Dispatches on the pulps: where they came from, who wrote them, and why the cheap stuff still hits harder than most of what's expensive.
The series
Latest dispatches
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Hard-Boiled America · Part 6
Harry Whittington: The Noose Builder
Harry Whittington wrote across every genre you can name, under a stack of bylines, at a clip that makes a modern reader squint. Surely nobody works that…
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Hard-Boiled America · Part 5
Gil Brewer: Desire with a Fever
Read enough Gil Brewer and you start to feel the thermostat creeping up inside the narrator's skull. The plots are built from the usual junk: money, sex,…
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Hard-Boiled America · Part 4
Peter Rabe and the Cold Eye
Peter Rabe wrote about criminals without needing them to be glamorous, colorful, or secretly decent underneath. His fiction can feel cold, and the cold…
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Hard-Boiled America · Part 3
Charles Williams: The Trap Closes Quietly
In a Charles Williams novel, the disaster usually starts with an offer that looks survivable.
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Hard-Boiled America · Part 2
Gold Medal and the Paperback-Original Revolution
Before the paperback original came along, a softcover was usually a hardcover's second life. The important publication had already happened somewhere…
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Hard-Boiled America · Part 1
Beyond the Big Three
American crime fiction has a front parlor, and three names are always sitting in it: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Mickey Spillane. They earned…
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The Paperback Code · Part 12
What the Paperback Warriors Left Behind
The paper was cheap. The inheritance was not.
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The Paperback Code · Part 11
The Long Series: Myth, Formula, and Burnout
The first adventure changes the hero's life. The fiftieth risks becoming his job.
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The Paperback Code · Part 10
Heroes, Villains, and the Wider World
The paperback warrior went everywhere.
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The Paperback Code · Part 9
Women, Desire, and the Genre's Blind Spots
There is no honest way to discuss men's adventure fiction without discussing the women on its covers and in its pages.
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The Paperback Code · Part 8
The Men Who Couldn't Go Home
The mission ends. The rescued return to their families. The hero leaves before breakfast.
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The Paperback Code · Part 7
Guns, Bodies, and the Truth About Action
Action is not the same thing as violence.
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The Paperback Code · Part 6
The Vigilante's Moral Ledger
Every vigilante story asks the reader for permission.
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The Paperback Code · Part 5
Vietnam Came Home in a Paperback
The veteran in a 1970s action paperback often returned from Vietnam twice.
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The Paperback Code · Part 4
Competence, the Genre's Secret Pleasure
The gun on the cover got your attention. The man checking the exits kept it.
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The Paperback Code · Part 3
The Paperback as a Machine
A good action paperback does not feel short. It feels fast.
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The Paperback Code · Part 2
What "Men's Adventure" Really Meant
Walk into a drugstore or bus station in the 1970s and the books told you what they were before you opened them.
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The Paperback Code · Part 1
The War Against the Mafia Begins
There is a moment near the beginning of every long-running action series when the hero still has a way back.