Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, September 1939

I think this is a Tom Lovell cover on this issue of DETECTIVE TALES, but I'm not absolutely certain. I am certain, though, that there's a great lineup of authors in these pages: Norbert Davis, Cleve F. Adams, Wyatt Blassingame, William B. Rainey (also Wyatt Blassingame), Emile C. Tepperman, Philip Ketchum, William R. Cox, Stewart Sterling, and Ray Cummings. Every one of those guys was a prolific, top-notch pulpster, and I'm sure this was a well-above average issue. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: No Wings on a Cop - Cleve F. Adams (and Robert Leslie Bellem)

Like SHADY LADY and CONTRABAND, NO WINGS ON A COP is another novel published under Cleve F. Adams’s name that was actually expanded by Robert Leslie Bellem from an Adams pulp story into a novel. Bellem and Adams were good friends, and I seem to recall reading that Bellem wrote those novels as a favor to Adams’s widow. Of course, I imagine Bellem got a cut of the money, too. If I’m wrong about any of that, I hope someone who knows more about the situation will correct me. Also, I’m not sure which Adams story served as the basis for this book. It might be “Clean Sweep”, from the August 24, 1940 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, which, according to the Fictionmags Index, features police lieutenant John J. Shannon, the hero of NO WINGS ON A COP. If anyone knows for sure, again please let us know in the comments.

With that bit of background out of the way, how is NO WINGS ON A COP as a novel? Pretty darned good, that’s what it is. When the story opens, Lt. Shannon’s boss and good friend, Captain Grady, has already been murdered, and the killing has been pinned on gambler Floyd Duquesne, who evidently had been paying off Grady for protection. Shannon doesn’t believe that his friend was crooked, of course, and sets out to find the real killer. Almost as soon as he begins his investigation, though, somebody plants a bomb in his car. Shannon survives the explosion, but his left arm is broken, so for the rest of the book he’s going around with his arm in a cast and a sling, which proves pretty inconvenient at times but ultimately comes in handy on at least one occasion.

All the action in the book takes place in less than twenty-four hours, and it’s a whirlwind pace, as you might expect. Shannon clashes with the acting chief of police (the regular chief is out of town), gets kicked off the force, gets hit on the head and knocked out, trades banter with his girlfriend, who’s a beautiful model, has a couple of shootouts with hired killers, has a beautiful redheaded stripper try to seduce him, and runs up against an assortment of crooked cops, corrupt politicians, big-time gamblers, and dangerous hoodlums. It’s all great fun, with a complex plot that Shannon finally sorts out at the end. I’ve been reading this sort of hardboiled detective novel for more than forty years now and still get a big kick out of a good one, which NO WINGS ON A COP certainly is.

Bellem’s writing is as smooth and fast and enjoyable as ever, and knowing the background of the book’s authorship gives it an added level of humor. There’s a mention of a cab driver reading an issue of the DAN TURNER, HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE comic book, some of the characters sit around and drink Vat 69, Turner’s favorite hooch, and Bellem even writes himself into the book as a character, bank officer Robert B. Leslie: “The guy was a middle-aged man with slightly wavy hair, a thickening middle and a mustache of which he seemed inordinately vain.” Although Adams might have been responsible for some of that in the original story, I don’t know. He and Bellem were friends, after all.

NO WINGS ON A COP was originally published by Handi-Books in 1950 and later reprinted by Harlequin. As far as I know, it’s been out of print for more than fifty years now, and it ought to be a prime candidate for reprinting by one of the small presses. This is one of those books that sat on my shelves for years without me getting around to reading it, then was lost in the fire. I replaced it not long ago and decided that I’d better get it read. I’m glad I did. Highly recommended.

