Paul Cain was the hardest boiled of all the Black Mask writers. And other than Hammett and Chandler, the one who best epitomizes the hard, brittle style that represented the magazine. Short staccato sentences void of introspection, conjunctions, and all but the most necessary exposition. Stark, violent, and occasionally brutal storylines. This collection features the novel Fast One (in its original serial form) and the complete 13 slayers—brilliant works of noir fiction—written by Paul Cain for Black Mask and other crime pulps. For six of the slayers, this is the first time ever that they have been collected in book format, and also marks the first time that all of Cain’s fiction has been collected in book form.