It's been a while since I posted but I've tried to keep up
with the list. Right now I am pissed off at having to cancel
a trip to Bouchercon where some of you will be attending.
Please send us full reports. I expect to be in Chicago next
year and at a regional con in Austin in July. I hate missing
Bouchercon but some things can't be helped.
As a poor substitute, I have been more active on eBay of late
picking up a few pulps. Just received in hand "Detective
Story Annual" 1946 Edition. These annuals are reprints from
"Street and Smith's Detective Story Magazine." I expected a
digest as the magazine had switched from pulp to digest
around 1943 but was delighted to receive a trimmed-edges
pulp.
The story that prompted my bid was "Death Does the Jitterbug"
by Roger Torrey, reprinted from a 1944 issue. Torrey is one
of the forgotten regulars of
"Black Mask," who for years wrote very funny, tough stories
when he wasn't earning a living as a speakeasy/nightclub
piano player. He's forgotten because he published only one
novel in his lifetime (42 DAYS TO MURDER in 1938, reprinted
by McMillan in 1988) and he died too early for paperback
revivals. As I've learned from his half-brother Don Torrey
(who sent me the death certificate), Roger tied of acute
intoxification on January 11, 1946 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
at the age of 45 or 46 and is buried in the Evergreen
Cemetary in that city. One day someone should do a collection
of his novelettes that will lead to a greater recognition of
his contributions to the hardboiled story. He really is quite
good. If you haven't read his one novel, it is easy to pick
up a cheap copy and well worth seeking out.
But the story in this pulp that cheered me up the most was a
reprint (also from a 1944 S&S Detective Story Magazine
issue) of a Race Williams story by Carroll John Daly entitled
"Body, Body--Who's Got The Body." Now this story comes 21
years after the first Race Williams story appeared in Black
Mask, the story commonly recognized as the first hard-boiled
detective story. Daly continued to turn out Race Williams
stories well into the 1950s, long after Mickey Spillane took
the Williams inspiration to the best seller list with his
Mike Hammer novels.
In small doses, I am a sucker for Daly. He is crude to the
edge of literacy but he is also funny, some of it
intentionally. And whether the story was written in 1924 or
1944, the style didn't change. So I skipped past the Torrey
story (which led the issue) and read the first three
paragraphs of the Daly story. It is so perfectly Race
Williams, I have to quote it to you (minus any SICs):
"I was ending up a case and I didn't like it. Larry Lapeno
was a tall slender greaseball with thin sneering lips that
some women called smiling ones. His eyes were shrewd and
foggy. His black hair the kind that first caused white towels
to be placed over the back of Pullman chairs. I didn't like
Larry Lapeno and I liked him even less now as I sat beside
his desk and counted out five hundred dollars in blackmail
money.
"'Really, Williams'--he ran a hand through the shiny
blackness above his oily forehead--'the damned letter isn't
worth five dollars to the girl. I suggested she use you, and
I set the price at five grand so you could pull me down and
pose as a clever man to the--Miss Cole is the name, isn't
it?'
"'There's the money.' I bit the words off sharp. 'If I don't
get the letter, I'll blow a hole in your forehead.'"
What a perfect Race Williams opening. Old Race not only would
blow a hole in this creep's forehead, he's aching to do
so.
The pulp also includes a story by the great Fredric Brown
"Murder In Miniature" that has another neat opening:
"Somehow, even before I opened that closet door I knew
something was waiting for me there. Don't ask me how I knew;
I just did. When you've got a major mental warp, you don't
question the minor ones."
Now that's a great opening paragraph! So despite having to
cancel my Bouchercon hotel reservation, I am a bit cheered by
this one pulp. And, heck, I've yet to sample stories by Hugh
Cave and Bruno Fischer, who both wrote many fine stories in
their long careers.
Richard Moore
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