A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Blonde in Lower Six - Erle Stanley Gardner

THE BLONDE IN LOWER SIX is Carroll & Graf’s second volume of Ed Jenkins stories reprinted (mostly) from the pulps, and I wish there were more of them. As far as I know, however, this is it for Ed Jenkins collections.

The Phantom Crook is back in three novelettes that originally appeared in BLACK MASK in 1927, being pursued by the underworld and the police alike, although as far as Ed is concerned, there’s not much difference between the two. If anything, most of the cops Ed encounters are more crooked and corrupt than the criminals they’re supposed to pursue. Ed’s still a hardboiled kind of guy, gleefully sending off his enemies to be caught in their own traps, running around Chinatown in various disguises, making hair’s-breadth escapes, befriending tong leaders, and fending off the attentions of two beautiful young women, because, after all, it wouldn’t be fair to them if he let them fall in love with a crook who has all hands against him. These yarns strike me as being a little more melodramatic than the ones in the previous collection, DEAD MEN’S LETTERS, but they’re still very entertaining.

Then you have the title story, “The Blonde in Lower Six”, which is a different sort of animal. Set in 1943 but published in ARGOSY in 1961 – and I’d love to know the story of how that came about – it’s a full-length novel that’s almost completely devoid of the Phantom Crook melodrama. Instead Ed acts more like an unlicensed private eye as he helps out an old friend from Chinatown in a case involving wartime espionage, embezzlement, characters pretending to be other characters, and at least three murders. The plot is so complicated I sort of lost track, but by the end I think I pretty much had everything straight. Vintage Erle Stanley Gardner plotting, in other words, and told in a very terse, tough style that reads really fast. I loved it, even though I couldn’t always keep up with what was going on.

My only quibbles aren’t with Gardner but rather with Carroll & Graf. On a book called THE BLONDE IN LOWER SIX, why would you use a cover illustration of a girl who’s definitely not a blonde? And if you read this collection, be sure to read the stories reprinted from BLACK MASK before you read the title story, which, although it comes first in the book, is actually more of a sequel to the pulp yarns. I have no idea why they were arranged that way for publication.

I highly recommend both DEAD MEN’S LETTERS and THE BLONDE IN LOWER SIX, and if any publisher wants to reprint some more Ed Jenkins stories, I’d read them without hesitation.

(This post originally appeared on August 15, 2008. Like DEAD MEN'S LETTERS, THE BLONDE IN LOWER SIX is long out of print, but it must be a lot more scarce because all the copies I saw for sale on-line are pretty expensive. If you already have it on your shelves, though, it's well worth reading. As far as I know, these two collections are still the only Ed Jenkins stories that have been reprinted. Maybe one of these days we'll get some more of them.)

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Dead Men's Letters - Erle Stanley Gardner

Erle Stanley Gardner is a long-time favorite of mine. One of his Donald Lam/Bertha Cool books as A.A. Fair, SHILLS CAN’T CASH CHIPS, is one of the first adult mysteries I remember reading, and that was so long ago I checked it out from the bookmobile that came out to our little town every Saturday from the public library in Fort Worth, a practice that ended in 1964 when our town opened its own small library. (I also checked out THIS IS IT, MICHAEL SHAYNE from the bookmobile, the first Mike Shayne novel I ever read. I believe I read other Shaynes and some more A.A. Fair novels from there, as well. But I digress . . .)

Gardner was a very prolific author for the pulps before he ever achieved fame and fortune as the creator of Perry Mason, spinning yarns about a multitude of series characters. One of them was Ed Jenkins, also known as the Phantom Crook, who appeared in scores of stories in BLACK MASK. Despite being branded a criminal, Jenkins was really a good guy who preyed mostly on other criminals, usually when they tried to blackmail him or frame him into helping them, when all the time, of course, they’re planning to set him up to take the fall. Ed always finds a way to turn the tables on them, though.

