I'll check it out. Thanks! Some of my favorite reading is genre fiction that trims the fat and floats above the rest of the genre. This seems to fit that bill.

REH, most famous for the Conan the Barbarian short stories, has a visceral writing style. I'd start with one of the Conan omnibuses, like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Conan-Cimmerian-Original-Adven...

Any recommendations?

Yes, I recently stumbled upon Black Wings Has My Angel by Eliot Chaze. Great, obscure and underrated crime/noir/pulp novel. It transcends the genre. It's somehow both more gritty and more literary than the more famous Hammett and Chandler and similar stuff.