The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
- Автор: Anderson Lars, Barr Randolph
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Vintage Books
- ISBN: 978-0-307-28048-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps». Краткое содержание книги:
Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train — a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.
“She probably was suspicious, because she told her husband about it. Nobody knows just how much she told him or how much he knew, but it’s a cinch that he knew enough to put two and two together when he saw Dike’s picture in the paper with the blurb about his taking over the Water Department and eliminating graft.”
Helen Vail watched him with wide eyes.
“Can we prove any of that?” she asked.
Ken Corning shook his head. “We can’t prove anything,” he said. “Wouldn’t do us any good if we could. They’ve dismissed the case against the woman, released her from custody and she’s gone. They probably made a deal with her, gave her some money and started her traveling.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Helen Vail. “Her testimony is just as damaging now as it ever was.”
Ken Corning smiled and motioned towards the morning paper.
“Read the news,” he said, “and you’ll notice that Dike has declined the appointment. He said that his private business was taking up too much of his time for him to make the sacrifice of accepting a public position.”
Helen Vail blinked her eyes thoughtfully and said: “How about the people in the automobile — don’t you know any of them?”
Ken Corning said: “You mean the ones who were trying to take me for a ride?”
She nodded her head.
Ken laughed and said: “Sure I do. Perkins was one of them. He was the detective who barged into the office here. He’s a cheap heel who does dirty work for the Dwight machine.”
“But,” she said, “you told the officers that you couldn’t recognize any of them.”
Ken Corning laughed mirthlessly and said: “Of course I did. I’d never get anywhere trying to pin anything on Perkins. He’d produce an alibi and get acquitted. Then they’d turn around and prosecute me for perjury. I’m bucking a machine in this town, and the machine is well entrenched with a lot of money back of it. I’m not a fool!”
“How about the man who pretended to be a Federal officer?” she asked.
“He’s got to take the rap. They’ve got the goods on him. They might have managed to make some sort of stall there, only I knew it was coming. I had worked the wallet that the waiter had planted on me out of my pocket. When they opened the door of the limousine I tossed the wallet in with my left hand before I grabbed at this guy’s gun and socked him with my right.”
She shuddered and said: “Oh, Ken, I don’t like it.”
He stood with his feet planted far apart, his jaw thrust forward, hands thrust into the pocket of his coat.
“I like it,” he said, “and I’m going to make them like it. I’m going to bust this town wide open. They’re going to stop me if they can. They’ll try to frame me, try to take me for a ride, try to freeze me out. I’m going to stay! I’m going to be here after they’re gone.”
“But, Ken,” she objected, “you’ve done all this work and risked your life and we only get a hundred and fifty dollars out of it.”
Ken Corning nodded and laughed.
“A hundred and fifty dollars,” he said, “and it’s honest money.”
Then he walked into his private office and the door clicked shut.
Helen Vail could hear him moving around in the inner office. He was whistling cheerfully as though he didn’t have a care in the world.
She opened the drawer of her desk, took out a ledger which was innocent of entry, took a pen and wrote in a hand which trembled slightly: “People versus Parks — cash retainer $150.00.”
Frost Rides Alon
Horace McCoy
A somewhat prolific author of pulp stories, primarily for Black Mask, Horace McCoy (1897–1955) is mainly remembered for his dark, tragic, and occasionally violent novels, several of which have been made into notable films.
A memorable work of noir fiction and a classic film is They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935), filmed in 1969 with Sydney Pollack as the director, which achieved its aim of illustrating the pain and hopelessness of the Great Depression, using a marathon dance contest as a metaphor, with the exhausting and pointless expenditure of energy for participants being analogous to the plight of the majority of Americans.
The film The Turning Point (1952), directed by William Dieterle, became the novel Corruption City in 1959; Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1948) starred James Cagney and was directed by Gordon Douglas when it was filmed in 1950; No Pockets In a Shroud (1937) was filmed in France in 1975; and Scalpel (1952) was filmed the following year as Bad for Each Other, the screenplay co-written by McCoy and directed by Irving Rapper. The only one of McCoy’s novels to have no film version is I Should Have Stayed Home (1938), and McCoy’s screenplay was published in 1978.
Captain Jerry Frost of the Texas (Air) Rangers made his debut in “Dirty Work” in Black Mask in September 1929; “Frost Rides Alone” was published in the March 1930 issue.
Frost felt that he and the woman were being followed, had been followed since they crossed the Border. As they emerged from the Plaza Madero and turned down the crooked street towards the Café Estrellita he became acutely aware that footsteps were proceeding in the same direction as himself and that the owner was trying to attract as little attention as possible.
To satisfy himself that he was not the victim of his own imagination, so often the case when he invaded old Mexico after nightfall, he halted briefly before a shop window, wherein baubles were exhibited, and whispered a caution to his companion. The moment they stopped the footfalls ceased. No one passed. Quite evidently someone was following.
Fully alive now, his nerves on edge, Frost spoke to his companion, and they walked on. In the distance he could see the lights of the Café Estrellita and outside the shadowy forms of customers at the sidewalk tables. Frost walked slowly, his ears strained, but did not look around. He was still being followed. Moreover, the number of steps behind him had increased. There were now two or three men. The street was narrow and the footsteps loud: overhead the stars blinked and from a hidden patio nearby there floated the dim tinkle of a guitar.
As the woman passed the dark, dank interiors she gave way to a swift rush of apprehension and took Frost’s arm nervously. He leaned over and whispered: “Don’t get excited, but I’d like to know if you can use a gun.”
She moved her head closer. “I’m sort of jumpy,” she apologized lamely, “but really, I can use a gun. Fact is—” her confidence returned “—I’ve got one.” She patted her voluminous handbag. She went on lightly. “I haven’t been a newspaper woman ten years without learning a few things.”
Frost said, “Oh!” rather contritely, and steered her into the cafe without looking back at his pursuers.