British crime writers today are replacing the genteel detective with their own pulp fiction heroes. Following the new directions in American crime writing being practiced by such authors as Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, James Crumley, and Charles Willeford, this new school of "fresh blood" authors portrays the mean streets of London and its environs with a gritty social realism. There are no traditional detectives or policeman in this world, little of the serene whodunit atmosphere. These stories try to show the consequences of crime in today's world. The central characters tend to be urban outsiders caught up in a violent world devoid of easy moral solutions. These are crimes of passion, crimes of betrayal, dark and often mindless, robberies which go terribly wrong or horribly right.

The Fresh Blood crime anthology launched the Bloodlines paperback series for a new, young, cutting-edge London publishing house, The Do-Not Press. This collection and other Bloodlines novels have re-captured the mood of the now respected and admired '50s noir pulp fictions of Jim Thompson, Charles Williams, David Goodis and other sadly neglected exponents of that genre. The fourteen stories included here are all from this new generation of crime writers, except one, a previously unpublished piece by the acclaimed British noir writer, Derek Raymond (Robin Cook), "Nightmare in the Street." John Harvey's "She Rote," chosen for inclusion in 1996's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories, as selected by the staff of Mystery Scene Magazine, featuring Harvey's gritty policeman, Charles Resnik, was first published here.

Also included are stories by John B. Spencer, Russell James, Mark Timlin, Ian Rankin, Denise Danks, Chaz Brenchley, Joe Canzius, Stella Duffy, Nicholas Blincoe, Graeme Gordan, and Ripley and Jakubowski. The authors provide brief background notes to each story, and Ripley contributes an Introduction on the "fresh blood" genre itself.

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