Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine, March 1939

Hubert Rogers provides a nice deep sea diving cover for this issue of STREET & SMITH'S DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE. Inside are well-known authors Erle Stanley Gardner (with a Lester Leith novella), Steve Fisher, and William G. Bogart, along with lesser known (at least to me) Edmund M. Littell, Chris Sieyes, and Carl Clausen. Of all the ESG characters I've read, Lester Leith is probably my least-favorite. However, I'm not sure I've ever read any of the stories except the one in Ron Goulart's iconic anthology THE HARDBOILED DICKS, so that's hardly a fair trial. I ought to see if I can hunt up a few more Leith yarns and give them a try. I own a few issues of DETECTIVE STORY (not this one) but I don't believe I've ever read any of them. I probably ought to do that, too. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Bodyguard - Roger Torrey

Roger Torrey was one of the leading authors of hardboiled detective fiction for the pulps during the Thirties and Forties, starting out in BLACK MASK and writing for a number of other pulps as well, including SPICY DETECTIVE, PRIVATE DETECTIVE, and Street & Smith’s DETECTIVE STORY. 

Torrey’s work has two major strengths. One is the easygoing, conversational style in which the stories are told. According to Black Dog Books’ editor and publisher, Tom Roberts, reading a story by Roger Torrey is like sitting in a bar somewhere and listening to a guy spin an exciting yarn about something that happened to him. The fact that the guy is usually a private eye, and the story concerns some bizarre case mixed up with murder and beautiful babes, is a real plus.

The colorful characterization of the narrators in most of Torrey’s stories is their other strong point. Despite the fact that they all have different names, those narrators are basically the same person: a private detective, often an ex-cop and a lone operative, smart but not infallible, tough but no superman, basically a decent sort but not above a little chicanery and lechery. He’ll get beaten up when the odds are against him, he’ll be fooled by an attractive woman from time to time, and he’ll muddle his way through cases with dogged determination as much as anything else. But in the end, he comes up with the killer every time, of course.

Torrey’s background included stints as a piano player in nightclubs and an organist in movie theaters, and his stories often have some sort of show business background. He was a heavy drinker, and so are many of his characters. Despite their sometimes oddball plot elements, the stories have an air of authenticity about them, including a fatalism that foreshadows Torrey’s early death. (He wasn’t even 40 yet when he passed away, probably from alcoholism.)

BODYGUARD reprints eleven stories, several of them long novellas. While not all of them are what you’d call rigorously plotted, they’re all very entertaining and enjoyable. The book also includes an informative introduction by long-time author and editor Ron Goulart, as well as the first-ever bibliography of Torrey’s work. I had a great time reading BODYGUARD, and if you’re a fan of hardboiled pulp fiction, I highly recommend it.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on March 17, 2010. BODYGUARD is still available in e-book and trade paperback editions, and my recommendation of it stands. It's well worth reading.) 

Forgotten Books: Skyrocket Steele - Ron Goulart

I've been reading and enjoying Ron Goulart's novels for decades. He's best known for his science fiction, I suppose, but he's also written quite a few mysteries (including a good four-book series about a California private eye named John Easy), various novelizations and tie-in novels, and a few Westerns. He also edited the iconic anthology THE HARDBOILED DICKS, which introduced a lot of readers of my generation to the great hardboiled detective authors from the pulps, and wrote several volumes of pulp and comic book history.

SKYROCKET STEELE is one of his science fiction novels I'd never read until now, and it's great fun. Although it's definitely SF, except for a few hints here and there that element doesn't really come into play until late in the book. Most of the way it's a funny, well-written account of making a science fiction movie serial called "Skyrocket Steele" in 1940. The protagonist is a young writer named Pete Tinsley who's been selling stories to the pulps for several years (he seems to have contributed mostly to the "Stimulating" line – STIMULATING WESTERN, STIMULATING SKY STORIES, STIMULATING ADVENTURE, etc. – a nice homage to the "Spicies"). Hired to help an experienced scripter come up with the screenplay for "Skyrocket Steele", Pete makes a very likable hero as he discovers some odd things going on around the production.

Throw in some Hollywood gangsters, a beautiful dancer named Boots McKay (great name), an equally beautiful redhead named Tracy Flinn who may or may not have some abilities that aren't quite normal, and some Nazi saboteurs, and you've got an excellent screwball adventure yarn that winds up with a burst of nice pyrotechnics.

This book came out in paperback from Pocket Books in 1980 with a cover by Carl Lundgren and has probably been out of print ever since, but it's well worth seeking out. I had a fine time reading it, and I suspect a lot of you would, too.