The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps by Otto Penzler

The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps Reviews

• 
  Bobby Underwood

  I'm of two minds about this collection, as I am many of Penzler's collections. There is almost a knee-jerk reaction to give this five stars just because it exists. There is no doubt that there is some great stuff here. Names like Hammett, Cain (Paul and James M.), Chandler, Gardner, Nebel, Charters, and Cornell Woolrich fill these pages. If you're a fan of pulp, and/or these writers, however, you might already have read Chandler's Killer in the Rain (the short story he later expanded into The Big Sleep) and the rather famous Red Wind. The same goes for some of these other names and stories here which are well known to those who enjoy the hardboiled pulp genre of another era (or eras, as the case may be).
  
  Though it’s nice that these familiar names and stories are included in this massive book, if you're fairly well read on ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s pulp, the real reason to pick this one up would be the lesser known authors and stories from the higher-end detective pulps. And therein exists my caveat to this collection. Penzler appears to have a bias against what is considered the B level of pulp magazines, and some of the authors who wrote in them. To my point, one of Fred MacIsaac's great Rambler stories could very easily have replaced one of Penzler's picks. I might understand the omission of Robert Leslie Bellem's Dan Turner: Hollywood Detective stories due to the slightly salacious (for the time period) situations and dialog, had Penzler not thrown in Sally the Sleuth comics! I actually like Sally the Sleuth, they are great fun. But ignoring Bellem’s Dan Turner stories, with their racy situations and over-the-top dialog, while including Sally the Sleuth is rather eye-rolling. It makes one speculate that inclusions and exclusions had more to do with what could be obtained, rather than what should be here.
  
  So a few lackluster choices, coupled with the glaring omission of Robert Bellem, Norvell Page, and Fred MacIsaac make this one hit and miss for me. I am glad I have it, because in one book I have some of the great stories from those pulp giants I cited at the beginning of the review, all of whom are revered today. Many of those stories are four and five star gems, and Penzler is to be commended for gathering these into one book. However, I was ho-hum about some of the other stories chosen, and even more so because of some glaring (at least to me) omissions. I realize that this was meant to be the high-end of the pulp magazine stories, but still…
  
  Story choices are a matter of personal taste, of course. But seriously, no Fred MacIsaac and no Robert Bellem, not to mention a conspicuously absent Norvell Page, in "The Big Book of Pulps" gives this one a downgrade, because those writers' best pulp stories are miles better than some of the picks here, in my opinion. Pulps weren't literature, they were supposed to be entertaining, and having those three guys absent here, in my opinion, is eyebrow raising.
• 
  Forrest

  Holy Toledo, after living with The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps for nearly three months I finally made it to the end!!!
  
  It’s tempting to give this beast of a book five stars for sheer volume alone. Containing two full-length novels alongside dozens of novellas and short stories (53 tales in all!), it's a wide-ranging survey of the taut, gritty style of hard-boiled crime story pioneered by Black Mask magazine in the 1920s and ’30s. All the greats are here: Hammett, Chandler, Woolrich, along with many other penny-a-word writers, famous and obscure.
  
  Honestly, it’s too much. I reached the saturation point twice while reading and had to put the book away for a few weeks. And with so many writers represented, the contents are very much a mixed bag. There were a few smoothly written, deeply haunting stories that I really loved and will certainly read again. But there were also a large number that were entertaining but forgettable, several others I couldn’t finish quickly enough, and a few I gave up on completely. The Kindle edition also suffers from some annoying OCR errors, on some stories more than others.
  
  Pulp (the name comes from the cheap woodpulp paper the original magazines were printed on) isn’t for everybody. These are tough-guy stories from another era, and they had no literary pretensions. They were meant to be candy for the masses, completely disposable — after all, a whole new crop of stories would be out in a few weeks. So modern readers may find it cheap, cliched, or hackneyed (or blatantly sexist and racist). But if you enjoy noir movies and other early 20th century entertainment, you’ll find the pulps easy to love despite their many flaws.
  
