Hardboiled America Lurid Paperbacks And The Masters Of Noir

Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, David Goodis ... these are a few of the masters of noir responsible for the great lurid paperbacks of the thirties, forties, and fifties. With titles likeThe Big Sleep, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye,andStreet of the Lost,with racy cover lines like "My gun-butt smashed his skull!" and "Ruthless terror ripped away the mask that hid cold fear," and with some of the most extraordinary cover illustrations ever to grace American literature, these paperbacks held the ingredients of American nightmares. InHarboiled Americalavishly illustrated with 135 paperback covers, and expanded with new material on Thompson, Goodis, and othersGeoffrey O'Brien masterfully explores the art, history, and ideas of the American paperback.

Geoffrey O'Brien is the author of Floating City: Selected Poems 1978-1995, The Phantom Empire, Dream Time, and other books. Executive editor of The Library of America, he also edited The Reader's Catalog.