Paul Cain, het pseudoniem van George Caryl Sims, was een pulpfictieauteur en scenarioschrijver wiens enige roman wordt beschouwd als een mijlpaal in de hardboiled stijl. Zijn literaire bijdrage ligt in de meesterlijke weergave van harde realiteiten en complexe personages binnen de Amerikaanse onderwereld. Cain's stijl kenmerkt zich door beknopte dialogen, een rauwe sfeer en een dynamisch tempo dat de lezer onderdompelt in een spannend verhaal. Zijn werk belichaamt de essentie van de Amerikaanse 'tough guy'-literatuur en heeft generaties schrijvers beïnvloed.
Murder multiplied by SEVEN! Supercharged action and breath-taking suspense in this carnival of crime from the blood-dripped pen of Paul Cain, a connoisseur of crime who writes in the best homicidal tradition of Hammett and Chandler. This is one collection of spine-tingling murder yarns that you won't read with your back to the door.
First published by Doubleday in 1932 in the depth of the Great Depression, an era whose seamy side it depicts, and only recently rediscovered, Fast One by Paul Cain explodes into real life with the story of one of the toughest characters ever to emerge in American fiction.
This novel is about Frank Grant, the seventh son and the eleventh child, of Michael and Mary Grant. He was just one short of a dozen. And to coin a phrase, his life was pretty much the same. "A day late and a dollar short" Being born four years prior to America entering the Second World War, when his mother was in her mid forties, and during the nineteen thirty-seven flood that devastated Louisville, Kentucky. About Franks father being killed walking home from work, and afterwards, losing their home, and living in abandoned houses with hardly enough to eat or decent clothes to wear to school. Overcoming the ridicule from the other kids because of his hand-me-down clothes and being too small for his age. Walk with Frank through his troubled adolescent years, and early manhood. Experience with him the indifference of his brothers, and the betrayal of his friends. The times spent running as a fugitive, the hard times as an inmate and finally reuniting with the love of his life.
In der Großen Depression profitiert in Los Angeles nur, wer stark und skrupellos ist. Gerry Kell, ein ehemaliger Scharfschütze, mischt sich in die rivalisierenden Gangsterkämpfe ein und spielt alle gegeneinander aus. Gemeinsam mit der alkoholabhängigen Schwedin Ganquist gerät er in eine gefährliche Situation. Ein Klassiker des hardboiled-Pulp.