4 stars for 4 great books, plus Dead Calm. Maybe if I understood sailing jargon, which is approximately 2/3 of the book, or if the pop psychology of the antagonist wasn't so laughable, it could have been a great short story. Too bad it's a full-length novel. Definitely worth a read for the other four novels included though.

I highly recommend this excellent collection of dark crime. I was familiar with the names and for some reason had not yet read the Stark, which surprised me, because I am a huge Donald E Westlake fan. This story is typically over-the-top, with the bad guys not trusting each other even though they are going to attempt an enormous heist. I was really surprised that Dead Calm felt so modern -- maybe because it was set at sea, it felt timeless to me. The others show immediate differences in technology but still hold up well story-wise. Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read these.

Five exceptional thrillers from the early 1960s. I was only familiar with Richard Stark and was pleasantly surprised to experience the works of Brown, Marlowe and Hughes. This sharp collection is a must for thriller fans.

Classic crime novels of the early 60s including In The Murderers (1961) by Fredric Brown,Dan J. Marlowe’s The Name of the Game Is Death (1962), Charles William' thriller Dead Calm (1963), The Expendable Man (1963), Dorothy B. Hughes’s final masterpiece of suspense The Expendable Man (1963) and Richard Stark's (aka Donald Westlake) The Score (1964).

All are good, but The Score is probably my favorite.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Library of America for the ARC.

Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964 is a collection omnibus which includes 5 full-length novels. Released 12th Sept 2023 as part of the Library of America series, it's 950 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout.

The five novels included are true classics and the authors will be familiar to most readers of crime fiction. This collection includes Fredric Brown, Dan J. Marlowe, Charles Williams, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Richard Stark. All are well known capable writers writing at the top of their formidable forms.

The editor, Geoffrey O'Brien, has also included biographical and background notes and an essay on text selection. For lovers and students of classic form American mystery, these extras and introduction will undoubtedly prove valuable and interesting.

Four and a half stars. The actual novels included in this and its sister volumes will likely be familiar to most die-hard lovers of American crime fiction; much of the value of the series comes from having the library as a reference source and to be able to revisit the classics over and over again. It would be a superlative choice for public library acquisition, for authors' home reference, and for lovers of classic American cinema/fiction.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

In my younger days I used to read a lot of pulp fiction which was quick and easy to read. This book expands on the genre, no less than 30yr later, to crime fiction. A much more sophisticated fiction which is more suspenseful and thrilling, and which required the reader to invest a lot more energy and effort in the reading. This set of five crime novels are well written, with good story lines. Although it is not my favorite fiction, (I prefer a gentler type or fiction from the golden age). these Classic Thrillers will be greatly enjoyed by many reader.

Thanks you NetGalley and the publishers for the DR..

If you're looking for dark, gritty crime stories from a time long before cell phones and the internet, then make sure you grab this collection. I love how unique each author's style is, but each story is engaging and interesting in its own right. There's a bit of mystery and plenty of tension within the stories, and you'll find it hard to stop reading each novel once you start. If you're a fan of older fiction and mystery thrillers, then you'll want to add this to your TBR pile.

I originally wanted to read this book because of the crime novel Dead Calm by Charles Williams it is a book my grandfather and I read together in one I will always cherish and probably the reason I love Crime mysteries and thrillers to this day. It reads like a modern day thriller while a couple sales from Panama over the Atlantic Ocean they run across a man in a lifeboats who claims everyone on board his yacht has died due to food poisoning Bonobo Ray insist they find his job he is totally against it and when they find it the couple find out why he didn’t want to locate his lost ship. OMG this is a great story but this is just one out of five great stories in this crime Collection. There’s one where a wife cheats on her husband and her lover decides after getting caught it may just be easier to kill her husband instead that one is called The Murderers by Frederick Brown and it also has lots of twists they also have The Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hues and my new favorite crime mystery The Score by Richard Stark A group of gangsters get together and try to rob a whole town in for those of you who think this may not be for you I thought that as well because I love historical crime novels I gave it a try and OMG it is my new favorite Storkel crime novel. Each story is between two and 400 pages long and OMG if every story doesn’t give you something different it’s not like today’s mystery thriller of the world they have the same old tropes it’s something new and totally worth reading I absolutely loved it and loved every story in it. I want to thank Blackstone publishing, American library, and Net Galley for my free-ARC copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

If the title of this book was as descriptive as it should be would read.....Five Classic Thrillers By Some of The Best Authors to Ever Grace Us With A Story. And it would be true. These stories are forerunners for today's crime novels. These authors had the abilities to take their readers into the story, you will refuse to acknowledge anyone trying to talk to you. If you have never read these stories, I envy you the experience. Enjoy.

This title is not inexpensive but readers get five novels within this volume that comes in at over 900 pages so still pretty reasonable overall. The books that are included here reflect a transition in crime fiction away from the neater and less violent books of writers like Agatha Christie. Here, I would say, there is more gritty realism.

