Some of you have asked what books we’re reading now. That’s not an easy question to answer, since we read so much! And despite our name, it’s not even all pulp fiction. But in the spirit of staying true to our moniker, we thought we’d point you to the work of Hard Case Crime who generously and reliably supply us with copies of their latest any time we get together…
THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN by Elissa Wald
An unforgettable story about two identical twin sisters, one a reformed libertine and one a repressed defense attorney, both discovering secrets about their sexual selves…
BLOOD ON THE MINK by Robert Silverberg
A federal agent goes undercover, impersonating a Mob lieutenant to destroy a counterfeiting ring from within.
FALSE NEGATIVE by Joseph Koenig
In 1953 Atlantic City, a former newspaper reporter uncovers a series of murders of beauty pageant contestants and doggedly digs in, even when it puts his own life in danger.
THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH by Ariel S. Winter
An amazing first novel that’s really three novels in one, each set in a different decade and each told in the style of a different famous mystery writer.
THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by James M. Cain
Who knew that the guy who wrote MILDRED PIERCE and DOUBLE INDEMNITY had an unpublished book? Well, he did, and 35 years after his death it finally reached bookstores…
A young woman living in New York makes a list of all the men she’s ever slept with and decides to track down the only five men on the list who are still alive. (Why are all the others dead? Well, she has this bad habit, see, of killing men after she has sex with them. And robbing them, too, but it’s the killing part she really enjoys. That and the sex part.)
So anyway, she’s got five former lovers to track down, and to kill, but it’s easier said than done…
Angel Dare started as a performer in adult films and then went on to manage other women in the business, but when a sex trafficking ring tried to kill her, she turned into a remorseless vigilante with just two things on her mind: her own safety, and getting revenge. That story was told in MONEY SHOT, which got nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award. In this sequel, Angel’s spent a year in the Witness Protection Program, but has to go on the run again when the only survivor of her earlier campaign of revenge somehow gets on her trail…
QUARRY’S EX by Max Allan Collins
How does a guy become a professional killer? Well, for Quarry it started when he came back from a tour of duty overseas to find his wife in bed with another man. The next day, he killed the man, and a new career was born. A decade later, Quarry’s making a good living in the killing business, when who do you suppose he stumbles across while doing a job? Yeah, the book’s title gives it away. But it’s a great story, about a man and a woman with a shared past but no love lost between them.
Getting off is quite the page turner 😀
So glad you enjoyed it! If you felt like writing up a review, we’d be glad to post it here…
Hm, where is the Kafka?
Good question! But Kafka doesn’t feel like summer reading, not even late summer. More like dead-of-winter reading, when night falls early…
May I suggest a book by James Hawes on Kafka: “Kafka was no tortured soul – he was a clubber with a penchant for porn. ” Hawes’ White Merc With Fins would fit the crime part.
If you had to recommend just one of these books, which one would you recommend?
Why would we have to recommend just one…? They’re all fun…
I think you need to start reading some Ken Bruen (particularly the stuff he wrote with Jason Starr) oh and there’s always Richard Stark. Great Job keep staying abreast of all that great noir/pulp out there.
B
I think you need to read some Mike Faricy; Russian Roulette, Mr. Softee or Bite Me would be a great start.
Thanks, Mike! Appreciate the recommendations!
can you recommend some more books? I have read all of these and need some more PULP FICTION!
Oh, there are so many great books out there! Wouldn’t know where to start. But as we find other fun titles we’ll certainly let people know.
And have you REALLY read all of these? Some of them haven’t even been published yet!
Have you read Bill Pronzini? He’s a Great writer.
I have! Good fit for us – the Nameless Detective and the Topless Readers…
Here’s a good one for you, Vienna Dolorosa,
A full length historical novel set in Vienna,Austria,Vienna Dolorosa takes place during a one-day time period – March 12,1938,the day Hitler invades Austria – in an Inner City hotel managed by a transvestite and doubling as a brothel for men who like boys dressed up as girls.Told from the perspectives of various hotel personnel and guests,brothel employees and clientele, a talkative Viennese official,German police,Nazi SS,and a darling street boy Petya.Not for the faint of heart,Vienna Dolorosa includes rape,incest,intergenerational sex,prostitution,transvestism,teen sex,brutality,castration/mutilation,and murder.
http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com
Lambda Literary Awards Winner 2009/Bisexual Fiction
Sounds like quite a read!
A lot of you were reading “The Twenty Year Death.” Did everyone enjoy it?
P.S. It’s great to see a lot of people reading Hard Case Crime novels.
