Wed 11 Apr 2012
Reviewed by Walker Martin: PAUL CAIN – The Complete Slayers.
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Reviews[25] Comments
PAUL CAIN – The Complete Slayers. Edited and with a biographic essay by Max Allan Collins and Lynn F. Myers, Jr. Centipede Press, hardcover, March 2012.
Recently I was very impressed by a collection of hardboiled literature and we discussed it here on Mystery*File. I’m talking about Frederick Nebel’s The Complete Casebook of Cardigan. Around the same time, a second collection was published, this time by Paul Cain (no relation to James Cain). The book is titled The Complete Slayers and has created a buzz on the internet and in some discussion groups.
Paul Cain’s career was far shorter than Frederick Nebel and except for one short story in 1949, all his fiction appeared during the period between 1932 and 1936. At least three major newspapers have reviewed the book, one did not like it and the other two loved it.
In The Wall Street Journal, Lee Sandlin bluntly states, “Cain wasn’t any good.” However in The Washington Post, Michael Dirda, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reviews, gives the collection a very favorable review and stresses Raymond Chandler’s quote about Paul Cain’s style being “some kind of high point in the ultra hard-boiled manner.”
He then finishes his long review by saying, “There’s absolutely nothing to criticize about the knockout stories inside the book…” The Los Angeles Review of Books also gives it a favorable long review and discusses “The grim hardness of a neglected noir master.”
I’ve been a long time admirer of Paul Cain and first read his work in Black Mask back in the 1970’s when I was picking up back issues for only a few dollars each. Of the 20 stories in this collection, 17 of them first appeared in Black Mask. Five were combined and published as Cain’s only novel, Fast One.
I reread the novel a couple times over the years and now with this collection, which reprints the novel in its original magazine form, I feel I can safely say that Fast One definitely deserves to be on any list of the 10 best hardboiled novels.
On a recent panel at PulpFest in Columbus Ohio, the topic was Black Mask and the consensus was that Paul Cain was one of the very best writers for the magazine, after of course, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Exactly how editor Joseph Shaw discovered Paul Cain is still a mystery but we can recreate some of the details of what must have happened.
In 1930 Dashiell Hammett stopped writing for Black Mask. He had been writing for the magazine for several years and had just about created the hardboiled detective. I say just about because some scholars also credit Carroll John Daly. He left not because of any disagreement but simply because the movie industry in Hollywood paid far more money.
Shaw even sent Hammett a check for $500 as an advance on another story, but this money was now just pocket change since Hollywood was paying more than this every week.
In an attempt to replace Hammett, Joseph Shaw got Frederick Nebel to start writing a series about another agency detective called Donahue. There were over a dozen of these novelets, which will soon see publication as Tough As Nails (Altus Press). Then in 1932 he discovered Paul Cain, and it’s obvious that Cain was encouraged to write in the Hammett, tough hardboiled style.
The first story by Cain appeared in the March 1932 issue of Black Mask and was called “Fast One” The first novelet of a series that would eventually be published as the novel, Fast One.
It stars Gerry Kells and relates the complicated plot of how Kells gets involved in gambling and corrupt politics. The story is very bleak, very violent, very fast.
Kells gets his face carefully kicked, sapped on the head, shot in the leg, an ice pick in the back, and finally a car crash. If you are looking for a clean cut hero with a happy ending, then this is not the book for you.
His girlfriend Granquist has no first name and is a drunk. Again, not your typical pretty, young heroine of most novels. In fact I consider her to be one of the most believable gangster girlfriends that I have read about.
Then in 1933, Shaw discovered Raymond Chandler as the hunt to replace Hammett continued. In 1936 Joseph Shaw left Black Mask over a salary dispute and he had such a big influence that several writers also quit the magazine.
When he left, so did Paul Cain, Frederick Nebel, and Raymond Chandler. Lester Dent also stopped writing for the magazine. He only wrote two hardboiled stories but he might have written more with Shaw’s encouragement. The magazine became quite different after Shaw left, certainly less hardboiled.
The Complete Slayers is published by Centipede Press in a special 500 copy edition, signed by the editors and the artist, Ron Lesser. The cover price is $75 but I see that amazon.com still is discounting it at $47.
