MacKinlay Kantor | Vincent Hall | Carl McK. Saunders | Tom Marvin | Howard Finney | George S. Schuyler | Roland Phillips | Howard McLellan | Walt Sheldon | William Manners | William Fay | Matt Taylor | Kendell Foster Crossen | Michael Avallone | Recommended Reading
A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection Home Page
"Night of Panic"
Author's Choice
It's About Crime
"The Moll-Trap" (1929)
"Murder on the Limited" (1932)
"The Shoemaker Murder" (1933)
Captain John Murdock stories
"Hip and Thigh" (1935)
"Ignorance of Art" (1937)
"Detective For a Day" (1940)
"Die Before Bedtime" (1940)
"Old Guy" (1940)
"Summer's End" (1940)
"Dust" (1941)
"Cop Maker" (1941)
"You'll Get the Hang of It" (1944)
Inspector Preston Kendall stories
McGuire stories
"A Nice, Clean Job" (1949)
Dan McGarry and Kitty stories
"Power of the Press" (1961)
Mortimer Death stories
The Splintered Man (1955)
The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse (1957)
MacKinlay Kantor was a pioneer writer of pulp suspense fiction. His "The Light at Three O'Clock" (1930) is a terrifying tale of seemingly impossible events at an apartment house. Kantor's work seems definitely to be in the same genre as Cornell Woolrich, whom he preceded. There are many similarities: the evocation of suspense; the urban setting; the look at "little people" trying to get by on routine jobs during the depression; the scared summoning of authority figures by those people; the anonymity of apartment houses evoked; the ratcheting of terror up notches; the plunging of ordinary people serving as detectives into terrifying situations; the emphasis on clocks; the background of gang warfare and kidnapping as a source of crime in the 1930's; the vivid descriptive writing; and the use of seemingly impossible situations that are eventually rationally explained. Kantor's work could have served as a model for Woolrich's, it is so similar.
MacKinlay Kantor's "Yea, He Did Fly" (written 1931) shows his skill with the non mystery story. While definitely not a mystery, one hesitates to call this a "mainstream" story, because it is also so different from most "literary" fiction. Written with an almost Shakespearean richness of language, it could be considered a prose poem. Like Shakespeare, Kantor here uses words outside their original contexts, in novel and unusual ways. For example, he speaks of a scene being "rinsed" by light, when a car's headlights swoop over it. Oddly enough, one can see similarities between this tale, and the storyteller of "The Light at Three O'Clock". There is the same fascination with light after dark, the same drawing of his heroes to places where danger and mystery lurk. There is also an emphasis on characters hiding in small narrow spaces, and ultimately emerging. Like "The Second Challenge" (1929), another early pulp tale, there is a nocturnal world in this story, one filled with danger, adventure, and personal self discovery. Kantor's use of rich language in "Yea, He Did Fly" is in the tradition of such 19th Century American Renaissance writers as Herman Melville and Harriet Prescott Spofford ("The Amber Gods"). It runs orthogonal to the dogma of his era that good prose should be in the American vernacular: see Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway. While Kantor often wrote about ordinary people, he rarely used ordinary language to do so. Kantor is too interested in lyrical descriptions, especially of nature and small town or neighborhood social life, to want to be plain. He is a rhapsodist, who wants to celebrate the beauty of the world around him. Kantor differs from American Renaissance writers such as Melville or Hawthorne, in that his stories are not loaded with symbolic meanings or resonances. There are no Minister's Black Veils in his tales to intrigue the reader with their symbolic weight. Kantor's typical hero is a young person beginning to discover the social world beyond his home. He is eager to explore the world around him. While the events he sees can be sad or even tragic, they are usually not bitter. Just seeing what lies beyond his own fence is fascinating to Kantor's hero. The lead can be a grown man or a child, or even an animal: Kantor had an especial sympathy for animals in his tales.
