Tue 19 Sep 2023
Archived Pulp Stories I’ve Read: WILLIAM E. BARRETT “The Tattooed Cop.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[10] Comments
WILLIAM E. BARRETT “The Tattooed Cop.” Novelette. Needle Mike. First published in Dime Detective Magazine, February 1936. Collected in The Complete Cases of Needle Mike, Volume 2 (Steeger Books, November 2022).
INTRO. This is the second story in this issue of Dime Detective that I covered in it entirety in my column “Speaking of Pulp” in the April/May/June, 1979 issue of The Not So Private Eye. To answer the question I brought up in the first paragraph, the answer is Yes.
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Let’s go on, I’ve never been sure if William E. Barrett, author of the “Needle Mike” stories is the same person who later wrote such bestsellers in the 50s as The Left Hand of God, but it could be. After all, if MacKinley Kantor could go on to better things from [beginning in] the pulps, so perhaps could a few others.
But who’s Needle Mike, you may be saying. He’s actually the son of a millionaire, and he relieves the monotony of his existence by posing as the disheveled operator of a run-down tattoo parlor on the wrong side of the St. Louis tracks. He appeared in a long series of stories in Dime Detective during the middle 30s, and this one’s about “The Tattooed Cop.”
In it, the identification of a dead cop with a tattoo on his chest gets Mike (or Ken McNally) into deep trouble with a tough gang of marijuana peddlers who prey on gullible college boys and girls looking for a cheap thrill. It reads pretty well — an interesting premise, that you’ve got to admit — up until the moment Mike gets a mammoth hunch about a doped-up weed addict he finds in an upstairs room in the gang’s hideout. He’s right, of course, and the story becomes little more than confused action from that point on.
September 19th, 2023 at 8:57 pm
There were in all fifteen tales in the saga of Needle Mike, all in DIME DETECTIVE, beginning with the January 1, 1935, issue, and ending with the one for November 1938.
It was a lengthy run, so it must have fairly popular with the readers. Those I remember reading, however, while having an interesting premise, never seemed to fulfill any promise it may have had. The stories were never more than ordinary.
The stories must have struck some sort of spark withe magazine’s readers, though. Maybe it was the thrill on the part of readers smanaging to make a living in low-paying jobs in seeing a rich guy faking it and continually getting into trouble, story after story.
September 19th, 2023 at 9:32 pm
William Edmund Barrett, same guy, began in the pulps ended up a bestseller with books like LEFT HAND OF GOD and LILIES OF THE FIELD, most of his later works reflecting his strong Catholicism.
Many examples of the same model starting in the pulps and moving on to more profitable fields of literature, Edison Marshall, F. Van Wyk Mason, Donald Barr Chidsey, Leslie T. White, Robert Carse, Milton Lesser (Stephen Marlowe) for that matter William Burroughs (BLACK MASK) and Tennesse Williams (WEIRD TALES).
September 19th, 2023 at 10:15 pm
Back in 1978, it was tough to make connections like this. I mean, William Barrett is a common name. Without Wikipedia at your fingertips, who’d have really thought that the author of “Lilies in the Field” also wrote pulp stories featuring a millionaire’s son posing as a tattoo artist on Skid Row?
September 20th, 2023 at 9:08 am
And with ChatGPT your computer can write just like William Barrett in his pulp mode or in his LILIES IN THE FIELD mode.
September 20th, 2023 at 10:16 am
David,
Re: Burroughs and Black Mask
Awhile back steve commented that:
“Burroughs did appear in Black Mask, but only in the August 1974 issue, as reprinted bit of miscellany entitled ‘The Coldspring News: Sunday, September 17, 1899.’†https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=62436
September 20th, 2023 at 12:35 pm
Ha! Thanks, Tony. I’d totally forgotten that earlier review. Only four years back, too, and covering much of the same ground. Always worth doing, though!
September 20th, 2023 at 11:42 am
Recently posted an interview with Barrett on my bloghere.
Have the collected Needle Mike stories in my TBR pile but haven’t got around to them yet.
September 20th, 2023 at 12:24 pm
Thanks for the link, Sai, and for coming up with the interview in the first place. New to me were the pen names he used for a handful of stories, but also the fact that not only did he write for the detective pulps, but also for western and aviation mags, as well those that published just general fiction.
I haven’t done a full count, but if his story pulp fiction output was as high as a thousand stories, I wouldn’t be surprised. Here’s what he had to say in the interview, done in 1930, when he was only 30:
“My total published stuff, if anyone cares, is 263 short stories, 10 complete novels, 13 novelettes of about 12,000 words each and countless articles.”
September 20th, 2023 at 1:41 pm
Interesting, and a pity about the apprentice work not quite rising to much beyond that. Thomas Lanier Williams’s one WEIRD TALES story about that caliber, or a bit lesser, as well.
Reading George Kelley’s SSW review today, I was reminded of Alfred Coppel, who wasn’t necessarily writing better than in his 1950s short stories but sure getting paid better by the time of his suspense novel THIRTY-FOUR EAST in the ’70s.
September 20th, 2023 at 3:30 pm
Right you are. This cover should show everyone exactly where Coppel’s writing roots were: