Private Eye Action, as You Like It
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Private Eye Action, as You Like It is a collection of short stories from early in the careers of Joe R. Lansdale and Lewis Shiner, published in a limited edition by Crossroads Press in 1998. They have never been made available in other collections and are now extremely rare.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/11/Private_Eye_Action%2C_as_You_Like_It.jpg/220px-Private_Eye_Action%2C_as_You_Like_It.jpg)
The Lansdale solo stories feature a character named Ray Slater; Lansdale also wrote a Ray Slater novel, unpublished at the time but later included in For a Few Stories More. After the mysteries did not catch on, Lansdale published the western novel Texas Night Riders using Ray Slater as a pseudonym (it was eventually re-published under his own name). Shiner possibly wrote two of the three Sloane stories specifically for inclusion in this collection. In the late-1970s, Lansdale and Shiner collaborated on a few stories about John Talbot; both were published, though at least one of them was heavily edited prior to publication.
It includes:
Joe Lansdale's Ray Slater stories
- Introduction to the Slater stories
- The Full Count {originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, June 1978}
- Long Gone Forever {originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Dec 1978}
- One Blonde, Well Dead {originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Apr 1979}
Lewis Shiner's Sloane Stories
- The Short Unhappy Career of Lew Shiner, Tough-Guy Writer (introduction)
- Deep, Without Pity {originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, June 1980}
- The Killing Season {first publication}
- Prodigal Son {first publication}
Lansdale & Shiner - the John Talbot Stories
- Can You Run With It? (introduction, by Lewis Shiner)
- Black As The Night {originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Sep 1979}
- Man Drowning {originally published in an edited form in Pulpsmith, Fall 1983}
- Afterword to the Talbot Stories by Joe R. Lansdale