"The Trail of the Brown Sedan" (1933) is part of Kantor's Detective Fiction Weekly (DFW) series about police officers Nick Glennan and Dave Glennan, two Irish cop brothers. Little remembered today, it is a pioneer work of the Police Procedural. Kantor always had a strong realist side to him - he was a mainstream writer, and shared the bias of that tribe toward realism - and these tales try to give a fairly realistic look at police work, without sacrificing excitement and drama. They are very different in feel from the hard-boiled stories then appearing in Black Mask, and are perhaps a little bit closer to the tales of gangsters then appearing in the Saturday Evening Post, although Kantor's work has a bit more of a working class feel to it than the typical Post story. (See also Howard McLellan's "The Moll-Trap" (1929) from Colliers'.) While Nick Glennan is the central character, a whole group of cops are portrayed, anticipating the police procedural technique of an entire squad of cops as the "hero" of a tale. There is also an emphasis on ethnic diversity, with a wide range of immigrant groups sympathetically portrayed, both among the police, and the witnesses to the crime. Most of the characters are poor but respectable members of the working class - this is the depths of the Depression. Many city locales are also portrayed, with the police traveling from one to another. Kantor likes open spaces: city plazas, street corners, the entrance steps of buildings, fields, vacant lots. There is always a railroad in the background somewhere. This is the same technique he used to describe the Iowa neighborhood of his childhood in "The Neighbors Light Their Lanterns" (1931), and also recalls his classic, "Yea, He Did Fly" (1931). The collective portrait of his neighbors in "Lanterns" also recalls the collective portrait of the cops in "Sedan". "Lanterns" is to a degree a cross between the mystery and the mainstream story, an unusual hybrid for its era. In fact, Kantor was not able to sell this tale anywhere. Kantor's first published story, the mainstream tale "Purple" (1922), also shows his ability to describe Iowa life. It contains some sharp comments on the relation between art and life. Both this tale and "Brown Sedan" also show Kantor's interest in unusual, non-standard things that can be done with photography.
Kantor would go on to write an early novel of the police procedural school, Signal Thirty-Two (1950). He records in his commentary in Author's Choice how much real life policemen of the early 1930's liked his Glennan tales. Not all of them are up to the quality of "Sedan". Both the OK "Sparrow Cop" (1933) and the dismal "The Hunting of Hemingway" (1934) are much too violent and plotless. The best parts of "Sparrow Cop" are the early sections, which deal with Glennan's pleasure in his new police uniform. Kantor also wrote non-series tales of police procedure. "Something Like Salmon" (1933) is a well done story that mixes a police man-hunt for bank robbers with detection. The man-hunt theme is a perennial feature of Kantor's police stories. The detection in "Something Like Salmon" is performed not by a policeman, but by the sympathetic and highly observant Greek owner of a lunch counter. He anticipates the Greek restaurateur in Kantor's "That Greek Dog" (1941), and is typical of Kantor's sympathetic treatment of immigrants. "Blue-Jay Takes the Trail" (1933) is also an absorbing story of a man-hunt around a small Midwestern city and its surrounding countryside, probably a fictionalized version of Kantor's home town of Webster City, Iowa. "Blue-Jay" suffers from excessive violence, but is otherwise an interesting tale. It is a pulp story, but it echoes the tradition popular in slick magazines of the era of pitting ordinary people against mobsters.
Kantor's "Night of Panic" is a short tale that takes place in Civil War era Washington D.C. It is not a mystery, but it can be considered a suspense work. Although it was first published approximately in the early 1950's, it has many of the hallmark's of Kantor's earlier tales. It takes place at night, one that is partially and inadequately illuminated. It takes place in an urban landscape that includes houses, yards and streets, like "The Neighbors Light Their Lanterns", and urban open spaces, like "The Trail of the Brown Sedan". Everybody is looking for an elderly man in jeopardy, as in "Lanterns". It is written in Kantor's richly evocative style. It has two brothers, both in uniform, just like the Glennan Brothers of Kantor's pulp tales, one older and more experienced, the other young and eager. Both get involved in derring do and excitement, also like the Glennans. There are animals in the tales, horses and mules, like the dogs and moths of Kantor's earlier stories. These are archetypal Kantor landscapes and characters, ones that appear whenever his creative mind is evolving a story. It is a landscape that has its roots in Kantor's childhood memories, as he makes clear in Author's Choice. Children's worlds are heavily bounded by yards and streets, and everything in them takes on an enormous importance, and great tactile reality. This is true of Kantor's yards: every wall or hedge or feature seems overwhelming vivid and real. It is a world most of Kantor's readers can identify with, because we can remember childhood worlds of our own that are equally vivid in their details. Kantor's family members are always bound to each other by affection. They might have difficulties with practical issues - the wife in "Night" cannot face her husband's danger in the Civil War- but they are always full of warm feeling for each other. Both the family members, usually brothers, and the animals in Kantor's stories also seem child like. This is a child's world view, projected onto adults. When one uses the word "child like" one conjures up a stereotype of sticky sentimentality, faux naiveté, etc. None of that is present here. All the same, Kantor's stories are close to the genuine aspect of the world viewed by a child.
