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| Pulp Fiction | 
 enlarge | Authors: Otto Penzler, Harlan Coben
Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc
Category: Book
List Price: $14.27
Buy New: $11.05
You Save: $3.22 (23%)
New (5) Used (1) from $11.05
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 343955
Media: Paperback
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.9 x 1.9
ISBN: 1847240666
EAN: 9781847240668
ASIN: 1847240666
Publication Date: March 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new Book, ALL days Low Price !
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| Customer Reviews:
Not Free SF Reader January 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
An anthology of stories mostly from the early thirties, and mostly from Black Mask magazine, with the latest being Cornell Woolrich's, in the early forties.
Hard boiled cops, private detectives, gangsters and dames to be found here, with the odd reporter or Texas Ranger, for variety.
One quibble would be including a novel in this, being an anthology and them saying Carroll John Daly being of no great interest as a writer, apart from influence wise, why not one of his influential stories instead, and get a bunch more writers in there, or at least a few more seeing there is a marked preference here for novellas it would appear?
The City of Hell! you could almost see as an adventure of The Spider, or The Suicide Squad - much more in that vein than some of the others, and very entertaining - so this was my favorite, ahead of Walsh, Woolrich and Daly.
The stories averaged right on 3.50, with a few ordinary ones, certainly enough to call this good overall and worth a look.
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : One Two Three - Paul Cain
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : The Creeping Siamese - Dashiell Hammett
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : Honest Money - Erle Stanley Gardner
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : Frost Rides Alone - Horace McCoy
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : Stag Party - Charles G. Booth
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : Double Check - Thomas Walsh
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : The City of Hell! - Leslie T. White
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : Red Wind - Raymond Chandler
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : Wise Guy - Frederick Nebel
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : Murder Picture - George Harmon Coxe
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : The Price of a Dime - Norbert Davis
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : Chicago Confetti - Williams RollinsJr
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : Two Murders One Crime - Cornell Woolrich
Pulp Fiction the Crimefighters : The Third Murderer - Caroll John Daly
"I talked to my driver like a father. I got down on my knees and begged him to keep that car in sight."
3 out of 5
"It is your idea that whoever did the carving advertised himself by running around the street in a red petticoat?"
3.5 out of 5
"I'm bucking a machine in this town and the machine is well entrenched with a lot of money behind it."
4 out of 5
One man Texas air army.
3.5 out of 5
Governor's lady killer.
3 out of 5
"Honest to gawd," he said, "some day Flaherty I'm gonna lay you like a rug.
4 out of 5
New justice, new court, a lot less rat.
4.5 out of 5
Some missing pearls, a dame, a dodgy cop, and a really good night for drinking.
3.5 out of 5
A spot of white slave trading.
2.5 out of 5
"The idea is okey as long as I don't get stuck with short beers."
3 out of 5
"Them heroes of the screen ain't taken no chances gettin' hurt. It'd spoil their act."
3.5 out of 5
"Even while I pulled the trigger, I knew I was pulling my second boner."
3 out of 5
"We couldn't get you for the one you did commit, so we'll try you for another and get you for that instead."
4 out of 5
Multiple Gorgons, The Flame and the Devil Unchained.
Here's a story of a private detective, a tough woman with a troubled past, and some immigrant bad guys, and a somewhat complicated tale of revenge.
The PI has a thing for the woman, and the woman is playing all sides to get what she wants, including the cops.
Definitely not understated, or sparse, this one.
4 out of 5
4 out of 5
 Beware: collected in Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps November 13, 2007
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
I have not purchased this book, but I have purchased its sister publication: Pulp Fiction: The Villains and was pleased with this British-published anthology. Unfortunately, I purchased and just received the Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, published in USA; it includes all the stories in The Villains and has 2 other major sections entitled "The Dames" and "The Crimefighters". I believe the Crimefighters book is also included completely in the Black Lizard Big Book of Pulp. Also, the Black Lizard volume is printed in 2-column format(like the original pulps) with the original story illustration included. Unfortunately the Black Lizard book is printed on much cheaper paper with apparent smaller type face. The Black Lizard book has a tremendous amount of reading in it; it is a giant book.
Pulp Noir June 17, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Editor Otto Penzler, Edgar-winning proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop and founder of Mysterious Press, has picked out fourteen fast-paced and tightly-written tales (mostly from Black Mask magazine) from 1928 to 1942: an era of diamond-studded gangsters and glittering gun molls, a time long before political correctness.
There are tough private eyes a-plenty, armloads of femmes fatales (a surprisingly large number of them redheads), honest "harness bulls" and corrupt cops, criminal lawyers as well as virtuous ones, even an heroic newspaper photographer.
