Wed 8 Aug 2018
KIERAN ABBEY – Beyond the Dark. Dell #93, mapback edition, no date stated [1945]. First published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover, 1944.
This one begins at Inspiration Point, overlooking the Hudson River at the uppermost tip of the island of Manhattan. A man and a woman, strangers to each other, are watching the boats on the water below. He offers her a cigarette. She accepts. Three men come walking up from the parkway below, deep in conversation. When they see the pair of them at the top, they stop talking and pull out their guns. Shots ring out.
The couple, still strangers, flee together, making their way downtown by means of a police car they steal, having found it left unmanned nearby. Thus begins one of the most Woolrichian tale of constant capture. escape and chase — up and down and across the entire city — that I’ve had the pleasure of reading in a good long while. Not only are the police after them, but the FBI, and of course the gang of conspirators the men who shot at them are a part of.
Both of them has a reason, not revealed, for not wanting to go to the police. Neither has anyone in the entire city they can turn to for help. Worse, when they return to the apartment the girl has borrowed for the duration of her stay, they find the body of one of then men who shot at them, recently and definitely deceased.
If you could stop reading at this point, you’re a better person than I. Of course the explanation of how these two people got into a fix like this is not nearly as interesting as the story of how they find their way out of it. No matter. This one was a pleasure to read.
Kieran Abbey was a pseudonym for Helen Reilly, who was, as you may already know, the author of several dozen Inspector McKee police procedural novels. This is the third of only three she wrote under this name, all during the 40s. It’s a book filled with the sights and sounds of late wartime New York City, showing another side of the author I wasn’t aware of before.
August 8th, 2018 at 6:54 am
Damn, this sounds fine! I’ll be looking out for it, thanks to you.
August 8th, 2018 at 9:15 am
An interesting online article on the Mapback Dell series has just been published. Google: DELL MAPBACKS A HISTORY.
I may have a complete set but may be missing a couple. The crossword books are very rare because everyone threw them away after doing the puzzles.
August 9th, 2018 at 1:25 am
Here’s the link: https://crimereads.com/dell-mapbacks-a-history/
Thanks, Walker. It’s an excellent article. There’s information here that I didn’t know, especially about the artists, but for the front covers and the backs. Here’s the link:
https://crimereads.com/dell-mapbacks-a-history/
At one time, a complete set of Dell mapbacks was a Holy Grail of sorts for paperback collectors. Now not so much. Time goes on, and people who never grew up with paperbacks in almost every store in town just aren’t interested. When the Internet came along, it made things very easy for collectors to fill in the gaps they’d had for years, but once they did, I think the hobby has pretty much shriveled up and died.
August 8th, 2018 at 7:42 pm
I was never a big McKee fan, but I never said Reilly couldn’t write either. Sounds like a hum-dinger.
August 9th, 2018 at 1:29 am
I haven’t read any of the McKee books myself recently, so I can’t say for sure, but I think they were primarily stories about people, while this one I think the setting — New York City — was a big part of the tale, and Reilly as Abbey told it in grand detail.
August 9th, 2018 at 5:52 am
The things you learn. Just looked her up on the Fantastic Fiction web site, found out that her brother James Kieran wrote a mystery novel and two of her daughters (Ursula Curtiss and Mary McMullen) also wrote mysteries.
Pretty talented family.
August 9th, 2018 at 7:06 am
I think what really killed the vintage paperback market was the internet. Before ebay, abebooks.com, etc, many collectors thought the old paperbacks were rare and thus prices reflected this supposed scarcity. But then, starting in the 1990’s you could look up titles and discover that they were really not that rare. This caused a drop in value.
For instance, as Steve points out, the Dell Mapbacks used to be worth a lot more before the internet but then we found out that these things were all over the place. The Dell 10 cent books I used to think were valuable, now with a couple exceptions, they can be easily found.
The same thing with the Hammett paperback set of Jonathan Press, Mercury Press, Bestseller. Used to think they were rare, now we all realize these paperbacks had fairly high print runs and many survived. They are not that hard to find anymore. There are some exceptions of course like JUNKIE or Jim Thompson first paperback editions.
At the NYC Paperback show I used to see boxes of Gold Medals, Ace Doubles, etc selling for low prices. Even as low as a buck a paperback. At Pulpfest a few days ago I saw the same thing. Old paperbacks selling for 2 for $5.00 or less.
At one time in the seventies and eighties, I thought my paperback collection might one day be worth a lot of money. Right now they are not worth much. Even my complete Dell Mapback is not worth selling. I’ll keep them before I sell them cheap.