(This post appeared originally on April 16, 2010. Since that time, NO WINGS ON A COP still hasn't been reprinted. One of these days . . .)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch Detective, September 1938

TOP-NOTCH DETECTIVE lasted for only three issues, of which this is the first one. That cover has enough going on that I thought at first it might be by Norman Saunders, but it's actually by J.W. Scott. The fact that this pulp didn't last long couldn't be due to the quality of the authors in its pages. This issue features stories by Cleve F. Adams, Arthur J. Burks, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Edward Ronns (Edward S. Aarons), Norman A. Daniels, Henry Treat Sperry, and Orlando Rigoni, as well as a number of other, lesser-known authors. That's a pretty strong lineup and an indication of a pulp worth reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Fiction Weekly, January 13, 1940

I've mentioned before that the first actual pulp I ever owned was an issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, so I've always had a soft spot for that magazine despite reading very little from it. This issue from 1940 sports a good cover by Emmett Watson and a very solid line-up of authors including Cleve F. Adams with two stories, a novelette and an installment from a Rex McBride serial called "Homicide: Honolulu Bound". If this serial was published as a novel under some other title, maybe one of you out there can provide that information. Also on hand are Brett Halliday (Davis Dresser) with an installment in the Mike Shayne serial "Death Rides a Winner" (if I've read this, I don't remember it), Hugh B. Cave, John St. John (who was really Richard Sale) and a forgotten pulpster named John Randolph Phillips. Like ARGOSY, DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY is a frustrating pulp for people who just want to read the stories because of all the serials, but there's no doubt that a lot of great yarns were published in its pages.

Punk & Other Stories - Cleve F. Adams

I’ve read several of Cleve F. Adams’ novels over the years and really enjoyed them. I’m not sure why I haven’t read more by him. Just another case of too many books, not enough time, I guess. But I hadn’t read any of Adams’ pulp stories as far as I recall, so the recent publication of PUNK & OTHER STORIES, a collection of four hardboiled detective yarns by Adams, was something I grabbed immediately.

The title novelette was published originally in the March 19, 1938 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY. “Punk” is how the narrator/protagonist Jerry Cassidy thinks of himself, and it’s an opinion shared by several other characters in the story. Jerry grew up with a couple of friends, Ed Harmon and Slats McKenna, but when they reached adulthood they went very separate ways. Harmon is now Big Ed Harmon, one of the top gangsters in Los Angeles, while Slats is now Lieutenant McKenna, a police detective. And Jerry? Jerry is a low-level criminal, a flunky who works for Big Ed even though he’d like to get into something more respectable like radio work, something he was trained for during a stint in the Navy. Jerry’s married to a floozy named Cora who hates him because he’s not successful. In his younger years he was in love with a beautiful dame named Frances, but she wound up marrying Jerry’s boss Big Ed. Jerry knows he’ll never escape from this shady life because Big Ed knows he killed a guy, a case of self-defense but a jury will never believe it from a punk like him. Then everything busts wide open for Jerry when a crooked politician is murdered and the love of his life has to go on the run and appeals to him for help.

As you can tell, Adams packs a lot of back-story in this novelette, but it’s never obtrusive and the information comes out naturally instead of interfering with the headlong pace of the action. And I do mean headlong. Breakneck, even. Man, this story moves. And with its bang-bang-bang pace, its touches of humor, and the distinctive, likable narration by its protagonist, it’s just terrific, the sort of pure, top-notch entertainment I needed right now.

“Default With Doom”, from the April 1937 issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES, is the only appearance of hardboiled Los Angeles private eye Mike Shane, and since the first Michael Shayne novel DIVIDEND ON DEATH came out two years later, it really makes me wonder if Davis Dresser happened to read this story and the name stuck in his head. We’ll never know, of course, but I don’t think we can rule it out. For our purposes here, what’s important is whether the story is any good, and it really is. This one is in third person, and the style is as terse and tough as can be as Shane investigates the murder of a newspaper columnist. His former girlfriend is the columnist’s secretary and is one of the suspects in the killing, so of course Shane has to find the real killer in order to clear her name. Once again the action is almost non-stop, and Adams manages to work a little actual detection in along with the shootouts, fistfights, and car crashes. As with “Punk”, I just had a great time reading this one.

Adams makes use of another one-shot private detective, Nicolas Flagg, in “Frame for a Lady” from the October 1938 issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE. Flagg is a former mobster who got out of the rackets and became a PI. He gets involved in this case when the beautiful daughter of his former partner in crime says that her father wants to see him. Unfortunately, when they get to the big guy’s apartment, he’s been murdered—and the dame, who has always been in love with Flagg since she was a little girl, is one of the primary suspects. Anyway, when a man’s partner—or his former partner, in this case—is killed, he’s expected to do something about it, or something like that, so Flagg sets out to find the killer. This is another whirlwind of action and plot twists and great dialogue.

