‘The Big Book of Rogues and Villains’

This will be one of a few reviews of some of the “Big Book of” volumes edited by Otto Penzler of The Mysterious Bookstore and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, part of Penguin Random House.

First off is The Big Book of Rogues and Villains (2017), which is a little over 900 pages long, with 72 stories broken up into eight sections. There is an overall intro by Penzler, and each story is prefaced by a short intro on the author.

As clear, the protagonists of these stories are rogues or villains. Villains are pretty clearly evil, but rogues may be gentleman thieves, con men, and the like, some of which may be more Robin Hood-like characters. And as many of these characters appeared in the pulps, we’ll focus more on those than the others. Sixteen stories were taken from the pulps, and some others may have been reprinted in the pulps.

We have several well-known characters and authors covered here. Characters include Dracula, Raffles, Arsène Lupin, Dr. Fu Manchu, and The Saint. Authors include H.G. Wells, Max Allan Collins, Lawrence Block, Jack London, Robert Louis Stephenson, and O. Henry.

The stories are organized into eight sections: The Victorians, 19th-Century Americans, The Edwardians, Early 20th-Century Americans, Between the World Wars, The Pulp Era, Post-World War II, and The Moderns. We’ll look at these by sections.

So first up is The Victorians. Here among others, we get “Dracula’s Guest” by Bram Stoker, a chapter planned for Dracula that was excised before publication that was more recently found and published, and an A.J Raffles story by E.W. Hornung. Raffles is an “amateur cracksman,” or safe cracker, written by Arthur Conan Doyle‘s brother-in-law.

Nineteenth-Century Americans has stories by Jack London and Washington Irving. The Edwardians gives us “Zayat Kiss,” the first Fu Manchu story, an Arsène Lupin story, and a Hamilton Cleek story. For those not aware, Cleek is a reformed crook and master of disguise turned detective, who appeared in many stories.

Getting to Early 20th-Century Americans, we start to get stories that appeared first in the pulps. This section gives us three stories by O. Henry, including “The Caballero’s Way,” which introduces The Cisco Kid, better known from the movies. We also get a Grey Seal story, which I have previously posted on.

Next up is Between the World Wars, which, again, has a few pulp works. From John Russell, we get “The Burglar”; and Vincent Starrett has “Footsteps of Fear” from the first issue of Black Mask. We get a trio of stories from Edgar Wallace, better known for the Four, later Three Just Men. There is also a Saint story from Leslie Charteris.

With The Pulps, we get nine stories, but one is from a digest magazine. But we get a Dr. Yen Sin novel from Donald Keyhoe, a Dr. Satan story from Paul Ernst, a Mr. Clackworthy story from Christopher B. Booth, a Moon Man story from Frederick C. Davis, and a Vivian Legrand story by Eugene Thomas, and several others.

I’ve posted on most of these. Mr. Clackworthy was a con man who had a long-running series, though I can’t find this one on my list of his stories. I am disappointed that we don’t get any of Johnston McCulley‘s stories that starred one of his villains or bent heroes such as The Black Star, The Spider, Thubway Tham, The Crimson Clown, or the like.

The Post-World War II section also has a few pulp stories, including four from Erle Stanley Gardner, better known for his Perry Mason novels. We get Ed Jenkins, The Patent Leather Kid, Lester Leith, and Paul Pry, which were all series characters from Gardner. Strangely, a couple of the stories are from 1927 and 1932, which is not “post WWII.”

Finally, with The Moderns, there are no pulp works, but stories by Lawrence Block, Max Allan Collins, Loren D. Estleman, and Donald E. Westlake, among others.

Overall, I found this a good collection of stories. I kind of jumped around reading those stories I was interested in and hadn’t read yet.

There are several series characters that I hope will be collected at some point. Some never have been, whereas others have only been incompletely reprinted, and those are hard to find.

Check out this and other “Big Book” collections from Penzler.