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.
Blaine backed away, turned at the door. Casey and Wade followed him out. Blaine went to his desk, opened the bottom drawer, took out a briefcase and systematically packed it with his personal belongings. He closed all the drawers, stepped over to the clothes-tree and got his hat and coat. As he stepped past the grinning Casey and the open-mouthed Wade, he turned, spoke irritably:
“Well, come on, you big ox. Don’t stand their gawking.”
In the hall Casey said: “Did Fessendon tell you to fire me?”
“Sure,” said Blaine, punching the elevator button. “If I hadn’t he would have.”
“But you knew I had some redhot plates of that—”
“I didn’t know you had ’em,” said Blaine. But you generally pull something out of the hat, and I wanted to fire you before you showed them to me. Then you could take them down the street to the Express or Mirror — not that you need anything to bargain with.”
Blaine muttered a soft curse. “You got a dirty deal from Fessendon, but you ought to be glad you’re out. I was all washed up with him anyway, after he broke that plate — as if we were a bunch of blackmailers. But he just came in his office about ten minutes ago, and I was going to be nice about it and give him two weeks’ notice.”
Casey’s broad face was cracked in a wide grin that would not come off. He was no longer tired. It was good to be free of Fessendon, to know that Blaine was level, that Wade was okey. He released a sigh of satisfaction and relief, said:
“Well, where we go in’ now?”
“I’m gonna call up Gilman at the Express and see if he wants a city editor and a couple of cheap cameras. But first” — the elevator door opened and Blaine stepped in — “we’ll stop at Steve’s and have a couple to celebrate on.”
Casey said: “You think of things.”
Wade grunted sardonically, said: “The idea is okey so long as I don’t get stuck with short beers.”
The Price of a Dime
Norbert Davis
When Raymond Chandler, not a young man, decided to try to write for the pulps, one of the stories that most impressed him was “Red Goose” by Norbert Davis. Years later, he reread it and wrote, in a letter, that it was not as good as he remembered it, but still very good, and that he had never forgotten it.
Davis (1909–1949) was one of the few writers who attempted to blend fast-moving violence and whimsy in his stories, the humor being an element that so displeased the great Black Mask editor, Joseph T. Shaw, that he published only five stories by the prolific author.
With his fiction selling easily to most of the major pulps, Davis graduated with a law degree from Stanford but never bothered to take the bar exam. His work also made it onto the pages of the higher-paying “slick” magazines (so-called because of their shiny paper) like The Saturday Evening Post, and into book form. Two of his novels, both featuring Doan (a private eye whose first name is never mentioned) and Carstairs (a gigantic Great Dane who is his constant companion), The Mouse In the Mountain (1943) and Sally’s In the Alley (1943), are hilarious adventures that nonetheless have their share of violence, mostly presented as harmless fun.
“The Price of a Dime” is the second story about Ben Shaley and was initially published in Black Mask in April 1934.
It was an old trick but this time it started fireworks
Shaley was sitting behind the big desk in his private office. He had his hat on, pushed down over his forehead, so that the wide brim shaded his hard, narrowed eyes, his thin, straight nose. He had an opened penknife in his hand, and he was stabbing the soft wood of a drawer of the desk in an irritated way.
There was a sudden shrill scream from the outer office.
Shaley started. He scowled at the door.
In the outer office a chair tipped over with a crash. There was another scream, louder than the first one.
Shaley tossed his penknife on the desk and got up.
“She’ll drive me crazy one of these days,” he muttered, heading for the door in long-legged strides.
He banged the door open, looked through into the outer office.
Sadie, his secretary, was scuffling with a fattish blonde woman. Sadie had the woman by the shoulders, trying to push her through the door into the corridor. The blonde woman’s face was puffy, tear-stained. She had a desperately hopeless expression. She was the one who was doing the screaming.
Sadie had her sleek, dark head down, pushing determinedly, but the blonde woman’s weight was too much for her.
Shaley said: “Well?” in an explosively angry voice.
Both women turned on him. Sadie got started first.
“You told me you didn’t want to see anybody this morning, and she wanted to see you, and I told her you couldn’t see her, and she wouldn’t go away, and so I tried to put her out, and she started to scream.” Sadie said this all in one breath.
The blonde woman sniffed a little. “I’ve got to see you. I’ve got to see you, Mr. Shaley. It’s about Bennie. I’ve got to see you.”
“All right, all right,” Shaley said helplessly. “All right! Come on in here.”
“But you told me—” Sadie protested.
“Will you kindly sit down and get to work?” Shaley asked in an elaborately courteous voice.
Sadie blinked. “Yes, Mr. Shaley,” she said meekly.
Shaley jerked his head at the blonde woman. “Come in.” He shut the door of the private office again, pointed to a chair. “Sit down.” He walked around his desk, sat down in his chair, and dropped his hat on the floor beside him. He frowned at the blonde woman. “Now what is it?”
She was dabbing at her puffy eyes with a handkerchief that was a moist, wadded ball. “I’m sorry I screamed and acted that way, Mr. Shaley, but I had to see you. Bennie told me to see you, and he’s in bad trouble, and so I had to see you.”
“Who’s Bennie?”
The blonde woman looked surprised. “He’s my brother.”
“That makes it all clear,” said Shaley. “Does he have a last name?”
“Oh, sure. Bennie Petersen.” The blonde woman looked like she was going to start to cry again. “He told me you knew him. He told me you’d help him. He’s a bellboy at the Grover Hotel.”
“Oh,” said Shaley understandingly. “Bennie Peterson, huh? That little chiseler—” He coughed. “That is to say, yes. I remember him. What’s he done now?”
“The blonde woman sniffed. “It wasn’t his fault, Mr. Shaley.”
“No,” said Shaley. “Of course not. It never is his fault. What did he do?”
“He just lost a dime, Mr. Shaley. And now Mr. Van Bilbo is going to have him arrested.”
Shaley sat up straight with a jerk. “Van Bilbo, the movie director?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Van Bilbo is going to have Bennie arrested because Bennie lost a dime?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm,” Shaley said, scowling. “Now let’s get this straight. Start at the beginning and tell me just what happened — or what Bennie told you happened.”
“Well, Bennie took some ginger ale up to a party on the seventh floor of the hotel. This party tipped him a dime. Bennie was coming back down the hall to the elevator. He had the dime in his hand, and he was flipping it up in the air like George Raft does in the movies. But Bennie dropped the dime on the floor. He was just leaning over to pick it up when Mr. Van Bilbo came out of one of the rooms and saw him, and now he’s going to have Bennie arrested.”