  Many of the stories here were first published in Black Mask, then and now regarded as the pinnacle of the crime pulps, although editor Otto Penzler also dredges the archives of seedier titles like Gun Molls and Spicy Detective. Compared to those half-cent-a-word rags, the Black Mask stories read like Shakespeare.
  
  Of course, there was a lot more to the pulp phenomenon than crime stories. Nearly all of what we today call “genre fiction” was nurtured in the pages of pulp magazines, from high adventure to horror, sci-fi to westerns to romance. But no aspect of the pulps endures quite like the hard-boiled world of private dicks, gangsters, and murderous mayhem explored here. So The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps is a wonderful sampler to get lost in, for veteran pulp fans and neophyte readers alike. Just don’t try to consume it all at once.
  
  My story-by-story ratings follow...
  
  PART ONE - THE CRIME FIGHTERS
  
  1. One Two Three - Paul Cain ***
  Hard-boiled double-crosses in LA. Written with great, breezy style.
  
  2. The Creeping Siamese - Dashiell Hammett ****
  A tightly-written tale of San Francisco's Continental Op.
  
  3. Honest Money - Erle Stanley Gardner ***
  A Perry Mason prototype stands tall amongst the filth of corruption.
  
  4. Frost Rides Alone - Horace McCoy ***
  Something different: a Texas Air Ranger takes to the sky and goes after a kidnapped dame.
  
  5. Double Check - Thomas Walsh ****
  Tough cops, a tough broad, extortion, and a bomb. What's not to like?
  
  6. Stag Party - Charles G Booth *
  Fast moving, fast talking and nearly incomprehensible. I gave up.
  
  7. The City of Hell! - Leslie T White ****
  Four crusty old cops go rogue to clean up their rotten town. Dark and badass.
  
  8. Red Wind - Raymond Chandler *****
  A twisty Philip Marlowe novella. Taut writing and fantastic atmosphere: there's no mistaking Chandler.
  
  9. Wise Guy - Frederick Nebel ****
  Tough-as-nails police captain MacBride and cynical reporter Kennedy investigate a nightclub murder. Lots of ethnic slurs, but solid.
  
  10. Murder Picture - George Harmon Coxe ***
  Hard-nosed photojournalist Flash Casey finds plenty of trouble after covering a raid.
  
  11. The Price of a Dime - Norbert Davis **
  Far too much plot for a story this short; it just seems silly.
  
  12. Chicago Confetti - William Rollins, Jr. ***
  A fast-talking dick walks into a trap or two and nabs a killer.
  
  13. Two Murders, One Crime - Cornell Woolrich *****
  An obsessed cop seeks vengeance when a killer walks free. Has that unsettling Woolrich magic.
  
  14. The Third Murderer - Carroll John Daly **
  Rambling, full-length Race Williams novel has some good characters, but the dialogue annoyed me and the plot kept chasing its own tail. This could have been so much tighter as a novella!
  
  PART TWO - THE VILLAINS
  
  15. The Cat-Woman - Erle Stanley Gardner ****
  Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook, smells a rat when he receives a strange commission.
  
  16. The Dilemma of the Dead Lady - Cornell Woolrich *****
  White-knuckle suspense as a crook's getaway from Paris becomes complicated... VERY complicated.
  
  17. The House of Kaa - Richard Sale **
  London smugglers run afoul of The Cobra, an American masked avenger based in India. Just weak.
  
  18. The Invisible Millionaire - Leslie Charteris **
  A murder tale starring Simon Templar, a.k.a. The Saint. I know he's popular, but I couldn't get into the overblown style.
  