The general reader may well enjoy these stories. I think that anyone who wants to study mysteries in context and in an academic way will want to add this title to their collection as well.

Note: Books included are by Frederic Brown, Dan J. Marlowe, Charles Williams Dorothy B. Hughes and Richard Stark. Several of them are authors with whom I was not familiar.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Library of America for this title. All opinions are my own.

Emerging from the social push toward conformism of the 1950s, the United States found itself in a strange circumstance as the 1960s got under way. Big shifts in the politics and culture were shaking the nation to the core, and these found avenues for larger expression in the era's entertainments. Particularly in fiction, we saw an emergence of conscientiousness and rebelliousness in various genre fiction modes. For the sf readers, the New Wave got going looking to the real issues of the day and casting them in satiric, dystopian, or generally angry near and far futures. Horror would be going strong, as well, particularly in the film side, since the decade would end with one of the most potent nightmares committed to celluloid: Night of the Living Dead (1968) might have been cast blindly, but it nevertheless cast a Black man in the lead and therefore positioned itself to make several points about current events. Mysteries might generally still be trying to keep rationality intact, providing solutions to various murders and other crimes, but a strong undercurrent was withholding even that delight by presenting mysteries that had no actual answers. And the hardboiled school was continuing to undo the nice, neat picture of America as a calm or happening place to be, land of the free, home of the brave. The best crime fiction shows the tarnish on that gilded American Dream. Yeah, the 1960s were a time of profound turmoil for America.

Across a two volume Crime Novels set, the Library of America showcases nine novels that use the crime fiction mode of storytelling to provide a picture of how this model of storytelling was reacting and showcasing those strange and often painful times. The first of these volumes is the subject of this piece, and it's a doozy of a book, offering five unsettling and dramatic visions of where we'd been, where we were careening toward, and what was going on in the first half of that decade.

Fredric Brown's The Murderers spins the tale of an actor with ambitions, for a career as well as the wife of a prominent man in LA. When he has the means and opportunity to rub that man out, well, he jumps at it … despite having zero experience with criminal activities other than small time drug use, loitering, and adultery. Still, he gives it his best, being undone at every turn until an unlikely opportunity arises to trade murders with an associate. Hollywood and its creators have always been eager to recycle old ideas, it would seem, so the fact that this idea didn't work out for the protagonists of Strangers on a Train doesn't enter into our protagonist's thoughts. But as the matriarch of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night opines: Things have a way of turning out so badly. But in this case not without twists, troubles, and a strong dose of gallows humor.

Dan J. Marlowe's The Name of the Game is Death finds an operator looking to capture his boodle from a missing partner in a bank robbery gone sour. The trail brings him to sunny, sweltering Florida where a trio of small town characters with big ambitions and low impulse control might hold the key to the missing moneys. The criminal chasing his swag is not a forgive and forget type of guy, and the situation he finds himself involved in is not the nicest. The nameless protagonist (later rewritten as Earl Drake to feed into a sequel novel and then a men's adventure series) will stop at nothing to get the answers he so desperately seeks. Even if he has to outthink small town minds intent on double crosses and murder …

Charles Williams Dead Calm finds a becalmed married couple making the acquaintance of another becalmed traveler, welcoming him aboard their yacht, and then discovering he's not quite what he seems. When the husband finds out this stranger's sinking yacht actually holds imprisoned fellow travelers, it is too late to stop him from sailing for the mainland in as taut and tense a nautical chase scene as you're likely to find.

Dorothy B. Hughes' final novel, The Expendable Man, finds a young Black doctor picking up a white hitchhiker while driving through the deserts between LA and Phoenix. It's a decision that will come to haunt him because just when he thinks he can move on, she resurfaces. First, it's for a ride, then it's for leverage, finally it's for an illegal surgical procedure … That stranger will make this doctor's life a living hell, particularly when she gets him mixed up in murder and sets a racist system on his trail.

Finally, Donald E. Westlake gets his first inductance into the annals of the Library of America via his down, dirty, and mostly humorless penname Richard Stark, and that nom-de-plume's flagship character, the amoral operator called Parker. While the first novel in that series, 1962's The Hunter, gives readers a sense of the changes happening to societal expectations (not only is a ruthless crook the protagonist, he gets away in the end); however, it has seen plenty of printings over time. Instead, the Library of America volume shines a light on a masterful later volume of the series. The Score might have been the fifth novel Westlake wrote under the Stark name, but it's a doozy of a book that stands on its own quite nicely. The heist is an ambitious one: robbing an entire small town over the course of one night. It's going to take a full team of skilled thieves to pull it off and it can all crash and burn if even one of them gets a little more eager for the boodle than for his fellow crooks' lives. This is also the book where Westlake gets to peek into his pseudonym's work via the actor and "loveable" cad, Alan Grofield.

