Tue 17 May 2022
The Stories in Ron Goulart’s Book THE HARDBOILED DICKS, Ranked.
Posted by Steve under General[9] Comments
Now that I’ve re-read all of the stories in Ron Goulart’s anthology The Hardboiled Dicks, and posted reviews of each of them on this blog, I’ve decided to rank them, not in terms of how much I liked them, but in terms of their relative hardboiledness, if such were really a word. Your opinion may vary:
LESTER DENT “Angelfish.â€
NORBERT DAVIS “Don’t Give Your Right Name.â€
FREDERICK NEBEL “Winter Kill.â€
RAOUL WHITFIELD “China Man.â€
JOHN K. BUTLER “The Saint in Silver.â€
FRANK GRUBER “Death on Eagle’s Crag.â€
RICHARD SALE “A Nose for News.â€
ERLE STANLEY GARDNER “The Bird in the Hand.â€
May 17th, 2022 at 10:12 am
What would your ranking be from the standpoint of personal enjoyment?
May 17th, 2022 at 12:22 pm
For some strange reason, just about the same. All 6.5 or better. And you?
May 17th, 2022 at 12:56 pm
I haven’t made my way all the way thru it yet. In terms of those I’ve read, Angelfish is top notch and can stand with just about anything by anybody. Then Sale and Whitfield, for their writing chops if nothing else. I wanna love Davis more than I do. I really do. But so far Carstairs is my favorite and he doesn’t know how to talk. And I feel bad that Davis killed himself, but it’s not my fault. Butler’s ending ruined it for me. So at this point, Butler’s coming in last so far. Still need to read the Gruber and Gardner.
May 17th, 2022 at 1:06 pm
I see I left out nebel. Haven’t read that one either. But your review made my desire to read that one extremely negligible. I’m not a fan of Nebel even though I’m supposed to be. I’ve only read 6 Deadly Dames and maybe one of the Cardigans. I just find Donahue too much of a tough guy without the necessary frailty. He’s like Sam Spade without a sense of humor. I don’t find myself rooting for him, which is a problem.
May 17th, 2022 at 7:28 pm
I agree with the ranking in this case though oddly if I was ranking the writers overall and not just these stories Dent would be at the bottom with Butler, Davis, Gruber, in the middle and Whitfield at the top followed by Nebel and Gardner.
Based on this anthology alone though I agree.
May 17th, 2022 at 10:20 pm
Of course Goulart had limits on the number of stories and how long they could be but Paul Cain should have been included since I see him as just behind Hammett and Chandler.
Also Robert Reeves was quite good but had his career cut short by his death in WW 2. Merle Constiner also was VG but his stories were all just about too long at 20,000 each and could not be included in this book. I like Roger Torrey also especially his dozen or so stories in Detective Story in the 1940’s.
May 18th, 2022 at 9:12 am
Lester Dent’s incredible productivity sometimes worked against him occasionally. It’s hard to keep quality high when you’re writing a million words a year.
May 18th, 2022 at 9:01 pm
Walker,
I wondered it if was length that kept Reeves from being anthologized much. He was usually mentioned, but seldom reprinted, and only fairly easy to find recently.
All the Reeves stories I have are novella length, but you would think since many of the modern big thick anthologies reprint full novels someone would have squeezed Cellini Smith in.
Then again, there was a time when the only Daly you ever saw reprinted was “Knights of the Open Palm.”
I wonder how many of the problems for Goulart at the time were getting rights to reprint the stories rather than tracking the actual stories down?
May 18th, 2022 at 10:47 pm
David, Goulart sold me his collection of pulps that he used for his book, The Hardboiled Dicks. He had representative copies of Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Detective Fiction Weekly from 1920’s through the 1940’s and I believe he simply based the anthology on the issues he had available.
The magazines he sold me numbered somewhere around 50 or so. UCLA at the time had a couple hundred Black Masks and he may have used them for reference. But his Dime Detectives and DFW’s he probably just used what he had.
Many years later he called me and asked me if he could use some of my collection for a proposed book he was thinking of doing but nothing came of the project.