Short post on two crime writers I gave up on

The Italian Andrea Camilleri. Tried to read his first novel, La forma dell'acqua from 1994 (The Shape of Water in English), but couldn't warm to his style, narration or characters! Sorry, Peter!
The American Linda Barnes. Tried Snake Tattoo, one of her Carlotta Carlyle novels, but it was pretty boring and nothing hooked me. Second-rate Paretsky or Grafton, both of whom I haven't cared much for, so...

But I just started Stephen Greenleaf's Beyond Blame from 1985, which I found earlier today at a library remainder sale, and I'm really enjoying it.

Edit: here's a link to an earlier post about Greenleaf.

The Rap Sheet on Robert Terrall

Really great piece on paperback writer Robert Terrall, conducted by J. Kingston Pierce. Yet another paperbacker who was a Communist at one time. (I think there's an essay on this in Woody Haut's Pulp Culture.)

L. Patrick Greene and James B. Hendryx

Here's another posting from pulp fan and SF/fantasy writer Gerald W. Page that he originally wrote on the PulpMags e-mail list. It's about L. Patrick Greene and James B. Hendryx, two old school pulp writers, and their series characters. (Greene on the left.)

As for Finnish translations, I believe Greene has only one novel, Timanttikuilu (published by Uusi Suomi in 1944 [must be the newspaper]), but I haven't been able to determine what the book's original title is. It's set in South Africa, that much I know without looking it up. As for Hendryx, there are some short stories translated from him, and I have an entry for him in my book Kuudestilaukeavat/Six Guns.

Both "The Major" and "Black John" are exceptional series, well written and entertaining, to say nothing of highly recommended.

L. Patrick Greene's stories of The Major are set in South Africa a few years later than H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain stories, which they hold a superficial and sometimes not-so-superficial resemblance to. The Major is an Illicit Diamond Buyer (IDB), active in the theft of diamonds and their smuggling out of South Africa. The adventures are varied and interesting,
with the setting and background adding a lot of flavor to stories that sometimes are rather similar to American Westerns.

The characters of both The Major and the Hottentot Jim are well-drawn and entertaining. Greene's attitude toward native Africans is worth noting. He obviously admires and respects them in many ways, but there is a racist attitude running through the stories that rises a bit above the Colonialist level. The n word occurs quite frequently in the stories -- which is probably nothing more than honest reporting of how people spoke in Rhodesia and South Afirca in the twenties, thirties and forties, but it can be jarring and offensive.

Some of the stories in Short Stories are obviously connected, with recurring villains and obvious plot connections that suggest Greene was writing with the intention of joining three or four novelettes into a book.

The Major stories, as said, began in Adventure but mainly showed up in Short Stories. (Did they appear in England first?) Later stories by Greene in Adventure, as well as in markets such as Fiction House's Jungle Stories, did not feature The Major but are set in South Africa. On the basis of what I've seen he never set a story outside South Africa.

James B. Hendryx wrote Northerns. I've seen a bare handful of westerns from him, but for all practical purposes he was a specialist in stories set in the Yukon Territory of Canada in the period of the Gold Rush of 1898.

Hendryx appeared frequently in Short Stories, Adventure, Argosy and other of the leading general fiction pulps. His Yukon stories are generally related in that he had an assortment of characters who moved from one series to another. His main characters, certainly in Short Stories, were Corporal Downey, a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, and Black John Smith, an outlaw and con man who was sort of reformed and now ran a small community close to the Canadian-Alaskan border, where outlaws were welcome so long as they obeyed the law as interpreted by Black John while there. There was also a group of Sourdoughs who appeared often in various stories and series by Hendrix. I recently read a letter by him in Short Stories' "Story Teller's Circle" where he claimed the Sourdoughs were based on actual people he met in the Yukon during the twenties.

Hendryx was a highly professional writer with a good, non-obtrusive style and a graceful way of plotting. He could handle almost any type of story. About two months ago, for example, in either Short Stories or Adventure, I read a psychological short story by him (set in the Gold Rush) that, while not supernatural, was macabre enough that it could have appeared in Weird Tales. But most of his stories seem to be adventures, mysteries, or light humor.

