CARROLL JOHN DALY “The False Burton Comes.” First published in Black Mask, December 1922. Reprinted in The Hard-Boiled Detective, edited by Herbert Ruhm (Vintage Books, paperback original; 1st printing, January 1977).

   While I could easily be wrong about this, the protagonist in “The False Burton Comes” is, never named. For most of the story’s length he’s been hired by the real Burton Comes to impersonate him for a summer’s season. Why? The real Burton Comes, a socialite of sorts, has gotten into trouble, and he believes that someone wants him dead. He is also sure they mean it.

   And he is, of course, absolutely right. The false Burton Combs finds life could be easy, living a life of wealthy comfort, flirting with women all around (and two in particular), far away from his usual status of thinking himself as being somewhere between a crook and a cop. He’s a rough and tough fellow, a confidence man with lots of crude – but effective – confidence.

   He slips up, though, and when the bad guys come, he is both ready and not ready for them. They catch him looking the wrong way at the time, and this is where the story really comes in. I don’t think he asks the right questions when he should have, even through the beginning of a trial that eventually catches up with him.

   “The False Burton Comes” is considered by many critics to be the first hard-boiled story to appear in the famed pages of Black Mask magazine. I claim no expertise in that regard, but I do have to say that Carroll John Daly is a better writer that some other experts say of him. He’s no Hammett or Raymond Chandler, of course. No one is. But the story moves along like a railroad train barely under control, and with a language and dialogue that’s, yes, hard-boiled, too. Even if the ending might be a little soppy, all in all, it’s a fine piece of work.