Skip content
Get two free audiobooks AND support local bookstores Make the switch
Black Mask 4: The Parrot That Wouldn’t Talk by Otto Penzler
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks when you make the switch!

Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Make the switch
Libro.fm app with gift bow

Gift audiobook credit bundles

You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

Start gifting

Black Mask 4: The Parrot That Wouldn’t Talk

And Other Crime Fiction from the Legendary Magazine

$22.02

Get for $14.99 with membership
Length 7 hours 7 minutes
Language English
Narrators Pete Larkin, Carol Monda & Alan Sklar

This audiobook uses AI narration.

We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by “the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine” (Booklist).

Otto Penzler selected and wrote introductions to the best of the best, the darkest of these dark, vintage stories for the collection The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories. Now that collection is available for the first time on audio.

Includes:

  • “Bracelets” by Katherine Brocklebank; read by Carol Monda
  • “Diamonds Mean Death” by Thomas Walsh; read by Alan Sklar
  • “Murder in the Ring” by Raoul Whitfield; read by Jeff Gurner
  • “The Parrot That Wouldn’t Talk” by Walter C. Brown; read by Pete Larkin
  • “Let the Dead Alone” by Merle Constiner; read by Oliver Wyman
  • Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of The Mysterious Press; mysteriouspress.com; and New York City's Mysterious Bookshop. He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars, and lifetime achievement awards from NoirCon and The Strand Magazine.

    Pete Larkin is an AudioFile Earphones Award winner and a 2014 Audie Award finalist. He has wide voice-over and on-camera experience and has worked in virtually all media. He was the public address announcer for the New York Mets from 1988 to 1993. He has worked as a disc jockey in Baltimore, Washington, and New York, including as host of WNEW-FM's highly rated "Saturday Morning Sixties" program. An award-winning on-camera host, Pete has worked on many industrial films for many of the country's top companies, corporations, and governmental agencies and has done hundreds of commercials, promos, and narrations. His theater experience includes a variety of dramatic, comedic, and musical roles.

    Winner of several AudioFile Earphones Awards and a multiple finalist for the APA's prestigious Audie Award, Alan Sklar has narrated nearly two hundred audiobooks, including Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden, The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings by Thomas Maier, and The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. Named a Best Voice of 2009 by AudioFile magazine, his work has earned him a Booklist Editors' Choice Award (twice), a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award, and Audiobook of the Year by ForeWord magazine. The Dartmouth graduate's theatre credits include Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Seagull, and many modern roles. Alan has also narrated thousands of corporate videos for clients such as NASA, Sikorsky Aircraft, IBM, Dannon, Pfizer, AT&T, and SONY. For several years, he has been the spokesman for TracFone Wireless Co. and can often be seen and heard on TracFone radio and TV spots and infomercials. "I am so pleased, as is my husband, to have found a narrator that holds our attention so well that we have come to compare every other narrator to him (you). So far we have found none with such a talent as yours. We very much plan to listen to as many of your works as we can find." -Sandi King, a letter to Mr. Sklar

    Phone showing make the switch message

    Limited-time offer

    Get two free audiobooks when you make the switch!

    Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

    Make the switch
    Libro.fm app with gift bow

    Gift audiobook credit bundles

    You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

    Start gifting
    Get two free audiobooks AND support local bookstores Make the switch