The Black John stories are filled with humor, much of it sly and some of it edging toward black. Black John flees the U.S. after committing a robbery and finds a small comminuty on Halfaday Creek in the Yukon where many outlaws are holed up. Since most of them have arrived under an assumed name -- and since most of them assumed the name "John Smith," descriptive nicknames are added, so that the place is populated by the likes of One-armed John Smith, Pot Bellied John Smith, Red John Smith and so on. Now Black John and Old Cush, the proprietor of Cush's Fort, the general store, have set up a coffee name with slips of paper on which they've written names cribbed from a history book, so the newcomer can draw a name that isn't John
Smith, such as Alexander Jefferson or John Washington.

While Halfaday Creek is close enough to the line between Alaska and the Yukon that a man can avoid the police simply by taking a few steps westward, Black John instigates some rules. No murder, no robbery, etc. It doesn't matter what a man does before he comes to Halfaday Creek, but once he gets there, he better be an exemplary citizen. Black John doesn't believe in going to the law with his problems, so when a man of dubious character shows up, he deals with the problem, himself. And in the event, usually finds himself acquiring the man's ill-gotten gains. These are returned if the thief stole them from some individual or family. But if they belong to a
company or corporation, the money will end up in Black John's cache. Corporal Downey by now knows it's no use trying to arrest anyone in Halfaday Creek; but it doesn't matter because the people who live there don't break the law, at least not now.

If you have access to issues of Short Stories with these stories in them, I recommend them highly.

Pelecanos

A long interview with George Pelecanos. It's a crime that a writer of his fame, stature, quality and readability has had only novel (King Suckerman) translated.

Dan Sontup on Scott Meredith

Oops... sorry, my memory of this little piece was that it was more about Sontup's career, but it's almost only about his stint at Scott Meredith's literary agency. But here goes nevertheless. There's first someone's (I don't know whose) question and then follows Sontup's answer:

When I was a beginning writer back in the 70s, teachers 'in the know' advised beginners to avoid the Scott Meredith Agency, saying he would only demand money for a reading and after getting the money would tell the author the story had no chance in the market. Do you think that was true? I never sent him anything. Maybe I missed the boat.

Here's how it worked back in the '50s (can't speak for the setup in the '70s). I started with Scott on what was called the "fee desk." Writers would pay $5 for a reading and evaluation, of which the fee desk editor got $2. Our instructions were to type at least a two-page report on each submission. (An interesting sidelight here. Lester del Rey had reworked on old Czech manual typewriter with English alphabet keys for Scott. It required a real heavy hand on the keys, but it had one big advangage -- the characters were very large type. This meant I could do the required two-page report with less wordage than a conventional manual typewriter, which the other editors used -- and this was important when trying to do as many $2 fee reports as possible in a day to make some money at the end of the week.) Also, in each report, we had to be sure to mention Scott's book, Writing to Sell, and in the case of fiction, delineate what Scott called "The Plot Skeleton," which reduced the amount of space you'd have to devote to actually discussing the submission itself. Also, when rejecting the submission, we were to make sure it was worded
so that the writer couldn't come back and say, for instance, "Well, if that's all that's wrong with the story, I'll revise it and send it back to you." The rejection had to be final and irrevocable to forestall repeat submissions of obviously
unsalable material.

If we found a manuscript that might have salable potential (which would be a rare find), we were to pass it on to the editor at the "pro desk." who at that time (a little name dropping here) was Evan Hunter, and who would make a final decision on the marketability of the manuscript. I estimated that I read through more than 200 manuscripts when I first started with Scott before I found one that I could pass on.

So, to finally answer your question -- yes, a good story would get consideration and, if marketable, would be taken on by Scott. Needless to say, this hardly every happened, because most of the submissions were from people who had not yet learned how to write.

As I said earlier, Sontup wrote this for the ShortMystery e-mail list. Tapani Bagge, who's a personal friend, is a member of that list and e-mailed this to me several years back. I've also joined since, but I don't have the time to follow the discussions there.

I've also included the only book-length work Sontup wrote (at least that I know of) - it's a novelization of the M-Squad television series, under the pseudonym David Saunders. I haven't read it.

