I’m a big fan of the “MAMMOTH” series of anthologies. They provide great value and plenty of wonderful stories! Maxim Jakublowki’s The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (2014) presents 33 stories from the 1930s to the 1990s. It weighs in at 814 pages and I picked it up for a dollar at a Library Book Sale! Talk about bargains! As you can see from the Table of Contents, there’s a variety of stories in this anthology by a variety of writers from a variety of eras. Think of this book as a Pulp Fiction buffet! Do you see any of your favorite writers here? GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction by Maxim Jakubowski xiii
The Diamond Wager (1929) by Samuel Dashiell (Dashiell Hammett) 1
Flight to Nowhere (1955) by Charles Williams 21
The Tasting Machine (1949) by Paul Cain 84
Finders Killers! (1953) by John D. MacDonald 101
The Murdering Kind! (1953) by Robert Turner 130
Cigarette Girl (1953) by James M. Cain 173
The Getaway (1976) by Gil Brewer 185
Preview of Murder (1949) by Robert Leslie Bellem 194
Forever After (1960) by Jim Thompson 236
The Bloody Tide (1950) by Day Keene 244
Death Comes Gift-Wrapped (1948) by William P. McGivern 277
The Girl Behind the Hedge (1953) by Mickey Spillane 290
One Escort–Missing Or Dead (1940) by Roger Torrey 301
Don’t Burn Your Corpses Behind You (1954) by William Rough 325
A Candle for the Bag Lady (1977) by Lawrence Block 378
Black Pudding (1953) by David Goodis 408
A Matter of Principal (1989) by Max Allan Collins 433
Citizen’s Arrest (1966) by Charles Willeford 444
The Sleeping Dog (1965) by Ross Macdonald 451
The Wench Is Dead (1953) by Fredric Brown 467
So Dark for April (1953) by Howard Browne, writing as John Evans 493
We Are All Dead (1955) by Bruno Fischer 516
Death Is a Vampire (1944) by Robert Bloch 552
The Blue Steel Squirrel (1946) Frank R. Read 576
A Real Nice Guy (1980) by William F. Nolan 615
Stacked Deck (1987) by Bill Pronzini 626
So Young, So Fair, So Dead (1973) by John Lutz 648
Effective Medicine (1954) by B. Traven 669
Nicely Framed, Ready to Hang! (1952) by Dan Gordon 680
The Second Coming (1966) by Joe Gores 704
Pale Hands I Loathed (1947) by William Campbell Gault 714
The Dark Goddess (1955) by Samuel G. Edsall 730
Ordo (1977) by Donald E. Westlake 756
What a bargain! My only problem with these books is that they are almost too MAMMOTH to hold and read.
Lots of favorite authors, starting with Hammett and MacDonald (who I don’t think of as a pulp writer), plus about 2/3 of the rest of the list – Fredric Brown, Pronzini, Block, Westlake, Gores, many others.
Jeff, I know what you mean by MAMMOTH books being unwieldy. A book that’s 4 inches thick can be hard to hold.
Why do’t they make books with handles? I’m for National Book Control legislation requiring every book over a certain size & weight be issued with a handle.
Dan, I usually have to read Big Fat Books like THE NEW MAMMOTH BOOK OF PULP FICTION by resting the book on a table. Not the most comfortable reading position. I would vote for handles, too!
I lay these big ones on the table to read them.
I have the first Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction, issued back in the 90s in the wake of a popular pulpy movie called… Pulp Fiction. But I didn’t even know this one existed! I’ll have to pick it up.
Graham, most of the stories in THE NEW MAMMOTH BOOK OF PULP FICTION first appeared in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF PULP FICTION. There are about six or stories that are different between the books.
Lots – the majority – of authors I like here, and I’ve read almost all of the stories one place or another. A nice collection for someone interested in trying the sub-genre to find authors to try more of. (oops: of which to try more).
Rick, I’m with you on using tables to read Big Fat Books and using the MAMMOTH series to discover new writers (and old favorites) at a value price.
I see the problem for people like us that usually you’ve read already many of the stories contained …
Re fat books:
before my wife got her kindle she also compalined because she also has to hold the books near to her – so in the end I had to cut George Martin’s fat books into four pieces each!
OT:
She’s having a cataract operation next week so I might not be here too often – but I’ll be back! 🙂
A real stretch to refer to many of (at least) the later stories as “pulp” in any way…for example, “The Second Coming” (a Joe Gores story that really shaped how I thought about capital punishment when I was 8yo and read it in my first, Harold Q. Masur-edtied HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: anthology) or Westlake’s “Ordo” (despite the fact a decent French film was made from it). But some definitely good stuff.
I don’t have a problem holding the MAMMOTH books so much as sometimes have difficulty keeping the spines from cracking.
Todd, you are so right about the Spine Cracking Problem. I reinforce the MAMMOTH book spines with 3M Shipping/Packaging Tape. Works great!
A bit OT:
I had to look up Maxim because his name rang a bell – now I realised:
I met him a few times, first at the SF convention in Brighton and later at his store in London: Murder One
He founded that in 1988 and kept it open until 2009 – I’ve already described that he also sold SF there and I got the last Mickey Splillane novels from him that I had missed earlier …
His character was a bit controversial – not everybody in the SF community in London liked him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_One_(bookshop)
The demise of his store was another sign of times a’changing …
Wolf, Maxim Jakubowksi has edited a bunch of MAMMOTH anthologies. The guy really knows his stuff.
I was in Murder One several times and bought a few books there. It was a terrific store located on Charing Cross Road with a number of other book stores. It moved across the road from its original location to a smaller place, but I assume the rent got too high, which apparently is what chased away most of stores, not the Internet. The look on Maxim’s face reminded me of the stereotypical used bookstore operators from the past who seemed to not want to be bothered by customers. I remember asking a couple of simple questions and received very abrupt answers.
Kent, I only remember the place on he Western side of the road – SF was downstairs, a relatively small selection …
My favourites were Forbidden Planet and the Fantasy Centre.
Yes, Maxim was a bit difficult unlike the others where they evenput books back for me and had them signed even by the authors! Of course that lead to some German beer and Ritter Sport chocolate being exchanged … 🙂
Kent, I’ve been some pretty grumpy bookstore owners. But, also some very friendly ones, too.
Maxim J. has also had some limited proceeds from his editorial career. We’re Facebook “friends” and he’s mentioned the relatively low proceeds editors gain from their efforts…he was doing two impressive best of the year annuals when Robinson and Carrol and Graf were both doing MAMMOTHs, one for UK crime fiction and one for erotica, along with his others less annual anthologies.
Todd, I can believe there isn’t much money in contemporary publishing and editing. Everything seems to be a “contract” project.