Matt Ranzino
Created by Ed Lacy (pseud. of Leonard S. Zinberg; 1911-1968)

MATT RANZINO has been a cop, a boxer and a private eye, but the lack of a valid license doesn't stop him from hiring out to do a job for a guy whose story seems more than a little shaky, in the very hard and violent Sin in Their Blood (1952).

Fortunately, Matt, fresh back from Korea, is a pretty tough guy, ready to go down those mean streets with "hatred in his heart and a .45 in his hand," according to Tim Murphy in his great article "Crime Fiction: A Litany of Very Private Eyes" in Paperback Parade.

Matt's creator was Ed Lacy (actually Leonard S. Zinberg), also created hardboiled detectives Hal Darling, Barney Harris, Marty Bond, John O'Hara, and Billy Wallace. But his greatest creation was Toussaint Moore, the ground-breaking black gumshoe. Racial hatred was one of Zinberg's favourite themes, and Sin in Their Blood is no exception -- Murphy speaks of the progonist in this one "screaming a particularly vicious racial epithet in misguided rationalization."

NOVELS

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

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