W.T. Ballard was one of Joe Shaw's Black Mask boys, and his number one hero, Hollywood troubleshooter Bill Lennox, starred in more than two dozen stories. Now, 78 years after his debut, Bill Lennox is still around, and his first three novel-length adventures are FREE for Kindle and other eReaders at Munseys.com. (Once you reach the Munsey's site, just click on each cover to choose your download format.)
Get the lowdown on more of this week's Forgotten Books at SWEET FREEDOM.
Ballard wrote great hardboiled prose.
ReplyDeleteBowling Green's collection of his short stories, Hollywood Troubleshooter, not only contains several of his best yarns from Black Mask, it also has a truly fine memoir of writing for that magazine by Ballard.
He decided to try to write for Black Mask while reading The Maltese Falcon out of the magazine while riding on a San Francisco street car. Wonderful stuff.
John Hocking
They were almost free back then at 25 cents it would seem now, but not everybody had that much to pay for a magazine. It went for food or gas.
ReplyDeleteHere's an interview I did with Ballard for Armchair Detective in 1976:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.blackmaskmagazine.com/ballard.html
--Stephen Mertz