What can you say about a book this good? For $25 you get 6, count 'em 6 of the very best classic American noir novels of all time: The Postman Always Rings Twice; They Shoot Horses, Don't They?; Thieves Like Us; The Big Clock; Nightmare Alley; and I Married a Dead Man. All this with a real cloth-bound hardcover, sewn in numbers, headbands, a beautiful book. Author notes, footnotes, chronology.

If you think noir is all about private dicks and dames, well think again, there isn't a detective protagonist in the bunch. These novels are more about life in the gritty years of the Great Depression and the effects it had on the physical and psychological conditions of people. Sure there are con men, bank robbers, blackmailers, murderers, prostitutes, but this isn't about psychopaths like a Jim Thompson novel, its about people trying to make it and stay alive when hope is gone. A lot of these writers were just trying to make it themselves, so they know what they are writing about. Some of the prose and writing is quite experimental, not always what you think of in dime crime novels. A lot of times the writing is on edge with the best stuff being written even today. This is classic American literature disguised as pulp crime fiction.

I Married a Dead Man is by Cornell Woolrich one of the greatest character writers of all time. ( )