Yes! THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH is an amazing book. A great summer read.
These seem to all be detective novels. Do y’all have a line on reprinted pulp sci-fi or horror?
Wish we did! We have more than one ardent sf fan in our group and we don’t know of a line that is to science fiction what Hard Case Crime is to mysteries…
Though biased, I can recommend one pulp-y space opera series:
http://www.macabreink.com/cpmain/print-editions/birth-dread-remora/
http://www.macabreink.com/cpmain/print-editions/veil/
We would be happy to supply copies. 🙂
Thanks for the recommendation! We try to avoid taking copies at this point (though we appreciate the offer), just because we’ve got so many books, more than we could ever possibly get to. But we always welcome recommendations.
There was an imprint called “Planet Stories” recently … don’t know if they’re still publishing. Similar format to the Hard Case line-up. They had a little banner in the upper-left corner, just like Hard Case, but I don’t know if they were related.
You might look to the smaller publishers of pulp-reprint fiction for your SF fixes.
“The Aspern Papers” by Henry James. Anything by Jane Austin.
Get some Christopher Moore on that list.
These books look pretty cool and the cover designs are a hoot. I’d be interested to hear what the group likes about them, and about pulp novels in general. Thanks! P.
They’re quick, fun reads, and ever so slightly scandalous. People look down on them and really shouldn’t. The covers are sexy and delicious. What’s not to like?
I like to say that “Macbeth” and “Romeo and Juliet” are … at least for starters … very pulpy stories, and part of their appeal is the blood and the sex. Now I have a fancy theory that blood and sex are popular in stories because they are an outlet for emotions that disrupt the social part of our social animal evolution; but that might just be taking the fun out pulps by thinking about them too hard.
You MUST check out Will Viharo’s Pulp Fiction books!!!
http://www.amazon.com/Will-Viharo/e/B004QWCU4W
I would HIGHLY suggest, “Love Stories are Too Violent for Me”…. before the movie comes out!! 😉
John O’Hara’s Butterfield 8, Jim Thompson’s The Grifters, A Swell-Looking Babe, & After Dark, My Sweet. Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, if they’re not already on your lists.
Yes, yes, and yes! All of them are on our lists except O’Hara, but I’m going to go order a copy right away. Hey, any chance you might want to come out with us and read together sometime? 🙂
[…] just about the boobs, these ladies have ridiculously awesome taste in literature. Check out their Pulp Fiction reading list, along with a post that outlines an encounter with one of my favorite authors Elmore […]
I don’t know if you ladies enjoy your pulp crime novels with a fantasy twist, but if you do, I’ve been reading a great series by the British author Ben Aaronovitch that I highly recommend. It’s about a modern-day police constable in London who becomes a wizard. The series is called the Rivers of London and the first book is called “Midnight Riot” (book 2 is called “Moon Over Soho”, book 3 is called “Whispers Under Ground”, and book 4 is called “Broken Homes”, but book 4 doesn’t come out until July 25th).
Always appreciate recommendations – thanks!
Anytime. I’m an avid reader so I’ve got some really good recommendations, although the vast majority of the books I read are either sci-fi or fantasy, so they really wouldn’t fit with the pulp fiction genre your group is focused on. If your interested though, just say so (I’ll check back in a few days) and if so, I’ll list a few of the series and some stand-alone books I found to be really well written.
Hi … CJ Henderson here. I scrolled through many, many pages of your photos, but I must admit I was hoping to find you were reading one of my books. It would have made me proud. If you drop over to http://www.cjhenderson.com, you can see much of what I have written. I would love to know if anyone in your group has read me. My fingers are crossed. And, of course, thank you for reading, young people. It makes us old authors very happy.
We’re a pretty widely read bunch – so even though I haven’t personally read your books, I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of our members has. 🙂
I’ve been looking for an excuse to visit New York City, and I’ve found it. I’ve been a pulp-fiction fan for decades, but my tastes began with the original magazines, then moved into the paperbacks. Do you folks ever attend Gary Lovisi’s New York Paperback Expo? Maybe you should come to my November “Pulp Adventurecon” in New Jersey as guests of honor … I wonder if the hotel could handle the attendance spike!
My latest obsession is Donald Westlake … particularly his “Richard Stark” novels featuring the criminal Parker. Next on the radar are books by Dan Marlowe. The Hard Case Crime line-up is great … but I love hunting down the paperbacks from the 1950s and 1960s. Are there any used bookstores left in New York City?
