Sat 3 Mar 2012
If you like (love) old vintage crime fiction as much as I do, and if you have a Nook, Kindle or other similar electronic reading device, you’re in luck.
A new ebook website, Prologue Books, has been in the works for the past few months, and it’s now online at www.prologuebooks.com.
You’ll find a complete list of current offerings below. Greg Shepard of Stark House Press, one of the fellows responsible for this new line of books, tells me that other authors yet to come are Harry Whittington, Dan Marlowe, Helen Nielsen, G. H. Otis, Jack Webb, Gil Brewer, Louis Trimble, Barry Malzberg. Westerns are next. Science fiction and adventure are coming, he says. (The other fellow involved is Ben LeRoy, editor of Tyrus Books. Trust me. These guys know what they’re doing.)
My reaction? What a great idea! One whose time has come. The good stuff. The kind of tough, hard-boiled fiction I’ve been reading for over 50 years. Looking through the list of books below, I bought some of them new off the local drugstore’s spinner rack when I was still in my teens. (I still have them.) The others in my collection I had to scrounge up from used bookstores here and there all over the country, from Maine to St. Louis and back again.
And here they are again, all spruced up, the dust brushed off and ready for a new generation of readers. Personally all I could wish for are paper editions as well, but this is the next best thing. Believe me, this is the best news I’ve had all week.
Robert Colby
Run for the Money
The Faster She Runs
The Deadly Desire
The Captain Must Die
Secret of the Second Door
Lament for Julie
Kim
Beautiful But Bad
These Lonely, These Dead
Murder Mistress
The Star Trap
Kill Me a Fortune
In a Vanishing Room
The Quaking Widow
Richard Deming
This Game of Murder
Tweak the Devil’s Nose
Give the Girl a Gun
The Gallows in My Garden
Fletcher Flora
The Seducer
The Brass Bed
Skuldoggery
Park Avenue Tramp
The Hot Shot
Lysistrata
Wake Up With a Stranger
Killing Cousins
Leave Her to Hell
William Campbell Gault
Sweet Wild Wench
The Convertible Hearse
Square in the Middle
Vein of Violence
The Wayward Widow
The Bloody Bokhara
Murder in the Raw
Dead Hero
County Kill
Don’t Cry for Me
The Hundred Dollar Girl
The Canvas Coffin
Run, Killer, Run
Night Lady
Million Dollar Tramp
End of a Call Girl
Death Out of Focus
Day of the Ram
Blood on the Boards
Orrie Hitt
Shabby Street
Woman Hunt
Untamed Lust
Unfaithful Wives
The Sucker
The Promoter
The Lady is a Lush
Suburban Wife
Sin Doll
Sheba
Pushover
Ladies Man
I’ll Call Every Monday
Dolls and Dues
Frank Kane
A Short Bier
A Real Gone Guy
Trigger Mortis
Red Hot Ice
Johnny Liddell’s Morgue
Dead Weight
Stacked Deck
Henry Kane
The Case of the Murdered Madame
Martinis and Murder
Don’t Call Me Madame
Death of a Dastard
Armchair in Hell
Fistful of Death
Death is the Last Lover
M. E. Kerr
Fell Down
Fell Back
Fell
Ed Lacy
The Freeloaders
Two Hot to Handle
Whit Masterson
A Hammer in His Hand
A Shadow in the Wild
Badge of Evil
Dead, She Was Beautiful
Evil Come, Evil Go
The Dark Fantastic
A Cry in the Night
Marijane Meaker
Scott Free
Game of Survival
Wade Miller
Deadly Weapon
Murder Charge
Shoot to Kill
Uneasy Street
Murder – Queen High
Calamity Fair
Vin Packer
The Young and Violent
Girl on the Best Seller List
Something in the Shadows
Dark Don’t Catch Me
Come Destroy Me
Alone at Night
5:45 to Suburbia
Don’t Rely on Gemini
The Damnation of Adam Blessing
The Evil Friendship
The Hare in March
The Thrill Kids
The Twisted Ones
Three Day Terror
Intimate Victims
Kin Platt
Murder in Rosslare
Match Point for Murder
Dead As They Come
The Body Beautiful Murder
The Giant Kill
The Kissing Gourami
The Princess Stakes Murder
The Pushbutton Butterfly
The Screwball King Murder
Talmage Powell
With a Madman Behind Me
Man Killer
Start Screaming Murder
The Girl’s Number Doesn’t Answer
The Killer is Mine
The Smasher
Corpus Delectable
Peter Rabe
The Silent Wall
The Return of Marvin Palaver
The Box
My Lovely Executioner
Murder Me for Nickels
Journey into Terror
Blood on the Desert
Benny Muscles In
Anatomy of a Killer
Agreement to Kill
A Shroud for Jesso
A House in Naples
Charles Runyon
The Anatomy of Violence
Color Him Dead
Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die
The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed
March 3rd, 2012 at 6:55 pm
And you can add Mulholland Books that plans to release 25 of 29 Jim Thompson books as e-books.
Also check out Mysterious Press lineup for out of print mystery writers now available on e-books.
http://www.mulhollandbooks.com
http://www.mysteriouspress.com
March 4th, 2012 at 12:27 am
Steve, If you had to pick half a dozen or so books from the above list to purchase which ones would they be?
March 4th, 2012 at 2:15 am
Truthfully? There’s no way I could limit myself to six books. Maybe six authors. I’d go with the Wade Miller grouping first, and there’s a half dozen right there.
After that, the Peter Rabe books. You can’t go wrong with any of them. After that, it’s a tossup between Henry Kane and William Campbell Gault, giving Kane the slightest bit of edge.
Back when I was buying them from the drugstore spinner rack, though, I always grabbed up the next Vin Packer book as soon as I saw it. I don’t know how they’ve aged, though. I haven’t read one in a long, long time.
March 5th, 2012 at 11:49 am
I followed the link to the web site, but for the life of me I could not figure out how to order or download any of the titles. And it lists no prices.
March 5th, 2012 at 1:40 pm
Hi Stan
I had the same problem at first, but I think they want you to order through Amazon (Kindle) or Barnes & Noble (Nook), and so on. Maybe they’ll set up their own shopping cart later on. As far as prices are concerned, the two or three books I checked out on Amazon were $3.19 each.
But they really ought to say this on their own site. I’ll forward your comment on to Greg.
— Steve
March 5th, 2012 at 2:15 pm
I have already bought Kin Platt’s “Screwball King Murder” at Amazon. I found them by searching by author. It was $3.19.
March 5th, 2012 at 2:23 pm
Here’s Greg’s reply:
“As far as I know, F&W have no intention of attaching a shopping cart to their Prologue website. But I agree that there needs to be more information so that it is clear that all purchases need to be done via Amazon, etc. Will pass that on.”
March 5th, 2012 at 2:32 pm
I don’t know how screwy the SCREWBALL KING MURDER is as a mystery, since it’s one I don’t have, as it never came out in paperback. But because it’s a baseball mystery, it looks as though I’ll have to obtain a copy.
(The title refers to a left-handed pitcher for the LA Dodgers known for throwing a screwball as one of his arsenal of pitches.)