FRANK GRUBER “Death on Eagle’s Crag.” Oliver Quade #8. First published in Black Mask, December 1937. Reprinted in The Hardboiled Dicks, edited by Ron Goulart (Sherbourne Press, 1965).

   At the beginning of this fanciful, not to mention far-fetched tale, Oliver Quade, also known as The Human Encyclopedia, has somehow found his way to an isolated resort located at the top of a mountain, doing what he does best: trying to sell the owner a set of encyclopedias. She may be better at resisting, though, than he isat selling them when one of the guests is found dead along a walking path.

   Remains of a bashed-up rattlesnake are found beside him, with vicious bite marks on his leg, but Quade quickly deduces it was a well-planned murder. The resort’s handyman is about to head down to notify the authorities when a car full of gangsters, escapees from a local prison, comes driving up the hill. Coincidences pile up quickly. The dead man, as it turns out, was a thief,and once the gang of crooks realize he must have hidden eighty grand worth of stolen cash on the grounds, they decide to stick around and keep all of the real guests hostage while they look for it.

   Even while it incorporates a small token of goofiness, making the story is quite a bit of fun to read, it is amazing how Gruber manages to turn the story around on itself as he does, making it perhaps the most violent one in The Hardboiled Dicks, the anthology of stories from the detective pulps Ron Goulart put together in the mid-sixties. There’s nothing very deep to this one, but somehow I’ve managed to remember the basic plot, all these many years later.

   Oliver Quade, who manages to find the money while under a lot duress in this one, was in 15 stories in the pulps. He wasn’t quite as inventive as MacGyver was in using his head to get out of jams, but selling encyclopedias for a living obviously gave him a decided edge over a lot of tough bad guys in his day.

Note: I first wrote a review of this story in 1967, and I posted it on this blog a few weeks ago. Follow the link and you can read it here.

RAOUL WHITFIELD “China Man.” Jo Gar #18. Published under the name Ramon Decolta in Black Mask, March 1932. Reprinted in The Hardboiled Dicks, edited by Ron Goulart (Sherbourne Press, 1965). Collected in West of Guam: The Complete Cases of Jo Gar (Altus Press, 2013).

   Jo Gar is attacked in his office by someone who appears to be a Chinese coolie, but strangely enough the knife thrower misses his mark, even at close range. Gar tries to follow him, but loses him in the crowds in the streets of Manila under the stress of an approaching hurricane.

   Returning to his small cramped office, he finds a note from his client slipped under the door. The man, an importer of valuable jade, had come early and left. The note accuses a “China man” as the person who has been stealing from him.

   Then his client turns up murdered, knifed to death, and his body dumped into a river.

   This may sound like a complicated case, but in spite of what also seems like a story with a lot of action, neither is true. What makes the story work as well as it does is the setting, that of what had to have been a really exotic, foreign land to most readers of Black Mask in 1932, the streets and other sights of the Philippines. And to tell you the truth, it probably still is to most people living in the US today.

Note: I first wrote a review of this story in 1967, and I posted it on this blog a few weeks ago. Follow the link and you can read it here.

MICHAEL BISHOP “Allegra’s Hand.” Novelette. First appeared in Asimov’s SF, June 1996. Collected in At the City Limits of Fate (Edgewood Press, hardcover, 1996).

   I called this a science fiction story, and it is that, but it’s far from a space or planets story. A young girl new to her school catches the head counselor there, as well as a host of bullies. It’s not difficult to see why. She wears a glove on her left hand, a long-sleeved one that goes up her arm to almost her elbow.

   Why? What is she hiding? Why won’t she tell anyone? She is clearly intelligent, perhaps more than her years. But taunted one day too far, she punches the boy bullying her in the stomach with the hand in the glove, leaving a huge circular bruise. I won’t tell you her secret, as the mystery is a major factor in the first half of the story, one her counselor (female, and a first person narrator) works to unravel.

   Which she eventually does, gaining Allegra’s trust at last, slowly and carefully. It is quite an affliction, shall we say, that Allegra has to face. Luckily she has her father on her side, and she doesn’t have to face her future alone, not for a while yet.

   It’s in essence a quiet, melancholy story and I think a memorable one. But as Mrs. Hewit tells a colleague, “Beth, I go bump against more hopeless, intractable cases than Allegra’s almost very week. None more unusual, I grant that, but many sadder and a few even harder to envision tuning out acceptably.”

   As for me, I agree. It won’t be easy, but I think Allegra is a survivor.

   Michael Bishop has been writing SF since 1970, and his work has won or has been nominated for any number of awards. Even so, his stories are not flashy, and I don’t believe they’ve ever gained the attention they should have.

FREDERICK NEBEL “Winter Kill.” Kennedy of the Free Press & Captain Steve MacBride #32. Novelette. First published in Black Mask, November 1935. Reprinted in The Hardboiled Dicks, edited by Ron Goulart. (Sherbourne Press, 1965). Collected in Winter Kill: The Complete Cases of MacBride & Kennedy, Volume 4: 1935-36 (Altus Press, 2014).