"That Greek Dog" (1941) is also a mainstream story with strong elements of the thriller. Even though Kantor was largely aiming toward mainstream markets at that era (the story appeared in the Post), his imagination was clearly still drawing on suspense situations. (Similarly, when many science fiction writers write mainstream fiction, there is often a strong sf tinge to it.) This is probably a good thing; Kantor became much less sentimental when including mystery or suspense elements in his tales; far too many of his later mainstream stories are dunked in sentimental goo, and the sort of small town folksiness that was real big in his era, but which today seems as phony as a three dollar bill. The tale recycles imagery from his early pulp story, "The Second Challenge" (1929). Both take place in what is essentially his home town of Webster City, Iowa, both contain little restaurants (here a sweet shop), and both have dogs who get involved in nocturnal crimes, protecting their masters. Even though these stories were written 12 years apart, there is a strong personal element in common. This tale and others of its era show Kantor as an early, outspoken advocate of racial integration.
Kantor's "Gun Crazy" (1940) was the source for the 1949 film noir classic directed by Joseph H. Lewis; he collaborated on the script with Milard Kaufman. The short story seems to be the barest outline or plot synopsis of the movie, however. Scenes that are dramatized in detail in the film are just summarized in the story, and the prose tale is basically just a footnote in film history.
Cornell Woolrich was perhaps influenced by Kantor's suspense tales; there might also be an influence from his police procedural tales, as well. Police characters are extremely common in Woolrich's work, and their behavior, characterization, and modus operandi largely fit into the patterns established by Kantor. The rain of bullets descending on the bad guys at the end of "Brown Sedan" finds its parallel shoot out in Woolrich's "Funeral" (1937), although Woolrich tells his story from the viewpoint of the crooks. There is also an encounter between children and the villains in "Brown Sedan", anticipating many such encounters in Woolrich. Woolrich was much less interested in authentic police procedure than Kantor; his stories apparently are largely fantasies, albeit gripping ones.
Of course, there might be a large common heritage of police stories drawn on by both writers as well: the police are by no means an institution neglected by popular literature, and Futrelle's "The Diamond Master" already showed many clichés of police activity, such as the third degree, way back in 1909, not to mention Gaboriau back even further. Pulp historians are largely in love with private detectives who appear in series tales, and police fiction from the pulps is much less reprinted. It is hard to tell how much or what kinds of police tales appeared in pulp magazines, let alone how good they were. Kantor has been reprinted because he was a mainstream author, Woolrich because he was a master of suspense. Carl McK. Saunders' police tales of Captain Murdock appeared in Ten Detective Aces, otherwise home base of much weird menace fiction. Both Kantor and Woolrich also have ties to the weird menace school, and one wonders if there is a systematic link between weird menace and the police tale in the pulps, unlikely as that first sounds. At the very least, both weird menace and police stories are alternatives to the hard-boiled p.i. tradition, and might have struck an alliance for mutual survival. For another, the police seem to show up often in Paul Chadwick's weird menace stories, with police characters realistically and sympathetically described in the Kantor mode. Frederick C. Davis' Moon Man is also a policeman in his secret identity, and once again there is a realistic police drama lurking in the background of Davis' fantastic center stage melodrama.
Vincent Hall published only one pulp story under his own name, the short-short "Ignorance of Art" in Detective Fiction Weekly for October 16, 1937. The tale shows signs of influence from Kantor. Its central plot derives from a story Kantor wrote, "Rogue's Gallery" (1935), and there is a police Detective Sergeant Mike Glennon in the cast. This is three years after DFW ran Kantor's police tales about the Glennan brothers (with an a, not a o). Is this someone imitating Kantor's work? Is it Kantor himself, publishing under a pseudonym, now that he was appearing in the slicks, and had largely stopped writing for the pulps? The stories' prose style seems less literary than Kantor's. The story itself is minor but pleasant.
Carl McK. Saunders' "The Wax Witness" (1933) is part of a series of tales about Captain John Murdock, a tough, gruff police Captain with a heart of gold. The stories appeared in Ten Detective Aces, and like many series in that pulp magazine, were shorter and more concise than the typical pulp novellas in Black Mask or Dime Detective. Saunders' story has a good puzzle plot mystery, as do many pulp tales. It also has a lot of interesting perspectives on class relations, which are the principal subject of the story. In the best thirties style, Saunders' attitude is tough, democratic, and perhaps a bit sentimentally certain about the ultimate triumph of egalitarian values. (I live in a time today when the rich, through the Republican party, are trying to cut off old people's medical care and poor people's food stamps, and trash the environment.)
Saunders' tale is well characterized, both in the continuing and "guest star" characters. I especially liked the Captain's breezy young aide, Jimmie Spence, who calls the Captain "Chief", just like Jimmy Olsen later called Perry White in the Superman comic books. After all, Murdock is chief of detectives in Central City, where the story takes place. (Raoul Whitfield's Five stories also took place in a town called Central City. Shades of the comic books' later Metropolis and Gotham City, not to mention that the Flash worked in Central City.) You can tell there is a good deal of affection among the detective team. The visiting Duchess of Savonia is also well characterized. I hope he brought her back for return appearances, in later stories.