Six Ed Jenkins novelettes, originally published in BLACK MASK in 1926 and ’27, were reprinted by Carroll & Graf in l990 in a volume called DEAD MEN’S LETTERS. Several of these stories are linked together, a common practice in the pulps of that time. (Hammett’s RED HARVEST and THE DAIN CURSE were both “fix-up” novels put together from linked novelettes.) What surprised me in reading this book was how good the writing is. Gardner’s prose is a little dated and melodramatic in places, but for the most part it’s as clear and sharp as anything being written today. And in places it approaches a sort of terse poetry unlike what you find for the most part in his Perry Mason and A.A. Fair books. Ed Jenkins is about as hardboiled a character as I’ve encountered in Gardner’s work, chuckling after he sends off one of the bad guys to be riddled by machine gun fire in an ambush intended for him by another gang of crooks. As usual, the stories are packed full of plot, and Ed is always two or three steps ahead of not only his enemies but the reader as well.

If all you know of Gardner’s work is Perry Mason, Donald Lam, Bertha Cool, or DA Doug Selby, give DEAD MEN’S LETTERS a try. There’s another collection of Ed Jenkins stories from Carroll & Graf, THE BLONDE IN LOWER SIX, and I intend to read it soon.

(This post first appeared on August 1, 2008. DEAD MEN'S LETTERS is long out of print, but affordable used copies can be found without much trouble. For once, I followed through on my stated intention to read something soon, and I'll be rerunning my review of THE BLONDE IN LOWER SIX next Friday. I hope those of you who are long-time readers of the blog aren't getting tired of these reruns. Enough time has passed that some of them seem like new to me, but then, I don't have the greatest memory in the world, either.)

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Dreamland (2020)

I had never heard of this movie, but the description sounded promising: a Depression-era crime yarn set in the Dust Bowl-blighted Texas Panhandle, with Margot Robbie playing a beautiful bank robber who encounters the teenage stepson of a deputy sheriff.

There are two ways a movie like this can go. Either you get a raucous, AIP/Roger Corman-style, Seventies drive-in epic complete with boobs, chase scenes, Tommy-gun shootouts, and lots of bluegrass music, or you get a leisurely paced, beautifully photographed, moody film reminiscent of Terence Malick’s BADLANDS (a movie I liked a lot, by the way).

Well, DREAMLAND goes the moody, leisurely paced route for the most part, although there are some decent chase scenes and gun battles. The slowly developing relationship between angsty Eugene Baker (Finn Cole, an actor I’m not familiar with) and fugitive Allison Wells (Robbie) after he finds her wounded in his family’s barn takes up the lion’s share of the movie. There are a few flashbacks to fill in the background of both characters. Eugene’s younger half-sister provides voice-over narration from the perspective of twenty years later. Allison wants to escape to Mexico, and of course it’s easy for her to persuade Eugene to help her. Eventually they take off together, banks get robbed, and the law, including Eugene’s deputy sheriff stepfather, pursues them.

The on-line reviews for this one are definitely mixed, with a lot of bad reviews and a few really glowing ones. I can’t give it a full-fledged recommendation, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. The cast, which includes Travis Fimmel (Ragnar from VIKINGS) as Eugene’s stepfather, does a good job. The photography is excellent. The movie was filmed in New Mexico, not the Texas Panhandle, and sometimes you can tell that, but it’s not too distracting. I didn’t spot any anachronisms, but I wasn’t watching too closely for them, either. At least there was nothing blatantly wrong. (That sounds like I’m damning with faint praise, and I don’t intend it that way.)

DREAMLAND is no lost classic, but I think it’s worth watching. And I’ve left what I liked best for last: Eugene is a big reader of crime and detective pulps, and issues of BLACK MASK and DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY are not only featured prominently on-screen, they even play a part in the plot. What’s the last movie you could say that about?

