Recommended reading - Sleuths of the Century (2000):

Sleuths of the Century

Edited by Ed Gorman and John L. Breen.

Published in 2000.

Published by Carroll & Graf.

First Edition.

Hardcover.

ISBN-10: 0786707097

ISBN-13: 978-0786707096

Description:

Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, Lord Peter Wimsey and Hercule Poirot, Matt Scudder and Easy Rawlins, Spenser and Dalgliesh - they stand among the most popular of twentieth-century heroes. And now the award-winning mystery novelist Ed Gorman and novelist-critic Jon L. Breen present a full century of the world's favorite sleuths in tales by such classic writers as G. K. Chesterton, Ellery Queen, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie as well as contemporary giants like Sharyn McCrumb, Walter Mosley, Ed McBain, Lawrence Block, P. D. James, and Ruth Rendell. A hefty, handsome volume, Sleuths of the Century also offers serious suspense from Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Highsmith, Tony Hillerman, Rex Stout, Donald E. Westlake, and John D. MacDonald. Crossing the decades with a gallery of sleuths impeccably styled for every generation, this collection provides exciting, literate tales of detection and danger that will keep the reader on tenterhooks well into the next century.

Recommended reading - Pulp Masters (2001):

Pulp Masters (2001).

Edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg.

Published by Carroll & Graf.

First Edition.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0786708735

ISBN-13: 978-0786708734

Description:

A pulp-packed volume of hard-boiled crime fiction from the writers who made the mold and mastered the form.

John MacDonald, James M. Cain, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Mickey Spillane, and Harrington Whittington – these six masters of pulp fiction at its suspenseful best distinguish this new anthology compiled by the award-winning editors of its two popular predecessors, American Pulp and Pure Pulp. Like its two popular predecessors, Pulp Masters culls its tales – in this case, five classic “novelettes” and one complete novel – from the golden age of magazine fiction in the first half of the twentieth century.

All six writers included in Pulp Masters in time emerged as giants in the field of crime fiction, and the stories in this volume demonstrate why. Their voices fresh, their talents raw and original, with titles like "Ordo," “College-Cut Kill,” "Stag Party Girl," "The Embezzler," and "Everybody's Watching Me," Westlake, Block, Cain, and Spillane heralded and shaped the crime story as we know it today. So did "the King of the Paperback Original" – Harrington Whittington – represented here by the novel based on his pulp short story "So Dead, My Love."