In the 1960s the masters of crime fiction expanded the genre's literary and psychological possibilities with audacious new themes, forms, and subject matter--here are five of their finest works
This is the first of two volumes gathering the best American crime fiction of the 1960s, nine novels of astonishing variety and inventiveness that pulse with the energies of that turbulent, transformative decade.
In
The Murderers (1961) by Fredric Brown, an out-of-work actor, hanging out with Beat drifters on the fringes of Hollywood, concocts a murder scheme that devolves into nightmare. This late work by a master in many genres is one of his darkest and most ingenious.
Dan J. Marlowe's
The Name of the Game Is Death (1962) channels the inner life of a violent criminal who freely acknowledges the truth of a prison psychiatrist's diagnosis: "Your values are not civilized values." Written with unnerving emotional authenticity, the story hurtles toward an annihilating climax.
Charles Williams drew on his experience in the merchant marine for his thriller
Dead Calm (1963). A newlywed couple alone on a small yacht find themselves at the mercy of the mysterious survivor they have rescued from a sinking ship, in a suspenseful story that chillingly evokes the perils of the open ocean.
In the beautifully told and sharply observant
The Expendable Man (1963), Dorothy B. Hughes's final masterpiece of suspense, a young man in the American Southwest runs afoul of racial assumptions after he picks up a hitchhiker who soon turns up dead.
In twenty-four brilliantly constructed novels, Richard Stark (a pen name of Donald Westlake) charted the career of Parker, a hard-nosed professional thief, with rigorous clarity.
The Score (1964), a stand-out in the series, finds Parker and his criminal associates hatching a plot to rob simultaneously all the jewelry stores, payroll offices, and banks in a remote Western mining town, only to come up against the human limits of even the most intricate planning.
Volume features include an introduction by editor
Geoffrey O'Brien (
Hardboiled America), newly researched biographies of the writers and helpful notes, and an essay on textual selection.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Fredric Brown (1906-1972) published more than 35 books and 200 short stories during his life, both science fiction and mystery. He was considered a master of "Flash fiction" and has received high praise from colleagues such as Stephen King and Phillip K. Dick.
Dan J. Marlowe (1914-1986) worked as the credit manager for a tobacco company and, on occasion, as a professional gambler until, when his wife died unexpectedly in 1956, he moved to New York City to begin a new life as a crime novelist, rising to prominence with
The Name of the Game is Death.
Charles Williams (1909-1975) was born in San Angelo, Texas, and served in the Merchant Marine and later worked as an electronics inspector before publishing his first novel at the age of 42. He would publish 26 novels over the next two decades. Twelve of his novels were adapted to film, including
Dead Calm, which gave Nicole Kidman her breakthrough role in 1989.
Trained as a journalist,
Dorothy B. Hughes (1904-1993) was a remarkable literary figure during the mid-20th century--she wrote poetry, history, crime fiction, and critical studies. Her first book,
Dark Certainty, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1931. She wrote
The So Blue Marble, her first mystery novel, in 1940 entitled and followed it with thirteen more. In 1978, she received the Grand Master award from the Mystery Writers of America.
Donald Westlake (1933-2008) wrote over a hundred books, ranging from crime fiction to biography written under his own name and various pseudonyms, most famously Richard Stark. He was the recipient of three Edgar Awards and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, their highest honor.
Geoffrey O'Brien, editor, is a poet, a widely published critic, and the author of books on crime fiction, film, music, and cultural history, including
Hardboiled America,
The Phantom Empire,
Sonata for Jukebox,
Where Did Poetry Come From: Some Early Encounters, and
Arabian Nights of 1934. He was for many years editor-in-chief of Library of America.