This book is definitely worth the price. There are 622 pages, a biographical essay about Cain’s life, a 13 page color section of book and magazine covers, and each story has an introduction. The dust jacket cover is a knockout showing a scantily dressed blond, casually pointing a gun at some guy lying on the floor.
There is one incorrect statement in the biography that has to be pointed out. The editors state that after Shaw left Black Mask in 1936, Daisy Bacon took over as editor. Daisy worked for Street and Smith and was responsible for the astounding success of Love Story, which was the biggest seller of all the pulp magazines. I’ve heard circulation reports of 600,000 a week.
She eventually became editor of Detective Story in the 1940’s but at no time did she ever edit Black Mask. The lady who took over after Shaw was Fanny Ellsworth(1936-1940). Then Ken White became editor in 1940 when Popular Publications bought the title.
If you like hardboiled fiction or the tough Black Mask style, then this collection is a must buy. It gets my highest recommendation.
April 11th, 2012 at 9:21 pm
Walker,
Another terrific review of a book I was going to pass on buying. I have all the stories in pulp format already, so I figured to save a few bucks and skip it, but thankfully, with a little egging on from Phil Nelson, I didn’t!! I purchased my copy from Amazon for the $47.00 you mentioned, with free shipping. The only complaint I can make is the intro was sloppily edited, if at all. Other than that, there was quite a bit of work put into this volume. Nice NEW pen and ink sketches of good looking girls adorn some pages as well as some of the original magazines interior artwork make this a very nice book to own.I can’t figure out why they didn’t use all the Black Mask covers of the Cain issues, (only a few are used)but they threw in other insignificant ones that have nothing to do with this volume!They did at least put in a photo of the ultra-rare hardcover dust jacket of “Fast One”. When I first started collecting pulps many years ago, I had tunnel vision as to what I wanted: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Paul Cain!!
Cain wrote as good as either of the other two as far as I’m concered, when it came to these Black Mask appearances. The only story that’s not worth bothering with pulp wise has to be the DFW “555”. It’s a total throw-away story. Overall, it’s a pleasure to own a copy of this book. Anyone thinking about buying this, might want to do it sooner than later, as it’s limited to 500 copies, all of which are signed by the artist and editors. Only available in Hardcover as far as I know.
April 11th, 2012 at 9:26 pm
…another stellar review by the Ronit Ave. Raconteur and Mystery*File’s own in-house Pulp historian, Walker Martin! The only thing better than reading Walker write about the pulps would be to share a day long ride to a pulp convention with him so you could pick his brain…oh well…one can dream 🙂
April 11th, 2012 at 10:45 pm
Paul, another great photo in the book is on page 23, showing Joe Shaw looking very distinguished and standing in front of several BLACK MASK covers. I’d love to have a print of this photo to frame and hang in my living room.
I agree “555” from DFW is a very minor short story but unusual for having a black taxi driver as the protagonist.
I forgot to mention that Cain also was involved in the screenplay for one of my favorite horror movies, THE BLACK CAT.
April 11th, 2012 at 11:13 pm
Scott in Comment #2 brings up a point that is of concern to me. How are 5 long time pulp collectors going to survive a 14 hour trip in a van to the Windy City Pulp Convention in Chicago? I still have not recovered from the last year’s trip.
But after reading this Paul Cain collection of hardboiled literature, we should be tough enough to make it.
April 11th, 2012 at 11:43 pm
In Comment #3, Walker mentions that Cain was involved with the screenplay of THE BLACK CAT, but failed to mention that this was done under a different pen name, that of Peter Ruric. For a list of his screen credits he accumulated during his short career in Hollywood, here’s a link to his IMDB page:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0750538/
But neither Cain nor Rurik was his name at birth, which was George Carroll Sims. There’s a short bio on IMDB, but a much longer, more detailed one in the book.
The title, by the way, might need some explanation to people who don’t know that there was a previous collection of his short stories called SEVEN SLAYERS. It was published as a hard-to-find paperback by Saint Enterprises in 1946. Later on there was an Avon edition in 1950, still somewhat scarce, followed by one from Black Lizard in 1987, easy to obtain.
But $47 for a hardcover edition as nice as this one? It’s a bargain!
April 12th, 2012 at 12:34 am
As Steve mentions above, this book is a bargain. I’ve bought several Centipede Press books and they all are fine examples of the art of book making. Some of the nicer editions with art have a list price of over $200 and a limited print run of only 200 copies. The prices go up when the books go out of print.
