Two new anthologies highlight whodunits and westerns; Arbor House Treasury of Detective and Mystery Stories from the Great Pulps, edited by Bill Pronzini. New York: Arbor House. 342 pp. $7.95
By Sam Cornish; Sam Cornish, who teaches writing at Boston's Emerson College , reviews books regularly for the Monitor. Both the good and the mediocre stories in this ''Treasury'' have the atmosphere of the '30s, '40s, and '50s, and the pages turn almost by themselves in these fictions by popular storytellers who well understood their audiences. On the other hand, ''Hall of Fame'' is a good reference for those trying to discover the best writers of western fiction. Missing are Elmer Kelton, Luke Short, and Will Henry. But the basic stories by such writers as Dorothy M. Johnson, Ernest Haycox, and Mark Twain make this a respectable collection that demonstrates the literary possibilities of the western story, despite its dime-novel history.
December 3, 1984
Western Hall of Fame, edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg. New York: William Morrow. 375 pp. $17.95.