   Russ Parcell is a cad, no way to get around that. A rich father’s son who drinks a lot, gambles a lot, and although married, runs around with cheap floozies a lot. He owes one gambling boss over $8500, which in 1935 would have been considered a lot of money, and the gambling boss is anxious to collect. It doesn’t make sense, then, for him to have killed Parcell, does it? The latter was found in the street,hid body frozen to death and covered with snow.

   It is Kennedy of Free Press who figures out it was murder. Someone had poured water on him and sent him wandering out in the cold in a drunken stupor. It is also Kennedy who does most of the investigative work on the case, although Captain Steve MacBride is there for police backup whenever he’s needed.

   It is also Kennedy who shows any personality in this particular story. He’s short and thin, and at times he can be almost invisible in a room, almost a shadow on the wall so that others also in the room can easily forget he’s there. He also drinks a lot, but whether he’s ever actually drunk is not easy to tell. He often learns a lot by pretending he’s had few too many.

   MacBride, on the other hand, could just as well be another generic cop. Luckily for Kennedy, he doesn’t mind putting up with the latter’s various foibles.

   The case, unfortunately, while long and involved, is not a particularly gripping one, and most of Kennedy’s legwork is done off screen, or with the motives for what he does do not revealed to the reader. The Kennedy-MacBride series was both a long one and very popular with the readers at the time. This particular story may not show them at their best.

Note: I first wrote a review of this story in 1967, and I posted it on this blog a few weeks ago. Follow the link and you can read it here.

JOHN K. BUTLER “The Saint in Silver.” Steve Midnight #4. Novelette. First published in Dime Detective Magazine, January 1941. Reprinted in The Hardboiled Dicks (Sherbourne Press, 1965). Collected in The Complete Cases of Steve Midnight, Volume 1 (Steeger Books, 2016).

   I’ve said it many times, and a couple of times in print as well, that of all the stories in The Hardboiled Dicks, Ron Goulart’s  highly seminal pulp detective anthology from 1965, “The Saint in Silver” was the one that I remembered most.

   Well, “ha” on me. Now, over 50 years later, last night I finally read it for a second time, and guess what? It was like reading it for the first time.

   Nothing I thought I knew about the story was true. I even had the object in the title wrong. I remembered it as a statue. What the saint in silver really is, I won’t tell you (although there’s no reason why I shouldn’t), but nothing could be further from the truth.

   Maybe the only thing I remembered correctly is that Steve Midnight (Steve Middleton Knight) is a taxi cab driver, and he usually has an overnight shift. He’s not a PI, but there were nine stories in the early 40s in which he was the leading character, all for Dime Detective. I assume that he was generally his own client, but I could be wrong about that.

   In “The Saint in Silver,” for example, he’s out a fare of $18 if he doesn’t find the blonde and the drunken guy who smashed up their own car while in the midst of a treasure hunt. After hiring him to continue their hunt, they disappear on him when the next clue takes them to a cemetery in the rain, with Midnight ending up clocked over the head in a tomb.

   Butler was a very good writer, nothing fancy, but the first half of the story simply flows and catches the reader along with it. The second half, the tracking down of the cab’s occupants, devolves into a case that involves both a narcotics ring and a rich pseudo-evangelist, is not as compelling, but it’s still a very good yarn. (Maybe at 48 pages, it’s just a little long for its own good.)

   And yes, by the way, one of the Steve Midnight stories is titled “Death and Taxis,” in the January 1942 issue of Dime Detective.

Note: I first wrote a review of this story in 1967, and I posted it on this blog a few weeks ago. Follow the link and you can read it here.

NORBERT DAVIS “Don’t Give Your Right Name.” PI Max Latin #2. Novelette. First published in Dime Detective Magazine, December 1941. Reprinted in The Hardboiled Dicks, edited by Ron Goulart (Sherbourne Press, hardcover, 1965; Pocket, paperback, 1967) and collected in The Complete Cases of Max Latin (Steeger ,Books, 2013).

   I can see why Ron Goulart picked as the lead story in his The Hardboiled Dicks. Norbert Davis had a wicked sense of humor to go with a master’s touch in telling the rough, tough, hardboiled kind of tale that both Dime Detective and Black Mask specialized in.

   “Don’t Give Your Right Name,” for example, begins with a chaotic scene at Gutierrez’s restaurant, a place that’s always hopping in spite of everything Gutierrez can do to keep customers away because they eat too fast instead of savoring their food.

   This includes paying an autograph collector to go in and annoy all of the famous people gathered there. But things turn serious when the fellow turns up dead in the alley in back, and to save his own skin, Max Latin is forced to take on the case. Latin is a not-so-honest PI who, when he calls his lawyer, the latter is all but out the door and heading to the police lockup where he assumes Latin is, and is calling from.

   The story is enormously complicated, with more than a smidgen of sexual innuendo to go with it. There lots of strings to the plot, but even with the pace as fast as it is, Davis manages to keep everything under control to the end. On his part, Latin manages to keep himself out of jail, but on their part, not everyone else survives the night. It’s a risky business, showing up in one the stories he’s in.

