I am currently going through my Shelf to clear out books that I either DNFed or was not able to write a full review for whatever reason. Unfortunately this is the case with this title.
I chose this one because I have a deep love for pulpy short stories (a la Varney the Vampire, Pulp stories, etc...). There's something so fun about truly trashy stories that are so entrenched in genres. I wasn't able to get through this whole book, but if memory serves, this was an excellent send-up of what is sometimes absolutely terrible and yet so bad its good at the same time.
I hope to pick up a physical copy and finish Gun in Cheek, and I hope to read more in the future.

I really enjoy the early pulp fiction, unfortunately the stuff that came later, for me, was not that believable or entertaining. This book by Bill Pronzini clarifies some of the history to present day evolution of the gene, I haven't read too many of the writer mentioned or used in the examples so I found the book pretty entertaining, maybe I might search out some of the earlier ones, they sound easy reads and a bit of fun.

Excellent book, great trip through literary detectives.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book; unfortunately I missed its window of availability, and no longer have access. I'm sorry I missed it.

The alternative classics in this book made me laugh out loud. Since I read this book I do not have to spend time reading many of these books. The author even does us the favor of telling us who did it. Reading all this bad writing can be tiring so I would read this book in small doses. I did enjoy the publishing history that produced many of these classics. This book is a reprint so it is a little dated. If you enjoy mysteries and a laugh you will enjoy this book.

Very, very funny and curated with a fantastic ear for the absurd. A celebration of the "so bad, it's good" subgenre - enjoyable for fans of straight up mysteries and spoof alike.

GUN IN CHEEK by Bill Pronzini is a hilarious look into some of the books that are so bad that they are good, or at least fun and worthy of cult status much as something like “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!” is to filmdom.

Highly recommended for those who wish to take a break from their usual reads in the pulp fiction & murder>mystery categories to enjoy the author’s humorous takes on books in those genres that either weren't very carefully thought out in terms of storyline, or crafted by those who would have been better served to find something (anything) else to do with their time besides putting pen to the stories represented here , yet they are brought back into the light for all to see for their incredibly flawed existence and place in history as being the worst of the worst.

4 stars.

If you're a mystery reader and a fan of "so bad it's good," then <i>Gun In Cheek</i> is the book for you. It's pretty much MST3K (Mystery Science Theater 3000) for detective fiction. As any mystery reader knows, mysteries are extremely formulaic, with a special formula for each subgenre, from classic golden-age to cozy to gothic to hardboiled to spy fiction. With a good mystery, the formula is satisfying and any deviations are intriguing. With bad mysteries, the results can be utterly hilarious. Pronzini has coined a great term for these wonderfully terrible works: <b>"alternative classic."</b> Given that this book was first published before I was born, he invented the phrase long before "alternative facts" came along.

So what makes a good "alternative classic"? Part of it is the writing. Some of my favourites, starting with one from the editor himself: <blockquote>"When would this phantasmagoria that was all too real reality end? He asked himself."
Bill Pronzini, <i>The Stalker</I></blockquote> <blockquote>"Her hips were beautifully arched and her breasts were like proud flags waving triumphantly. She carried them high and mighty."
Ed Noon, <i>The Case of the Violent Virgin</i></blockquote> <blockquote>"A hint of excitement hovered around Miss Kane, looking well in an afternoon frock and explaining that she had obtained a weekend leave and was looking forward to the party."
R.A.J. Walling, <i>The Corpse Without a Clue</i></blockquote><blockquote>"All in the same motion, he snap-kicked the man in the right armpit! The knife clattered to the floor as Mace finished the slob off with a mule-kick to his scrotum. Looking like a goof who had just discovered that ice-cream cones are hollow, the man sagged to the floor."
Joseph Rosenberger, <i>Kung Fu: The Year of the Tiger</i></blockquote> <blockquote>"The old woman's breasts were balanced over her folded hands like the loaded scales of justice waiting for her final judgment."
Leslie Paige, <i>Queen of Hearts</i></blockquote><blockquote>"Hope flared in her dark eyes as she grabbed the rope I had tossed to her drowning brain."
<i>Naked Villainy</i>, Carl G. Hodges</blockquote>And consider this eloquent bit of dialogue:<blockquote>"'Dan Turner squalling,' I yeeped. 'Flag your diapers to Sylvia Hempstead's igloo. There's been a croaking.'"
Robert Leslie Bellem, "Come Die for Me"</blockquote>Attempts at introspection are also a great way to achieve an alternative classic. Take this epic bit of impending doom: <blockquote>"When it had settled itself, unperceived, in its lurking place--the Hand stole out again--closed the window-door, re-locked it.
Hand or claw? Hand of man or woman or paw of beast? In the name of God--<i>whose hand</i>?"
Mary Roberts Rinehart, <i>The Bat</i></blockquote>And how's this for the start of a gothic? <blockquote>"I know now that there must have been a touch of madness in me that raw October night as I went to Cemetery Key and the house of horror known as Stormhaven."
Jennifer Hale, <i>Stormhaven</i></blockquote>And there's a special way for detective fiction to achieve Alternative Classic status: the mysteries themselves. Sometimes it's a convoluted, incoherent mystery with a climax disturbingly similar to:
<a href="https://youtu.be/i9iQ1yU5Ops"><img src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/i9iQ1yU5Ops/hqdefault.jpg" width="300px"/></a>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i9iQ1yU5Ops" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
From bugged belly-buttons to murder by fire-extinguisher-nozzle-foam-in-ear to murder by embarrassment, there is an impressive variety of ridiculous creativity in the collection. I can't decide whether I prefer the man who becomes an evil avenger because he's so upset he went bald or the archaeologist who went bald and now wanders around in gloopy mud. There are the Death Rays, and Giant V-Rays, and "Crime Rays," and probably a few other rays I forgot about. (And yes, here's the obligatory M&W sketch.)
<a href="https://youtu.be/op2hRvUgcms"><img width="300px" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KG_oErV2wXc/hqdefault.jpg"/></a>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/op2hRvUgcms" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

