A Century of Noir: Thirty-two Classic Crime Stories, 2002

I’d planned to review The Accused, a hardboiled novel by Harold R. Daniels for Friday’s Forgotten Books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase but since there were still a few more pages left to be read, I thought I’d write about a collection of stories I'd overlooked so far.

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I found A Century of Noir: Thirty-two Classic Crime Stories on Amazon. The crime fiction anthology is edited by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, and published by the New American Library, a Penguin Random House company.

The anthology offers “Thirty-two stories of stunning ingenuity. Thirty-two writers of legendary genius. One hundred years of crime fiction in a one-of-a-kind collection.”

Noir fiction is described in different ways by different people. You can say colourful things about it. Publishers Weekly put it nicely: “It may not actually span a century, but this volume offers plenty of blood, booze and cigarette smoke in worlds populated by flinty men and fetching women.”

I haven’t read any of the crime stories when they were first written and published, though I have read other stories by some of the authors in this collection. Apart from what appears to be an excellent storehouse of noir fiction, each of the thirty-two stories also offers an understanding of the art of writing crime fiction.

Contents

Introduction by Max Allan Collins

‘The Meanest Cop in the World’ by Chester Himes

‘Just Another Stiff’ by Carroll John Daly

‘Something for the Sweeper’ by Norbert Davis

‘I Feel Bad About Killing You’ by Leigh Brackett

‘Don’t Look Behind You’ by Fredric Brown

‘Death Comes Gift-Wrapped’ by William P. McGivern

‘Murder for Money’ by John D. MacDonald

‘Cigarette Girl’ by James M. Cain

‘Guilt-Edged Blonde’ by Ross Macdonald

‘The Gesture’ by Gil Brewer

‘The Plunge’ by David Goodis

‘Tomorrow I Die’ by Mickey Spillane

‘Never Shake a Family Tree’ by Donald E. Westlake

‘Somebody Cares’ by Talmage Powell

‘The Granny Woman’ by Dorothy B. Hughes

‘Wanted-Dead and Alive’ by Stephen Marlowe

‘The Double Take’ by Richard S. Prather

‘The Real Shape of the Coast’ by John Lutz

‘Dead Men Don't Dream’ by Evan Hunter

‘The Used’ by Loren D. Estleman

‘Busted Blossoms’ by Stuart M. Kaminsky

‘The Kerman Kill’ by William Campbell Gault

‘Deceptions’ by Marcia Muller

‘The Nickel Derby’ by Robert J. Randisi

‘The Reason Why’ by Ed Gorman

‘No Comment’ by John Jakes

‘How Would You Like It?’ by Lawrence Block

‘Grace Notes’ by Sara Paretsky

‘One Night at Dolores Park’ by Bill Pronzini

‘Dead Drunk’ by Lia Matera

‘Kaddish for the Kid’ by Max Allan Collins

‘Lost and Found’ by Benjamin M. Schutz