The So Blue Marble by Dorothy B. Hughes

Dell Mystery edition of The So Blue Marble from 1946

The So Blue Marble is Dorothy B. Hughes' first novel and foray into mysteries, a genre to which she would go on to dedicate the majority of her career. Hughes was one of the more talented and recognized female mystery writers of the 20th century, and The So Blue Marble marks the beginning of her fun-to-read stories of suspense from 1940. This Inspector Tobin mystery follows former movie star Griselda Satterlee as she comes to glittery, mid-century New York City to relax and stay in her ex-husband's apartment while he's away. Griselda quickly finds herself in the center of a plot to regain an ancient blue marble, which feature the identical, sinister Montefierrow twins, who are convinced that Griselda has the eponymous marble. The reader learns that the marble apparently holds a secret, ancient formula which can be used to master gravity. As bodies pile up around the city, Griselda must work with Inspector Tobin to get the twins off her back and end the string of murders. While the driving force of the plot is a little farfetched, Hughes' book is incredibly engaging to read and one will quickly overlook how fantastical it is. Featuring great cover art of the twins' matching top hats in a pool of blood (by an unknown illustrator), this Dell Mystery edition is a wonderful artifact of the genre.

Back cover featuring the convenient Crime Map, which depicts the relevant areas where a murder took place

The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing

First edition of The Big Clock published by Harcourt Brace in 1946

This thriller by Kenneth Fearing is my favorite of his books; The Big Clock tells the enthralling story of George Stroud, family man and news executive, who is the last person to see his mistress Pauline Delos alive. The problem is that he knows his boss, powerful news magnate Earl Janoth, is the murderer. Janoth knows someone was in the shadows the night she was killed but he can't figure out who it was, and uses the vast media resources of Janoth Enterprises to track down this supposed murderer, most specifically his publication "Crimeways," which George Stroud heads up. Tasked with having to track himself down, Stroud must race against time to prove his own innocence and Janoth's guilt. The Big Clock is stylistically unique, especially for a crime novel from 1946, in that most of the chapters are told from a different character's point of view while juggling the plot. It is also poetically eerie in certain ways like how each member of George Stroud's family has a variation of the name George (i.e. Georgette and Georgia), and all of Janoth's publications have the same kind of title ("Futureways," "Newsways," etc.). Fearing's novel feels like it exists within a noir-ish microcosm of old New York and is tremendously fun to read. This first edition features great cover art attributed only to someone who signed "Roger" on the top right corner of the front cover.

The Devil's Home On Leave by Derek Raymond

First British paperback edition from 1985 published by Abacus

This is the second book by Derek Raymond, the pen-name of English author Robert Cook, in his Factory Series about an unnamed Detective Sergeant working in the Unexplained Deaths department. The Devil's Home On Leave follows the Detective trying to solve the murder of a body chopped up, boiled, and casually dispersed on the street amongst five plastic shopping bags. Featuring a gritty cast of London underworld characters, known as "Villains," and the Detectives who pursue them, Raymond's novel is filled with intrigue and written mostly using amazingly authentic British slang. Raymond himself was a British gangster at one point, among many other things in his lifetime, before later becoming a novelist, and is considered to be the founder of British Noir with this series. Although this is the second book of five in the Factory Series, The Devil's Home On Leave is the best one in my opinion.

The Dead All Have The Same Skin by Boris Vian

Reprinted copy of The Dead All Have The Same Skin by Boris Vian

Boris Vian was a really odd guy in that a lot of his books were about part-black people and Americans, yet he was from Paris and never visited America. He was also completely white. They all take place in cities he never visited, and were about things he had never really experienced; but for this reason, his books are that much more interesting to read. Originally published in France in 1947, Vian claimed to have translated this book and several others from an American author called Vernon Sullivan—more than likely to distance himself from the lewdness, extreme sexuality, and racism that star in this book and most of his others. It soon came out that Vian himself had actually written them, both to popular acclaim and horror. They were successful in France and in the US for their bluntness, "forward-thinking," and ingenuity. The Dead All Have The Same Skin is about a quarter-black man who outwardly appears fully white to his family and co-workers, but whose world is overturned when his fully-black brother appears to extort him. Part noir and racial commentary, the story takes place in an awesomely imagined New York and Brooklyn in the late 1940's, features murder, fighting, drinking, police chases, profanity, and no fewer than 20 sexual exchanges in a novel that's just barely a hundred pages. This book—if you can believe it—is the most straightforward and least ridiculous of Vian's controversial work, although I highly recommend all of it. TamTam books reprinted this novel in 2007 and have since republished most of Vian's works.