"From its first issue, Manhunt declared itself different. For one thing, all the stories were
claimed to be new and remained that way until near the end. And many of the early
contributors were familiar names from hardcover publishing, including William Irish
(a.k.a. Cornell Woolrich), Kenneth Millar (as himself and as John Ross Macdonald),
Eleazar Lipsky, Bruno Fischer, Craig Rice, Harold Q. Masur, Leslie Charteris, William
Lindsay Gresham, Henry Kane, and David Goodis...
"The essence of Manhunt was not the private eye story, though it published plenty of
them. What set it apart was what is now called noir fiction, a term often thrown around
very loosely but in its purest form concerning a flawed but not necessarily unsympathetic
protagonist who will not have a happy outcome."
-from the Introduction by Jon L. Breen