Tue 4 Jan 2022
Pulp Stories I’m Reading: VICTOR MAXWELL “The Plainly Marked Trackâ€.
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Reviews[5] Comments
VICTOR MAXWELL “The Plainly Marked Track.†Sgt. Reardon #1. Novelette. First published in Flynn’s, 8 August 1925. Collected in Threads of Evidence: The Complete Cases of Riordan, Volume 1 (Steeger Books, 2021; introduction by Terry Sanford).
The genesis of the Steeger collection is both straightforward and complicated. It began with an essay on the primary Mystery*File website by Terry Sanford, a former bookstore owner and present day dedicated pulp magazine collector. In that short piece he discussed several of the series characters who filled the pages of [Flynn’s] Detective Fiction Weekly in the 1920s, 1930s, and into the early 1940s. One of these was a Detective Sergeant named Riordan who appeared in exactly 100 stories over the years.
The byline on these stories was Victor Maxwell, but it was generally suspected that that was a pen name. Who the real author was was unknown. But then something unsuspected happened. I was contacted by Don Wilde, who told me that he was the step-grandson of the author of the Riordan stories, whose real name was Maxwell Vietor.
I immediately got Don in touch with Terry, and I’ll let Terry tell the tale from here. Or in fact he already has. (Follow the link, and you will learn all.)
It may suffice to say, however, that Terry received a load of information and other documents about “Victor Maxwell†and his long life, and he decided to see if some enterprising young publisher might be interested in reprinting some of the stories. Matt Moring of Steeger Books agreed. It’s now ten years later, and the first volume of the first nine Riordan stories has just been published.
Based on the first story only, you can’t judge the growth and other changes in a series that may take place over a span of some fifteen years, so any description I make of it here, please don’t take it any further than that. Riordan is mentored in this one by a Captain Brady, his boss, who often seems to wonder about how slow he is on the uptake. When the safe at Ladd’s Emporium is robbed on a Saturday night, the tightwad owner thinks his son is responsible. A plaster cast of a tire track discovered at the scene helps prove otherwise.
What’s most noticeable about the story is how cool and calm the policemen on the job go about their business. They may have have had all of the CSI stuff cops have today, but working with what they had – and knowing people – goes a long way in cracking the case. I’ll see about tackling the other eight stories in this volume as soon as I can. I’m also hoping that enough people buy this one so that it doesn’t take another ten years before we see the second!
January 4th, 2022 at 1:15 am
I find the identities and lives of long-ago pulp authors to be extremely fascinating, so this was a lot of fun to explore. One quick note though: his real last name (at least according to the linked article) was Vietor, not Victor.
I also found a brief mention of Vietor in the October 30 1913 issue of the Oregon News: he seems to have been pro-alcohol, and there’s a letter written by someone accusing him of being in the pocket of “Portland liquor interests”.
In any case, thanks for the article, and I’m going to see about tracking down some of these.
January 4th, 2022 at 9:24 am
Keith, Thanks for catching that. Vietor it is. My error all the way. I’ll fix that right away in the review.
January 4th, 2022 at 7:32 pm
Interesting to see the early roots of what became the police procedural.
January 9th, 2022 at 7:55 pm
I don’t have my reference material on hand. How do these compare to McHarg’s O’Malley stories on the timeline for police stories.
January 9th, 2022 at 8:44 pm
You’re right to ask. There are a lot of similarities between them.
This may be the first O’Malley story:
The Ring (ss) Collier’s Dec 13 1930
If so, Riordan has him beat by over five years.