Adams’ unscrupulous private eye Connor O’Melveny appears in three stories, and “Forty Pains”, from the July 1941 issue of DIME DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, is the middle yarn in that trio. It opens at the Santa Anita racetrack, where O’Melveny and his beautiful former secretary turned partner in the agency, Desiree Dugan, are following a married couple bent on divorce. Although neither husband nor wife are aware of it, they have both hired the O’Melveny agency to follow the other and gather evidence. Desiree doesn’t know about this, either, but O’Melveny does and has no qualms about playing both sides against each other. Then a handsome lad the wife in the case rendezvouses with at the racetrack turns up dead, and off we gallop again. This one is a bit more of a screwball comedy than the other stories in this collection, although they’re humorous at times, too. And “Forty Pains” has its share of hardboiled action, as well. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Connor O’Melveny is an odd but engaging character, and his banter with his partner Desiree Dugan is excellent.

I knew I was a fan of Cleve F. Adams’ work, but this book made me even more of one. I had a great time reading it and rank it as one of the best books I’ve read this year and some of the best hardboiled private eye fiction I’ve read in quite some time. I hope there’ll be more collections of Adams’ pulp stories in the future. For now, I give this one a very high recommendation. You can get it on Amazon in paperback and e-book editions.

Overlooked Old Time Radio: Here Comes McBride

I enjoy old time radio programs and have ever since I started listening to syndicated reruns of THE LONE RANGER, THE SHADOW, THE GREEN HORNET and GANGBUSTERS in the early Sixties. There are a lot of shows available on-line, and I wish I had more time to listen to them. I may have to start making some time.

The most recent program I've listened to is HERE COMES McBRIDE, which my friend Brian Ritt told me about. From May of 1949, it stars Frank Lovejoy as private eye Rex McBride, who appeared in pulp stories and novels by Cleve F. Adams. I've read and enjoyed some of them but had no idea there had ever been a radio show based on the character. I don't know how many episodes there were, but only one, the first one, appears to have survived.

McBride is actually an insurance investigator based in Los Angeles in the radio version. But as the episode opens, he's in San Francisco on a case, trying to track down a valuable stolen necklace. Unfortunately, he finds a corpse in his hotel room and winds up having to solve that murder, and another that follows it, while navigating the usual troubled waters of nightclubs, crooked gamblers, suspicious cops, beautiful but maybe not trustworthy dames, etc. It's standard private eye stuff but done pretty well, and Frank Lovejoy, an actor I've always liked, is good as McBride. If they had ever made any Rex McBride movies, he would have played the character quite well, I think.

One nice thing about this program is that Cleve Adams is mentioned in the opening credits "above the title", as it were. I always like to see the guy who created something acknowledged. The episode itself was written by someone named Robert Ryf, who wrote some early cops-and-robbers TV in addition to his radio work.

This single episode of HERE COMES McBRIDE is available in several places on-line. I downloaded it here, and you can also just listen to it there if you don't want to download it. Also, SABOTAGE, the first of Adams' novels about Rex McBride is in print from Altus Press, if you want to check out the original version of the character.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Clues Detective Stories, July 1935

The cover on this issue of CLUES DETECTIVE STORIES makes it look more like an adventure pulp than a mystery magazine, at least to me. And the presence of E. Hoffmann Price with the lead novel makes it just seem even more like that. But that's okay with me, since I always like Price's work. Also in this issue are stories by Cleve F. Adams, Paul Ernst, William Merriam Rouse, Arden X. Pangborn, and others.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, September 1939

Nice cover on this issue of DETECTIVE TALES. I think it might be by Tom Lovell, but that's just a guess on my part. No guess about the great group of authors inside, though: Norbert Davis, Cleve F. Adams, Philip Ketchum, Stewart Sterling, William R. Cox, Emile C. Tepperman, Ray Cummings, and Wyatt Blassingame. That's a bunch of top-notch talent.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Star Detective Magazine, November 1938

