Tue 4 Sep 2018
Pulp Villain Stories I’m Reading: A. E. APPLE “The Diamond Pirate.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[5] Comments
A. E. APPLE “The Diamond Pirate.” Rafferty #2. Long novelette. First published in Detective Story Magazine, 22 October 1927. Reprinted in The Compleat Adventures of Mr. Chang and Mr. Rafferty, Battered Silicon Dispatch Box Press, hardcover, four volume set, 2010.
I do not know whether the latter collection was ever published. “The Diamond Pirate” was the lead story of the October 22, 1927 issue of Detective Story Magazine, which is where I read it. It was preceded chronologically by “Rafferty, Master Rogue,” which appeared in the same magazine three weeks earlier.
In that earlier story a master criminal named Rafferty outwitted a high-powered private eye by the name of Bradley and pulled off a bank robbery that netted him some twenty million dollars, a tidy sum, even today. In this second caper, Rafferty ups his game somewhat, intending to rob the diamond district en masse on a scale never seen before.
The story opens in a mausoleum in a cemetery on a vicious rainswept night, as Rafferty’s closest lieutenants in crime meet in ear darkness to obtain the next step of instructions. In Act II, Rafferty obtains the services of a anarchic German scientist named Herr Heinie (…) but not before a long drawn-out confrontational scene between the two men takes place.
Next, one of Rafferty’s assistants tries to defect to Bradley’s side, but the former gets wise, negates the loss and continues his plans. There is quite a bit of suspense that builds along way, but what may take the modern day reader by surprise — it did me — is that [PLOT ALERT!!] everything goes off smoothly. Rafferty and his gang make off with millions of dollars worth of diamonds, the last stage of their getaway accomplished by submarine. Bradley is a complete non-factor.
There were over twenty tales told of Mr. Rafferty, at least two of them in conjunction with Mr. Chang, A. E. Apple’s equally long running version of a Chinese mastermind villain. I have no idea if Rafferty had the same amount of success in all of his ventures, but if all his schemes came off as easily as this one does, I have to wonder why the stories stayed as popular for as long as they did. A steady diet of tales such as this one would go nowhere quickly, as far as I am concerned.
September 5th, 2018 at 6:54 am
This story is not unusual and DETECTIVE STORY published many tales that seemed to go nowhere, were not that exciting, and very sedate. DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY also had the same problem in the 1920’s but then Howard Bloomfield became editor in 1928 and started to introduce more hardboiled fiction.
Even BLACK MASK before Joe Shaw became editor in 1926 had some dull and bland fiction, the main exceptions of course being the hardboiled fiction of Dashiell Hammett and Carroll John Daly.
September 5th, 2018 at 1:14 pm
This story wasn’t exactly dull while I was reading it, but it was bland, even though it had all of the right ingredients: a mastermind criminal, a famous PI as his nemesis, a gang of henchmen who are forced to meet in a cemetery in the rain and dark, a crazy German scientist who after due deliberation chooses to side up with the villain, one of the henchmen who tries to defect… so no, not dull, but bland in the sense of talky, with the author going over everything very carefully every so often to make sure the reader is still with him. In a very pronounced way, very typical 1920s semi-thriller stuff.
My larger complaint is a tad more than that. Today readers and movie-goers do not expect caper novels and heist films to go smoothly. They know that something will always go wrong, no matter how detailed the planning. This particular scheme, once begun, goes off without a hitch. Where’s the fun in that?
September 5th, 2018 at 8:48 pm
Bland seems a fair assessment of this pulp in this era, but then the mainstream American mystery tended to be bland and talkie at that point with too few able to inject much drama even in a melodramatic plot.There were exceptions, but too much of the genre seemed to be written with white gloves on so the writer didn’t get his hands dirty.
Too many American mysteries from this period seem more interested in the reader getting a good nights sleep than keeping him up all night. It’s hard to read something along this line and realize it is contemporary to both the Van Dine and hard boiled revolutions in mystery writing, or see the radical changes just around the corner.
The Mr. Chang books are more entertaining than this would seem, Chang the least Yellow Perilish of of the Yellow Peril lot, more in line with the great rogues of the era than Fu Manchu. Evil though he is the reader does root for him to escape and plot again in the ones I have read.
September 5th, 2018 at 9:04 pm
There are short stories about large scale robberies, preceding these:
“The Night of a Thousand Thieves” (1913) by Frederick Irving Anderson,
“The Gutting of Couffignal” (1925) and “The Big Knockover” (1927) by Dashiell Hammett.
Both of these writers are far more prestigious today than Max Apple.
September 6th, 2018 at 12:22 pm
Mr Apple had his brief moment in the sun for 15 years or so, from 1919 to 1933, but once that moment passed, I’m sure he was forgotten immediately.
Mr Hammett, on the other hand, really had something going for him.