If short stories are your thing, here are two more thumping great anthologies from Robinson at knock-down cost. Though some of the stories are a little more reflective than the title suggests, the one to go for is Pulp Action, Maxim Jakubowski’s nicely balanced successor to his 1996 anthology for the same publisher. This fills in some of the gaps he left before - and it’s a cracker. Of course, everything has its price and what you don’t get here is the kind of historical background and contextual analysis of the writers that say Hardboiled, the 1995 Bill Pronzini/Jack Adrian anthology for the Oxford University Press, will give you at somewhat higher cost.
Pulp Action hits the ground running with a fine pre-Perry Mason story from Erle Stanley Gardner (1934). From a historical perspective however, Raoul Whitfield’s lack-lustre, 1929 story comes first. I suspect that the editorial standards at Breezy from which this comes were somewhat different to those of the legendary Black Mask magazine under editor Joseph T.Shaw, and for which Whitfield did most of his early work. The 30’s however are represented by seven stories of which the best are the Gardner mentioned above together with one of Frank Gruber’s stories featuring Oliver Quade, “"The Human Encyclopaedia"”, a highlight of which is a fight to the death with a Jungle Shawl fighting cock! And there are three from Black Mask, slickly plotted tales, crammed with action, notably Roger Torrey’s tough tale complete with crooked D.A., of a gang war set in motion by a paving contract, that reveals him as a distant (1934) relative of James Ellroy.
For me the collection, again taking the stories in date order, hits its stride with two of the three stories from the 40’s. Frederic Brown once again reveals himself as one of the most original and quirky of the pulp writers, whilst connoisseurs of the period when noir turned purple will love Bruce Cassiday’s fluorescent story revolving around the “"nine greatest paintings of the twentieth century."” Thereafter, the collection hardly misses. The 50’s are represented by classic noir from Lawrence Block and long stories from Frederick C.Davis and John D MacDonald (pre-Travis McGee), the 60’s by late Bruno Fischer, the 70’s by Evan Hunter (a scalpel-sharp dissection of motel adultery) and Bill Pronzini’s neat locked room mystery, set in the world (what else?) of pulp collecting.
The 80’s, alas, are represented by a brutal and elemental tale from Joe Lansdale, which I could happily have done without. In the 90’s however contrasting stories by Marcia Muller and particularly Ed Gorman leave you with the kind of questions that all good fiction should. And, as if to prove that nothing much has changed in 80 years of pulp fiction, our new century brings us not only our own Mark Timlin writing at or very near his best together with a virtuoso performance from wunderkind writer Michael Guinzburg.
I have left the best until last. In 1975 Charles Willeford started to write a new novel with the prescient subject of reality-TV, indeed the ultimate form of reality-TV, the possibility of real on-screen murders. He never finished it, but what remains, The First Five in Line (Warren Oates as MC?!) is the funniest blackest 26 pages you will read this year.