Cover Cavalcade

 

From 1949.  Yet another example of Date Night going badly.

"You killed him, girlie. But you didn't kill him dead enough!"

A few weeks ago, I was playing the game Ace Detective, a card game in which the players create a hard-boiled mystery set in the early 1940s. One of the components are cards you can play that include quotes from various hard-boiled stories.

One of those quotes was "You killed him, girlie. But you didn't kill him dead enough!"

Well, obviously I had to look up the story from which that quote is taken and read it.

The story is "Heir in the Air," published in the September 1945 issue of Black Mask. It was written by Dale Clark, one of several pen names used by a writer named Ronal Kayser. Clark wrote something over two hundred stories for the pulps, including twenty-nine stories for Black Mask featuring hotel detective Mike O'Hanna.

Clark is one of those writers that it is a delight to discover as more and more pulp magazines become available digitally. "Heir in the Air" is the first story by Clark I've read, so its my introduction to O'Hanna.

I like him. The hotel for which he works is a swanky Southern California place called San Alpa. He's tough and, if a crime is committed, quite willing to direct that toughness at the wealthy, paying customers.

That's quite necessary in this case. The attractive Eva Taine has come running out of her room, screaming that the ghost of her grandfather had just tried to strangle her.

An investigation leads to another nearby room, where the guy staying there actually took a shot at the supposed ghost. Soon after that, though, a fresh corpse with a bullet in him is found.

O'Hanna soon discovers that several other members of the Taine family are in the hotel, all of whom have issues. This pretty quickly starts to aggravate him: "I'm tired of bumping into a brad-new Taine family skeleton every time I open a door!"

The murder, the supposed ghost and various other shenanigans turn out to revolve around a copy of the first draft of the Gettysburg Address. An old attempt to kill the Taine grandfather with a car bomb several years earlier is also a factor.  (He had since died of natural causes.) The fact that the grandfather had left a chunk of money to his cat is also thrown into the mix.

Despite all this, O'Hanna proves himself to be smart as well as tough. He manages to sort all these facts together and arrive at the truth.

A few years ago, I wrote about an Erle Stanley Gardner character whose adventures have never been collected into a single volume. The same is true of Clark's Mike O'Hanna tales. I love stumbling across pulp characters whose adventures I haven't read before, but once I find them, I want ALL the stories. I want them NOW!!!

Well, at least "Heir in the Air" is there to read. You can find it online HERE.

Every Good Secretary Will Risk Getting Shot For Her Boss

Read/Watch 'em in Order #74

In each of the last five looks at Erle Stanley Gardner's stories about two-fisted lawyer Ken Corning, I identified the setting as New York City. Now I consider myself a good reader--I don't skim and I have good comprehension skills.

But despite this, I mentally replaced "York City" in every story with "New York City." Perhaps its because Gardner dropped Perry Mason into a real-life city. But Ken Corning was set in a faux NYC with the "New" dropped from it. Gee whiz.

I finally caught my error when I read the last story: "Blackmail with Lead" (Black Mask, August 1933). I now know that Corning works out of York City, not New York City. Just in time for this excellent series to come to an end.

Corning, as usual,takes on a case that pits him directly against the corrupt city administration. But why do the politicians care about this case? The victim was a hobo. The man accused of the murder is a hobo. Why does anybody care?

Corning at first hasn't the slightest idea. He searches for the truth--a task made harder because his client isn't telling the whole truth when he gives Corning an alibi.

The lawyer soon finds a witness who has some important information. But the witness is arrested by the cops for bootlegging and, when the charges are suddenly dropped, she suddenly changes her story.

This leaves Corning with the task of running down whatever tiny clues he can dig up and trying to make something out of them. This actually pays off, but to get to the whole truth, he has to ask Helen Vail, his loyal secretary, to act as bait to catch a killer. Helen, as usual, treats this sort of thing as a normal part of her job.

