As you know, I'm a longtime fan of private eye stories and don't mind a bit if they make use of elements that have become clichés in the eyes of some readers. In the novelette "Homicide's Their Headache" (THRILLING DETECTIVE, August 1948), author Carl G. Hodges does exactly that. The narrator is a private detective with the unlikely name Bill Starch, who operates in a small midwestern city, cracks wise and banters with almost everybody he encounters, has a beautiful secretary, gets knocked out while investigating a case (twice in the space of 20 pages!), has a nemesis on the police force (a homicide detective with the even more unlikely name Flemming Morf) as well as a sympathetic cop who helps him out, and gets involved in complicated cases involving multiple murders and a slew of suspects, who he gathers at the end to expose the killer after explaining how he figured it all out. For a novelette, Hodges crams a lot into this tale!
The story starts out with Starch trying to get paid for a case where his wealthy client stiffed him on the fee after Starch located a missing man for him. Of course, when Starch goes to confront the client, the guy has been murdered. (The victim's name is Elsberry Dilweg, continuing the trend of odd names in this story.) The killing leads to a matrimonial agency con game, a fortune in oil-rich land, disabled World War II vets, a beautiful but probably crooked dame, and a second murder. Starch untangles the whole mess, of course.
I don't know much about Carl G. Hodges. He wrote a mystery novel, MURDER BY THE PACK, that was the other half of an Ace Double with Frank Kane's Johnny Liddell novel ABOUT FACE. I had a copy of that book years ago, but I don't think I ever read Hodges' novel. He also wrote some historical non-fiction books for the juvenile market, as well as a couple of dozen mystery and Western stories for assorted pulps in a career that lasted from the Twenties to the Fifties. Several of his mystery stories published in THRILLING DETECTIVE were about a crime-solving sports reporter, his only series character that I know of. "Homicide's Their Headache" is the only appearance of Bill Starch.
Hodges' style seems to have been influenced by Robert Leslie Bellem's Dan Turner stories, with its fast pace, complicated plot, and colorful slang, but Hodges lacks Bellem's inspired goofiness. Even so, I enjoyed this story quite a bit. It's no lost masterpiece, by any means, but still fun if you don't mind the stereotypes. And let's be honest: sometimes that's exactly what I want.
Also, in a bit of synchronicity, the issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE in which "Homicide's Their Headache" appears also features a Nick Ransom story by Robert Leslie Bellem, Nick being a sort of toned down Dan Turner himself.
If this story sounds like it might appeal to you, you can check it out on the Pulpgen Archive, along with several more stories by Hodges and hundreds of other pulp stories.
1 comment:
The only thing I have ever read by Hodges was NAKED VILLAINY, a 1951 digest (Suspense Novel No. 3). I read it too many years ago to count and my copy went walkabout long ago. Supposedly, Hodges "Tuckerized" a number of Chicago pulp writers in the book but I was too young to realize this. I'd love to get a copy of the book and see if that was true.
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