Black Lizard

Founded and edited by writer Barry Gifford[?], Black Lizard released over ninety books between 1984 and 1990, including novels by Charles Willeford[?], David Goodis[?], Peter Rabe[?], Harry Whittington[?], Dan J. Marlowe[?], Charles Williams, and Lionel White[?]. Lizard is single-handedly responsible for renewing the interest in pulp master Jim Thompson in the late 1980s, long after his death, which resulted in several film adaptations of his novels. The original series were mass-market paperbacks[?] with covers drawn by Kirwan[?].

Random House bought out Lizard in June 1990 and formed Vintage Crime/Black Lizard[?]. In came the novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and numerous contemporary authors. Out went all the less commercial authors, the same ones that made Lizard unique in the first place. The mass-market paperbacks[?] were replaced by trade paperbacks[?] with [black & white] photographs on the covers. Most of the series was reprinted in this new format, but practically all of the books published by Lizard before the merge, with the notable exception of books by Jim Thompson, have been allowed to fall out of print and have remained so since the early 1990s.

External links

• Vintage Crime/Black Lizard (http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/blacklizard/)
• List of books originally published (http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/ablit/amerlit/lizard)
• Covers by Kirwan (http://www.kirwanesque.com/cover_art/blb/blbcovers.htm)