Paul Pry, one of Gardner’s least-known and strangest characters is showcased here. He picks ‘Mugs’ Magoo out of the gutter and forma a partnership which makes the big shots of the underworld look pathetic.

Brooklyn's toughest female detective takes on Dallas in this "violent, sexy, and completely absorbing" Edgar Award nominee, the first novel in the acclaimed Betty Rhyzyhk series (Kirkus Reviews). Dallas, Texas is not for the faint of heart. Good thing for Betty Rhyzyk she's from a family of take-no-prisoners Brooklyn police detectives. But her Big Apple wisdom will only get her so far when she relocates to The Big D, where Mexican drug cartels and cult leaders, deadbeat skells and society wives all battle for sunbaked turf. Betty is as tough as the best of them, but she's deeply shaken when her first investigation goes sideways. Battling a group of unruly subordinates, a persistent stalker, a formidable criminal organization, and an unsupportive girlfriend, the unbreakable Detective Betty Rhyzyk may be reaching her limit. Combining the colorful pyrotechnics of Breaking Bad with the best of the gritty crime genre, The Dime is Kathleen Kent's brilliant mystery debut and the launch of a sensational new series. "Only a fan blowing in the right direction could flip the pages of this lightning-paced tale any faster." --Minneapolis Star Tribune

This book reveals subversive representations of gender, race and class in detective dime novels (1860-1915), arguing that inherent tensions between subversive and conservative impulses—theorized as contamination and containment—explain detective fiction's ongoing popular appeal to readers and to writers such as Twain and Faulkner.

The shudder pulps published some of the grisliest, goriest, most outrageous mystery-terror fiction ever sold on the American newsstand, during the golden age of the pulp magazines. This volumes chronicles the authors, artists, and publishers of those classic thrill-fests!

A century of American history reflected in the iconic private eye. Steadfast in fighting crime, but operating outside the police force—and sometimes even the law—is the private detective. Driven by his own moral code, he is a shadowy figure in a trench coat standing on a street corner, his face most likely obscured by a tilted fedora, a lit cigarette dangling from his hand. The hard-boiled detective is known by his dark past, private pain, and powers of deduction. He only asks questions—never answers them. In his stories he is both the main character and the narrator. America has had a love affair with the hard-boiled detective since the 1920s, when Prohibition called into question who really stood on the right and wrong side of the law. And nowhere did this hero shine more than in crime fiction. In Detectives in the Shadows, literary and cultural critic Susanna Lee tracks the evolution of this truly American character type—from Race Williams to Philip Marlowe and from Mike Hammer to Jessica Jones. Lee explores how this character type morphs to fit an increasingly troubled world, offering compelling interpretations of The Wire, True Detective, and Jessica Jones. Suddenly, in the present day, the hard-boiled detective wears his—or her—fatigue outwardly, revealing more vulnerability than ever before. But the detective remains resolute in the face of sinister forces, ever the person of honor. For anyone interested in crime fiction and television, or for those wanting to understand America's idolization of the good guy with a gun, Detectives in the Shadows is essential reading.

Provides reprints of the texts of 5 detective dime novels, and lists of all the titles in the series published by the five publishers.

A truck driver employed by Murdock Motor Freight, Bookie Barnes is a tough working class hero. Though not a detective per se, he is a rough customer described as "tall, heavy-chested, with a build you see only in physical culture ads, and, though barely twenty-six, he'd been on the trucks for three years." He is emblematic of the type of crime fighters found in pulp fiction in that he represents the typical readership of pulp fiction: an average working-class audience. Written by one of the greats of the detective pulps, Robert Reeves-who was tragically killed in World War II-this book collects all of his Bookie Barnes stories: "Murder in High Gear," "Over a Barrel," and "Murder Without Death," as well as his lone, non-series character story, "Dance Macabre."

Brilliant, decisive, and hard-charging, Deputy Inspector Allhoff was the NYPD's ace detective until bullets from a mobster's machine gun robbed him of his legs, his career, and-in the opinion of an associate-his sanity. Yet Allhoff was too good a man to be put out to pasture, so New York's police commissioner found a way to keep him employed and refer to him such cases as the department couldn't or wouldn't handle. Confined to a wheelchair and operating from a seedy tenement flat, Allhoff is assisted by two cops: Battersly, the rookie patrolman whose brief moment of cowardice cost the inspector his legs, and Simmons, the bitter career cop who detests Allhoff but sticks with the embittered cripple to protect his own pension. Created by D.L. Champion, Inspector Allhoff denied most conventions of detective-pulp fiction. He could never be confused for one of Raymond Chandler's knights errant, trudging down those mean streets. Allhoff was no Rover Boy in trench coat and fedora. He was, in fact, a sadist and a psychopath. With 30 entries published between 1938 and 1946, the Allhoff series was among the most popular and long-lived to appear in Dime Detective, the prestigious crime pulp second only to the legendary Black Mask in its impact on the genre. Volume 3 collects the next seven stories: "You're the Crime in My Coffee," "Thanks for the Ration Card!," "The Profitable Corpse," "The Diplomatic Corpse," "Aaron Had a Rod," "The Day Nobody Died," and "Go Home and Die!"

Bailbondsman William "Bail-Bond" Dodd was the first series character that hard-boiled genius Norbert Davis created for Harry Steeger's best detective pulp. Running for eight installments, this unique series was one of the best Davis ever wrote for the pages of Dime Detective, the prestigious crime pulp second only to the legendary Black Mask in its impact on the genre. As a bonus, this edition also includes the first story that Davis wrote for Dime Detective: "The Gin Monkey."