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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Cass Blue

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Cass Blue

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I’ve got another introduction out for Steeger Books. I got to jump in for Volume Two of John Lawrence’s tough PI, Cass Blue. Here’s that intro, to whet your appetite. If you like what you read, check out the two books. I hadn’t read Blue before writing this intro, and I enjoyed discovering these stories.

Cass Blue presented an unusual combination to the readers of Dime Detective when he arrived in November of 1932 in “The Bloodstone.” The settings of the first three stories were more akin to an Agatha Christie novel than to the pages of a hardboiled pulp magazine. The country manor; the island only reachable by boat; a houseful of suspects – and potential victims. But there were also those elements of the Weird Menace pulps. What’s a country house without a seance? Need a masked assailant? – Check. Murder by mad bomber? Of course!

In addition to the Christie-esque setting and the Weird Menace tone, Blue himself is a tough guy that Roger Torrey or Frederick Nebel might have written. It’s a different type of Pulp Stew than readers were used to in Dime Detective when Blue became a regular in 1934.

Story four – “Calling All Cars” – involved a big heist caper and a serial killer. It was different from the first three, but still not the usual private eye yarn. It had a pretty big scope. You can find those first four stories in Volume One, also from Steeger Books. It also includes an excellent intro by Ed Hulse, looking at the history of Dime Detective.

This second volume starts a little more traditionally with “Guilty Party” from the August 15, 1935 issue of Dime Detective. “Calling All Cars” had been in the prior issue, only two weeks before. Blue is walking home, pleased that his private detective business has lasted for eight years – with Blue still alive to enjoy it. A harmless-looking fellow is following him through a snowstorm, and Blue figures it’s a stool pigeon looking to sell some info.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: James Reasoner on Trail Towns in the Traditional Westerns of REH

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: James Reasoner on Trail Towns in the Traditional Westerns of REH

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REHWesterns_Cover
Intro by James Reasoner…

The first big series I did here at Black Gate was Discovering Robert E. Howard. And I was excited to get one of my favorite Westerns writers, the beyond-prolific, James Reasoner, to talk about REH’s Westerns. Continuing on with our recent Westerns theme, here’s James’ essay on trail towns in REH’s traditional Westerns. Saddle up and hit the trail!

 

When Robert E. Howard was growing up in Cross Plains in the 1920s, it was entirely possible that some of the older men in town might have gone on cattle drives in their youth, as the great trails from Texas to the railheads in Kansas opened up after the Civil War and changed the focus of the Lone Star State’s economy. Whether a young Bob Howard ever listened to these old cowboys spin yarns about those days, we don’t know, but he certainly might have.

J. Marvin Hunter’s classic book Trail Drivers of Texas appeared in 1927, and this volume might well have caught Howard’s interest, too, although we have no record of him ever reading it.

What we do know, however, is that Howard wrote several Western stories in which the trail towns which served as destination points for those great herds of Longhorns play an important part, beginning with “Gunman’s Debt”, which went unpublished during Howard’s lifetime but is one of his best Westerns. It’s set in the small Kansas settlement of San Juan, and although Howard tells us that the rails and the trail herds haven’t reached it yet, it’s clear that they’re on the way. San Juan is new and raw and more than a little squalid:

Three saloons, one of which included a dance hall and another a gambling dive, stables, a jail, a store or so, a double row of unpainted board houses, a livery stable, corrals, that made up the village men now called San Juan.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand Turns 100!: Erle Stanley Gardner’s ‘Getting Away With Murder’

A (Black) Gat in the Hand Turns 100!: Erle Stanley Gardner’s ‘Getting Away With Murder’

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

And A (Black) Gat in the Hand turns 100 today. With help from some friends, this column has managed to offer a hundred essays on the fascinating world of Pulp. April 8, 1949 was the day the Pulps died (I think that American Pie is one of the greatest songs of all time – couldn’t pass up the reference – with a tip of the fedora to William Lampkin for the phrase). On that day, Street & Smith announced they were quitting the Pulps. My favorite, Dime Detective, straggled on into 1952. But the days of the Pulps were effectively over.

But the love of Pulps lived on. Back in May of 2018, I kicked off my weekly Black Gate column as follows:

“Working from Otto Penzler’s massive The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, we’re going to be exploring some pulp era writers and stories from the twenties through the forties. There will also be many references to its companion book, The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories. I really received my education in the hardboiled genre from the Black Lizard/Vintage line. I discovered Chester Himes, Steve Fisher, Paul Cain, Thompson and more.

With first, the advent of small press imprints, then the explosion of digital publishing, Pulp-era fiction has undergone a renaissance. Authors from Frederick Nebel to Raoul Whitfield; from Carroll John Daly to Paul Cain (that’s 27 letters – we went all the way back around the alphabet – get it?) are accessible again. Out of print and difficult-to-find stories and novels have made their way back to avid readers.”

