Crime Novels of the 1960s: Nine Classic Thrillers (a Library of America Boxed Set)

Here in two volumes are 9 timeless novels, including 4 lost classics now restored to print

In the 1960s a number of gifted writers--some at the peak of their careers, others newcomers--reimagined American crime fiction. Here are nine novels of astonishing variety and inventiveness that pulse with the energies of that turbulent, transformative decade:

• Fredric Brown's The Murderers (1961), a darkly comic look at a murderous plot hatched on the hip fringes of Hollywood.
• Dan J. Marlowe's terrifying The Name of the Game Is Death (1962), about a nihilistic career criminal on the run
• Charles Williams's Dead Calm (1963), a masterful novel of natural peril and human evil on the high seas.
• Dorothy B. Hughes's The Expendable Man (1963), an unsettling tale of racism and wrongful accusation in the American Southwest.
• Richard Stark's taut The Score (1964), in which the master thief Parker plots the looting of an entire city with the cool precision of an expert mechanic.
• The Fiend (1964), in which Margaret Millar maps the interlocking anxieties of a seemingly tranquil California suburb through the rippling effects of a child's disappearance.
• Ed McBain's classic police procedural Doll (1965), a breakneck story that mixes murder, drugs, fashion models, and psychotherapy with the everyday professionalism of the 87th Precinct.
• Run Man Run (1966), Chester Himes's nightmarish tale of racism and police violence that follows a desperate young man seeking safe haven in New York City while being hunted by the law.
• Patricia Highsmith's ultimate meta-thriller, The Tremor of Forgery (1969), a novel in which a displaced traveler finds his own personality collapsing as he attempts to write a novel about a man coming undone.