Fast One

Paul Cain's Fast One is hard-boiled crime fiction stripped to the bone: fast, brutal, cynical, and soaked in the violence of Depression-era Los Angeles. Gerry Kells moves through a world of gangsters, gunmen, gamblers, corrupt operators, and double-crosses, where every alliance is temporary and every conversation may end in blood. This is not a puzzle mystery and not a gentleman's detective story. It is crime fiction as impact: sharp, cold, and merciless.

First published in book form in 1933 after appearing in Black Mask, Fast One is one of the most admired and uncompromising novels of the hard-boiled pulp tradition. Cain's prose is lean, detached, and deadly, moving with the speed of a gunshot through a Los Angeles underworld where survival depends on nerve, instinct, and the willingness to strike first. This Black Curtain edition restores a landmark of American noir and hard-boiled crime for readers of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Black Mask fiction, gangster novels, vintage paperback crime, and the darkest side of early twentieth-century American pulp. Cain's Fast One has been described as a landmark of pulp fiction and a high point of the ultra-hard-boiled manner.