Tue 12 May 2009
I’ve posted several times on this blog about J. V. Turner, aka David Hume, the most recent being some biographical notes provided by Judith Gavin, whose grandfather was Turner’s brother Alfred.
Based on the information she provided, Steve Holland did some researching and has come up with a lot more, including Turner’s correct year of birth, 1905, not 1900, and that “he was, in fact, the third son and youngest of six children.”
I’m quoting here from Steve H.’s Bear Alley blog, where besides all of the biographical data he’s uncovered, he adds a complete bibliography and a few covers that I’ve not seen before.
Turner, under both his own name as and David Hume, was a thriller writer, more interested in guns and gangsters than sedate manor house detective stories. Steve also suggests that:
“Hume’s Mick Cardby novels might be the first to feature a hardboiled British private detective. Not the first British hardboiled stories: Hugh Clevely, John G. Brandon, John Hunter and Edgar Wallace had already featured gangs and gangsters in London; nor the first British private detective of which there had been countless examples; he wasn’t the first fist-swinging crime solver, either, but Mick may have been the first bonafide British private eye fighting gangs and gunmen in the UK.”
I don’t know if that’s grounds enough for you to give either Turner or Hume a try, but it is for me. I’ll soon be dipping into the small stack of their books that I’ve been accumulating for a short while now. But go read Steve’s piece. It’s worth the trip!
May 16th, 2009 at 2:40 am
Although I’ve never seen a comment to that effect anywhere, you may well be right about Mick Cardby being the first hardboiled American style private eye in British fiction. Although Hume is writing in the Edgar Wallace mode more than Black Mask there is still a good deal about Cardby that would fit right in with his American counterparts. Gangs and gangsters were common enough in Edgar Wallace (When the Gangs Came to London, The Flying Squad) and Hugh Clevely’s The Gang Smasher, but even if you stretch and call Clevely’s Maxwell Archer a private eye he’s closer to Bulldog Drummond than Sam Spade.
I’ll have to rumage through Jess Nevins encyclopedia of popular fiction, but it may well be Carby is the first official British version of the American private eye.
There is a British character who prefigures Philip Marlowe though, E. Baker Quinn’s (a woman) James Strange, an ex Yard man (disgraced), and private eye with an almost Marlowe like voice who made his debut a year before The Big Sleep, in One Man’s Muddle. But it really isn’t unitl Peter Cheyney’s tales of G-Man Lemme Caution and Brit private eye Slim Callaghan that the flood gates open to the hardboiled Brit breed, and even then they are never as prolific as their American cousins, and many of the British hardboiled writers like James Hadley Chase, Michael Brett, or Basil Copper just wrote about faux American tecs rather than home grown British ones.
July 28th, 2010 at 7:46 am
I am 81. When I was 14 or so in one of the local shops was a Book Club. They existed throughout UK in small local shops. Books for the middle class women who were requred to sit in doors all day waiting for hubby to return from the office. I would take out thrillers (the stock was mainly thrillers and romances. I read about a policeman and his son. I enjoyed the books. Years passed and I often tried to remember the authors name. I read a John Master about an old man sitting and thinking about his past. I thought “How Stupid” You know your past. However I began to put it to the test and found that if I sat and thought about a period in my life gradually more and more detail would gradually return. I remembered – the author was David Hume. Paperbacks with a policeman on the cover.
I was in London about 2000 and had heard of a new shop which only stocked thrillers and such (nr Covent Garden). I was in with my wife. At the back were various old paperbacks. I stood and looked on the shelves. I happened to look down. On the floor were all newly arrived old books scattered about. I saw on the top a paperback Crime Unlimited by David Hume. (Collins White Circle) It was the author I was seeking. I bought it for 50p.
Recently I have been re reading all the very good authors and an on Reginald Hill. Then noticed next book was David Hume. I still have only the one book but thought I would see if Amazon had any others. That led me to here and this is my contribution. However I no nothing of his American style books. All I ever read were about Scotland Yard. The son was Michael Cardby so it must be the same author. This may be of interest to someone.