As one pretty tired of the oft-expressed anti-short-fiction
bias here at RA, the '40s month gave me an excuse (however
weak, given that most of its contents are from MANHUNT's
heyday a decade later) to read Leo Margulies's 1960 Pyramid
Books antho DAMES, DANGER, DEATH. The major 1940s entry, the
only one copyrighted and probably the only one written in the
'40s, is a
"real" Brett Halliday (Davis Dresser) Mike Shayne story,
"Death Goes to the Post," from the underappreciated (STREET
& SMITH'S) DETECTIVE STORY
(MAGAZINE) in 1942 (not as literate as EQMM, not as
impressive as BLACK MASK or DIME DETECTIVE in their best
years--perhaps...I shall have to read some to say, to look
past the classics to what else dwelled within any particular
number--but a good cross-section of all the kinds of
pulp--and wartime digest--crime fiction in the issues I have
read, most actually from a British reprint run).
Unsurprisingly, this early Shayne is a hell of a lot fresher
than the ghostwritten items hacked out for MSMM I recall, and
one can see the seeds of Hammer and all the less romantic
children of Marlowe, less emotionally distant offspring of
the Op, here.
The book opens and closes with two pseudonymous stories by
Salvatore Lombino, at time of writing not yet, I think,
legally Evan Hunter, and only jokingly Curt Cannon, who in
"Now Die in It" is about as deft a parody/pastiche-straddler
of Hammer (from a 1953 MANHUNT) as was Howard Browne's "The
Veiled Woman" from a slightly earlier FANTASTIC. Curt Cannon
is both author and protag, doncha know, much like Ellery
Queen, and he gets tied up with teenagers who run
"nightclubs" of sorts out of their families' rec' rooms and
the nymphomaniac who patronizes one in particular. She, too,
can't get enough abuse-as-foreplay. It's a nice touch that
this percussive fellow starts out as a down-and-out flophouse
resident, reminiscent of what I've heard of Barry "Mike
Barry" Malzberg's later Executioner-style series wherein
apparently no bones are made about the psychosis of the
protagonist.
"Classification: Dead" as by Richard Marsten, is mostly
notable for the depth of hatred Lombino/Hunter evinces for
both abortionists and abortion as a concept. Henry Kane has a
decent Peter Chambers story here, "Sweet Charlie"; Frank
Kane, a more ridiculously terse attempt at ultra HB Johnny
Liddell story, "Sleep Without Dreams" (somehow, it doesn't
surprise me that Liddell stories would eventually pop up in
the bottom-of-the market WEB DETECTIVE by the turn of the
'60s). Richard Prather's Shell Scott "Squeeze Play" bounces
along as nicely as you'd expect; Richard Deming's "Optical
Illusion" is disappointing when compared to his later work,
which I've tended to enjoy, but is a solid if unexciting
example of the criminal-with-scruples-and-injured-vanity
taking on his rivals. Best in book is Jonathan Craig's "A
Lady of Talent," a police procedural of sorts in this book
supposedly of PI stories, and the story which really gets at
the urban High Lonesome of hb, with a fully human touch that
the others tend to fall short of. And not because they're
short fiction, but because this is a Margulies antho, or so I
gather from the others attributed to him and published by
Pyramid at about the same time, such as his WEIRD TALES,
wherein he was more interested, apparently, in overlooked and
somewhat interesting, than in actually Good work.
Picked up Maxim Jakubowski's MAMMOTH BOOK OF PULP FICTION, in
its new instant-remainder hc edition from Castle as PULP
FICTION, and after reacquainting myself with Hammett's "Too
Many Have Lived," I'm now a good chunk of the way into a
Charles Williams seaborne hb novella, and how you folks who
are are willing to pass up a 60-page story of this caliber
because it's not 110 pages (or "Too Many" at a mere 20 or
so), I'll never understand. TM
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