Review: Desperate Times: Stories From the Great Depression - Cornell Woolrich

My recent reading of Cornell Woolrich’s MARIHUANA put me in the mood to read more of his work, which I’ve enjoyed for many years. My attention span hasn’t been very conducive to reading novels lately, but luckily there are a number of Woolrich collections available on Amazon, reprinting some of his shorter work from the pulps. DESPERATE TIMES: STORIES FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION caught my eye, so I started there.

The first story is “The Heavy Sugar” from the January 1937 issue of POCKET DETECTIVE. A down-and-outer in New York City finds a diamond necklace hidden in a sugar bowl in a seedy cafeteria. He figures, correctly, that some crook stashed it there to keep from having the cops find it on him. Our protagonist quickly discovers, however, that having a valuable necklace in his possession is a dangerous thing, since the gang that stole it in the first place is on his trail. As always, Woolrich does a great job depicting a squalid world of bars and flophouses, and he ratchets the suspense up skillfully to a twist ending that I should have seen coming but didn’t.

A guy tries to rob his miserly, corrupt former employer to recoup some lost wages he was cheated out of. Things go wrong. And then they get worse. That’s the plot of “Murder Always Gathers Momentum” from the December 14, 1940 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY. Once again, this tale is pure headlong suspense, barreling along to a twist ending, and yes, Woolrich got me again. It’s a very effective gut punch.

“Goodbye, New York” (STORY, October 1937) also concerns a robbery that turns into murder and the killer’s flight from the law. Only this time, his wife accompanies him, and she’s the narrator of this story. It’s tense and well-written, but it never grabbed me quite as much as the others and I didn’t care much for the ending. Interestingly, at least to me, the version that appears in this e-book edition seems to have been taken from a later reprinting rather than the original, because there’s a reference to the characters watching TV, not likely something they would have been doing in 1937. I suspect it was originally listening to the radio. I also suspect this version comes from the reprint in the March 1953 issue of ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, since TV was a huge fad in those days and EQMM editor Fred Dannay was known to edit/revise some of the stories he reprinted.

“Borrowed Crime”, from the July 1939 issue of BLACK MASK, once again concerns a robbery that turns into murder, but this time the protagonist of the story has nothing to do with the crime. However, he has a very good reason for confessing to it anyway. He also has an alibi that will keep him from being found guilty. But then something happens to that alibi, and he’s facing conviction and a trip to the electric chair unless he can convince someone that his wild story is true. Something similar could be said for Woolrich, who was famous, or infamous, for his far-fetched plots. This story is a good example of that. Did I find it believable? Not at all. Did I keep flipping the digital pages to find out what was going to happen? I sure did. Woolrich’s slick prose and storytelling ability get all the credit for that.

“Dormant Account” appeared in the May 1942 issue of BLACK MASK. The narrator, down on his luck George Palmer, comes up with an unusual way to try to turn his life around. He sees a list of dormant bank accounts in a newspaper and decides to pretend to be one of the people listed who has money coming to them. Through Woolrich’s careful manipulation of the plot, Palmer makes this crazy scheme work, but only up to a point. Then everything falls apart and he winds up running for his life. Once again, Woolrich spins a yarn that seems too ridiculous when you look at it logically. But who looks at a Cornell Woolrich story logically? And since when is life logical? All I know is that I enjoyed this story, and I loved the final twist even though you could see it coming the proverbial mile away.

“I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes”, from the March 12, 1938 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, is one of Woolrich’s best-known stories and a prime example of how he could stretch coincidences and unlikely twists into a suspense yarn that gallops along and keeps the reader enthralled. A guy loses his temper and throws his shoes out the window at some yowling cats who are keeping him awake. Then, before you know it, he’s arrested and charged with murder. He’s tried, convicted, and on the brink of execution, his only chance a police detective who comes to believe his wild story. Not only does Woolrich construct a compelling story out of not much more than thin air, he even throws in a couple of entirely logical late twists that give this yarn a really bittersweet ending.