Zekial Marko AKA John Trinian dead

I just got an e-mail from a relative of crime writer Zekial Marko (also known as John Trinian) announcing he died on the 9th of May. It was also revealed that his birth name was Marvin Leroy Schmoker, which I don't think was public information before.

I also don't recall seeing any notice about his death before, but here's a short obit, which doesn't say much about his novels. (He wrote some half dozen crime paperbacks, one of which (Once a Thief) was translated in Finnish as Rotta ulos kolostaan in the Ilves paperback series. It's an excellent story about a criminal who gets out of the jail.)

Allan Guthrie's promo video for Savage Night

Do I hear right? Allan Guthrie says that he's vegetarian and a teetotaller? Is that a fact?

Here he talks a bit about this coming book Savage Night.

Unsung pulp hero Art Crockett

Some weeks back James Reasoner wrote a review of an issue of Two-Fisted Detective Stories on his blog, and I couldn't help noticing that one of the writers in that magazine was one Art Crockett. I remembered having seen the name somewhere before. I did some brain-work and I sure remembered that it was in the introduction to a true crime anthology Murder Plus that was edited by Marc Gerald in 1992.

Gerald writes about the time when he was recruited to work for True Detective magazine that was focused on true crime. He goes on for quite a while about Crockett:

My boss was Art Crockett. Pushing seventy, he wore a fedora over his horseshoe of hair and a cardigan vest over white starched shirts. He walked with a cane, had a lame eye, a wisecrack for every occasion, and a two-pack-a-day
cough though he'd recently cut down to a half a pack a day. Doctor's orders.

If Art looked and acted the part of the wizened, tough-guy editor, he had a right to. He had lived the life.

Raised a few blocks up from our office, Art received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart as a radioman with the 100th Infantry Division in World War II. After his discharge, he worked a series of unsatisfying jobs - in a salt factory, a refrigeration plant, and as an elevator repairman. Then, with a wife and two kids to support, Art quit his day job, rolled the dice, and began hammering out plots fast and for money - a penny a word.

His first stories appeared in second-generation detective fiction pulps like Manhunt, Pursuit, Menace and Conflict. In the early 1960's, he edited a bizarre string of
sex-cum-violence magazines, unreasonable facsimiles of legitimate men's adventure titles like Argosy and True that featured lavishly illustrated covers of dolled-up girl-Nazis equipped with leather, whips and chains. When they folded, Art left for greener pastures of the True West publications. It was a short stay, for they, too, closed up shop, and when they did he turned to True Detective.

Art was a considerable literaty talent although thirty-five years of high-speed writing had taken its toll. When necessary, he could still knock out a masterful yarn. Mostly,
he just churned out tawdry blurbs and titles on his Royal manual, circa 1936, something he could do like nobody's business. ("The poor joker on the floor was literally beaten to death. That was bad enough. But what his blood-dimmed eyes beheld before the end came may have been even worse." Or "It was the ultimate humiliation for the man who was obsessed with sex, and no power on earth could stop her as she approached him with her menacing knife.")

Gerald also says that Crockett died of a heart attack in June 23, 1990. If Crockett was in his seventies in 1988, when Gerald came to work for True Detective, he must've been born in 1918 or thereabouts.

Gerald mentions also other writers who wrote lots of true crime stories: Jack Heise, Bud Ampolsk, Bill Kelly, Bill Cox and Walt Hecox. Of the names, I can find real fiction writing credits only for Walter Hecox. (The Bill Cox here seems to be Bill G. Cox, so he's not the pulp and paperback writer William R. Cox.) Gerald calls Jack Heise "all-time pulp great", but I can't find any support for the claim of him being a pulp writer. But then again, Gerald seems to equate true crime mags and pulp mags. (This guy may be the same Bill Kelly Gerald refers to.)

Here's a list of Art Crockett's and Walter Hecox's crime stories from the Fictionmags Index.

