William F. Nolan - Read Online Free Books

The Marble Orchard

Tue, 27 Aug 1996 17:35:08 +0300

Mystery fiction's legendary trio, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Erle Stanley Gardner, are back as amateur detectives, following their dynamic, critically acclaimed debut in The Black Mask Murders. Here they interact in a complex, colorful, and ultimately dangerous adventure, a richly textured thriller that also celebrates the joys of love and marriage between Chandler and his exceptional wife, Cissy.

As narrated by Chandler, the adventure begins in East Los Angeles with the discovery of what is apparently the ritual suicide of Cissy's former husband in a Chinese cemetery. Action moves swiftly from the coastal splendors of the Hearst castle, to the abandoned canals of Venice by the Sea, to an ornate hotel on Coronado Island, to the rococo Victorian mansions of Bunker Hill.

The characters are equally diverse: a mysterious screen star known to millions as the Vampire Queen, a concert pianist who discovers surprising romance, an ex-stage actor with a penchant for using his fists, a missing sister who prefers to stay missing, and a pair of muscle-bound punks who don't balk at kidnapping and murder.

Along the way readers will encounter such fascinating real-life personalities as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, America's cinema sweetheart Shirley Temple, comic genius Charlie Chaplin, Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, and a brash young Orson Welles.

Once again, William F. Nolan expertly evokes the surreal world of Southern California in the 1930s, when Hollywood provided golden dreams for a nation in economic crisis, as the all-time masters of crime fiction return in a bold, inventive new novel that will stun, shock, and delight.

***

From Kirkus Reviews

A thousand dollars is a lot of 1936 dollars, and even though Raymond Chandler's never walked the mean streets he writes about, he's happy to take the money from self-styled "Countess" Carmilla Blastok (Ce Letty Knibbs of Newark) to find her missing sister Elina-especially since he'd like to quiz Elina about the death of her rumored lover, pianist/composer Julian Pascal. The LAPD thinks Julian's death in a Chinese cemetery was a clear case of ritual suicide, but Julian's ex-wife, Cissy, who left him for Chandler years ago, is sure it was murder. With some help from Dashiell Hammett and Erle Stanley Gardner, his buddies from Black Mask (The Black Mask Murders, 1994), Chandler goes after Elina's lowlife companion Merv Enright-and walks right into a mulligan stew of fact and fiction, with many scenes he's evidently planning to hoard for his own later novels. Despite clunky cameos by Orson Welles, Hedda Hopper, Charlie Chaplin, William Randolph Hearst, and Shirley Temple, the shaggy story moves along briskly, with detection-on-the-fly very typical of Chandler's own work, and inaccurate social prophecies ("Maybe Los Angeles will someday even lead the way in race relations," muses one character) that mark a nice change from the usual 20/20 hindsight of most historical mysteries. It's not just because of his subject that prolific Nolan may well represent the last of the pulp tradition. Black Mask fans will be waiting eagerly for his Erle Stanley Gardner installment.

***

From Booklist

The Black Mask boys are back, and that's a cause for celebration. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner, introduced as detectives in Nolan's Black Mask Murders (1994), track down the murderer of Chandler's wife's first husband, Julian, who has apparently committed ritual suicide in a Chinese cemetery. Cissy Chandler, not buying the suicide story, puts her husband on the case. Chandler follows Julian's trail to horror-movie actress Carmilla Blastok, who leads the writerly sleuth to a thug named Enright, who may have killed Carmilla's sister. When Chandler gets in over his head, he calls his Black Mask cronies for help. Along the way, Charlie Chaplin, William Randolph Hearst, and Orson Welles also make cameo appearances. Nolan has obviously researched the Hollywood of the 1930s thoroughly; his backgrounds are always convincing, even when you don't believe the foreground for a minute. Entertaining for nostalgia buffs.

***

From Library Journal

Nolan's Black Mask Boys-Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner-undertake their second amateur investigation. The apparent suicide of Cissy Chandler's former husband entails visits to East L.A., Hearst Castle, and Venice-by-the-Sea. Various famous people make appearances. Especially good for fans of 1930s historical fiction.

