PETE HAUTMAN – Drawing Dead. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, 1993. Paperback reprint: Pocket, 1997.

   Joe Crow is an ex-cop, and an ex-coke head, and an ex-husband, too. Matter of fact, most of his life is ex-; he’s sort of at loose ends professionally and financially, not doing much of anything but playing poker and drifting along.

   He’s got sort of a relationship with another ex-coke head, an entertainment agent. Joey Cadillac, down in Chicago, doesn’t have any identity problems — he’s a minor league wiseguy, with a car dealership selling cars mostly to people who need to launder cash.

   Joey’s just been ripped off on an old comic book scam, and he’s pissed. He sends a legbreaker to Minneapolis on the trail of the two scammers, who have another deal working with a stockbroker there who happens to play poker with Crow. They know his wife, too, a pheromone-emitting lady named Catfish. Yep. Then they all begin to converge.

   This is a jim-dandy first novel. It reminds me of Leonard and Westlake, and maybe just a little of Hiaasen. Hautman has a good ear for dialogue, and a good eye for the kind of people who have been knocked around somewhat.

   He tells the story from a number of different viewpoints, and keeps it moving right along. Crow is an interesting lead, competent enough to like but no superman. There is a lot of good stuff about poker and comics, and it’s credible for a change.

   This is my kind of book.

Editorial Comment:   Pete Hautman’s book The Prop (2006) was profiled on this blog when it was nominated for Best Private Eye Paperback Original of the Year in 2007.

   While Joe Crow did not appear in The Prop, a list of his appearances since his debut in Drawing Dead can be found in this previous post.

STEPHEN PAUL COHEN – Island of Steel. Morrow, hardcover, 1988. Paperback reprint: Avon, 1989.

   Stephen Paul Cohen, a real estate lawyer now living in Minneapolis, introduced Eddie Margolis in Heartless, not read by me. Eddie now returns in Island of Steel.

   Here he’s working for the Charles Murphy Detective Agency, even though he has no experience in investigation and his boss is almost never around. To top this, he’s assigned to find a real estate lawyer who’s missing from the prestigious New York firm of Fenner, Covington & Pine.

   Why would an upwardly mobile attorney go out for cough drops one afternoon and never return? Could it be fatal to find out?

   Nicely peopled, nicely plotted, nicely tensioned, a pleasure to read.

Bibliographic Data:   There were, as it happens, only the two adventures of Eddie Margolis. In terms of crime fiction, Cohen later co-authored a near-future thriller, Night Launch (Morrow, 1989), with then Senator Jake Garn, and on his own, a paperback novel entitled Jungle White, published only in Thailand.

   Mike Grost has a short section on Cohen on his Classic Mystery and Detection website. He says in part, “Cohen has considerable poetic skills of description. Both novels seem to be epic poems, an Iliad and Odyssey set in modern New York City.”

   My recent experience with the first Continental Op story (related here ) took me on a sort of Hammett binge which brought me to the collection of his Lost Stories (Vince Emery Productions, 2005).

   There are 21 tales in this book, but most of them don’t qualify as crime fiction, and those that do are familiar to many of us in the somewhat shorter versions published by Fred Dannay, first in various issues of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and then in the Hammett paperback collections he edited.

   Seventeen of the 21 date from Hammett’s earliest years as a writer, 1922-25, when he hadn’t yet developed his distinctive style. Only in “Night Shade” and the non-criminous but fascinating Hollywood tale “This Little Pig” (Collier’s, March 24, 1934) do we find the Hammett we know from his five superb novels.

   â€œNight Shade” first appeared in the debut issue (October 1933) of Mystery League, which was founded and edited by Fred Dannay and Manny Lee and folded after four months. But there are other links to Queen in these pages. The 21st and last of the Lost Stories is “The Thin Man and the Flack” (Click, December 1941), which almost certainly was not written by Hammett.

   This throwaway is not so much a story as a stunt to promote the “Thin Man” radio series, with photographs of various actors pretending to re-enact key scenes. One suspect was played by a little-known actress named Kaye Brinker. A few months later, while appearing in an episode of the Ellery Queen radio series, she met and began dating Manny Lee. They married in July 1942 and the marriage lasted until Manny’s death in 1970.

   A special plus of Lost Stories for Queenians is that we get to see her as she looked around the time she joined the Queen family. In 1948, during the Queen program’s last few months on the air, Brinker took over as Ellery’s secretary Nikki Porter, which makes her the last actress to play that role in any medium.

   Not that many readers of this column are likely to read Chinese, but a small publisher from that country recently contracted with me to issue a modest-sized book called Ellery and Queen containing a number of my essays on EQ.

   This volume will include a few paragraphs I’ve written directly for translation into Chinese, discussing the 11-book series of mysteries that was aimed at a juvenile audience and published as by “Ellery Queen, Jr.” All except the ninth and tenth featured Djuna, the houseboy character from the early Queen novels, and share a title pattern — The (Color) (Animal) Mystery — derived from the pattern Fred and Manny had used from The Roman Hat Mystery (1929) through The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935). All eleven were ghost-written. Fred had nothing to do with them but Manny seems to have edited and supervised them.

