Additional information
by Jack Boyle (Author)
Boston Blackie introduces one of early American crime fiction's great gentleman thieves: a safecracker, jewel thief, fugitive, and rogue with his own code of honour. Blackie lives outside the law, but he is not merely a criminal appetite in motion. He is clever, charming, dangerous, loyal to the helpless, ruthless toward enemies, and always one step away from prison, betrayal, or another impossible escape. Jack Boyle's stories helped create a figure who would later become familiar through films, radio, and popular culture: the reformed or semi-reformed criminal hero whose knowledge of the underworld makes him more effective than respectable society's own guardians.
First appearing in magazine stories in 1914, Boston Blackie was later shaped into the 1919 book Boston Blackie, a linked narrative drawn from Boyle's magazine fiction. The character's earliest stories appeared in The American Magazine, with later stories in Red Book, and his screen career began as early as 1918. For Black Curtain, the appeal is obvious: this is not cosy detection, but early American crime fiction built around theft, pursuit, prison shadows, underworld loyalty, social hypocrisy, and the dangerous glamour of a criminal who knows the rules better than the people paid to enforce them. For readers of classic crime, gentleman-thief fiction, early hardboiled precursors, pulp crime, and rogue-hero stories, Boston Blackie is a key rediscovery.
