Podcasts · Fiction · Society & Culture

Vigilante Crime and Pulp

Gutter Books LLC

37 episodes

Righteous Independent Fiction and More vigilantemag.substack.com

Episodes

  1. Host Bribed to Read Freida McFadden!

    · 52 min · S10 E2 · Explicit

    Our rotund raconteur accepted a $50 cash bribe from shady new pulp fiction author Frank Kidd (Once Upon A Time in Argentina) to read bestselling chick thriller Brain Damage by Freida McFadden aka Dr. Sara Cohen. Hear…

  2. How I Stole My Favorite Book: A Random Ramble

    · 25 min

    Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Get full access to Vigilante Crime & Pulp at vigilantemag.substack.com/subscribe

  3. How Ed McBain Rehabilitated the Heroin Junkie

    · 49 min · S2 E9 · Explicit

    Philip “Big Philly” Smith took time away from talking smack about bad books to deeply diving into good books about smack! It’s 1952 and New York native Salvatore Lombino is a 26-year-old short story stud in the nadir…

  4. Writing Advice From the Unknown Master of Short Crime Fiction

    · 43 min · S2 E8

    For over 30 years John M. Floyd, a writer you’ve never heard of, has published over 1,000 short stories—mostly in crime fiction—in over 600 publications. Here we analyze his career and extrapolate effective craft and…

  5. ‘90s Grunge Almost Made Me A Pussy!

    · 40 min · Bonus · Explicit

    Philip “Big Philly” Smith reflects on the potential deleterious effects of entering his adolescence at the exact moment Kurt Cobain and his ilk commandeered the culture. The ethos of Nirvana was toxic garbage that…

  6. Book Club Moms Don’t Get Megan Abbott

    · 47 min · S2 E7 · Explicit

    Megan Abbott is the Gen X queenpin of literary noir crime fiction, and not enough appreciative readers know it. Abbott writes smoldering, classic noir New York suits foolishly package as everything from YA adjacent…

  7. Vigilante Between the Lines: Literary Stories That Entertain... Plus a Confession!

    · 34 min · Bonus · Explicit

    In this installment of the gonzo off-week podcast, host Philip “Big Philly” Smith shoots the manure about classic literary stories that entertain nearly as well as genre fiction… plus he confesses to a forbidden guilty…

  8. Keeping It Real With Raymond Chandler: The Simple Art of Murder (1944)

    · 41 min · S2 E6

    A discussion of Raymond Chandler’s sweeping essay on crime fiction, The Simple Art of Murder (1944). How do the master’s ideas apply today? Chandler argued, among several other things, sanitized murder mysteries are…

  9. Vigilante Between the Lines: Cutesy Cozy Animal Mysteries Are the Condoms of Crime Fiction... Plus Autographs Are Dumb

    · 32 min · Bonus · Explicit

    Philip M. Smith is the name on his sub-500 credit report, but the real ones know him as Big Philly. The home offices of Vigilante Crime and Pulp, in consultation with Philly’s psychiatric care team, authorized a new…

  10. Prison Farm Violence to Debutantes: Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye by Horace McCoy

    · 35 min · S2 E5

    Horace McCoy is now best known for his depression era classic They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1935) and its 1960s film adaptation starring Jane Fonda. But Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1948) is a shocking cocktail of brutal…

  11. Hitchcock's Fetish for Dead Blondes: Vertigo (1958)

    · 41 min · S2 E4

    Couched between his traditional black-and-white noir The Wrong Man (1956) and his vibrant action and espionage thriller North By Northwest (1959), Alfred Hitchcock made a smoldering, genre-bending meditation on…

  12. The Secret Writers Behind Hitchcock

    · 42 min · S2 E3

    Alfred Hitchcock didn’t merely have an eye for what worked on camera, he was one of the greatest curators of commercial crime and suspense fiction of the twentieth century. In this episode, we discuss the writers…

  13. Reviewing Alfred Hitchcock's Favorite Film: Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

    · 35 min · S2 E2 · Explicit

    We review and analyze Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite of his own films. Starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten, and co-written by Our Town playwright Thornton Wilder, Shadow of a Doubt (1943) is a domestic noir of family…

  14. Psychopathia Sexualis: A Hell of A Woman by Jim Thompson

    · 49 min · S2 E1 · Explicit

    Paperback crime author Jim Thompson, nicknamed the “Dimestore Dostoevsky,” is best known as mid-century American crime fiction’s darkest prince of noir thanks to classics like The Killer Inside Me, Pop. 1280, and The…

  15. Pulp Master Robert Bloch: Lovecraft's Favorite Jew

    · 44 min

    Robert Bloch was best known for his novel Psycho, on which Alfred Hitchcock’s cinema masterpiece was based. However, he began as a teenage literary prodigy under the intense tutelage of weird fiction master H.P.…

  16. Vigilante Anthology Special! Plus Joe R. Lansdale Is Brilliant

    · 49 min

    In honor of the launch of the hotly anticipated Vigilante Crime Pulp Fiction Anthology, we discuss the niche of short fiction, limited readership, value of the form, and one of its masters (Joe R. Lansdale). Get full…

  17. Stephen King's Most Gruesome Body Horror Story

    · 41 min

    In this episode, we begin with a discussion of whether reading is dead in the 21st century. Spoiler alert: it’s not! Next, we discuss horror master Stephen King’s 1980s body horror short story titled “Survivor Type.” I…

