Thu 1 Apr 2010
ANNOUNCING: The Adventures of Blackie Savoy, by David L. Vineyard.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists[16] Comments
If you’re as big a fan of obscure mystery writers and characters as I am, you’re going to enjoy this immensely.
Over the past twenty years David Vineyard has been tracking down information about a man who certainly qualifies as all but totally forgotten, Australian thriller writer Paul Savoy and his primary series character Blackie Savoy. Tidbit by tidbit, piece by piece, David has also painstakingly put together a bibliography of perhaps the most difficult set of books to find in all of mystery fiction.
Over the past several weeks, David and I have compiled all of this information into a single article and posted it on the primary Mystery*File website. (Follow the link.)
The article is far too long to have been posted it here on the blog. Cover images have been included, but the books, both hardcover and paperback, are so scarce that many of the scans are in far poorer condition than I’d have preferred. Nonetheless, working on the principle that something is better than nothing, I’ve included everything that David has been able to send me.
The article plus the bibliography, which includes adaptations of Savoy’s work into a single film, Blackie Savoy Gets His (Centaur Studios, 1935), comic strips, radio shows, and a four-year syndicated program on Australian TV that seems to have slipped the memories of almost everyone, is, we believe, all that is known about the author.
Obviously if anyone can supply any more information, including specific publishing dates, reprint editions, and any covers that David has not come across on his own, would be extremely welcome.
April 1st, 2010 at 6:23 am
I’m including this one, Steve. Hope that’s the one you wanted.
April 1st, 2010 at 6:31 am
You may indeed include this one, Patti. I can’t think of an author or a series of books that qualifies more as “Forgotten” than these.
— Steve
April 1st, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Great job, David. Beautifully done!
April 1st, 2010 at 3:27 pm
This is wonderful. Paul Savoy was my great-great-uncle on my father’s side. We on our branch of the family always knew he was a writer who was well-known in his day, but you have provided me with considerable information about him that I knew nothing about until today.
I have been searching on Google for more on Uncle Paul every day for nearly ten years, with nary a peep, until today, when your website came up Number One, and I have hastened to respond.
In return for what I have learned from your article, may I inform you that your Bibliography, while containing several items I was quite unaware of, is sorely lacking in another regard?
I am convinced that Uncle Paul, or Blackie, as his family and close relations always referred to him as, wrote thousands of other novels under several hundred pen names.
I hesitate in mentioning any of them to you, as I have not been able to verify them, but a closet in the house in which he was living when he disappeared is filled from floor to ceiling with old books and magazines of several shapes and sizes, some dating back to the 1920s. All of them seem to have been there since they were new. Except for being covered by dust, they appeared to have never been opened, much less read, until of course when I did, when I came across them several years ago.
These are stories I am sure he wrote, as they are all very much in his style, which I gather you are very familiar with as well.
Please contact me at your earliest convenience. We have much to talk about.
R S-R
April 1st, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Ralph
Steve and I were aware of the extensive number of books written by Paul Savoy, but only felt comfortable including those we could actually confirm.
Anyone contributing new titles and publication and or biographical data would be welcome.
Currently I’m on the track of an uncollected short story that appeared in the Australian men’s magazine MAN JUNIOR and featuring Blackie and Wanda.
I’m glad we could help in regard to your uncle. Considering his six marriages (the ones we know about and can confirm) you can imagine trying to track down those related to him is a daunting task.
I would also like any information available on the novelization of the radio series SHOOT FAST BLACKIE SAVOY. At least one source suggests this may have been an early work of Peter Yates, better known under his pseudonym Carter Brown.
I have confirmed that the Blackie Savoy comic book featured at least some work by noted Australian comic book artists Hart Amos, John Dixon (AIR HAWKS), Stan Pitt (YARMAK), and Larry Horak (JAMES BOND).
I have been able to find very little in the way of critical assessment of Paul Savoy’s work. When his Sam Sunderman stories were compared to the Napoleon Bonaparte series by Arthur Upfield I’m told Upfield only snorted, and that when Ngaio Marsh was asked about his influence she thought it was a reference to the Savoy Hotel in London. Jon Cleary apparently became indignant when Blackie was compared to his Scobie Malone books, and Alan Yates (Carter Brown) claimed that while he remembered Lord Sexton Bleek from childhood he wasn’t sure he had actually read any of the Blackie Savoy books (though as noted earlier he may have written the novelization of the radio series).
Steve and I look forward to any details of Savoy’s work, life, and career that may emerge.
April 2nd, 2010 at 8:09 am
This commentary above is so interesting. What a shame, these authors didn’t leave extensive notes about their various pen names.
April 2nd, 2010 at 10:23 am
Patti
I’m sure some authors back in 20s and 30s kept detailed records of their sales, probably even most.
But unless a writer is really well known and not struggling just to get by all his life, as I suspect was the case with Paul Savoy, such records were likely to be among the first things to be tossed out into the trash when he died.
I hope either David or Ralph can tell us more.
I for one, would have liked to have been there when Ralph opened that closet chock full of old books and magazines, the ones he thinks contained a huge bulk of his great-uncle’s work.
— Steve
April 2nd, 2010 at 6:21 pm
With apologies to Ralph, from what I can tell Paul Savoy was always fairly slapdash in his methods. I’m sure he kept some records, but knowing what we do of Savoy his records likely were kept on cocktail napkins in the pocket of his favorite tweed jacket tucked in among the betting slips on horses that invariably came in dead last.
Then too, so many of his publishers were fly by night operations that tracing their records is equally frustrating. It’s interesting to speculate what might have happened if Blackie had ever caught the attention of a major publisher and encouraged to make a bit more effort in literary terms.
