An unstoppable anthology of crime stories culled from   Black Mask magazine the legendary publication that turned a pulp phenomenon into literary mainstream.    

Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir.  It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared.  It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like "Murder Is Bad Luck," "Ten Carets of Lead," and "Drop Dead Twice." Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America's finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America's underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this. 

CONTENTS 

Erle Stanley Gardner: Come and Get It 
Fredric Brown: Cry Silence 
Peter Collison: Arson Plus 
Fredrick Nebel: Doors in the Dark 
Lester Dent: Luck 
Dashiell Hammett: The Maltese Falcon 
Stewart Sterling: Ten Carats of Lead 
Wyatt Blassingame: Murder Is Bad Luck 
Talmadge Powell: Her Dagger Before Me 
Charles G. Booth: One Shot 
Richard Sale: The Dancing Rats 
Katherine Brocklebank: Bracelets 
Thomas Walsh: Diamonds Mean Death 
Roul Whitfield: Murder in the Ring 
Walter C. Brown: The Parrot That Wouldn't Talk 
Merle Constiner: Let the Dead Alone 
Carrol John Daly: Knights of the Open Palm 
William Cole: Waiting for Rusty 
Ramon Decolta: Rainbow Diamonds 
William Rollins Jr.: The Ring on the Hand of Death 
Theodore A. Tinsley: Body Snatcher 
D wight V. Babcock: Murder on the Gayway 
Cleve F. Adams: The Key 
William Campbell Gault: The Bloody Bokhara 
Brett Halliday: A Taste for Cognac 
Day Keene: Sauce for the Gander 
W.T. Ballard: A Little Different 
Charles M. Green: The Shrieking Skeleton 
Hank Searls: Drop Dead Twice 
Dale Clark: The Sound of the Shot 
Frederick C. Davis: Flaming Angel 
Don M. Mankiewicz: Odds on Death 
Norvell Page: Those Catrini 
Hugh B. Cave: Smoke in Your Eyes 
Robert Reeves: Blood, Sweat and Biers 
Whitman Chambers: The Black Bottle 
Milton K. Ozaki: The Corpse The Didn't Kick 
Raymond Chandler: Try the Girl 
Norbert Davis: Don't You Cry for Me 
Ray Cummings: T. McGuirk Steals A Diamond 
Steve Fisher: Wait For Me 
Frank Gruber: Ask Me Another 
Horcase McCoy: Dirty Work 
Julius Long: Merely Murder 
John D. MacDonald: Murder in One Syllable 
H.H. Stinson: Three Apes from the East 
D.L. Champion Death Stops Payment 
Richard Connell: The Color of Honor 
Bruno Fischer: Middleman for Murder 
Richard Deming: The Man Who Choose the Devil 
C.M. Kornbluth: Beer-Bottle Polka 
Cornell Wollrich: Borrowed Crime