The talk about Black Wings Has My Angel made me think about Gold Medal Books, a topic dear to my heart. What a great list of writers they had in the 1950s: John D. MacDonald, Harry Whittington, Gil Brewer, David Goodis, Richard S. Prather, Charles Williams, Day Keene, Stephen Marlowe, Edward S. Aarons, Peter Rabe. Those guys were all regulars, and I'm probably leaving out a lot. In the 1960s, Donald Hamilton came along, as did Dan J. Marlowe. Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) switched over to GM from Pocket Books. And there were the lesser-known names like Richard Wormser and Walt Sheldon. Again, I'm sure I'm missing some, this being just off the top of my head. For a quarter (thirty-five cents, a little later on), you could get some great reading. Now a paperback costs seven or eight bucks, and while you get a lot more pages, but I'm pretty sure you don't get better writing, better plotting, or better characters.
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