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: John Bullard on REH’s Rough and Ready Clowns of the West – Part II

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: John Bullard on REH’s Rough and Ready Clowns of the West – Part II

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Last week, fellow Robert E Howard Foundation Award-winner John Bullard wrote about Breckenridge Elkins. At the end of his life, it wasn’t Conan and fantasy that REH was earning a living with – it was Westerns with humor. So, here’s Part II, covering more funny Westerns. Next week, another Pulp (and Sherlock  Holmes) buddy, William Patrick Murray, will delve into REH’s Weird Westerns. Read on! 

Rough and Ready Clowns of the West:  Robert E. Howard’s Humorous Western Characters Part II

Last week, we looked at Robert E. Howard’s attempts to break into other pulps besides his humorous boxing tales, and fantasy, and horror stories. His creation in the summer of 1933, of Breckinridge Elkins, a recurring funny Western character series for the Action Stories pulp, became very popular and lucrative. His success with it had Howard try to create more funny Western characters to sell to increase his earnings, just as he had done with his funny boxing characters. He created three characters that were each based off Breckinridge Elkins to varying degrees. He was able to sell all three to the pulps, with two starting on the road to becoming recurring characters that only ended with Howard’s death.

Bearfield Elston, the Psychotic Breckinridge Elkins

There was one rejected Breckinridge Elkins story, “A Elkins Never Surrenders”, that Howard rewrote to star his new character of Bearfield Elston. Under its “newish” title, “A Elston Never Surrenders”, Howard sent it to his agent, Otis Kline. Kline eventually sold it to the Star Western pulp in May, 1936, where it was published in the September 1936 issue under its new title of “The Curly Wolf of Sawtooth”. In comparing the two stories, Howard generally just changed the name of Breckinridge to Bearfield Elston.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Evan Lewis on Cleve Adams – Black Knight, Cannibal and Forgotten Man

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Evan Lewis on Cleve Adams – Black Knight, Cannibal and Forgotten Man

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

If you read Pulp, you know who Evan Lewis is. He’s an MLB MVP while I’m AAA on a good day. Hardboiled, Adventure, Doc Savage, Dick Tracy, Davy Crockett, Nero Wolfe – the guy knows it all. He and I message about our like interests, and I conned – I mean, convinced – him to join in the Black (Gat) parade, this year.  I know a little about Cleve Adams, but not nearly enough to write about the once popular but now mostly forgotten pulpster.

 

Chapter 1

OBSCURITY

Cleve F. Adams is the forgotten man among hardboiled pulp writers. Though he produced well over a hundred stories and more than a dozen novels, almost every word is now out of print.

Adams was an anomaly in that his characters were genuinely hardboiled, while his style was not. His detectives were sometimes harder and more brutal than their contemporaries, but remained likable due to his easy-going whimsical style. This blend of violence and humor made him one of the relatively few hardboiled pulp writers to successfully move his magazine characters into hardcover.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ten Pulp Things I Think I Think (August 2023)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ten Pulp Things I Think I Think (August 2023)

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Ten Things I Think I Think has become an occasional feature in my column here. I’m always up to my elbows in various reading, writing, gaming, TV/streaming, radio plays, and audiobooks.

So it’s probably no surprise I like the idea of picking one of those areas, and sharing my sorta-random thoughts on things. Similar to my What I’ve Been Watching/Reading posts. Because I like to use my column here at Black Gate to share things I like with folks, I’m usually pretty positive. But in talking about ten different topics, I’m bound to hit on some things I’m not as crazy about. So be it.

I wrapped up our Talking Tolkien series with a Tolkien-centric version a few weeks ago. It was fun. So, I figured why not do one for A (Black) Gat in the Hand as we get up to full steam.

Not making the list are recent items such as I re-watched a couple episodes of Powers Boothe’s Philip Marlowe series. It’s still really good. I also watched a few of Stacy Keach’s second-run as Mike Hammer. Those shows are my favorite version of Hammer, but  one or two at a time is enough. They seem a little cheesy – they didn’t age particularly well. But still fun to watch. Keach is my picture of Hammer.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Will Murray and The Diamond Wager Caper – Not Dashiell Hammett?

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Will Murray and The Diamond Wager Caper – Not Dashiell Hammett?

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand makes its first-ever Friday appearance as Will Murray takes us down some Mean Streets never explored before. And he’s gonna need a blackjack and a roscoe in hand for this one. I’m not gonna spill the beans about Dashiell Hammett’s “The Diamond Wager”, but you’re definitely going to want to read on to find out the real truth behind that story. Take it away, Will!

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Recently, friend and fellow researcher Evan Lewis posted on Facebook the text of a story that first appeared in the October 19, 1929 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly entitled “The Diamond Wager.“ This was featured in a blogpost he originally posted in June, 2013.

The story ran under the byline of Samuel Dashiell. According to Evan, it is widely believed to be the work of Samuel Dashiell Hammett, and constitutes Hammett’s only contribution to Detective Fiction Weekly.