***

"Masterfully penetrates the surreal Black Mask world of Southern California in the 1930s. Nolan has captured the essence of both an era and a literary form in one brilliant exercise."

-Robert R. Parker

The Black Mask Murders

Sat, 27 Aug 1994 17:35:07 +0300

Mystery and suspense readers are in for a rare treat with The Black Mask Murders, a unique achievement in the art of sophisticated action entertainment. It is the first in a series featuring the three seminal authors of the American private eye novel-Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner-each, in turn, as himself, the detective-hero. In the first of this delightfully offbeat mystery series, "Dash" Hammett is the narrator, with the other two in subsidiary roles; their turns will come in subsequent books. The reader encounters high-stakes crime and corruption in a dazzling murder case in the chic glitter-world of Hollywood during its golden age. Colorful sequences extend from New York to San Francisco's Chinatown to Southern California's Big Bear Lake country.

Authentically recreated, the legendary masters of suspense fiction live again as they follow a complex, danger-filled blood trail in pursuit of a fabled jeweled treasure-the real-life inspiration for Hammett's classic novel. The Maltese Falcon.

Gritty and glamorous, fascinating and fast-paced, bold and brilliantly conceived, here is a compulsive read for those who seek the unusual in the best of mystery and suspense. There's never been a novel quite like The Black Mask Murders.

***

From Publishers Weekly

Veteran author Nolan (Logan's Run) launches a series to be narrated by those crime writers he calls "The Black Mask Boys"-Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner. Hammett leads off this 1935 plot, jam-packed with movie stars and moguls, gangsters, blackmailers, nasty pre-Miranda cops and even a gem-encrusted human skull dating from the Crusades. Readers will be reminded less of The Maltese Falcon than of Hammett's early pulp fiction. This tale, featuring some incredibly daring sleuthing by all three writers-made-characters, moves along like a crumpled cocktail napkin caught up in the windstorm and seems to have about the same weight in the end. Cameo appearances include those by Scott Fitzgerald and Heinie Faust, who wrote as Max Brand (and other names). Nolan dredges up some pretty portentous prose in this plumbing of the past (an encounter with Fitzgerald leaves Dash ruminating: "All that talent-and all that booze. A bad combination."). Of interest as a period piece and for its insider allusions, this is no hard-boiled tale.

***

From Booklist

Dashiell Hammett was a real-life detective as well as the author of several classic detective novels, including The Maltese Falcon. Now he's also a fictional character, the narrator of this series debut that also features two of Hammett's fellow contributors to Black Mask magazine, Erle Stanley Gardner and Raymond Chandler. The real author, William Nolan, is a scholar of Black Mask-era fiction and the author of Hammett: Life at the Edge (1987). Set in Hollywood shortly before the appearance of the Falcon movie, the story finds Hammett asked to deliver a jewel-encrusted ruby to a local mobster. A shootout occurs, and the bad guy gets the icon and the girl for which it was to serve as ransom. Hammett, Gardner, and Chandler work to recover both the jewel and the girl. Nolan mixes as many biographical facts into the narrative as possible, serving up a healthy portion of literary history along with the action. There's gunplay, humor, and just enough realism to humanize Hammett and his cronies. The premise may ultimately wear thin, but for now, it's perfectly good fun for the hard-boiled crowd.

***

"A talented original."

-Ross MacDonald

"William F. Nolan is a hell of a writer! I have real admiration for his stories."

-Peter Straub

"I envy Bill Nolan's successful productivity, and I also envy the incredible spectrum of his work-fantasy, science fiction, mystery, suspense-Nolan is a fine writer."

-Richard Matheson

"Nolan's scholarship is impeccable, his organization of material flawless… his work belongs on every serious mystery reader's shelf."

-Joe Gores

"Mr. Nolan has considerable skills… His stories are bright and individual."

-The New York Times

"A gifted writer… intriguing and imaginative."

