Author Description

Presenting the complete collection of Robert E. Howard's private eye stories starring Steve Harrison! Everything in this volume-stories, drafts, synopses-was pulled directly from Howard's own typescripts, including an early draft of "Graveyard Rats," the most horrifying of Harrison's adventures. In these pages, you will enter a nightmarish world that blends weird mystery and heart-stopping horror, with Steve Harrison as your guide, a powerful man who is more likely to tear into a fight with a mace or a battle-axe than a gun. Harrison has more in common with Howard's sword-swinging Conan than Hammett's Continental Op, but he helps to establish the roots of a noir style that would later find success with Micky Spillane's Mike Hammer. Harrison might walk the mean streets and back alleys of the 1930s, but he has the soul of a barbaric savage, possessed by the crimson instinct for slaughter. Changes from the first edition: There are few changes from the first published version of this book. The first edition used the first published version of "Names in the Black Book". Since then the REH Foundation has located the final typescript and re-edited back to match that for the Ultimate Edition. In fact, the changes are few, mostly punctuation, etc.