Although Murdock is twice editorially blurbed as "Hard-Boiled" Murdock, an epithet that does not appear in the actual story, he seems considerably less hard-boiled than the characters who appeared in Black Mask. Nor does Saunders' literary style have much in common with Hammett's or the rest of the Black Mask school. Perhaps this is just the editor's way of distinguishing him from the weird menace writers like Paul Chadwick. Still, this indicates that by 1933, the adjective "Hard-Boiled" could be used to sell magazines.
Tom Marvin's "You'll Get the Hang of It" (1944) is a little detective story. It reminds one of Hugh Pentecost's "The Dead Man's Tale" (1943) in several ways. Both stories combine mystery with spy fiction, involving villains who are Nazi spies operating in secret in the wartime United States. Both work men's clothes into their plots. Both stories are at a turning point in how men dress. Traditionally they felt terrible wearing anything other than a suit; now they are wearing unofficial clothes at home involving slacks and leather jackets. They both prize these clothes for casual wear, yet feel they are not right for public display. The changeover is made a humorous yet vivid part of both tales, especially as they affect the narrator.
Spies have different motives from ordinary suspects in mystery tales. They are willing to go to greater extremes and make greater sacrifices than the traditional domestic suspect. Marvin uses such differences to construct a fairly innovative puzzle plot.
Howard Finney's "Murder on the Limited" (1932) is a nicely done tale of a mystery aboard a train. Unfortunately, this is only one of three pulp tales credited to Finney, so unless he was a pseudonym for another writer, he didn't have much of a career. Its detectives are the train officials, not policemen, but it seems closest to the police fiction category, so I am including it here. Especially notable is the way the black Pullman porter participates in the detective work that solves the mystery, something that was very progressive in 1932. The schemes of the crook in this story show some affinity with the Rogue tradition, which was fast becoming a distant memory in 1932, although Octavus Roy Cohen was still flailing away at it in Scrambled Yeggs (1933). Cohen's tales of a Pullman porter, collected in book form as Epic Peters (1930), might have been an influence here.
George S. Schuyler's story, "The Shoemaker Murder" (1933), like MacKinlay Kantor's in the pulps, is an early example of the police procedural. It stars a black police detective in Harlem, and celebrates the promotion of such men, apparently a recent historical phenomenon in 1933. Schuyler's technique is less pulp oriented than Kantor's, and is closer to the Golden Age plotting technique found in novels of the era. It especially reminds one of Stuart Palmer's Murder on the Blackboard (1932), which also deals with a crime dependent on the architecture of the cellars of urban buildings. I have always liked Golden Age stories which center on buildings and architecture. Schuyler's story is a find, and one suspects that we will be seeing much more of his reportedly voluminous mystery fiction being reprinted in the future. His tales appeared not in pulp magazines, but in black newspapers of the 1930's.
Roland Phillips is today a completely forgotten figure of the pulp magazines. In the 1940's, Rex Stout included his "Death Lies Waiting" (1944) in an anthology. This is a pleasant pulp detective story, which contains a puzzle plot (or at least some ingenious plot twists) embedded in its action and suspense. Everything about this story is very satisfying, including its puzzle plot twists. It is low key, as are many pulp tales with a policeman hero. Pulp police fiction tends not to be especially hard-boiled. Police stories tend to stress "realism", and one way for their authors to do this is to avoid melodrama, the flashier forms of violence, and lurid plot contrivances. I do not know if Phillips' detective McGuire was a series hero, or a one-shot; even his first name is not clear from the tale. His police superior calls him "Mac", which seems to be short for McGuire. Despite this lack of a first name, there is nothing standoffish or arty about his author's portrait of him. He seems to be a quietly decent man, trying to do his best. According to Cook and Miller, Phillips produced over 60 pulp tales, including "Murder Rides a Broomstick" (1946) from Dime Detective, and "Hell's House Boat" (1937) in Ten Detective Aces. He appeared in DFW and Street and Smith's Detective Story Magazine more than any other pulps, although he was also the star writer in the short lived All Star Detective Stories (1929 - 1932), which also published a good deal of Allan Vaughan Ellston.