   The first eight titles in the series were The Black Dog Mystery (1941), The Golden Eagle Mystery (1942), The Green Turtle Mystery(1944), The Red Chipmunk Mystery (1946), The Brown Fox Mystery (1948), The White Elephant Mystery (1950), The Yellow Cat Mystery (1952) and The Blue Herring Mystery (1954).

   All of these except Golden Eagle and Green Turtle were written by Samuel Duff McCoy (1882-1964), a well-known journalist of the early 20th century whose papers are archived at his alma mater, Princeton University, and include many documents related to his work as “Ellery Queen, Jr.”

   As Samuel Duff he was the author of “The Bow-Street Runner” (EQMM, November 1942), a historical whodunit—narrated in first person by a Cockney — which was one of the earliest original stories to appear in the magazine Fred had founded in 1941.

   The author of Golden Eagle and Green Turtle was Frank Belknap Long (1901-1994), a specialist in pulp horror fiction, whose correspondence with fellow horror maven August Derleth includes statements that he wrote two of the series, although he doesn’t mention the titles.

   After an eight-year hiatus in “Ellery Queen, Jr.” titles, Golden Press issued The Mystery of the Merry Magician (1961) and The Mystery of the Vanished Victim (1962), both featuring Ellery’s nephew Gulliver Queen as youthful sleuth.

   These and the eleventh and final entry, The Purple Bird Mystery (1966), were apparently written by James Holding (1907-1997), an advertising executive who turned to writing mystery novels for juveniles after the tragic death of his son. But on at least one occasion Holding seems to have employed a second-order ghost to do the work for him, and Manny Lee went livid when he found out.

   Among adult readers Holding is best known for two series of short stories in EQMM, one (1962-70) featuring professional assassin Manuel Andradas, known as The Photographer, the other (1960-72) following two mystery writers, the creators of fictional sleuth Leroy King, as they solve “real” crimes while on a world tour. The titles of these tales, from “The Norwegian Apple Mystery” to “The Borneo Snapshot Mystery,” employ the familiar pattern of the early Ellery Queen novels.

   By the time The Purple Bird Mystery came out, Pocket Books was publishing the last of the 15 original paperback novels signed as by Ellery Queen but, as has long been known, ghosted by others under Manny Lee’s supervision.

   During those years Pocket was also using another Dannay-Lee byline, Barnaby Ross, for six historical novels beginning with Quintin Chivas (1961) and ending with The Passionate Queen (1966).

   All six were written by Don Tracy (1905-1976), the author of a number of thrillers and historicals under his own name, including several published by Pocket Books. Whether Manny Lee supervised these as he had all the ghosted Queen books is uncertain. He and Fred must have received some money under this arrangement.

   But why did the publisher bother to pay them anything? It can’t be coincidence that, during the same years Pocket was issuing ghosted paperbacks as by Ellery Queen, it was also putting out another line of softcovers under another Dannay-Lee byline.

   As far as I can tell, Pocket never made the slightest attempt to lure potential readers into identifying the byline on these six historicals with the byline on the four Drury Lane detective novels of 1932-33. What would have been the point?

   If there was no point, why not just publish all six as historical adventures by Don Tracy, without the Barnaby Ross byline and without having to pay Fred and Manny for its use? Perhaps someday the business correspondence dealing with these books will be unearthed and allow us to understand a sequence of events which on its face makes no sense.

   Many years ago I made myself read one of those historicals. One was quite enough. Never again!

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. Paramount Pictures, 1941. Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Edward Arnold, Leif Erickson, Helen Vinson, Willie Best. Director: Elliott Nugent.

   A funny movie needs a funny premise, I’d have to say and I hope you agree, but is a funny premise enough to make a funny movie?

   Bob Hope, playing Steve Bennett, a new partner in an investment firm, is inveigled into making a $10,000 wager that he can tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, for the next 24 hours. The rest of the movie, given this rather belabored but still promising beginning, is unfortunately about as predictable as (in general) the rest of movies come.

   The three men who are betting against Bob are not above low and mean-minded activities to protect their wager, as you might expect. On the other hand, the money Bob is putting up is not really his to bet, but that of Gwen Saunders (Paulette Goddard), or really the charity she is desperately trying to raise $40,000 for — and you can see how desperate she is, giving the money to someone like Bob Hope with a request to “double it for her overnight.”

   As if this were not enough, a showgirl trying to raise money for her Broadway-bound play is also involved. And of course Bob and Paulette Goddard fall in love, even though she already has a strapping young boy friend, one of the idle rich, and one of the guys who made the bet with Bob.

   But need I tell you more? I’ve already called the plot predictable, and from here on, you’re on your own. What kind of idiot situations could you think of? Most of them (I’ll wager) will be in here.

