Black
Created by Paul Cain

Tough, hard and cold, private dick BLACK popped up in a couple of short stories in Black Mask in the thirties. Originally from New York, where he alludes to some shady business he was involved in, he's now doing quite well legitimately, "keeping people out. of trouble, not getting them into it." Black is his last name; he is not given any first name in the stories.

Like Hammett, there is that spare, dispassionate tone in Cain's work, which narrates events in a flat, unemotional manner. The detective is cold and unemotional, a lean, mean detecting machine, who gets involved in gang disputes in "Black", and plays both sides against each other, just like The Continental Op in Red Harvest.

As with all Cain's stories, they're masterpiece of a "stripped-down prose style thast makes...Ernest Hemingway look flowery and...Andrew Vachss seem somehow overblown." (Jack Adrian, Hard-Boiled).

SHORT STORIES

• "Black" (1932, Black Mask; also 1950, Seven Slayers)
• "Trouble-Chaser" (April 1934, Black Mask; also 1995, Hard-Boiled)