The Deadly Streets

A set of very minor 1950s stories from Ellison, published in various less than stellar detective magazines, and even in a Men's magazine, some under pseudonyms, and a couple co-written with Robert Silverberg and Henry Slesar. The subject matter is almost invariably doomed young gang members, with a few welcome variations. While this isn't a collection to read one story after another, it is enjoyable. It is a lot more straightforward than the science fiction that made Ellison a household name (at least among science fiction writers.) This book is the work of a professional writer, churning out story after story as quickly as he could to make a living. It is a mark of Ellison's ability that despite their simplicity, there is hardly a show more false note or a bad sentence in the collection. Ellison's new introduction makes more of the stories than they are - but it is quite interesting. Written in 1983 when New York City was much more crime-ridden than in the era (1958) when The Deadly Streets was first published, it is an angry, overdone exercise in paranoia and catharsis. show less

HE can put himself in the mind of a New York street kid with violent tendencies very easily. This is a collection that first saw the book racks as an Ace paperback in 1958. It sold for 35 cents. When you couple it with "The Last Exit to Brooklyn", you have the canon as regards pre-druglord gang life. The prose is excellent, and the images it leaves you with are vivid.

For ten weeks in the early 1950s, Harlan Ellison joined a notorious Brooklyn street gang known as the Barons as part of his research for his first novel, Web of the City and later, his crime collection, The Deadly Streets.

The first edition of The Deadly Streets was released in 1958 and contained 11 hard-boiled tales about teenage street gangs. The book was re-released in 1975 with an additional five crime stories, some written in collaboration with other writers including “Ship-Shape Pay-Off” with Robert Silverberg and “Sob Story” Henry Slesar.

What sets these additional five stories apart from the original 11 is that they are much shorter and completely unrelated to the theme of teenage street gangs. Rather, they tend to focus show more on mob hits (“The Man with the Golden Tongue”), revenge (“Rat Hater”, “Hippie Slayer”) and personal vendettas (the aforementioned “Ship-Shape Pay-Off”). “Sob Story” is the weakest of the lot and barely qualifies

My personal favorites from the collection include “We Take Care of our Dead,” “The Man with the Golden Tongue,” “Johnny Slice’s Stoolie,” “Buy Me That Blade,” “Hippie Slayer,” “With a Knife in Her Hand,” “Dead Shot,” and “Students of the Assassin.”

Although the slang is outdated and the depictions of violence mild by today’s standards, each of the original 11 tales present a vivid snapshot of the bloody and ruthless street gang culture of 1950s New York. show less