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The Black Mask Boys book cover 1
The Black Mask Boys book cover 2
The Black Mask Boys
Series · 2 books · 1994-1998

Books in series

The Black Mask Murders book cover
#1

The Black Mask Murders

1994

Mystery and suspense readers are in for a rare treat with The Black Mask Murders, a unique achievement in the art of sophisticated action entertainment. It is the first in a series featuring the three seminal authors of the American private eye novel - Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner - each, in turn, as himself, the detective-hero. In the first of this delightfully offbeat mystery series, "Dash" Hammett is the narrator, with the other two in subsidiary roles; their turns will come in subsequent books. The reader encounters high-stakes crime and corruption in a dazzling murder case in the chic glitter-world of Hollywood during its golden age. Colorful sequences extend from New York to San Francisco's Chinatown to Southern California's Big Bear Lake country. Authentically recreated, the legendary masters of suspense fiction live again as they follow a complex, danger-filled blood trail in pursuit of a fabled jeweled treasure - the real-life inspiration for Hammett's classic novel, The Maltese Falcon. Gritty and glamorous, fascinating and fast-paced, bold and brilliantly conceived, here is a compulsive read for those who seek the unusual in the best of mystery and suspense. There's never been a novel quite like The Black Mask Murders.
Sharks Never Sleep book cover
#3

Sharks Never Sleep

A Novel Featuring the Black Mask Boys : Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner

1998

After being charged with murder, Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner calls on Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett to help him prove his innocence and uncover the real killer, in a mystery set against the backdrop of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Author

William F. Nolan
William F. Nolan
Author · 32 books

William F. Nolan is best known as the co-author (with George Clayton Johnson) of Logan's Run—a science fiction novel that went on to become a movie, a television series and is about to become a movie again—and as single author of its sequels. His short stories have been selected for scores of anthologies and textbooks and he is twice winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Special Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Nolan was born in 1928 in Kansas City Missouri. He attended the Kansas City Art Institute and worked as an artist for Hallmark Cards. He moved to California in the late 1940s and studied at San Diego State College. He began concentrating on writing rather than art and, in 1952, was introduced by fellow Missouri native (and established writer) Ray Bradbury to another young up-and-coming author, Charles Beaumont. Moving to the Los Angeles area in 1953, Nolan became along with Bradbury, Beaumont, and Richard Matheson part of the "inner core" of the soon-to-be highly influential "Southern California Group" of writers. By 1956 Nolan was a full-time writer. Since 1951 he has sold more than 1500 stories, articles, books, and other works. Although Nolan wrote roughly 2000 pieces, to include biographies, short stories, poetry, and novels, Logan’s Run retains its hold on the public consciousness as a political fable and dystopian warning. As Nolan has stated: “That I am known at all is still astonishing to me... " He passed away at the age of 93 due to complications from an infection.

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