There's a Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe story, `Red Wind', which alone is worth the price of the book. On a night when the Santa Ana is blowing and "Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.", Chandler's world-weary knight-errant witnesses a murder in a bar, and finds himself trying to sort through the mess created by an over-ambitious blackmailer in a way that will spare the innocent.
It's a beautifully written short piece, not just for its dialogue and prose, but for its characterization, its wonderfully tight little plot, and Marlowe's personal code of honor.
Similar in tone, if less polished, is Erle Stanley Gardner's `Honest Money', the tale of a young attorney's first case. Ken Corning accepts the job of defending a woman arrested for bootlegging and attempted bribery. Almost instantly, he's visited by a cop from the liquor detail, then by the man who tells New York's mayor what to do.
Corning soon discovers what "the ring" is prepared to do to defend one of its own - and not in a courtroom. It's a cynical but oddly pleasing tale from the writer who'd later become famous as the creator of Perry Mason.
Even more darkly cynical is Cornell Woolrich's `Two Murders, One Crime', a story of a detective who realizes that the police and eyewitnesses have sent an innocent man to the gallows. When the real murderer is caught, too late, the D.A. refuses to prosecute for fear of making the system seem fallible. The detective refuses to accept this, and begins a campaign of psychological warfare against the murderer.
Leslie T. White's `The City of Hell!' also features crusading off-duty cops; it's much less subtle in its plot, characterization, police procedures and ethics, or prose style than Woolrich's (White used exclamation marks the way many modern writers use four-letter words), but it's undeniably action-packed and exciting.
`The Creeping Siamese' is a Continental Op story by Dashiell Hammett, written immediately before he started work on the superb Red Harvest. It begins with a man walking into Continental's offices and dropping dead on the floor, and doesn't slow down much after that.
While all of the stories are readable and entertaining, not all of them are gems. `Frost Rides Alone' is lightweight and rather disappointing, considering that it came from Horace McCoy, author of the brilliant (though very depressing) They Shoot Horses, Don't They? And Penzler admits to having chosen the closing piece, Carroll John Daly's `The Third Murderer' purely because of Daly's role in inventing the prototype of the hard-boiled, wise-cracking P.I. in 1923.
Penzler describes Daly rather unkindly as "truly a hack writer, devoid of literary pretension, aspiration and ability", but while `The Third Murderer' is perhaps the only story in the anthology that tends to ramble (at 136 pages, it's also by far the longest), it is also one of the few that tries to give the reader some insight into the villain and the femme fatale. Some of the twists may seem cliched now, but that can happen when you're the pioneer in a field. It's an interesting story rather than a completely successful one, but I think Penzler was right to include it.
Pulp Fiction: The Crimefighters will not suit everyone's tastes. The world of the pulps was a simpler one, but that doesn't mean their simple answers were always good ones, and some readers may find some of these crimefighters difficult to warm to, or even tolerate.
If you dislike fiction by dead white males with few roles for women except as victims or vamps; if you're offended by stereotypes or epithets such as "good wop"; or even if you can't help giggling at the phrase "private dick", this book probably isn't for you. For fans of the genre and the era, though, it's a must-read. That's a lead-pipe cinch.
Old Style Classics June 5, 2007
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This collection foreworded by one of the most successful modern day writers Harlan Coben, presents big stories from a former era. Those interested in this book purely for the Coben angle may be disappointed if they don't understand the concept of this book by the fact that he has no story in here (his foreword barely scraped over a page as well). None of the stories inside were written after the 1930s but that doesn't mean they are not good. These are the stories where movies are made with a tough guy hero in a hat wearing a trench coat or suit. The stories are introduced by the editor Otto Penzler whose collections are always full of great stories. For modern day tale fans you can't go past his various author anthology titled Dangerous Women but he's proven with this book he can pick great stories from any era. Like any collection of various authors the quality will vary from story to story and some you'll enjoy more than others, but with 14 stories, even if you don't like a few, this book is still great value for money.
The stories and their authors inside are -
One, Two, Three by Paul Cain
The Creeping Siamese by Dashiell Hammett
Honest Money by Erle Stanley Gardner
Frost Rides Alone by Horace McCoy
Stag Party by Charles Booth
Double Check by Thomas Walsh
The City of Hell! By Leslie White
Red Wind by Raymond Chandler
Wise Guy by Frederick Nebel
Murder Picture by George Harmon Coxe
The Price of a Dime by Norbert Davis
Chicago Confetti by William Rollins Jr
Two Murders, One Crime Cornell Woolrich
The Third Murderer by Carroll John Daly
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