Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, David Goodis , these are a few of the masters of noir responsible for the great lurid paperbacks of the thirties, forties, and fifties. With titles like The Big Sleep, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, and Street of the Lost, with racy cover lines like "My gun-butt smashed his skull!" and "Ruthless terror ripped away the mask that hid cold fear," and with some of the most extraordinary cover illustrations ever to grace American literature, these paperbacks held the ingredients of American nightmares. In Harboiled America ,lavishly illustrated with 135 paperback covers, and expanded with new material on Thompson, Goodis, and others,Geoffrey O'Brien masterfully explores the art, history, and ideas of the American paperback.
- ISBN10 0306807734
- ISBN13 9780306807732
- Publish Date 22 March 1997 (first published August 1981)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 5 March 2021
- Publish Country US
- Publisher INGRAM PUBLISHER SERVICES US
- Imprint Da Capo Press Inc
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 214
- Language English