PAPERBACK CONFIDENTIAL
Brian Ritt
2014
Stark House
The crime fiction/mystery genre is full of reference books and I’m not exaggerating when I say there are hundreds of them. They take a lot of research to put together and a lot of time to write. Some are interesting and some are not, and my problem is usually one of two things, they are too academic and as a result very dry reading. Also a lot of times I’m not really learning anything new as some of these subjects are just over analyzed.
PAPERBACK CONFIDENTIAL does not have these problems. Focusing on authors who hit big during the heyday of paperbacks Ritt does a brilliant job of giving us interesting facts about a lot of authors who should be in every crime fiction readers library. He gives biographical history, a list of books written, references the screen work they have done and screen work based on their work. There is also a list of pseudonyms for each author. I actually thought I knew all the names Lawrence Block wrote under, I was wrong.
This is a terrific reference book and thoroughly interesting. I think it should be on the self of everyone who loves old paperbacks, crime fiction and just cool writing about a great time period.
Jon
