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 four of their finest works
This is the second 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 Margaret Millar's The Fiend (1964) a nine-year-old girl
disappears and a local sex offender comes under suspicion. So begins a
suspenseful investigation of an apparently tranquil California suburb
which will expose a hidden tangle of fear and animosity, jealousy and
desperation.
Ed McBain (a pen name of Evan Hunter) pioneered the multi-protagonist
police procedural in his long-running series of 87th Precinct novels,
set in a parallel Manhattan called Isola. Doll (1965) opens at a
pitch of extreme violence and careens with breakneck speed through a
tale that mixes murder, drugs, the modeling business, and psychotherapy
with the everyday professionalism of McBain's harried cops.
The racial paranoia of a drunken police detective in Run Man Run
(1966) leads to a double murder and the relentless pursuit of the young
Black college student who witnessed it. In Chester Himes's breathless
narrative, New York City is a place with no safe havens for a fugitive
whom no one wants to believe.
In Patricia Highsmith's The Tremor of Forgery (1969) a man whose
personality is disintegrating is writing a book called The Tremor of
Forgery about a man whose personality is disintegrating, "like a
mountain collapsing from within." Stranded unexpectedly in Tunisia,
Howard Ingham struggles to hold on to himself in a strange locale, while
a slightly damaged typewriter may be the only trace of a killing
committed almost by accident.
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.
