LAST YEAR MARKED the 70th anniversary of French publisher Gallimard’s crime fiction imprint Série Noire, a book imprint that more than any other, in any country, put together what was classic and cool about the genre. The books were, ...

ONE CAN READ TOO much into an author's dedication, but the one Dorothy B. Hughes used for her 1942 novel The Fallen Sparrow is as telling in what it doesn't say as it is in what it does: For Eric Ambler ...