Sat 27 Oct 2018
Pulp PI Stories I’m Reading: FREDERICK NEBEL “Red Hot.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[8] Comments
FREDERICK NEBEL “Red Hot.” Jack Cardigan #27. Short story. Dime Detective, July 1, 1934. First collected in The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 3: 1934-35 (Altus Press, 2012). Reprinted in The Big Book of Female Detectives, edited by Otto Penzler (Black Lizard, 2018).
Private eye Jack Cardigan appeared in some 44 hard-boiled tales published in Dime Detective Magazine between 1931 and 1937. Assisting him in many of his cases was Patricia Steward, sometimes in major ways. (I am not clear as to what her status actually was in the Cosmos Agency. Was she his secretary, or was she actually something more than that?)
In “Red Hot,” Cardigan is hired by a client to find his nephew who left his family in bad standing, but now that his father has died, he is needed to be present for the reading of the will. Cardigan makes short work of finding the nephew, but the man flat out refuses to go back with his uncle.
When Cardigan reports to the uncle, he assumes the man will confront his nephew directly, but the next morning Cardigan learns that the uncle has disappeared. Things happen very quickly from this point on, but not only is this a fast-moving story, it’s well plotted, too, ending in a most satisfactory fashion. (Many pulp yarns start off with a bang only to flag off badly at the end.)
I read this one in the Penzler anthology, another giant doorstop of a book that’s well worth the money. I do question why this particular Cardigan story was used, though. Pat Steward is present throughout, but truth be told, besides being on hand to offer comfort to the nephew’s wife, she has very little to do.
October 27th, 2018 at 3:58 pm
Penzler’s pulp section of the Big Book leaves a number of female detectives out. Certainly he should have had Carey Cashin, and Violet Dade, who were detectives in their own right. Or what about the daughter of Ray Cummings’ Dr. Feather. She does most of the crime scene analyst while her father gets all the credit.
October 27th, 2018 at 4:15 pm
You’re quite right, Brian. U was thinking that Penzler might have chosen a better Cardigan story, but why choose one at all when there are, as you say, so many others a lot more deserving.
October 27th, 2018 at 3:59 pm
Nebel is one of my favorites and one of the best hard boiled writers that wrote for BLACK MASK and DIME DETECTIVE. Six years ago I did a review of the first Cardigan collection published by Altus Press:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=16157
These four volumes collecting the Cardigan series are among the best fiction reprinted by Altus Press.
October 27th, 2018 at 4:19 pm
Walker
You’re right. Altus Press has done pulp collectors big, big favors with all of their reprint pulp collections. For me, it’s meant that I’ve been able to start selling off many of pulps, and still have the best of the best to read.
October 27th, 2018 at 7:49 pm
For those of you with a yearn for Cardigan and lesser budgets Internet Archive has a few issues of DIME DETECTIVE with Cardigan stories available to read or download for free.
As I recall Steward is an operative of the Agency, though mostly used as support for Cargigan. I don’t recall any cases where she worked on her own. In the real world most agencies had female operatives. At least she’s not another tough but screwball reporter.
Ironically for an anthology of female detectives Kennedy and McBride might have been a better choice since on screen Kennedy had a sex change and became Torchy Blaine.
As for why a Nebel story at all, the reason is as simple as the fact Nebel is a “name” where some of the pulpsters with female leads aren’t quite in the same league. Even when you are your own publisher editors still have to think about name recognition and not just theme when doing any anthology.
October 27th, 2018 at 10:01 pm
There’s a lot of merit in your suggestion, David, and it’s one that hadn’t occurred to me.
I guess I’d respond, though, by pointing out that to the general public, any name value that Nebel might have is practically nil. Only a small segment of the population, which would include anyone who’s reading this right now, have any idea who he was.
For what it’s worth, the names mentioned on the front cover are:
Mary Roberts Rinehart
Agatha Christie
Sara Paretsky
Laura Lippman
Sue Grafton
Joyce Carol Oates
October 28th, 2018 at 7:24 pm
Nebel still has a name with pulp collectors, who are the core buyers for some of these anthologies, and he is also one of the better writers more likely to spin prose modern readers will respond to. Anthologies don’t usually expect to get much in ways of sales outside of their target audience and if you don’t hit the big names in the general area you are dealing with it hurts sales, which is why certain names almost always appear and others fade and disappear.
October 28th, 2018 at 7:59 pm
You’re quite quite. The general public cannot possibly be the target population for a book like this.