{"id":16869,"date":"2017-04-15T00:01:59","date_gmt":"2017-04-15T06:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=16869"},"modified":"2017-04-15T19:01:09","modified_gmt":"2017-04-16T01:01:09","slug":"16869-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/16869-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Audiobook Review: Black Mask 1: Doors in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=as_ss_li_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=adamsblog03-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B005KFQJOG&amp;asins=B005KFQJOG&amp;linkId=17a58bc37026bdfb0ddeacd3bf89a981&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<em>Doors in the Dark<\/em> gives is the first of several audiobooks that provide material that first appeared in Black Mask Magazine, perhaps the best known of the crime magazine pulps.<\/p>\n<p>The collection begins with Keith Alen Deutsch\u2019s history of Black Mask. It\u2019s a great listen for fans of classic crime fiction, though skippable if you just want the story.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome and Get It,\u201d is written by Erle Stanley Gardener, who\u2019d become a mystery legend for writing Perry Mason. This story features Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook. This story is a self-contained short novel but in a series of novels involving the Phantom Crook\u2019s battle with a crime syndicate who is trying to hurt a girl that Jenkins\u00a0likes. Jenkins has some of the cleverness and cunning that would later be seen in characters like Leslie Charteris\u2019 the Saint. However, he\u2019s also a bit of a throwback to the \u201cCrook with a Heart of Gold\u201d character that was popular in the 1920s, and his sharp self-definition of himself as a \u201ccrook\u201d is a dominant. Overall, this story is decent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cArson Plus\u201d was originally published by Dashiell Hammett under the pseudonym of Peter Collinson. It\u2019s the first story featuring Hammett\u2019s Continental Op. It\u2019s a quick moving arson case with a very clever solution.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Fall Guy\u201d was written by George Harrison Coxe and features Flash Casey, the great crime photographer. Having listened to many episodes of the radio show, \u201cCasey, Crime Photographer,\u201d I found this to be a bit of a treat. The story itself is competent, but not &#8220;flashy&#8221; with typical noir characters.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Doors in the Dark,&#8221; by Frederick Nebel features Captain Steve McBride investigating the apparent suicide of a friend, but he believes it&#8217;s murder. This story is from the series on which the\u00a0<em>Torchy Blane\u00a0<\/em>film series was based, though the series doesn&#8217;t feature Torchy with McBride being the hero. Still, there are some madcap\/screwball moments in this story that set the tone for the Torchy Blane series.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Lucky&#8221; by Doc Savage creator Lester Dent is one of the few stories featuring his crime solving Ship&#8217;s Captain\/Insurance Oscar Sail. This story is fast paced and with a bit more violence than any other tale in the collection. Still, quite enjoyable with some clever twists.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, I enjoyed this audiobook, but it&#8217;s one of those releases that fall under, &#8220;You will like if you like that sort of thing.&#8221; One negative review criticized the stories for having the same quality as old time radio. As someone who loves old time radio mysteries, I consider that\u00a0a positive. The pulp genre is not high literature but much of it is still entertaining in its own way.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, this audiobook offers talented narration of a good history of pulp fiction along with five classic pulp stories including a Flash Casey story and tales by the creators of Doc Savage, Perry Mason, and Sam Spade. If that sounds up your alley, then this is definitely an audiobook to pick up.<\/p>\n<p>Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0<\/p>\n<p><em>This post contains affiliate links, which means that items purchased from these links may result in a commission being paid to the author of this post at no extra cost to the purchaser.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>If<\/em> you<em> enjoyed this post, you can have new posts about Detective stories and the golden age of radio and television delivered\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B004U8SET2\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=adamsblog03-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B004U8SET2\">automatically to your kindle.\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Doors in the Dark gives is the first of several audiobooks that provide material that first appeared in Black Mask Magazine, perhaps the best known of the crime magazine pulps. The collection begins with Keith Alen Deutsch\u2019s history of Black Mask. It\u2019s a great listen for fans of classic crime fiction, though skippable if you&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[63,123],"tags":[359],"class_list":["post-16869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-golden-age-article","tag-good-review"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-4o5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16869"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16900,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16869\/revisions\/16900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}