By the way, Gerald's book is a great anthology: it features stories by writers like Robert Bloch, Jim Thompson, Bruno Fischer, Lionel White, Dashiell Hammett and Harlan Ellison, almost every story being pulled from a true crime magazine. Mention is also made of Charles Burgess and Robert Faherty, whose rare entries in book-length writing Gerald speaks of admiringly. Has anyone read Burgess's The Other Woman, published by Beacon in 1960, or Faherty's Swamp Babe, published by Crest in 1958?

Edit: Based on what Allen Hubin found, it seems probable that Art Crockett was born in 1921.

Arthur Lyons dead

American private eye writer and film noir enthusiast Arthur Lyons has died. He's one of those American crime writers who have mysteriously been untranslated in Finnish. Almost only sign of him in Finnish is the video release of Slow Burn (1986), a TV film based on one of his Jacob Asch novels (the Finnish title of the movie is also Slow Burn). I haven't seen it myself, but I've talked about it with Tapani Maskula, the Turun Sanomat movie critic and one of the best experts on American crime cinema in Finland (and maybe in the whole world as well), and he said he liked the film very much.

Here's a lengthy piece by J. Kingston Pierce at The Rap Sheet, and here's Steve Lewis and Mystery*File, providing bibliographic info.

Stephen Marlowe and my curse

Prolific paperbacker and historical novelist Stephen Marlowe died last Friday. This is no news to anyone following the vintage hardboiled scene, but I just wanted to say that now I finally know I'm jinxed. I've killed several old writers and authors by sending them letters and lately e-mails asking for interviews and general questions about their careers: Hugh Cave, Jack Williamson, Bruce Cassiday... and now Stephen Marlowe.

We changed some e-mails two months back and I got his permission to use a Chet Drum story for Isku, and earlier this week I thought I'd send him an e-mail asking for an interview for my Pulp fanzine. His wife answered that the offer is kind, but Stephen is in the hospital. He'll recover and then we'll see about the interview, the wife said. Two days later I heard he was dead. I'm so sorry.

This has been known as the Ashley curse, due to Mike Ashley who performs similar feats, but there's a subcategory called the Nummelin curse.

I haven't actually read much by Stephen Marlowe, but he was consistently entertaining, if nothing else. His Blonde Bait, reissued by Stark House Press last year, is a very good James M. Cain -ish story set in a ski resort. Try it if you like classic hardboiled noir. If I had a publisher of my own, I'd publish a new translation of Blonde Bait. (It was published in Finnish in the early sixties, under the title Vaaleaverikkö syöttinä, and is easily locatable in the second hand book shops, if you want to try it. You should.)

Bill Crider has a nice slide show for him in his blog.

PS. I don't know if Clayton Matthews is dead, but his wife, Patricia Matthews, died rather recently. I interviewed Mr. Matthews four years ago.

Edward Hoch dead

I learned just about an hour ago from Bill Crider's blog that veteran writer Edward Hoch has died. So sad - he almost came close of having 1,000 short stories under his name (and some pseudonyms).

Here's what I wrote about the man and his writings in Pulpografia (in Finnish, naturally):

Edward D. Hoch (s. 1930) on harvoja nykyisiä jännityskirjailijoita, joka kirjoittaa lähinnä novelleja. Hoch on julkaissut viisi romaania, mutta novelleja ainakin 700. Niitä hän on julkaissut lähinnä Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazinessa, mutta myös muissa lehdissä. Hoch aloitti novellistin uransa 1950-luvun puolivälissä. Hoch julkaisi tuolloin mm. Murder!-lehdessä ja salanimellä Stephen Dentinger Smashing Detective -lehdessä. Vuodesta 1965 alkaen Hochin pääasiallinen julkaisukanava on ollut juuri Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Hochin tuotantoon mahtuu niin klassista perinnettä mukailevia tarinoita (Hochin itsensä suosikkikirjailijoita ovat John Dickson Carr ja Ellery Queen) kuin kovaksikeitettyjä, seikkailullisia novelleja.