1933 was the same year Gardner published the first Perry Mason novel. In this story, Perry was a two-fisted tough guy who acted more like a hard-boiled P.I. than a lawyer--just like Ken Corning. Perry had a loyal secretary who would go above-and-beyond to help her boss--just like Ken Corning.

The Perry Mason novels were incredibly successful, so (even though Perry evolved into a less hard-boiled character) Gardner continued this particular template with those novels. Corning's career came to an abrupt end.

Well, we can't complain about Perry Mason--his existence in the pop culture universe is something we wouldn't want to live without. But Corning had his own personality and his stories--centering much more on political corruption and dirty cops--had a vibe different from the Mason novels. It would have been nice to visit with Ken a few more times.

Rigging a Game to Catch a Killer

 Read/Watch 'em In Order #73

The next-to-last Ken Corning story ("Devil's Fire"--Black Mask, July 1933) is another fast-moving and fun adventure, though the ending is arguably a little weak.

The dirty NYC cops are once again framing an innocent man. Well, actually Corning's client this time around probably doesn't quality as innocent, but Corning doesn't think he has committed the particular crime of which he has been accused.

But there doesn't seem any possible way the client (George Pyle) could be innocent. He was in the street with the victim, clearly angry with him. There was a shot that witnesses say came from near Pyle. A woman saw him running away from the crime and toss a pistol away. The pistol is found and has Pyle's fingerprints on it.

Corning finds a friendly witness and stashes the guy away in a rooming house. But the friendly witness turns unfriendly and accuses Corning (in front of a police officer) of trying to suborn perjury. Corning quickly calls his secretary and sets up an improvised con on the cops, convincing them that certain conversations between  Corning and the witness had been recorded.

I love that part. Helen Vail, Corning's secretary, proves just as quick on her feet as her boss--adding several elements to the con on her own initiative that add verisimilitude to it. It continues to be clear that Erle Stanley Gardner is developing the character dynamic that he will use so successfully in the Perry Mason novels. Heck, the last two stories even had Corning employing the same detective agency for extra assistance.

But avoiding charges against himself doesn't get Corning any closer to clearing his client. To do this, Corning will have to set up yet another con--this one using a rigged target-shooting contest to flush out the real killer.

That's the part of the story I'm a little torn about. On the one hand, the con is a clever one and the end result is logical. But it was in no way a sure thing. Corning himself admits that his plan only had a one-in-a-thousand chance of working. So he successfully clears his client pretty much because he got really lucky.

Still, no one else would have caught the real killer at if it weren't for his plan. I felt the ending was a very small cheat, but this is very much a subjective opinion. And the rest of the story really is a lot of fun.

Just one more Ken Corning story to go, though. The first Perry Mason story would see print that same year and Gardner's other characters would begin a slow, sad slide into obscurity.

Every Good Lawyer has Skeleton Keys and a Solid Right Hook

Read/Watch 'em In Order #72

Poor Ken Corning. The lawyer can't spend more that a few minutes working quietly behind his desk before someone tries to frame him.

Actually, in "Making the Breaks," (Black Mask, June 1933), it's his secretary Helen Vail who gets framed. Or rather, she's framed so that Corning can in turn be framed so that Corning's client can in his turn be framed.

The client is accused of killing a man during an armed robbery. Both the dead man's friend (present during the robbery) and two other witnesses make positive identifications. But someone is willing to hedge their bets even further when two hundred-dollar bills--part of the loot taken from the victim--turn up in Helen's purse after someone tries to snatch it.

Corning is convinced his client is being framed, which means one or more of the witnesses are lying and are probably plants arranged by the notoriously corrupt NYPD. He sets Helen Vail out to make friends with the girlfriends of the witnesses and eventually does a little breaking-and-entering, steals a diary, sets a fake fire and essentially kidnaps someone. But that's how you get things done in the Hard-Boiled Universe, by golly. Corning identifies the real killer and clears his client without ever setting foot in a courtroom--AND all because he carries a set of skeleton keys and can knock a man out with one punch. Who needs law school?

