Fast One

<p><strong>Paul Cain's <em>Fast One</em> is hard-boiled crime fiction stripped to the bone: fast brutal cynical and soaked in the violence of Depression-era Los Angeles.</strong> Gerry Kells moves through a world of gangsters gunmen gamblers corrupt operators and double-crosses where every alliance is temporary and every conversation may end in blood. This is not a puzzle mystery and not a gentleman's detective story. It is crime fiction as impact: sharp cold and merciless.</p><p>First published in book form in 1933 after appearing in <em>Black Mask</em> <em>Fast One</em> is one of the most admired and uncompromising novels of the hard-boiled pulp tradition. Cain's prose is lean detached and deadly moving with the speed of a gunshot through a Los Angeles underworld where survival depends on nerve instinct and the willingness to strike first. This Black Curtain edition restores a landmark of American noir and hard-boiled crime for readers of Dashiell Hammett Raymond Chandler Black Mask fiction gangster novels vintage paperback crime and the darkest side of early twentieth-century American pulp. Cain's <em>Fast One</em> has been described as a landmark of pulp fiction and a high point of the ultra-hard-boiled manner.</p>