Edward D. Hochilla on monta vakiohahmoa. Tunnetuin ja arvostetuin on Nick Velvet, arvottomiin tavaroihin keskittyvä murtovaras. Myös Kapteeni Leopoldista kertovia tarinoita on kehuttu. Suomen-noksissa yleisin on yksityisetsivä Simon Ark, jonka elämä on mysteerioita täynnä. Vuonna 1955 Crack Detectivessä ensiesiintymisensä suorittaneen Arkin väitetään olevan vaeltava juutalainen, joka kulkee ympäri maailmaa Paholaista hakien — ja samalla maallisiakin rikoksia ratkaisten. Ark-novelleissa on usein hyvä tunnelma ja ne ovat huolellisemmin kirjoitettuja kuin suuri osa aikalaisistaan, mutta niiden julkiuskonnollinen sävy on oudoksuttava. Lisäksi novelleissa on usein myös uskonnollisten teemojen varjolla tapahtuvaa diskriminointia — esimerkiksi homoseksuaalisuus novellissa "Salaperäinen rakastajatar" on vain pahasta. Uskonnolliset teemat ovat pinnalla novellissa "Paholaisen hetki", jossa Kiinan kommunistihallintoa paenneet lähetyspapit kuolevat salaperäisesti luostarin muurien sisällä. Simon Ark sanoo novellissa, jossa sivutaan platonilaista symposionia: "Todellinen mystillisyys ei ole magiaa eikä spiritismiä. Se liittyy vain Jumalaan."

Maallisempi seikkailu on "Kadonnut laululintu", jossa Simon Ark ja hänen nimetön apurinsa etsivät Lawn Lawrencea, sensaatiomaista laulajatarta. Laulajattaren salaisuus paljastuu, mutta hän itse kuolee ja häntä kaukokaipaavasti katsellut Arkin apuri tuntee jääneensä yksin maailmaan. Salaisuus — jota en tässä paljasta — vielä menettelee, mutta se, mitä Lawn Lawrencelle tapahtuu, on seksuaalipoliittisesti vähintäänkin epäkorrektia.

Hochin tuotantoon kuuluu myös tavanomaisia vakoilunovelleja ("Labyrintti", jossa Spacer-niminen vakooja etsii Euroopassa Minotauros-nimistä terroristia) ja jännitysnovelleja ("Mies, joka oli kaikkialla", jossa aviomiehestä päästään eroon erikoisella tavalla). Komisario Leopoldista kertovat novellit ovat melko perinteisiä poliisikertomuksia, joissa on usein muistumia mysteeriperinteestä. "Leopoldin lomassa" komisario ratkaisee lomapaikallaan tapahtuvan ampumistapauksen, johon näyttää liittyvän uhkapeliä. "Komisario Leopoldin uhkapeli" on urbaanimpi ja kovaksikeitetympi. Siinäkin liikutaan peliluolien maailmassa: Leopoldin työtoveri huumataan ja häntä ammutaan lomallaan Atlantic Cityssa.

Novellit:
Kadonnut laululintu, Seikkailujen Maailma 5/1961.
Kapteeni Leopold ja lukittu huone teoksessa Josh Pachter (toim): Top Crime — jännityksen valiot. Suom. Jouko Vanhanen. Kirjayhtymä: Helsinki 1984.
Kolme hautakiveä, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 4/1973.
Komisario Leopoldin uhkapeli, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 3. Viihdeviikarit: Hyvinkää 1981.
Kuolema vierailee satamassa, Ellery Queenin jännityslukemisto 4/1963.
Labyrintti, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 10. Viihdeviikarit: Hyvinkää 1983.
Leipää linnuille, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 6. Viihdeviikarit: Hyvinkää 1982.
Leopold hermona, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 1/1974.
Leopoldin loma, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 8/1973.
Lukitun huoneen arvoitus, Maailman parhaat jännärit 4/1971.
Malabarin korppikotkat, Hitchcock esittää 3/1988.
Mies, joka oli kaikkialla, Alibi 7/1958.
Miljoonakaappaus, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazinen valitut jännärit 1. Junior-Kustannus: Helsinki 1977.
Nahka-arkun arvoitus, Maailman parhaat jännärit 5/1971.
Nainen vai leijona? Alfred Hitchcockin valitut jännärit 2/1980.
Paholaisen hetki, Seikkailujen Maailma 9/1961.
Pehmeä turvapaikka, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 6/1973.
Pieni palvelus, Hitchcock esittää 2/1988.
Salaperäinen rakastajatar, Seikkailujen Maailma 1/1962.
Syntymäpäivälahja, Alfred Hitchcockin valitut jännärit 3/1980.
Taistelu timanteista, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 3/1973.
Vakoilija, joka tiesi liikaa, Maailman parhaat jännärit 2/1971.
Vakooja ja kaunis rakastajatar, Maailman parhaat jännärit 1/1971.
Vampyyrin päivä, Alfred Hitchcockin jännityskertomuksia 10/1973.
Novelli nimellä Mr. X:
Virvatulten salaisuus, Maailman parhaat jännärit 2—3/1971.

