Monday, August 17, 2015

Coming soon from Altus Press: The COMPLETE Adventures of Race Williams


Yes, it's finally happening - and Volume 1 is now available for pre-order. The write-up from Amazon follows. Sign me up!

Collected for the first time: the stories of hard-boiled detective Race Williams. Originally appearing in the pages of Black Mask Magazine, author Carroll John Daly pioneered the hard-boiled P.I. story and perfected the genre with his classic character Race Williams. Apart from the novel-length Race Williams stories, these classic hard-boiled thrillers have rarely been reprinted, if ever.

Volume 1 contains the first 17 Race Williams stories, all from 1923-26 issues of Black Mask: ''Knights of the Open Palm,'' ''Personal But Not Confidential,'' ''$3,000 to the Good,'' ''The Red Peril,'' ''Them That Lives By Their Guns,'' ''Devil Cat,'' ''The Face Behind the Mask,'' ''Conceited, Maybe,'' ''Say It With Lead!,'' ''I ll Tell the World,'' ''Alias Buttercup,'' ''Under Cover,'' ''South Sea Steel,'' ''The False Clara Burkhart,'' ''The Super-Devil,'' ''Half-Breed,'' and ''Blind Alleys.''

Three additional, early, first-person hard-boiled stories by Daly which laid the groundwork for the Race Williams are included as well: ''Dolly,'' ''Paying an Old Debt,'' and ''The False Burton Combs,'' as well as editorial pieces by Daly himself on his inspirations, writing style, and advice to prospective writers. And it's prefaced by an all-new, scholarly introduction by Professor Brooks Hefner of James Madison University.

Them That Lives By Their Guns: The Collected Hard-Boiled Stories of Race Williams Volume 1 is the most important release in years on the history of the Hard-Boiled Detective story.

Pre-Order here:
Them That Lives By Their Guns: The Collected Hard-Boiled Stories of Race Williams Volume 1

10 comments:

Norman Walz said...

Pre-ordered it!

jhegenbe said...

Do we know why he's called Race? Must be a good story behind that, eh?

Evan Lewis said...

There are LOTS of Race stories I haven't read. Maybe the origin of his name will be in this book.

George said...

Wow, this is Great News! I'll buy all the volumes Altus Press publishes. Race Williams finally gets his due!

Rick Robinson said...

My pre-order is in, it should arrive right at my birthday, what a great present.

Oscar Case said...

Many fine novels came out in the early 1900's, including westerns, of course. Tey "lightened up" the heavy literature of the time.

Oscar Case said...

Damn, did it again, Tey means They.

Moring said...

This has turned out to be one of the books I'm most proud of producing. You'll see what I mean when it exists in the flesh (or paper, as the case may be).

shonokin said...

Wonderful! I've only read 5 or 6 of these, so there's plenty of "new" stuff for me. :D Looking forward to it!

Chris Casey said...

Words like anxious, excited, impatient, eager, yearning, keen---are all grotesquely inadequate descriptive terms for how I feel about this upcoming tome!!