A match made in noir heaven

George Pelecanos updates his website occasionally with his current picks of good movies and books, and before New Year’s he wandered into a neighborhood bookstore and set his eyes on the Hard Case Crime novels:

…I walked up the street to my favorite used book store, Silver Spring Books, to say hello to my friend Cynthia, a former parole officer who is one of the owners of the shop. Sitting on a shelf face-out were four novels that caught my eye due to their cover art, fashioned after the paperbacks published in the golden age of pulp/noir. The publisher, Hard Case Crime, was new to me, but the cover treatment and my familiarity with two of the authors compelled me to buy all of the books….

Suffice to say that reading through four of the publisher’s releases has made him a fan for life:

My only quarrel with the publisher’s strategy is that I suspect the pulpish covers will put off those literary snobs who wouldn’t be caught dead with these books on their coffee tables, for fear that someone might not think they are "erudite" readers. And that would be a damn shame. For the month of December, at least, these books reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the genre. Like the old Black Lizard imprint, or Pete Ayrton’s Serpent’s Tail out of the UK, I’ll read anything with the Hard Case Crime logo on its spine.

To which I can only add one thing: wait till Sunshine’s book is out in March…