There are a lot of rules about starting a business, and the number skyrockets when the enterprise is publishing. I would have to do more research but, from what I’ve observed over the past 25 years, Dennis McMillan has ignored or deliberately violated every one of those rules, and he flourishes.

1) Have sufficient capital. Every MBA knows you need sufficient money to sustain you through a year, or maybe two, when starting a business, especially one like publishing, where most bills need to be paid before you have anything to sell. Mr. McMillan may have had two nickels to rub together when he started, but they were his lunch money.

2) Make it easy for your customers to buy your product. Mr. McMillan had at least a half-dozen homes and offices (well, same thing in this case) during his first decade, holing up with friends in Arizona, Montana, California, Hawaii, and, I think, Mars. This was in the Dark Ages before computer use was common, so the only way someone would know he’d moved would be when a letter or phone call came. To make the business experience truly perfect, he usually required payment up front, frequently for books that then weren’t produced for months afterward.

3) Plan obsolescence. For books, this means using the cheapest paper available (check out the quality of the pages in the next book you pick up published by Bantam, say, or Putnam), three-piece bindings (covers in cardboard, spine either cheap cloth or pressed cardboard) and perfect-bound, which means glued.

The books published under the Dennis McMillan imprint are printed on a deliciously creamy paper, sewn into full-cloth bindings, with elegant colored end papers and, of course, full-color pictorial dustjackets. They are expensive to make, but what a beautiful piece of bookmaking at the end of the day.

None of this would matter if Mr. McMillan published crummy books. He doesn’t. He has a very narrow focus, publishing only what he likes, and what he likes is noir, and it’s the best noir in the world. Some of the authors he’s published are James Crumley, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Scott Phillips, Charles Willeford, and James Sallis.

For collectors of serious modern crime literature, it is impossible not to have Dennis McMillan books on the shelf. He has published first editions of more than a half-dozen Michael Connelly novels for starters, including “The Closers,” “The Narrows,” and “Chasing the Dime.” Each was produced in an edition of 300 to 400 copies, signed by the author and housed in a slipcase; regular trade editions were then published by Little, Brown.

The same star treatment has been accorded Mr. Pelecanos, whose limited first editions include “Drama City,” “Hard Revolution,” and “Hell To Pay.” Mr. Crumley’s previous three novels, too, were first published by Mr. McMillan, as was Scott Phillips’s “The Ice Harvest” in 2000, followed by the Ballantine edition of 2001.

This superb novella was filmed with John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, and Connie Nielsen, with a script by (and could it possibly get any better than this?) Robert Benton and Richard Russo. Harold Ramis directed the film, which was released in the United States the day before Thanksgiving. Read the book and see the movie! They’re both terrific.

Mr. McMillan doesn’t publish only limited first editions, however. With his sharp editorial sense, he has published several outstanding novels that could not immediately find traditional trade publishers. “Night Dogs” by Kent Anderson is a memorable example.

This noir masterpiece (and when I say “noir” I mean it makes “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” seem like “The Sound of Music”) had a first printing of 1,000 copies in 1996 and created such a buzz that Bantam, which initially had rejected the manuscript, paid $100,000 for the rights. Mr. Anderson, who previously had written the violent, yet poetic, Vietnam novel “Sympathy for the Devil” in 1987, is due for another book soon, as he seems, sadly, to produce them only once a decade.

Kent Harrington, a terribly neglected writer of enormous strength and originality, has also seen his books published by McMillan. First came “Dia de Los Muertes,” the publisher’s all-time best-selling book, then the excellent “Red Jungle,” a semi-autobiographical thriller about a treasure and a woman murdered by communist rebels.

Maintaining his commitment to noir fiction, McMillan recently released “Plots With Guns” (326 pages, $30), a collection of stories originally issued in electronic form on an eponymous Web site, with five additional stories written especially for this volume. Mr. Connelly, Laura Lippman, Steve Hamilton, Robert Skinner, Jason Starr, Mr. Phillips, Sean Dolittle, Mr. Anderson and a hatful of names new to me are among the contributors in an assortment even more varied than most anthologies.

Although the “Plots With Guns” Web site required all stories to contain, well, guns, that’s all they have in common. The editor, Anthony Neil Smith, a pretty good short story writer himself, has a fine editorial eye but seems overly respectful of his writers’ work. That sounds like a good thing, but it means he lets them get away with too much slovenly writing, wild coincidences, over-the-top weirdness, and concentrated efforts to play can-you-top-this?

There are a lot of good writers here, and some good stories, but many appear to be trying too hard to be cool. That stuff comes naturally to authors like Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, or Dennis Lehane, but can be more than a little irritating when it’s forced.

Many of the contributors lack restraint and subtlety, their prose sneaking up on the reader the way a bug sneaks up on a windshield.

For all that, “Plots With Guns” is still one of the best anthologies of the year, and Dennis McMillan continues his enviable record of never having published a bad book. I’d love to make the same claim for myself, but I once published a book by Andrew Greeley. Mea culpa.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at openzler@nysun.com.