Phillips' "Clews in the Wind" (1930) is a nice pulp story from DFW; it is his debut in that magazine. Unexpectedly, it is not hard-boiled at all. In some ways, it is a story in a typical Golden Age style, dealing with a closed circle of suspects in a jewel robbery. It takes place on a millionaire's luxurious Palm Beach houseboat, an interestingly detailed setting, one that recalls Earl Derr Biggers' slick magazine novella "The Dollar Chasers" (1924). In other ways, it shows signs of its pulp origins. The detective is a New York police inspector, not an amateur, or any other kind of a Great Detective. He is polite and fits in well into high society, but is ready to use his fists against criminals too. There is considerable sympathy for the servants in the story, who come across as real characters, and not just background props as in so many Golden Age novels. They clearly stand for the working people who were DFW's main readers. Several of the rich characters are viewed critically, as was the wont during the Depression. All in all, the story is vastly less snobbish, than say a Dorothy L. Sayers novel. Still, the tale milks its glamorous setting for all its worth; the story got the cover, which shows a tuxedoed young man and an evening gowned young woman watching the moment when the gems mysteriously disappear. The story has a well done impossible crime puzzle plot, that would grace any Golden Age tale. The overall tone of the writing reminds me of Erle Stanley Gardner, whose Lester Leith stories were DFW reader favorites, according to the letters section of the magazine.
The story builds up considerable sympathy for a young former crook, who seems to have reformed, and who is now working on the houseboat as a servant. He and the police inspector have a relationship that evolves over the course of the tale. Phillips' warm feelings here and in "Death Lies Waiting" show a real sense of emotion.
"Death Lies Waiting" shows the male bonding previously found in "Clews". Here it is an older detective who cares deeply when his friend, a young patrolman, is murdered. The detective is very working class, a common thread in Phillips, as are most of the characters in the story. The police here are surprisingly polite; they are the people's friends. They may wisecrack and talk tough among themselves, but they are very polite with the public. By the way, in 1944 in "Death Lies Waiting", Phillips is still using the spelling "clew".
Phillips shows the Golden Age interest in architecture. All three of the locations in the story are well characterized. There is an interesting symmetry in the second, a pair of apartments across the street, from which one can see into the other with opera glasses. Phillips imaginatively milks this for plot developments. The symmetry he builds up recalls symmetric developments in the tales of Allan Vaughn Elston. The final location in the story also mirrors the second. Phillips makes an unusual effect by having his hero slugged and brought there unconscious; when he wakes up he knows nothing about the exterior of where he is. This is unusual for any sort of detailed setting in a story - usually we see the characters enter it, and know its exterior geographical coordinates.
"Death Lies Waiting" takes place in the familiar hard-boiled underworld of police, professional crooks and entertainers. And its characters are certainly not upper crust. There are several fight scenes in the story, in the pulp tradition. Despite this, the tale does not really seem at all hard-boiled. Phillips never sends his characters even close to the extremes of violence and brutality featured in the hard-boiled tradition. Nor is he trying to depict characters with an extreme edge, as do the hard-boiled writers. Instead, he treats the events as an exciting adventure story. The tone is actually closer to Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys: stories in which the hero has run-ins with crooks, tracks them down, is captured by them, manages to intrigue against them at close quarters. This whole approach worked very well in kid's tales, and it works very well here. There is a genuine sense of adventure in Phillips, an evocation of what it must actually be like to solve an exciting case.
"Bring Back the Dead" (1944) is a minor suspense tale without any mystery elements. It has a Florida island and boating setting, recalling "Clews in the Wind", but focuses on a poor working class hero. As in that tale, the police are kind-hearted and friendly to the hero. It paints a vivid picture of how tightly patrolled a Florida Key used as a W.W.II Coast Guard base was, and how hard it would be for anyone to escape from such an island. Such roadblock tales would be popular in 1940's and 1950's stories and film.
Howard McLellan's "The Moll-Trap" (1929) appeared in the slick magazine Colliers, and was reprinted by Carolyn Wells in her Best American Mystery Stories of 1930. But much of McLellan's work actually appeared in the pulps; he was a regular in DFW.
Walt Sheldon's two very short tales from DFW for 1940 are the only pulp works of his that are available today. "Die Before Bedtime" has a policeman protagonist, the punningly named Detective Bayer Cubbs. Its plot bears little resemblance to what we think of as pulp conventions; instead it is almost a pure puzzle plot mystery in Golden Age style. "Detective For A Day" shows a welcome vein of humor. Both pieces are good, and one wants to read a lot more of Sheldon's work. He published over thirty pulp tales, including "I Know My Sewers" (1945).
Manners' "Summer's End" (1940) is not a police tale, but it is included here along side of the other short DFW tales. It is a moving, emotionally involving detective story. It is the first of only two pulp tales of this author; the other was "To Whom It May Concern" (1941). Biographical information on William Manners can be found in the article on his brother, David X Manners.
