DASHIELL HAMMETT “Corkscrew.” The Continental Op #20. Short novel. First published in The Black Mask, September 1925. Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1947 (severely edited by Fred Dannay). Collected in The Big Knockover, edited by Lillian Hellman (Random House, hardcover, 1966) which includes all of Dannay’s changes and adds one. Also collected in The Big Book of the Continental Op (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, softcover, 2017), which goes back to the original text and reverses all the changes.

   In many ways “Corkscrew” is one of my favorites of Hammett’s shorter works. In it the Op travels to an isolated small town in Arizona (circa 1925, I presume) and tries his best to fit in as an obvious city slicker in one of the last pockets of the Old West, complete with all of the lawless elements you can think of, standard cliches all, including some of the newer ones, such as opium users and human trafficking of would-be immigrants across the border.

   Nor did the Old West have automobiles (flivvers) or telephones, although while I’m sure they are mentioned, I don’t think anyone in Corkscrew had one. The Op’s mission is supposed to be a secret: he’s undercover as the new deputy sheriff in town, but he’s recognized as that eve before he arrives. He’s been sent by the head office to clean up all of the bad element so that their clients can come safely in and bring commercial enterprise to the area.

   The scene that I like best – and it’s stuck with me ever since I read this story the first time – is the one in which the Op is joshed along by some ranchhands who persuade him that the horse they’re offering to sell him is as gentle a horse as there ever could be. Ha! Three times on, and three times off. The Op is no horseman, but it is a way to get the locals’ respect.

   What I also noticed this time around is how much of precursor to Red Harvest this tale is. The Op comes in and when the opportunity arises, he sets one faction of the non-savory aspect of Corkscrew against the other. What I also noticed is this is more than just a crime story. It’s a detective tale as well, and well-clued at that. And I didn’t even notice!

   Here’s a link to the long list of changes Fred Dannay made when he published the story in EQMM, as carefully delineated by Terry Zobeck on Don Herron’s website.

   Some are relatively minor, some consist of huge chunks of expository text. And some are explainable, sort of. A character referred to as the “the Jew” in the original version becomes “The Toad” in EQMM. It’s not a choice I would have made, but as I said, it sort of makes sense.

T. T. FLYNN “The Deadly Orchid.” Trixie Meehan & Mike Harris #1. First published in Detective Fiction Weekly, April 15, 1933. Reprinted in The Pulps, edited by Tony Goldstone (Chelsea House, hardcover, 1970) and Hard-Boiled Dames, edited by Bernard Drew (St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1986).

   I have written about the bickering pair of PI’s by the name of Trixie Meehan and Mike Harris before. You can find my review of “Barred Doors,” the seventh in the series, here. To recap quickly, though, they both work for the Blaine Agency and are always casting barbs at each other – in a friendly way, you know —  or at least I think so.

   In this, their first appearance, they go undercover in a plush hotel disguised as husband and wife (but in a suite of adjoining rooms, with a lock on the door between them). With the benefit of an unlimited expense account, they also are pretending to be a fabulously wealthy pair of Texans (oil money), and living it up greatly.

   Their target: a incredulously beautiful wisp of a girl, nicknamed the Orchid, who is also a notorious blackmailer who has also been known to kill her victims when things don’t work out perfectly with one of her schemes.

   Mike is the one who tells the story and the one who works up the plan to discover where the love letters she is holding over her latest victim are located, but Trixie is no slouch either when she is needed to take part in the action.

   There’s not a lot of depth to the tale, but it’s smoothly told, in something of a screwball story sort of way. Somebody really ought to put together a complete collection of their adventures together.
   

      The Mike Harris & Trixie Meehan stories –

The Deadly Orchid (ss) Detective Fiction Weekly Apr 15 1933
Falling Death (nv) Detective Fiction Weekly Oct 28 1933
Murder’s Masquerade (nv) Detective Fiction Weekly Mar 31 1934
The Yin Shee Dragon (na) Detective Fiction Weekly Sep 29 1934
Murder Harbor (nv) Detective Fiction Weekly Dec 1 1934
The City Hall Murders (na) Detective Fiction Weekly Mar 23 1935
Barred Doors (na) Detective Fiction Weekly May 18 1935
Nitro! Nitro! (na) Detective Fiction Weekly Apr 4 1936
The Letters and the Law (na) Detective Fiction Weekly Jun 27 1936
Abbey of the Damned (na) Detective Fiction Weekly Oct 30 1937
Murder Circus (na) Detective Fiction Weekly May 21 1938
The Secret of the Swamp (na) Detective Fiction Weekly Feb 25 1939
Brother Murder (na) Detective Fiction Weekly Dec 2 1939
Mike Finds Trouble (sl) Detective Fiction Weekly Aug 17 1940, etc.
Build Up for Murder (nv) Detective Fiction Aug 20 1941
Killer in the Clouds (ss) Detective Tales Mar 1951

  ROBERT R. MILL “Murder on the Island.” Short story. “Tiny” David #1. [Corrected to #2. See Comment #1.] First published in Blue Book, May 1933. Collected in Murder on the Island and Other Stories of “Tiny” David and the Black Horse Troop (Black Dog Books, paperback, 2004).