-The Los Angeles Times

Small World

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:37:48 +0300

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Space For Hire (Seven For Space)

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 06:59:46 +0200

Hang on to your hats for a roller-coaster ride around our solar system with one of fiction’s wildest characters, William F. Nolan’s futuristic private eye, Sam Space. He works out of a seedy office on Mars, replete with a plug-in secretary, argues over his drinking with a grumpy hovercar, is hired by a body-switching eccentric and a three-headed female from Venus, battles a fire dragon, pops in and out of alternate universes, has his head on backwards (part of the time), is captured by mice, gets trapped by a witch in a candy forest, is reduced to a quavery old man and a squalling infant, beds a lush beauty with winking nipples, views his own corpse, chases a robot’s testicle, lays a freckled egg, and is fatally shot. Among other things.

Never Fear

Thu, 15 Nov 2001 06:59:45 +0200

Apocalypse-definition: the complete final destruction of the world, especially as described from the Book of Revelation in The Bible; an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome or catastrophic level.Eighteen bestselling and award-winning authors have contributed their visions of the apocalypse.Classic sci-fi writer William F. Nolan adds to his canon with a tale from his futuristic Logan's Run series.Creator of the popular Repairman Jack series, F. Paul Wilson presents his vision of a world where vampires have become the ruling race.Bestselling author Heather Graham serves up her apocalyptic nightmare.Horror master Tim Waggoner terrifies with a tale of the World After.Master writer, screenwriter, and creator of classic video games Matthew Costello offers up a post-apocalyptic tale of terror, cannibalism, and a vacation gone so wrong.Icon of classic science fiction and fantasy, Ron Goulart, spins a tale of futuristic famine and desperation.Also new stories from the new...

Space Tales (Seven For Space)

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 15:33:32 +0200

A collection of five Sam Space short stories.

Look Out For Space (Seven For Space)

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 06:59:46 +0200

Logan: A Trilogy

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 06:59:45 +0200

SUMMARY: One of the best-loved science fiction classics of all time, Logan has been adapted into an Oscar-winning motion picture, Logan's Run, a television series and a comic book series. Dell now brings the three complete novels into one combined paperback volume for the first time.

Things Beyond Midnight

Sat, 16 Nov 2013 00:56:16 +0200

A classic collection of dark fantasy from the co-creator of Logan's Run.

Review

A fine artist and craftsman, working here at the peak of his powers. -- Joe R. Lansdale

"I am terrified, delighted and truly moved by William F. Nolan's best work... he makes a permanent dent in our memories, Nolan is able to create a real atmosphere of ultimate terror, causing the reader to live out his nightmares."—Ray Bradbury

"His sense of what frightens us has been honed to razor sharpness. Nolan is a master of horror fantasy."—Charles L. Grant

"A dedicated and gifted writer."—Richard Matheson

"Because Bill Nolan's talents are so varied and his interests so many—novels, biographies, screenplays—we have had only a handful of his short tales of horror and suspense. But even a single book of his stories is worth several volumes from other writers. Few can match his insight into the nasty side of human nature or the casual ease with which he tells stories of awful unpleasantness. Nolan is one of the masters of us all; Things Beyond Midnight is an important and basic book in the literature of fear, one to be welcomed by anyone who loves a good scare."—Alan Ryan

"Nolan's work, beautifully-wrought, has color, feeling, flavor... He often reveals character through sensory reaction—and his realization of action description is probably unique."—Dennis Etchison

One of horror's best storytellers. -- Peter Straub

Table of Contents
*Dedication*
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
*Epigraph*
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
SATURDAY’S SHADOW
THE POOL
STARBLOOD
INTO THE LION’S DEN
A REAL NICE GUY
DEATH DECISION
FAIR TRADE
HE KILT IT WITH A STICK
VIOLATION
THE PARTNERSHIP
DEAD CALL
THE UNDERDWELLER
SOMETHING NASTY
LONELY TRAIN A’COMIN’
THE ZURICH SOLUTION
ONE OF THOSE DAYS
DARK WINNER
KELLY, FREDRIC MICHAEL: 1928
COINCIDENCE
THE PARTY (A Teleplay)