These five works deliver solid storytelling in the gritty vein. That each of them is also a timestamp of a nation on the move into a dark period makes those stories resonate all the stronger these days. But the novels themselves are quality page turners, each exploring the genre through very different means. No one will mistake Williams' meticulously written thriller for Marlowe's speedy descent into hell. And no one is going to confuse Brown's hardboiled page turner with Hughes' rich psychological character study. And The Score is just a triumph from a series of numerous triumphs and from a career with more successes than one author should conceivably possess.

Having these five very different books in one place really draws out the kinds of themes and motifs running rampant at the time. Books stand by themselves (whether they are entries in a series or not), but they are also part of a larger conversation with the culture they are written in as well as with the books that came before them. These five books kick off a fascinating chapter of this conversation from a tumultuous era, and they speak to the books Library of America features in the previous two volume set that tackled the American Noir of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s as well as the sets dedicated to Women Crime Writers of the 40s & 50s and those dedicated to Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, David Goodis, Ross MacDonald, and Elmore Leonard's fiction. Reading all the contents of these various sets offers a brilliant overview of how crime fiction has developed and reflected upon American society across the twentieth century. They are all great books, well worth the investment.
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Thank you to the Library of America and NetGalley for providing an eARC edition of the book in exchange for an honest review.

"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 five of their finest works.

This is the first 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 The Murderers (1961) by Fredric Brown, an out-of-work actor, hanging out with Beat drifters on the fringes of Hollywood, concocts a murder scheme that devolves into nightmare. This late work by a master in many genres is one of his darkest and most ingenious.

Dan J. Marlowe's The Name of the Game Is Death (1962) channels the inner life of a violent criminal who freely acknowledges the truth of a prison psychiatrist's diagnosis: "Your values are not civilized values." Written with unnerving emotional authenticity, the story hurtles toward an annihilating climax.

Charles Williams drew on his experience in the merchant marine for his thriller Dead Calm (1963). A newlywed couple alone on a small yacht find themselves at the mercy of the mysterious survivor they have rescued from a sinking ship, in a suspenseful story that chillingly evokes the perils of the open ocean.

In the beautifully told and sharply observant The Expendable Man (1963), Dorothy B. Hughes's final masterpiece of suspense, a young man in the American Southwest runs afoul of racial assumptions after he picks up a hitchhiker who soon turns up dead.

In twenty-four brilliantly constructed novels, Richard Stark (a pen name of Donald Westlake) charted the career of Parker, a hard-nosed professional thief, with rigorous clarity. The Score (1964), a stand-out in the series, finds Parker and his criminal associates hatching a plot to rob simultaneously all the jewelry stores, payroll offices, and banks in a remote Western mining town, only to come up against the human limits of even the most intricate planning.

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."

Whenever I need a quality read I always turn to Library of America. In particular their selection of crime novels can not be beat.

A great cross-section of early-1960s crime thrillers, speaking as someone who likes the genre but isn't so knowledgeable about it (especially that far before I was born). I have heard of "Richard Stark"'s Parker novels so I knew to look forward to that one but the others were all pretty good too. I particularly liked the breadth of plot setups, to wit:

- The Murderers - a down-on-his-luck actor concocting a murder plot (as an amateur)
- The Name of the Game is Death - a bank robber hunting down his missing partner (and the take from their latest hit)
- Dead Calm - hardly even a crime novel in the conventional sense (more a thriller), a couple on a boat encountering a survivor from a crippled yacht whose story seems suspicious
- The Expendable Man - a "wrongfully accused man trying to find the real killer" plot, set against the racial backdrop of 1960s Arizona
- The Score - a heist novel full of professional criminals

Each has a different and unique angle on what might be a "crime novel", and I really enjoyed the variety. I'm very interested to see if the other volume of this set (covering 1964-1969) has any duplicate angles, and how that compares overall.

The book has definitely inspired me to go hunt down some more Parker novels, and to a lesser extent Dorothy B. Hughes, Charles Williams, and Dan J. Marlowe. <i>The Murderers</i> was the closest thing to a dud in the whole collection - not because it was bad, per se, and reading it first in the collection I quite liked it. It was just that I thought each of the other stories was so much better in one way or another that it looks weak in retrospect. It's unfortunate for Fredric Brown that crime writers tend to be so prolific - if I start adding more of them to my TBR list that adds up FAST so I have to be really picky, and I think he gets bumped off the list based on just these selections.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Library of America for an advance copy of this collection of crime stories from the early part of the 1960's that showcase many of the problems that were prevalent in the American society, and the rage that was just boiling under the surface.

