The BIGGEST, the BOLDEST, the MOST COMPREHENSIVE collection of PULP WRITING ever assembled!

Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train — a bullet couldn’t pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best.

Including:

• Three stories by Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Dashiell Hammett.

• Complete novels from Carroll John Daly, the man who invented the hard-boiled detective, and Fredrick Nebel, one of the masters of the form.

• A never before published Dashiell Hammett story.

• Every other major pulp writer of the time, including Paul Cain, Steve Fisher, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy, and many, many more of whom you’ve probably never heard.

• Three deadly sections — The Crimefighters, The Villains, and The Dames — with three unstoppable introductions by Harlan Coben, Harlan Ellison, and Laura Lippman.

Featuring:

• Plenty of reasons for murder, all of them good.

• A kid so smart — he’ll die of it.

• A soft-hearted loan shark’s legman learning — the hard way — never to buy a strange blonde a hamburger.

• The uncanny “Moon Man” and his mad-money victims.

Erle Stanley Gardner turns to a hair-raising tale about the hero of “Murder Up My Sleeve” — quiet, amazingly perceptive Terry Clane, who bids fair to rank with those other two favorites, Perry Mason and Doug Selby...

Terry Clane, just back from China where he has been working on a secret government mission, runs into murder when he walks down the gangway at San Francisco. Whisked straight from the dock to police headquarters, Terry puts to good use all the powers of intense concentration he has learned in the Orient in order to beat the lie detector with its uncanny mind-reading.

Terry quickly senses that despite his absence the police think he knows too much about the escape of a man convicted of murder. The fugitive has disappeared and Cynthia Renton, original, impetuous painter who was once Terry’s fiancée, has disappear too. Was Cynthia implicated in the escape? Where would she hide a fugitive from justice?

Terry’s mind flew to Sou Ha, the sparkling vivacious daughter of his wisest Chinese friend, in her hidden, luxurious home in San Francisco’s Chinatown. How far would Sou Ha’s loyalty to Terry take her?

Sight of the old Chinese figure of Chow Kok Koh, riding backward on his white mule, sent the lie detector needles shooting up. Terry had given that figure to Cynthia. What was it doing now, stained with blood, a clue in a brutal murder?

A plot that never lets down from beginning to end, human and fascinating characters, a Story told with authentic punch, all prove that the maestro has done it again. From the appointment in the lonely warehouse to the explosive climax, it’s top mystery fare.

Mason (with Della Street and Paul Drake, of course) takes on a super-baffling case involving — among other strange things—

A shattering car wreck in which apparently no one was injured...

A glamorous widow who should have had a husband but didn’t...

An alarm clock that ticked away cheerfully under ground...

A bank clerk who boasted brazenly about a $90,000 embezzlement...

A girl who was always on hand when Perry Mason wanted her miles away, but was always missing when he needed her most...

A client on trial for murder who wouldn’t even talk to Mason...

A blood-stained bullet about which there was something very phoney...

A photographer who could make a camera do everything but climb a tree...

A gold mine without any gold...

AND, last but not least — Perry Mason, all but hoist with his own petard.

A Perry Mason Mystery... featuring the famous lawyer-detective in a bewildering case. Not one but TWO courtroom sessions — each with a different defendant — make this one of the most intriguing novels Erle Stanley Gardner has yet created.

It all begins with a minor automobile accident featuring a building contractor and a glamorous photographer’s model.

From then on it is a matter of snap decisions, snap judgments, and some telling snap-shots — one of them candid, and one of them fatal.

When Mason gets in the act, Hamilton Burger figures the D.A.’s office can make a killing of its own — and bring in Mason’s head on a platter!

Start on page one, play it to win, and you’ll be in on one of the most fabulous photo-finishes of Perry Mason’s career.

Two poisonings and two shootings at the Shore mansion on the thirteenth of October are no mere coincidence. Nor is the presence, in the neighborhood, of that celebrated man-about-murder, Perry Mason.

Warned by the local police to stay off the Shore case, Mason refuses to do so Result? His secretary, Della Street, is indicted on a charge of hiding a witness. And Mason is held as her accessory!

Watch the Mighty Mason extricate himself from this legal noose while solving the Shore mystery with his usual finesse.

After his employer dies in a fire, a caretaker hires Mason to allow him to keep his cat against the wishes of the men who inherit. When the caretaker is killed, Mason defends the woman accused of his murder.

"Peter Brunold has a bloodshot glass eye to use the "morning after". It is distinctive, closely identified with him, and thus quite a handicap when a corpse is found clutching a bloodshot glass eye. Later, another corpse is found, with another bloodshot glass eye in hand. Perry Mason is in almost as much jeopardy as his client: the lawyer's fingerprints have been found on one of the alleged murder weapons."

In this novelette Perry Mason clears his client, despite damning evidence in the victim’s lovenest, through the lipstick kiss impression on the dead man’s forehead.

Arthur Bickler was mad. The truck marked Skinner Hills Karakul Company was responsible for the accident. What’s more, the driver unceremoniously had snatched away his notebook in which he had written down the license number of the truck. He certainly thought he was entitled to $750 damages. Jackson thought he might get $500. Perry Mason compromised for $2000... He smelled more than sheep in them that hills...

The first person Perry Mason ferreted out was Daphne Milfield, obviously a blonde bomber in spire of the swollen eyes. Then there was suave Harry Van Nuys — a bit too solicitous about his friend’s wife. And Carol Burbank, a streamlined beauty who knew she had brains — and used them.

