"Max Winters, a pulp writer in 1930s New York, finds himself drawn into a story not unlike the tales he churns out at five cents a word--tales of a Wild West outlaw dispensing justice with a six-gun. But will Max be able to do the same when pursued by bank robbers, Nazi spies, and enemies from his past?"--Provided by publisher.

Gifford provides a hard-boiled investigation of hundreds of pulpy paperbacks written by Chester Himes, Donald Goines, and Iceberg Slim (aka Robert Beck), among many others. He draws from an impressive array of archival materials to provide a first-of-its-kind literary and cultural history of this distinctive genre, evaluating the artistic and symbolic representations of pimps, sex-workers, drug dealers, and political revolutionaries in African American...