William Fay's "A Nice, Clean Job" (1949) shows unexpectedly lively plotting, for an author who has spent little time in our genre. While his plotting is not especially believable - Fay is especially weak on motives, both for his killer and his policeman protagonist - the plotting is inventive. According to David C. Cooke's Best Detective Stories Of The Year - 1950, Fay was mainly a writer of boxing tales and occasional romances for the slicks. He edited some pulps for a while, but never appeared in the mystery pulps as an author, at least not under his own name. His policeman hero Joe Devlin solves crime and battles urban corruption in Brooklyn, and there is plenty of urban Brooklyn atmosphere. Fay's "The Conscience of the Cop" (1955) is far more conventional; it is an early example of a story that has been constantly filmed on TV: a cop kills someone in the line of duty, then feels guilty.
"McGarry and the Box-Office Bandits" (1960) is a humorous gem, dealing with robbery and police undercover work. This little story has the same subject as Freeman Wills Crofts' The Box Office Murders (1929), but a very different development. Mainly, it is notable for its sparkling humor. There is also some satire of the horror movies of the era, and the gimmicks used to promote them in theaters; such gimmicks were associated in real life with the film director and flamboyant showman, William Castle.
Among Matt Taylor's detectives, Dan McGarry is a policeman and Kitty is his love. The idea of a series in which detection is done jointly by a policeman and his wife is appealing. The treatment of the couple is refreshingly egalitarian, with Kitty rescuing Dan, and not the other way around. Apparently a large number of Dan McGarry and Kitty stories appeared in This Week magazine during the 1940's and 1950's, enough to make a book, The Famous McGarry Stories (collected 1958). This Week was not a pulp; it was a Sunday newspaper magazine that paid big bucks for very short detective tales.
"Power of the Press" (1961) was published in EQMM, but it might have been originally intended for the slicks. This suspense tale follows slick magazine traditions in pitting an ordinary person against a sinister, powerful underworld figure. The slicks had been publishing such tales since the 1920's. The theme of a person using ingenuity to outwit a crook also recalls some of Erle Stanley Gardner's short stories.
Kendell Foster Crossen was a prolific and uneven writer, who started out in the pulps, wrote series detective stories that mixed private eyes and espionage in the 50's and 60's, apparently worked in radio, and also dabbled in science fiction. His Milo March series was at one time very popular in paperback, written under his pseudonym M. E. Chaber. The best book I have read in the series is The Splintered Man (1955). This is a spy novel, not a mystery tale, even though March is an American p.i., and the kind of pre le Carré spy tale that emphasizes gung ho adventure, more Scaramouche than Smiley. I enjoyed March's cheekiness, and the general escapist verve of this tale. It is consistently more imaginative than the average run of paperback original adventure stories. The way in which March keeps switching uniforms at the end of this tale is fun, and so are his sassy, anti-authoritarian attitudes.
Crossen also wrote the Mortimer Death mystery stories for Detective Fiction Weekly (DFW) in the early 1940's, under his pseudonym Bennett Barlay; he also wrote for the magazine under his own name, Ken Crossen. (His pseudonym reminds one of Tennyson's "Only reivers reaping early, in among the bearded barley" - The Lady of Shalott.) Although this pulp is as prestigious as Black Mask and Dime Detective, surprisingly little fiction has ever been reprinted from its pages. Two of Woolrich's most enthusiastic masterpieces appeared there, "Death in the Air" (1936) and "The Room With Something Wrong" (1938), and I tend to think of DFW as a magazine that mixes detection with enthusiastic, even exuberant storytelling. DFW stories tend to have puzzle plots in them. DFW is also a magazine with a fondness for policeman sleuths, who were depicted as tough, sympathetic representatives of "ordinary people", who had to battle crooks, gangsters and corruption. Dale Clark once wrote a serial for the magazine, Cop's Crusade (1939), and this title pretty much sums up the tone of Good Vs. Evil that pervaded DFW's cop stories. In H. H. Matteson's "Hip and Thigh" (1935), the policeman actually has to impersonate a waterfront minister to battle a gang, and a great deal of old-style preaching is worked into the tale. Most of DFW's cops are roughnecks, with working class backgrounds, and often ethnic identities as well. The cops are clearly drawn from the people, and stand for The People, as well. They are not some alien force of authority. This is the Depression, and the urge to identify with the common man is strong. There might be some echoes of the proletarian orientation that was fashionable in mainstream literature of the day, especially in a DFW stalwart like McKinlay Kantor, who also had a foothold in the mainstream.
