From Publishers Weekly
Hearkening back to the time when magazine stands were clogged with pulps and slicks, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg (co-editors of The Big Book of Noir) have assembled stories by John D. MacDonald, James M. Cain, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Mickey Spillane and Harry Whittington in Pulp Masters. Cain's books "have never been rivaled as expressions of sociopathy, nor as `tabloid poetry,' " gushes Gorman; MacDonald introduced "the working-class and the lower middle-class into the crime novel" and exhibited "the best storytelling skills of his generation"; and Spillane, well, he merely "wrote six of the ten best-selling books of all time," distinguished by their "atmospherics," sex scenes, "right-wing paranoid fantasy" and first-class writing. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Six masters of pulp fiction at its most powerful and suspenseful best -- John MacDonald, James M. Cain, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Mickey Spillane, and Harrington Whittington -- distinguish this new anthology compiled by the award-winning editors of its two popular predecessors, American Pulp and Pure Pulp. Like them, Pulp Masters culls its tales -- in this case, six classic novelettes and one complete novel -- from the golden age of magazine fiction in the first half of the twentieth century. The writers included in this volume 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 novelettes like "Ordo," "Stag Party Kill," "The Embezzler," and "Everybody's Watching Me," Westlake, Block, Cain, and Spillane both 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."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

John D. MacDonald, James M. Cain, Donald E. Westlake, Lawrence Block, Mickey Spillane, and Harry Whittington -- these six masters of pulp fiction at its suspenseful best distinguish this new anthology compiled by the award-winning editors of 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 collection 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, MacDonald, 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 compelling pulp short story "So Dead My Love."

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews