Hunter and Hunted: The Ed and Am Hunter Novels (Frederic Brown Mystery Library)
*Starred Review* Why is one out-of-print crime writer rediscovered and another, equally deserving, left to languish? Why Jim Thompson but not Fredric Brown? The answers to questions like that breed just the kind of bitter irony on which both of these masters of pulp fiction thrived. Thankfully, ambitious small-publisher Stewart Masters has begun a project that could take Brown's name off the unfairly forgotten short list. This volume--part 1 in the projected seven-volume Fredric Brown Mystery Library, which will bring all of Brown's mystery fiction back into print--collects four of the author's Ed and Am Hunter novels (the remaining three will make up volume 2). There are some major differences between Brown and Thompson. Brown is far less a classic noir writer than Thompson; his stories are not nearly as dark and perverse, and his style is far more polished. Brown was a craftsman plying his hard-boiled trade, whereas Thompson was an open wound bleeding on the page.The Ed and Am Hunter novels star a nephew (Ed) and uncle (Am) who begin as amateur sleuths but eventually become professional detectives. Of the four novels collected here--The Fabulous Clipjoint(1947),The Dead Ringer(1948),The Bloody Moonlight(1949), andCompliments of a Fiend(1950)--the best is the first, in which 18-year-old Ed helps his uncle solve the murder of Ed's father. The setting is a beautifully realized postwar Chicago. Like Hammett, Brown relishes specificity of place as he tracks Ed and Am's peregrinations across the city's North Side slum (now the trendy River North district). Publisher Masters rightfully characterizes Brown as a "little too life-embracing and mischievous" to fit comfortably in the noir category, and both those characteristics are much in evidence here. The streets are mean, but the characters are amiable, and the prose is almost jaunty.The Fredric Brown Mystery Library deserves the support of all crime-fiction fans. Ed and Am Hunter have been out of town too long.Bill OttCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved