Sat 19 Feb 2011
Archived Review: ROBERT TURNER – The Girl in the Cop’s Pocket.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[19] Comments
ROBERT TURNER – The Girl in the Cop’s Pocket. Ace Double D-177; paperback original; 1st printing, 1956. Published Published dos-Ã -dos with Violence Is Golden, by C. H. Thames (Stephen Marlowe).
When an old girl friend is accused of killing her wealthy husband with a method from one of his mystery yarns, ex-newspaperman Will Dennison heads back to the old mill town he grew up in. It’s a town on the way down; labor problems have forced the mills to head south. All that remain are the cheap hotels, the ramshackle homes of the unemployed, and cops who don’t care.
Dennison investigates and finds at the root a blonde who was forced to grow up too fast. (Why is the worst expected of the most beautiful?) The town is gross, but its inhabitants deserve it. So much for nostalgia!
Only a rather melodramatic finale brings the rating down. In The Girl in the Cop’s Pocket Turner tells a fast-paced tale.
Rating: C plus.
[UPDATE] 02-19-11. Robert Turner wrote a long list of stories for the detective pulps before they died out and he had to turn to paperbacks to continue writing. He has four novels in the Revised Crime Fiction IV under his own name, including this one, and one story collection.
As Don Romano he co-authored three of the five books in a Mafia series beginning with Operation Porno (1973), and ghosted two “Shaft” paperback originals under the name of the author who created the character, Ernest Tidyman.
On another note, I’ve always been fond of mystery novels in which the primary detective is the author of the same. Who was the first? How about the first one in which one of the author’s stories was used as the basis of a crime?
February 19th, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Steve
If you are talking about a book where the detective and author use the same name (ala Ellery Queen), one of the earliest would have to be Dick Donovan unless you want to count the ‘non fiction’ of Vidoq, Waters, Richardson, and Allan Pinkerton.
Not sure who first used the old one where the killer is using the writers own plots for a crime or series of crimes — that may come later than we think. In Richard Harding Davis IN THE FOG a false mystery is contrived to keep a politician from voting on an important bill, but that isn’t quite the same thing, and closer to HAMLET where a play is created to mirror the crime and expose the guilty.
If I remember rightly (it’s been a while since I read it or saw the movies) part of the plot of Earl Derr Biggers SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE involves the incidents confronting the author hero resembling those in his own book, but then that turns out to be a hoax.
February 19th, 2011 at 9:17 pm
“If you are talking about a book where the detective and author use the same name (ala Ellery Queen)…”
No, I wasn’t thinking of anything as narrow as that. I phrased myself quite badly, and my apologies for that.
What I was getting at are detective novels in which the detective is him/herself a writer of detective fiction. (Not necessarily that the character and the author of the book have the same name.)
February 19th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
That’s a more difficult one since even the Saint supposedly penned a few thrillers in some of Charteris early works (Charteris was making fun of one of his own failures as the Saint’s South American hero fails to win over readers just as Charteris similar hero had), and of course, Charles Latimer in Ambler’s A COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS writes mysteries.
Other than Ellery Queen there was Footner’s Amos Lee Mapin and Amelia Long’s Peter Piper, and Lenore Glen Offord’s Todd MacKinnon. William Le Queux’s alter ego in several books was himself — there was another character based on himself, but I can’t recall if he was a mystery writer too. Richard Verrill, Bruce (and later Roderic) Graeme’s Blackshirt, was a mystery writer.
Still, what with so many 19th Century narrators being writers finding the first one to act both as sleuth and writer could prove difficult. It was so common to inject the author into the plot to introduce an element of realism that pinpointing the first time it was used where he is also a detective could be problematical.
Then too, it wasn’t uncommon for Golden Age sleuths to threaten to write a mystery just to show the pros how it should be done, more than a few of them claimed to have done so, though seldom as more than mere asides.
February 20th, 2011 at 12:03 am
When it comes to crime and detective fiction, “firsts” are always tough. You think you have an answer pinned down tight, and somebody else comes along with an earlier one.
In any case, Ellery Queen was the first one in this category that came to mind, but if he was actually the first, I’d be awfully surprised.