   Is the movie funny? Bob Hope made me laugh, but between you and me, nobody else did, with the possible exception of Willie Best, who plays Bob’s personal valet in what’s really a rather demeaning role. (You could say that at least it was a role, which all too few blacks had in movies made in 1941, but it is highly unlikely that roles such as this did anything to improve the lives of blacks in this country.)

   Paulette Goddard, however, is bright and spritely and sparkling in this movie, and if somebody can tell me why her career went downhill after this, and not onward and upward, I’d surely appreciate learning about it.

[UPDATE] 11-05-10.   This movie was recently released on DVD in a box set called Bob Hope’s “Thanks for the Memories Collection,” and I’ve just put it into my Amazon shopping cart.

   Arguing with myself on the merits of an old film I saw (and taped) on TV this many years ago is probably futile, but I have a feeling that if I watched again, I might enjoy it a lot more than I did this first time around. Comedy and humor are funny things (and you can quote me on that).

   As for Paulette Goddard, I didn’t have the luxury of the Internet to help me out when I first wrote this review. Even so, while pointing out that she was nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for So Proudly We Hail! in 1943, IMDB only says that “her star faded in the late 1940s […] and she was dropped by Paramount in 1949,” when she was still only 39.

BRANDON BIRD – Hawk Watch. Dodd Mead, hardcover, 1954. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, August 1954. UK edition: T. V. Boardman, hardcover, 1955 (shown).

    Kay Harris and George Bird Evans wrote four mysteries under the Brandon Bird pseudonym, but this was the first of their books I had encountered. I bought it for two reasons: it was cheap and it was signed by the authors.

    Charles Gratton, a professional photographer, is on assignment in the West Virginia mountains to capture the hawk in flight. The hawk proves an elusive subject but a predatory Golden Eagle that attacks and kills a dog belonging to his local guide, and a mysterious figure Gratton catches watching him through binoculars, bring him into a situation far more daunting — and dangerous — than his hawk assignment.

    This entertaining mystery makes good use of the remote rural setting, a captivating heroine, and a reclusive, canny, murderous antagonist.

    Hubin lists three other mysteries by Bird, Downbeat for a Dirge, Never Wake a Dead Man, and Death in Four Colors. All three feature Hampton Hume, his wife Carmela, and Ruff, their their “faithful” English setter, Ruff.

    The last recorded appearance in Hubin for the Evans’ novels is for The Pink Carrara, written under the nom de plume of Harris Evans, and published in 1960 by Dodd Mead.

    My enjoyment of Hawk Watch and the intriguing titles of the three other Bird titles led me to do a bit of sleuthing on the Internet, where I came up with a number of hits for George Bird Evans.

    He was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania (a town not far from Pittsburgh) in 1906 and studied art at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon) in Pittsburgh, where he met his future wife and co-author, Kay Harris of Wheeling, West Virginia.

    After studying at the prestigious Chicago Art Institute, George (now married to Kay) moved to New York City, where he had a successful career in magazine illustration, eventually landing a contract to illustrate mystery fiction for Cosmopolitan Magazine.

In 1939, the couple left Manhattan and moved to a farm they had bought in Preston County, West Virginia, a pre-Revolutionary building they immediately began to renovate. George continued to do magazine illustrations until the 1950s, when the two, both voracious readers, began publishing their pseudonymous mysteries.

    Although I’ve not been able to consult a copy of The Pink Carrera, I found a listing on ABE that described it as “a novel about a portrait sculptrist and his need to do art to support his pink carrara.” (Carrara is a city in Northern Italy famous for the white marble that was favored by Italian Renaissance sculptors.)

    A signed, limited edition of all five of their novels was published as “The Old Hemlock Mysteries” in 1995. This omnibus suggests that the crime elements in The Pink Cararra are stronger than described above.

    George Evans, an avid sportsman from childhood, became nationally known as a breeder of bird dogs and was a frequent contributor to Field & Stream and Pennsylvania Game News.

    Late in his life, Evans apparently came to regret his contribution to overhunting that had led to a substantial decline in the numbers of native game birds, and began to lobby against the practice. After George’s death in 1998 and Kay’s in 2007, the Old Hemlock Foundation was established on their West Virginia farm with a number of objectives that include environmental protection, support of the local Humane Society, and the awarding of scholarships to the WVU Medical School.

[UPDATE] 11-07-10.   Jamie Sturgeon has kindly sent me a cover image for the British edition of The Pink Carrara, along with a full description of the story, taken from the inside flap of the dust jacket:

    “This is the story of a man and a woman who loved not wisely but too well. It begins in a sculptor’s studio in New York where a great conductor, Joseph Matulka, has sent his young wife Leslie for a series of sittings.

    “Leslie, a brilliant opera singer; Matulka, the musical genius to whom she is married; and Paul Greer, the sculptor, are the three key figures in this situation, filled with tragedy or happiness. As the author develops his story from three points of view, the action progresses.

    “A magnificent block of pink Carrara marble, which in the sculptor’s hand takes on a significance he has not realised, gradually becomes the focal point of the story and begins this serious and distinguished novel, with its suspenseful theme, to a dramatic close.”