The Mystery novel had started with the best of intentions. Clever crimes being solved by clever people, the bad guys arrested the good guys and gals going on with their lives untouched by the violence that they had been a part of, looking forward to another murder, hopefully in a nice house with fine drinks. Then private eyes showed up, dealing with seedy things like divorce and infidelity, mobsters, drugs and dirty blackmail, turning over rocks Americans didn't want to deal with, but still enjoyed for all the punching, drinking and womanizing that went on. There were others but this seemed to be the popular trend, aired on that new fangled television, and gradually causing mystery novels to start to fade from consciousness. However in this vaccum came the crime novels. Nasty books about about crime, shooting people for kicks, running over dogs and other nasty deals. Was this an answer to the idea of Raymond Chandler's knight errant private detective, or the fact that Eisenhower's America was not the future that a war had been fought for, and while America was good for those with the right breeding, there were plenty that were left out. And angry. Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964 (LOA #370) edited and introduced by Geoffrey O'Brien is a look at stories from the first four years of the decade, from seasoned writers and some new blood, looking into the abyss that was America and writing what they saw looking back.

The book starts with a very good introduction to the state of mysteries and where the genre was going, and failing. O'Brien also adds very good notes to the stories, lists why changes were made to the stories, mostly typographical, and biographies on the authors, which in many cases ended quite sadly. The first story is by Fredric Brown, The Murders. This is a story of cool cats and want-to-be actors trying to make their way in life, with the least amount of work, until an offer comes up, that is too good to pass up. Dan J. Marlowe’s The Name of the Game Is Death is probably one of the strongest stories a nasty story about a career criminal who was born bad, looking for the loot from his last job, leaving a very large swath of destruction. Dead Calm by Charles Williams will probably be familiar to movie goers, is a claustrophobic tale of anger and obsession on the open sea. The book is even more tense than the move. The Expendable Man is the lone story by a woman, Dorothy B. Hughes writing her final novel, and probably why its story of alienation and paranoia rings so true and powerfully. And finally but definitely not least is Richard Stark's The Score featuring Stark's series character Parker taking down his largest job, robbing an entire town, a job only a true professional like Parker could take on.

All five stories are really very good, very tense, and different. What seems familiar to us in the writing is that much of what these authors have been written have been imitated, on page and on film. Most of these characters have given up on society, realizing not that they are better than their fellow man, they just don't care. The rules of society, 9-5 jobs, putting up with people lording things over you, killing dogs, are limits. The rules these characters live for are don't mess with mine. Don't touch my dog, don't touch my stuff, and don't mess with me. Mine, to a few characters might include money in banks or that rich people have, but that is there mindset. These stories are very psychological from psychopaths, to damaged people trying to just be left alone. Most end like one expects, but the story along the way is exceptional, and in many cases not easy to put down.

A great collection of stories. As I write this I am about halfway through the second collection, and these stories really do stand the test of time. The emotion, the feeling that are put on the page really reflect what the county was feeling. Studying a countries mystery stories is a very good way to get a grasp on what the people were feeling and thinking at the time. These stories tell quite a bit.

By the time the crime novels collected here first appeared in the early 1960s, the popularity of the type of crime fiction pioneered by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and others had already peaked. Now, as Geoffrey O'Brien points out in his introduction to the collection, "the best crime writers reinvented the genre." That was probably the only way the genre had much of a chance, according to O'Brien of competing with powerful competition from a burst in popularity of science fiction novels, fantasy novels, spy novels, and political thrillers.

Represented in this volume of Crime Novels are five very different writers, writers who found varying degrees of success during their lifetimes. Whether or not all of them lived to enjoy the success and respect they deserved, all five are recognized today as some of the best crime fiction writers of their day.

The collection opens with Fredric Brown's The Murderers, a story about a group of sociopaths in Los Angeles who will do just about anything to keep themselves financially comfortable. When two frustrated actors decide to swap murders that will benefit both their careers, innocent people will die but nobody really seems to care. Brown's novel is a scary look inside the mind of a true sociopath.

Next comes The Name of the Game Is Death by Dan J. Marlowe, another psychological novel that follows a bank robbery gone bad after one of the three robbers is shot dead, one escapes with the all the cash, and the narrator goes into hiding until it's safe for him to rejoin the other surviving gang member. But after the man with the money suddenly cuts off all contact with the main character, all bets are off. Much of the character development in this one occurs through flashbacks that illustrate just what a pure sociopath our hero is.

Third in the collection is probably the best known of the group, Dead Calm. Some twenty-six years (1989) after Charles Williams published the novel in 1963, Dead Calm was turned into a successful movie starring Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, and Billy Zane. The novel tells the story of a young couple alone on their yacht who pick up what appears to be the only survivor of a sinking vessel on which the survivor claims everyone on board has died of food poisoning but him. It's easy to imagine the tension that will build over time as the stranger's story begins to unravel.

Then we have The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, the only novel in the collection written by a woman. Hughes is largely ignored today, but Geoffrey O'Brien's introduction calls her "one of the most important crime writers of her era." Hughes dared to tackle racism in the heat of the racially turbulent 1960s by making her message a major factor governing the behavior of her main character, a young black doctor who happens to have picked up a young female hitchhiker who is later found dead.

