Fun, fun and more fun, with some disturbing elements along the way. Black Mask is a legendary magazine, and this collection put together by the wonderful people at Black Lizard preserves its riches for all. The quality of the content is uneven, as it must be, but it's a delight to dip in and read something at random -- you truly don't know what you'll find. Modern sensibilities may reel here at the casual racism, sexism, misogyny, misanthropy, homophobia, ethnic slurring, etc. in many of the tal...

Good book. Entertaining and illustrative. Being an omnibus, not all stories have the same level of quality, but the general average is quite high. A very nice experience if you want to capture the style of the Black Mask type of short stories. It is addictive. In general, they are stories depicting a hard-boiled private dick. Some dialogues are in the best Chandler style. But you also have some instances of English-style crime story. All in all, a good anthology and a lasting (well over 1000 pag...

Although I didn't read every single story in this collection, I did read enough to know that these authors were fantastic storytellers. It's small wonder that so many of them provided content for the burgeoning movie industry of their time.FWIW, there's one female author who wrote stories for Black Mask about a woman detective, which was apparently not well-received by the magazine's readership. I found that an interesting contrast to the early film industry, which embraced women storytellers. A...

Discovering The Black Mask was like finding a pot of gold. After realizing how much I enjoyed reading specific authors, I found a common thread, that many were published early in their career by a pulp magazine called The Black Mask.It was first published in 1920 and continued regular publication with some interruptions until 1951. Many noted authors were able to have their first stories published in the originally 10 cent (I believe) magazine and again, I believe it was similar to a comic book

If vintage noir is your cup of tea this book will be right up your alley. Hammett, Chandler, etc. There is an author here named Frederick Brown whose writing I like a lot. I have a SF anthology of short stories by him (Parodox Lost) that I pick up now and then. He wrote for tv in the 50s and his stories are reminiscent of that. In Black Mask the tales also are reminiscent of tough guy 50s tv and 30s thru 50s noir films. As I've mentioned before - I love this kind of stuff!

It's a huge collection of stories ranging from trashy (in a good way, mostly) to classic.One quibble, and it's a slightly alarming one. The editor says in the bio of Katherine Brocklebank (a great story, by the way - one of four she wrote for BLACK MASK - but she seems to have done nothing else, as far as I can find...) that, other than hiding behind initials and pseudonyms, no other women seem to have written for BLACK MASK, despite its having a female editor for many years. It happens not to b...

May I introduce to readers Katherine Brocklebank (criminally listed nowhere within goodreads until right now!), the creator of Tex, a female border patrol agent of 1928, was the only woman writer identified as such (unless there were other women writers writing under male psuedonyms) "in the 32 year history of Black Mask magazine even when it was under the control of a female editor, Fanny Ellsworth, from 1936 to 1940," writes Otto Penzler, editor of the terrific "Black Lizard Big Book of Black

My library's multiple audio books are apparently part of this book. Rather than create more books which would be confusing, I'll just list those I read. I'll probably need to reopen this review for later ones, although I'm not sure. There are a lot of different Black Mask books edited by Penzler. It looks like #10 & #11 of this collection, which I've already read & reviewed, are listed separately.All were very well narrated. Kudos to whoever matched the narrator to the story. Black Mask Stories,...

Black Mask was the most important and influential pulp magazine of the detective fiction genre during the first half of the 20th-Century. Publishing the major authors of the literary field, some of whom would be among the most talented and seminal authors in American literature, it was the cornerstone of a then emerging style of writing termed the "hardboiled" school of fiction which highlighted a world of tough, wisecracking private eyes, sultry and troubled dames, and criminals of varying degr...

Pulp fiction collection with some gems and some selections I was surprised at. I want to emphasize that this is a large, inclusive collection available in one tome for the great convenience of the reader. No searching through old magazines or records. There are some I wish I had not read though - like a Klan story? Was not expecting that.Enjoy the gems and skip the ugly.

This is a beautiful and enormous collection but, sadly, my only purpose was to read the Cornell Woolrich tale herein, and then back to ILL it goes. Coincidentally, it was the last story in the book.The story was "Borrowed Crime" and I think it ended up on my list because its set-up features Woolrich using the abject poverty of the Depression as his plot prompt. A poor man discovers that his son *must* receive treatment (actually, the treatment is being sent out to hot, dry western climes) or sur...

Wow...this took me a loooooooooooong time to get through, but I'm glad I stuck with it as there are some true gems of the noir genre in here. I will miss reading you slowly, you massively heavy, wrist breaking book!

Read this one long ago. Even as a compilation, this one was too much of a mixed bag. The lay-out and illustrations were enjoyable. Font and overall presentation was also rather retro, with the introductory write-up placing things in perspective. But...Unfortunately most of the stories remained tied to their time. There were a few jewels, expectedly. The rest, in my humble opinion, were entirely forgettable.In case you are looking for period pieces, this one is good. Otherwise, if you are looking...