The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

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

Otto Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He is the founder of The Mysterious Press and Otto Penzler Books, and has received an Edgar Award, an Ellery Queen Mystery Award, and a Raven Award for his contribution to the mystery field. His anthology The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps was a New York Times bestseller.

Keith Alan Deutsch is the publisher and proprietor of BlackMaskMagazine.com, the rights holder for several American pulp classic magazines, including Dime Detective, Strange Detective Mysteries, Terror Tales, and Black Mask.