Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Long-running series

From: Jess Nevins (jjnevins@ix.netcom.com)
Date: 25 Aug 2008

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    -----Original Message-----
    >From: James Reasoner <jamesreasoner@flash.net>
    >>
    >> I know they're not single author series, but how many Executioner (and
    >> how many by Pendleton before he authors became involved?) and Nick
    >> Carter books are there?

    >If you're talking about the Nick Carter, Killmaster paperback series,
    >there are either 261 or 263, I forget exactly. Throw in the Nick
    >Carter pulp novels and dime novels (same name, different characters)
    >and the number goes up a lot more.

    >Hank Janson and Sexton Blake have to figure into this discussion, too,
    >but I have no idea about the numbers on them.

    In terms of stories, not novels, Dixon Hawke (a Scottish Holmes/Blake knockoff) is (to the best of my knowledge) the winner for totals, with over 5500 stories--he regularly appeared in magazines from 1912 to 2000. Blake comes in around 4000, with Nick Carter a couple of hundred ahead of him.

    In terms of single-author novel series, Simenon's Maigret (79 novels and short story collections) must be among the leaders, if not the leader. Of course, a lot of obscure or mostly-obscure authors had long runs, back in the day: Arthur Plummer had 50 novels about Detective-Inspector Andrew Frampton (I wrote about Plummer and Frampton here: http://nofearofthefuture.blogspot.com/2007/08/care-and-feeding-of-your-dead-writer.html and Steve Lewis followed up here: http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=376 ) and Gladys Mitchell had 68 novels about Beatrice Bradley. And those are two I found without much effort; I'm sure there are others I'm overlooking with similar numbers.

    jess--Perry Mason, at 83 novels, for example....



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