  19. You'll Always Remember Me - Steve Fisher ***
  Chilling first-person tale of a psychopathic teen.
  
  20. Faith - Dashiell Hammett ***
  An odd little tale of faith and madness among migrant laborers.
  
  21. Pastorale - James M. Cain ***
  A short, grisly story of southern murder; strange ending.
  
  22. The Sad Serbian - Frank Gruber ***
  An amoral debt collector turns detective to bust a scam. Snappy writing.
  
  23. Finger Man - Raymond Chandler ***
  A gambling cheat drags Philip Marlowe into a rat’s nest of trouble.
  
  24. The Monkey Murder - Erle Stanley Gardner ****
  Gentleman thief Lester Leith solves a gruesome crime and makes a monkey of the police. Intentionally silly.
  
  25. About Kid Deth - Raoul Whitfield ****
  A hood gets framed and the bodies start piling up. Dark stuff.
  
  26. The Sinister Sphere - Frederick C. Davis ****
  Meet the mysterious Moon Man, a crusading thief who wears a spherical glass helmet!
  
  27. Pigeon Blood - Paul Cain ***
  The usual hard-boiled fare: fraud, double-crosses, and attempted murder.
  
  28. The Perfect Crime - C.S. Montanye ***
  A coke head/mastermind plots a robbery. Great character; I wish it had been a longer story.
  
  29. You'll Die Laughing - Norbert Davis ****
  Entertaining crime story about a good guy who goes out for hamburgers and gets in over his head.
  
  30. The Crimes of Richmond City - Frederick Nebel ****
  Presented as a full-length novel, this is actually a string of five linked novelettes featuring MacBride and Kennedy, who we first met in Part 1 of the book. The writing is hard-boiled as hell as MacBride fights his way through gang wars, mob terror, and political corruption to find the puppeteer behind it all, with each tale raising the stakes.
  
  PART THREE - THE DAMES
  
  31. Angel Face - Cornell Woolrich ***
  A sassy slang slinger uses her assets to clear her brother of a murder rap.
  
  32. Chosen to Die - Leslie T. White ***
  Whenever private dick Duke Martindel gets in over his head, his lawyer wife is ready to save his bacon.
  
  33. A Pinch of Snuff - Eric Taylor **
  Melodramatic story of a woman seeking revenge in the slums of Montreal.
  
  34. Killer in the Rain - Raymond Chandler ****
  This story of sleaze and murder became the core of Chandler’s novel, “The Big Sleep.” But this version is a lot easier to follow.
  
  35. Sally the Sleuth - Adolphe Barreaux **
  A pair of naughty comic strips from the pages of “Spicy Detective” magazine.
  
  36. A Shock for the Countess - C.S. Montanye *
  A brief but unreadable purple prose theft caper. Ugh.
  
  37. Snowbound - C.B. Yorke ****
  Former mob boss Queen Sue (one of my favorite characters in this entire anthology) goes toe to toe with a dope racketeer. Hard-boiled.
  
  38. The Girl Who Knew Too Much - Randolph Barr **
  A reporter rescues a gangster's moll in distress. another "spicy" story full of torn dresses and heaving bosoms.
  
  39. The Corpse in the Crystal - D.B. McCandless ****
  Dowdy detective Sarah Watson helps a fly-by-night fortune teller escape a murderous gang. Light and humorous.
  
  40. He Got What He Asked For - D.B. McCandless ***
  Sarah Watson is hired to recover a stolen necklace. An extremely silly story, but entertaining.
  
  41. Gangster's Brand - P.T. Luman ***
  A gangster's moll faces a romantic triangle and a double-cross of her mob. Moves along nicely.
  
  42. Dance Macabre - Robert Reeves ****
  Scrawny pickpocket Firpo Cole swears vengeance when he's accused of murdering the woman he loves. Taut, tense, dark.
  
  43. The Girl with the Silver Eyes - Dashiell Hammett ****
  The Continental Op searches for a poet's missing fiancee and finds a murderous plot. Pure Hammett.
  
  44. The Jane from Hell's Kitchen - Perry Paul ***
  A gun moll revenge story... with airplanes! Overcooked writing but unique enough to be fun.
  
