The paperback-original writers who dragged American crime fiction past the famous private eyes. Class, sex, money, and doom, written better than any of them ever got credit for.
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Part 1 of 8
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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Part 2 of 8
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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Part 3 of 8
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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Part 4 of 8
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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Part 5 of 8
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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Part 6 of 8
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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Part 7 of 8
Vin Packer: Crime and the Outsider
The whole history of paperback crime shifts under you the second you stop assuming the troubled man was the only thing worth pointing a camera at.