From World War II through the 1960s, paperback hard-boiled crime novels were one of the best-selling book publishing genres.
They were written by well-known authors such as Erle Stanley Gardner and Mickey Spillane as well as by promising young writers including Lawrence Block, Elmore Leonard, and Donald Westlake.
This literary form has been resurrected by the Hard Case Crime series, which includes lost masterpieces as well as new novels by today's hot new writers, all complete with stunning original cover art in the grand pulp style.
Noir crime novels are also making a tremendous comeback. 
One of the more interesting new noir critical successes is an author who is an established academic with several scholarly studies of Samuel Johnson to his credit.
Richard B. Schwartz is a Professor of English and Dean at the University of Missouri, Columbia and also taught at West Point and Georgetown.
We meet his fictional character, Jack Grant, in Frozen Stare.
Grant is a Vietnam vet turned Los Angeles P.I. who spends his days busting small-time insurance defrauders.
When his latest client turns up dead in a tub of ice and another body is found in a downtown meat freezer, Jack is plunged into a murky underworld of Chilean exiles.
In The Last Voice You Hear, Grant is called in when a body turns up at Disneyland impaled in the same way as the victims of a killer who is terrorizing London.
When he discovers the killer's identity, Grant is caught in an ethical dilemma because he understands and even sympathizes with the murderer's cause.
Absolute noir!
The third book in the series, Proof of Purchase, is expected in March, 2007.