The last novel in the collection is Richard Stark's (Richard Stark is a pen name used by Donald Westlake at times) The Score. This one is actually the fifth book in Stark's twenty-three book "Parker" series. The most unusual thing about the series is that Parker is not a cop or a detective; he is a successful criminal. The Score serves as a reminder that even the best mind can become a little overconfident and overambitious. The caper-gone-wrong here is one in which Parker and his gang decide to simultaneously rob multiple locations in one small town.

This volume of Crime Novels is the first of two volumes soon to be published by Library of America. The second collection will feature similar fiction written in the second half of the decade.

Library of America has assembled a worthy and captivating quintet of noir fiction specimens depicting the yeasty era of the early 1960s. (This is a companion volume to a LoA release gathering similar works from the late-‘60s, reviewed separately.) The selections are deftly arranged and juxtaposed by editor Geoffrey O’Brien, who contributes useful background and biographic notes. He bookends intriguing works by Fredric Brown and Donald Westlake writing as “Richard Stark,” ensuring that the compendium opens and closes with authors familiar to many readers. Brown’s amusing tale of a scrappy Hollywood D-list actor attempting to make manifest the plot of “Strangers on a Train” is a lovely introduction to the decade of the sixties — as well as to this book. Stark’s “The Score” also features a rascally actor who is an occasional sidekick to Parker, celebrated protagonist of a long-running series of crime novels. Sandwiched in the middle are three very fine novels by lesser-known writers. Dan J. Marlowe’s “The Name of the Game is Death” is a hard boiled treasure, and I’ll certainly seek out more of his work. Charles Williams’ “Dead Calm” seems like a work by Patricia Highsmith in a nautical setting, with deep psychological asides. The unexpected find in this collection is Dorothy B. Hughes’ “The Expendable Man,” which is concerned with themes of race and class in the USA in ways that might be 60 years ahead of its time. Taken in sequence, this intelligently curated collection will entertain and inform readers as to how we arrived at our current point in American life. Strongly recommended.

#CrimeNovelsFiveClassicThrillers19611964LOA370 #NetGalley

LOA follows up their previous collections of crime fiction of the 1930s-1950s with one focused on the early years of the 1960s. This volume contains a quintet of excellent novels, all of them short but still brimming with suspense and psychological insight.

Things get off to a wild start with Fredric Brown's THE MURDERERS. It's the classic noir set-up - lovers conspire to bump off an inconvenient spouse - only it unfolds in Beat-era Los Angeles, so the lazy couple of Hollywood hangers-on in question might not have their hearts in the plan. But they back into mayhem anyway. Tremendous atmosphere, Brown's usual sly sense of humor, and a doozy of an ending.

Author Dan J. Marlowe's life is something out of pulp fiction. (It's recounted by editor Geoffrey O'Brien in the thorough biographical section.) But in THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH, Marlowe wrote the quintessential Gold Medal paperback. As a criminal sets out after the loot from a bank job, he flashes back to incidents from his life that made him the way he is. The result is a slow-burn revenge yarn in the wilds of Florida that's also a hardboiled case study. Marlowe later rewrote the book to turn his unnamed protagonist into a series character. LOA serves up the original text in all its gut-punch glory.

Charles Williams's nautical thriller DEAD CALM is the best known title in the collection, adapted into the 1989 film starring Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman. The book is stronger than the movie, drawing on Williams's extensive experience as a sailor.

A young Black doctor driving to a family wedding in the Southwest picks up a hitchhiking girl and comes to regret his act of kindness in THE EXPENDABLE MAN by Dorothy B. Hughes. With a plot touching on race and abortion, it's a hot-button novel with a cool and steady pulse, its protagonist inexorably plunged into a nightmare.

You can never go wrong with any of the novels by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake) about the icy professional thief Parker. In THE SCORE, Parker assembles a crew to knock over an irresistible target: an entire town.

This collection is the first of two volumes of classic crime novels from the 1960s, issued by the Library of America. And what a fabulous collection it is! As is usual for the LOA volumes, the introduction and the additional biographical material and notes really add to appreciating the novels themselves.

My two favorites stories in this collection were The Expendable Man by Dorothy Hughes, and The Score by Richard Stark (pseudonym for Donald Westlake), one of the best entries in the legendary Parker series.

My thanks to LOA and to Netgalley for providing an ARC of this book.

This was an absolute great introduction to five different thriller writers from the 1960s. Every one was great, and difficult to pick a favorite.

Fredric Brown, The Murderers - I always like these classic noir novels, and this one was no exception. The characters are well developed, with a great story/pacing. Especially enjoyed the ending, but no spoilers. Will be picking up more books by Fredric Brown.