  45. The Duchess Pulls a Fast One - Whitman Chambers ****
  Reporter Katie Blayne outwits her buddies to get a scoop. Breezy and entertaining.
  
  46. Mansion of Death - Roger Torrey ****
  A little old rich lady hires a detective... and then does all the detecting herself. Great fun.
  
  47. Concealed Weapon - Roger Torrey
  Hard-boiled and quick paced, but the Kindle edition is riddled with OCR errors. I got annoyed and gave up.
  
  48. The Devil's Bookkeeper - Carlos Martinez ****
  Gang accountant "Clerical Clara" always collects her debts... This gawd-awful story from "Gun Molls" magazine reads like a parody, so I'm rating it for humor.
  
  49. Black Legion - Lars Anderson **
  The Domino Lady, a sexy masked avenger, is described in leering detail. She also fights a gang. Dreadful.
  
  50. Three Wise Men of Babylon - Richard Sale ***
  Wisecracking reporter Daffy Dill bandies words with his gal pal Dinah and stops a killing spree. Slangy and snappy.
  
  51. The Adventure of the Voodoo Moon - Eugene Thomas **
  Master criminal Vivian Legrand runs up against an amoral planter and voodoo rites in Haiti. Not exactly PC.
  
  52. Brother Murder - T.T. Flynn *****
  Private detectives Mike Harris and Trixie Meehan go undercover to investigate a Hollywood cult leader. Terrific, witty, suspenseful writing.
  
  53. Kindly Omit Flowers - Stewart Sterling ***
  A policewoman and plain-clothes man hunt a killer of mail-order brides. Grisly.
• 
  John

  This book offers a broad overview of pulp fiction. Some of the prose is uneven. And some is admittedly substandard. And then there are those stories by Woolrich--dark and moody, and then suddenly frenetic and fast paced. There are stories by masters of the genre: Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Gardner. The great stories sparkly and crackle with tension and suspense.
  
  And the not-so-great stories are forgiveable because the writers were only paid on the average a penny a word. So the idea was to churn stories out fast (no economic motive for rewrites) send them in, and then begin writing the next story.
  
  You can be reading a story that is fairly lackluster from a writing viewpoint, and then unexpectedly, there is a great sentence--a great image, or bit of description, or sardonic observation on the human species.
  
  The book is immense--over 1100 pages of relatively small print. If you've never read pulp fiction from the 30s, 40s, and early 50s, this book will serve as a very good introduction to the genre.
• 
  Carla Remy

  I didn't read every story- the book is huge. It's amazing. It's overwhelming. All I will say is I love Cornell Woolrich. "I Married a Dead Man" was a mind-blowing novel for me, and his shorter works are just as amazing. His writing is tops.
• 
  Willem van den Oever

  Getting a limited amount of time to write any story and receiving the rather measily salary of a penny per word don't seem like the perfect writing condictions for any writer who wants to be taken seriously. Still, a great deal of young writers would start off in the pulps during the 1920's through 40's, before becoming bigtime novel published authors. Both critically and publicly highly respected crimewriters like Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett, James M. Cain and Erle Stanley Gardner started off in these magazines and proved that the word "pulp" comes from the low quality paper on which their stories were printed rather then the quality of the stories themselves.
  
  The vast collection of short stories and novellas contained in this phoneregister sized book show the very best of pre-WW2 tales of passion, crime and revenge. Subtle might not always apply best to these stories, yet the very basics of great storytelling are found within each of them. Heroes, villians, love, death and redemption are strong recurring themes and it's remarkable how well these stories have stood the test of time. Chandler's 'Red Wind' is as strong as it was when first published in 1938. The very same can be said of Leslie T. White's subtlely titled 'The City of Hell!' or Woolrich's highly enjoyable 'The Dilemma with the Dead Lady'. These were writers with huge literary potential and their bright futures shine through in these tales.
  
