She took a final drag at the cigarette, flipped it away, and said, I don't get this line of talk. It's way over my head. Maybe you're waiting for some dream girl to come along in a coach drawn by six white horses, and she'll pick you up and haul you away to the clouds, where it's all milk and honey and springtime all year around.

A chronicle of the noir paperbacks of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. This text examines the works of such writers as Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Jim Thompson, David Goodis and James M. Cain, and is illustrated with 135 paperback covers and expanded with new material on Thompson.

In the rough end of Philadelphia, docker William Kerrigan obsesses over the mysterious suicide of his sister. Into a dive bar walks Lorretta Channing the beautiful, enigmatic socialite and sister of Newton the drunk. Loretta's the impossible dream, the escape route from his hellhole existence, but maybe she holds the key to his sister's death.

A classic hardboiled novel of the '30s, the first ever No Exit title, originally published in 1987. Superb retro cover.