Tue 16 Jul 2019
Pulp Stories I’m Reading: THOMAS WALSH “Murder Twist.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[4] Comments
THOMAS WALSH “Murder Twist.” Short story. First published in Ace-High Detective, August 1936. Probably never reprinted.
I haven’t taken the time to check this theory out, but it’s my sense of things that most Edgar winners for Best First Novel come from nowhere, so to speak, or in other words are brand new to the mystery field. Not so in the case of Thomas Walsh, whose novel Nightmare in Manhattan (Little Brown, 1950) was indeed a winner, but he’d been writing short mystery fiction since 1933, when a story titled “Double Check” appeared in the July issue of Black Mask magazine.
Walsh gradually graduated to the slicks, magazines such as Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post, many of them later being reprinted in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Almost all of these, if not out-and-out police procedurals, were cases solved by policemen largely working alone but in their ordinary tours of duty.
Such a one is “Mystery Twist,” in which a cop named Gannet — his only appearance, I believe — tackles what appears to be a straightforward suicide, that of a woman whose grieving husband claims she jumped out of a window on the 20th floor of an apartment building.
Gannet is the kind of cop who doesn’t like to take anything for granted, however, but it takes some psychological prodding on the part of his immediate superior, Inspector Powell, to make sure he follows up on his instincts in cases such as this.
As the title of the story suggests, there is a twist in tale, and I’m going to pat myself on the back by telling you that I figured it out as quickly as Gannet did. But if the story’s well told, and this one definitely is, then the facts should point to the conclusion all along the way, shouldn’t they?
July 17th, 2019 at 7:30 pm
Walsh was a popular writer as well, and usually worth reading. At least two films, UNION STATION and THE PUSHOVER were based on his work, the latter also based on a Bill Ballenger novel.
July 17th, 2019 at 7:45 pm
UNION STATION was based on NIGHTMARE IN MANHATTAN, the Edgar-winning novel I mentioned in my review.
I didn’t know about PUSHOVER, which Wikipedia says was adapted from two novels, THE NIGHT WATCH by Thomas Walsh and RAFFERTY by Bill S. Ballinger.
July 18th, 2019 at 6:16 pm
Thomas Walsh wrote several very good short stories.
Thank you for telling is about this one.
Wish it and many others were available for reading today.
Much of his work is buried in old magazines.
July 18th, 2019 at 7:03 pm
You are quite right about Walsh’s stories being buried, Mike. It doesm’t help, I suppose, to say that a lot of his stories for Collier’s and the Post were reprinted later in Ellery Queen’s magazine. Back issues of EQMM are inexpensive but awfully time consuming to put a complete set together.