Black Mask 3: The Maltese Falcon: And Other Crime Fiction from the Legendary Magazine

Otto Penzler

Sep 2011 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Jeff Gurner, Pete Larkin, and Oliver Wyman

About this audiobook

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by “the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine” (Booklist).Otto Penzler selected and wrote introductions to the best of the best, the darkest of these dark, vintage stories for the collection The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories. Now that collection is available for the first time on audio. Includes: “The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett; read by Jeff Gurner“Cry Silence” by Frederic Brown; read by Oliver Wyman“Waiting for Rusty” by William Cole; read by Pete Larkin

Ratings and reviews

Outstanding classic novel. The narration was very well done, and I've found myself missing an exit several times, getting heavily involved in the imagry and descriptions in the novel.

About the author

Pete Larkin is an AudioFile Earphones Award winner and a 2014 Audie Award finalist. He was the public address announcer for the New York Mets from 1988 to 1993. An award-winning on-camera host, Pete has worked on many industrial films and has done hundreds of commercials, promos, and narrations.

Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of The Mysterious Press; mysteriouspress.com; and New York City's Mysterious Bookshop. He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars, and lifetime achievement awards from NoirCon and The Strand Magazine.