Seven Slayers [Hardcover]

Paul Cain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1987 | ISBN-10: 0940941031 | ISBN-13: 978-0940941038

A FINE FIRST trade hardcover edition in dj. Introduction by the brilliant William F. Nolan.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Prime examples of thirties' pulp crime-fiction writing at its finest . . . as intense a noir portrait of Depression-era America as those painted by James M. Cain." --Bill Pronzini --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

Seven brutally ingenius tales of murder passionate and cold-blooded, written by a poet of the hard-boiled.

There's Black, a stranger in town, who gets drafted into a gang war just because he had the bad luck to trip over a corpse on his way from the station.  There's the glamorous Bella, whose boyfriends have the distressing habit of stabbing one another while she naps in the next room.  And of course there's Johnny Doolin, who hires himself out as a bodyguard--only to find that his client has no interest in staying alive.

The men and women in Seven Slayers are exactly what the title promises:  people who kill for love or money or for the sheer, perverse joy of homicide.  And this riveting collection is one of the few surviving books by Paul Cain (aka Peter Ruric, aka George Sims), a hard-drinking, enigmatic writer of the 1930s who had as many pseudonyms as he had wives and of whom Raymond Chandler wrote that he had reached in his fiction "a high point in the hard-boiled manner." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 194 pages
• Publisher: Blood & Guts Press (June 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940941031
• ISBN-13: 978-0940941038
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,044,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seven tough stories by long-neglected Black Mask contributor, August 16, 1997

By 

burglar "burglar" (Newport Beach, Ca. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seven Slayers (Hardcover)

If you're a fan of Hammett, Chandler, Thompson, Goodis, et al, you owe it to yourself to read anything you can get your hands on by Paul Cain. His characters live outside the law and in the depths of the Depression, and are invariably without hope or anything resembling a future. Someone always ends up dead, and deservedly so. These are not random or remorseless killings, though, they are full of passion and betrayal, and when some mug gets a belly full of lead you understand only too well why he had it coming. James M. Cain (no relation) was a powder puff compared to this guy. Highly recommended

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Horrible presentation by Blackmask.com ruins the book!, March 21, 2006

By 

Baron Von Cool - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Seven Slayers (Paperback)

After all the hype, I expected more from Seven Slayers. I did not find these short stories anywhere near the level of Chandler, Hammett or Thompson. The writing style was too sparse and clipped (not as bad as James Ellroy's, but still!). They read like standard pulp fare of the day; decent, but nothing special. Furthermore, any possible enjoyment of the text was marred by the terrible presentation by publisher Blackmask.com. Inside, and on the back cover, there are a fair number of distracting typos. Worse, chapters and paragraphs are not properly separated, making it hard to know when scenes change or where you are in the book if you lose your place. This seems to be a conscious decision by the publisher to cram the novel into as few pages as possible. I can understand pinching pennies, but this is ridiculous! Cramming together of paragraphs (where the time, locations and characters have abruptly changed) makes reading Seven Slayers virtually impossible. The cover is an embarassingly bad, tiny pixellated .jpg of the 1950s paperback cover (obviously taken off the internet). My advice is to avoid buying anything from Blackmask.com if you can obtain a reasonably-priced copy elsewhere. Unfortunately, that may be hard, considering their rarity. I really wish Blackmask, whose heart is in the right place in rereleasing these lost classics, would clean up its act and actually put some effort into their presentation/packaging so the books looked good and read easier. As it is, their releases look like no budget, amateur hour junk. These novels deserve better! I'm proud to display my old Black Lizard reprints, but the Blackmask books? Forget it!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Makes most other noir writing seem pallid, August 30, 2005

By 

Victor Valentine "V Valentine" (Gallup, NM, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seven Slayers (Paperback)

Absolutely the most brutal, riveting crime stories I've ever read....the characters live in a remorseless, alternate universe which makes ordinary reality seem like a respite...I liked these better than his novel, FAST ONE...the closest literary equivalent to the toughest crime radio of the 40's, as well..oh, yeah..