The man behind Centipede is Jerad Walters and his website goes into detail about several of the books. One of my favorites is a series of books he calls MASTERS OF THE WEIRD TALE. So far, enormous collections of near a 1000 pages have been published collecting the work of Blackwood, Poe, Hodgson, Lovecraft, Long, Kuttner, and Karl Wagner. More are planned.
The art books are excellent. I have one just dealing with the art illustrating H.P. Lovecraft. A recent one deals with the art of Lee Brown Coye. Another future book will reproduce the artwork of Hannes Bok.
April 12th, 2012 at 4:02 am
I am a big fan of Cain’s short stories and screenplays. But not so enthused about his novel FAST ONE.
My comments are at:
http://mikegrost.com/hardboil.htm#Cain
I’m amazed to see national newspapers reviewing pulp fiction.
Usually old mystery fiction is completely ignored in the non-mystery press.
April 12th, 2012 at 5:16 am
Thank you, Walker, for another great review, and another clear ‘BUY’ recommendation.
It is simply great that people like Altus republish the works of these sometimes legendary, sometimes almost forgotten writers, who had quite some influence, being read by millions of readers, back then.
The Doc
April 12th, 2012 at 5:20 am
@ Mike ,
I think, that blogs like Steve’s here, and their growing following, as well as your own work on the net,have brought about this sudden interest of mainstream media in pulps.
This orphan literature has simply been adopted by such a lot of people, even in academe, that there is no way around.
Which is a VERY good thing, as a lot of it is still great to read, and an important source of everyday life and beliefs back then.
The Doc
April 12th, 2012 at 6:46 am
Mike Grost in Comment #7 provides a link also discussing the influence of Dashiell Hammett on Paul Cain. I’m sure that editor Joe Shaw definitely told Cain to use the work of Hammett as a guide. The stylistic influence of Hammett is very obvious.
I think the reason that we see national newspapers reviewing pulp fiction is that in this case at least, the quality of the fiction merits the attention. Plus Paul Cain is an excellent example of hardboiled literature at its most extreme.
However, I do take the opposite view concerning FAST ONE. I think it’s Cain’s best work.
April 12th, 2012 at 7:06 am
I agree completely that Cain’s fiction is of high quality and merits national attention.
But lots of the reprints from Crippen & Landru, Rue Morgue Press, Ramble House are also of high quality. And my impression is that their work rarely gets the big national reviews. Very unfortunate!
Maybe this attention being paid to Cain marks a change of attitude. Let’s hope so!
I last read FAST ONE in 1980. Sounds like it’s time for a second look on my part…
April 12th, 2012 at 10:12 am
Mike Grost, I don’t think quality is the reason mainstream press is turning its attention to Paul Cain, David Goodis, and the hardboiled school. It is due to how close such fiction is to today’s modern thriller.
April 12th, 2012 at 10:33 am
Michael
As usual, you’ve put your finger right on the crux of things. The mainstream press is not at all interested in the Golden Age of Detection. Carr, Christie, Queen and the rest of the “fair play” school are all old hat and dull, and mean nothing to them.
Sherlock Holmes got back in the news with the new revisionist movies, not so much the original guy with the deerstalker hat and magnifying glass.
The movie PULP FICTION maybe was the start of the mainstream interest in what we call pulp fiction, but only the hardboiled aspect of it, which is good to see, but the honest to goodness detective fiction published by Crippen & Landru and Rue Morgue Press, if any of their books are reviewed in the Washington Post, you’d have to pinch me twice before I’d believe it.
April 12th, 2012 at 12:36 pm
I’ve always preferred the hardboiled, tough style of literature when I read crime or mystery novels. I think it’s less dated and holds up better decades later when reread.
For instance a couple years ago I reread all 18 of the Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald and they did not date like alot of fiction from the so called Golden Age. The same thing with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. I thought they were great back in the 1960’s when I first read them and now over 40 years later, I still find their work to be highly outstanding.
I first read Paul Cain in 1969 when I started buying up all the BLACK MASKS that I could find. I was really impressed by his hardboiled, tough fiction back then and now, all these years later, I’m still impressed. I’m not saying Christie, Carr, Queen, are no good. It’s just that I can identify with the hardboiled style and find it to be more in tune with real life and the way things really are.
