Fri 1 Aug 2014
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: WILLIAM MacHARG – The Affairs of O’Malley.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
William F. Deeck
WILLIAM MacHARG – The Affairs of O’Malley. Dial Press, hardcover, 1940. Popular Library #340, paperback, 1951, as Smart Guy.
“Cherchez la femme,” I commented.
“Not at all,” O’Malley answered; “what we got to do is look for the woman.”
While O’Malley claims he’s not too bright, he gets his man (or woman) in all of the cases presented in this collection of six-to-ten-page short stories. Often O’Malley — first name and rank on the New York City police force not known — is assigned to investigate a crime when all hope is lost of solving it. Clear them up he does, with no assistance from the anonymous narrator, though he seldom gets the credit.
Many of these stories are fair-play and well constructed in spite of the brevity with which they are presented. In non-fair-play cases, O’Malley doesn’t know who did it but has the intelligence to trap the malefactor. In one story O’Malley says: “That gag has got whiskers on it like Methuselah, but being that old just shows how good it works — a gag that don’t work don’t never get no chance to get old.”
Delightful hard-boiled police procedural tales from the ’30s. Prohibition is still in force in at least one of them.
CONTENTS: (listed alphabetically)
Almost Perfect · Collier’s Jun 25 1932
Best Clue Missing · Collier’s Jun 23 1934
Broadway Murder · Collier’s Oct 8 1938
The Cat’s Eyes · Collier’s Apr 4 1931
The Checkered Suit · Collier’s Oct 10 1936
Dumb Witness · Collier’s Sep 24 1938
The Fourth Girl · Collier’s Mar 26 1932
Just Too Smart · Collier’s Jan 3 1931
The Key Man · Collier’s Oct 27 1934
Last Look · Collier’s Mar 11 1939
A Little More Evidence · Collier’s Oct 3 1936
The Locked Door · Collier’s Dec 10 1932
Lost Girl · Collier’s Jan 15 1938
Man Missing · Collier’s Jun 8 1935
The Man on the Truck · Collier’s Jun 9 1934
Murder Makes It Worse · Collier’s Sep 23 1939
No Clues · Collier’s Jun 20 1936
No Evidence · Collier’s Sep 11 1937
No Fingerprints · Collier’s Mar 18 1933
The Right Gun · Collier’s Feb 18 1939
The Ring · Collier’s Dec 13 1930
The Scotty Dog · Collier’s Jan 17 1931
Sinister Gifts · Collier’s Jul 30 1938
The Sleeptalker · Collier’s Apr 18 1931
Smart Guy · Collier’s Nov 21 1936
Soiled Diamonds · Collier’s Sep 17 1932
Too Bad · Collier’s Oct 10 1931
Too Many Enemies · Collier’s Feb 11 1933
Too Many Miles · Collier’s Apr 1 1933
The Unconvincing Note · Collier’s Jul 22 1939
The Weak Spot · Collier’s Apr 18 1936
The Widow’s Share · Collier’s Jul 3 1937
Written in Dust · Collier’s Dec 12 1931
August 2nd, 2014 at 8:30 am
This is indeed a delightful book.
There are some uncollected O’Malley tales. One wishes that an expanded, complete edition would be brought out.
The stories are realistic, and take place among “average” New Yorkers. I’m not sure they are “hard-boiled”, though. There are few mobsters or hoodlums. The stories do not resemble Hammett or Chandler.
My own take is at:
http://mikegrost.com/moffett.htm#MacHarg
August 2nd, 2014 at 10:04 am
Thanks for the link, Mike. Your take on the O’Malley stories, along with Bill’s, makes me doubly wish I’d read this collection before — I’ve had the paperback for nearly 50 years now, and I doubt that I’ve ever even opened it. And if there are more O’Malley stories not included, I’m with you in wishing that someone would collect them all.
August 2nd, 2014 at 10:02 pm
Quite a few of them can be found in the Collier etexts on the Unz site.
http://www.unz.org/Author/MacHargWilliam
August 3rd, 2014 at 4:26 am
One might also note that Ellery Queen included “The Affairs of O’Malley” in “Queen’s Quorum”, his list of the most important detective short story collections.
Anthony Boucher anthologized O’Malley tales.
March 7th, 2021 at 10:54 am
Most of the uncollected O’Malley stories (along with a few repeats) are collected in THE DETECTIVE O’MALLEY MEGAPACK published by Wildside Press, both in regular book form and as an e-book.