The earliest story in this collection, “The Death of Me” appeared originally in the December 7, 1935 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY. It opens with a man attempting to commit suicide because of his financial straits, but bad luck prevents him from taking his life. Or is it good luck, because a short time later, an opportunity to start over falls into his lap. Or is that bad luck, too? Nothing works out as you might think in a Woolrich story, or at least nothing works out as the characters think it will. Things pile up in this one until it seems that the protagonist has no way out. Or will fate come to his rescue yet again?

This volume wraps up with “Even God Felt the Depression”, a lightly fictionalized autobiographical essay that went unpublished when Woolrich was alive but appeared in BLUES OF A LIFETIME, a collection of such essays published in 1991. Set in the early Thirties, it centers around Woolrich’s attempt to write and sell a novel that will then sell to the movies and make him enough money to rescue him from poverty. Along the way, it presents a vivid portrait of those unfortunate times and the people who suffered through them. I missed BLUES OF A LIFETIME when it came out, but it’s still available and after reading this, I ordered a copy.

This is a fine collection, although the similarity of plots in some of the stories means it might be best to space them out a little, as I did. Twin themes of the vagaries of fate and the lengths to which desperate people will go run through all of them, and that’s a great framework for Woolrich’s distinctive style. If you’ve never read his work before, this might not be the best place to start because of those plot similarities I mentioned, but if you’re already a fan, I give this collection a high recommendation. It's available in print and e-book editions on Amazon.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Mask, September 1933

What would 20 cents buy in 1933? Well, it would buy a lot of things I suppose, but one possible answer is that it would buy an issue of BLACK MASK with stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick Nebel, Raoul Whitfield, W.T. Ballard, Roger Torrey, and Eugene Cunningham. That's just a spectacular group of authors. Cunningham is best remembered as a Western author, but he wrote quite a few hardboiled yarns, too. His story in this issue is the first in a series about hotel detective Cleve Corby. Nebel's story is part of his Kennedy and McBride series, Gardner's features the phantom crook Ed Jenkins, Ballard writes about Hollywood troubleshooter Bill Lennox, Torrey's story is about policeman Dal Prentice, and Whitfield's is the first of two about private eye Dion Davies. Several of the stories from this issue have been reprinted, and I'm sure they're well worth seeking out. By the way, the cover of this issue is by J.W. Schlaikjer, who did quite a few covers for BLACK MASK during this era.

Big Shots Die Young (Manville Moon #5) - Richard Deming

“Big Shots Die Young” is the fifth novella featuring Richard Deming’s one-legged private eye Manville Moon. It was published originally in the July 1949 issue of BLACK MASK and featured on the cover by Norman Saunders, although that cover has nothing to do with Deming’s story.

This novella is a direct sequel to the previous entry in the series, “No Pockets in a Shroud” (BLACK MASK, January 1949). And fair warning, it spoils the mystery of that earlier story, too. But since I’d read that one, I had no problem going right along with this yarn, which finds Moon the target of an old enemy who comes back into the unidentified city where these stories take place intending to take over the local gambling setup. Before you know it, Moon has been framed for murder, arrested by the cops, and has to escape and uncover the real killer to clear his name. All while romancing a beautiful woman at the same time, of course.

Manville Moon is a flat-out great protagonist. He’s tough, funny, just vulnerable enough not to be superhuman, and has become one of my favorite first-person narrators over the course of the five stories about him I’ve read so far. Deming’s prose, as always, is so smooth and polished that it glitters.

Where “Big Shots Die Young” doesn’t quite reach the level of the earlier stories is in the plot, which is rather thin and predictable. Anybody who’s read many private eye yarns will know what’s going on right away. The other stories so far in the series had pretty complex plots, but that’s not the case here.

Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it. I had a really good time reading “Big Shots Die Young”, and I think anybody who has enjoyed the previous stories will like this one, too. Like the others, it’s available as an inexpensive e-book if you don’t happen to own that particular issue of BLACK MASK. And if you haven’t made the acquaintance of Manville Moon yet, I highly recommend that you do.

A Rough Edges Rerun: Green Ice - Raoul Whitfield

A number of Raoul Whitfield’s stories from BLACK MASK have been reprinted and anthologized over the years. I’ve read quite a few of them and enjoyed them all, going back to one of his Jo Gar stories that was reprinted in the anthology THE HARD-BOILED DICKS, which I bought at The Book Oasis in Seminary South Shopping Center in Fort Worth on a December evening in 1967. (Yes, I remember that. Just don’t ask me what I had for lunch yesterday.)

Anyway, I’d never read any of Whitfield’s novels until now. GREEN ICE was his first novel, published in 1930 and based on a series of five linked novelettes published in BLACK MASK from December 1929 through April 1930 that are put together pretty seamlessly. It’s the story of what happens when ex-con Mal Ourney gets out of Sing Sing after having served a two-year sentence for manslaughter. Mal wasn’t really guilty; he took the rap for his girlfriend at the time, who was really behind the wheel in a fatal car crash. She comes to meet Mal when he’s released, but he’s no longer interested in her and refuses to go with her. A good thing, too, because a short time later, she’s dead, the first of at least a dozen murder victims in this novel.

While in prison, Mal has made friends with several small-time crooks who were drawn into the rackets by the big bosses, the men Mal refers to as the crime breeders. He decides that when he gets out, he’ll go after these big bosses and try to bring them down. Before he can even get started on his crusade, though, he finds himself up to his neck in murder after murder, all of them tied together by some missing emeralds, the green ice of the title. This is one of those early hardboiled novels where the plot gets incredibly complicated, to the point that Whitfield has to stop the action every so often to have his characters explain to each other everything that’s happened so far. He even manages to save one last major twist for the very end.

Plots so complex that they get a little far-fetched are a hallmark of hardboiled fiction from that era, though, as is terse, staccato prose. Whitfield delivers on that score, too. There’s a little snappy patter and considerable tough guy slang, along with plenty of fistfights and tommy-gun massacres, before Mal finally untangles all the various interwoven strands of plot. As you can imagine, I thoroughly enjoyed it, too. These days, GREEN ICE would have to be considered a historical novel, but if you’re interested in the genesis of hardboiled crime novels or just looking for a good yarn, I recommend it.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on April 17, 2009.)

The Price of a Dime: The Complete Black Mask Cases of Ben Shaley - Norbert Davis

The first Norbert Davis story I ever read was “Don’t Give Your Right Name”, a Max Latin yarn included in the iconic anthology THE HARDBOILED DICKS. That was the first time I’d heard of Davis, but I loved the story and in the years since have read dozens of other pulp stories by him. They’ve never disappointed me.

Davis is best remembered for stories that were both humorous and hardboiled, but he could do straight tough guy tales, too, which he did early in his career. THE PRICE OF A DIME, a new Davis collection from Black Mask/Steeger Books, features five of those early hardboiled stories, two starring private detective Ben Shaley.

“Red Goose” is the first of the Shaley stories, from the February 1934 issue of BLACK MASK. It was reprinted in Joseph T. Shaw’s THE HARD-BOILED OMNIBUS, so I know I’ve read it before, but I didn’t have any recollection of it when I sat down to read this volume. Not surprisingly, it’s a very entertaining story in which Shaley is hired to recover a valuable painting stolen from a museum. There are a lot of twists and turns in a relatively short story, and it takes some explaining from Shaley at the end to straighten everything out, and even then, Davis has a final twist lined up.