From then on it’s a matter of ships and shoes and candlewax — and for a time Della Street, paul Drake, and Perry mason wished they had left their clothes on the hickory limb and not gone near the water...

A woman claiming not to be a bride consults Mason about her 'friend' whose husband, long thought to have died in a plane crash, turns up alive.

A recipe to delight every gourmet of mystery fiction...

Take a proxy fight and a series of mysterious phone calls from an unknown female who said her name was Rosalind.

Add a couple of guns and a very dead blonde in a bare hotel room.

Season with Perry Mason’s brilliant analytical mind... and some fast action by Della Street and Paul Drake.

Pop it all into the courtroom... and you will have a murder case that is almost too hot to handle. At least that is the way Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, felt about it.

It’s a sensational pièce de résistance that calls for whirlwind action by three of the best cooks in the business, Perry Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake.

The team of Mason. Street and Drake was never in better form.

Perry Mason and Della Street were both out to lunch. Gertie, the receptionist and telephone operator, was indulging in her favorite noontime occupation munching chocolates and reading a love store — when the door burst open and a woman rushed in.

Gertie got her name, all right, dimly registered the fact that she was not only very attractive but very upset at having to wait for Mason, and Gertie even looked up when the woman left before he returned.

But vicarious romance was the rule of that day — much to the annoyance of Lt. Tragg when he later tried to piece together what had happened. And although his plan for surprising Gertie into an identification of the lady was ingenious, Perry’s counter-measure was even more so...

Perry Mason has cause to ponder the old adage “Like Father, like son” in this explosive drama of murder among California’s upper crust... featuring a small boy ho just loves guns — preferably those that go Bang!

The curtain rises on Mervin Selkirk’s scandalous divorce. Then, with the battle for custody of seven-year-old Robert still pending, Selkirk’s fiancée, Norda Allison, learns of some unfortunate qualities in her intended. Exit romance; enter letters — crude, threatening ones addressed to Norda.

That’s when Selkirk’s ex-wife and her second husband come on stage, his powerful father lurks behind scenes, and Perry Mason makes his entrance as star in a daring — and deadly — role.

People did not see eye to eye about Nadine Farr. Some called her sweet... some called her sour... some branded her a vicious murderess and blackmailer. But all agreed that she was a very good looking young woman, a real knockout.

Perry Mason reserved judgment and came up swinging on the count of ten in the most harrowing legal battles of his career.

First there was a corpse... but no corpus delicti. Then there was too much cyanide. Then Mason himself was accused of perjury.

Erle Stanley Gardner has contrived a brilliant puzzle for this 50th case of his famous lawyer-detective, and Perry Mason pulls out all the stops in a dazzling courtroom climax.

“What prominent lawyer received the mitten in front of his office building last night? Who was the mysterious blonde spitfire who swung one from the hip and left him groggy...?”

That gossip columnist knew that Perry Mason was the lawyer. But Mason himself didn’t know who the girl was... and he wanted to.

She had climbed down the fire escape from the Garvin Mining, Exploration and Development Company — right into Mason’s office on the floor below. After a story which neither believed, she ran away. And the next day Ed Garvin came to see the lawyer.

Garvin said he didn’t know the girl. He was just crazy about his new bride... but he did want Mason to find out whether or not he had two wives. He, himself, didn’t quite know.

Perry Mason takes the case that soon involves murder and reaches a climax in one of the most brilliant courtroom scenes of Mason’s career.

Perry Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake... faced with a puzzle to which their arch antagonist, Hamilton Burger, alone seemed to have the missing piece...

Muriell Gilman left her father at the breakfast table while she cooked seconds of sausages and eggs. When she returned, he had disappeared — seemingly into thin air.

She searched the house from cellar to attic. Then she went out to the workshop... there, scattered on the floor, were hundred-dollar bills, and in their midst — a spreading crimson stain... That’s when she telephoned Perry Mason.

Some of the characters: Nancy Gilman, a talented photographer who looked like a picture herself; Glamis Barlow, a chic blonde who loved to gamble and was definitely in the chips; Hartley Elliot, an up-and-coming beau of Glamis’, who, unlike his car, had a battery charged for action; Vera Martel, a shady detective interested in shady pasts.

The client was young, blonde and beautiful and she wanted to disappear.

The trouble was she wouldn’t say why, and she wouldn’t give her name. So Perry Mason agreed to a code of identification based on her measurements: 36-24-36.

But according to Della Street, the figures were padded, and as it turned out, so was everything the client said.

When Morley Eden burst into Perry Mason’s office claiming that a beautiful brunette has placed a five-strand barbed-wire fence through the middle of his property — house, pool, grounds and all — Mason is intrigued. But when he jumps into this bizarre situation with both feet, he finds himself in no time at all up to his neck in some very hot water indeed.

"When a potential client wants to see Perry Mason about a howling dog and a will, the attorney is not interested. He does not enjoy drawing wills, and wonders if the man shouldn't see a veterinarian. However, when the man asks whether a will is legal if the person who made it had been executed for murder, immediately Mason becomes interested. He finds, in addition to the will and the dog, a man who had run away with the wife of another, and a sexy housekeeper."

A beautiful coed is raped and murdered. Only one clue is found, and that so small that it is invisible to the naked eye.

Here, Erle Stanley Gardner recounts how one tiny lead enabled the police to bring a murderer to justice.