Pulp Culture takes the reader on a walk down the Mean Streets of post-war America to investigate the classic texts of the American hardboiled crime fiction and the era from which they came.

With crooks hiding in every doorway and commies lurking under every bed, crime fiction - its gaudy paperback covers portraying men with guns and women with low necklines - was avidly read by a nation adjusting to the Cold War and the Atomic Era.

Beginning with Dashiell Hammett testifying before Senator Joseph McCarthy, Pulp Culture pursues the lives and work of crime writers who approached the genre at street level: David Goodis, Chester Himes, Jim Thompson, Dorothy B. Hughes, Dolores Hitchens, Leigh Brackett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Howard Browne, William P. McGivern, Lionel White, Ross MacDonald, Horace McCoy, Charles Willeford and Charles Williams.

Pulp Culture is essential reading for anyone interested in noir writing, films and the post-war era.