Dan J Marlowe, The Name of the Game is Death - Wow. I read Dan Marlowe before (the whole Johnny Killian series), and this was just as good. Enjoyed the character (Drake). Also had great story/pacing. A little dark noir is always a great read. Will need to read more in the series.

Charles Williams, Dead Calm - Have read several novels by Charles Williams, but this is my favorite (so far). This had great characters, pacing, and story. The location is a little unsettling, but it definitely works. Will be reading more from Charge Williams.

Dorothy B Hughes, The Expendable Man - Wow. This book was great. Always look a good mystery/suspense story, and this book was fantastic. Great characters, great pacing, great story. Social commentary thrown in, but in a very good way. This book made me go out and get other Dorothy Hughes books. Hopefully all will be as great as this one.

Richard Stark (Donald E Westlake), The Score - The Parker series never disappoints, and the Score is no exception. As usually, a great band of characters, and another great story, with great pacing. Donald E Westlake never disappoints.

#CrimeNovelsFiveClassicThrillers19611964LOA370 #NetGalley

This review will be published on the June the 7th at restingandreviewing.wordpress.com

Book Review: Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964 Library of America

A Thank-you

Thank-you Library of America for giving me access to this book. Expected Publication September 12, 2023

Blurb

“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 five of their finest works

This is the first 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 The Murderers (1961) by Fredric Brown, an out-of-work actor, hanging out with Beat drifters on the fringes of Hollywood, concocts a murder scheme that devolves into nightmare. This late work by a master in many genres is one of his darkest and most ingenious.

Dan J. Marlowe’s The Name of the Game Is Death (1962) channels the inner life of a violent criminal who freely acknowledges the truth of a prison psychiatrist’s “Your values are not civilized values.” Written with unnerving emotional authenticity, the story hurtles toward an annihilating climax.

Charles Williams drew on his experience in the merchant marine for his thriller Dead Calm (1963). A newlywed couple alone on a small yacht find themselves at the mercy of the mysterious survivor they have rescued from a sinking ship, in a suspenseful story that chillingly evokes the perils of the open ocean.

In the beautifully told and sharply observant The Expendable Man (1963), Dorothy B. Hughes’s final masterpiece of suspense, a young man in the American Southwest runs afoul of racial assumptions after he picks up a hitchhiker who soon turns up dead.

In twenty-four brilliantly constructed novels, Richard Stark (a pen name of Donald Westlake) charted the career of Parker, a hard-nosed professional thief, with rigorous clarity. The Score (1964), a stand-out in the series, finds Parker and his criminal associates hatching a plot to rob simultaneously all the jewelry stores, payroll offices, and banks in a remote Western mining town, only to come up against the human limits of even the most intricate planning.

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.”

Ebook

I read the ebook of this book and I would have liked, considering it is a whopping omnibus with over five novels, links I could click on in the contents page. I do like going back and forth, so instead of manual bookmarks links would have been appreciated. As this is not yet published, maybe it would be possible to add them in.

Book by Book

If you follow R&R you will know, we like our Crime Fiction. Old, New, Noir, Pulp, if it’s good – we like it. Here we’ll give you a breakdown of all the books included in this omnibus.

Murderers – Fredric Brown

Blurb

“A struggling actor, Willy Griff keeps himself entertained with the wife of a business mogul, but he wants more: He also wants the business mogul’s money. The mistress, Doris, likes the idea even more than Willy does, and figures if she helps plan the murder, she can ditch the husband and keep the cash.

It’s a dangerous scheme for two low-level, aspiring criminals. But Willy comes up with an ingenious, foolproof plot for pulling it off. At least, he better hope it’s foolproof . . .

The Murderers is a gritty tale of crime and passion from Fredric Brown, a master of noir and mystery and winner of the prestigious Edgar Award.” (Goodreads, The Murderers, n,d).

Review

This was a brilliant book, putting you right into the heart of a criminal. Or is Willy Griff a criminal? If somebody asked you how much money would you want for murdering someone, would you give them a figure? How much does a life cost? Murderers contemplates these questions, wrapped up into a gritty thriller set in Los Angeles, the city of angels, or more likely, a hub of dying dreams. I found myself contemplating what Hollywood has to offer. How many dreamers are there out there? How many has life passed by, or the cameras stained too much? How many people are now auditioning for an advert, a play, a film, a tv series, an extra? How many people want to be seen and heard by billions across the world? Is that something everyone wants? Personally, I have never been interested in Acting. The line of work has never appealed to me. Do I think acting is hard? Yes. It is hard, but not in the sense of back breaking work, more mental toil and fatigue. All work is hard. Acting takes skill, as much skill as anything else, if not more. It’s a niche area, something that Murderers made me respect even more. Willy Griff is a cheater, a liar, an adulterer and maybe something more. But it’s his skill in acting which allows him to perform on the worlds most dangerous stage, real life. Unfortunately, although a rational, law abiding citizen, I was suckered in by his outrageous charm. Is he a nice person? No. So why did I find myself liking this chap, who would throw anyone under the bus, including new actresses, who come to Hollywood, with stars in their eyes and dreams in their minds….. I do not know. He is charming, enough so to make everyone around him like him. Is that what murderers do? I think it was a great read and the first person style which it was written in is perfect for this genre. I read it within a few days and could not put it down; because you need to know what was going to happen. Would it work out? Was there going to be a fairytale ending? What I did learn from this book, is avoid Hollywood. It sounds like a dangerous place.