    Other than the phrase “suspenseful theme,” there is not much here to indicate that this is indeed a crime novel. We shall assume that it is, however, unless I can impose even further on Jamie to skim through the book until such time he can definitively say yea or nay.

[UPDATE #2.] 11-08-10.   Here’s Jamie’s reply:

    “Looking through the book there are 310 pages — the death, an accident, takes place on 276. The musical genius Matulka goes to the sculptor’s studio (with a gun) to have it out with the sculptor about the sculptor and Matulka’s wife. They have a fight and Matulka gets crushed by the pink carrara. There is some business afterwards about hiding the gun but I would say marginal at best.”

    Bill Pronzini, in a separate email, has concurred. He had the book at one time and has since swapped it away. “Only marginally a crime novel,” he says, “and for my taste not half as well done as any of the Brandon Bird mysteries.”

    The opinions above were duly reported to Al Hubin, who replies: “It certainly looks like it merits a dash [as having only marginal crime content] at least, if not deletion.”

    His final decision on the matter will undoubtedly appear in the next installment to the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

[UPDATE #3.] 11-09-10.   No need to keep you waiting. He’s decided on the dash.

SELDON TRUSS – Where’s Mr. Chumley? Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1948. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1949. Reprinted in Two Complete Detective Books, No. 59, November 1949.

   Where indeed is the Reverend Mr. Chumley, curate at Charwell? The police suspect that he is off with an illicit lover, but those who know the good man are dubious, perhaps incredulous. As well they might be, for the unfinished letter to his “lover” turns out to be a forgery.

   Under the guise of a commercial gentleman, Chief Inspector Gidleigh, C.I.D., takes charge of the investigation into Chumley’s disappearance and has also to contend with a possible abortionist, a seeming suicide, and the odious Mr. Twigg. Nobody’s fool, Gidleigh gets part of it right.

   While Truss is not in the top rank of mystery writers, he (she?) is certainly high in the second tier. Humor, interesting and sympathetic characters, if one does not count the child Maisie of the marbly eyes, and a splendid plot make this novel, as well as others by Truss, worth trying to find.

Bio-Bibliographic Data: If (Leslie) Seldon Truss (1892-1990) is not male, I hope someone will leave a comment to let us know. His (I am presuming) writing career extended from 1928 to 1969, and included some 40 crime novels, including one written as by George Selmark.

   Inspector Gidleigh appeared in 22 or 23 of these (when one non-Gidleigh book was reprinted, Gidleigh showed up in it as the detective in charge), while Detective Inspector Shane appeared in six and Inspector Bass in yet another three.

[UPDATE] 11-07-10.   From Victor Berch comes the following note about Seldon Truss:

    “Here is what I’ve managed to gather from a variety of records:   Leslie Seldon Truss was the son of George Marquand, an agent for a produce company, and Ann Blanch (Seldon) Truss on August 21, 1892 in Wallington, Surrey, England.

    “According to his enlistment record in WW I, he had previously been a film producer for Gaumont Film Co. On the record dated Oct 8, 1915, he lists his age as 23 years and 2 months. He served with the 2nd Scots Guard during WW I.

    “He died Feb 5, 1990 at Hastings and Rother, East Sussex, England. He was a member of the Society of Authors and the Crime Writers Association. I think this should clear up his sex gender once and for all.”

LAURENCE JANIFER – The Final Fear. Belmont B50-764, paperback original, 1967.

   I read Laurence Janifer’s The Final Fear back in high school, and for some reason it stayed on my shelf all this time, so the other day I decided to take it out and have a re-read after 40+ years. Robert Bloch had some kind words to say about it, so I figured it might be worth another look.

   Well, it’s interesting. Not entirely successful, and I don’t know if I’d recommend it very highly, but it has its moments. The whole thing has kind of a rushed feel to it, starting out with the plot, if you want to cal it that, already underway: the Hero running for his life as the Villain shoots at him on a New York street, with the Heroine and Good Friend yet to make an appearance.

   This is basically a four-character drama, as if Janifer (a busy sci-fi hack in those days) wanted to rush through it without too much bother. It quickly develops that the Hero is Jack Roe, a high school English teacher who had an affair with the Heroine, Madeline, whose husband Edward learned he had only six months to live and decided to kill the man who wrecked his happy home.

   The Good Friend, a police detective, comes in just a bit later, primarily to move the plot along. And that’s pretty much it. Edward shows up and shoots at Jack, who runs away and talks to Madeline for a bit, then Edward shows up, shoots at Jack, who runs away and talks to the cop for a bit, then Edward shows up.

   Somewhere along the way, this acquires an almost poetic simplicity, like a ballad oft-repeated, or a Woolrich tale set in some hostile universe where the price of love is death.

