Product Description
From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by “the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine” (Booklist).
Otto Penzler selected and wrote introductions to the best of the best, the darkest of these dark, vintage stories for the collection The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories. Now that collection is available for the first time on audio.
Includes:
Otto Penzler selected and wrote introductions to the best of the best, the darkest of these dark, vintage stories for the collection The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories. Now that collection is available for the first time on audio.
Includes:
- “The Black Bottle” by Whitman Chambers; read by Bart Tinapp
- “The Corpse Didn't Kick” by Milton K. Ozaki; read by Bart Tinapp
- “Try the Girl” by Raymond Chandler; read by Scott Brick
- “Don't You Cry for Me” by Norbert Davis; read by Eric Conger
- “T. McGuirk Steals a Diamond” by Ray Cummings; read by Alan Winter
- “Wait for Me” by Steve Fisher; read by Carol Monda
- “Ask Me Another” by Frank Gruber; read by Jeff Woodman
Reviews/Praise
“Any fan of crime stories and radio shows will find these a compelling listen, spiced with a variety of accomplished narrators.”
—The Bookwatch
“There is gold in every set. . . . Hitting like a Tommy gun blast, these pulse-pounding collections will leave mystery hounds panting for the next installment.”
—Library Journal [starred review]
“Black Mask lives. . . . Read by top-notch performers.”
—BookPage
“These six stories showcase some surprisingly compelling writing by work-a-day writers, most of whom never achieved wide recognition. . . . Each of the stories gets its own narrator, and each one is stylistically on the mark, evoking the rough-and tumble thirties and forties with picturesque, streetwise, and world-weary voices.”
—AudioFile
“Hardboiled crime fiction was never better than in the pages of Black Mask magazine, and Black Mask has never been better than in these vibrant, exciting audio editions. Close your eyes and you can practically smell the gunfire and whiskey.”
—Charles Ardai
“The stories of Black Mask and the audio book are a love-match as inevitable and passionate and entrancing as a private eye and a femme fatale. This is a series that will make you want to get in your car in the middle of a rainy night and drive around listening.”
—Robert Olen Butler, author of The Hot Country, a Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller
“The Black Mask Audio Series from Otto Penzler is a tribute to early pulp mystery and detective fiction that was highly entertaining, exciting and terrifically written. But this collection is far more than a nostalgic salute to the past, it’s downright fun to enjoy in the present.”
—Joseph Wambaugh
“Pitch-perfect performances of stories that are as rollicking as they are artful. I drove from Delaware to Mississippi on one long Black Mask bender, and if it weren’t for the Gulf of Mexico I’d still be driving.”
—Michael Kardos, author of The Three-Day Affair
