spillane team up to co-edit A Century of Noir: Thirty-two Classic Crime Stories, a collection that includes tales by the aforementioned as well as by luminaries such as Chester Himes, James M. Cain, Donald E. Westlake, Sara Paretsky and Evan Hunter. It may not actually span a century, but this volume offers plenty of blood, booze and cigarette smoke in worlds populated by flinty men and fetching women. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
First bad news: This "century" of reprints goes back only to a smartly depressing 1933 vignette by Chester Himes. Second: It doesn't include Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Horace McCoy, Roy Huggins (absences regretted in Collins's brief Introduction), or Jim Thompson. What's left, apart from anthology standards by Fredric Brown ("Don't Look Behind You"), Ross Macdonald ("Guilt-Edged Blonde"), and Sara Paretsky ("Grace Notes"), is a middle range of hardboiled tales marked less by brilliance than by workaday professionalism. The crudeness of Spillane's idol Carroll John Daly shows just how far noir has come from its shoot-'em-up roots; Donald E. Westlake and Stuart M. Kaminsky provide mild humor; Dorothy B. Hughes contributes a memorably miraculous backwoods resurrection; Talmage Powell, Marcia Muller, and Lia Matera show how big a heart can beat under that trenchcoat. Mostly, though, hoods and cops, private eyes and freelance avengers simply try to stay alive while they're plying their everlastingly conflicting trades in the pages of Norbert Davis, Leigh Brackett, James M. Cain, William P. McGivern, Gil Brewer, Stephen Marlowe, John Lutz, Evan Hunter, Robert J. Randisi, Ed Gorman, John Jakes, Lawrence Block, Bill Pronzini, Benjamin M. Schutz, and both the editors. The highlights-John D. MacDonald's beautifully matter-of-fact insurance investigation, Loren D. Estleman's densely plotted twister, and David Goodis's pitch-black little nightmare-show the genre's characteristic alternation between bravado and despair. Readers looking for the true highlights of this all-American genre, though, will need to look elsewhere.
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