Black Mask 2019 Yearbook

Carroll John Daly, Frederick C. Davis, Brian Townsley, Jane Jakeman, Brian Stanley, Hannah Honeybun, Katrina Younes, William Burton Mccormick, Frank Megna, Michael Bracken, Jonathan Sheppard, Jim Doherty, Isaac Babel, Boris Dralyuk, D.L. Champion, Dashiell Hammett, Frederick Nebel, T.T. Flynn, Arthur Rodman Bowker, Norman Saunders

Description

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 Babel’s “Lyubka the Cossack” and arranged for its reprinting here.

And, as with previous issues, Black Mask collects some of the best hard-boiled detective fiction from the Popular Publications vaults, as written by some of the genre’s best: Dashiell Hammett, D.L. Champion, Carroll John Daly, Frederick Nebel, T.T. Flynn, and Frederick C. Davis.

Sujets

• Hardboiled
• Pulp Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Black Mask
• Date de parution: 18 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9788835347736
• Langue: English

Extrait

Black Mask 2019 Yearbook
by
Brian Townsley, Jane Jakeman, Brian Stanley, Hannah Honeybun, Katrina Younes, William Burton McCormick, Frank Megna, Michael Bracken, Jonathan Sheppard, Jim Doherty, Isaac Babel, Boris Dralyuk, D.L. Champion, Dashiell Hammett, Carroll John Daly, Frederick Nebel, T.T. Flynn, and Frederick C. Davis

Black Mask • 2019
Copyright Information

BLACK MASK (Vol. 37, No. 3), 2019. Published annually by Black Mask. © 2019 by Steeger Properties, LLC, all rights reserved. Black Mask is a Registered Trademark of Steeger Properties, LLC. The stories in this magazine are all fictitious, and any resemblance between the characters in them and actual persons is completely coincidental. Reproduction or use, in any manner, of editorial or pictorial content without express written permission is prohibited.

Publishing History
“Prize Fight,” “In Custody,” “Fight Music,” “Innocent Made Guilty,” “The Evolution of the Femme Fatale in Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister,” “Lady Death,” “Sucker Punch,” “The Guilty,” “The Maltese Terrier,” and “Twelve Good Men and True” appear here for the first time. Copyright © their respective authors. “Lyubka the Cossack” appears courtesty of Pushkin Press; English translation copyright © 2016 Boris Dralyuk. “Lock the Death House Door!” originally appeared in the December 1938 issue of Dime Detective magazine. Copyright © 2019 Steeger Properties, LLC. “Slippery Fingers” originally appeared in the October 15, 1923 issue of Black Mask magazine. “Three Gun Terry” originally appeared in the May 15, 1923, issue of Black Mask magazine. “Nobody’s Fall Guy” originally appeared in the August 8, 1931 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly. Copyright © 2019 Steeger Properties, LLC. “Kentucky Kickback” originally appeared in the May, 1940 issue of Dime Detective magazine. Copyright © 2019 Steeger Properties, LLC. “The Green Ghoul” originally appeared in the June 15, 1935 issue of Dime Detective magazine. Copyright © 2019 Steeger Properties, LLC.
Behind The Mask
It’s true—this issue is a bit delayed. But now that it’s out and you see it’s double-sized, with more stories than ever, we hope you’ll find it well worth the wait.
This time around, we’re including 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.
We’re appreciative of “Friend of Black Mask” Boris Dralyuk, who kindly supplied his translation of Isaac Babel’s “Lyubka the Cossack” and arranged for its reprinting here. Black Mask readers are highly encouraged to pick up the recent Babel collection published by Pushkin Press, Odessa Stories.
And, as with previous issues, we’ve collected some of the best hard-boiled detective fiction from the Popular Publications vaults, as written by some of the genre’s best: Dashiell Hammett, D.L. Champion, Carroll John Daly, Frederick Nebel, T.T. Flynn, and Frederick C. Davis.
Prize Fight
by Brian Townsley