One of your members, in recent photos, is reading CASINO MOON. I lent that particular book to a friend, and he was reading it on the train a few weeks ago. He probably walked through Central Park with the paperback in his briefcase, around the same time the Society was there.
If you gals like, I’d be happy to donate more pulp fiction to the cause of making reading sexy. My bookcases overfloweth … which is not the worst thing in the world …
We’ve never attended the Expo, though we’ve heard of it. Not sure it would be the right environment for us, but…maybe one or two of us will drop by this year incognito…
Your new explorer seems a little ill at ease in her picture. I’m sure that few people would feel ill at ease or self conscious about their hands or their elbows or their knees. If we can feel sort of the same matter-of-fact satisfaction about our body as a whole that we feel about our elbows or our knees or our hands, then we will have come a good way toward being much healthier, not only in body. Really, if someone were to go wild, or if someone wants to go wild (at least occasionally), the really good reasons for that are not visible in any case. We want associates with wisdom, with kindly dispositions, with an understanding attitude, with a sense of joie de vivre (what’s that????). None of that is visible, but all of it is much more important than the shapely articulation of a wrist bone or a knee ligament or, perhaps, a collar bone. Feeling entitled to be comfortable in your own body is a minimum thing, and your associate is well advised to practice that in some setting—maybe yours (or not).
Two years ago, you asked for a review of Getting Off. Here’s mine:
Getting Off is a crime novel by Lawrence Block (writing as Jill Emerson). It begins as the story of Katherine “Kit” Tolliver, a young woman with a bad habit of killing all the men she has sex with. This is due in large part from a childhood trauma, but has now become an itch that she must scratch. One day, however, one of her prey makes an offhand remark, and this gets her to thinking about the men who got away. She makes a list, then begins crossing the men off of it. Everything is going fine until she meets a beautiful young woman named Rita Perrin, who begins to enjoy swapping sordid sex tales with Kit (whom Rita knows as her beloved “Kimmie”). Kit begins to wonder whether or not her killing can go on forever, and whether she should trade a life on the run for one of domestic bliss ….
If Kit were simply a cold-blooded killer, it would be very difficult to care about her. However, Block has given her a wicked sense of humor that holds the reader’s interest. You might not be rooting for her, but you want to know her fate. The suspense is also palpable in each scene, leaving one to wonder how Kit will get off with each crime (in both senses of the phrase). Vivid descriptions (of setting and supporting characters) drop the reader right into the thick of story, so one feels that he or she is right there with Kit as she carries out her dirty deeds. Killer dialogue (pun fully intended) also keeps the reader firmly hooked. Without spoiling the plot, due to convenient circumstances, Kit’s murders become almost heroic, as if the homicides are justifiable. And while I should have seen the “surprise” ending coming a mile away, it was still quite a kick. The whole book is really, and well worth your time.
On a personal note, I did really enjoy this. Thanks for the recommendation!
This whole idea is great. I feel like these would be up your alley: http://www.feministpress.org/books/fp-series/femmes-fatales
Yeah, those are wonderful.
[…] Books. […]
Your experiment has been going for a long time, now. Some of us are very ill at ease about anything that is too unusual. So, your experiment should be uncomfortable for us because it is not what we are used to. Shocking, simply shocking. Still, over this time, you seem to have done no one any harm at all—no one died. No great trouble happened. No crimes were committed. The only real down side is that you had some fun. We old fashioned people are, of course, against fun whenever we might encounter it. Maybe we could use more lessons from you regarding what we worry about and shouldn’t. We shouldn’t worry if some female person wanders around reading topless. It won’t cause trouble. Of course, perhaps we ought to worry a bit more about a few other things (climate change, pestilence, war in the middle east, proper performance of the Goldberg Variations—important things).
The world would be a better place if there were more literary societies. Meeting together and discussing books gives me the shivers as Owen Meany would say.
I live in Mexico where there aren’t a lot of readers but I read and review books from time to time. Just finished Tyler Cohen’s ‘Average is over’ and reviewed it in a less than flattering way (some writing just gets under my skin).
The king of detective style fiction [for me] is John D. MacDonald’s wonderful ‘Travis McGee’ series.
Can a Male join your group?
We do have one or two men at most of our events – but never more than one or two, since it’s primarily a group for women and we want to keep the female-to-male ratio high. And the one or two men we do invite are almost always men we already know well beforehand (e.g., someone’s bf or husband or longtime best buddy). So while the answer to the question “Is the group really co-ed?” is yes, the answer to the question “Can a male join your group?” is generally no, unless you’re someone we already know or who comes vouched for by someone we already know.
