Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s: The Postman Always Rings Twice / They Shoot Horses, Don't They? / Thieves Like

US: Library of America, 1997. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. "The most important collection of crime fiction ever published in the Unite d States." -- Ed Gorman Evolving out of the terse and violent style of the pulp magazines, noir fic tion expanded over the decades into a varied, innovative and profoundly inf luential body of writing. The eleven novels in The Library of America's adv enturous two-volume collection taps deep roots in the American literary ima gination, exploring themes of crime, guilt, deception, obsessive passion, m urder, and the disintegrating psyche. With visionary and often subversive f orce they create a dark and violent mythology out of the most commonplace e lements of modern life. James M. Cain's pioneering novel of murder and adultery along the Californi a highway, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), shocked contemporaries with its laconic toughness and fierce sexuality. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1935) uses truncated rhyth ms and a unique narrative structure to turn its account of a Hollywood danc e marathon into an unforgettable evocation of social chaos and personal des peration. In Thieves Like Us (1937), Edward Anderson vividly brings to life the dus ty roads and back-country hideouts where a fugitive band of Oklahoma outlaw s plays out its destiny. The Big Clock (1946), an ingenious novel of pursuit and evasion by the poet Kenneth Fearing, is.