   But it never gets to the level of good writing in any conventional sense. Janifer moves his tale across New York City in the late 60s, when the rotting arcades and crumbling theaters held a sleazy splendor all their own, none of which he evokes here. Instead, he simply runs from one scene to the next: Washington Square, Greenwich Village, the subway, Central Park…

   We go through all this and more, but never with the sense of having been there. His police detective, on the other hand, is pure Woolrich: a patient, thoughtful man with nothing but time on his hands and apparently working a 24-hour shift because he can turn up any time the plot calls for him.

   The Final Fear didn’t give me time to get bored, but somehow it never really grabbed me either.

Editorial Comment:   It’s possible that it’s large enough for you to read it from the cover image provided, but in case it’s not, here’s the blurb from Robert Bloch which I’m sure Belmont has happy to use: “This is more than a suspense novel; it’s a shattering personal experience.”

FRED VARGAS – Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand. Knopf-Canada, hardcover, 2007. Penguin, US, trade paperback, 2007. First published as Sous les vents de Neptune, Paris : Viviane Hamy, 2004; translated by Sian Reynolds.

Genre:   Police procedural. Leading character: Commisioner Adamsberg; 5th in series (4th translated into English). Setting:   Canada.

First Sentence:   Leaning his shoulder against the dark basement wall, Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg stood contemplating the enormous central heating boiler which had suddenly stopped working, two days before.

   Comm. Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg and seven of his officers are getting ready for forensics training in Quebec, Canada. A few days before they are to leave, Adamsberg sees a news story about a murder where the victim received three stab wounds to the stomach and the accused has no memory of committing the crime.

   A number of similar crimes, including one where Adamberg’s brother was accused, occurred 16 years ago. Adamsberg is certain the true killer is back, except that he attended the man’s funeral. Now in Canada, another murder occurs, but this time it appears Adamsberg is the killer.

   The most important elements of a book, for me, are the characters. Vargas creates wonderful characters, although she does not provide as much background with each book as a reader coming into the middle of the series should have.

   However, once you do start to know the players, they become real and characters about whom you want to know more. What is appealing about Adamsberg is that is he a very unconventional policeman, yet he gets results and has the loyalty of his colleagues and friends.

   Vargas’s voice is wonderfully effective. Originally written in French, I appreciate that the translation still has a Gallic undertone to the text. Her descriptions are vivid and her phrasing lush. She has an excellent ear for dialogue, and a delightful sense of humor.

   The plot of Wash This Blood is so well done. Yes, there are coincidences — it is rare to find a book without them — but it is also very clever with excellent twists and a soupçon of poignancy that adds dimension to Adamsberg’s character.

   It is also the first time I recall that we see Adamsberg really lose his temper, which humanizes him even more. I’ve one criticism in that it feels as though there is a book missing from the series. Knowing how Have Mercy ended, this did cause a bit of confusion in terms of series plot continuity.

   This was an excellent read. I highly recommend both it and the series which must be read in order — frustrating as the English versions have not been published in series order.

Rating:   Excellent.

       The Chief Inspector Adamsberg series —

1.   The Chalk Circle Man (2009). First published in France as L’Homme aux cercles bleus (1991).

2.   Seeking Whom He May Devour (2004). First published in France as L’Homme à l’envers (1999).

[*]   The Four Rivers. Date? [Graphic novel]. Published in France as Les quatre fleuves (2000).

3.   Have Mercy on Us All (2003). First published in France as Pars vite et reviens tard (2001).

[*]   Coule la Seine (2002). [Collection of graphic stories.] Not yet published in English.

4. Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand (2007). First published in France as Sous les vents de Neptune (2004).

5.   This Night’s Foul Work (2008). First published in France as Dans les bois éternels (2006).

6.  An Uncertain Place (2011). First published in France as Un lieu incertain (2008).

Editorial Comment:   Please consider this bibliography a work in progress. Dates for the French editions are based on information obtained from Wikipedia-France. Dates for the English editions are (I think) a mixture of US and Canadian first printings.

   In any case, L.J. is correct in suggesting that readers of the series in the US have been treated badly by Ms. Vargas’s publishers. One can assume, however, that perhaps they started with what they believed to be a stronger title in the series, uncertain of the reception her books might receive.

   Whether one must read the graphic novel or collection listed above (without number) in order not to miss any of the overall series continuity is at present unknown, but it would explain L.J.’s comment regarding “a book [she felt was] missing from the series.”

   We have so far discussed and covered the so called Big Three: Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Detective Fiction Weekly. However there was a fourth magazine that has not received the proper attention that is due especially when you consider influence and the number of issues published. Detective Story Magazine with the October 5, 1915 issue became the very first pulp magazine to be devoted entirely to detective, mystery and crime fiction.

   In fact it just about started the trend for pulps to be devoted to one genre. Earlier examples are Railroad Man’s Magazine in October 1906 and The Ocean in March 1907. But with Detective Story the publisher, Street & Smith, got the idea to develop a line of magazines such as Western Story, Sport Story, Sea Stories, Outdoor Stories, and Love Story. The title showed the reader exactly what type of story he could expect to read.