How publishers get books in your hands? We have a book, The Wrong Man, that is definitely pulp and matches well with Hard Case.
At this point I’m afraid we’ve been so deluged with offers of free books from authors and publishers (a nice problem to have, I admit) that we’ve pretty much set a policy of not taking any more – we’d just feel bad accepting more when we’ve already got more than we could possibly get around to reading. But we do take recommendations and share them with the people in the group, and if anyone’s interest is piqued, it’s easy enough for us to order a copy the old-fashioned way. That way you even get a sale out of it! 🙂
Fair enough. This is a link to the Amazon page. Acclaimed Cinema Productions and Throughline Films are starting preproduction on the movie this year (!) and we’re trying to get some eyeballs on it.
http://www.amazon.com/Wrong-Man-Matthew-Louis-ebook/dp/B00JE2GLS0/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1399519457&sr=1-4&keywords=The+Wrong+Man
Thanks! We’ll give it a look. Love the cover.
Check out “Lies We Were Told.” It’s not pulp fiction, but it’s a page turner with romance, mysticism, and very good reviews.
Thanks – we’ll give it a look!
So this is mostly about exhibitionism.
Not reading good books.
Don’t understand me wrong: I love breasts. And reading.
Sadly “Pulp Fiction” has nothing to do with the movie.
Actually, “pulp fiction” has quite a lot to do with the movie – Quentin Tarantino was inspired to write the movie by reading the same sort of pulp crime novels we enjoy reading. So if you want to see where Tarantino got his ideas and sense of style, reading pulp crime yarns isn’t a bad place to start.
I’m curious if you’ve read anything by Robert E. Howard, the 1930s pulp fiction author. I’ve been a fan of his since high school. His material includes some crime, western, and barbarian stories. His most famous character is Conan the Barbarian – but his work is quite different than what ended up on the big screen (REH’s work is better IMHO). “Pulp Fiction” the movie is also a favorite, I saw it three nights in a row when it first hit the theater and I’ve seen it many, many times since then.
Joe
I’m sure at least some of our members have read Howard!
I don’t know if you have ever read any of Tony Hillerman’s mysteries. His mysteries novels about two detectives with the Navajo Tribal Police are all gripping, can’t-put-’em-down page turners, yet at the same time so educational. If you have not read him I strongly recommend him!
I can’t believe no one has mentioned anything by Ross Macdonald. If you haven’t read anything by him, I would suggest: “Black Money”, “The Galton Case”, or “The Barbarous Coast”. Psychological, hardboiled, detective fiction set in southern California. Tasty stuff!
Oh, absolutely. Macdonald is great.
May I also suggest any of John D MacDonald’s Travis McGee series.
If you guys want to try branching out into something of pulp fiction with a taste of fantasy I’d love to give you the suggestion of Glen Cook’s Garrett PI novels. Start with the first “Sweet Silver Blues”.
If you want something pulpy with a bit of sci fi in the mix try Larry Niven & Steven Barnes’ “Dream Park”. If you enjoy it they wrote a couple of subsequent books as well.
Have fun girls!
Thanks! DREAM PARK is great. Will have to try Cook… 🙂
You guys should read some Murakami. Hard-Boiled Wonderland is right up your alley!
Congratulations! I happen to love what you’re doing, for a couple of reasons. First, I learned to read from my dad’s pulp fiction collection, most especially his pulp science fiction collection. Having E. E. “Doc” Smith as an English teacher in absentia gave me a rather peculiar vocabulary, especially for a seven year old. It also gave me a view into social nudity (or in the case of Lyranians, downright antisocial nudity), as it was a feature in several of his novels. Don’t even get me started on Heinlein. I was very pleased to see The Martian Chronicles in one of the photos; I noticed the ladies, surely, but I was LOOKING for what you might be reading. I wonder if any of you have read Philip José Farmer’s “Flesh”?
In any case, keep up the good work, and perhaps I’ll see you if I ever visit New York. I may even bring a sketch book.
You got me into Max Allan Collins. Thanks. Let me return the favor and recommend Blood Sucking Fiends by Christopher Moore. It takes place in SF where being top free is legal.
If you are looking for new reading material, check out “The Francis Bacon Mystery Series” by Anna Castle. It is a series of, so far, three murder mysteries, set in Elizabethan England, with Francis Bacon as chief detective and spymaster. I think you would enjoy them.
Wonderful selection… If I might toss one more into the mix.. Illusions by Richard Bach.
An inspiring read.. and one that I have done my best to follow
All the best
Micheal