Mon 25 Mar 2019
Pulp Stories I’m Reading: C. S. MONTAYNE “The Perfect Crime.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Reviews[5] Comments
C. S. MONTAYNE “The Perfect Crime.” Short story. Rider Lott #1. First appeared in Black Mask, July 1920 (Vol.1, No.4). Reprinted in The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage Crime, softcover, November 2007).
Unless I’m very much mistaken, not only was this Rider Lott’s first appearance, it was also his last. Which is as it should be, since doesn’t the old saying go, “Crime Does Not Pay”? The story is included in “The Villains” section of Otto Penzler’s book, but to tell you the truth, Rider Lott is one very minor villain indeed.
His modus operandi in “The Perfect Crime” is to recruit two others, one male and one female, to commit the crime of burglary for him, while he takes a third of the loot for being the mastermind behind the plot. But even though he warns his two underlings to be extra cautious in leaving no clues behind them, it goes without saying that if you want to commit the perfect crime, you’d be better off doing it yourself.
As I suggested earlier, this is not a major piece of work. To me it’s historically significant because I’m fairly sure this is the earliest story in the long run of Black Mask I’ve ever read. Otherwise I think I’d rather have read one of Montayne’s stories about one of his other villains, namely a certain jewel thief by the name of Captain Valentine, a gentleman who appeared in a total of ten Black Mask stories, as Otto tells us in his introduction to this tale, plus one novel, Moons in Gold (1936).
March 25th, 2019 at 10:19 pm
Back in the 1970’s when it was possible to buy the early issues of BLACK MASK for a few dollars, I read several stories and they were not that interesting at all. The magazine did not really become interesting until Daly and Hammett started writing hard boiled fiction around 1923 and 1924.
Then Joe Shaw became editor in 1926 and he really encouraged all the writers to write in the hard boiled tradition especially as shown by the example of Dashiell Hammett. Daly was popular with the readers also but did not have the literary impact of Hammett. Almost a hundred years later Hammett is still regarded as one of the very best of the writers to come from the pulps.
March 25th, 2019 at 10:40 pm
Montayne wrote hundreds of stories for the pulps and filled a lot of pages for a lot of magazines, but no one would ever confuse him with Dashiell Hammett.
March 25th, 2019 at 11:37 pm
You are right about Montayne not being confused with Hammett. I just looked at The Fiction Mags Index and Montayne made a living writing mainly for the lower end pulp markets. He wrote hundreds of stories, almost all mediocre or of little interest. Starting in the teens he wrote for many minor magazines and continued writing for decades right up to the end in 1950. He appears to be an example of the poor writer somehow making a living writing for the pulps.
March 26th, 2019 at 10:43 am
Montayne started writing for the pulps in 1913 with a story in SNAPPY STORIES and continued in a similar light vein for several years for that magazine and others such as BREEZY STORIES and PARISIENNE MONTHLY. He did get published several times in the early BLACK MASK, but he seems to have been finished there by 1925 when the hard-boiled stories began to take over. He died in 1948, ending up his career writing for THRILLING DETECTIVE and Phantom Detective novels for the latter’s magazine.
March 27th, 2019 at 4:56 pm
The early MASK is hardly the classic it became. Quite a few early issues are available at various sites for free download.