“The Diamond Wager” is a 7,600 word yarn of a gentleman thief set in Paris. For a tale purportedly written by the author of The Maltese Falcon, it’s underwhelming. Opinions on the story’s worth do not vary much. When compared to Hammett’s oeuvre, it’s an oddball outlier, a tongue-in-cheek relic of the Golden Age of mystery stories.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Back Down those Mean Streets in 2023

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Back Down those Mean Streets in 2023

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Talking Tolkien takes a one-week break, as we are into summer – though Ohio’s pleasantly cool weather might belie that. And since 2018, summer Mondays at Black Gate mean it’s pulp time with A (Black) Gat in the Hand.

Talking Tolkien has pushed the start back later than usual, but I’ve been doing pulp reading and writing to gear up for another great run. I have two introductions over at Steeger Press, ready to come out before the end of the year (I hope). I’ll post both here at book release time.

Talking Tolkien will be back next week, but I want A (Black) Gat in the Hand to make a June appearance again this year – we’re almost at 100 essays in the series! Not bad for an award-winning fantasy and sci-fi site. With me, expect the unexpected (to paraphrase from a Monk episode).

CASS BLUE

I’d not read any John Lawrence, but I picked up Steeger’s first ebook of Cass Blue. The second (and final) volume is in the works. These are different. The settings for the first three of four are more Agatha Christie than the mean streets of Chandler. A country estate with a seance, or  mansion on a secluded island.

The tone and plot are more weird menace than typical hardboiled, while Blue himself plays rough. The fourth story is a serial killer hunt in the city, that is a mix of weird menace and robbery heist.

I liked, but didn’t love, these. They are definitely a change of pace, which is nice. I will be checking out his Marquis of Broadway stories. They seem to be about a police squad who are brutal thugs, in NYC’s theater district.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Norbert Davis’ Max Latin

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Norbert Davis’ Max Latin

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

A Black Gat in the Hand makes a rare Fall guest appearance! I think that John D. MacDonald was one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century – in any genre. He’s my favorite author, and I’ve written several essays about him here at Black Gate. His last piece of professional writing before he died was an introduction to The Mysterious Press’ collection of Norbert Davis’ Max Latin short stories. Written for Dime Detective magazine, they are one of my favorite private eye series’.

Unfortunately, MacDonald comes across as a grumpy old man shaking his cane and yelling “Get off my lawn, you kids!” He essentially accused Davis of being  a sell-out for moving from the pulps to the slicks. It’s a very unflattering intro. Steeger Books has reissued the collection, but with a new introduction: by me!

Getting to replace something that John D. MacDonald wrote is a thrill for me. As I am an unabashed Norbert Davis fan, it’s a lot more complimentary than JDM’s was. I listen to the audiobook of these stories several times a month. I really enjoy them. Below, find my new intro. And if it sounds like something you might like, swing by Steeger Books and order a copy. It really is one of my favorites.

Norbert Davis is considered one of Joseph ‘Cap’ Shaw’s Black Mask Boys: Those writers who formed the core of the legendary magazine editor’s stable. But Shaw only accepted four of Davis’ submissions, and one has to think it likely that there were more, but which were rejected. Davis would sell ten stories to subsequent Mask editors. Shaw did include a Davis story in his ground-breaking The Hard-Boiled Omnibus, but in reality, Davis was much less of a ‘Shaw guy’ than those more commonly identified, like Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, Frederick Nebel, Raoul Whitfield, or even Horace McCoy.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Thrilling Adventures from Robert E. Howard

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Thrilling Adventures from Robert E. Howard

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Two weeks ago, we followed Robert E. Howard out of our usual mean streets, and into the Shudder Pulps. Two-Gun Bob was our tour guide again last week, as we wandered into Spicy Adventures territory. Howard is a great guide through the pulps, and this week, Kirby O’Donnell takes us to the Adventure Pulps.

Robert E. Howard sold his first story in 1925, with “Spear and Fang” appearing in the July issue of Weird Tales. One of Howard’s first characters, written as a young teen, was a Texas gunslinger who roamed the wilds of Afghanistan and neighboring areas. Francis Xavier Gordon, who would be better known as El Borak (The Swift) was Howard’s attempt to get into the higher paying, prestigious pulps, like Argosy, and Adventure.

Unfortunately, that turned out to be an unassailable market for Howard, and he did not get his first adventure story published until late 1934. At the peak of his writing skill, he would, sadly, be dead in less than two years. And it wasn’t a more developed El Borak that got Howard into the market. It was a very similar, less complex character named Kirby O’Donnell.

My REH friend Dave Hardy has written two excellent articles on El Borak and Howard’s gunslingers of the Near East. The definitive essay on the topic is in the Del Rey El Borak and other Adventures collection. And you can find the other here at Black Gate, in our Discovering Robert E. Howard series.

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