An unstoppable anthology of crime stories culled from Black Mask magazine the legendary publication that turned a pulp phenomenon into literary mainstream. 
 
Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir.  It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared.  It was the slum in which such American literary titans like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler got their start, and it was the home of stories with titles like “Murder Is Bad Luck,” “Ten Carets of Lead,” and “Drop Dead Twice.” Collected here is best of the best, the hardest of the hardboiled, and the darkest of the dark of America’s finest crime fiction. This masterpiece collection represents a high watermark of America’s underbelly. Crime writing gets no better than this.
 
Featuring

   • Deadly Diamonds
   • Dancing Rats
   • A Prize Fighter Fighting for His Life
   • A Parrot that Wouldn’t Talk
 
Including 

   • Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon as it was originally published
   • Lester Dent's Luck in print for the first time

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Foreword         Otto Penzler
 
Introduction     Keith Alan Deutsch
 
Come and Get It                                 Erle Stanley Gardner
Cry Silence                                           Fredric Brown
Arson Plus                                           Peter Collinson
Fall Guy George                                   Harmon Coxe
Doors in the Dark                               Frederick Nebel
Luck                                                       Lester Dent
The Maltese Falcon                            Dashiell Hammett
Ten Carats of Lead                            Stewart Sterling
Murder Is Bad Luck                           Wyatt Blassingame
Her Dagger Before Me                      Talmadge Powell
One Shot Charles                               G. Booth
The Dancing Rats                               Richard Sale
Bracelets                                              Katherine Brocklebank
Diamonds Mean Death                      Thomas Walsh
Murder in the Ring                              Raoul Whitfield
The Parrot That Wouldn’t Talk        Walter C. Brown
Let the Dead Alone                             Merle Constiner
Knights of the Open Palm                Carroll John Daly
Waiting for Rusty                                William Cole
Rainbow Diamonds                            Ramon Decolta
The Ring on the Hand of Death        William Rollins Jr.
Body Snatcher                                    Theodore A. Tinsley
Murder on the Gayway                      Dwight V. Babcock
The Key                                                 Cleve F. Adams
The Bloody Bokhara                          William Campbell Gault
A Taste for Cognac                            Brett Halliday
Sauce for the Gander                          Day Keene
A Little Different                             W. T. Ballard
The Shrieking Skeleton                   Charles M. Green
Drop Dead Twice                                Hank Searls
The Sound of the Shot                       Dale Clark
Flaming Angel                                      Frederick C. Davis
Odds on Death                                    Don M. Mankiewicz
Those Catrini                                       Norvell Page
Smoke in Your Eyes                           Hugh B. Cave
Blood, Sweat and Biers                    Robert Reeves
The Black Bottle                                 Whitman Chambers
The Corpse Didn’t Kick                     Milton K. Ozaki
Try the Girl                                            Raymond Chandler
Don’t You Cry for Me                          Norbert Davis
T. McGuirk Steals a Diamond          Ray Cummings
Wait for Me                                          Steve Fisher
Ask Me Another                                  Frank Gruber
Dirty Work                                            Horace McCoy
Merely Murder                                     Julius Long
Murder in One Syllable                      John D. MacDonald
Three Apes from the East                H. H. Stinson
Death Stops Payment                       D. L. Champion
The Color of Honor                             Richard Connell
Middleman for Murder                      Bruno Fischer
The Man Who Chose the Devil        Richard Deming
Beer-Bottle Polka                               C. M. Kornbluth
Borrowed Crime                                 Cornell Woolrich

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