Re Mark's question below:
> I've got a question for those of you who are
more
> familiar with older
> PIs. How ubiquitous was California as location
in
> the early days of
> PIs? Was it always a preferrred setting
of
> hardboiled or does Chander's
> shadow just loom so large it now feels that
way?
It was pretty common for pulp-era PI stories to be set in
California, but I wouldn't necessarily say more so than
now.
The Op worked out of San Francisco, of course, and Carmady
(Marlowe's *Black Mask* incarnation) and John Dalmas
(Marlowe's *Dime Detective* incarnation) worked out of LA.
And there were others, notably Dan Turner who even had his
own pulp magazine *Hollywood Detective*. *Black Mask* editor
J.T. Shaw was said to have referred to California as "the new
Wild West."
On the other hand, Carrol John Daly's Race Williams and
Frederic Nebel's Donahue worked out of NYC; Lester Dent's
Oscar Sail out of Florida; George Harmon Coxe's
"Flash" Casey (not a PI, but as a crime-solving journalist
he's a cousin if not a brother) out of Boston; and Raoul
Whitfield's Jo Gar out of Manila in the Phillipines.
I think it just happened that a lot of pulp writers happened
to live in California. Writers who lived elsewhere tended to
set their stories there.
JIM DOHERTY
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 06 Sep 2001 EDT