  This is crimewriting pur sang. Anybody who enjoyed classic tales of crime like 'The Big Sleep', 'The Maltese Falcon' or 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' and wants to return to the very source of it all - or anyone who's new to this classic genre, because this is the perfect place to start off - should get their mitts on the 'Big Book of Pulps'.
• 
  Peggy

  I love pulp fiction. Yeah, that’s right, I said pulp fiction: square-jawed tough guys, devilish dames and trouble with a capital “T”. The only thing I love more than pulp fiction is the lurid art that went along with it. When I saw The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps in the Vintage catalog my eyes lit up like the rep had just shown me the Maltese Falcon.
  
  What we have here is no less than a history of the mystery pulps in the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, the time of the ascendance of Black Mask and the birth of hard-boiled crime fiction. You’ve got your Hammett and Chandler, but you’ve also got Cornell Woolrich, Leslie Charteris, and a whole heap of writers you and I might never have heard of who made their living at a penny a word. As if this piece of literary history isn’t enough, you’ll also get the lovely lurid artwork that originally accompanied these stories, truly a confection not to be missed.
  
• 
  Vel Veeter

  Yeah this book is super long. I went to Otto Penzler's bookstore in NY this summer. I didn't see him there, but they mentioned him around the place a little. He's very much into this material and his passion shows through in all the section breaks and introductions. The shorter introductions written by the other writers are very distinct. Laura Lippman and Harlan Coben both take the assignment in straightforward ways and introduce their sections -- Dames and Crimefighters -- in earnest. Harlan Ellison takes umbrage (ironically I assume) with being asked to introduce villains and goes off about it.
  
  The stories themselves are a mixed bag. As a collection, this book definitely collects. It houses a wide variety of stories, approaches, and plots. And some are very good, and some are very bad. Others are ridiculous, including a series about a thief who wears a glass dome over his head (like Mysterio) made of two-way mirror material. It's silly. There's no women in this! None! Laura Lippman writes an introduction to a "dames" section in which no stories by women appear. That's an issue because I can tell you the name of about a dozen or so women who were writing at this time in this genre. Sigh.
• 
  Ravi Singh

  Fantastic pulp comic type stories all in one place! I got on to this kind of story telling after reading The Maltese Falcon, which I watched on a flight to India a few years ago, I thought it was fantastic. Lines like 'The place was darker than a car full of assholes'! Love it! Gritty and tough, full of hard men and dangerous women. What is not to love?
  
  Highly, highly recommended.
• 
  Todd Stockslager

  Cover blurb: "The best crime stories from the pulps during their golden age--the '20s, '30s, & '40s."
  
  This collection of pulp fiction weighs in at 1141 pages of stories about crime fighters, villains, and dames. The stories, written for cheap magazines that paid writers a penny a word or less for fast-moving formulaic fiction, vary in quality and length, but have much in common: absurd action, slangy dialogue, chain-smoking whiskey-slugging detectives and policemen, sexist treatment of women, and minimal description of settings invariably dark and dangerous.
  
  The size of the collection and the variety of authors of varying abilities brought together in this large collection made me take notice of a couple of interesting and sometimes disturbing themes I had not noticed reading past pulp fiction.
  
  --an underlying assumption of racism. The gang members are invariably Italian, while policemen and detectives often have Irish names, setting up an unspoken racial conflict between the older Irish and newer Itialian immigrants. African-Americans are usually stereotyped as grotesquely obsequious, or referred to by a variety of ethnic slurs not repeatable today. The racism is part of the visceral language and violent action of the heroes in these stories, and therefore most disturbingly not just acceptable but expected and relished by contemporary readers.
  
  --the driving impetus of Prohibition. While the liquor-ban was in effect during this entire period, alcohol was readily available and heavily consumed, but its supply was controlled by criminals and its demand was driven by weak men and women who frequented dark places which bred crime and social disorder. Nowhere in these stories is there any debate about the value of Prohibition, it is merely part of the background that is blithely ignored by all classes and races, and even the legal system itself.
  
