Synopses & Reviews
Fifteen stories and one novel—hard-boiled classics by an undisputed masterFollowing gangsters, blackmailers, and gunmen through the underbelly of 1930s America on their journeys to do dark deeds, Paul Cain’s stories are classics of his genre. The protagonists of ambiguous morality who populate Cain’s work are portrayed with a cinematic flair for the grim hardness of their world. Fast One, Cain’s only novel, was originally serialized in Black Mask in the 1930s. It introduces us to Gerry Kells, a hard-nosed criminal who still holds fast to his humanity in a Los Angeles that’s crooked to the core.
This collection presents Cain’s classic crime writing to a contemporary audience.
Review
“Some kind of high point in the ultra hard-boiled manner.” —Raymond Chandler on
Fast One“Cain’s stories move quickly with never a wasted word.” —Keith Alan Deutsch
Synopsis
From the Introduction:Cain’s virtuosity extends to his perfectly pitched depictions of disparate social strata. His narratives move effortlessly from the Roosevelt Hotel to a dirty flophouse, and his characters react to these shifts in various ways. “St. Nick” Green circulates among “legmen, Park Avenue debutantes, pickpockets, touts, bank robbers and bank presidents, wardheelers, and international confidence men,” but remains a
parvenu, spending “more of his time in night courts than in nightclubs.” Whereas Druse, a mysterious retired judge in “Pigeon Blood” (November 1933), exudes an elegance and sophistication alien to most of Cain’s protagonists.
Only a writer freely exploring the boundaries of his genre could have produced such a variety of stories in so short a time. It is, in a sense, fitting that the man behind this protean achievement was himself so protean.
Synopsis
· Black Mask readers· Readers of contemporary writers like George Pelecanos, Andrew Vachss, Ken Bruen, and Gregory Mcdonald
About the Author
Paul Cain was a pen name used by George Caryl Sims (1902–1966), an American pulp fiction author and screenwriter. He wrote fourteen short stories in Black Mask and one book, Fast One, which is considered to be a landmark of the pulp fiction genre and was called “some kind of high point in the ultra hard-boiled manner” by Raymond Chandler. Writing under the pen name Peter Ruric, Sims enjoyed a brief career in Hollywood as a screenwriter during the 1930s, including writing the screenplay for the Boris Karloff film Black Cat.