CARROLL JOHN DALY “Corpse & Co.” Novelette. Race Williams. First published in Dime Detective Magazine, February 1936. Added later (see comments #7 and #13): Collected in The Adventures of Race Williams (Mysterious Press, trade paperback, 1989), and in Just Another Stiff, The Collected Hard-Boiled Stories of Race Williams, Volume 5 (Steeger Books, 2019).

INTRO: This pulp fiction PI review has been excerpted from a column I did for the April/May/June, 1979 issue of The Not So Private Eye, a fanzine published by Andy Jaysnovitch for several years in the late 70s. In this particular column, titled “Speaking of Pulp,” I dissected, if you will, the complete February issue of Dime Detective Magazine. It was a long column, so I’ve decided to break it up and post it here story by story.

   And so with no further ado, here’s what I had to say about story Number One:
         —
   The lead novel is a Race Williams yarn, written by a name you should recognize. The story is entitled “Corpse & Co.”, and it’s written of course by Carroll John Daly. It’s called a novel on the contents page out of courtesy only, for it runs only 33 pages long. Still, in terms of actual wordage, my calculator works that out to be the equivalent of 70 to 75 pages of today’s average hardcover novel. So call it a third of a novel.

   And it reads that way as well. Maybe I have bad luck whenever I pick up a pulp to read a Daly story in it. His stories, whether a Race Williams adventure like this one, a Satan Hall yarn, or whatever, they always seem as though they were installments of unannounced serials. What I mean is I get the idea that a series of connected Daly stories would follow in consecutive issues of a given magazine, each supposedly complete in themselves, but always seeming to begin in the middle of a plot, and never winding up the loose ends completely. I’ve never taken the time to check this out, and so perhaps I stand to be corrected.

   Anyway, the focus of all the action this time around is a previous case in which the bodies that Williams so happily provided in the final scene were conveniently disposed of by one Gentle Jim Corrigan. To avoid bringing in the feds, and to save Mary Morse’s business and reputation, Williams agreed to this course of action. Of course that leave Miss Morse open to a bit of blackmail, and that’s this story. Since her jewelry business is still floundering, Race refuses her case at first (no dough in it), until he’s forced to take it when the blackmailer gets the bright idea that Williams will make a handy target for tommy-gun practice and is better off dead just on general principles.

   As a prime example of the supreme self-appointed vigilante, Race Williams was probably the founder of that particular school of tough private eyes. Mike Hammer turned out to be a more than willing student of his a number of years later, with the principal difference being that Hammer has never yet turned a willing dame down. Florence Drummond, alias The Flame, says to Williams, “Brains are something you haven’t got.” Mary Morse is in love with him, and he treats it as a minor complication.

   Dirty Harry, of movie fame, is another who shoots first, in the name of the law, and worries about the law,only afterwards. But while Race Williams lives by his guns, and that’s the extent of the story. Not much is said about constitutional law and the rights of criminals here. Here’s the last line: “When better corpses are made, Race Williams will make them.”

CONNIE WILLIS “The Sidon in the Mirror.” Novelette. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, April 1983. Reprinted in Isaac Asimov’s Space of Her Own, edited by Shawna McCarthy (Davis, digest softcover, 1983). Also reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year #13, edited by Terry Carr. First collected in Fire Watch (Bluejay Books, hardcover, 1985). Nominated for both Nebula and Hugo awards for Best Novelette of 1983.

   Some novelettes by some SF writers are nothing but fluff and padding. On the other hand, there are novelettes by other SF writers that are dense enough to have enough story content to fill two full novels and maybe more. “The Sidon in the Mirror” is one of the latter.

   Consider then the protagonist, a pianobar player with two eight-fingered hands who is also the “mirror” of the title, a man who can absorb the characteristics of others – not physically – but their thoughts and inner beings. Sidon is the third largest city in Lebanon, but that may (or may not) be important. In the story, a sidon is an animal having a ferocious unpredictable temper. It cannot be tamed; if you try, it may seem as though you are succeeding, but turning your back on it is not a thought worth considering.

   A sidon is also (in the story) what the miners on the all-but-dead star called Paylay (after the Hawaiian volcano Pele?) call their taps into the similarly dangerous gas-mines through the crust and into the core below. The man (mirror), named Ruby by the proprietor of the bar slash brothel, is there (perhaps) on a mission of revenge. It is not clear, but a blind girl named Pearl whom he befriends is somehow the crux of the story.

   The crust is thick enough that one can walk on Paylay, but if one stands still long enough, the bottoms of you feet will suffer severe blisters.

   So, there you are. Just a hint of who and what this story is about, told in something like Gothic overtones. And at the moment you probably know as much how it all ends as I do, and I have the advantage that I’ve actually read the story. I’ll take that back. I’ve absorbed the story rather than simply read it, and so I’m wrong. I do know more than you do. Until you’ve read it yourself, that is, and I think you should. This is a good one, a story told well beyond the capabilities or visual imagery of a Stanton A. Coblentz and maybe even a Stanley G. Weinbaum.

