Thu 11 Jul 2019
Pulp Stories I’m Reading: J. ALLAN DUNN “In the Grip of the Griffin.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[5] Comments
J. ALLAN DUNN “In the Grip of the Griffin.” Novelette. Gordon Manning vs. the Griffin #30. First published in Detective Fiction Weekly, May 18, 1935. Reprinted in In the Grip of the Griffin: The Complete Battles of Gordon Manning & The Griffin, Volume 3 (Altus Press, 2015).
The first of this long saga of 31 stories was, I believe, “The Crime Master,” which appeared in the November 30, 1929, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly. IN this and stories yet to come, Gordon Manning remained continually on the trail of the notorious madman and supervillain known only as the Griffin, his real identity unknown.
Readers of “In the Grip of the Griffin” were treated to more of same — capture, escape, capture again, rescue, and so on — but what they didn’t realize it at the time, but there was but one more to go: “The Seventh Griffin” (DFW, Oct 5, 1935). I haven’t read that one, but I have been told that the series did have a finale, and I kind of hope it was a good one.
The Griffin was the key reason why the series lasted as long as it did. It is the evil villain who attracts readers, not the mild-mannered adventurer (in this case Gordon Manning) whose sworn duty is to bring the mad killere to well-deserved justice. (Who remembers the fellow who chased Fu Manchu all around the globe, back in the day? Almost nobody.)
In this case the Griffin sends one of his henchmen to break into Manning’s home — object: eliminate him — not knowing that Manning is ready and waiting for such a contingency. Once the tables are turned, however — and I hope I’m not revealing too much — the tables are turned again, with Manning bands in the hands of the Griffin. And in what better place to be held captive than a mausoleum located below an abandoned cemetery.
All ends well for Manning, though, have no doubts about that. Narrow escapes in these kinds of stories are only to be expected. On the other hand, the Griffin is shot and wounded as he makes his own escape one more time. You shouldn’t expect a lot of characterization in stories such as this one, and in fact, there isn’t any at all. But they are in fact a lot of fun to read. Not too many at once, though!
July 11th, 2019 at 10:13 pm
Howard Bloomfield took over as editor of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY sometime in 1928 and immediately tried to upgrade the fiction from the bland and stale, sort of dated mystery plots that DFW had been publishing earlier in the twenties.
Probably the Griffin villain was part of this revamp but as you point out the hero was still the same old mild mannered man about town, know it all, etc. DFW always liked this type of hero and we see him in such long running series as The Park Ave Hunt Club and the many series written by Erle Stanley Gardner.
Fred Nebel and Cornell Woolrich tried to stay away from this cliche in their stories. But he kept popping up and I guess the readers liked that type of hero. Personally I could never stand him.
July 13th, 2019 at 12:52 am
Dunn was one of the masters of the pulp form writing everything from mystery, to adventure, pirates, Westerns, and fantasy. He’s also one of the more prolific writers. This sort of mental popcorn is seldom sustaining, but a good snack.
July 13th, 2019 at 1:11 pm
And it paid the bills.
July 13th, 2019 at 1:25 pm
When it comes down to it, the whole scenario of a disfigured and crazed mastermind killer being chased story after story, escape after escape, makes no sense at all. Not in the real world.
What Dunn seems to have been able to do is to make these stories consistent on their own terms, taking place in an alternate universe, if you will, in which the Griffin could exist, and if he did, what are the logical consequences?
It takes a writer with some imagination to be able to do that, and even from the little I’ve read of J. Allan’s work, it’s obvious that that’s the kind of mind he had.
July 14th, 2019 at 7:53 pm
Internal logic is important to any escapist series. Most thrillers break down at some real world point and require a certain illogic on the characters part. You have to buy into the writers internal logic and they have to do it consistently to keep up the readers willing suspension of disbelief.
On the face of it Ellery Queen is as absurd as Doc Savage and Jane Marple as outrageous as the Shadow, but all of those create that internal logic, a world in which the reader accepts the illogical as part of the process of reading.
Mystery and Adventure barely exist without it and Science Fiction would be lost.
The great storytellers were always able to tap into this. I’ve always thought the great lie of hard-boiled fiction was that Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe were any more realistic than Philo Vance or Charlie Chan when you got right down to it, merely better written with more effort put into giving the shadows more substance.