From the pulp era comes twenty-two hardboiled stories of hardboiled suspense. You'll meet embittered detectives, shifty conmen, and henpecked losers -- sad people trying to escape their dreary lives. Charles Boeckman wrote for pulps and slick magazines, while pursuing a full-time career as a musician. His jazz background figures into several stories, reaching a two-fisted crescendo. The stories in this anthology were originally published in various pulp magazines -- and now they appear together, wrapped in a breath-taking cover by Robert A. Maguire.