The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Though this is not the first collection drawn from the pages of yesteryear's Black Mask magazine, Edgar Award-winning mystery editor, publisher, and bookstore owner Penzler declares that "it is the biggest and most comprehensive." He's not kidding! Launched by H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan in the 1920s, Black Mask would springboard the careers of a handful of writers, raising the level of penny dreadful pulp mysteries to that of literature, while also publishing plenty of quickly hacked-out swill. This gathers the cream produced by legends like Dashiell Hammett (the godfather of hard-boiled detective fiction), Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, Carroll John Daly, Cornell Woolrich, and other aces. There are more than 50 stories in all, including "The Maltese Falcon" (the original serialized version, which differs from the published novel, is reproduced here for the first time since its initial 1929 publication), Chandler's "Try the Girl" (which, ultimately, became Farewell, My Lovely), and Horace McCoy's "Dirty Work." Each author receives a brief bio and the stories sport original artwork—it's a complete education on vintage crime mysteries between two covers.