Getting back to Crossen, his DFW Mortimer Death series was narrated by a policeman Watson, Sgt. George Stuart, a real roughneck who provides comedy relief. Just like Milo March, he has a real attitude, and is plenty prepared to bust in where he is not wanted: Crossen stories can start with the hero assigned to invade enemy territory. There is a great deal of exuberant comedy in the series, some of which is still left in the March books. There is also a skepticism about doctors and the chemicals they can employ in both works. "Too Late For Murder" (1941) has a good puzzle plot in it, something that was unfortunately not preserved by Crossen when he wrote his Milo March tale. "Too Late" also has an atmosphere pleasantly reminiscent of 1940's Hollywood whodunits - in this it recalls the pulp stories of Paul Chadwick.
Crossen also wrote science fiction novels, pulp hero tales, and comic books. His 1940's pulp and comic book hero the Green Lama might appeal to today's readers and their fascination with Tibet. Crossen's Year of Consent (1954) is a dystopian science fiction novel, in the tradition of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932). Crossen depicts a future United States under the control of public relations and advertising experts, people who know how to manipulate public opinion. There is considerable satiric thrust to this, and it has only gotten worse in recent elections, with sound bites and negative campaigning. Crossen also follows Huxley's ideas in being concerned about psychoactive drugs, and their ability to manipulate populations. Crossen's The Splintered Man is probably the first work of fiction of any sort to discuss LSD. Crossen depicts LSD as a sinister drug, used by Soviet totalitarian scientists for purposes of mind control. Crossen also wrote anti-drug novels aimed at young readers. Year of Consent is also notable for its depiction of computers as an instrument of social control. Crossen's technical specifications for the government computer (known as "Hugo") are remarkably detailed, precise and scientifically accurate. Crossen clearly had done a lot of serious research into science before writing his tales, which are unusually grounded in real science.
The hero of Year of Consent is a government employed private eye. He has a fancy title, but that is what his job really amounts to. In this he recalls a bit Todhunter Ballard's series sleuth Bill Lennox, who works as a private eye for a Hollywood film studio, keeping its stars out of trouble. He also recalls Milo March, who works both as a self-employed detective in many books, and occasionally as a US Government agent in others.
A Hearse of a Different Color (1958) is a Milo March detective novel. It's a genuine mystery story, with fair play clues pointing toward the final solution, and other subplots along the way. The tale focuses relentlessly on detection throughout, with March constantly attempting to learn more about the crimes. The story never degenerates into a thriller or suspense tale. I found the puzzle plot of the book very easy to solve, but it is still there, unlike some private eye writers.
The tale suggests that nothing is as much fun as the life style of 1950s corporate America, with its endless flow of money, expense accounts, and the opportunities to pursue such activities as travel, nice clothes, cars, fine dining and romance. Both Milo March and some of the characters live in such a world, which is designed to be a pleasant fantasy experience for the readers. There is a relatively realistic tone to Crossen's work, at least when compared to such contemporaries as Richard S. Prather. Both men like the high life of the day, but while Prather spins fantasies about a private eye's life, Crossen sticks to a fairly realistic account of the opportunities open to a well to do business exec of the time. Of course, most Americans of the era could not afford to live on this scale. Still, Crossen's desires are relatively modest, and his delight in travel and good food would increasingly become affordable to the majority of Americans.
Milo March stories differ radically in tone from those of Raymond Chandler. Chandler's stories are dark, and they depict a world full of evil characters. Crossen despises mobsters and crooks, but basically he likes 1950's America and the world in general. Neither he nor March seem alienated, which is the word I'd use to describe Philip Marlowe and his successors. Instead, Crossen and March preserve a sunny, good-natured attitude towards most of life. Indeed, Crossen's tone is generally comic throughout. Even his mob villains have a slightly tongue in cheek quality. Parts of the story even approach the comedy of manners, something one associates more with Golden Age sleuths than 1950's private eyes. Milo March also has a different attitude towards the men he meets, than most private eyes. Usually he winds up making friends with them, and the book is full of scenes of male bonding. March is especially fond of government agents, such as police and FBI men, Madison Avenue type executives, and artists. All of these types are described glowingly in Crossen's work. All of these men represent success, in different forms and professions. They tend to be highly competent and glamorous.
A Hearse of a Different Color strongly endorses integration and the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, its best parts deal with black "diviner" Willie Morell. Willie is the most colorful of the New Orleans locals March meets, and he is a character whose verbal facility and unique way of talking mark out as an original. Crossen's sympathy with black Americans reminds one of Ed Lacy.
The Flaming Man (1969) also has a Civil Rights theme. Once again, March travels to a case, this time to Los Angeles in the middle of the 1960's Civil Rights upheaval. These aspects only are used for one section of the story, however. The novel resembles A Hearse of a Different Color (1958) in being a mystery story. Both novels are pleasant reading experiences, without being masterpieces of mystery fiction.
