My Bookshelf
The Hardboiled Dicks, edited by Ron Goulart
An absolute essential for anyone who loves this stuff, Ron Goulart’s 1965 The Hardboiled Dicks (my 1967 paperback reprint is the one pictured above) was one of the first collections of hard-boiled detective fiction from the thirties and forties crime and detective pulps, preceded by only Cap Shaw’s 1946 The Hard-Boiled Omnibus, from two decades earlier, which collected fifteen nuggets from Black Mask.
Goulart’s book also contained stories from Black Mask, but stretched to include stories from Dime Detective and Detective Fiction Weekly as well. Goulart also wrote the introduction, and true fan that he was, provided an informal reading list at the end of the book that still serves as a kick ass introduction to hard-boiled fiction.
And unlike Shaw’s 1946 historical gem, you can still find find relatively cheap copies of Goulart’s book around (I found one last year for four bucks, and current prices start at about six or seven bucks on ABE or Amazon).
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THE HARDBOILED DICKS | Buy this book
Goulart, Ron, editor.
New York: Sherbourne Press, 1965.
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Introduction by Ron Goulart
- “Don’t Give Your Right Name” by Norbert Davis
- “The Saint in Silver” by John K. Butler
- “Winter Kill” by Frederick Nebel
- “China Man” by Raoul Whitfield
- “Death on Eagle’s Crag” by Frank Gruber
- “A Nose for News” by Richard Sale
- “Angelfish” by Lester Dent
- “Bird in the Hand” by Erle Stanley Gardner
- An Informal Reading List
A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR
- “James & all: I appreciate the kind words about The Hardboiled Dicks. It was my first book. It was inspired my an article I’d done for a men’s magazine. My honorary mentor Anthony Boucher had given the piece a favorable mention in his NY Times review column and I parlayed that into a book contract with Sherbourne Press, where my friend William F. Nolan had an editor friend. Now if only somebody would (mention) one of my books that’s still in print.
— Ron Goulart (Comments section, April 2010, Rough Edges)
FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS
- Forgotten Books: “The Hardboiled Dicks” by Ron Goulart, ed.
James Reasoner looks back fondly. (April 2010, Rough Edges) - My Bookshelf: The Hard-Boiled Omnibus by Joseph T. “Cap” Shaw
Extra, extra, read all about it.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
This is the book that turned me into a slavering, helpless hardboiled fanatic. I mean, I’d read the stuff before, but this one set me back, first on my ass, and then on my financial heels, the genre of course being a black hole from which there is no emerging. I was forever hooked the moment the restaurant owner, outside the restaurant in the back alley, gave a newsboy a touch of cash and told him “Here, go inside and annoy my customers.” I forget what he called the customers, but that moment and image, the seedy alley and the fancy restaurant, dunno why, hooked me. And that was HOW many years ago?
Just a moment of nostalgia, spurred by the cover. I don’t think I ever knew it was Goulart’s first outing.
The story you mentioned was “Don’t Give Your Right Name” by Norbert Davis, one of my all-time favourites, featuring his ne’er-do-well hustler/private eye Max Latin.