Wed 28 Jan 2026
PI Stories I’m Reading: FREDERICK NEBEL “Murder à la Carte.”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Stories I'm Reading[7] Comments
FREDERICK NEBEL “Murder à la Carte.” PI Jack Cardigan. First published in Dime Detective Magazine. 15 November 1933. Collected in The Adventures of Cardigan. (Mysterious Press, softcover, 1988), and in The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 2: 1933 (Steeger Properties, softcover, 2012).
Cardigan’s main source of work comes from the Cosmos Agency, but he’s hired on his own by a baseball pitcher and a good friend in this one. The fellow was picked up in bar by a lady of some disrepute and after a few drinks they head off to her place in a cab. He doesn’t remember much after that, or so he tells Cardigan.
He also doesn’t remember signing a check for the lady, a sizable one, but he thinks he might have. This presents a problem on two fronts. He’s married,for one, and for two, the World Series is coming up. With him pitching that’s almost a sure two wins for his team. Otherwise, they wouldn’t stand much of a chance. One more problem, and it’s a doozy: when Cardigan finds the lady’s apartment, he finds her dead.
Nebel’s prose has a smooth, crisp flow to it, and the chase for the two guys Cardigan’s client vaguely remembers being in the girl’s room is a good one. Until, that is, there is a development in the tale that takes the case to a quick ending. Maybe, I thought, just a little too quick. It’s a weak transition point, and it’s far from a fatal one. Maybe it was just me, and maybe I should better just keep my mouth shut.
Overall it’s a good story. Neither Nebel nor Cardigan are remembered today. Neither is up to Hammett or Chandler’s standards, but on the other hand, nobody else is, either.
January 29th, 2026 at 10:26 am
Quick endings were perhaps a pitfall of working quickly and prolifically for pulp publication? “Time to wrap it up, guy.” I used to have the old collection of Nebel’s Donny Donahue stories from Black Mask. SIX DEADLY DAMES, bought for 25 cents from a box of used paperbacks in the back room of a newsstand in 1973.
January 29th, 2026 at 12:50 pm
I’ve read several FREDERICK NEBEL stories over the years. Nebel was a quality Pulp Fiction writer, but as Fred points out, time and length of story undoubtedly constrained his production.
January 29th, 2026 at 1:21 pm
The review as you see it now is perhaps the 5th or 6th version. I softened my comments every time I made a change, and with another rewrite, I may do so again. Reading it this morning, though, I’ve decided I said what I’d like to say, and I’m going to leave it as is. I agree with both of you fellows, though. Speed in writing a story for the pulps was of the essence. As a writer back then, you didn’t have the luxury or time to fine tune a story, and I think that’s what happened here. Not Nebel’s fault. It was more me and how the story hit me the first time through.
February 1st, 2026 at 3:12 am
I ranked Nebel in that high second rank of hard boiled writers with Whitfield, Davis, and Gardner. The Cardigan stories tended to be novella length with speed often more important than plot though seldom second to voice and style.
February 1st, 2026 at 11:14 pm
I don’t think Nebel’s problem was not having the time to wrap his story up better. I don;t think he was ever that prolific. I suspect it was more about length. If he was writing novellas for a magazine that accepts story that long and finds himself on page 25 with the denouncement still far away, well he’s got a problem. Or the problem is that he just never figured out how to smoothly slid into the denouncement. I’ve been reading a series of short stories that have that same problem, the solution to the mystery is just sort of dumped on us. I don’t think the author (Florance M. Pettee was pressed for time ot space. She just didn’t how to blend in the denouncement.
February 1st, 2026 at 11:26 pm
“Or the problem is that he just never figured out how to smoothly slid into the denouncement.”
I think you’re onto something there. Thinking about the story again, I’m not so sure that Nebel had a good handle on writing a detective story at this point in his career. It took me a while to convince myself he set himself up for a decent segue from the story as it was sailing along before coasting into the ending. To be able to do this successfully is a peculiar talent to have for a writer, and not all of fellows writing for the pulps had it.
February 7th, 2026 at 5:03 am
It should be pointed out that Nebel was one of that elite few pulp writers who cracked Hollywood (Sleepers East, Fifty Roads to Town, and the Torchy Blaine series based on Kennedy and McBride), but also broke into the slicks with Gardner and Hammett and stayed there successfully.
I really think speculation about his skills as a writer, might be less in question than how seriously he took some of this and whether he wanted to put the same energy going into novels, the slicks, and Hollywood into the pulps.