  --classism, directed both upward toward the wealthy and downward to the poorest. The rich are at best objects of envy, and usually derogated as weak, stupid, grasping, or undeserving usurpers of the labor of those below them; this feeling is shared by both the criminals and the crime fighters in these stories, the crime fighters often with the hinted feeling that they are unwilling and underpaid lackeys guarding riches they will never touch.
  
  Meanwhile, at the bottom rung of society, the poorest, while sometimes the beneficiaries of Robin Hoods who disperse their criminal gains downward, most often face the irrational hatred of those just above them on the social ladder whose grip on the rung depends on their stolen wealthy. Even the most sympathetic policemen consider the poor to be the breeding ground of the criminal element; the more cynical seem to blame the criminal mind on the weakness of poverty.
  
  --an absence of technology, particularly cell phones, that made it possible for those who wanted to disappear to do so with a readiness not possible today. Without the ubiquitous cell phone, it is amazing the number of times in every story that the intrepid detective or scheming criminal must plan his next actions around the location of an available phone. Drug stores are most often frequented to find a phone booth, not to make a purchase.
  
  A serious study of these elements in the extant body of pulp fiction would be a fascinating companion to the history of the United States in the 1920s through 1940s. In the meantime, the reader can enjoy these stories. The sheer size of the collection, given the limitations of the genre, lead to some repetitiveness, but the reader can understand and enjoy the qualities of the better writers, and the endearing campiness of the worst.
• 
  Michael

  PART ONE
  
  THE CRIMEFIGHTERS
  
  Harlan Coben: Introduction
  
  Paul Cain: One, Two, Three
  
  Dashiell Hammett: The Creeping Siamese
  
  Erle Stanley Gardner: Honest Money
  
  Horace McCoy: Frost Rides Alone
  
  Thomas Walsh: Double Check
  
  Charles G. Booth: Stag Party
  
  Leslie T. White: The City of Hell!
  
  Raymond Chandler: Red Wind
  
  Frederick Nebel: Wise Guy
  
  George Harmon Coxe: Murder Picture
  
  Norbert Davis: The Price of a Dime
  
  William Rollins, Jr.: Chicago Confetti
  
  Cornell Woolrich: Two Murders, One Crime
  
  Carroll John Daly: The Third Murderer
  
   
  
  PART TWO
  
  THE VILLAINS
  
  Harlan Ellison: Introduction
  
  Erle Stanley Gardner: The Cat-Woman
  
  Cornell Woolrich: The Dilemma of the Dead Lady
  
  Richard Sale: The House of Kaa
  
  Leslie Charteris: The Invisible Millionaire
  
  Steve Fisher: Youll Always Remember Me
  
  Dashiell Hammett: Faith
  
  James M. Cain: Pastorale
  
  Frank Gruber: The Sad Serbian
  
  Raymond Chandler: Finger Man
  
  Erle Stanley Gardner:The Monkey Murder
  
  Raoul Whitfield: About Kid Deth
  
  Frederick C. Davis: The Sinister Sphere
  
  Paul Cain: Pigeon Blood
  
  C. S. Montanye: The Perfect Crime
  
  Norbert Davis: Youll Die Laughing
  
  Frederick Nebel: The Crimes of Richmond City
  
  i) Raw Law
  
  ii) Dog Eat Dog
  
  iii) The Law Laughs Last
  
  iv) Law Without Law
  
  v) Graft
  
   
  
