Fast One
A Black Curtain Crime Novel
Published on 4. May 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
176 pages
978-1-62755-067-3 (ISBN)
Description
Paul Cain's Fast One is hard-boiled crime fiction stripped to the bone: fast, brutal, cynical, and soaked in the violence of Depression-era Los Angeles. Gerry Kells moves through a world of gangsters, gunmen, gamblers, corrupt operators, and double-crosses, where every alliance is temporary and every conversation may end in blood. This is not a puzzle mystery and not a gentleman's detective story. It is crime fiction as impact: sharp, cold, and merciless.
First published in book form in 1933 after appearing in Black Mask, Fast One is one of the most admired and uncompromising novels of the hard-boiled pulp tradition. Cain's prose is lean, detached, and deadly, moving with the speed of a gunshot through a Los Angeles underworld where survival depends on nerve, instinct, and the willingness to strike first. This Black Curtain edition restores a landmark of American noir and hard-boiled crime for readers of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Black Mask fiction, gangster novels, vintage paperback crime, and the darkest side of early twentieth-century American pulp. Cain's Fast One has been described as a landmark of pulp fiction and a high point of the ultra-hard-boiled manner.
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
265 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-62755-067-3 (9781627550673)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Paul Cain was the pen name of George Caryl Sims (1902-1966), an American pulp writer and screenwriter whose small body of work left a lasting mark on hard-boiled crime fiction. Writing as Paul Cain, he became associated with Black Mask, the magazine that helped define the American hard-boiled tradition. His fiction is known for its violent momentum, emotional coldness, stripped-down prose, and refusal to soften the world it depicts. Cain wrote only one novel, Fast One, but its reputation has grown steadily among readers and critics of pulp crime, noir fiction, and early twentieth-century American gangster literature.Cain also worked in Hollywood under the name Peter Ruric, contributing to screenplays including the 1934 horror film The Black Cat. His fiction often follows men on the wrong side of the law rather than conventional detectives, giving his work a darker and more fatalistic edge than many crime stories of the period. Fast One, first serialized in Black Mask and then published as a novel in 1933, remains his central achievement: a cold, rapid, violent masterpiece of the ultra-hard-boiled school and a key title for readers interested in Black Mask fiction, American noir, Los Angeles crime fiction, and the development of modern hard-boiled style.