   Way beyond. Like night and day.

IAN WATSON “Slow Birds.” Novelette. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1983. Reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year #13, edited by Terry Carr. Lead story in the collection Slow Birds and Other Stories (Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1985). Nominated for both Nebula and Hugo awards for Best Novelette of 1983.

   Before starting this review in earnest, a description of the Slow Birds of the title is probably a good idea. The setting isn’t stated, but it appears to a rather cut-off area of perhaps a future United States, but if so, an appreciably altered one. The slow birds are a hazard the small population has learned to live with. They are not alive, far from it. They have tubular metal bodies, rounded in front and tapering to a point in back, about the length of a man and the girth of a horse with small wings used for stabilizing, not for propulsion.

   They appear and disappear at random and fly through the air at a constant speed of three feet per minute at the height of a man’s shoulders. Objects they can push their way through, they do. If they can’t, they bank around them. Graffiti on them identifies them, one from another. Eventually one of two things happen. They vanish on their own, or they explode, leaving a circle of flat glass having a radius of two and half miles on the ground below.

   One way to describe how well the inhabitants of five villages which lie close to each other have adapted is to tell you about the competition has developed between them on Mayday every year: a windsail/skating race on a circle of glass next to one of the villages. Jason Babbidge, the story’s primary protagonist has hopes of prevailing against last year’s winner, but as told in some detail, he fails.

   It’s the detail that matters, not necessarily that he fails. Later the same day, Jason’s younger brother climbs onto one of the slow birds, determined to learn, once and for all, where they go when they vanish, only to appear again later. Does he survive the trip? It takes a lifetime for him to return again, with finally an answer.

   When I started this review I was going to tell you what he learned, but now I have decided not to. You may have some idea what the slow birds and why they do what they do, and I did as well. What I did not expect to happen is to have the story turned inside out in such a cosmic mind-blowing fashion, from the scale of a small annual semi-friendly competition to what I will tell you is the exact opposite.

   If ever after I finished a science fiction story by saying to myself “Wow,” this one was it.

   Five stars.

MICHAEL CANFIELD “We Both Loved Scandies.” Lead story in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, July/August 2023.

   The story begins as a woman is about to leave the small town of Osta in Sweden only to have an inspector from the local police department stop by, one she had not met before. Gradually we learn, largely from long flashbacks, that although we do not not exactly what, something has happened and that in all likelihood (as we can easily guess) it was serious.

   The woman, as it is gradually revealed, had come to Osta with another woman, a traveling companion, on a trip to see where the exploits of her favorite detective character had taken place, and where in fact the author, one Freddie Ek, had lived.

   Any fan of detective mysteries will identify with this immensely, and enjoy puzzling out who the other woman was and what might have happened. As his questions seem to reveal, the inspector seems to know than he actually says. The flashbacks also serve to only skirt around the real reason for his visit.

   It’s a storytelling technique that here, in the case at hand, is very neatly done. It’s only when the story is over might the reader realize how artificial the cat-and-mouse game really was.

   Your enjoyment of this particular tale, told in this particular way, will depend primarily on how forgiving you are, once the tale is told. As for me, I enjoyed it.

            —

    From the author’s “About the Author” Amazon page:

MICHAEL CANFIELD is the author of the crime novels Perfect Likeness, Bad People, and Exhibit A, as well as Red Jacket: A Novel with a Superhero and a horror novel, Pain Thieves. He has published over two dozen mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, stories in Strange Horizons, Spinetingler, Escape Pod, Realms of Fantasy, Talebones, Black Gate, Borderlands, and other places. His novelette “Super-Villains” was reprinted in the prestigious Fantasy: The Best of the Year series, edited by Rich Horton. He divides his time between Seattle and Los Angeles, with frequent side-trips to Vegas.

    This appears to be his first work of short story detective fiction.

FREDERIK POHL “Servant of the People.” First published in Analog SF, February 1983. Collected in Midas World (St, Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1983) and Platinum Pohl (Tor, hardcover, 2003). Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction of the Year #13, edited by Terry Carr (Baen, paperback, August 1984). Nominated for a Hugo for Best Short Story, 1984.

   Sometime in the near future, standing at a point in time circa 1983, a US Congressman, having served in that role for over twenty terms, begins his campaign for yet another election cycle. Although it is becoming harder, he enjoys campaigning, meeting people, kissing babies, endless meals out at greasy diners, the whole bit.

   To his mind, his greatest achievement is having been instrumental in passing a law allowing robots to vote, even those coming fresh off the assembly line.

   Imagine his loving wife’s consternation, then, when they discover his newest opponent is … a robot itself.

