October 28: Hard Case Crime at the Center for Fiction

Next Wednesday, October 28, I’ll be hosting the next event in the Beatrice reading series at the Center for Fiction, and it’s an opportunity for me to pay a small tribute to one of my favorite independent publishers, Hard Case Crime. Over the last five years, it’s established itself as a consistently excellent source for hardboiled crime fiction, with a mix of rediscovered gems and sensational new stories (as well as some manuscripts that have been waiting decades to see the light of day), and next week’s reading is a perfect example of how its reputation was built.

It’s been a decade since Russell Atwood debuted with the private eye novel East of A, and we’ve finally got the sequel: Losers Live Longer. Peter Blauner’s Casino Moon was first published in 1994, but as Hard Case publisher Charles Ardai pointed out a while back, “I don’t think it got the readership or the attention it deserved the first time out, in part because the original paperback edition had one of the least appealing covers I can remember.” (That’s certainly been taken care of…) And, finally, Ardai is on hand to tell us about pulp master Lester Dent and Honey in His Mouth, a novel that’s waited more than half a century to see the light of day.

If you’re in the New York area next Wednesday, I hope you’ll join us at 7 p.m. at the Center for Fiction (17 E 47th St.) for a free reading; the books will be available for purchase, and you can mingle with the authors over wine afterwards.

21 October 2009 | events |