Death Stops Payment: And Other Crime Fiction from the Legendary Magazine

by Otto Penzler (Editor), Horace McCoy, Julius Long

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by "the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine" (Booklist).

Otto Penzler selected and wrote introductions to the best of the best, the darkest of these dark, vintage stories for the collection The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories. Now that collection is available for the first time on audio.



"Dirty Work" by Horace McCoy; read by Bart Tinapp "Merely Murder" by Julius Long; read by Eric Conger "Murder in One Syllable" by John D. MacDonald; read by Jeff Woodman and Carol Monda "Three Apes from the East" by H.H. Stinson; read by Scott Brick "Death Stops Payment" by D.L. Champion; read by Eric Conger A Library Journal Best Audiobook Selection.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Audiobook, Noir

ebook

First published July 31, 2012

About the author

Otto Penzler is an editor of mystery fiction in the United States, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, where he lives.

Otto Penzler founded The Mysteriour Press in 1975 and was the publisher of The Armchair Detective, the Edgar-winning quarterly journal devoted to the study of mystery and suspense fiction, for seventeen years.

Penzler has won two Edgar Awards, for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection in 1977, and The Lineup in 2010. The Mystery Writers of America awarded him the prestigious Ellery Queen Award in 1994, and the Raven--the group's highest non-writing award--in 2003.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This selection of stories certainly wasn't the best I've read/heard from this series even though it had a story by John D. MacDonald, best known for his Travis McGee novels. His story was in the middle of the pack & none of the stories tickled me. The best part was often the author biography that preceded the story.

There were only 4 or 5 stories, too. Overall, I'd give this collection 2.5 stars. I really liked the earlier Black Mask collections. I wonder if the pickings are just getting slimmer.

[JZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still enjoying these, but a couple fell a little flat for me. "Death Stops Payment" was the best.

[Eric Bowers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent and funny noir short stories.