Sat 2 Feb 2019
Pulp Stories I’m Reading: FREDERICK C. DAVIS “Death to the Witness.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[6] Comments
FREDERICK C. DAVIS “Death to the Witness.” Show-Me McGee #6. Novelette. First published in Detective Fiction Weekly, 24 February 1934. Advertised as “The Hand of Doom” on the front cover. Published separately in the UK in paperback by Sharman Ellis Ltd., sometime in the 1930s.
Almost without fail a series character in the old pulp magazines had to have a gimmick — something that made him different from all of the others, something that made him stand out in the reader’s mind so that they’d recognize him when they came across the next of his adventures.
Some of these gimmicks were awfully minor ones, though. Show-Me McGee’s was exactly that. Hailing from the “Show Me” state of Missouri, Detective Lieutenant John McGee was one of those policemen who had to see the evidence and be convinced of what it told him before he ever went into action.
As gimmicks so, this is a mere trifle. I have an idea that by the time this one came out, the sixth in the series, even the author had gotten tired of it or he’d run out of ways to build it into the stories he was writing. There’s only one paragraph in this one that it’s really brought up.
And speaking of the story, this one’s about a cleaning lady in a large office building who witnesses a murder, one committed by a mysterious criminal mastermind, and she is the only one who can identify him. Trouble is, she’s in a coma in a hospital bed, and the killer has ordered all the members of his gang to get in and bump her off.
The title on the cover, “The Hand of Doom,” is actually the more appropriate one, and in a way, in 1934, it may have been science fictional. Show Me McGee manages to save the day by the judicious use of liquid oxygen, freezing the killer’s hand so that it breaks off just before he is able to detonate several sticks of dynamite.
Well, howdy. As perhaps you can tell, this is a story that’s filled with action from beginning to end. Even if this happens to be a mug of your favorite brew, it’s deeply flawed, though. Why, you might ask, even at the time, didn’t the killer knock off the cleaning lady as soon as he saw that she had seen him? He slugs her on the head instead, and dumps her into a nearby closet. To his regret later on — for the rest of the story, in fact.
The Show-Me McGee series —
Hell on Wheels (nv) Detective Fiction Weekly Sep 30 1933
Murder Without Motive (nv) Detective Fiction Weekly Oct 7 1933 (*)
The Killer in the Tower (ss) Detective Fiction Weekly Nov 18 1933
The Devil’s Dozen (nv) Detective Fiction Weekly Dec 2 1933 (*)
The Three Doctor Jekylls (nv) Detective Fiction Weekly Dec 30 1933
Death to the Witness (nv) Detective Fiction Weekly Feb 24 1934 (*)
Stone Dead (nv) Detective Fiction Weekly Jun 9 1934
The Eye in the Wall (nv) Detective Fiction Weekly Jul 21 1934
(*) Reprinted by Sharman Ellis Ltd. in the UK, probably all as 64 page paperbacks. Fellow blogger Morgan Wallace has recently posted a long review of The Devil’s Dozen, which also includes a photo image of the cover. Follow the link.
February 2nd, 2019 at 12:47 am
Davis was often much better than this sounds, even in the Moon Man stories. He wrote a few good books published in hardcover in the Post War era that were good.
February 2nd, 2019 at 7:52 am
I don’t know any biographical details about Davis. Perhaps someone else can say more. I knew him first as the author of his detective novels that came out in hardcover, most if not all for the Doubleday Crime Club. There may have been 15 or 20, an as you say, David, some of them were quite good. It was only later that I learned that had also written hundreds of pulp stories, including most of the early Operator #5 novels and the outrageously bizarre Moon Man tales in which the crime-solving hero caught crooks by running around with a fish bowl made of one-way glass on his head.
February 2nd, 2019 at 1:33 pm
Steve – My two cents’ worth about Davis:
https://carrdickson.blogspot.com/2014/01/plentifully-supplied-with-plot.html
In the five intervening years since that posting, several of those links are now D.O.A. – surprise!
February 2nd, 2019 at 5:56 pm
Thanks for the link, Mike. I see you saw that he wrote over a thousand stories for the pulps. Without taking the time to count them myself. In my previous comment I bailed out and said only “hundreds.” I’m easily convinced that your number is right.
February 2nd, 2019 at 11:15 pm
Fred Davis’ granddaughter, Karen Cunningham, has been a regular at Pulpcon and Pulpfest for several years now. I sold her some Fred Davis cancelled checks which were from the files of Popular Publications. She also has bought many pulps where he appeared as an author.
When I first met her on an elevator I was impressed by the Fred Davis shirt that she had on. The front was a photo of Davis, surrounded by several images of pulps that he had stories in and on the back were titles stories and listings of magazines.
She eventually gave me the T-shirt and I wear it once a year at the pulp convention. It’s the best pulp related T-shirt that I’ve ever seen. Usually they are just pulp covers. Needless to say I have a couple dozen which I only wear at the conventions. I can’t wear them anywhere else because people just react in a negative way when they see a weird menace cover shirt or images of damsels in distress.
February 3rd, 2019 at 11:49 am
I never met Karen at a pulp show, only saw her once at a distance. It’s great that she think enough of her grandfather’s work that she’s been a regular attendee. Lots of families couldn’t care less, or so I’ve heard.