Weighing in at over a thousand pages, containing over forty-seven stories and two novels, this book is big, baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train-a bullet couldn't pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes; sultry dames whose looks are as lethal as a dagger to the chest; and gin-soaked hideouts where conversations are just preludes to murder. This is crime fiction at its gritty best. Featuring: - Three stories each by Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Erle Stanley Gardner and Dashiell Hammett. - Plenty of reasons for murder, all of them good. - A never-before-published Dashiell Hammett story. - Why you should never buy a strange blonde a hamburger - Complete novels from Carroll John Daly, the man who invented the hard-boiled detective and Frederick Nebel, one of the masters of the form. - 3lbs of Pulp in three lethal installments: The Crimefighters, The Villains, and The Dames and three unstoppable introductions by Harlan Coben, Harlan Ellison and Laura Lippman.