   Not only was this the first of many detective and crime magazines, but it lasted longer than any other detective pulp magazine, 1057 issues during 1915 through 1949. The 1057 issues are even more than 929 issues of Detective Fiction Weekly.

   Not too many collectors bother with Detective Story and it certainly is not on the same level as Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Detective Fiction Weekly, but it did publish a lot of interesting stories. In fact if you read and collect hero pulp fiction then Detective Story should be of interest to you because the magazine dealt with heroes and villains, some of which wore costumes and fought crime figures before the first hero pulp titles started in the early 1930’s.

   The early issues still showed the dime novel origins (Nick Carter), but soon the fiction moved away from the teenage boy market and started to appeal to the adult mystery and detective fan. Even in 1916 it was possible to read such writers as Johnston McCulley, Sax Rohmer, Caroline Wells and H. Bedford-Jones.

   With the February 20, 1917 issue the crude covers improved, showing more color, the price was increased to 15 cents, and 30 extra pages were added for a total of 160. Frank Blackwell was editor, though Nick Carter was first credited, and he remained editor for at least 20 years. Since he also would edit Western Story starting in 1919, he must of had a staff of assistant editors to help with these weekly magazines.

   Another man who also lasted 20 years was the cover artist, John A. Coughlin. I know it is hard to believe but he did every cover each week for around 20 years, 1915-1935. As I was recently looking through my set I was watching for some other artist but I never noticed anyone else but Coughlin.

   That’s 52 cover paintings each year or over 1,000 for the 20 years. Plus he was doing covers off and on for just about all the other Street & Smith pulps.

   During the years I’ve owned several of his cover paintings from Detective Story and at present I still have two. It’s very interesting to see the development of Coughlin as an artist, from the crude early paintings in 1915 and 1916 to his excellent symbolic later work.

   I don’t know of any other pulp cover artist who dominated one magazine so thoroughly for a thousand issues. I guess the closest would be Nick Eggenhofer but his work was mainly interior drawings in Western Story and other pulps.

   From just about the very beginning the magazine specialized in series characters and in fact there were so many series that I sometimes mistakenly refer to the pulp as Detective Series Magazine. There are perhaps close to a hundred different series, too many to list in this article but I’d like to point out a few of the more interesting ones.

   Johnston McCulley was the leader by far and was an expert at developing all types of series. In fact he is responsible for one of the most well known and recognized figures in literature and film, the series character Zorro.

   The first series he developed for Detective Story was Black Star, followed by such characters as Terry Trimble, The Spider (no relation to the Norvell Page Spider), Thubway Tham, The Thunderbolt, The Man in Purple, The Avenging Twins, and the Crimson Clown. There may be others that I missed.

   Probably the most outrageous character was the Crimson Clown who appeared in around 20 stories in the 1920’s. He’s a crime fighter but for some strange reason he dresses up as a clown in the full clown costume and makeup. I would think this would make him very noticable to the police and criminals.

   The Spider appeared in about a dozen long novelettes in the teens and starred John Warwick as the gentleman crook who works for the criminal mastermind, The Spider. Thubway Tham appeared in over a hundred short stories mainly in the twenties and was a lisping pickpocket who worked the subways. The stories have a comedy element but I find them almost unreadable due to the lisping dialog whenever Thubway Tham opens his mouth. However the readers loved his adventures.

   A favorite of mine stars John Flatchley, alias The Thunderbolt and his stupid sidekick, Saggs. It is the usual theme of the bored, rich young man robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, etc. He robs from six rich men who legally ripped off investors and he returns the money to the original owners. All this is done without bloodshed.

   Erle Stanley Gardner’s Lester Leith was patterned after this type of character as were so many others. The hero wears a hood with a thunderbolt on it and is such a nice, good guy that he carries a gun, but it is empty with no bullets.

   Street & Smith had a hardcover line called Chelsea House and many of the stories in these series were eventually published as books. All six stories about The Thunderbolt were collected into two Chelsea House hardcovers.

   But there were plenty of other writers also dealing with series characters. Herman Landon, for instance, wrote about The Philanthropist who eventually developed into The Picaroon. Both heroes are gentlemen crooks but they are very strange indeed because after stealing money or jewels, they leave cards stating that the stolen items will be returned if the victim gives 10% of the value to charity.

   The charity of choice is usually the Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). I find these novelettes absurd, but I love the insane character! Landon had another long running series starring a crime fighter and crook named The Gray Phantom.

   One of the most fascinating series was by Arthur Hankins and starred an ex-cop and museum guard named Israel Pocket. The series appeared in 1918 and the hero works undercover in the stomach of a fake whale on exhibit. There he can spy on the museum visitors and prevent crime. His co-workers call him “Jonah.” Even as early as 1918 these six stories show that it was possible for quality fiction to exist in the pulps.

   Another interesting series that ran for a long time in the 1920’s was by Roy Hinds and dealt with an elderly Jewish pawnbroker who aids criminals. The Simon Trapp series was humorous, and he was not your typical pulp hero. There is no redeeming Robin Hood morality in many of the stories, and often I finished a story thinking that Simon was crook and that was that.

