Dan Turner - Hollywood Detective - 03/43 (ISBN 1597980706)

Excellent Hard-Boiled Detective Pulp Fiction At Its Silliest Best:
First of all, the writing here is spectacular . . . and funny. The Dan Turner stories were clearly written to be over the top "Her gat spat liquid death . . . " or "Her gams could halt an out-of-control city bus". The writing is crisp, punchy and very colorful (and sometimes hyperbolic). Nothing here is meant to be taken seriously and it's a lot of fun to read. On a more historical note, these stories were part of the on-going evolution of the hard-boiled detective genre which started earlier in the 1930s with the novels of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain which would later be taken over my Mickey Spillane. It's an era that's gone now and can only be taken seriously for its escapist value. But, oh, what writing!