Wed 19 Nov 2014
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: ROBERT J. CASEY – Hot Ice.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[9] Comments
ROBERT J. CASEY – Hot Ice. Bobbs-Merrill, hardcover, 1933. Greenberg, reprint hardcover, no date stated. Prize Mystery Novels #4, digest-sized paperback, 1943.
Robert J. Casey’s Hot Ice was something I picked up at an antique store just to be nice and let it sit on my TBR shelf for five or ten years till I finally seized it in fit of read-it-or-rid-of-it. Well, it’s not a keeper, but I’m glad I took the time for this charming, hard-boiled tale of double-cross and murder in the stolen gem market.
It features Joseph Crewe, a Chicago police detective, and an ex-reporter named Jim Sands as an engaging pair of sleuths following a trail of unrelated (or are they?) murders across the city, and author Casey uses a ploy here you don’t see very often: we all know how irritating it is when an author provides information to the detective and withholds it from the reader (she bent down and picked something off the floor, tucking it carefully in her pocket. “I’ll pull this out in the last chapter,” she smiled knowingly) but Casey provides information to the reader that the sleuths have to puzzle out for themselves (or will they?) and there’s some dandy suspense engendered watching them stumble towards it, plus a few added twists as the reader and detectives are both faced with the mystery of a murdered milkman who finished his route post mortem.
The Jim Sands series —
The Secret of Thirty-Seven Hardy Street. Bobbs, 1929.
The Secret of the Bungalow. Bobbs, 1930.
News Reel. Bobbs, 1932.
Hot Ice. Bobbs, 1933.
The Third Owl. Bobbs, 1934.
Editorial Comment: Hubin does not say whether Joseph Crewe is in all of these novels or not. According to a limited Google search, he is in some of them.
November 19th, 2014 at 2:37 pm
I’ll catch up to the review in a minute Dan, I’m still in shock over that $2 for a hardcover book.
November 19th, 2014 at 10:30 pm
You’ve got very good eyes, David, to have read that awfully small print. I’m fairly sure that $2 for a hardcover was pretty much the standard at the time.
If you’d like to buy a copy now, the Bobbs-Merrill edition in jacket, there’s one on Abebooks for $275.00, both the book and dj described as being in Very Good condition. I don’t think it’s going to fly out the door at that price, though. If one without a jacket would suffice, I see one offered at $20.
I know I have the paperback of this one. If I have the hardcover, it would be in a box of mysteries I haven’t cataloged in yet. Dan makes the book sound a whole lot better than I expected, after all these years I’ve had the paperback.
November 19th, 2014 at 10:56 pm
I recall $4.95 hardcovers in the early sixties and being upset when they hit $7.95. They were in the $14.95 range only a short time before they leaped to $17.95.
Now they are pushing thirty though many bestsellers can be found discounted to just at or over $20.
I read fewer new books these days because I would rather spend the money on something worth while I know I will like than risk a disappointment. Of course Hastings, the Dollar Store, and various outlets have heavily discounted remainders if you don’t mind waiting a year or more for titles. Even most e-books are ridiculously overpriced for nothing but an electronic signal.
I’m willing to bet the author wouldn’t pay over $200 for this one, but Dan does make it sound interesting since I’m a sucker for hard boiled with a newspaper background. With that many titles though and a major publisher and at least digest republication I’m curious why I don’t really know anything about Casey or the series.
But then Kurt Steel’s Hank Heyer was well enough known to merit at least one movie adaptation and very well written and virtually unknown today with I think only one early paperback outing.
November 20th, 2014 at 10:17 am
Thank you for covering this genuinely obscure writer.
I’ve had a cheap old copy of “The Secret of Thirty-Seven Hardy Street” for decades. But have never written about it. Have got to get busy!
This book has both Jim Sands and Joseph Crewe.
November 20th, 2014 at 12:58 pm
When I started buying books a novel was always $2 or $2.50. I understand that pocket Books didn’t put prices on their original publications because they all cost 25 cents.
In Elementary School I once saw a children’s picture book priced at over $10 and I thought that was outrageous!
Many years later I remember a used book store in New York City that seemed to price all their fiction at $2.50.
November 20th, 2014 at 6:50 pm
Randy,
Yeah but when you started buying books folks thought they’d just be a passing fad
November 21st, 2014 at 11:29 am
Dan,
I knew they wouldn’t catch on 🙂
November 21st, 2014 at 1:03 pm
Sounds good enough for me to spring for the $2.50 edition, now discounted to $1.50. Might be hard to find, though. Um, I’d guess somehow the gems were in the milk bottles?
November 21st, 2014 at 8:31 pm
You’d guess wrong.