That looks a little like a Norman Saunders cover to me, but it's not listed on his website, so I guess it's some artist whose work is similar. Whoever painted it, I like it. This pulp doesn't appear to have lasted very long, but this issue, at least, has some good authors in it: Cleve F. Adams, Edward Ronns (who was really the great paperbacker Edward S. Aarons), Norman A. Daniels (another prolific pulp and paperback author), Cyril Plunkett, and a couple of house-names.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Double Detective, November 1937

I'm often amazed at the table of contents in some of these pulps. Like this one: stories by Leslie Charteris (a Saint yarn), Max Brand, Cornell Woolrich, Richard Sale, Cleve F. Adams, Roger Torrey, Dale Clark, and Walter Ripperger. That's all. Just a normal issue in those days.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Fiction Weekly, April 8, 1939

I haven't read that many issues of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, but all the ones I've read have been good. This one sports a cover by Rudolph Belarski, and the line-up of authors includes Richard Sale, Hugh B. Cave, Howard Wandrei, William R. Cox, and Cleve F. Adams. That's a top-notch group, all the way around.

Forgotten Books: No Wings on a Cop - Cleve F. Adams (and Robert Leslie Bellem)

Like SHADY LADY and CONTRABAND, NO WINGS ON A COP is another novel published under Cleve F. Adams’s name that was actually expanded by Robert Leslie Bellem from an Adams pulp story into a novel. Bellem and Adams were good friends, and I seem to recall reading that Bellem wrote those novels as a favor to Adams’s widow. Of course, I imagine Bellem got a cut of the money, too. If I’m wrong about any of that, I hope someone who knows more about the situation will correct me. Also, I’m not sure which Adams story served as the basis for this book. It might be “Clean Sweep”, from the August 24, 1940 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, which, according to the Fictionmags Index, features police lieutenant John J. Shannon, the hero of NO WINGS ON A COP. If anyone knows for sure, again please let us know in the comments.

With that bit of background out of the way, how is NO WINGS ON A COP as a novel? Pretty darned good, that’s what it is. When the story opens, Lt. Shannon’s boss and good friend, Captain Grady, has already been murdered, and the killing has been pinned on gambler Floyd Duquesne, who evidently had been paying off Grady for protection. Shannon doesn’t believe that his friend was crooked, of course, and sets out to find the real killer. Almost as soon as he begins his investigation, though, somebody plants a bomb in his car. Shannon survives the explosion, but his left arm is broken, so for the rest of the book he’s going around with his arm in a cast and a sling, which proves pretty inconvenient at times but ultimately comes in handy on at least one occasion.

All the action in the book takes place in less than twenty-four hours, and it’s a whirlwind pace, as you might expect. Shannon clashes with the acting chief of police (the regular chief is out of town), gets kicked off the force, gets hit on the head and knocked out, trades banter with his girlfriend, who’s a beautiful model, has a couple of shootouts with hired killers, has a beautiful redheaded stripper try to seduce him, and runs up against an assortment of crooked cops, corrupt politicians, big-time gamblers, and dangerous hoodlums. It’s all great fun, with a complex plot that Shannon finally sorts out at the end. I’ve been reading this sort of hardboiled detective novel for more than forty years now and still get a big kick out of a good one, which NO WINGS ON A COP certainly is.

Bellem’s writing is as smooth and fast and enjoyable as ever, and knowing the background of the book’s authorship gives it an added level of humor. There’s a mention of a cab driver reading an issue of the DAN TURNER, HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE comic book, some of the characters sit around and drink Vat 69, Turner’s favorite hooch, and Bellem even writes himself into the book as a character, bank officer Robert B. Leslie: “The guy was a middle-aged man with slightly wavy hair, a thickening middle and a mustache of which he seemed inordinately vain.” Although Adams might have been responsible for some of that in the original story, I don’t know. He and Bellem were friends, after all.

NO WINGS ON A COP was originally published by Handi-Books in 1950 and later reprinted by Harlequin. As far as I know, it’s been out of print for more than fifty years now, and it ought to be a prime candidate for reprinting by one of the small presses. This is one of those books that sat on my shelves for years without me getting around to reading it, then was lost in the fire. I replaced it not long ago and decided that I’d better get it read. I’m glad I did. Highly recommended.