  PART THREE
  
  THE DAMES
  
  Laura Lippman: Introduction
  
  Cornell Woolrich: Angel Face
  
  Leslie T. White: Chosen to Die
  
  Eric Taylor: A Pinch of Snuff
  
  Raymond Chandler: Killer in the Rain
  
  Adolphe Barreaux: Sally the Sleuth
  
  C. S. Montanye: A Shock for the Countess
  
  C. B. Yorke: Snowbound
  
  Randolph Barr: The Girl Who Knew Too Much
  
  D. B. McCandless: The Corpse in the Crystal
  
  D. B. McCandless: He Got What He Asked For
  
  P. T. Luman: Gangsters Brand
  
  Robert Reeves: Dance Macabre
  
  Dashiell Hammett: The Girl with the Silver Eyes
  
  Perry Paul: The Jane from Hells Kitchen
  
  Whitman Chambers: The Duchess Pulls a Fast One
  
  Roger Torrey: Mansion of Death
  
  Roger Torrey: Concealed Weapon
  
  Carlos Martinez: The Devils Bookkeeper
  
  Lars Anderson: Black Legion
  
  Richard Sale: Three Wise Men of Babylon
  
  Eugene Thomas: The Adventure of the Voodoo Moon
  
  T. T. Flynn: Brother Murder
  
  Stewart Sterling: Kindly Omit Flowers
• 
  Bryan

  I had been reading this book for several weeks, picking off stories and authors like a Dime Detective would pick off a cheap bottle of rye in his pocket.
  
  The genre is fascinating to me, so the book was a treasure from my library. Too big to read in one checkout cycle, so renewal was necessary. Too heavy to trudge along to work, so lunch hour reading behind the seclusion of my door and 80-some ‘way-back Year’s’ in my mind was not possible.
  
  In some stories, I can feel the dirt, grime and heat, the sweat rolling down the necks, the weight of the loaded gun or bottle in the pocket. I have read stories from Chandler and Hammett and loved the noir in movie form for years, since childhood days. But in some stories, the adjectives are wasted. Thus I picked off the stories and tried ‘new’ authors (yes new to me). Daly, Cain and Erie Stanley Gardner stand out.
  
  I’m now looking forward to Gardner’s Perry MasonSeries. Yup, approaching the 1950’s in genre writing now. Ha
  
  Oh, one last thing, if this novel seems to interest you, pick up the kindle version and save your arm workouts for the gym. The weight alone of this book hurts when you drop it on your face as you drift off in bed reading.
• 
  Dave

  awesoem collection of very fast paced and fun Crime and Noir stories (which are all crime based of course.)
  this is classic stuff real great when America was the gem of the world.
  the Men were straight talkers and no nonsense, and the Dames were all fabulous be them good or bad.
  it is a hefty anthology but you breeze through it. and you keep looking for more.
  for the "PC" sensitive jerks out there, this is not PC.
  when every one was an American in this country, if they had something different it was pointed out- so Black Jimmy was a Black guy named Jimmy (not African American) and "Dago" Jimmy was an Italian American named Jimmy how else would you tell them part in writing or a conversation?
  and there is no apologizing for any of this as it was descriptive, and not diminutive or derogatory.
  and women well, more often than not they were Gals, Dames, and Broads who could either make you forget about all the troubles in the world or be the cause of them...and well if you are a guy this is still true, you just don't verbalize it much- in public.
  and that's the way it is.
• 
  Mark Bacon

  The Big Book of Pulps is a collection of dozens of noir stories from the 1920s through 1940s. The table of contents looks like a directory of the best authors in the genre.
  
  The book contains three stories each by Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich and Dashiell Hammett. Other authors include James. M. Cain; Carroll John Daly, credited with writing the first U.S. detective novel; and Earl Stanley Gardner. In one Gardner story, Ken Corning, precursor to Perry Mason, leaps on the running board of a car and battles gunmen. Not the deft courtroom-style exchange you might expect from watching Raymond Burr.
  
  Each story is introduced with commentary by Otto Penzler, editor and owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He provides useful biographical information on the authors, background on the stories and when and where each was originally published.
  
  Not every story is a gem, but at 1,163 pages and and weighing more than two pounds, it's a noir lover's dream.
  