   We don’t get to see any of the Black Horse Troop in this, the first story of 47 in all, all appearing in Blue Book magazine between 1933 and 1942. The Black Dog collection contains only four of them. The rest I imagine I’ll never get a chance to read, never having collected the magazine, and the ones I did own for a while are long gone.

   In this one, we meet only Trooper Edward David and his immediate superior, Sergeant James Crosby. The setting is somewhere in the Adirondacks in New York State, as Tiny and the sergeant are rowing to an isolated island where a wealthy man and his daughter are living, along with several servants. Disliking publicity, visitors are generally not welcome, but an urgent telephone call from Joseph Bahn has them heading that way in rowboat, and in a hurry.

   Once there they find the body of the Bahns’ butler, dead, having been shot in the head. Although six foot two and weighing 220 pounds, “Tiny” David may appear lazy and slow-witted, but he’s one observant fellow, a lot sharper than his sergeant, and when he senses that something is wrong with the scenario they’ve been presented with, you can count on his sense been exactly right.

   What this story turns out to be is a perfectly ordinary detective mystery, a rather light-hearted approach that even without a challenge to the reader, an equally observant reader can see and interpret the same clues that Tiny does.

   For more on the author and the series, here’s a link to Sai Shankar’s Pulpflakes blog and his essay on both:

https://pulpflakes.blogspot.com/2017/01/robert-r-mill.html

JAMES A. LAWSON “Hard Guy.” Short story. “Hard Guy” Dallas Duane #1. First published in Spicy Western Stories, March 1937. Collected in Dying Comes Hard (Black Dog Books, softcover, 2015) under the author’s real name, James P. Olsen. Introduction by James Reasoner.

   â€œHard Guy” Dallas Duane was an oil range troubleshooter in the 1930s, a fact that fully qualifies him as a PI. His adventures took him all over Oklahoma and Texas, often working undercover. And under the covers, too, which you will have already recognized for yourself if you saw that this first one was published in Spicy Western, a pulp magazine which took its title very very seriously.

   This first of 20 adventures has Hard Guy tracking down the killer of the local county attorney, all the while beating himself up for being tricked into being in the arms of very friendly saloon singer by the name of Nancy. Then follows ten pages of non-stop action, punctuated by the stops to wonder over the pulchritudinous delights of both Nancy and another girl named Kate, both of whom look very good, even with their clothes off, and even while less frequently with them on.

   Great literature this is not, as a wise man once told me, but if that wise man never read this story, I’m one up on him. I just did! And note this: the Black Dog collection collects all twenty of Hard Guy’s recorded adventures.

JAMES H. COBB “The Sound of Justice.” Kevin Pulaski #2. Novelette. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 2005. Probably never reprinted.

   The Kevin Pulaski of the present is a retired veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, but when he was in high school, back in Indiana in 1949, that he would grow up to be a lawman was the furthest thing from his mind. He was, in fact, a hod-rodder of the first magnitude, and a JD? His reply, “Man, I was there when they first came out.”

   That he had an off-and-on relationship with the local authorities at the time doesn’t matter when a good buddy is accused of stealing a small fortune of jewelry from his girl friend’s father’s store. Kevin goes the preliminary trial on his own initiative, and part of the evidence he provides is… Well, this small excerpt should explain:

   â€œI […turned] to face the judge’s desk. “I’m what you call establishing precedent. You see, Your Honor, every hot rod ever built has a kind of fingerprint. Something about it that is totally different from any other car in the world, the sound of its engine.”

   He demonstrates and his friend goes free. The story is cleanly told and not once pretentious. Even though I was never part of the hot rod culture in high school, I was fully aware of it, and I enjoyed this brief trip back in time.
   

      The Kevin Pulaski series —

Road Bomb (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2004
The Sound of Justice (nv) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 2005
Framed (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine June 2006
Over the Edge (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 2007
Body and Fender (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine August 2008
Desert and Swamp (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Mar/Apr 2009

   and previously:

West on 66. Minotaur, hardcover, October 1999, and taking place in Pulaski’s days as a LA lawman.

   Just in case you were wondering how David Handler’s story “The Happy Couple” I reviewed here a couple of days ago ended, I have decided on a way to tell you, but only if you want to be told. Please read comment #1.

DAVID HANDLER “The Happy Couple.” Novelette. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July 2005. Not known to have been reprinted.

   David Handler is best known for his hardcover mysteries, most of which fall into either of two series: his Stewart Hoag and Lulu mysteries (of which there are twelve), or his Berger and Mitry tales (of which there are eleven). “The Happy Couple” is therefore a rarity: it’s one of only a small handful of short stories he’s written, and it’s a standalone.