That faking a fire bit, by the way, is emulating a similar trick once used by Sherlock Holmes. Everybody learns from Holmes.

This is the fourth of the six Ken Corning stories and, if anything, they are getting better as the series progressed. The pace grows faster and the stories more exciting, while the plots remain strong and logically constructed. Erle Stanley Gardner was an excellent storyteller and (as I've said before) it's a shame that Perry Mason has overshadowed so many of his other characters. Mason deserves his fame, but the other guys are pretty cool as well.

Cover Cavalcade

One of my favorite Rafael DeSoto cover paintings.

Power of the Press

Read/Watch 'em In Order #71

"Close Call," (Black Mask, January 1933) the third of the Ken Corning stories, starts off with a bang and doesn't stop sprinting until the final sentence. Corning is still butting heads against the corrupt city administration and this tale opens with a dirty cop trying to badger Corning into giving away information about the lawyer's latest client.

The client is accused of murdering a newspaperman who was working for reform. The accused man is also a reformer, but the cops have come up with a vague motive for the murder and have a supposed witness to the murder stashed away.

Corning is not a man to be badgered or intimidated. He gives the cop a verbal beat-down and immediately starts looking for a witness of his own who can demonstrate his client's innocence. He accomplishes this without too much trouble, but the cops are right behind him and quickly start their intimidation tactics again.

Corning also finds out where the prosecution witness is hidden and tries to speak with him.

He's tossed out before he can do so, but he gets a look at the witness AND has arranged for a press photographer to get a picture of him (Corning) being forcibly ejected from the hotel room. The resultant publicity gives him a slight advantage.

But then Corning's witness is bribed to leave town. Putting everything he learns together, Corning realizes the prosecution's fake witness is actually the real killer. He might not be able to prove this, but he can once again use the power of the press to force the D.A. to drop the charges against his client. It means pulling a stunt that requires Helen Vail, his loyal secretary, to arrange a fender bender with a cop car AND it comes uncomfortably close to suborning perjury. But if it works, an innocent man will walk out of prison.

The dynamic between Corning and Vail grows even closer to the one Erle Stanley Gardner was building in his Perry Mason stories, but it's a dynamic that Gardner handles well, so there is no objection to it. The story is perhaps the fastest moving and most purely entertaining of the first three Ken Corning stories.

The first three stories were published in consecutive issues of Black Mask. There would be a five-month gap before the final three stories appeared, but Ken Corning will be back. There's still a lot of corruption in New York City that needs cleaning up.

On the Run from the Law for... Breaking a Camera?

Read/Watch 'em In Order #70

Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason novels started out very hard-boiled, with Mason pretty much acting as a private eye as he tough-guyed his way to solving murders and clearing the names of his falsely-accused clients. But, though he could always be tough, the Mason stories evolved into the excellent but more cozy murder mysteries usually climaxed by wonderful courtroom scenes.

But--as we saw in our look at the first of the Ken Corning stories that appeared in Black Mask, Perry wasn't the only hard-boiled lawyer who used P.I methodology that Gardner unleashed upon the world.

What sets the Corning stories apart from Mason is the theme of government corruption that drips from the pages. Corning works in New York City, which was just as corrupt in the pulp universe as it often is in real life. In his initial outing, Corning was able to foil a plot to give a civil service post to a crook and caught a murderer. But the killer was a pretty low-level thug. Political boss Carl Dwight and a corrupt cop named Perkins are still free.

The second story is "The Top Comes Off," (December 1932 issue of Black Mask), in which Corning is hired by the wife of a man accused of murder. The odd thing about this is that the murdered man was the wife's lover.

A reporter barges into Corning's office to get a picture of the wife. Corning tosses the guy out and breaks the camera. The reporter goes running to the cops. Corning, by now, realizes that an aspect of the case ties it into the city's political machine. The minor charge is trumped up and soon there's a warrant out for Corning's arrest.

