Learning to kill

by Evan Hunter

Learning to Kill starts out with a wonderful introduction, where McBain details the history of his start in the writing business: responding to a blind ad in the New York Times for an editor that turned out to be from a literary agency. He almost turned it down when he discovered it was an agency, but quickly changed his mind when he found out why the person he was replacing was leaving. It turns out that he was making too much money writing his own stories to make staying in that position worth it. McBain jumped at the chance, and the rest is history. Once he was established, he began submitting his own work as well as handling other clients, and many of these stories are published in this book. The book is appropriately named as he was literally learning and honing his craft here. Along with the introduction to the book, I found the previews of the stories very interesting too, as he tells where the story was published (mostly in "Manhunt" magazine, but there are a few others) and gi