The first hard-boiled detective Race Williams, runs up against the Klan in his premiere adventure, which leads him to fast and tragic action. Plus two other early Daly hard-boiled classics: "The False Burton Combs" and "Dolly." Story #1 in the Race Williams series.Carroll John Daly (1889–1958) was the creator of the first hard-boiled private eye story, predating Dashiell Hammett's first Continental Op story by several months. Daly's classic character, Race Williams, was one of the ...

Wacky as a loon—that was Connelly's first impression of the Grey gal when she walked into his office and offered him a retainer for protecting her from the man she loved. And who could blame him? It was a million-buck check she presented to that hard-boiled investigator and the signature it bore was simply "The Man in the Moon!"

"Better stay out of this… It will mean death for you—sure,” grunts a ruthless thug. But Three Gun Terry is not one to back down from a fight, especially when the life of a beautiful, young dame is at stake. Terry manages to whisk the girl away from certain death, just in the nick of time. But the retrieval brings more money and more trouble for Terry. It turns out the girl—Nita—is fresh off the boat and drop-dead gorgeous, catching his usually business-minded eye. To make matters worse, th...

Better Corpses first published in 1940, is a classic hard-boiled detective murder mystery featuring private investigator Race Williams. Williams, operating midway between the police and the criminal world, is called to aid Mary Morse, wealthy heiress to a long-established New York jewelry business, who is being threatened with blackmail by a ruthless gang. Carroll John Daly (1889-1958), considered one of the pioneers of the hard-boiled crime genre, authored 16 novels and a...

Black Mask, the greatest American detective magazine of all time, is back with another issue. This time around, it includes nine new stories in the Black Mask vein by Brian Townsley, Jane Jakeman, Brian Stanley, Hannah Honeybun, William Burton McCormick, Frank Megna, Jonathan Sheppard, Michael Bracken, Jim Doherty, as well as a new article on Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister by Katrina Younes. In addition, Boris Dralyuk has kindly supplied his translation of Isaac Bab...

Who do we look up to? Christ the Savior is no more. In the modern West, the life of the most significant figure in the history of the culture is assumed to be obsolete. What remains?Quite a lot, actually. In this groundbreaking work, acclaimed sociologist John Carroll argues that humans in the Western tradition are, by their nature, savior seeking. What he describes as a 'savior syndrome' impels humans to find someone, or some equivalent, to show the way to a bette...

Picking up from where our last issue left off, we have another group of crime stories written especially for us. Starting with ex-police detective Lissa Marie Redmond whose short fiction has appeared in anthologies like Akashic’s Buffalo Noir and whose debut novel will be out in February 2018, we move along to novelist Andrew Welsh-Huggins, author of the Andy Hayes PI series.Then we have a chilling new tale by short story specialist Nick Kolakowsi, followed by this issue’s featured...

The quarter-century since 1990 has witnessed an unprecedented economic performance by Australia. It stands as an extraordinary world achievement.A prospering economy in an era in which the rest of the developed world has faltered, and even stagnated, does pose the question of what has made it happen. Was it a fluke; was it the result of long-term prudence and practical intelligence; or a slice of both, and perhaps much else? What kind of people achieved this? What manner of society...

This book confronts issues of meaning in a disenchanted, ‘godless’ world marked by the decline of organised religion. It proposes that right order is emerging as both the hidden structure of meaning that underpins the human condition and the force that shapes existence. The author argues that right order is both prior and to be made.Men, women, and children depend on a sense of right order to feel at home in their world. They live by it. Order making is native, co...

A Roman centurion asks Jesus to heal his dying servant. Jesus agrees to help and begins making his way to the centurion's home, but the centurion tells him not to bother making the trip. He says that it would be enough for Jesus just to say the word for the servant to be healed. The Bible then says that Jesus "marveled" at the centurion's faith. How could Jesus, whom Christians believe to be God incarnate, who knows all things, be amazed by anything a human does? There must be something sp...

Race Williams—the classic hard-boiled detective from the pages of Black Mask Magazine—takes on the biggest blackmailing scheme of his career. Plus a bonus Daly hard-boiled classic: "Paying an Old Debt." Story #2 in the Race Williams series.Carroll John Daly (1889–1958) was the creator of the first hard-boiled private eye story, predating Dashiell Hammett's first Continental Op story by several months. Daly's classic character, Race Williams, was one of the most popular fic...

A chance meeting in the night brings together New York City’s roughest private eye Three Gun Terry and runt-of-a-millionaire John Rogo. Over a cup of coffee, Rogo relays a tale to Terry that is all too familiar, despite its setting. Twenty five years ago, Rogo, his brother, and their friends were in South Africa hunting when they discovered fields of diamonds. They all looked to become the next Morgan and Rockefeller. Then, they stuck him: killed his brother and left him for dead, leaving ...