Sleaze novels for your XXXmas pleasure

A while back I posted minireviews of some fifties and sixties sleaze paperbacks to the Rara-Avis e-mail list. I thought it should be posted here as well. Sorry, don't have time to seek for illustrations for these. These are made up from the notes I've been making in the process of trying to do a book about sleaze paperbacks published in Finland. And with this, I wave my hand and yell: "Merry Christmas!"

Brad Curtis: Too Young, Too Wild, Midwood 1966: Brad Curtis was Giles A.
Lutz, a pretty prolific Western writer who penned some dozen sleaze novels on the side. Too Young, Too Wild is a soap opera gone bad: a young girl likes men, but his father, a powerful financial and political figure, destroys all the men the girl has sex with.

Paul Daniels: The Cover Girls, Monarch 1962: Paul Daniels was Paul Fairman,
a prolific hack of science fiction and sleaze, sometimes mixing the two; The Cover Girls is a pretty well-written drama of modelling girls, with some flashbacks and homosexuality thrown in.

Ben Doughty: Sex Slave, Playtime 1965: I haven't been able to find any info on Doughty, except that he wrote some other sleaze novels, beside this one which is a picaresque story about a young woman who gets trapped inside prostitution and sex industry, some interesting points: bad cops work as pimps. How hardboiled can you get?

Arnold English: School for Sex, Midwood 1961: English was really Morris
Hershman (who's probably still alive, in his late eighties), a prolific writer of short stories, crime novels for low-end paperback houses and some science fiction. He was interviewed in Paperback Parade some years back, he said he hated writing sleaze. No one in the business looked him in the eye (except Mike Avallone, he said). School for Sex, Hershman said, was the first bestseller Midwood, one of the biggest sleaze publishers in the sixties, ever had - and he got 600$ for it! The book is a P.I. mystery, about Roy Knox who gets hired by the principal to find out just what the teenagers in the school do after the school closes. Sadly, the book is not as interesting it could be and there's moralism that doesn't seem to be in the right place in the book. ("Arnold English" - compare with "William Irish". It's a homage, Hershman said.)

Only short story translations

Here's a list of important, mainly American, crime authors who've had only short story translations in Finland:

William Campbell Gault
Norbert Davis (see also this)
H. Bedford-Jones
Lawrence Blochman
William G. Bogart (the WikiPedia link doesn't say that Bogart's hero Johnny Saxon was an ex-pulp writer himself)
Hugh B. Cave (see also this)
George C. Chesbro (two Mongo stories, if I remember correctly)
George Harmon Coxe (okay, he had some serials published in magazines)
Charles Einstein
Hal Ellson
Steve Fisher (I've been forgetting to link to this excellent post at Woody Haut's blog)
William Lindsay Gresham (you've all seen the film about his wife, haven't you?)
Robert Martin
Harold Q. Masur (see also this and this)
Bob McKnight
Sam Merwin, Jr.
Frederick Nebel (see also this)
Francis M. Nevins, Jr.
William Nolan (see also this)
Lawrence Treat (see also this)
Robert Turner (see also this)
Richard Wormser
Leslie T. White

Does William Barrett count? Many of his Needle-Mike stories from Dime Detective were published in Finnish in the fourties, but none of his adventure and religious novels ever appeared here.

I also noticed that I was wrong about William Ard when I said that he has nothing translated in Finnish. He has a short story in a men's mag in the fifties, called "The Only Piece of Evidence" (or something to that effect).

By the way, Bart Spicer has been published in Finland only in Swedish!