THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE by Ed McBain (Hard Case Crime)

THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE is another awesome title from HardCase Crime. Charles Ardai shared this inside info in a letter this weekend:

Friends,

We just got copies in from the printer of Ed McBain’s new Hard Case Crime book, THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE. This is a revised version of a very rare book he published in 1958 as I’M CANNON–FOR HIRE by Curt Cannon. He never liked that title — as he explained to us, the character’s name was never supposed to be “Cannon,” and he’s not for hire. The character was born as “Matt Cordell” in the pages of MANHUNT magazine, and it was only at the insistence of the editor of Gold Medal books that both the character’s name and the author’s ended up changed to “Curt Cannon.” When we approached him about letting us reprint the book, he agreed on one condition — that we’d let him change the character’s name back and give the book a new title and make other revisions to fix problems in the original edition of the book. We, of course, were delighted to make whatever changes he wanted — and we kept getting edits right up to the day before his recent death.

THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE is an excellent book — one of the very best we’ve had the privilege of publishing. And it really is a privilege. Ed (I should really say “Evan,” since in his private life he went by Evan Hunter) was very proud of this book, and with good reason. It’s not just a model of great pulp writing, it’s also a very personal story. At a memorial service Evan’s family held recently, I learned a number of things I never knew about him — for instance, that he grew up on the upper east side of Manhattan, that his father owned a tailor shop, that he took classes at Cooper Union, that he wanted at one point to be a Big Band musician. And finding those things out made me see THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE in an entirely new light — since it opens on the street outside Cooper Union, then travels to the upper east side of Manhattan where a man is found murdered in a tailor shop and one of the suspects is a young man trying to make it as a musician in a band…

THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE should be turning up in stores between now and the end of the month, and I can’t urge you strongly enough to get a copy and read it. To make this a little easier, we’re going to be holding a drawing to give away 10 free copies of the book. If you’d like to be entered in the drawing, all you need to do is send an e-mail message to drawing@hardcasecrime.com including your name and the address to which you’d like the book sent if you’re selected. We’ll accept entries until midnight New York time on Saturday, November 26th. All we ask is that if you are selected you post a review of the book somewhere online — Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, your own blog if you have one, your favorite mailing list, wherever you think it might help bring the book to the attention of people who might enjoy it.

I also encourage you to pick up a copy of Lawrence Block’s THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART, the Hard Case Crime title currently in stores. Or, if you’d like to get each new Hard Case Crime title shipped to you automatically, you can join the Hard Case Crime book club by calling 1-800-481-9191. You pay for only one book per month but they send you two — that month’s new title plus one old title from our first year. (Yes, you might occasionally get a duplicate of a title you already have, but what the heck, it’s free; if it happens, you can always give the extra to a friend…) A subscription to the Hard Case Crime book club also makes a great gift for the readers in your life, something to keep in mind as the holidays loom on the horizon.

I’ve got to say this is one of the better Xmas ideas I’ve ever seen. Hard Case is doing a tremendous job with packaging a consistent high-quality product animated by a single brilliant guiding concept: that hard case crime fiction is, well, lovable.

Related posts:

• Cop Hater by Ed McBain
• The case for mocking religion. By Christopher Hitchens
• THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART by Lawrence Block
• King’s ‘Colorado Kid’ stolen and auctioned on E-Bay
• LUCKY AT CARDS by Lawrence BLock