I just finished reading Man in the Dark in Browne's
Incredible Ink, the story Browne wrote as Roy Huggins. As
Browne explains in the Memoirs essay, Huggins had said he
would write a story for Fantastic, but had to back out after
his name was already on the cover, so Browne wrote a story,
but credited it to his friend.
Now I don't know a whole lot about the individual pulp
magazines, pretty much all of my reading in that area has
been in later anthologies, but I'm not quite sure why this
was a "Fantastic" story. When Browne originally approached
Huggins to write it, he asked, "if he could do a detective
story with fantasy elements in it." So I would guess that
when Browne set out to fill the gap he wrote to the same
formula. So where was the "fantasy element" in this
story?
Now please don't take this as a criticism. I prefer my
detective stories without fantasy and this is a pretty good
little mystery story about a man trying to convince everyone
his wife is not dead as everyone else thinks, but I was
wondering if anyone could tell me exactly what
"fantasy" means in this context.
On a related note, Browne's Memoirs tells how he met Huggins,
when the latter sent Browne "The Double Take" along with a
note saying "You like the hardboiled style -- here's one I've
written. You can send me the check. PS -- My grandmother
didn't like the book."
Browne thought the book was good, but fell apart at the end.
It seems Huggins didn't know how to end it himself, so he
asked a real PI friend of his to solve the case. Anyway,
Browne offered his suggestions, Huggins rewrote the ending
using them, Browne published it and Huggins' career was off
to a start.
Anyway, I recently read Double Take featuring Stuart Bailey,
later of 77 Sunset Strip. It is a very nice, very
Chandleresque LA private eye novel. It's easy to see why
Huggins and "John Evans" got along so well, they clearly
liked the same things.
Mark
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