Reading Savoy I am often reminded of the famous cable Street and Smith editors sent to Nick Carter writer Frederick Van Renassler Dey after he left one installment of Nick chained in a trunk and thrown off a ship in mid Atlantic in their hands: “Can’t you curb that d–ned imagination of yours!”
Unlike a John Creasey who kept detailed records of his sales (there is a page detailing his sales for 1933 reproduced in W. Vivian Butler’s THE DURABLE DESPERADOS) Savoy likely wanted as little record as possible of his work. Between his drinking, gambling, six wives, and other debts his work was always a cash and carry operation. None of those things are an incentive to keeping good records.
Then too, the war years are pretty well lost. He wrote very little during that period that we know about and seems to have spent the war as a cook at a small mining camp in the wilds of Western Australia. You can imagine conscientious objectors (Savoy was a Jehovah’s Witness, although he was frequently at odds with the faith and often more or less excommunicated for a variety of reasons) didn’t fare well in Australia with the Japanese breathing down their necks.
But I would love to wade through that closet full of his works Ralph mentions. I’m sure there are many treasures in there, including some ‘lost’ Blackie Savoy material. I would be surprised if Blackie was his only series character once he left the BOYS OWN PAPER style of writing behind him, and I have to wonder if he didn’t do more than that one science fiction novel.
I’ve always suspected the Blackie material was only a small portion of his output, I find it had to believe anyone who churned out four million words before his major career began would be so limited afterword.
We have to wonder if his lifetime output didn’t rival the some 500 books John Creasey wrote, probably over multiple genre’s including not only mystery, western, and science fiction, but likely also romance and juvenile fiction.
It really is a shame we know so little of Australian and New Zealand genre fiction. Only a handful of names, Marsh, Upfield, Jon Cleary, and the Horowitz group such as Carter Brown and James Dark are known at all, yet both countries have produced a good deal of mystery fiction both in the past and now.
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Dear David
There is no need to apologize to me. I have been rummaging through the few remaining belongings of my great-uncle (other than the closet of books and magazines I alluded to earlier) long enough to realize full well that you are quite correct in your appraisal of him. I congratulate you on learning so much about him, your being so far away from his homeland Down Under.
There is one matter that puzzles me, however. I have never been a fan of mystery or adventure fiction, so the names of most of the other authors you mention are quite unfamiliar to me. Ngaio Marsh, for example. Is he well known?
But one of the names you referred to earlier rings a distinct bell, that of an author named “Carter Brown.”
When I pointed out that I suspected that you had missed a number of pen names used by my uncle, Carter Brown was one of them.
There are many many books and magazines by an author of this name (with equally as many lurid covers, I must tell you) and a large wad of papers bundled together in one of them has led me to believe that Peter Savoy was the author responsible for all of the stories attributed to Carter Brown. I do not know who this Yates person might be.
I do not believe myself to be wrong on this. The evidence seems to be incontrovertible, and I am certain of this as I can be. I will scan these papers and email them to you as soon as they allow me access to one in this “residence hall” where I am currently confined.
Bad knees, you know.
R S-R
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:01 pm
This is astounding news about Savoy really being the author behind the long series of books written by Carter Brown. I have stacks of the Carter Brown mystery paperbacks and have crossed his name off the cover and scribbled in the correct name of Paul Savoy. I also dug up my copy of the Carter Brown autobiography and corrected the name throughout to Paul Savoy. Now we have alot of corrections to be made all through the internet, including the wiki entry, etc.
Thanks guys for the information. Maybe it would be easier for me to just rip off the covers of the Carter Brown books and write in capital letters “THIS BOOK IS REALLY BY PAUL SAVOY”.
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:24 pm
Walker
This is news as amazing to me as it is to you. How could so many people have been fooled by this Alan Yates fellow for so long? He was obviously one good teller of tall tales, that’s for sure.
My recommendation though, if you were to ask me, is to tear the covers off the Carter Brown books, save those, and throw the books away.
— Steve
April 3rd, 2010 at 12:08 am
Paul Savoy was Carter Brown! That explains so much. I’ve always thought there was something about Al Wheeler that reminded me of Blackie Savoy — Andy Kane and Paul Donovan even more so, and despite being a redhead Wanda is clearly a sister under the skin of Mavis Seidlitz.
However, before we get too carried away we must recall that many of the Carter Brown books mention being typed on Yates IBM Selectric, and Savoy from all I have been able to detect could barely master a Remington portable.
However if he does indeed turn out to have been the man behind the man so to speak we have much history to rewrite.
Steve
Throw away the books and keep the covers? You aren’t suggesting Paul Savoy was Robert McGinnis by any chance?
April 3rd, 2010 at 7:08 am
I just spent the day hunting through my book collection in hopes of finding a Paul Savoy book to read. As Steve knows, I spend my days reading obscure fiction by obscure writers, watching obscure films, listening to obscure music, and in general just doing obscure things. In fact I am getting so obscure that one day I’ll just disappear without a trace.
Savoy is so forgotten that I couldn’t find a single book of his among my obscure collection. I even checked abebooks.com and not a single Savoy book is listed among the millions of listings. I hate to say it, but one day in the not so distant future, every writer that we all love to talk about on the MYSTERY*FILE website, will be completely forgotten just like Paul Savoy.
April 3rd, 2010 at 6:34 pm
David
A great job of research and am looking forward to any new revelations you can come up with.
Victor
April 3rd, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Walker
Is it possible Paul Savoy is the original little man who wasn’t there?
I went out this morning and on the stair
There was a little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I hope he hasn’t come to stay …
April 15th, 2010 at 2:14 am
[…] who have read the article on Paul Savoy and his creation Blackie Savoy (announced previously here on the blog) may be interested in this one, a look at what many consider his best book, Black Moon […]