   The Doctor Bentiron stories written by Ernest Poate was another long-running series. Poate has been unjustly forgotten. Dr Bentiron is an interesting and strange character who lies around in his bathrobe, dribbling ashes and chain smoking. He is often bored but manages to solve crimes and has the habit of often grunting for some reason.

   Amos Clackworthy by Christopher Booth was a major character whose adventures were reprinted in the Chelsea House hardcovers. Clackworthy is a sophisticated conman who with his sidekick, The Early Bird, gyps suckers and steals their money. Possibly this character had an influence on Erle Stanley Gardner’s Lester Leith character.

   Ruth Aughiltree had one of the stranger characters called “Old Windmills”, who was a busy body, senile, old man who solved crimes. A strange detective who I found enjoyable and unintentionally funny.

   Mother Hansen, like many of the series characters mentioned above, ran for many stories — another odd series. Written by Paul Ellsworth Triem, she was an old lady who by day sat behind a cash register in a seedy restaurant but in the night she helped reform criminals. The one I just read had a burglar breaking into her house but by the end of the story she has saved the crook from the police and helped him escape.

   Edgar Wallace was one of the biggest stars of Detective Story in the twenties and in addition to the interesting “Ringer” series, he had over 20 serials. Only his early death silenced him.

   There were many other series, too many to discuss in detail. One of the best of the early writers was Hugh Kahler, who has been just about completely forgotten today. For four years, 1918-1921, he wrote around 35 long novelettes all 40 to 50 pages in length. Just about all of them are well done, some starring series characters named The White Rook, The Joker, The Justice Syndicate.

   The stories had elements in them that you usually do not see in pulp fiction from around 1918: love interest handled in an adult manner, well done characterization, a private detective acting in a believable way, and plots that are slowly and carefully developed, leading to a surprise ending.

   There is not a lot of violence in these stories, and sometimes the crimes do not even involve murder. One of the more impressive villains is named “The Wiremaster,” who has killed 10 men by some means of electric shock. The ten were unconvicted murderers who had beat the system and the law.

   The Wiremaster acts as a vigilante and like many of the heroes and villains likes to send weird letters and threats signed The Wiremaster, The Third Hand, The Picaroon, The Gray Phantom, or The Scarlet Scourge. One story even has a letter signed by “The Green Pansy”.

   Kahler eventually graduated to The Saturday Evening Post in 1920 and wrote slick fiction for 20 years. He became a close friend of George Lorimer, The Post’s editor, and was part of the antique collecting circle.

   Other writers of note were Agatha Christie with short stories, Dorothy Sayers with a serial, Raymond Chandler with one novelette in 1941, and Carroll John Daly. The format for each issue usually consisted of one or two serial installments, a long novelette, short stories, a true crime article, and several departments.

   The following departments ran for most of the magazine’s life: “What Handwriting Reveals,” “Expert Legal Advice,” “The How, When, and Where of Success.” There was also “Under the Lamp,” which dealt with ciphers and puzzles, “Missing,” which listed friends and relatives who had disappeared, and “Headquarters’ Chat,” which printed letters from the readers and announced coming attractions.

   On occasion “Popular Detective Story Writers,” written by D.C. Hubbard, gave informal and perhaps incorrect biographical details about the writers. It printed over two dozen bios during 1928 to 1932.

   Sometimes collectors have wondered how I managed to amass over 1,000 issues. It’s mainly because of what probably is the biggest windfall and deal during my 50 years of pulp collecting.

   In the 1970’s there was one collector who also was collecting Detective Story and we were always bumping heads at the the annual Pulpcons. In fact, he managed to compile a bigger set of the magazine and ended up with 800 issues compared to my 500 issues. But in the early 1980’s the video revolution killed his interest in pulp collecting and instead of attending Pulpcon, he started to collect video tapes. At one point he told me he had several Betamax recorders taping movies.

   I then started a campaign of calling and writing him letters every few months and this continued for a few years. The subject was always about him selling me his Detective Story collection.

   Finally in 1985, during a telephone call, he told me if I would stop harassing him he would ship me the 800 issues absolutely free. All I would have to pay would be the freight charge on delivery. Sure enough a couple weeks later, a big truck dumped 500 pounds of Detective Story Magazines’s on my porch.

   Of the 800 issues, I needed 239 and many others for upgrades. For several years after, I had so many duplicates, that I was willing to trade four Detective Story’s to get one of my pulp wants. Many collectors found the four to one ratio to be irresistible.

   However, at one Pulpcon I was reminded that not many people cared about Detective Story. Since I had so many duplicates, I took 200 of the issues in the best condition to a show in the late 1980’s. I priced them all low at $5.00 each, except for the Crimson Clown and Mr Chang issues which I priced at $10.00.

   Not a single issue priced at $5 sold. All the Clown and Chang issues sold because they were listed as hero characters in a pulp index. Even today there probably is not much interest in collecting the magazine.