   Given this basic premise, I have a feeling that everyone reading this will have their ow ideas of how the story should take place from here. And I also suspect it won’t be very much different from the one I imagined it would be, which in turn was awfully close to the one that SF Grand Master Frederik Pohl wrote.

   Speaking for myself only, the story Pohl wrote is yards better than anything I might have come up with. While not up there at, say a Hemingway level, Pohl was a master of crisp clear prose with a keen visionary and often sardonic  eye on what the future might bring for this country, if not the entire world.

   The only thing wrong with this tale, from my point of view is the premise. Passing a law in this country that would allow robots to vote? No way, no how.

   This is a theoretical exercise only. A “what if” proposition carried to a logical conclusion, and of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. To my mind, it’s precisely what serious science fiction is/was designed to do.

Rating: B plus
   

PostScript: I read this in Terry Carr’s Best of the Year anthology for 1983, published exactly forty years ago. That’s a nice round number. I will have to wait and see, but at the moment I’m planning to  continue working my way through it and reporting back here as I go. Don’t change that dial!

HENRY KANE “The Case of the Murdered Madame.” PI Peter Chambers, Lead story in the collection of the same name: Avon #646, paperback original, 1955. Reprint edition: Signet D2646, paperback, May 1965.

   Both Henry Kane, the author, and Peter Chambers, his most well-known private eye detective character, came onto the scene at the same time, in 1947, first with a handful of stories for Esquire magazine, then a hardcover novel, A Halo for Nobody, from Simon & Schuster. I haven’t followed Kane’s career well enough to state this as more than a working hypothesis, but based only on the scanty evidence I have so far, Peter Chambers’ early adventures seem to combine as well as anyone hard-boiled PI mystery fiction with the older-fashioned traditional detective novel, complete with clues, alibis, and the like.

   Take “The Case of the Murdered Madame,” for example. While not a locked room mystery or an impossible crime in any sense, it is a case in which a murder takes place in a house where there are only a limited number of suspects, each with a common motive – that is to say, the theft of $100,000 in cash the dead woman has made abundantly known to the other tenants of the rooming house catering to theatrical folk living there.

   Peter Chambers’ job: find out who did it.

   The fact that it was a dark rainy night comes into play in twofold fashion, first in terms of limiting the number of suspects, then secondly in providing Chambers with the clue he needs to name the killer.

   The story is too short to provide much in the way of characterization, but the sheer rhythm of Kane’s prose, almost unique in the annals of detective fiction, is a pure plus that adds considerably to the enjoyment of this short but snappy tale.

PostScript: The Avon paperback of the same title appears to have been the first appearance of this story. What caught me by surprise in reading the Signet reprint was that there is no contents page, and therefore no suggestion ahead of time that the book is a collection of three stories, the other two, also cases cracked by Peter Chambers, those two both first appearing in the pages of Manhunt magazine.

   In any case, though, while reading the story, I was thinking it was a novel, and here Peter Chambers was, summing the case up against the killer, and I’m only a third of he way into the book. What’s going on, I thought. What kind of twist is this?

THOMAS M. DISCH “Voices of the Kill.” First published in Full Spectrum, edited by Lou Aronica & Shawna McCarthy (Bantam Spectra, paperback original, September 1988). Reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy: Second Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (St. Martin’s Press, trade paperback, 1989). Collected in The Wall of America (Tachyon, softcover, 2008).

   Thomas M. Disch was an author almost as well-known for his poetry as he was for his unique blend of science fiction and fantasy. While “Voices of the Kill” is a fantasy tale through and through, it is poetry as well, and in a way as opaque to me as most poetry is.

   It is the story of a man who, living alone in a cabin along a stream, falls in love (of sorts) with the flowing water, or (perhaps better said) is seduced by the stream, lying at night as he does in its waters and soothing embrace, listening to it talk to him.

   I do not know why Nixie asks him to place a twenty dollar bill under a stone in its (her?) depths. When William’s cousin Barry comes to visit, the overnight stays in the stream must end. When the two travel down it to its outlet into the sea, Nixie is annoyed.

   And what is the significance of the black woman in a pea-green swimsuit who is playing there with her son on the beach? (She does return.)

   In spite of these and other questions I cannot answer, the effect of this story is one I cannot get out of my head. Good poetry (and fantasy) can have an amazing effect on one’s mind. It is no wonder this was the lead story in the Full Spectrum anthology where it first appeared.

STUART PALMER & CRAIG RICE “Once Upon a Train.” Hildegarde Withers & John J. Malone. First appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, October 1950. Original title or published later as “Loco Motive.” Collected in People vs. Withers & Malone (Simon & Schuster, 1953; Award paperback, 1965). Filmed as  Mrs. O’Malley and Mr. Malone (MGM, 1950, with Marjorie Main as Harriet “Hattie” O’Malley and James Whitmore as John J. Malone).

