Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... The Complete Slayers: Fast One and the Complete Short Stories of Paul Cainby Paul Cain
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. no reviews | add a review
Fifteen stories and one novel--hard-boiled classics by an undisputed master Following gangsters, blackmailers, and gunmen through the underbelly of 1930s America on their journeys to do dark deeds, Paul Cain's stories are classics of his genre. The protagonists of ambiguous morality who populate Cain's work are portrayed with a cinematic flair for the grim hardness of their world. Fast One, Cain's only novel, was originally serialized in Black Mask in the 1930s. It introduces us to Gerry Kells, a hard-nosed criminal who still holds fast to his humanity in a Los Angeles that's crooked to the core. This collection presents Cain's classic crime writing to a contemporary audience. This ebook features an introduction by Boris Dralyuk. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.52Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1900-1944LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
The editors, including Max Allan Collins, did a great job of pulling together all of these stories before they were completely lost. Apparently that was a very tough job. One, "The Tasting Machine" was an early example of bizzaro fiction, very much at odds with all the other stories which were hard boiled detective or criminal.
Cain is very, very terse, often barely sketching the characters & action in his plot driven tales, yet that whirls about in maddening twists & turns. His characters all tend to be amoral, at best. They drink like fish, drug, gamble, & shoot each other down in such numbers that it's hard to keep track, especially since there are entire scene changes occasionally from one paragraph to the next. You can't skim this prose or you'll get lost.
Some elements are very dated & even hackneyed. Many of the stories rise to a crescendo of violence & that makes little sense until the 'hero' explains it all to us in the last page or so. That happened a bit too often. While he did create one of the first female detectives, most of his ladies were supporting characters, damsels in distress or femme fatales. It was definitely a white man's world, although there wasn't a lot of bad racial prejudice.
Overall, it was a fantastic read & a must for any noir detective or hard case buff. Each story is introduced by another hard boiled author & their insight is wonderful, although they all agree that Cain wrote some of the toughest, meanest characters around. His only novel "The Fast One" is included in this as the original 5 short stories. I think I would have preferred to start with it. Great stuff. ( )