February 20th, 2011 at 1:31 am
Blackshirt predates Ellery by a couple of years as does LeQueux (who was dead before he started), and certainly Dick Donovan who like EQ wrote both Dick Donovan and non Dick Donovan stores under the DD byline. Footner’s Mapin trails Ellery by only a year I think. Wasn’t the old lady
in Rinehart’s THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE a mystery writer?
For that matter SEVEN KEYS TO BALDPATE predates Ellery Queen, and always struck me as a possible source of inspiration for Ellery himself, at least the later incarnation from the late thirties on.
In the film version of Israel Zangwill’s THE BIG BOW MYSTERY (THE VERDICT directed by Don Siegel) Peter Lorre’s character is a Victorian mystery writer, but I can’t recall off hand if anything like that is in the book (haven’t read it in thirty years and my copy is in a box somewhere), which mostly focuses on the Scotland Yard inspector (played by Sydney Greenstreet in the film).
There is probably someone obvious we are missing, likely from the period between Sherlock Holmes and the birth of the Golden Age. Someone will no doubt bring up Harriet Vane or Adrienne Oliver, but neither is the main sleuth in those cases. Similarly I don’t think Maugham’s Richard Ashenden writes anything as lowly as detective novels, though Maugham certainly wrote some shorts that fit crime and mystery if not detective definitions.
Of course later there is Francis Durbridge’s Paul Temple, a cross between EQ and Nick and Nora Charles.
Other than Blackshirt and the Saint, I think several of the gentleman adventurer types may have mentioned in passing trying their hand at writing a mystery — usually in an offhand way so they could make fun of themselves or silly titles. I want to say Wyndham Martin’s Anthony Trent, but I’ll let someone else wade through that series that goes from WWI to the 50’s to find out, I know he started out as a musician before turning to crime.
In the film of LADY IN THE LAKE Philip Marlowe has written for a pulp magazine, but of course not in the books. Still, I would be surprised if there wasn’t at least one hard boiled eye or reporter who didn’t write for the pulps — seems too natural an idea to have been passed by completely.
Before he turned to private eye Dick Marlow and spies I think John Bentley’s Sir Richard Herrivale may have written mysteries, but I could be wrong on that one.
Can anyone recall what Jeff Troy of Kelly Roos Jeff and Halia Troy series did for a living or Delano Ames Dagobert Brown? Surely Jerry North published a mystery or two.
February 20th, 2011 at 3:08 am
BALDPATE came out in 1913 and I should have thought of that one. I guess I wasn’t thinking of Billy Magee as a mystery novelist, so I had to track a copy of the book down to check on that.
http://books.google.com/books?id=FdW_tHNHC6cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=seven+keys+to+baldpate+mystery+novelist&source=bl&ots=16z_ESOutU&sig=Zo_MpB2MQy82oFB7TGoUKG-1V30&hl=en&ei=wsVgTYmdOoWssAPYodHACA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBjge#v=onepage&q&f=false
He’s a writer of melodrama, romantic thrillers, “Wild thrilling tales for the tired businessman’s tired wife — shots in the night, chases after fortunes. Cupid busy with his arrows all over the place!”
Not exactly detective fiction, but I think it’s close enough. Footner’s Mappin started in 1930 (I had to check that, as my reading career has not come across him so far) and EQ’s ROMAN HAT was published in 1929. No cigars there.
The rest of the names I’d have to check a lot further. I’d thought of Vane and Oliver but discarded them for the same reason you did — they were never the primary sleuth.
February 20th, 2011 at 9:09 am
Turner’s memoirs ALL MY BEST FRIENDS ARE WRITERS BUT I WOULDN’T WANT MY DAUGHTER TO MARRY ONE are very entertaining.
February 20th, 2011 at 10:10 am
IIRC, Jeff Troy in the Kelley Roos series is a fashion photographer, and his wife is a Broadway actress.
Susan Dare in Mignon G. Eberhart’s tales of the 1930’s is a mystery writer.
And I think there is some sort of writer (mystery? science fiction?) in Craig Rice’s MURDER THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. He’s not the detective.
Hercules Poirot writes a critical study of Mystery Fiction: see THE CLOCKS.