Note: I first wrote a review of this story in 1967, and I posted it on this blog a week or so ago. Follow the link and you can read it here.

MICHAEL COLLINS “Dan Fortune and the Hollywood Caper.” PI Dan Fortune.  Short story. First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1983. Collected in Crime, Punishment and Resurrection (Donald I. Fine, 1992) as “The Woman Who Ruined John Ireland.” Reprinted in Silver Screams: Murder Goes Hollywood, edited by Cynthia Manson & Adam Stern (Longmeadow, paperback, 1994).

   Dan Fortune is hired by a young woman, a file clerk for a company in midtown Manhattan, who lives a life on the borderline between real life and movieland fantasy. She looks like Gloria Grahame, and there are times when she thinks she is. She is having an affair with the manager of a small used bookstore whom at times she believes he is John Ireland. When she is shot at, she comes to Dan, convinced that her lover’s wife, Grace Kelly, is the one responsible.

   Before he has solved the case, she even has Dan doing it. Here below is a list of the movie stars who play a part in the investigation, even briefly. I hope I haven’t missed any. It would make one hell of of a movie, wouldn’t it?

CAMFORD SHEAVELY “The Tie That Blinds.” Novelette. Clyde Collier #1. First published in Detective Story Magazine, June 1947. Never reprinted.

   I may be stretching it a bit to call Clyde Collier a private eye, but then again trouble shooters for the movie studios in the 1930s and 40s are generally allowed to be thought of to be in the category – think of W. . Ballard’s “Bill Lennox” stories as a prime example – so even if maybe Collier is in reality only a glorified PR man, he’s still a PI in my book, especially when murder is involved.

   Even though it’s the lead story in the issue it’s in, it’s still a minor tale. What I think I’ll do is tell you the basics and let you see if you can’t figure out the plot on your own. Dead is one of Hollywood’s top ranked directors. What’s unusual is the way he’s dressed: in a blue coat and tan shirt, with a tie decorated with purple and maroon flowers. Later on Collier spots one of the crew playing cards, only to lose because he confuses a spade for a heart in what would otherwise be a straight flush.

   Sorry, but no more hints. Not that I think you are likely to need any.

   The rest of the story is padding, but that’s ameliorated by the fact that Sheavely seems to have been someone who knew his way around a movie studio. I’d never heard of the author before either, but he had about a dozen stories published in the detective pulps in the 40s, including one in Black Mask (July 1946). You may know him better as John Reese, who wrote quite a few western novels under his own name, beginning in the 50s, including ten in his Jefferson Hewitt series.

   I’ve not read any of the latter, but I’ve always meant to. I believe, but am not sure, that Hewitt was a detective in the Paladin sense, who traveled the early West taking various jobs for hire. If anyone can say more, that’s what the comments are for.

HENRY KANE “The Memory Guy.” PI Peter Chambers. First published in Come Seven, Come Death, edited by Henry Morrison (Pocket, paperback original, 1965). Reprinted in Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine (US), March 1966.

   In “The Memory Guy” Peter Chambers is hired to do one thing – find who’s been leaving an aspiring Broadway actress phone calls threatening her father’s life – and ends up doing another. To wit:  saving her from being accused of killing him. It seems that he was doing his best to keep her from her desired choice of career, including the rather drastic measure of persuading her to marry his law clerk, a man with a photographic memory.

   Hence the title.

   If you were to read the blurb for this particular story on the back cover, it gives the entire plot away, so don’t. As a pure detective story, it’s too short to linger in your memory for very long afterward, but it’s very well constructed.

   What I found disappointing, is that there’s nothing of Peter Chambers himself in the story. The Personality he’s developed in earlier stories doesn’t exist in this one. The PI the girl hires could have been anyone. In fact, he needn’t even be a detective, just someone she knows who’s a little more observant than a stranger off the street.

HAROLD Q. MASUR “The Corpse Maker.” Short story. Scott Jordan. First published in Come Seven, Come Death, edited by Henry Morrison (Pocket, paperback original, 1965). Never collected or reprinted (unless advised otherwise).

   Attorney Scott Jordan’s client, a notorious fence, is guilty as charged, but when the D.A. offers to make a deal, he turns him down. It seems that the police forced their way into the man’s apartment and searched it without a warrant. So why then does the man not show up for his trial? Has he skipped bail just when he’s about to go free?

   Totally baffled, Jordan tracks him down and finds him at home almost beaten to death. He names his assailant and an (almost) dying message, which of course gives Jordan a lot to go on. And he needs it, as the case is (almost) as complicated as a full-length novel, complete with another killing and (of course) a beautiful girl.

   All to the good, but the story is badly marred by heavy coincidence – two, in fact, occurring on the very same page. Nor in the length of the tale (22 pages) is there time for any real detection. Jordan’s explanation fits all the facts, but how he managed to put them all together is not gone into. And in spite of the fact that I’ve enjoyed all of the Scott Jordan novels I’ve read, that was a long time ago, and I was disappointed with this one. In “The Corpse Maker,” he’s as straight and narrow as white bread, with not a ounce of grittiness to him.

   I’ll have to go back and read some of his early books again.