There are <i><b>"blood-sucking, man-eating"</b></i> bushes, a man born with the head of a wolf, and a half-spider half-octopus monster called the Red Crawl which turns out (naturally) to be a man in a costume and a mask. There are vampires who, when unmasked, prove to be costumed people complete with a vampire bat that is actually a <b><i>"tiny monoplane"</i></b> whose engine is <b><i>"fitted with a silencer"</i></b> that flies around <b><i>"with the wheels tucked up inside the fuselage."</i></b> But my favourite has to be the octopi. There are actually <i>multiple stories</i> involving a death-pit of octopi, which, we are told, are <blockquote>"The world's most awful bundle of awfulness, a writhing, squirming mass of hell-fury, attaching itself to its victim with four hundred vacuum cups on its eight snaky legs [...] in short, it is the monster-supreme of earth or sea or Hell."</blockquote>
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but I will say that I'm not sure Pronzini necessarily gives the writers credit. While it made them no less entertaining to read, quite a few of the stories struck me as intentional parody, such as Joseph Rosenberger's confrontation in a warehouse filled with "Musical Panda Dolls" between the protagonist--named the Death Merchant--and a killer. I thoroughly enjoyed it all, but I did read it in small doses-- you can only take so much "alternative classic" at a time. If any of this sounded entertaining to you, I can promise that <i>Gun in Cheek</i> has more where it came from. Take the opportunity to <i>savor</i>, down to the last bugged belly-button and twenty-pound attack octopi.

Damn you Bill Pronzini! I was jotting down authors names before I reached the back and discovered and neatly listed bibliography. I had every intention of taking your advice to seek out these B-grade gems of the mystery fiction genre, after-all, many a B-grade film has, with time, become a cult classic.

I liked the way Bill uses his chapters to tackle the different aspects of the fictional mystery - the amateur detective, the police investigator, the private eye, the gentleman rogue, the evil oriental - as well as the spy story. We gain an insight into the publishing - and specifically Phoenix Press, who apparently published the majority of these gems (see page 91). There are comparisons between more popular characters with, often, their not so well known contemporaries and imitators.

Pronzini peppers each chapter with some of the best (??) of the writing of these featured authors:
"He keeps on waiting awhile longer. Then, at five o'clock, he gets up, locks the office door, and goes out (in that order)." "Tomorrow was another day." (Robert Twohy's "Slime"). Even some of our more well-known authors make the list (ie: Spillane, West, Basinsky, Brown, Leroux).

The titles of some of these works border on the fantastical and highly imaginable (No Coffin For The Corpse, The Clue of the Leaning Chimney, The Face on the Cutting Room Floor, When Last I Died, No Luck With The Hanged Man) ; the men are invariably rugged, macho and mysoginistic; the women sport bazooka bras and ooze sex appeal; the dialogue is cliched; the villains suitably nefarious. They were quick reads - they were escapism. But don't be fooled - many of these B-graders were at the height of popular fiction during their day and were prolific in their writing - these were the authors that contributed to what we now refer to as "pulp fiction".

"The good mystery gets all the credit, all the attention .... But what about the BAD mystery?" Well, Pronzini has certainly brought together the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in such a way that you may look twice at some of the lesser gems. I know I have.

There are signs of two good books in this mess, but not enough to earn a recommendation. One book delights in the unintentional comedy of bad writers trying to be good. This can be more than mean fun, the right bad writer can expose clearly what we love about a genre, showing nakedly what better writers clothe to meet the demands of logic, character, realism and plot.

Another book would explore the history of mystery fiction focused on the bad books that were popular instead of the classics that have stood the test of time. The narrative fallacy is to write an account of events using foreknowledge of the outcome. Foreknowledge determines what is important and what is not, and naturally arranges events into simple cause-and-effect. That account is quite different from the experience of living through events in forward order, forming ideas of what is important from contemporary attitudes rather than future knowledge, and being entirely unable to distinguish cause and effect.

This book veers unsteadily between the two ideals, and accomplishes neither. A few of the quoted passages are so bad as to be funny, but most are just stories the author wants to criticize, or early efforts by major writers that seem like parodies of their mature style, but are actually are developmental stages. There is some insight into what mystery readers liked at various times in the past, but mostly we get the author's opinions. Mickey Spillane, for example, does not belong in either of the two good books mentioned above. In answer to criticisms like those made in this book, Spillane wrote, "Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar... If the public likes you, you're good." You don't have to enjoy Spillane to acknowledge that he had a genuinely tough writing style and wrote ground-breaking action scenes that have had a strong influence on more subtle and accomplished writers.

In this end, this book is not very funny and not very enlightening.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy.
I think I just did not "get" this book.
I found it relentlessly unfunny and rather tedious.Perhaps my sense of humour needs to be attended to....or is this just an example of cheap shots at easy targets?
I thought it would be a light-hearted history but simple endless repetition of plots and no real analysis turned me off

Gun in Cheek is a Dover reprint of a title released in 1982, and the subtitle is "An Affectionate Guide to the 'Worst' in Mystery Fiction". In modern parlance, I think this book would be called a recap rather than a guide. In sections devoted to amateur detectives, cops, and gothic novels, Pronzini picks two or three novels that he considers "bad" and basically retells the entire story of each one. If you have ever read a TV show episode recap on a website like Previously.tv, then you have this book -- except this book doesn't have quite as much snarky fun. Still, some of the quotes from the actual novels Pronzini is summarizing are amusing.