The New Black Mask Quarterly (No 1)

Introduction

The New Black Mask Quarterly is an expression of homage to the original Black Mask pulp magazine which flourished in the twenties and thirties and provided an incubator for the hard-boiled school of writing. Whether — as literary historians have claimed — those writers really established the authentic voice of American prose, it is indisputable that American fiction would be very different without the progeny of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. This extended family includes Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Mickey Spillane, Horace McCoy, James M. Cain, Robert B. Parker, and Elmore Leonard.

Black Mask died a lingering death in 1951. The crumbling copies are now collector’s items and have the look of literary artifacts. Yet the tradition remains vital. Under its most influential editor, Joseph T. Shaw (1926–1936), Black Mask achieved a wide reputation for strong fiction; in that respect we will endeavor to emulate our namesake. But The New Black Mask Quarterly will not be restricted to hard-boiled detective stories. Classifiers enjoy differentiating among the detective story, the mystery story, the crime story, the suspense story, and what the British designate the “thriller.” Our pages will be open to all of these categories, as well as spy fiction. Since British writers have always been masters of the mystery, their work will be sought — with the exception of what has been called the “murder-in-ye-olde-quaint-cottage-story,” against which the original Black Mask boys reacted.

We dispute authorities such as W. H. Auden, who have insisted that mystery and suspense stories are meant to be purely escapist. This generalization obtains if it is restricted to plot. We believe that good fiction is remembered for its characters. The “whodunit” label is respectable when the first syllable is accented.

We undertook this series at the invitation of William Jovanovich, who provided the editorial rationale. Although The New Black Mask Quarterly will reprint buried stories that extend the tradition of the hard-boiled movement, our brief is not to resurrect the founding fathers, but to publish the best fiction we can obtain from the present generation of mystery and thriller writers.

— The Editors