The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction

Rating:
Summary: Packed Full of Pulp
Review: "The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction" certainly lives up to its name. Containing 32 stories and nearly 600 pages of text, it is packed full of hard-boiled crimes taless, many of them superior in quality. The best include, but are not limited to, "A Candle for the Bag Lady," a fine early Matthew Scudder tale by Lawrence Block; "So Dark for April," an excellent moody P.I. story by Howard Browne; "Stacked Deck," a masterful caper tale by Bill Pronzini; "We're All Dead," a heist-gone-wrong story by Bruno Fischer; plus a couple of good tales by the MacDonalds, Ross and John D.

On the downside, there are no author introductions for the individual stories to provide them context. Nor are all of the stories first rate. A couple of them veer into the supernatural, which doesn't seem to fit the theme. They range in time period from the early 1930s to the mid-1990s but are not chronologically sequenced. Nevertheless, as a reader you can certainly pick and choose, making this collection worthwhile for any fan of hard-boiled short crime fiction.

Rating:
Summary: Packed Full of Pulp
Review: "The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction" certainly lives up to its name. Containing 32 stories and nearly 600 pages of text, it is packed full of hard-boiled crimes taless, many of them superior in quality. The best include, but are not limited to, "A Candle for the Bag Lady," a fine early Matthew Scudder tale by Lawrence Block; "So Dark for April," an excellent moody P.I. story by Howard Browne; "Stacked Deck," a masterful caper tale by Bill Pronzini; "We're All Dead," a heist-gone-wrong story by Bruno Fischer; plus a couple of good tales by the MacDonalds, Ross and John D.

On the downside, there are no author introductions for the individual stories to provide them context. Nor are all of the stories first rate. A couple of them veer into the supernatural, which doesn't seem to fit the theme. They range in time period from the early 1930s to the mid-1990s but are not chronologically sequenced. Nevertheless, as a reader you can certainly pick and choose, making this collection worthwhile for any fan of hard-boiled short crime fiction.

Rating:
Summary: The Worst of Pulp Fiction
Review: I'm a bit of a connoisseur of pulp fiction, and often order paperback originals of Spillane, Craig Rice, Bill Ballinger, etc. from Amazon Z-shops.

This book was a huge disappointment to me.

Pulp writers did it for the money - and in some cases also produced great works of art, like James M. Cain's "Mildred Pierce." Unfortunately, most of the stories in this collection read like something knocked out on deadline to a precise word count - and once the writer hit that word count, he dropped it in the mail and headed for the corner bar.

Lawrence Block's "A Candle for the Bag Lady" is the worst offender - the writer sets up a fascinating premise in which a seemingly homeless woman, newly murdered, turns out to have distributed her substantial wealth in a complex will naming random strangers. Where did the money come from? Why was she living in such reduced circumstances? And why in the world did she choose these beneficiaries - the owner of a local newspaper stand, a neighbor she rarely spoke to, the detective himself - when her real friends and acquaintances got nothing at all? And how is all this linked to her murder?

We'll never know, because when Block hits his word count, he has a new character show up in the detective's corner bar and say, "I hear you are looking for the murderer. Well, I did it. I just felt like killing someone. Would you mind coming with me to the police station?" End of story. (Sorry to spoil it for those who haven't read it, but it's hard to imagine that anyone could spoil it more than Block himself.)

The Cain and Spillane contributions here are bores - truly not their best work. The one top-class story, Donald E. Westlake's "Ordo" , is also available in another collection, "Pulp Masters." I would recommend that book instead of this one.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific collection for the avid or new noir fan
Review: The Mammoth Books do a fine job in their respective categories, however, this collection surpasses them all. It is perfectly conceived with representative stories from the masters of the noir/hardboiled style as well as underappreciated authors who created a few gems. Black Pudding by David Goodis is remarkable and probably my favorite in the collection, but it really is hard to pick a favorite since there are so many stories. The best part is that each story stands on its own and they don't start running into each other. Long after you put the book down, you will remember each story.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific collection for the avid or new noir fan
Review: The Mammoth Books do a fine job in their respective categories, however, this collection surpasses them all. It is perfectly conceived with representative stories from the masters of the noir/hardboiled style as well as underappreciated authors who created a few gems. Black Pudding by David Goodis is remarkable and probably my favorite in the collection, but it really is hard to pick a favorite since there are so many stories. The best part is that each story stands on its own and they don't start running into each other. Long after you put the book down, you will remember each story.

Rating:
Summary: Variety is the spice of life
Review: This book is filled with great little stories, each of which are pure art in their own way. Forget deep analysis, forget reading into heavy plot lines and meaning-drenched narrative, this book is good-old fashioned, great story-telling. And what makes it even greater is juxaposing current "political correctness" with the raw narrative of the old days. Sure, some of the stories don't cut it, but those that do will make you wish it was 1944 all over again.