There is less emphasis on glamour in this case. Instead, the story spoofs private eye traditions, by being almost entirely set in bars. Whenever Milo March wants to interview a suspect, or track down a clue, he goes to another bar to do it. There is something surrealistic about this, as well as being a satire on the traditional private eye tale. It is consistent with Crossen's depiction of substance abuse throughout his fiction.
Michael Avallone's The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse (1957) is a private eye novel from the same era as Kendell Foster Crossen's tales of Milo March. Like Crossen, this is an escapist tale, with little of the angst associated with Raymond Chandler. Also like Crossen, Avallone includes sympathetic minority characters, in this case, a Chinese laundry man and his family.
The characters in Crazy are especially vivid. Many of the characters in the book represent emotional needs of the hero. Policeman Mike Monks is the hero's best friend, and someone who watches over him like a father. The Chinese kids represent Noon's desire to have kids. The two women in the book represent an emotionally sustaining woman, and cheap attractiveness respectively. The handsome cowboy character also fascinates Noon. All of these characters seem to come right out of his subconscious, and represent deep emotional longings on his part. They are described with overwhelming vividness by Avallone. The feelings they represent come over to the reader with astonishing clarity and emotional impact. The whole book has a surrealistic quality, in that everything it is emotionally charged. It is like an eruption directly from the inside of someone's fantasy life. Avallone's rich writing style also helps convey a lot of feeling to the reader.
Ed Noon is the least sexually arrogant private eye in mystery history. When the heroine tells him she finds him attractive, he is almost pathetically grateful. He goes on to share with the reader his almost unbearable loneliness. He conveys a sense of being blest by the heroine's attentions. This human quality is extremely refreshing. It is part of the way Avallone's characters talk about fundamental human needs.
Avallone breaks from mystery history in a number of ways. While private eyes tend to be poor, their work regularly brings them into contact with the rich and upper crust, in most authors. Not in Crazy. Ed Noon spends the entire book among characters of working class origin. Even though the cowboy is now a well to do gangster, his poor Texas origins are conspicuous. Much of the book is set within a few blocks of Noon's office, in a series of near-slum locations occupied by the working poor, Noon among them. Oddly, this helps the emotional sincerity of the book. The book is about people who represent emotional needs of Noon. It is not about social snobbery, or attempts to join the rich. The people in it seem even more accurate as emotional figures, because they are not carrying the burden of fantasies of wealth.
Avallone's book does not match critical depictions of his work as Camp. His grammar is good throughout, and his prose coherent. It is often wildly emotional and filled with metaphors, wisecracks and funky descriptions, but these are an asset, not a liability. His good characters are a bunch of working stiffs, and his bad ones deliriously slimy, but everyone gets a coherent portrayal. The adventure aspects of the novel tell a coherent story as well. The book does fall down badly in its puzzle plot aspects: they get brief, unsuccessful explanations at the end of the tale. This is a serious limitation in his work. However, the characters, the writing and the adventure elements make for a good reading experience.
Noon frequently quotes from various popular songs in this tale. He shows inventiveness in working their lyrics into his dialogue. They add a surrealistic touch to the writing. Despite what critics say, there are few film references in this novel.
Avallone's Shoot it Again, Sam (1972) is a spy thriller with few if any elements of mystery. Its first half (Book One) has a delirious plot, nutty and full of surrealistic humor. It is told with vigor and narrative flair by Ed Noon, and shows much of Avallone's gift for verbal expression. It also shows Avallone's vast knowledge of film history, with a discussion of Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) being worked into the plot. Avallone, like Sternberg, has his own gift for creating mise-en-scène. Sternberg's plots are often as delirious as Avallone's, and Avallone's evocation of Sternberg's dream like atmosphere blends into Avallone's own surreal chain of events. This section is a cornerstone of the story. It is one structural element, out of which the whole flow of Noon's feelings is contrasted.
The plot in Shoot it Again, Sam largely takes place within Ed Noon's head. It has some external elements, but it is mainly concerned with the brain washing of Ed Noon, and his mental state. This ties in with the solipsistic feel of the Noon stories. They are above all concerned with the feelings and emotional life of their protagonist. The elaborate description of Noon's feelings, conveyed in heightened prose, underlines this emotion centered approach.
The tales by Finney, Matteson, Hall, Sheldon, Osborne, Manners, Holden, and Henderson are from the entertaining anthology 100 Dastardly Little Detective Stories, edited by Robert E. Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz and Martin H. Greenberg. Other pieces from it are described in the article on American realists.
No pulp fan should be without Michael L. Cook and Stephen Miller's Mystery, Detective, and Espionage Fiction: A Checklist of Fiction in U.S. Pulp Magazines, 1915-1974 (1988). This guide attempts to list every story in every mystery pulp magazine ever published.