Mon 7 Jan 2019
Pulp Stories I’m Reading: ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Face Lifter.
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[10] Comments
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER – The Face Lifter. Kayo Macray #1 (?). “Complete novel.” All Detective Magazine, June 1934. Collected in Silent Death (Pulpville Press, trade paperback, March 2013).
I have discovered no evidence that personal body trainer Kayo Macray ever appeared in any other story but this one. This is so even though there is a hint of a case of services rendered to someone in need, one with a happy ending, that occurred before this one. When he’s asked by a current client who’s worried about what kind of jam her daughter’s gotten herself into, he gladly agrees to do what he can to help.
This is a situation that could easily be the beginning of a Perry Mason novel. The daughter, when he meets her, tells Kayo that she’s being blackmailed, and of course it is nothing she could tell her mother about. Kayo goes into immediate action. But unlike the Perry Mason, the rest of the story is nothing but action.
Well, no, I’ll take that back. [Plot Alert!] As he discovers by accident, after obtaining the indiscreet material the girl needed him to retrieve, Kayo learns that she was an imposter. This is kind of a neat twist, but Kayo recovers quickly and saves the day. Lots of fisticuffs, gunplay, and a frantic car chase follow.
The title of the story comes from the fact that in the process of rescuing the damsel in distress, Kayo is very good with his fists, and messes up the face of one of the hoodlums he tracks down in very fine fashion.
Overall, this is a mediocre story in a third rate pulp magazine, but you can always tell Gardner’s prose style from anyone else’s, no matter how early in his career he may have been writing. And just between you and me, calling “The Face Lifter” a “complete novel” is stretching the truth quite a bit. In the standard pulp magazine format, it’s only 23 pages long.
January 7th, 2019 at 7:39 pm
Wasn’t it Gardner who said in an interview none of his heroes were good shots because he got paid by the word and bang, bang, bang paid better than bang.
January 7th, 2019 at 9:00 pm
If he didn’t say that, then he should have!
January 7th, 2019 at 8:07 pm
Plot is my favorite part of pulp stories. and fighting is the least favorite part. So the plot twist sounds good – but all the action sounds bad!
January 7th, 2019 at 8:56 pm
I wouldn’t be surprised if it weren’t the best story in that issue of ALL DETECTIVE it appeared in, but that certainly doesn’t make it good. I used the word mediocre, and I think it fits.
And you’re right. What made this one disappointing, and to me surprisingly so, was the lack of a stronger plot.
January 7th, 2019 at 10:52 pm
Steve,
I think it was in an article either written for or reprinted in EQMM, maybe the same one where he explained why Della never married Perry so he didn’t have to kill her as Ian Fleming killed James Bond’s wife.
January 8th, 2019 at 2:41 pm
I know someone said they would write
“Bang, bang, bang” instead of just “bang” because it made more. Well, yes it would pay 1-2 cents more. Which hardly seems worth the effort. More to the point all these magazines had editors whose job was to edit each story. And they would trim away anything they considered excess verbiage. The idea that authors could pad the length of their stories is nuts.
January 8th, 2019 at 6:17 pm
Not that I don’t agree with you, Brian, because mostly I do. But checking the online Inflation Calculator, 2 cents in 1934 would be equivalent to 38 cents today. And at that rate, a few extra words here and there that the editor didn’t pick up and toss out, the count would add up fairly quickly.
https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
January 8th, 2019 at 8:35 pm
Gardner got ten cents a word, he was one of the top writers in the pulps and followed Bedford-Jones as the highest paid writer in the business. IN 1934 thirty cents would buy you lunch.
January 9th, 2019 at 7:31 pm
Ten cents a word seems high to me, but even if true for BLACK MASK or DIME DETECTIVE i’m sure it wasn’t tue for lesser markets, such as ALL DETECTIVE. Gardner seems to have sold to every pulp magazine there was, escept for maybe ADVENTURE or BLUE BOOK. And maybe even one or both of those.
January 10th, 2019 at 7:08 pm
I know Gardner was making as much as $50k a year in the pulps before he hit it big with Perry Mason, that’s a lot of words at 2 cents per even for Gardner.