Some years ago, when I had a publishing company (The Mysterious Press) that produced a substantial number of new books every year, I was asked why I didn’t publish any paperback originals. My response was that if a book was worth publishing at all, it was worth publishing in hardcover. To my way of thinking, if a book was a mere paperback, it was a piece of trash.

Well, I have come to a realization. I was (gasp! shock! can it be true?) wrong. Flat out, unequivocally, hugely and brain-numbingly wrong. Somehow, I’d neglected to remember that throughout most of the world, virtually all books were published only in paperback. Indeed, the birth of the detective story, “Poe Tales,” was issued only as a paperback. The first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet,” was a paperback.

More contemporaneously, the early works by many of the best mystery and crime writers of the past half-century were soft stuff. John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, Charles Willeford, Jim Thompson, David Goodis, Lawrence Block, and Ed McBain gained fame primarily as paperback writers. Even more recently, the first books by such hardcover bestsellers as Lisa Scottoline, James Ellroy, and Laura Lippman were paperbacks.

The next generation of hot young writers is turning with ever-greater frequency to the paperback as a way of reaching a larger audience directly. While they are not reviewed as often as hardcover books, paperbacks have a better chance of building a reader ship for their authors, since they are generally issued in greater quantities.

Trade paperbacks, the larger format volumes that have a more upscale look and feel to them, have become the format of choice for many readers; they are less expensive than hard covers and take up less space in crowded New York City apartments. Yet they are sturdier, made with better materials, and seem more substantial than their mass-market peers.

I have stacked on my desk a nifty little group of titles that have never been in a cloth binding. I am not speaking here of the stuff that’s cranked out in which cats or dogs solve the crime, a serious murder investigation is put on hold while the heroine either shops, cooks a meal while rhapsodizing about the ingredients, or has a blind date. No, these are the real deal.

David Bowker’s “I Love My Smith and Wesson” (St. Martins Griffin, 227 pages, $13.95) is as darkly comic (or comically dark) as anything you’ve ever read. Set in the gritty underworld of Manchester, it is the story of Steve Ellis, a murderer utterly devoid of conscience who has named himself “Rawhead.” He kills vast numbers of people simply because … well, he just does. It doesn’t need to be about hatred, or revenge, or financial gain. He might just be in a bad mood and kill a few people because they happen to be walking on his side of the street.

His childhood friend, author Billy Dye, becomes successful when his worthless book is bought for television. He’s getting married when Rawhead shows up at the reception, ruining it. Billy had been happy trying to dance like John Travolt a in “Pulp Fiction” (a mistake many people have made). Rawhead doesn’t actually do anything other that sit in a corner, looking so full of hatred that people head for the exit in droves. Even the band just quits. His presence in a room will do that.

When he decides to take over the gang that runs most of the crime in Manchester, poor Billy is drawn into the plot. And it gets worse. Rawhead meets a female assassin who is almost as ferocious as he is. They seem meant for each other. And it’s possible they’ll be back.

One of the weirdest and, again, darkly comic, novels one is likely to encounter is “Sock.” (St. Martins Griffin, 228 pages, $12.95) by Penn Jillette, the talkative half of the comedic magician team of Penn and Teller.

This bizarre serial-killer story is told mainly in the first person by a sock monkey who calls its owner, a New York policeman who dives in the city’s polluted waters searching for dead bodies, “The Little Fool.” I didn’t know what a sock monkey was before now, but it appears to be a little puppet with buttons for eyes made from – as you might have surmised – a sock.

If you’ve ever seen a Penn and Teller show, you know it’s not only about magic and comedy. There are riffs on politics, social behavior, philosophy, and anything else that appears to be important to them. Likewise, this book frequently seems to be largely an excuse for clever one-liners or amusing observations, such as: “Any science that has the word ‘science’ in it isn’t a science. Social science. Computer science. If your field is so insecure about its place in science that your field has to sneak the word in, you field is probably not science.”

I’d love to give a little plot synopsis here, but since I have no idea what the book is about, I won’t. It is great fun to read, and it occasionally makes sense. What more do you want?

No more space, but look for these paperback originals, too: “The House of Special Purpose” (Onyx, 385 pages, $7.99) by Christopher Hyde, a crime novel set during World War II; “Bandit Queen Boogie” (Three Rivers Press, 290 pages, $13.00), Sparkle Hayter’s hilarious tale of a crime filled journey around Europe by a couple of con men; “A Play for Isaac” (Berkley, 312 pages, $6.50); the first in a new series of 15th- century mysteries by the two-time Edgar award nominee Margaret Frazer.

If you like mystery fiction, try some of these paperback originals. It won’t be hard to like them.