Thu 15 Aug 2019
PAUL AYRES – Dead Heat. Bell, hardcover, 1950. No paperback edition.
I am always very hesitant in saying that any book is the first and/or only one in a particular category, but off the top of my head, I don’t know of any other mystery novel that was based on a radio series, that being Casey Crime Photographer, which was of course based on the character created by George Harmon Coxe.
I don’t know how this book happened to come about. Perhaps Randy Cox, our resident expert on all things Casey, will leave a comment to tell us more. As for the author, one supposedly Paul Ayres, he was in real life writer Edward S. Aarons, of Gold Medal’s “Assignment” series fame. In 1950, however, he’d written only one book under his own name; before then he was always Edward Ronns.
You have to be of a certain age to have listened to the radio when the program was on the air. It ended in 1955 — after having started in 1943 — but since we did not have a local CBS outlet nearby when I was young, I never heard it until I started collecting OTR shows on tape in the mid-70s. Nonetheless, the book brought back quite a few memories from that later time and era:
The characters were Casey, of course; his girl friend Ann Williams, who also worked for the Morning Express; and Captain Logan of Homicide. Every so often the action stops and they all find their way to the Blue Note cafe, where Ethelbert was the bartender and Herman played the piano.
From the title and cover image above you might possibly guess that Dead Heat takes place in the world of horse racing, and it does, but it also takes place i the dead of summer, and the whole city of Boston is sweltering in the heat. Murdered is a jockey who has made a mess of his two currently overlapping love affairs, but who is also known for being scrupulously honest. This makes the timing of his death very suspicious: it’s before a race that if he were riding, he’d be a cinch to win.
Aarons’ prose is clean and uncluttered, very descriptive, and since the plot is not all that complicated, the book takes no time at all to read. It probably isn’t as rewarding as one of Coxe’s own stories about Casey, but I enjoyed it immensely.
August 16th, 2019 at 5:39 pm
Which part of the country was missing a CBS radio station? (I started paying attention to such things as networks on television around 1970, and radio a little later…but from 1969 onward I’ve never not lived in or near a major urban market with all the potential networks pretty much represented (the proliferation of little broadcast tv networks and their not being picked up by Verizon cable has cut back into that, What Must Carry?, but I never could relate to those who would go on about having Just Three Channels on tv…there were always eight or more where I lived…and I’m surprised how many people managed to not live near a PBS nor independent commercial station…
The only book that comes to mind is a three-script prosification from THE CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER, STRANGE TALES FROM…, attributed to Himan Brown and published by Popular Library in ’76. But I suspect the likes of ONE MAN’S FAMILY had some sort of book tie-in earlier…and perhaps some of the INNER SANCTUM NOVELS series actually had some sort of tie to the series, among CF items.
August 16th, 2019 at 6:16 pm
Todd
You shouldn’t underestimate the paucity of network radio stations in (I suspect) what is flyover country now. In order to listen to a CBS station when I was growing up in northern lower Michigan, I had to listen to KMOX in St Louis. I think it was called a clear channel station with a huge powerful signal that no other station could use. (I may be quite wrong about this.)
I remember listening to TARZAN on the radio this way, but as a kid I found it only by accident and had to remember when it was on and how to set the dial (very carefully) for the right time and frequency. This would have been the early 50s.
You are quite right about the book of stories based on the CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER. I may still have a copy. Thanks for reminding me. I’d never have come up with that one on my own!
August 16th, 2019 at 8:03 pm
In much of the country radio stations are still pretty sparse, or as in parts of West Texas still blasted off the airwaves by the huge 50 and 100 thousand watt stations in major markets and blasting Mariachi music from Chihuahua in Mexico.
Most big cities had the various networks, but many of those were hard to pick up from as little as fifty or sixty miles away.
We got our first television in 1951, and there was one television station. Well into the sixties and the advent of cable there were only five stations in the major Dallas/Fort Worth area and one tiny one in Sherman you could pick up if you held your breath and the antenna right.
There are still places in rural America that are pretty much “dead” areas where there is limited choice for radio stations unless you have WiFi.
I recall having the measles at five and discovering radio, the Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, Six Shooter, and others, but by then radio drama was dying out and there were limited choices if you didn’t live close to a major market.
Aarons seems a good choice to follow Coxe. There are other radio novelizations, but they tend to be of kids series like Captain Midnight and not adult series.
August 16th, 2019 at 11:17 pm
I’m not really certain how this book came about. Even George didn’t remember when I spoke with him in 1971. I know I had a copy of it and it went with the rest of my Coxe Collection when most of my books went to the University of Minnesota a few years ago. As I recall, George supposed that someone at CBS may have thought it would be a good idea to have a book to help publicize the radio show. I included a synopsis of the book in my Flashgun Casey book. (If anyone does not have a copy there are signed copies available from Dan Magnuson at MLC Books. Google it and see what comes up.)
I remember listening to Crime Photographer when it originally aired. I spent a lot of my childhood, high school and college years listening to dramatic radio, what is now called Old Time Radio, and that attracted me to George Harmon Coxe’s mysteries when I began collecting detective stories.
In recent years I have added CDs of Herman Chittison’s jazz piano to my shelves and I think of Casey whenever I listen to them.
August 17th, 2019 at 11:48 am
I was born in Pittsburg Kansas in 1954. I don’t remember listening to fiction stories on radio until I started collecting OTR in the 70s. We had two local TV stations up into the early 1960s – one was CBS and the other had NBC, ABC, and other programming.
My Mom’s family was one of the first to own a TV in town during the early 50s. Many of her dates were ruined when the boy would spot the TV set and he and her father would watch static and snow from the area’s only station in Kansas City.
I have photos of me as a baby with the TV set in the background.
During the early 50s (memory says 1952) the FCC froze the start of new TV stations so it took awhile for some areas to get coverage. In fact the early ratings advertisers were the most interested in were the percentage of the country the TV series reached (covered).
4. Randy, let me know if your book on Casey ever is available as a e-book. My hands are too weak to hold many objects including print books and my eyes need my 27 inch Mac screen to allow me to read the type (for a variety of boring reasons glasses don’t work for me).
August 17th, 2019 at 10:58 pm
Michaels, My book was published in 2005 and is long out of print so I don’t think an e-book will ever appear. I am truly sorry about that.
August 19th, 2019 at 8:42 am
Before his name change, “Ronns” produced, as the best pulpsters could, some fairly entertaining short stuff:
https://carrdickson.blogspot.com/2015/11/his-bullet-knocked-my-hat-off-my-head.html
https://carrdickson.blogspot.com/2017/01/and-we-all-played-ring-around-rosy.html
August 19th, 2019 at 11:24 am
Great posts, Mike. Thanks for the links!