THE ILLUSTRATED DETECTIVE MAGAZINE. September 1931; 10¢, 122pp, 9″ x 12″.

   This slick magazine distributed through Woolworths and published by Tower Books, is surely one of the strangest detective magazines of that or any other era. The full title includes The Illustrated Detective Magazine, Thrilling and Romantic Mysteries of Real Life, billed as “The Most Unusual Detective Magazine You Can Buy at any Price.”

   The magazine was aimed at women running from 1929 to 1932 and changed its title after thirty three issues to Mystery. Not all the stories are romantic in nature, though the bias in favor of women readers is fairly evident.

   The Illustrated Detective Magazine is an odd mix of disparate material. There are true crime and confession-style articles like “The Woman Who Paid With Her Life” by ‘a Police Official’ about the murder of blackmailer Vivian Gordon; “The Iron Czar” by Jim Roberts about early New York gangster Iron Man Becker; and “He Risked All for the Thrilling Chance,” asking what happened to the crusading detective/reporter of an earlier age, as well as beauty and cooking aids and articles on scientific detection.

   The issue’s fiction opens with a story called “Received Payment,” unbilled to any author but described as ‘another’ crime busting account of Mary Shane, who turns out to be an attractive semi-independent sleuth in this case helping to put bootleggers out of business who sell poisoned bathtub gin. It’s a fairly tough little story and Mary Shane tough as nails in her underworld dealings, if not particularly realistic or believable. It’s closer to the dime novel than hard boiled. This and some other features are illustrated with dramatized photographs while some have black and white illustrations, mostly handsomely done in wash rather than line, thanks to the slicker paper.

   This issue features the opening installment of “The Hollywood Bridal Night Murder” by Octavius Roy Cohen, featuring his popular fat jovial canny sleuth Jim Hanvey. Cohen was a sure seller on the front of magazines of the period, and Hanvey was popular enough to have two film outings. It’s standard Cohen fare, meaning entertaining but nothing special. You won’t be all that driven to find the later installments or the book publication unless you are an obsessive sort.

   The second big story in the issue is “The Egyptian Necklace” by R. T. M. Scott, an adventure of Aurelius Smith, a private detective who would form the basis for Richard Wentworth and the Spider when Scott wrote the first entry in that series. While the story is dated, it shows the strengths and weaknesses of the Smith series and Scott’s writing, and is the most pulp-like of the stories in this issue. It’s probably the story most readers here will enjoy the most, with its hints of melodrama and mystery from the East.

   Major fiction entry number three is a humorous tale by Ellis Parker Butler, “The Heckly Hill Murder” featuring ‘Oliver Spotts, the Near Detective of Mud Cove, Long Island.’ It is a moderately amusing romp by a well known humorist of his time, but mindful too that whimsey doesn’t always survive the passage of time. It shows Butler’s talents to good effect but how a modern reader reacts to it is anyone’s guess.

   The rest of the magazine includes a sort of fictionalized expose called “The Queen of the Beggars” by James Jeffrey O’Brien, about a young man who runs afoul to the beautiful and dangerous self styled ‘queen’ of the big city beggars. There are also some rather sensational ‘true confession’ pieces, a bit on code-breaking, a plea and offer of a $1,000 reward for information leading to the discovery of Judge Crater, and articles on fingerprinting and other aspects of police work, interspersed with ads for Woolworths, articles sold at Woolworths, and publications of Tower Books.

   All in all it is a very odd little magazine, but a pretty good bargain for a dime if you happened to be shopping in Woolworths. This was the third issue, and it continued until 1932 in more or less the same vein. It is certainly one of the stranger magazines of its type I’ve run across.