# How Ed McBain Rehabilitated the Heroin Junkie

An episode of [Vigilante Crime and Pulp](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1809034672), 28 Sep 2026, 49 min.

Audio: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/217888515/96c2bc2bc231472f9618051e5cc3adb2.mp3

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 of the pulp fiction magazine market. So what does he do? He legally changes his name to Evan Hunter and publishes his first crime novel, The Evil Sleep! from Falcon Books. Eventually, it was reissued as So Nude, So Dead (2015) by Ed McBain thanks to Charles Ardai and his temple to mid-century classics, Hard Case Crime. Listen now to learn how McBain’s debut transcended its modest prose and window dressing thanks the author’s eagle eye for targeting popular subgenre expectations to subvert. So Nude, So Dead is heroin, hoes, and prose—all a pulp writer knows. Other books mentioned in this episode: The Blackboard Jungle by Evan Hunter Roots Down to Hell by Matthew Louis The Wrong Man by Matthew Louis Frenzy by Jonathan Craig - Not specifically mentioned, but this is the other junkie amateur sleuth novel I was referring to. As promised in the episode, here is a picture of a street from my neighborhood. Get full access to Vigilante Crime & Pulp at vigilantemag.substack.com/subscribe

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