FICTION

The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

by Maxim Jakubowski
Running Pr. Apr. 2014. 512p. ed. by . ISBN 9780762452217. pap. $13.95; ebk. ISBN 9781472111807. MYS
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The Golden Age of pulp mysteries spanned the 1920s to the 1940s and conjures up visions of Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, and other wisecracking hard-boiled private eyes. This collection of 33 stories covers publications from 1929 through 1989, with only a handful written during the pulp fiction heyday. Few of the authors are those who defined the genre, and the stories lack the fast, terse language of the original pulps. However, most of these action-packed and well-written stories are by some of mystery's best writers, including Bill Pronzini, Donald Westlake, and Lawrence Block. There are honest cops and crooked ones, bank robbers, double-crossing dames, murderers, and even one vampire. Many have not been previously collected in mystery anthologies.
VERDICT One troubling feature here is that there seems to be no rationale for the order of the pieces, and a "nice to have" would have been short author biographies, since many of the writers, such as Dashiell Hammett, had unusual backgrounds. Clearly the bibles of older pulp mysteries are Otto Penzler's The Black Lizard Big Book of the Pulps and The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories. However, this anthology may attract pulp fiction fans interested in more contemporary interpretations.
Reviewed by Edward Goldberg, Syosset P.L., NY , Apr 25, 2014
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