  18. Philip K. Dick Predicted the Dystopian Future

    · 39 min

    A review (no spoilers) of the novel Ubik by Philip K. Dick. Was the legendary speculative fiction forefather suffering insane delusions or did his fiction capture the future of technology and its impact on our modern…

  19. Thomas Ligotti's Horror Fiction Should Be Banned

    · 37 min

    A deeper dive into American weird fiction master Thomas Ligotti: his bleak philosophy, mental health, and the extreme despair of his frightening tales of cosmic horror and uncanny nightmare realities. This is the…

  20. Richard Matheson: the Author Stephen King Wishes He Was

    · 36 min

    From short pulp fiction to Hollywood screenplay machine, we discuss the career of Richard Matheson. He wrote 10% of the total episodes of Twilight Zone, invented the zombie genre, and got Steven Spielberg his start.…

  21. David Goodis: The East Coast Jim Thompson

    · 46 min

    An exploration of the late great king of Philadelphia, David Goodis, and his even better contemporary, Jim Thompson. Parallel themes and parallel careers. A deep dive into these two bleak writers and their impact and…

  22. Explaining David Lynch's Noir Fever Dream (Lost Highway)

    · 41 min

    David Lynch’s 1997 masterpiece Lost Highway deserves to be considered a neo-noir classic despite its unconventional elements of story, character, and audio-visual misdirection. Here we analyze and discuss how Lost…

  23. Scott Wolven: The Best Noir Author You Never Heard Of

    · 33 min

    A discussion of masterful yet obscure literary noir author Scott Wolven, and his excellent short story collections, Controlled Burn and Hundred Proof. Why should every men's fiction and noir fan read Wolven? Listen to…

  24. The War Against Readers

    · 32 min

    Using B.R. Myers’s A Reader’s Manifesto (2002) as a starting point, we break down why the intractable purple prose of post-modern literary fiction is inferior to both classic literary fiction and commercial/pulp…

  25. Jurassic World: Rebirth is All Adventure and No Messaging

    · 28 min

    A review and discussion of Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025) starring Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey. The latest in the iconic series, inspired by Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel Jurassic Park, is a masterclass in…

  26. Book Review and Analysis: The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain (Minor Spoilers)

    · 28 min

    We discuss the life and writing style of the great James M. Cain, especially his 1934 masterpiece The Postman Always Rings Twice. We cover Cain’s minimalist prose, flirting with censorship boundaries, and how to say…

  27. What Is Weird Fiction?

    · 26 min

    We explore the broad and uncanny world of weird fiction, cosmic horror, and its progeny. A discussion of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert W. Chambers and his King in Yellow mythos, Lord Dunsany, Algernon…

  28. My Gateway Drugs to Pulp Westerns and Western Fiction

    · 35 min

    This episode details my personal winding trail to discovering the excellence of pulp western fiction, from stumbling on to spaghetti western films to reading Louis L’Amour. The western will never die! Get full access…

  29. Book Review: She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper (Spoiler Free)

    · 31 min

    In this episode we review She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper. It’s a modern noir take on True Grit, featuring a memorable young lady with balls of steel and her convict father against a world a bad guys set on killing…

  30. Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Its Promotion of Pulp Crime Fiction

    · 40 min

    Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest and most influential film directors of the 20th century, brought noir and hardboiled pulp crime stories to a TV audience via his classic NBC series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents…

  31. James Scott Bell and His Mike Romeo Thrillers

    · 30 min

    This episode is an author spotlight on International Thriller Writers Award-winner James Scott Bell. We discuss Bell’s distinguished career as both a writing craft instructor to a generation of authors and entertainer…

  32. Blockbuster Screenwriter and TV Auteur Taylor Sheridan: Episode 2 of 2 (The Yellowstone Universe--1883, 1923, and 6666 the Four Sixes)

    · 31 min · Episode 6 · Explicit

    On the strength of his early screenplays, Taylor Sheridan created Yellowstone for Paramount and the rest, as they say, is history. Beyond being simple one hit TV show, Yellowstone opened an intellectual property…

  33. Blockbuster Screenwriter and TV Auteur Taylor Sheridan: Episode 1 of 2 (Sicario and Hell Or High Water)

    · 24 min

    Before Taylor Sheridan became a household name for creating and writing blockbuster TV series Yellowstone and its prequels 1883 and 1923, he wrote two of the greatest neo western/neo noir movies of the 21st century,…

  34. An analysis of the feminist thriller Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

    · 37 min

    A review, analysis, and discussion of the blockbuster crime novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Listen to the end so you won’t miss hilarious one-star reviews of the legendary feminist thriller. Get full access to…

  35. Bonus Episode: A further analysis of The Bitch by Les Edgerton with spoilers galore

    · 25 min · Episode 3 · Bonus · Explicit

    There are no themed mocktails or baked goods at this book club meeting! Now that you took our advice from last episode and read The Bitch by Les Edgerton, dig into this spoiler-laden bonus episode for further…

  36. Book Review: The B***h by Les Edgerton (Edgy Noir Crime - No Spoilers)

    · 42 min

    We review, recommend, and analyze a modern, 21st century noir crime novel: The B***h by Les Edgerton. Keep listening to the end for our reading of the book’s one-star reviews and an announcement of bonus podcast…

  37. 5 Must-Read Macho Crime Classics

    · 43 min · Episode 1

    Host Philip “Big Philly” Smith, who writes fiction as Philip M. Smith, reviews five classic noir crime paperbacks perfect for men interested in action, violence, and pulp fiction. Big Philly discusses legendary authors…

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