   While I was collecting Detective Story, I carried on a 25 year correspondence with Bob Sampson, from 1969 to his death in the early 1990’s. All our letters dealt with pulp matters, especially the Detective Story series.

   You can read the results of many of our letters in Sampson’s excellent six volume survey of the pulps, Yesterday’s Faces. This is a set of books that every reader and collector of the pulps should own.

   Starting in 1932 a series of changes occurred that indicated the magazine might be having problems. They dropped the price to 10 cents, then announced a monthly schedule which lasted for one issue, and then decided on twice a month.

   The price eventually went back to 15 and 20 cents and the schedule to monthly. The cover was redesigned, serials were dropped, and in 1935 the departments were gone. The pages varied between 128, 144 and 160.

   Long time veteran and Love Story editor, Daisy Bacon became the new editor in the early forties. In 1943 the entire Street & Smith line of pulps either went digest or discontinued publication, like Wild West Weekly and Unknown Worlds.

   Daisy Bacon attempted to improve matters by encouraging some of the Black Mask and Dime Detective authors to write for her. Norbert Davis, John K. Butler, Fred Brown, all had good stories. She published over a dozen excellent stories by Roger Torrey, all novelettes starring detectives with Irish names. Only an early death because of alcoholism silenced him around 1945. William Campbell Gault was another fine writer who had around a dozen novelettes.

   But there were still some bad signs. The digest covers were really poorly done and unattractive. Circulation must have been dropping because in 1949 they even tried going back to pulp size for three issues.

   Nothing worked, however, and the pulp era was ending. Daisy Bacon would soon be out of a job and by the middle fifties the pulps were dead except for a couple holdouts. Street & Smith killed all their pulps except for Astounding. The digest boom was around the corner and there would be many new SF and mystery digests. Ironically Detective Story, the longest surviving detective pulp, would not be one of them.

Previously on Mystery*File:   Part Three — Collecting Detective Fiction Weekly.
Coming next:   Part Five — Collecting the other Popular Publications pulps.

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER —

       The Case of the Amorous Aunt. Morrow, hardcover, 1963. Reprint paperback: 1st Pocket printing, June 1965. (All four titles have been reprinted many times.)

   A young woman and her opportunistic boy friend ask Perry Mason to help get the woman’s aunt out of the clutches of a handsome stranger who may be a professional killer of women.

   But it’s the Bluebeard who turns up dead, in a bordertown motel unit next door to the aunt, so that Mason winds up having to try a murder case in a country where he’s an alien and with a client whose story simply doesn’t square with the facts.

   The long meaty courtroom scenes are distinguished by Mason’s demolition job on a tricky district attorney and a shifty prosecution witness, with help from a young local lawyer who might have become the Mason of the next generation if Gardner had written a new series around him.

But, like so many other Mason novels of the Sixties, this one is pockmarked with dozens of inconsistencies, incredibilities and careless oversights in plotting, although there is one neatly planted clue amid the debris.

       The Case of the Daring Divorcee. Morrow, hardcover, 1964. Reprint paperback: 1st Pocket printing, 1965.

   The pace is as vigorous as usual in this adventure and the plot elements as exciting, including a mysterious woman who flees Mason’s office leaving behind a handbag containing a twice-fired gun.

   Add a will contest, a gun-switching ploy, some elaborate schemes to discredit eyewitnesses, and a full measure of familial and financial flimflams, and the basis exists for a spectacular display of Masonry.

   Unfortunately it never comes. Even the courtroom sequences this time around the track are wretchedly constructed, with dear old Hamilton Burger introducing totally irrelevant evidence just so that certain story elements can be furthered, and with a rabbit-out-of-chapeau Mason solution that rests on hopelessly silly reasoning and explains nothing.

   Fiasco.

       The Case of the Phantom Fortune. Morrow, hardcover, 1964. Reprint paperback: 1st Pocket printing, November 1965.

   This time the opening scenes are rather sluggish, and so inconsistent with later developments that they seem to be part of a different book.

   The fireworks start to go off when Mason plays fast and loose with the penal law in trying to protect his client’s wife from a blackmailer, but soon finds his client charged with the extortionist’s murder, and himself suspected of attempting to hang a felony rap on an innocent man.

   Although the pace and intellectual excitement never let up once the story proper gets under way, and the solution packs a beautiful wallop, the usual quota of holes in the plot remain unplugged, and — a fault rare in Gardner — too many characters speak in impossibly textbookish sentences.

       The Case of the Horrified Heirs. Morrow, hardcover, 1964. Reprint paperback: 1st Pocket printing, February 1966.

   The best part of this one comes early, in a brilliant courtroom sequence where Mason proves that his client, the former secretary of another attorney, was framed on a narcotics charge.

   Trying to learn who framed the girl and why, Mason discovers a connection with a scheme to forge two contradictory wills, which as usual leads to a murder trial, although this one winds up with a twist unique in the Mason canon.

   Wonderful ingredients, wretched construction, unfair solution — in short, standard late-model Gardner with all the strengths and all the flaws.