Black Book Detective Tales is proud to present our first thrilling publication. Each book contains a collection of exciting detective stories written in the style and tradition of the classic Golden Age Pulp Magazines. In each issue you'll find pulse pounding tales of intrigue, suspense, mystery, and adventure. Each tale is a self-contained story, full and complete. So you can begin wherever you'd like!
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Golden Age Pulp Magazines:
Pulp magazines or pulp fiction was often referred to simply as "the pulps". They were inexpensive fiction magazines widely published from the 1920's through the 1950's. The name "pulp" originates from the cheap wood pulp paper on which such magazines were printed. Magazines printed on higher quality paper stock were often called "glossies" or "slicks".
Pulps were the successors to the earlier "penny dreadful" and "dime novels". Many classic science fiction and crime novels were originally serialized in pulp magazines. Generally, the pulps are best remembered for their lurid and exploitative stories and for their similarly sensational cover art.
Pulp magazines often contained a wide variety of genre fiction, including gangster, detective/mystery, science fiction, adventure, westerns, war, sports, fantasy/sword and sorcery, and railroad men's adventure. Then of course there were "the sweats" which included romance, horror/occult, and Série Noire (French crime mystery) genres.
Excerpt
Story #1
Crystal Blue Persuasion
The city was hot that night, thick and heavy like a wool blanket. As if the place itself, the bricks and the asphalt were feverish, coming down with something. I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business and that's when she walked in.
She was a sultry brunette with smoldering brown eyes and stunning good looks. She sauntered in, swaying from side to side like 100 pounds of warm smoke. This dame was trouble and I knew it...
Story #2
The Persian Slippers
I felt low, very low, the night I set out searching for that girl with strange hazel eyes. The fog, which hung over the city, didn’t help matters any and I felt even worse when I found her. For by then, I had death on my hands…
Story #3
The Panama Hat
It sounded good, real good, a weekend at the beach with all expenses paid and a cash bonus thrown in. That was before I knew about the henchman, the redhead, and the corpse. Those three and a Panama hat ruined it all for me…
Can something so perfect really be poisonous?
When Rachel and her husband Adam move to Maple Cottage in remote Cheshire, it should be the fulfilment of their dream to start a family.
Haunted by her past and challenged by events around he
Following several murders, means, motive, and opportunity all point to out-of-work actresses Bootsie Kittredge and Babs Harrison. Their claims of righteousness and lack of guilt seem fabricated, thanks to a cheerfull announcement made to the patrons
