Contrary to the description here at LibraryThing, this collection does not feature Paul Cain's novel Fast One; in fact, it contains nothing at all by Cain. Possibly this was a reference to an earlier or later edition of the book than the one I own. At any rate, you shouldn't feel unduly discouraged. (A couple of Cain's stories were pretty good--my favorites are "Trouble Chaser" and "One, Two, Three"--but Fast One is absurdly overrated.) The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories is filled to bursting with great material, so the absence of a single author is negligible.

Highlights include Dashiell Hammett's landmark third novel The Maltese Falcon as it was first serialized in Black Mask (a number of changes were made to the text before it was published in book form) and Raymond Chandler's "Try the Girl," his final story for the magazine and one which became the basis for his second novel Farewell, My Lovely. There's also "A Little Different," which marks the debut of W.T. Ballard's studio fixer character Bill Lennox; "Luck," an early draft of Lester Dent's bone-crunchingly violent "Sail" (and the version he preferred to the published story); and "Don't You Cry for Me," in which Norbert Davis--his customarily zany humor somewhat subdued--follows the exploits of pianist/amateur detective John Collins. The biggest surprise of the book is Rainbow Diamonds, a serial novella by Raoul Whitfield--writing as "Ramon Decolta"--and featuring his popular Filipino detective Jo Gar. Better than all of the standalone Gar stories, it also outclasses Whitfield's three full-length crime novels (Green Ice, Death in a Bowl and The Virgin Kills). After a Manila jewelry store is robbed and his cop friend winds up dead, Jo Gar pursues the murderous thieves to Honolulu and finally to San Francisco, seeing a lot of gun-blazing action along the way. It's an engaging, fast-paced read by an author not generally known for his keen sense of narrative momentum. George Harmon Coxe's "Fall Guy" (a typically rough-and-tumble showcase for his greatest character, hapless newspaper photographer Flash Casey) is good, too.

I vastly prefer this book to its companion volume, The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps. There are far fewer duds here because Black Mask had a higher literary standard than the other crime pulps, and editor Otto Penzler has made some really first-rate selections. ( )

Like any anthology, some stories were great, some were good, and some stunk. The highlight of the anthology for me was the serial Dashiell Hammett wrote of "The Maltese Falcon" before the edited it to make the novel version. Because these stories were written in the 30s and 40s the racism and prejudices of the time are rampant. "The Color of Honor" was the worst in this aspect and probably could have been left out of the anthology altogether. The editor did give an attempt at a trigger warning in the introduction to the story. ( )