• 
  Nick Seeley

  "Big" doesn't cut it ... this thing is mammoth, and offers an unparalleled slice of pulp history. Some of the stories, like those by Dashiell Hammett and Paul Cain, are genuine gems of crime literature. Others are cripplingly dated, and a few like the "Sally the Sleuth" comics, are best described as historical curiosities. All offer insight into the golden age of the crime magazine. And whether the writing is brilliant, execrable or mediocre, every story here can still conjure the power to set the pulse pounding, if a reader is willing to go along for the ride.
• 
  Cindy

  Lots of good old fashioned fun and entertainment in these stories of yesteryear. A few plots skirt the edge of the clean label but profanity is very sparse and “lite.” Loved the trip down memory lane and the all the narrators were fine. Guys, dolls, babes, and every term used in the pulps is here — if you’re easily offended by terms of the age best head elsewhere. But this was a pleasure reading and I was sorry when it ended.
• 
  Chuck

  They just don't write like that anymore! Go straight to Raymond Chandler's Red Dust! Greatest opening paragraph - EVER! I won't spoil the fun and I won't ever through out this book. It's like a good dictionary or thesaurus, essential reference material for good writing. Okay so some is a little less but I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of literature!
• 
  Robert Stewart

  I'm shocked Robert Leslie Bellem was left out of this huge anthology. Bellem was one of the few pulp writers who appreciated the inherent humor of the genre--the polar opposite of the brittle, often old-womanish Chandler, who Penzler is so enamored of.
  
  Check out "The Pulps: Fifty Years of American Pop Culture Hardcover" by Tony Goodstone, a much more entertaining book.
• 
  Margaret Sankey

  I've been working through this one for a while--this is a collection of early noir, defined by their dangerous women of deadly agency, secrets from the past, damaged war buddies in trouble, men who drive by night and drink all day, post-war shady business deals and violent denouements.
• 
  Michael Sigler

  Man, what a time investment this was... A great compilation of 20s-40s crime pulps that are absolutely worth reading. I am actually surprised it took me so long to finish, even if it was jist shy of 1200 pages. The first of the three parts of this book is by far and away the weakest of the lot, and I feel should have been saved for the end of the book (the stories in this part are nowhere near as good as the rest, and it actually took me 2 months to read that part alone).
  By far THE worst in the entire book is part two's introduction by Harlan Ellison. Wow. Wow wow wow. A terrible writer who shows his age and bias and old man-ness in his writing. Best part of his intro was to educate me on why NOT to read him, and I subsequently removed his books from my to-read list.
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  Bill

  I read about half of this omnibus. So many of the stories are lackluster. The book is a good reference for anyone who wants to find out what pulp crime magazine stories were like, particularly those published in Black Mask, the magazine that launched the careers of Hammett, Chandler, et al. But it appears the magazine published much that wasn't up to their quality. Back in the heyday of pulp magazines, 1920s-40s, a writer could make a living churning out stories: romance, crime, aviation, horror, sci-fi, war. They'd be published in various magazines under several pen names and the writer would be paid upon acceptance, not publication. It'd be steady income, but maybe wouldn't promote quality writing.
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  Andrew Lind

  Don't get me wrong, I love all of The Black Lizard Big Books and I think Otto Penzler does an amazing job at putting these collections together. While it was a good read and it featured many stories from many different pulp magazines (including a few from the risque, controversial, and sometimes poorly written magazine SPICY DETECTIVE), many of the stories in here were from repeat authors such as Raymond Chandler. Don't get me wrong, I love Raymond Chandler, but I'm sure there were other pulp fiction magazine writers who came up with some pretty good stories even though they weren't as popular as him.
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  Santiago

  Obvio no he leído todo lo de este tabique. Sin embargo, lo que llevo es de lo mas estimulante y clavado que puede existir sobre lo Pulp. Siento que esta literatura suena a 'Round midnight de Davis y no me disculpo por ser mamador
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  Richard Mann

  Wonderful!
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  Graham Carter

  Mch like usual some stories were okay while others were true gems to read!
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  Braden Thompson

  big book of bad yet indispensable bullshit