<<I just can't afford the collectible prices (if you
can
find them at all) for the paperback originals that have never
been
reprinted, much less, Off the Wall, his "true life novel"
about Son of
Sam.>>
To make it worse, the ones that were reprinted by Black
Lizard, such as
Cockfighter, Pickup, The Burnt Orange Heresy, didn't remain
in print
that long and often weren't displayed in the mystery section.
I found my
copy of Cockfighter at a shop in Los Angeles, shelved with an
odd
assortment of true crime and current affairs books. Carroll
and Graf
reprinted "The Woman Chaser" (a weird psychosexual novel) but
they
stopped at that, at least to my knowledge.
Besides Willeford, there are quite a few of the very best
crime writers
who are hard to find, among them Fredric Brown, Howard
Browne, William
Campbell Gault, Cornel Woolrich, Norbert Davis (his novels
were never
reprinted), E. Richard Johnson (reprinted by IPL but quickly
out of
print), David Goodis (though his original paperbacks sold in
large
quantities and are easy to find), Leigh Brackett, Bart
Spicer, Charles
Williams (again, these sold a lot originally, so there are
plenty of
copies, but few reprints), Chester Himes, and so on.
I have noticed that the English do better by their best
writers than we
do here in the U.S.
Regards,
MT
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