SOURCE: Hagemann, E. R. “Introducing Paul Cain and his Fast One: A Forgotten Hard-Boiled Writer, a Forgotten Gangster Novel.” Armchair Detective 12, no. 1 (1979): 72-76.

In the following essay, Hagemann presents an overview of the career of hard-boiled writer Paul Cain, author of the novel Fast One—“the best of its kind ever to appear,” according to Hagemann.

I. Career

During his professional writing career, 1932-1948, he used Paul Cain for his fiction and Peter Ruric for his movie work, passing off the latter as his real name; yet he was born George Sims in Iowa, 30 May 1902. Nothing is known of his personal life and little of his professional life either before or after he broke into print in March 1932.

In a discarded Introduction (ca. 1946) to The Hard-Boiled Omnibus, Joseph T. Shaw, its editor known for his supervision of Black Mask, cites Ruric's “recollections of his boyhood experiences in Chicago...