   The narrator is Tim Ferris, as he tells a story that took place thirty years earlier when he was struggling young newspaper reporter in Manhattan. The first line gives a small hint of what is to come: “This is the ugliest show business story that I know.”

   Enamored of the Broadway stage, and superstar actress Barbara Darrow in particular, Ferris is thrilled beyond belief when he is offered an interview with her and her husband, the equally famous actor Anthony Beck. What he does not realize he is walking into is a love triangle between the two of them and Leigh Grayson, a young accomplished actress who is in a lesser role in the current play all three are in.

   Ferris himself finds himself strongly attracted to the latter, which does not please Ms Darrow and the games she loves to play. Not only does he find himself drawn into them as well, but so does the reader. You can simply feel the sexual tension growing, punctuated by Beck finding Darrow sitting naked in Ferris’s lap, an unwanted event by the latter, and totally surprised by it.

   The ending? Totally horrific. I won’t say more, but it is one that Ferris had to wait thirty years before he could tell it. This one’s a chiller.

MAX ALLAN COLLINS “A Wreath for Marley.” PI Richard Stone #1. First published in Dante’s Disciples, edited by Peter Crowther & Edward E. Kramer (White Wolf, 1995). Collected in Blue Christmas and Other Holiday Stories (Five Star, hardcover, 2001). Rewritten as “Blue Christmas,” an unpublished and unproduced screenplay.

   â€œA Wreath for Marley” takes place in Chicago, 1942, at Christmas time, and it doesn’t take long before you, the reader, realize that PI Richard Stone is a louse. He’s bribed his doctor to come up with a note to say he’s 4-F, he buys steak on the black market, and he has been sleeping with the widow of his now deceased former partner, Jacob Marley.

   Marley was shot and killed a full year ago, and to this date, Stone has done nothing about it. I don’t know if you know what’s ahead of him that evening, but if you are already suspecting that this is a mashup of Charles Dickens and The Maltese Falcon, you are one hundred percent correct.

   The ghost that Stone first meets is a gent named John Dillinger, and the one who takes Stone to see his (possible) future looks and sounds very much like the King himself, Elvis Presley. This in spite of the fact that in the real world, the latter is still only seven years old.

   You can get away with a lot of things when you’re writing fantasy, but you can take from me that this is a good one, even if you do know exactly where it is going. In his introduction to hardcover collection of several holiday-based stories he’s written, Max Allan Collins says that while this may not be his best story, it is his favorite one. I can see why.

      The Richard Stone series –

“A Wreath For Marley” (1995, Dante’s Disciples, Blue Christmas)
“A Bird for Becky” (1996, Shades of Noir, Blue Christmas)
“Flowers for Bill O’Reilly” (2001, Flesh and Blood, Blue Christmas)

CAROLINA GARCIA-AGUILERA “The Right Profile.” Short story. Maria Magdalena “Maggie” Morales #1. First published in Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery, edited by Sarah Cortez & Liz Martínez (Arte Público Press, 2009). Probably never reprinted or collected.

   As a Cuban-American private eye based in Miami, Maggie Morales seems to work exclusively for a low level attorney named Bobbie O’Meara. (She tries to get paid in advance but doesn’t always succeed.) In this case, her only appearance on record, her assignment to get the goods on an ex-husband who claims he can’t pay the money he owes to his former wife because he can’t work. He’s a photographer by trade, and in court, he’s an awfully good faker.

   Posing as a client who needs a photo shoot done, Maggie gets the evidence that proves otherwise, with a final shot back at the man in court that he richly deserves. It’s a minor case, but even so, it provides the reader a solid ten minutes of reading fun. The author, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, a PI herself, is better known for the six novels she has written about another Cuban-American private eye by the name of Lupe Solano, also based in Miami.

KIERAN SHEA “The Lifeguard Method.” Charlie Byrne #1. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 2009. Probably never collected or reprinted.

   This is both Kieran Shea’s first published story and (of course) the first recorded case of PI Charlie Byrne. Although most of the story takes place in a room at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, Byrne seems to be permanently based in Philadelphia. Most of his work is for hotshot litigator there, having saved his son Andy from drowning while working as a lifeguard at a beach when the boy was only six.

   Andy is now in his early 20s and is foolishly trying to scam his father out of fifty grand by faking his own kidnapping. Byrne is having none of it, but makes the initial mistake of taking everything for granted, a mistake he doesn’t make twice.

   In her introduction to the story, the editor points out that it was difficult to decide whether to put this tale in their Department of First Stories, or in their “Black Mask” section. They chose the latter, and it was a good choice. Without being able to say more, this is one of the most hard-boiled stories I’ve read in a long time.

   It was also stated in the introduction that the author was working on a novel involving Charlie Byrne, but if so, it may have never been completed. There was one more appearance for this otherwise one-shot PI, that being “Shift Work,” which was serialized in three parts in an ezine titled Crime Factory, March, May & July 2010.