A funny - sometimes laugh out loud so - recap of a bunch of unusually written books, including quotes; an odd kind of love letter to the whole pulp industry and those authors with alternative genius. It also gives a kind of whirlwind tour of the various crime/mystery genres (including the paperback original gothic, kind of strangely). There's something really fascinating to me about the whole system of churned out, hundreds of thousands of very similar words per year publishing and the book was really evocative of that even though it didn't go into much detail, just touched on it. The only problem I had with the book was really wanting more, heh - more plot details, more bad writing, more coverage of different areas of writing etc. Definitely looking forward to reading the sequel.

Note that the book covers a lot of stories which have racist themes or are pretty explicitly racist - he obviously doesn't endorse it but it could easily be uncomfortable to read.

Some random good quotes he gives that I highlighted while reading:

"I do, Ranny, I do and I am happy but I don't feel happy."
"I know, dear, and I feel the same way."

"In plain English, Patterson," said Pye, "nix on the gats!"

"This is verra, verra serious," he said, lapsing into his native tongue."

"I wanted to see the murderer of that beautiful creature seated in the gas chamber. I wanted it so bad my saliva glands throbbed."

"His eyes popped out of his pink-cake face and danced in the air."

"She went up in a puff of smoke, and a startling truth dribbled out of her explosion."

"She swayed toward me, a sob swelling her perky pretty-pretties"

"Drop that corpse, you fool!"

"Dan Turner squalling," I yeeped. "Flag your diapers to Sylvia Hempstead's igloo. There's been a croaking."

"A while ago you mentioned my hardboiled rep. You said I'm considered a dangerous hombre to monkey with. Okay, you're right. Now will you come along willingly or do I bunt you over the crumpet till your sneezer leaks buttermilk?"

my fav title he mentions is probably "Lady, That's My Skull". He also has a lot of great lines writing about the writing eg "This is the second atypical quality: the Mafia generally has better things to do than run amok in Gothic suspense novels, so you almost never find them in one" ( )

Reprint of Pronzini's affectionate 1982 look at what he calls "alternate classics"--that is, books so bad they're good, is fun at first but grows a bit tedious. The lengthy repetitions of the plots are not as interesting or funny in some cases as he thinks they are. The series of quotations from various writers fares better, with some real gems of mixed metaphors and pure gibberish standing out. Pronzini isn't consistent in his critiques, either. He veers from the really really bad (Stephen Harry Keeler) to the sometimes bad (Richard Prather) to a few authors who maybe aren't so bad after all. He is also very skeptical that any author he considers to have written an "alternate classic" may have been aware of what he was doing, which perhaps speaks to a general lack of perception on Pronzini's part. The book is also quite dated. I'm happy that no one has gone back and updated lines such as "and is still writing," but Pronzini misses a few other targets he could skewer for their sometimes unbearably bad prose, including John D. MacDonald, whose blurb is on the back cover.

Still, despite my criticisms, this is a worthwhile work for anyone interested in the history of the mystery genre (or spy fiction or thrillers or even gothic, none of which Pronzini can resist talking about). I see that there is even a sequel. Perhaps it is better? ( )