New Beginnings

 

 

Over the years I have begun and abandoned this project several times. As you can see above, I am an avid fan of the Hard Case Crime imprint. 

Just in case you logged on to this blog with no prior knowledge, let me give you a little background. Hard Case Crime was launched a little over 20 years ago. Over the years the publishers have released over 160 or so novels, in the classic hard boiled crime genre that became popular in the 60's and 70's. These releases are a mix of reprints of those classic novels as well as some new novels written in the same style.

When I am describing the Hard Case output to the neophyte, I often tell them it's something like film noir in print. (Sometimes I have to tell them what "film noir" is...) Now, admittedly, that may not be the same impression that others get from reading these volumes, but in my defense, the current newest book from the imprint, The Return of the Maltese Falcon by Max Allan Collins is a sequel to the original The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, and I defy ANYONE to tell me the movie version of  The Maltese Falcon isn't film noir...  

So here's the deal. The last couple of times I tried to launch this blog I tried to do it by chronological order of the issue of each novel. This time, instead, I am going to do it in a somewhat random order. For instance, the first review will be the previously mentioned Max Allan Collins book, which was just released. Subsequently I will be rereading some of my favorites that I have read, in no set order.

If you like what you read in the blog article, I encourage you to seek them out.

Happy reading.

Quiggy