Fredric Brown (1906–1972)

Written in 1949, but I read the 1951 published novel and if this is cheating a bit I am glad I did because this was a great read. Brown was a master of the short story form that was the backbone of the 1940's pulp fiction craze. This was one of his few novel length stories and his hero Keith WInton is a pulp fiction short story writer. He can knock out a story in a coupler of hours of hard pounding on his typewriter. He collects three or four stories and hocks them around the various magazine publishers, he is an established name in the business and so he has little difficulty in getting his stories accepted, counting on a 50-50 success rate. He writes mostly science fiction or mystery stories and so when the first rocket is sent to the moon he finds himself a good vantage point to witness the landing: the rocket will produce a tremendous flash of light which the scientists say will be visible to the naked eye. The flash of light is in fact a lightning strike caused by the rockets descent to earth and Winton is knocked unconscious.

When he wakes up things are different: the large estate belonging to the owner of his favourite publishing house no longer exists, he hails a passing motorist who takes him into town, credit notes are used instead of money. A shopkeeper claims to be a collector of coins willing to exchange a large amount of credit notes for one of Winton's coins, but he is reported to the police who have a shoot on sight policy, he escapes and finds his name and address in the phone book, there is space travel and planet earth is at war with the Arcturians. The first part of the novel finds Winton adapting to his new situation and then trying to figure out what has happened to him. He books in at a hotel buys a typewriter and starts working on new stories to sell to earn a living.

Brown has fun with his novel that manages to include plenty of the tropes and plotting that one might find in the short stories published by the pulp magazines. There is more however, as he includes tension and mystery as well as irony in the adventures of Keith Winton on this different planet. Pulp fiction it maybe, but I enjoyed the invention and the fast pace of this fantasy science fiction novel - 4 stars… (mais)

Crime Novels: Five Classic Thrillers 1961-1964 is a wonderful snapshot of how the genre was evolving during this time frame. The novels are classics and having them together in one volume takes the reader back to the early 60s.

Collections like this I generally rate as a whole based on their purpose rather than, for instance, a collection of stories recently written that are presented to the world for the first time. In other words, while I think about how good they are I am more concerned with how representative they are of the time period. And on that note, I think this volume succeeds very well.

The only one of these I had not read previously was The Score by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake), and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I was compelled, after rereading Dead Calm by Charles Williams, to go and rewatch the film. And the one that reverberated the most for me was The Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hughes, it speaks to our current times just as directly as it spoke to those times.

Some may find these novels "dated." I won't say I disagree, but any work of fiction that utilizes the society contemporary to the writing as an element in the story is going to be, by definition, dated. That is neither a positive nor a negative, to treat it as either is pointless beyond simply being a personal reason to not like it. In fact, in a collection that seeks to highlight how a genre was evolving during a time period, datedness is a positive attribute.

I would recommend this collection to any readers of crime fiction who enjoy good storytelling, these novels can each stand as an excellent example of crime fiction. For those who like to know how their favorite genre has developed over the years, this will give you a glimpse at the time when it was swinging from hardboiled private detectives to more psychologically, and sociologically, driven narratives.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (mais)