April 12th, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Walker’s review convinced me to buy the Paul Cain collection even though I feel he is TOO hardboiled.I like most of the Black Mask authors.McCoy,Nebel,Whitfield (especially his Jo Gar stories) and Tinsley (Jerry Frost).However Cain is just a bridge too far.Even so I do feel he is an important author and deserves collecting.By the way one of the early hardboiled characters that is mostly ignored now is Gordon Young’s Don Everhard from Adventure.He first appeared around WW I and continued until 1940.It is interesting to follow his gradual evolution toward more of a Black Mask type character over the years.
April 12th, 2012 at 3:57 pm
Digges brings up a point that some readers have complained about, mainly that Paul Cain is too tough, too hardboiled, too bleak. However, it is hard not to agree that he is an important writer in the BLACK MASK school and deserves to be read and collected.
If you like Hammett, Chandler, and some of the other writers like Nebel, Whitfield, McCoy, Norbert Davis, etc, then you should be able to appreciate Paul Cain.
April 12th, 2012 at 5:20 pm
The more hard-boiled, the more eternally human and believable across the ages.
It is like street-wise bar-brawling versus a very complicated, yet stilted martial art.
The Doc
April 12th, 2012 at 8:10 pm
A nice analogy, Doc.
April 13th, 2012 at 9:33 am
While looking through some reference books I came across the following interesting comments about Paul Cain and FAST ONE:
In the Fall 1979 issue of THE ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE, Herbert Ruhm who edited an anthology of BLACK MASK stories, states “…certainly, the first part of FAST ONE is the unsurpassed opening of any hard-boiled novel.”
In TWENTIETH CENTURY CRIME AND MYSTERY WRITERS, E.R.Hagemann says of FAST ONE, “…the toughest tough-guy and most brutal gangster story ever written.”
In 1001 MIDNIGHTS, Bill Pronzine says, “The hardest of the hard-boiled writers for BLACK MASK in the early 1930’s was unquestionably Paul Cain.” He then calls FAST ONE stark and brutal and uncomfortable to read. “…one begins to feel a kind of breathless despair well before the end.”
I’ve included the above quotes just in case anyone is still undecided about buying this collection.
April 14th, 2012 at 8:32 pm
Walker
You have reminded me, a day or so late, that I should have posted Bill Pronzini’s review on this blog long before now.
Believing the old maxim, Better Late Than Never, I’ve just uploaded it now, along with a few more cover photos I thought people might enjoy seeing.
Check it out at https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=16513
— Steve
June 9th, 2012 at 12:36 am
I just saw THE BLACK CAT(1934) on TCM, which Paul Cain wrote under the Peter Ruric name. I’ve seen this film many times over the years and I’m now of the opinion that it is one of the very best of the Universal horror movies.
It is very atmospheric and influenced by the Art Deco style. Karloff and Lugosi are at their best and this is the best movie that the two starred in together. It’s on dvd and a must buy for any lover of the bizarre and unusual.
June 16th, 2012 at 11:06 pm
Issue #81 of the magazine, PAPERBACK PARADE, reprints the introduction to the Paul Cain collection. Unfortunately, I see that the error about Daisy Bacon editing BLACK MASK after Joe Shaw left remains uncorrected.
I’ll write to Gary Lovisi the editor and mention to him that Fanny Ellsworth took over as editor, not Daisy. Looks like this is one of those mistakes that will be hard to kill.
June 21st, 2012 at 3:45 pm
I have to believe revived interest in “hardboiled” stories by the authors mentioned is due to style and purpose. Chandler said it best, when he lost his job he read various pulps and BLACK MASK’s stories stood out: lean storytelling about people committing murder for good reason.
July 10th, 2012 at 9:12 am
I mentioned above that the cover price of THE COMPLETE SLAYERS is $75 but that amazon.com had copies for only $47.
Today I noticed that the book is out of print and now a new copy is $999.00 and used copies start at over $200.00. This is now officially a collectors item. I should have bought several copies at the discounted $47 price.
December 5th, 2023 at 11:55 pm
Just a note for admirers of Paul Cain, steegerbooks.com has just published a deluxe edition of his work titled LEAD PARTY, the complete fiction works of Paul Cain.
This gets my highest recommendation and hopefully the collection does not repeat the insane howler that Daisy Bacon edited Black Mask after Joe Shaw left.