Shaley’s second, and final recorded, case is “The Price of a Dime” (April 1934). This involves a hotel bellhop who receives a dime as a tip, an incident that leads to murder, blackmail, and a shootout on the Western lot at a movie studio. Shaley reminds me a little of Mike Shayne, because his thinking always seems to be two steps ahead of everybody else in the story and three steps ahead of the reader. With its movie studio background, this yarn also reminds me of Robert Leslie Bellem’s Dan Turner series, and it has something in common with one of Fred MacIsaac’s Rambler stories I read recently. A very entertaining tale, all around.

Davis’s first appearance in BLACK MASK was in the June 1932 issue, with a story called “Reform Racket”. This is a pretty straightforward story in which the protagonist returns to his hometown and finds himself in the middle of some dangerous political intrigue involving his sister, gangsters, and a candidate vowing to clean up the town. With its very terse prose, ultra-hardboiled protagonist, and understated but brutal violence, this made me think of some of Paul Cain’s stories. It’s an auspicious beginning for Davis.

“Kansas City Flash” was published in the March 1933 issue of BLACK MASK, and despite the title, it’s another Bellem-like yarn about a Hollywood troubleshooter, a former stuntman named Mark Hull. Given that, it’s also reminiscent of W.T. Ballard’s Bill Lennox stories, which also ran in BLACK MASK. I enjoyed this one, and it would have been fine with me if Davis had written more stories about Mark Hull, but this is the only one.

This volume wraps up with “Hit and Run”, from the April 1935 issue of BLACK MASK. It’s a tale of another one-shot private eye, Jake Tait, who goes in search of a hit-and-run victim and finds himself neck deep in a case involving bank robbery and murder. It’s surprising just how much plot Davis could work into these novelettes. Tait’s another tough but likable protagonist, able to absorb a lot of punishment but dish it out, too.

All these stories are very good and well worth reading if you’re a fan of hardboiled detective fiction. My Norbert Davis streak continues: he’s never disappointed me. I give this collection a high recommendation.

No Pockets in a Shroud - Richard Deming

“No Pockets in a Shroud” is the fourth novella featuring Richard Deming’s private eye character Manville Moon. It was published originally in the January 1949 issue of the iconic pulp BLACK MASK, a magazine long past its glory days by that time but still publishing plenty of good hardboiled detective fiction. “No Pockets in a Shroud” is a fine example of that.

Moon, who operates in an unnamed Midwestern city, is a World War II vet who lost his right leg from the knee down to a shell blast in Europe. He gets around pretty well on an artificial leg, though, and other than not being able to run very fast anymore, his injury doesn’t really hamper him. He’s still plenty tough and smart and still attracts the ladies, even though he describes himself as ugly.

As this case opens, Moon is approached by two competing mobsters, each of them determined to control the city’s gambling. Open warfare between them is looming, and each man wants to hire Moon to be on his side if that happens. Moon isn’t having any of it. The last thing he wants is to get caught in the middle of a gang war. Then one of the mobsters surprises him by trying to hire him in advance to investigate a murder. Whose murder, Moon wants to know? Turns out, the mobster thinks somebody is trying to kill him, and if the would-be murderer succeeds, he wants Moon to bring the killer to justice.

Well, before you know it, there’s a murder, of course . . . but it’s the other mobster who winds up dead, and Moon is up to his neck in the case, anyway. Also, naturally, while trying to sort out the truth, he has to deal with several beautiful women, including the wives and mistresses of the two rival gangsters. There’s also a hopped-up young gunman with an itch to ventilate Moon. All of it is hectic and breathless and a heck of a lot of fun to read for somebody who grew up on this stuff like I did.

As in the previous Manville Moon yarns, the murder is pretty complicated, but Deming puts it all together very well and all the clues are there, leading to a satisfying conclusion. Moon is a very likable protagonist. There’s one bit of business that’s so old it had long white whiskers on it even in 1949, and its stereotypical nature takes away a little from the story, but not enough to cause a real problem. I had a great time reading “No Pockets in a Shroud”, and if you’re a private eye fan, there’s a very good chance you’ll enjoy it, too. There’s an inexpensive e-book version available on Amazon if you don’t have the pulp.

