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High Class Muscle
In the shadows between law and chaos, there are always men willing to get their hands dirty... but even the roughest men have lines they won't cross. From rain-soaked city streets to war-torn alien landscapes, from 1940s Arizona to cyberpunk futures, these stories follow enforcers, fixers, and hard cases who make their living in the gray areas of justice. When push comes to shove and everything is on the line, they face the ultimate What separates a man doing his job from the monsters he fights? The answer lies in where they refuse to compromise, that line that defines who they are when all other choices have been stripped away. Dive into tales of detectives battling shadows and saving innocents; protagonists drawing moral lines in corrupt worlds; private eyes and ex-soldiers facing impossible choices, and learn what it means for a man to be High Class Muscle.
254 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 9, 2025
8 people are currently reading
About the author
Sam Robb
19 books10 followersSam Robb is a devoted husband & the father of three teenagers. As such, he's developed a propensity for Dad jokes. He's also interested in long walks, urban photography, martial arts, & self-defense. When he's not walking around Pittsburgh taking pictures & making up stories to tell, he works as a software developer. Oh, yes - he also ran for President, once upon a time.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 16, 2025
I’m part of this anthology, so I’m biased, but I do really enjoy it. What’s more, I love the model that Raconteur Press is following with this and their other releases.
Above all, this strikes me as a modern-day answer to the Black-Mask era of the original pulp magazines. Those magazines were “pulp” because, to hold down production costs, they were printed on pulp paper – like newspaper – rather than higher-end, acid-free paper that would last more than a few years. Most original issues of Black Mask and its competitors are long gone, either disintegrated or thrown away by their original purchasers who weren’t looking for anything other than a quick read-and-toss experience.
One implication of that process was that it could be outrageously experimental. It’s true that the work we best remember is the classic noir of Hammett, Chandler, and Cain, but the pulps went in other directions, too. We got proto-superhero work, early experiments in sci-fi, and even some envelope-pushing explorations of sexuality.
Most of those early stories look like failures in retrospect. But, if we take the scientific model as a metaphor, they’re successes in that they helped us collectively to come to a sense of what then-contemporary narrative made possible. Hemingway didn’t publish in the pulps, but I’m confident he read them. He preceded their golden age – and helped shape it with his commitment to tight prose – but I believe it helped shape him. We can forget the hundred disposable stories that he read, or even just glanced at on newsstand shelves, but the atmosphere must have influenced him. (Anyone read “The Killers” lately?)
Anyway, I’ve been frustrated for years that I can’t find outlets with the same audacity, outlets with real audiences – and Raconteur seems to have a real audience – and with a let’s-try-it-all sensibility. This is the 68th collection from the press, which means two-thirds of the way to 1000 stories. They’re getting it all out there, much of it – of course – stuff we won’t want to remember a few years from now, but a surprising amount of it the kind of literature that might – on its own or in its diffuse influence – shape the stuff we’ll be talking about next decade.
Think I’m exaggerating? Consider where George R.R. Martin published his original work forty years ago. But, consider as well that those sci-fi/fantasy markets have lost much of their edge by codifying what they want to publish. You have to sound like Martin to get into their magazines or to publish with Tor or Del Rey. Where they once dealt in disposable paperbacks that I used to find in a corner shelf of the tiny bookstore in my hometown, now they have an expectation of seriousness.
Think I’m exaggerating? Consider that Martin can’t finish his series because he’s so intent on making it a literary achievement. Game of Thrones is fun stuff, and I’ve enjoyed it more than most people, but it’s not Faulkner. It’s part of a tradition – born in pulp – that lets it all fly and picks up the worthwhile pieces later.
That’s a longer screed than I intended, but it’s justification for why I enjoy this collection so much. Yes, I’m in it, but my story is more traditional than most with a real-world, working-class protagonist. We also get cyber-Sam-Spades and Angelic-nephilim descended tough guys. We get exotic locales like a post-apocalyptic desert space or a theocratic city-state. I’m not sure that each one always works on its own, but, collectively, they define a space of real creativity. I read all of them in under 48 hours, and it feels like I’m waking up from a night of strange but compelling dreams.
My favorite story is almost certainly Ross Hathaway’s “Black Tie, Red Flags.” There’s a plot, and it works, but it’s the language that sells it. He’s read his Chandler, and – with a nod to the gifted and just-murdered Rob Reiner and his Spinal Tap – he’s turned it up to 11. Every page has at least one metaphor that’s running on turbo. It’s fun with the language, but it’s also a knowing nod to the tradition the entire collection is trying to revitalize.
Some of the other strong ones are Malory’s “Among the Ash Heaps and Yahoos,” Urna Semper’s “Night of the Leopard,” and Michael Morton’s “Blood on Sacred Steps.” But all of them push the envelope, and that’s the point.
The real star may be Sarah Clithero, though. The cover painting is striking, a clear reference to Ross’s story. But then we get at least one illustration for each story, and the effect is a lot like the original pulps. The drawings amplify the stories, commenting on them and making the whole feel all the more cinematic – but cinematic more in the Roger Corman vein than in the Hitchcock (which suits me just fine).
