Pure Pulp [Paperback]

Edward Gorman (Editor), Martin Harry Greenberg (Editor), Bill Pronzini (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1999

Pulp magazines like Dime Detective and Crime Busters flourished in America between 1920 and 1950. Their purpose was only to entertain, yet they produced such giants in crime fiction as Robert Bloch, Frederic Brown, John Jakes, Leigh Brackett, and John D. MacDonald, all of whom feature in this new anthology.

So are Ed McBain, Mickey Spillane, Vin Packer, Donald Westlake, Dorothy B. Hughes, Helen Nielsen, David Goodis, Evan Hunter, and two dozen tough-writing others whose stories appeared in the more artful The Saint, Manhunt, Verdict, and Tightrope as well as Ellery Queen's and Alfred Hitchcock's mystery magazines. With their moody, atmospheric plots and psychological depth, the pulp fiction in this volume shaped the modern crime story as we know it today. Pick this anthology of pure pulp up. You won't put it down.

Praise for American Pulp "[An] exciting and exemplary collection" - Drood Review of Mystery "A bargain...560 pages of stuff your mother warned you to keep away from." Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

A second skimming of the same deep vats that provided the harvest for the editors American Pulp (1997) produces a behemoth collection of 25 more oldies spanning 40 years, from 1944 (Leigh Brackett) to 1984 (Joe L. Hensley), running from 4 pages (Lawrence Block) to 148 (Peter Rabe), and resembling each other only in being as dark, tawdry, exciting, and stylishly desolate as a city street at midnight. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Paperback: 565 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub; First Edition edition (November 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786707003
• ISBN-13: 978-0786707003
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,425,542 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a hit and (mostly) miss collection of pulp fiction, June 25, 2004

By 

lazza (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pure Pulp (Paperback)

As with any massive collections of short stories one would a few duds. Maybe even more than a few. However in "Pure Pulp" I consider on 11 of the 35 short stories/novellas to be either good or excellent. The other 24 are only fair or downright poor or even amateurish. So with a hit rate of only 30% I'd say one can probably do better with other pulp fiction collections.

For completeness sake, here are the books[authors] of the stories I liked:

- In a Small Motel [MacDonald]
- Sudden, Sudden Death [Powell]
- That Stranger, My Son [Gilford]
- Terrorists [Marlowe]
- The Plunge [Goodis]
- Down in the Valley [Reasoner]
- Cry Silence [Brown]
- Tick, Tock [Wandrei]
- Guilt [Jakes]
- Decision [Nielson]
- Don't Twist My Arm [Ritchie]

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 565 page of pure unadulterated pulp!, August 6, 2000

By 

"jhodo" (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pure Pulp (Paperback)

When I first pick up this book I was a little skeptical of just how entertaining this collection would be. It turned out to be my favorite collection of short stories ever written. Now "pulp" fiction may not be the highest caliber of literature but you can't overlook the each author's usage of description, twists, and character names (i.e. Sam Culp, James Cargill and so on). I recommend this book to anybody who wants to have a good time with a great book.