Hard Case Crime Update

News from Hard Case:

More than 50 years ago, the great, tormented pulp writer Cornell Woolrich (author of "Rear Window," among many other classics) wrote a novel called FRIGHT. The book was never published under his real name. He put it out under a pseudonym, "George Hopley"; a hardcover edition appeared in 1950, a paperback in 1952. The book hasn't been published since. Today, copies of the paperback sometimes sell for more than $100, copies of the hardcover for several hundred dollars.

We'll be publishing the first new edition of this book in half a century -- and the first ever under Woolrich's name -- next summer. As of today, you can get a first look at the book on our Web site, www.hardcasecrime.com. And that's the reason I'm writing -- it's really worth a look. The cover was painted for us by an artist who is new to our line, Arthur Suydam, and his work is truly breathtaking. You can also find a sample chapter and some information about the book -- but first and foremost, I thought you'd want to see the cover.

And if you do like that cover, you may be interested to know that Arthur Suydam is hard at work on another cover for us as we speak. This one is for a brand new book by the late Mickey Spillane. It's called DEAD STREET, and it's the last crime novel Mickey ever wrote. (He has some other unpublished work as well, including a final Mike Hammer private eye novel, but no other straight crime fiction.) We'll have more to say about DEAD STREET soon -- probably around the same time Arthur finishes painting the cover . . . .