The drawing that Sarah did for my story simply blows me away. I turned to it as soon as the volume came in the mail – yeah, sorry, but you pretty much have to buy these from Amazon since few bookstores will stock them – and my jaw dropped. It did so much to capture and then amplify my protagonist that I had to close the book and open it again, two or three times eventually, to make myself believe it was real. My wife and son had similar reactions, each gaping as they took in the drawing with all its detail.
Anyway, there’s a good chance this book isn’t for you. If you like coloring outside the lines, though, and if you’re willing to kiss some frogs on the way to finding a prince of a story, go for it. If you get it on Kindle, it’s less than the price of a magazine. And, if you want to lay a bet that something here is going to be something we talk about in ten years, it’s not that expensive to buy a paper copy that, despite the pulp aesthetic, is nicely enough produced that it will stick around a long time.
Above all, this strikes me as a modern-day answer to the Black-Mask era of the original pulp magazines. Those magazines were “pulp” because, to hold down production costs, they were printed on pulp paper – like newspaper – rather than higher-end, acid-free paper that would last more than a few years. Most original issues of Black Mask and its competitors are long gone, either disintegrated or thrown away by their original purchasers who weren’t looking for anything other than a quick read-and-toss experience.
One implication of that process was that it could be outrageously experimental. It’s true that the work we best remember is the classic noir of Hammett, Chandler, and Cain, but the pulps went in other directions, too. We got proto-superhero work, early experiments in sci-fi, and even some envelope-pushing explorations of sexuality.
Most of those early stories look like failures in retrospect. But, if we take the scientific model as a metaphor, they’re successes in that they helped us collectively to come to a sense of what then-contemporary narrative made possible. Hemingway didn’t publish in the pulps, but I’m confident he read them. He preceded their golden age – and helped shape it with his commitment to tight prose – but I believe it helped shape him. We can forget the hundred disposable stories that he read, or even just glanced at on newsstand shelves, but the atmosphere must have influenced him. (Anyone read “The Killers” lately?)
Anyway, I’ve been frustrated for years that I can’t find outlets with the same audacity, outlets with real audiences – and Raconteur seems to have a real audience – and with a let’s-try-it-all sensibility. This is the 68th collection from the press, which means two-thirds of the way to 1000 stories. They’re getting it all out there, much of it – of course – stuff we won’t want to remember a few years from now, but a surprising amount of it the kind of literature that might – on its own or in its diffuse influence – shape the stuff we’ll be talking about next decade.
Think I’m exaggerating? Consider where George R.R. Martin published his original work forty years ago. But, consider as well that those sci-fi/fantasy markets have lost much of their edge by codifying what they want to publish. You have to sound like Martin to get into their magazines or to publish with Tor or Del Rey. Where they once dealt in disposable paperbacks that I used to find in a corner shelf of the tiny bookstore in my hometown, now they have an expectation of seriousness.
Think I’m exaggerating? Consider that Martin can’t finish his series because he’s so intent on making it a literary achievement. Game of Thrones is fun stuff, and I’ve enjoyed it more than most people, but it’s not Faulkner. It’s part of a tradition – born in pulp – that lets it all fly and picks up the worthwhile pieces later.
That’s a longer screed than I intended, but it’s justification for why I enjoy this collection so much. Yes, I’m in it, but my story is more traditional than most with a real-world, working-class protagonist. We also get cyber-Sam-Spades and Angelic-nephilim descended tough guys. We get exotic locales like a post-apocalyptic desert space or a theocratic city-state. I’m not sure that each one always works on its own, but, collectively, they define a space of real creativity. I read all of them in under 48 hours, and it feels like I’m waking up from a night of strange but compelling dreams.
My favorite story is almost certainly Ross Hathaway’s “Black Tie, Red Flags.” There’s a plot, and it works, but it’s the language that sells it. He’s read his Chandler, and – with a nod to the gifted and just-murdered Rob Reiner and his Spinal Tap – he’s turned it up to 11. Every page has at least one metaphor that’s running on turbo. It’s fun with the language, but it’s also a knowing nod to the tradition the entire collection is trying to revitalize.
Some of the other strong ones are Malory’s “Among the Ash Heaps and Yahoos,” Urna Semper’s “Night of the Leopard,” and Michael Morton’s “Blood on Sacred Steps.” But all of them push the envelope, and that’s the point.
The real star may be Sarah Clithero, though. The cover painting is striking, a clear reference to Ross’s story. But then we get at least one illustration for each story, and the effect is a lot like the original pulps. The drawings amplify the stories, commenting on them and making the whole feel all the more cinematic – but cinematic more in the Roger Corman vein than in the Hitchcock (which suits me just fine).
The drawing that Sarah did for my story simply blows me away. I turned to it as soon as the volume came in the mail – yeah, sorry, but you pretty much have to buy these from Amazon since few bookstores will stock them – and my jaw dropped. It did so much to capture and then amplify my protagonist that I had to close the book and open it again, two or three times eventually, to make myself believe it was real. My wife and son had similar reactions, each gaping as they took in the drawing with all its detail.
Anyway, there’s a good chance this book isn’t for you. If you like coloring outside the lines, though, and if you’re willing to kiss some frogs on the way to finding a prince of a story, go for it. If you get it on Kindle, it’s less than the price of a magazine. And, if you want to lay a bet that something here is going to be something we talk about in ten years, it’s not that expensive to buy a paper copy that, despite the pulp aesthetic, is nicely enough produced that it will stick around a long time.
Displaying 1 of 1 review