[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

RARA-AVIS: Frederick Nebel 

On Sat, 12 Apr 1997, William Denton wrote:

> One guy had a few _Black Masks_ on his table, and I asked him how much
> one with a Hamett story would go for.  He pointed at the one I had in
> my hand, and said, "Actually, that one has one installment of _The
> Maltese Falcon_ in it."  But it wasn't listed on the cover!  The lead
> story was a Frederick Nebel, and who knows about him these days? 

Ohhhh, you knew I'd reply to this, Bill...  :-)  

As many of you already know, I'm writing an article on Nebel for the
_Dictionary of Literary Biography_, and I have spent the past several
weeks poring over his uncollected stories in issues of _Detective Fiction
Weekly_ and _Dime Detective_.  (BGSU's Popular Culture Library has strong
collections of many pulp titles, but their _Black Mask_s date only from
1938 on.  Potential donors to this valuable archive, please note.) 

Before taking on the DLB project, I had read and enjoyed Nebel's few
anthologized and collected stories, but had never realized the scope or
sheer amount of his writing: in the early '30s, he had up to five series
running *simultaneously* in different magazines.  He was only in his
twenties at the time. In addition to the Cardigan, Donahue, and Kennedy &
MacBride stories most of us know, he contributed Northwest frontier/Far
East/Mountie/Western tales to the adventure magazines, aviation stories to
_Wings_, and several minor detective series (most resembling his _BM_ and
_DD_ successes) to the low-budget mystery titles. 

One thing that surprised me about the lesser-known detective stories was
the more graphic violence.  However rough and tough Cardigan was, he never
used a lit cigar on a suspect, while I've found two examples of this so
far in the "no-namers."  In fact, Nebel is right up there with Raymond
Chandler and Cornell Woolrich when it comes to portraying a third-degree. 
Certainly, sadism was a common theme in the less choosy pulps, but it was
strange to see a story like that from the creator of Kennedy and MacBride. 
Does anyone know whether Cap Shaw had a rule against violent description
of this type?  I can't think of any _Black Mask_ examples, with the
exception of the "Dog House" episode in _The Glass Key_ and the drug
addict's death (described after the fact) in a Chandler story. 

Unfortunately for those of us who enjoy genre fiction, Nebel chose in the
mid-'30s to abandon the "low-prestige" pulps for the more lucrative
slicks.  It ruined his career.  He re-entered the public consciousness in
1950 and again in 1980 when some of his Donahue stories were published
under the title _Six Deadly Dames_ (:-p), and again in 1989 with _The
Adventures of Cardigan_.  Now it's time for another collection: I'm sure
I'm not the only person who would cheer if some publishing house chose to
resurrect some Nebel stories that haven't seen light since their original
publication. Rara-avis readers, what do *you* think? 

Kathy

Katherine Harper
Department of English
Bowling Green State University
Visit the W.R. Burnett Page at http://ernie.bgsu.edu/~kharper/



-
# RARA-AVIS:  To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis"
# to majordomo@icomm.ca
Follow-Ups: References:

[Archives] | [RARA-AVIS]