Review: Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled

Blurb: BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled is a compilation of uncompromising, gritty tales following in the footsteps of the tough and violent fiction popularized by the legendary Black Mask magazine in its early days. This collection includes thirteen lean and mean stories from the fingertips of Garnett Elliott, Glenn Gray, John Hornor Jacobs, Patricia Abbott, Thomas Pluck, Brad Green, Ron Earl Phillips, Kent Gowran, Amy Grech, Benoit Lelievre, Kieran Shea, David Cranmer, and Wayne D. Dundee and a boiled down look at hardboiled fiction in an introduction by Ron Scheer. Edited by David Cranmer and Scott D. Parker.

Review: As advertised! What a nifty little collection and the price is right, too! Just 99¢ gets you a good read, chock full of tough guys and daunting dames with a whole lot of bullets flying. Names you know and those you don’t, no clunkers to be found. I have to say I especially enjoyed Pluck’s “Black Eyed Susan” which just hit a nerve, managing to be both funny and cringingly painful. Abbott’s “Ric with No K” reminded me in a way of Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” because it captured that kind of liminal space of those teenage years and the danger it often invites. Good stuff. Get it.

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5 Comments

  1. Let’s face it — I’m a sucker for violent and funny.

  2. I’d take a bullet for a swell book like this.

  3. Daunting dames. Like that.


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