The first hard-boiled detective Race Williams, runs up against the Klan in his premiere adventure, which leads him to fast and tragic action. Plus two other early Daly hard-boiled classics: "The False Burton Combs" and "Dolly." Story #1 in the Race Williams series.Carroll John Daly (1889–1958) was the creator of the first hard-boiled private eye story, predating Dashiell Hammett's first Continental Op story by several months. Daly's classic character, Race Williams, was one of the ...

Wacky as a loon—that was Connelly's first impression of the Grey gal when she walked into his office and offered him a retainer for protecting her from the man she loved. And who could blame him? It was a million-buck check she presented to that hard-boiled investigator and the signature it bore was simply "The Man in the Moon!"

"Better stay out of this… It will mean death for you—sure,” grunts a ruthless thug. But Three Gun Terry is not one to back down from a fight, especially when the life of a beautiful, young dame is at stake. Terry manages to whisk the girl away from certain death, just in the nick of time. But the retrieval brings more money and more trouble for Terry. It turns out the girl—Nita—is fresh off the boat and drop-dead gorgeous, catching his usually business-minded eye. To make matters worse, th...

Black Mask, the greatest American detective magazine of all time, is back with another issue. This time around, it includes nine new stories in the Black Mask vein by Brian Townsley, Jane Jakeman, Brian Stanley, Hannah Honeybun, William Burton McCormick, Frank Megna, Jonathan Sheppard, Michael Bracken, Jim Doherty, as well as a new article on Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister by Katrina Younes. In addition, Boris Dralyuk has kindly supplied his translation of Isaac Bab...

Race Williams—the classic hard-boiled detective from the pages of Black Mask Magazine—takes on the biggest blackmailing scheme of his career. Plus a bonus Daly hard-boiled classic: "Paying an Old Debt." Story #2 in the Race Williams series.Carroll John Daly (1889–1958) was the creator of the first hard-boiled private eye story, predating Dashiell Hammett's first Continental Op story by several months. Daly's classic character, Race Williams, was one of the most popular fic...

Humanism built Western civilisation as we know it today. Its achievements include the liberation of the individual, democracy, universal rights, and widespread prosperity and comfort. Its ambassadors are the heroes of modern culture: Erasmus, Holbein, Shakespeare, Velázquez, Descartes, Kant, and Freud.Those who sought to contain humanism’s pride within a frame of higher truth — Luther, Calvin, Poussin, Kierkegaard — could barely interrupt its torrential progress. Those who sought t...

Better Corpses first published in 1940, is a classic hard-boiled detective murder mystery featuring private investigator Race Williams. Williams, operating midway between the police and the criminal world, is called to aid Mary Morse, wealthy heiress to a long-established New York jewelry business, who is being threatened with blackmail by a ruthless gang. Carroll John Daly (1889-1958), considered one of the pioneers of the hard-boiled crime genre, authored 16 novels and a...

Who do we look up to? Christ the Savior is no more. In the modern West, the life of the most significant figure in the history of the culture is assumed to be obsolete. What remains?Quite a lot, actually. In this groundbreaking work, acclaimed sociologist John Carroll argues that humans in the Western tradition are, by their nature, savior seeking. What he describes as a 'savior syndrome' impels humans to find someone, or some equivalent, to show the way to a bette...

Picking up from where our last issue left off, we have another group of crime stories written especially for us. Starting with ex-police detective Lissa Marie Redmond whose short fiction has appeared in anthologies like Akashic’s Buffalo Noir and whose debut novel will be out in February 2018, we move along to novelist Andrew Welsh-Huggins, author of the Andy Hayes PI series.Then we have a chilling new tale by short story specialist Nick Kolakowsi, followed by this issue’s featured...

The quarter-century since 1990 has witnessed an unprecedented economic performance by Australia. It stands as an extraordinary world achievement.A prospering economy in an era in which the rest of the developed world has faltered, and even stagnated, does pose the question of what has made it happen. Was it a fluke; was it the result of long-term prudence and practical intelligence; or a slice of both, and perhaps much else? What kind of people achieved this? What manner of society...

Who is the criminal known only as “The Beast?” Too baffling for the police to solve, it becomes a manhunt in which detective Race Williams must track down “the most feared, the cunningest and cruelest creature that stalks the city streets at night.” But it will soon become Race's most dangerous case as he tries to stay alive. One of the longest and best of the dozens of Race Williams adventures. Story #17 in the Race Williams series.Carroll John Daly (1889–1958) was the creator of ...

Mexican Joe was a sore eye and a bad tooth to the New York City Police Department. So, when he spread-eagled out of a twenty-second story window of a skyscraper and ended as mush amid the Brooklyn traffic, no one batted an eye. Except for Race Williams. A sure buck and a good lead compelled him to the scent of a fresh kill, and the end of a smoking gun. Having narrowly escaped his own close encounter with death, Race Williams must work against a mysterious shadow in the stormy city to solv...