   In Ellery Queen’s introduction to the collection of Withers-Malone stories, of which there were six, they say that this was the first known collaboration between two mystery writers on a tale in which their respective primary characters showed up to solve a case together. This could  very easily be true.

   When Malone, a somewhat disreputable Chicago lawyer finds that his most recent client, a city official accused of embezzling $30,000 from municipal funds, and a man he has just gotten off from  those charges, is on a train headed for New York City — and  without paying him — what is there to do rush to the station and board the very same train.

   Along with several other people crying for his scalp, as it is clear that the man’s innocence is still very much in doubt.  It is no wonder that his body is found at length very much dead. And in whose train compartment? None other than the horse-faced schoolteacher Miss Withers, whose accommodation adjoins Mr. Malone’s.. As they furiously move the body back and forth between their separate compartments as needed, which  is often,  they still manage to find time to solve the case together.

   Which case is one the screwballiest detective stories you can imagine, with a laugh or a chuckle every other paragraph, if not oftener.

   When they made a movie out of this, they had to change Miss Withers name to Mrs. O’Malley for copyright reasons, and no, Marjorie Main is not my idea of Miss Withers, either, but James Whitmore did passably well as Mr. Malone, if not better.

JOHN D. MacDONALD “Ring Around the Redhead.” First published in Startling Stories, November 1948. First reprinted in Science-Fiction Adventures in Dimension, edited by Groff Conklin (Vanguard Press, hardcover, 1953). First collected in Other Times, Other Worlds (Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback original, October 1978).

   I don’t imagine that any young SF reader coming across this story in the (at the time) most recent issue of Startling Stories had any idea that the author would become rich and famous a few years later as the John D. MacDonald you and I know today as, for example, the author of the series of mystery novels for which he is most remembered, thous about “salvage expert” Travis McGee.

   Nor did, I suppose, those fans of the Travis McGee books happen to know that he started out writing SF stories — as well as mysteries — for the pulp magazines of the late 1940s. I don’t know if all of his early SF work were later collected in Other Times, Other Worlds (1978), but there are sixteen of them, and ones MacDonald much have felt worth reprinting at the time.

   â€œRing Around the Redhead” is, well, one of them, and it begins with a defendant in court having been accused of murdering his next door neighbor, and in a most vicious fashion: the dead man had been decapitated as if by a mammoth pair of tin snips. When the defendant, an amateur tinkerer, gets to tell his story to the jury, it really is quite a story. Having strangely discovered a mysterious ring in his workshop in the basement, he learns by trial and error that by reaching through it, he can bring back, among other items, valuable jewels, for example. (This is why he is seen arguing with the neighbor, who has discovered this.)

   One day, then, he brings a beautiful girl back through the ring, a redhead, who is wearing next to nothing but strangely still something.

   Hence the title of the story, which has no other objective than to be fun and amusing. No deep scientific principles are discussed in this tale. What this tale reminded me of, more than anything else, are the SF stories very common back in the early 30s, based on speculation but not a whole lot of down-to-earth physics – but, in this case, a tale that’s a whole lot better written.

   Nonetheless, without a solid background in science, JDM must have decided that science fiction was not a field where he had much of a future. Considering how things worked out for him, this was a wise choice.

PHILIP K. DICK “The Defenders.” Novelet. First published in Galaxy SF, January 1953. First reprinted in Invasion of the Robots, edited by Roger Elwood (Paperback Library, April 1965). First collected in The Book of Philip K. Dick (Daw, paperback original, February 1973). Along with two of Dick’s other stories, “The Mold of Yancy” and “The Unreconstructed M,” the basis for his novel The Penultimate Truth (Belmont, paperback original, 1964).

   The story begins with a married couple unhappily having breakfast together. The war news is good, but there is an uneasiness to their conversation that suggests that not all is well. Gradually it is revealed they are several miles underground, and the war on the surface is being fought with robots (called leadies) on each side. Because of uncontrolled radiation, the Earth itself is uninhabitable.

   Strangely enough, the husband is called into his lab to learn that one of the leadies that has been brought down for a progress report is not radioactive after all. Baffled, a team including our protagonist is sent to the surface to investigate.

   I will not spoil your enjoyment of this story by telling you what they learn, but if you have read enough of Philip K. Dick’s work, I imagine you can guess what the twist is well enough on your own.

   Of course, though, that’s the point of the story, but what Dick also manages to do is describe living conditions not on, but inside the Earth so well that we, the reader, can feel the oppression of a life that is so subtly unbearable, although it has been made as palatable as technology can do it.

   It’s short for a novelette, only 25 pages long, but I think it was long enough to make a noticeable impression on SF readers of the day. My only personal unhappiness with it is that the ending seemed to me to be an overly happy one. To me, it was a case of too quick, too soon.