Sonny tried desperately to focus on the passing landscape from the backseat of the cab in which he found himself. At least it was a cab, he reasoned. Of the three kinds of cars in which one suddenly finds himself in the backseat, the cab is clearly the best of the lot. There was no iron grate, no siren, and no goons on either side of him, so that was something.
He remembered sitting at the bar of the hotel where he was staying. He remembered the job going to shit. He remembered that it was 1951, already. He remembered his nine months of sobriety, before tonight. He remembered ordering rye with a beer back. More than once, he remembered that. There may have been more. Many more, even. Who knew? What he knew now, however, was that the Cathedral City nightlife was passing him quickly enough that he could hardly focus. He knocked on the window as a means of getting the driver’s attention. He wanted out— needed out, in fact. He rapped his knuckles on the window and said what he was pretty sure was ‘stop here.’ The particulars were fuzzy, and his voice was difficult to discern, even to him, but he got his point across. The driver, a French gentleman who sang and hummed in his home language as he drove, stopped the vehicle and looked back at his sole customer, concern etched on the not inconsiderable features on his face. Sonny thought the concern ridiculous, of course, and asked ‘how much’ that sounded a bit more like ‘dowmusssh’ than he intended, but details were really not the point here. He tossed the bills at the man and exited the cab and found the level concrete a challenge.
Upon sitting on the curb, his reason for desiring fresh air was revealed as he projectile vomited heavily between his brogues in the gutter. It was mostly pink and thick and voluminous, filled with rye and chunks of bread and cheese snacks from the bar and it was hot and shot onto the concrete with verve. He heard women gasp behind him on the sidewalk and young men laugh out loud and without looking he knew other men were guarding the frail eyes of their dates as they passed. He laughed at this, which evolved into a cough and when he did this his head bobbed slightly as if a puppet, his pomaded hair nodding towards the pavement. He said something to them, these passing model civilians, but it was without handle and sounded a bit like a slurred blashphemy. But man, did he feel better. He reached into his pocket and removed his handkerchief and wiped clean his mouth and then the wingtips he had sullied with the contents of his stomach, which lay now steaming and given character on the pavement. He tossed the white cotton square into the gutter. No use in keeping that, he knew even without the gift of sobriety. His fumbled awkwardly at a pack of cigarettes until a single soldier was unearthed, at which point he stuck it in his mouth, unlit, and took in the evening.
He knew without looking at the signage that he was in the part of town in which he could not swing a dead cat without hitting a whorehouse or nightclub or saloon that did not have roots, or books, with the mob. The job may have fallen apart, but the night was still young. He spit once then, a thick gob that turned over upon itself and raised majestically above the street before catching the window of a passing car and was ferried away into the night. He stood, removed the fedora from his head and raked his slicked black hair with his fingers before rehatting, took note of his increased balance and the possibilities therein, and peered skyward at the bowl of stars presented. Then he lit his cigarette, inhaled deeply, and exhaled the remains into the desert night. A beginning, again.
Cathedral City is so named because of the southern canyon which rims its borders and reminded travelers long before of a cathedral; the fact that the city was now well known for those actions one would not partake of in a cathedral was, of course, a paradox that the honorable founder Colonel Henry Washington could not have foreseen. For while the neighboring city of Palm Springs held the sobriquet of being the vacation home for the rich and beautiful on location from Hollywood, Cathedral City was surely the slutty younger sister, bereft of elegance, manners, and the money that often accompanies such things, but no less full of the lascivious desires therein. In short, Cat City was the place to go after dark. The mob had its hands in prostitution and nightclubs, after hours gambling and the habits that went with it.
Unlike the city which housed it, The Hotsy Totsy Club was appropriately titled. As Sonny took his bearings, the neon sign, which formed an X on the repeated O in the words, called to him like a lighthouse to the wayward stranger adrift. He checked for the brass knuckles in his jacket pocket and felt the weight of them before his hand had even found purchase. By the same measure, he knew without checking his shoulder holster that he had left the .45 in his room before he had gone down to the bar. Which had apparently led to too much rye, which had somehow led to him hailing a cab, which had led to his date with the curb, which led directly to the Hotsy Totsy. Quite the straight line, if you thought about it. So he was without his piece tonight. No better reason to avoid the need for one, he reasoned optimistically. Feeling an idiot nonetheless.
What he knew about the Hotsy Totsy was this: there was plenty to drink and eat, women of domestic repute if one was so obliged, card games on certain nights, numbers games most nights, and dog fights on a given night. Problem was, he couldn’t quite remember what night it was at present, and reconciling that knowledge with the given night for said entertainment was downright hopeless.
The joint was set up thusly—it was a two-story establishment, the lower of which was mainly for drinking and the mentioned card game at the back on said given nights. He, however, did not have Katie with him and certainly would have to cheat at solitaire to pull anything nearing a victory from the 52 this fine evening. The upstairs was generally where guests frequented in couples. Even this thought briefly reminded Sonny of his deceased wife and with it brought no desire for cheap Cathedral City whores. Or even the moderately-priced ones. The back, which, truth be told, only the invited were able to frequent, featured other forms of entertainment. He sat at the bar with a crash and raised his finger while ashing his cigarette with his other hand. He had to really focus on this daring show of double-handed dexterity, and realized that was probably the extent of his coordination at present.
He looked around briefly, which he knew any good de