A disgraced LA music star faces execution for a crime he didn't commit in the long-lost crime novel of Robert Silverberg, SFF Writers of America Grand Master, available for the first time in over 60 years.

Had LA's hottest bandleader become an instrument of death?

Before his extraordinary career as a grandmaster of science fiction, Robert Silverberg honed his craft as a writer for a variety of pulp magazines, including crime digests with titles like Trapped and Guilty Detective Story Magazine. He also wrote this long-lost novel, which appeared under the pen name “Stan Vincent” in 1960 – and has never been published since. 

Meet Bob McKay: once a rising star in the toniest nightclubs of Los Angeles, now a down-and-out denizen of tawdry bars where B-girls hustle drinks and brawls break out nightly. When one hustler winds up strangled, McKay lands on Death Row. Can a starlet and a sympathetic newspaper columnist clear his name before his date with the death chamber? 

Featuring a new introduction by the author and three bonus stories from Guilty and Trapped, THE HOT BEAT offers readers a trip through time back to the pulp era, when a future star was making his bones with stories of murder, betrayal, and dangerous desires…

'Silverberg’s novel isn’t a modern homage but the real thing; he brings the same vigor and imagination to noir that characterises his award-winning science fiction ... Genuinely juicy pulp noir from 60 years ago.' — Kirkus Reviews

'Definitely a keeper.' — Booklist