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."

Recommended reading - The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories (1988):

The Mammoth Book of Private Eye Stories (1988).

Edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg.

Published by Running Press.

This revised edition published in 2004.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0786713712

ISBN-13: 978-0786713714

Description:

The very best in hardboiled fiction, from such masters as Ross Macdonald, Raymond Chandler, Marcia Muller, Michael Collins, Ed McBain, William Campbell Gault and many more.

With its roots in the American private detective fiction of the 1920s but traceable back as far as Sherlock Holmes, the private eye story remains as popular as ever. Here are 24 of the finest short novels and stories from the hardboiled world of the private eye. The characters in this collection range from the tough, cynical, hard-drinking Philip Marlowe type to hard-hitting female private eyes and the one-armed intellectual Dan Fortune – from masters of the genre past and present.