BOTTLED IN BLONDE: THE PETER KANE DETECTIVE STORIES by Hugh B. Cave. Minneapolis, MN; Fedogan & Bremer; 2000. First edition hardcover. Collects the nine detective stories featuring Kane, all originally published in Dime Detective magazine in the late 1930's and early 1940's: short foreword by the author plus a three page introduction by Don Hutchinson: cover art by Jill Bauman. "They're written with vulgar energy and non-Beacon-Hill-Boston savvy, and with traces of the mean-street poetry that a few writers like Raymond Chandler mastered and turned into American literature. . . . In his introduction, Don Hutchison doubts that Kane's lurching around Boston perpetually drunk would pass muster in "today's politically correct climate." Nope, it wouldn't." -- Richard Lipez, The Washington Post Book World. "These stories are best savored in short gulps, like occasional shots of aged whiskey. They're worth your time, as historical precedent for today's brank of hard-boiled literature, and as a source of politically incorrect entertainment." -- Reed Andrus, Mystery News In honor of his 90th birthday, Fedogan & Bremer released a third collection of stories by the ever versatile and prolific Hugh B. Cave this summer. Like Wandrei brothers, Carl Jacobi, E. Hoffmann Price, and other Weird Tales authors, Hugh B. Cave also crossed over into the mystery genre. In Bottled in Blonde, Cave serves up nine tales of gin-soaked noir with a twist, featuring his hard drinking, hard-boiled, and hard-headed private eye, Peter Kane. This is the first ever collection of his Kane stories which were originally published in the detective pulps during the Thirties. Contents: The Late Mr. Smythe Hell on Hume Street Bottled in Blonde The Man Who Looked Sick The Screaming Phantom The Brand of Kane Ding Dong Belle The Dead Don't Swim No Place to Hide. Limited to 100 copies, SIGNED by Cave and Bauman on special art/signature page, with custom endpapers, in decorative gold- embossed slipcase. Fine copy in a fine dustjacket & slipcase. OUT OF PRINT FROM THE PUBLISHER. |