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
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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.
Russo fired once toward the door, then squealed and pitched to the floor under a hail of lead.
The film cleared from my eyes and I saw Inspector Daly come into the room followed by two men in uniform. Polly Knight, ignoring her state of nudity, knelt beside me, loosening the knots that held me.
Daly grinned at me. “That fathead Finger, my relief, told me about your call. Technically, he may have been within his rights, but I thought I’d better look into the matter!” He smiled down at Polly. “I’ll take the boys and wait outside until the young lady has had a chance to cover herself up a little.”
I gave her my coat and sat patiently while she wiped blood from my face. “Was it worth it — all for a gangster’s girl?” she whispered.
I put an arm around her, not caring how much the effort hurt. “I don’t care what kind of girl you are,” I told her. “It was worth it!”
There was a devil dancing in her eyes. “As a matter of fact, I’m not a gangster’s girl. And my name isn’t Polly Knight. Don’t you remember ‘God’s Good to the Irish’?”
I stared at her in amazement. “You’re Polly Day!” I gasped. “You played the lead in the show!”
She nodded. “But the show folded. I was broke and I got a job for a private detective agency. I was sent down here because there were indications that Russo’s mob was behind a series of hold-ups. I went to work in the Little Albania as a hostess. I was trying to get something on the gang—”
I stopped her explanations with a kiss. “That’ll be enough for now,” I said. “You can give me installment two of your story when we get back to my apartment.”
The Corpse in the Crystal & He Got What He Asked For
D. B. McCandless
An element of a great deal of pulp fiction that correctly prevents it from being regarded as serious literature is the absurd reliance on the reader to accept virtually any far-fetched coincidence or series of events. The suspension of disbelief is often pushed to the very brink of fantasy.
The Sarah Watson stories of D. B. McCandless are a case in point. They are humorous and charming, and the protagonist runs against stereotypes. She is not a sexy redhead in tight, low-cut sweaters who has every man she encounters eating out of her hand. She is, instead, middle-aged, heavy, dowdy, and relatively charmless. This element of originality, as well as a fast-paced narrative, combine to make the stories among the most readable of their kind — so much so that two tales of “The Female She-Devil” have been included in this collection. Do not, however, judge the stories based on credibility, as they will fall somewhat short. Even allowing for the difference of era between the 1930s and the present day, railroad and airplane travel had little in common with the events related in the second of these adventures.
“The Corpse in the Crystal” and “He Got What He Asked For” (January 1937) were originally published in Detective Fiction Weekly.
“You know everything — and ifs just too bad for you.”
A massive individual in blue and brass marched resoundingly down a tiled corridor and halted before a door. Scabby gilt letters on the door said: “Watson Detective Agency.” The massive individual pounced upon the door knob, wrenched it and swung himself into the office beyond.
A long, languid young man with red hair let his feet thump from his desk to the floor, sat upright, said: “Cheese it, the cops!” and relaxed again, grinning.
The massive individual, standing spread-legged and stroking a black eyebrow thick enough to have served as a mustache for a daintier man, greeted the young man.
“ ’Lo, Ben Todd. Where’s your boss?”
“ ’Lo, Sergeant. Sarah Watson has gone out.”
“I can see that, even if I am a cop. Where’s she gone?”
“Crazy, I guess. She said she was going to consult a crystal gazer.”
Sergeant O’Reilly cried out and shook his fists at the ceiling.
“Damn Sarah Watson!” he exclaimed. “A crystal gazer, eh! I might have known she’d get ahead of me!”
O’Reilly sat down heavily in the chair beside Sarah Watson’s roll-top desk. He reached a thick arm and laid heavy fingers upon a newspaper lying there. He lifted the paper and stared at a square hole cut neatly therein. He took a square clipping from his pocket and fitted it into the hole in the newspaper.
“Read this, Ben Todd.”
Ben Todd shambled across, lounged over the Sergeant’s shoulder and read. The clipping fitted into the empty space in Sarah’s newspaper, under “Letters from Readers.” It read:
Dear Editor: People say all fortune tellers, mediums and crystal gazers are fakes. Two weeks ago, I sat before a crystal ball and the most wonderful seer in the world looked into the crystal and saw the body of a certain well known wealthy young man laying dead in a marsh, with cat-tails drooping over him and a bone-handled knife in his heart. That was two weeks ago, and the next day, the body of that same well known, wealthy young man was found dead, laying in a marsh, just exactly as the wonderful seer had seen it in the crystal. Now that young man lays in his grave and the police can’t find his murderer. And then people say crystal gazers are fakes!
Yours respectfully,