For ten weeks in the early 1950s, Harlan Ellison joined a notorious Brooklyn street gang known as the Barons as part of his research for his first novel, Web of the City and later, his crime collection, The Deadly Streets.

The first edition of The Deadly Streets was released in 1958 and contained 11 hard-boiled tales about teenage street gangs. The book was re-released in 1975 with an additional five crime stories, some written in collaboration with other writers including “Ship-Shape Pay-Off” with Robert Silverberg and “Sob Story” Henry Slesar.

What sets these additional five stories apart from the original 11 is that they are much shorter and completely unrelated to the theme of teenage street gangs. Rather, they tend to focus on mob hits (“The Man with the Golden Tongue”), revenge (“Rat Hater”, “Hippie Slayer”) and personal vendettas (the aforementioned “Ship-Shape Pay-Off”). “Sob Story” is the weakest of the lot and barely qualifies as a crime drama.

My personal favorites from the collection include “We Take Care of our Dead,” “The Man with the Golden Tongue,” “Johnny Slice’s Stoolie,” “Buy Me That Blade,” “Hippie Slayer,” “With a Knife in Her Hand,” “Dead Shot,” and “Students of the Assassin.”

Although the slang is outdated and the depictions of violence mild by today’s standards, each of the original 11 tales present a vivid snapshot of the bloody and ruthless street gang culture of 1950s New York.