One of my all time favorite films is FLICKERS (1980), a British TV miniseries about the early days of the British silent film industry. The team hires a writer of blood-and-thunder, highly macho adventure novels as a scriptwriter. He turns out to be the complete opposite of his heroes: shy, gentle and middle aged. He’s one of my favorite characters.
February 20th, 2011 at 4:21 pm
Murder Rehearsal by Roger East (1933) deals heavily with a mystery writer’s book plot that is the inspiration for a series of murders disguised as suicides.
That’s the earliest book that I can think of that uses that plot gimmick.
It turns up an awful lot on old TV shows. And it still turns up in this century. Most recently it became the basis for the entire “Castle” TV series.
February 20th, 2011 at 7:28 pm
Just a point of clarification, John. It was only the first episode of CASTLE in which the murders that occurred in his book(s) were copied, isn’t that right? The rest of the series of course depends on the fact that Castle is a mystery writer who’s then assigned to accompany homicide detective Kate Beckett on the regular course of her duties — which is to say, investigating other murders. It’s an enjoyable series that seems to have caught on.
February 20th, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Juri, in reply to Comment #7. You’re right about the book, but the title is Some [not ALL] of My Best Friends Are Writers, But I Wouldn’t Want My Daughter To Marry One!
It’s a very informative and entertaining book about the lower levels of the writing business, maybe one of the best ever, even better than Frank Gruber’s book about writing for the pulp magazines.
After years of pumping out stories for the pulps, the crime digests, and then TV, Turner still had a lot of trouble making ends meet.
February 21st, 2011 at 2:09 am
Mike
There is an old movie with Albert Dekker as a western pulp publisher who has trouble with his hard drining best selling cowboy author — Ernest Truex, that sounds similar to your FLICKERS series.
Re CASTLE, the series has been good about keeping the detective element, in part to justify why they’d let Castle hang around.
And the tie in novel may be unique. Instead of being about Castle and Beckett, the book is a ‘Richard Castle novel’ about ‘Nikki Heat’ the character from the series he writes on the show. Something similar may have been done for a chapter or a paragraph by others, but this is the only novel length example I can think of.
February 21st, 2011 at 2:11 am
The closet thing to the Castle novel I can think of is the Ellery Queen novelization of A STUDY IN TERROR, and even there it is only alternating chapters.
February 21st, 2011 at 10:14 am
Color me embarassed, of course Alice Tilton (Phoebe Atwood Taylor)’s Leonidas Witherall (Bill because he looks like the famous bust of Shakespeare) writes blood and thunder thrillers about Lt. Haseltine — a fact he keeps hidden from his colleagues and friends.
The greatest screwball mystery series of all time, rivaling Craig Rice at her best, and I forgot.
Though not as sleuths, both Brett Halliday and John Gardner wrote themselves into adventures of Michael Shayne and Boysie Oakes respectively, and Georges Simenon and Maurice Leblanc frequently put themselves into the early adventures of Maigret and Arsene Lupin if only as an audience.
February 21st, 2011 at 11:12 am
Steve –
Yes, it was the pilot in which Castle’s book was the basis for a copycat killer. I haven’t watched it very often. I’d rather watch the old Thriller, Honey West and Ellery Queen DVDs as they pour in through my mailbox via Netflix.
February 22nd, 2011 at 11:33 am
Add one more series character who was a mystery writer to the list, Lenore Glen Offord’s Todd McKinnon, who was a writer for the detective pulps.
Bill Deeck’s review of The Smiling Tiger (1949) can be found here:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=3436
while Mike Grost says more about the character and some of Offord’s other books here:
http://mikegrost.com/hibk.htm#Offord
February 26th, 2011 at 8:17 pm
Roger Torrey wrote a series of stories under the name John Ryan that are about a detective named John Ryan. These stories appeared in the Trojan Publishing line of pulp magazines in the ’40s.
February 26th, 2011 at 9:39 pm
I have a feeling that some of those stories were in that collection of Torrey’s that Black Dog Books published not too long ago. I’ll bet there were and I totally forgot. Thanks, Joel!
April 28th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
In response to comment number 5. Jeff Troy in the books was a photographer who was often asked to investigate a crime. In the movie “A Night to Remember”[based on “Frightened Stiff”]he was a mystery writer.