Sat 19 Jun 2021
Pulp Stories I’m Reading: VINCENT STARRETT “Footsteps of Fearâ€.
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[7] Comments
VINCENT STARRETT “Footsteps of Fear.†First published in The Black Mask, April 1920. Collected in The Quick and the Dead (Arkham House, hardcover, 1965). Reprinted in The Big Book of Rogues and Villains, edited by Otto Penzler (Black Lizard, softcover, 2017).
Dr. Loxley has it made, or so he thinks. He has killed his wife Lora, but the police are not on his trail – not as the killer, that is. He made his plans well in advance, and to all intents and purposes is considered dead as well, as he (under his own name) has completely vanished. But under a new name and a new profession, he is doing quite well: as the frosted glass door outside his outer office says, he is now William Drayham, Rare Books, Hours by Appointment.
He is friends with his neighbors on the same floor, and he does not need to leave his building. It has all the amenities he needs: restaurants, barber shops, and so on. And as a big plus, the sign on the door was “formidable enough to frighten away casual visitors.â€
This may have been an inside joke included here on the part of the author, a well known bookman of his era. Stories in this very first issue of Black Mask were far from the hardboiled fare for which it later became famous.
It is, however, reminiscent of one that magazine’s better known writers, Cornell Woolrich, with a twist in the ending that brings a severe comeuppance to the former Dr. Loxley. In spite of the new name and facial features, he becomes more and more convinced that his plans have fallen short, and a zinger of an ending worthy of a story on Alfred Hitchcock’s television show ensues, well thirty or forty years ahead of its time.
Here below is a list of the other stories in that same issue of Black Mask, taken from the online Crime Fiction Index. Only Harold Ward’s name, he being a long time pulpster, is vaguely familiar to me. I’m going out on a limb here, without reading any of the other tales, but I suspect none of the others have anything very much to offer modern day readers. This one by Starrett may be the only one that’s ever been reprinted.
The Black Mask [Vol. I No. 1, April 1920]
Who and Why? · J. Frederic Thorne
The Stolen Soul · Harold Ward
The House Across the Way · Sarah Harbine Weaver
The Peculiar Affair at the Axminster · Julian Kilman
The Puzzle of the Hand · Stewart Wells
Piracy · Harry C. Hervey, Jr.
The Mysterious Package · David E. Harriman & John I. Pearce, Jr.
A Small Blister · David Morrison
Hands Up! · Ray St. Vrain
Footsteps of Fear · Vincent Starrett
The Dead and the Quick · Gertrude Brooke Hamilton
The Long Arm of Malfero · Edgar Daniel Kramer
June 19th, 2021 at 8:18 pm
Hard to think of Starrett as one of the Black Mask Boys, though of course the magazine had been around a while before the revolution that made it.
June 19th, 2021 at 8:31 pm
Maybe two and a half years. From Wikipedia, for dates:
“[Carroll John] Daly has been credited with creating the first hard-boiled story, “The False Burton Combs”, published in Black Mask magazine in December 1922, followed closely by “It’s All in the Game” (Black Mask, April 1923) and the PI story “Three Gun Terry” (Black Mask, May 1923).”
June 21st, 2021 at 7:07 am
The early years of Black Mask contain very little of interest except for Hammett and Daly. Joseph Shaw took over as editor in 1926 and encouraged writers to imitate Hammett. Then the magazine really took off and published many hard boiled and excellent stories by several writers.
June 21st, 2021 at 9:15 am
Seems interesting. Is the story available online?
June 21st, 2021 at 9:32 am
Now that’s a good question. I went looking and came up empty. But I did discover that it was included in THE QUICK AND THE DEAD, a collection of Starrett’s stories published by Arkham House.
If anyone can find out more, let us know!
June 23rd, 2021 at 11:06 am
Nobody looks at the opening graf, apparently …
Was I the only one who noticed that this story is in Otto Penzler’s Big Book Of Rogues And Villains?
Which is where I located it – within about two minutes of reading this post?
Of course, I’m not looking for a Collector’s Item (that I can turn over for a profit somewhere down the line); I just wanted a reading copy – and since I had the Big Book anyway, I already had it!
Check your shelves, everybody – you might be surprised at what you’ve got already – without even knowing it!
June 23rd, 2021 at 11:57 am
You’re certainly right about that, Mike. I guess I assumed that everyone had seen the reference to the Big Book and were looking for a cheaper way to read only the one story. Of course with all of the other stories in the same book, you do get your money’s worth. They don’t call these books Penzler has been doing “Big Books” for no reason!