By the way, the title has nothing to do with the story, and I have to wonder if some editor at Popular Publications was responsible for it. They retitled many of the stories published in their Western pulps and I imagine the same was true in their detective pulps. Anyway, it’s a good title, relevant or not, so I’m fine with it.

Classic Private Detective Pulp: A Shot in the Arm (Manville Moon #3) - Richard Deming

It's taken me a while, but I've read the third novella in Richard Deming's series about private detective Manville Moon, who lost his right leg from the knee down fighting in World War II but doesn't let that slow him down when it comes to solving murders and fighting with mobsters and killers. In "A Shot in the Arm", published originally in the July 1948 issue of BLACK MASK, Moon is hired to help a rich, beautiful young woman kick her morphine habit. (Didn't something similar to this happen to the Continental Op in THE DAIN CURSE? It's been a long time since I read that book.)

Unfortunately, there's been a murder before the story even opens, and there's another one soon after, and Moon is left trying to sort out the killings as Deming fills in the background with a lengthy flashback. Sometimes I'm not a fan of that technique, but it works pretty well here and Deming is such a good writer that he keeps things racing along in a swift, smooth manner. The dialogue is good, Moon is a great character, and the mystery is fairly clued and seems to hold together pretty well. I enjoyed this yarn quite a bit. It's available as an inexpensive e-book, if you don't have that issue of BLACK MASK in your collection. 

Classic Hardboiled Pulp: Dead Evidence: The Complete BLACK MASK Cases of Harrigan - Ed Lybeck

Ed Lybeck’s name was vaguely familiar to me, and when I read Will Murray’s excellent introduction to this collection of Lybeck’s stories published in BLACK MASK, I realized why: Joseph T. Shaw included one of Lybeck’s stories in the iconic anthology THE HARD-BOILED OMNIBUS, which I read about fifty years ago. I have no memory of Lybeck’s story in that book, however, and after rereading it in this one, I still have no memory of it from back then. Which proves nothing except that I didn’t always recognize greatness when I came across it, because these yarns are absolutely fantastic.

Lybeck had only four stories published in BLACK MASK, all of them novella or novelette length, and they all feature the same protagonist, tough guy reporter Francis St. Xavier Harrigan, who covers the crime beat for the New York Leader and who, Lybeck implies, was once a crook and a gunman himself. Lybeck doesn’t seem sure whether abandoning gangdom for journalism is a step up or down for Harrigan.

In the first story, “Leaded Ink” (BLACK MASK, December 1931), Harrigan goes after the mobsters who murdered a young reporter who was his protégé. The second story, “Kick-Back” (January 1932) finds him clashing with a corrupt politician running on a reform ticket and the gangster backing the politician. This is the story that appeared in THE HARD-BOILED OMNIBUS. “Dead Evidence” (March 1932) is a direct sequel to “Kick-Back”, with Harrigan framed for a killing and fighting to clear his name. The final Harrigan story, “Silent Heat”, didn’t appear until February 1934. In this one, Harrigan takes on a white slavery ring.

These are all action yarns and don’t have much actual detection in them, but as fast-moving tales of crime-busting, they’re some of the best I’ve ever read. Lybeck’s style is a joy to read, a mixture of tough violence, snappy patter, and unexpectedly breezy humor. I laughed out loud a number of times reading these stories. Harrigan’s a great character, able to absorb a tremendous amount of punishment and still keep slugging away at his enemies. I probably never would have been able to read these stories if Steeger Books hadn’t reprinted them in the new Black Mask line, so I really appreciate the opportunity. Based on only four stories, you can’t put Lybeck in the same rank as Hammett, Chandler, Nebel, and the other giants from BLACK MASK, but he was mighty good anyway and I had a great time reading this collection. If you love hardboiled pulp like I do, it gets my highest recommendation.