Recommended reading - City Sleuths and Tough Guys: Crime Stories from Poe to the Present (1989):

City Sleuths and Tough Guys: Crime Stories from Poe to the Present

Edited by David Willis McCullough.

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Published 1989.

Hardcover.

ISBN-10: 0395513189

ISBN-13: 978-0395513187

Description:

Trace the hard-boiled mystery back to its roots with this collection of twenty-eight detective stories set in tough, urban settings. From classics by Poe and Vidocq to contemporary favorites such as Hammett and Spillane, this is a literary feast for all mystery fans.

Contents: Introduction, by David Willis McCullough; The simple art of murder, by Raymond Chandler; The clue of the yellow curtains, by Francois Eugene Vidocq; The mystery of Marie Roget, by Edgar Allen Poe; The lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes; Princess Sonia's bath, by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre; The investors, by Edgar Wallace; The tenth clew, by Dashiell Hammett; The rubber trumpet, by Roy Vickers; No proof, by Yoh Sano; Dead-end for Delia, by William Campbell Gault; At the Etoile du Nord, by Georges Simenon; I always get the cuties, by John D. MacDonald; This world, then the fireworks, by Jim Thompson; The gold fever tapes, by Mickey Spillane; Wild goose chase, by Ross MacDonald; The nine-to-five man, by Stanley Ellin; Small homocide, by Ed McBain; Blind man with a pistol, by Chester Himes; Pigeon blood, by Paul Cain; Just one of those days, by Donald E. Westlake; Election day, by Joseph Hansen; The Parker shotgun, by Sue Grafton; The Johore murders, by Paul Theroux; Sure, blue, and dead, too, by Janwillem van de Wetering; Skin deep, by Sara Paretsky; Death by water, by William Marshall; Flake piece, by Carolyn Wheat; Dead soldier, by Loren D. Estleman; Double indemnity, the screenplay, by Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder.