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Quercus/Murdoch Books, This Edition first published Nov
2006
Reviewed by Sally Roddom
Otto Penzler has brought us fourteen short crime stories. Most of them
originally appeared in the Black Mask Magazine during the 1920s through to
the 1940s, the golden age of pulp detective fiction. These are fast paced
stories that take us back to a time when men were men and the women
swooned. A time when most of the crime fiction produced consisted of
hard-boiled detectives, cynical cops and women who are either femme
fatales, tarts with a heart or innocent victims. The stories are not
politically correct by our standards today – but they are melodramatic,
and very clever.
Pulp Fiction were usually cheaply printed mass market novels, the
description ‘pulp’ came from the paper quality as pulp paper was the
cheapest wood pulp newsprint available. Pulp fiction covered the genres of
westerns, science fiction series, murder mysteries in serialized format,
and, as in this collection, melodramatic crime stories.
Space won’t allow each story to be reviewed, but three are worthy of
mention. Dashiell Hammett’s story The Creeping Siamese begins when
a man walks into the Continental Detective Agency and falls over dead. He
has been stabbed in the chest and a piece of red silk sarong is stuffed in
the wound. Then there is Raymond Chandler’s Red Wind where his
hero, Philip Marlowe, witnesses a murder in a bar one night when the Santa
Ana is blowing and madness lurks in the wind. Marlowe has to clean up
chaos created by a less than intelligent blackmailer and protect the
innocent. The final story is Honest Money by Erle Stanley Gardner,
who went on to write the Perry Mason novels. Young attorney Ken Corning’s
first case is to defend a woman arrested for bootlegging and attempted
bribery.
I haven’t read much vintage pulp fiction and found this collection a great
place to start. Before each short story, Penzler gives a brief background
of the author and plot. I have to say I enjoyed each of the stories and
loved going back to look at the work of the pioneers of crime fiction.
Oct 2007 review originally published on Murder and Mayhem
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