The Name of the Game is Death – Dan J Marlowe

Blurb

“”Two guys with guts and a go-to-hell-with-you-Jack regard for consequences have about three chances in ten of pulling off a big, well-planned smash-and-grab. If one of them can shoot like me . . . the odds are a damn sight better.”

In the course of his line of business, the man who calls himself Roy Martin has robbed a bank in Phoenix, killed three men, and caught a bullet in his arm. Safety–and one half of $178,000–awaits him on the other side of the country. All that separates “Martin” from his destination are two thousand treacherous miles and three lethal to trust the wrong friend, to love the right woman, and to start believing that a man like himself can ever be safe.

The Name of the Game is Death combines a narrative as taut as a hangman’s rope with chillingly authentic insights into the psychology of casual murder.” (Goodreads, The Name of the Game is Death, n,d).

Review

This story is in the form of first person perspective as well. I enjoyed it, a rapid read, the pace is good and yet again, the first person allows for a smooth flow where you’re as close to the action as your going to get. Meet Roy Martin, or Chet, or Adrian, who knows who he really is. A killer, a robber, a rapist, a thief, but a good guy? What’s a bad guy? The lines are blurred. Is he selfish? Does he rob banks and try to hurt as few people as possible? Has he all his life stood up to bullies? Did an experience as a child shape how he views authority. Spent a lifetime getting back at the law, for what they did to him. Can you blame someone who thinks all cops are corrupt? Can you blame someone when we see that the cops are corrupt? But he’s an unreliable narrator. Maybe this robin hood image isn’t true at all, but he never tried to hide anything. When he kills, he says so. He doesn’t try and justify it, he gloats over his marksmanship, someone that good with a gun, must be good at killing. He learnt a lot in prison, saw the system. An overall action packed read and definitely a pulp.

Dead Calm – Charles Williams

Blurb

“John and Rae Ingram are alone on their honeymoon yacht in the Pacific, becalmed. It shoud be idyllic. . .but it’s not.

On the near horizon a ship is sinking. They rescue its lone passenger, a young man who claims he buried his wife and another couple, dead from food poisoning. But suspicion gnaws at Ingram, a suspicion only too soon justified. Soon Ingram and his wife are nearly overside with the killer’s other victims!

“A brilliant tour de force … breathtaking.” (The New York Times)”

Review

This was awful. I watched the film as well. Sam Neil and Nicole Kidman’s performances as actors were decent, however the script was as awful as the book. A great premise and a great potential seed for a novel, stranded, psychological episode in the middle of the ocean, the only conceivable modern fear. Isolation at sea – everywhere there is civilisation, but the sea. Even in the Amazon rainforest I think you would find litter and debris from tourists or who knows what. But at sea there is no calling for help , unless now in 2023 there are things which go beyond the technology then, like satellite phones. However a budding writer could do things like trip the wire, or destroy the machinery….. Anyway, a great premise and a great idea soon fizzles out. The writing is lacklustre, the pace slow compared to the two first person stories preceding it. It is an odd choice to put such a slow burner right after two stories with such intensity. Sure, a few things happen in the book, but the time between each of them makes you bored. Bored is not something you want when reading any book, but being bored while reading a thriller is not very thrilling. I was ready for the end when I turned the first few pages, and I only kept on reading to see how the book differed from the film. IT DIFFERS. If I had to compare, I would say the book is better, but it’s like comparing a leak in your ceiling to a leak in your sink, you want neither. Terry Hayes wrote the screenplay and instead of turning a great idea into something with real potential, they wasted a really good opportunity. (Scripts, n,d). This is also the second book in a series, with the first called Aground. I think Charles should have either started here or killed it with Aground. I have not read aground, so I cannot say what that book is like, I have not read any of their other books, but this certainly was awful. I don’t understand it’s good reviews, there’s perspective shifts as sudden as car crashes, which were very confusing. Monologue episodes of thoughts, rolling at you like the waves of the ocean, and the plot was what? It certainly sounded exciting, but reading it all the suspense and tension drifts away. Stay away from this one.

The Expendable Man – Dorothy B Hughes

Blurb

““It was surprising what old experiences remembered could do to a presumably educated, civilized man.” And Hugh Denismore, a young doctor driving his mother’s Cadillac from Los Angeles to Phoenix, is eminently educated and civilized. He is privileged, would seem to have the world at his feet, even. Then why does the sight of a few redneck teenagers disconcert him? Why is he reluctant to pick up a disheveled girl hitchhiking along the desert highway? And why is he the first person the police suspect when she is found dead in Arizona a few days later?

Dorothy B. Hughes ranks with Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith as a master of mid-century noir. In books like In a Lonely Place and Ride the Pink Horse, she exposed a seething discontent underneath the veneer of twentieth-century prosperity. With The Expendable Man, first published in 1963, Hughes upends the conventions of the wrong-man narrative to deliver a story that engages readers even as it implicates them in the greatest of all American crimes.”

Review

Dorothy had me hooked from the start. I won’t spoil a twist, but it blindsided me and this deals with complex social issues. It was harrowing. Academically I have studied the era and the civil rights movement that went on in America, but to see the Veneers written so well by Dorothy, made my gut twist. I cannot say too much in this review without spoiling the plot, or giving something away. I will say it was a brilliant read, more a sociological study, than a crime novel. The crime was compelling, but Dorothy used the crime genre as a spring board to give her access to wider issues. I was being educated while being entertained and that is how you write a brilliant crime novel.

The Score – Richard Stark

(Goodreads, The Score, n,d).

Blurb

“It was an impossible crime: knock off a huge plant payroll, all the banks, and all the stores in one entire city in one night. But there was one thief good enough to try — Parker. All he needed was the right men, the right plan, and the right kind of help from Lady Luck. The men and the plan were easy; Lady Luck was another story. She turned out to be a good-looking blonde with a taste for booze and eyes for Parker. And Parker knew this chilling caper could either be the perfect crime… or a set-up that would land him in jail — for life.”

Review

The Expendable Man was a tough act to follow. I suppose the omnibus highlights this, sometimes you have a really good read and if the next one does not live up to the same standard, you’re left with a bitter taste in your mouth. I am reviewing this omnibus book, which is made up of all these books. As I go through them one after another I cannot help compare them. Is this book better, is the writing better. I think The Expendable man should have been the one to end the book. The Score is a gritty pulp, which is also part of a larger series. I have never read Parker before and have no affinity for the character. It seems to be the fifth novel in the series and although it may fit the time line of 61-64, I could not help feel I was missing out on something. Being a series and jumping into the fifth novel head first, although the story is understandable, I feel like this is a book where if you like the character from the off, great. But compared to Willy Griff? Roy Martin? Hugh? I prefered these characters, these criminals, these protagonists. I prefered there stories.

Review of Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964 Library of America

All too often today you have the boring, lacklustre whodunnit. You stare at your television set or wander down the pages of a typed out best selling novel, to dumbly follow piecemeal traces of evidence and blindly follow the all knowing detective who seems to find a theory or know the killer above all else. These detectives are superhuman and you look at them, like a child who is bad at maths looks at a calculator. But Chandler, Macdonald, Dorothy. B Hughes they have what these new writers lack, they have style. I can hear people cry now, philistine! How can you say that? Give the new writers a chance! I’m all for giving new writers a chance, I know in this business it is so hard for budding writers to accomplish their goals, the good ones aren’t in it for the “business”, sure they want to make a living, who doesn’t(?), but thats what literature has seemed to turn into, business. The art and style has been paved over for novels that are whacked out in a few months, all so they can snap up the pay cheque and satisfy the agents. Rarely have I opened a modern crime novel and been blown away. So in times when you’re looking for a good thriller, mystery, noir or pulp, look no further than the classics. You get that with this omnibus, sure I liked some more than others, but that’s going to happen. Your favourites may not be mine. The only book I did not like was Dead Calm. My reasons are above and that may be a controversial statement, but here at restingandreviewing, we dont want confusing, multiple perspectives, or boring long winded monologues with our fast paced, nail biting thrillers.

I would recommend this collection for any crime fan. Get in on your bookshelf, and when you want a good crime thriller, remember, they are classics for a reason.

References:

Library of America Book Cover. Accessed via: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83171964-crime-novels
Goodreads. Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964 (LOA #370): The Murderers / The Name of the Game Is Death / Dead Calm / The Expendable Man / The Score. Accessed via: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83171964-crime-novels
Goodreads. The Murderers. Accessed Via: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/439115.The_Murderers
Goodreads. The Name of the Game is death. Accessed via: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/672989.The_Name_of_the_Game_Is_Death
Scripts. (n.d). Dead Calm. Accessed via: https://www.scripts.com/script/dead_calm_6477
Goodreads, The Murderers, n,d. Accessed via: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/439115.The_Murderers
Goodreads, The Name of the Game is Death, n,d. Accessed via: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/672989
Goodreads, Dead Calm, n,d. Accessed via: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/829913
Goodreads, The Expendable Man, n,d. Accessed via: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/939794



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