So he gets faithful secretary Helen Vail to stash the wife away in a hotel room under a false name. He registers at another hotel under another false name. Then, while being careful to leave no trail, he begins looking into the murder.

This involves interviewing several witnesses and breaking into the murdered man's office to look for evidence--it really does feel very much like a private eye story.

But it works and, within the context of a hard-boiled universe, Corning's actions make sense. Soon, he has enough evidence to convince him that the corrupt cop he ran into in the previous story is the real killer. But to get legal proof, he'll need to convince one of the few honest cops in the city to help him set up a trap.

Like pretty much all of Gardner's yarns, "The Top Comes Off" is a well-paced story with a good plot and a satisfying resolution. Once again, the high muckity-mucks in the city government are still free, but Corning is chipping away at their organization.

I also enjoy the interplay between Corning and Helen. As I mentioned in my last Corning review, she's a little more extroverted than was Della Street. Also, Corning and Helen are a little more regularly overt in their attraction to each other than Perry and Della usually were. Where Della was adamant that Perry needed her more as a secretary than a wife, Helen gives the impression she would jump to the altar with Ken pretty much any time. But Gardner is too good a storyteller to waste too much time on romantic mush--he keeps the repartee between Corning and Helen fast and witty and keeps our concentration focused on the murder mystery.

This is wise. Murder is always more interesting than marriage.

Perry Mason isn't the ONLY Lawyer in the World!

Read/Watch 'em In Order #69

Between the popularity of the Perry Mason novels and the success (both in terms of ratings and quality) of the classic TV series, other characters created by Erle Stanley Gardner are often forgotten. And that's too bad. Gardner created dozens of characters and I have yet to run across one of them I didn't enjoy hanging out with.

Ken Corning, for instance, is yet another lawyer--though his first adventure appeared a year before the first Mason adventure. Corning had a short but honorable career in Black Mask magazine in 1932 and 1933.

The stories have a different feel to them than the Mason tales. Corning is based in New York City, which Gardner portrays as corrupt--both politicians and cops are on the take. Corning has just set up shop as a lawyer, determined to accept only honest money.

This, in fact, is the title of his first adventure. "Honest Money" appeared in the November 1932 issue of Black Mask.

His client is a woman who was arrested for running a speakeasy. And she is clearly guilty of this. But if that were the only charge against her, Corning could probably get her off with a fine. But she's also charged with attempted bribery. This is particularly odd. The cops generally accept bribe offers. And why were they bothering to shut down a small, second-rate speakeasy anyways? And why did they do so in a hurry with incomplete information--it's the woman's husband who hires Corning and the husband is himself free because the cops didn't know about him.

And why is a political boss offering Corning a nice bribe to just plead guilty?

It's an odd case--made odder when the woman's husband is gunned down outside Corning's office. But a smashed fender on the dead man's car gives Corning a clue to what's going on. He sets up a trap, depending on one of the few honest policemen in New York to help him out.

If Corning can himself avoid being taken for a ride, he might be able to get his client freed.

Gardner shows a lot of skill as a storyteller when he wraps up the story. One bad guy is caught and a scheme is foiled, but most of the true villains are still free. That Gardner is setting up a story arc that will continue through more stories. Since the first three Ken Corning tales would appear in three successive issues of Black Mask, its likely that Gardner sold them as a package deal to the magazine.

Despite this, the ending is satisfying even when taken on its own. Corning has done right by his client, he's earned some honest money and he is here to stay, ready to buck the dishonest officials again and again when he needs to do so. The story works because Corning is victorious as an honest and honorable man, not because he saves the city in one fell swoop. Gardner constructs the plot and develops the protagonist in just the right way to make this work.

We also meet Helen Vail, Ken's beautiful and devoted secretary who can be depended on to go the extra mile to help him out. The dynamic is identical to what Gardner would also use with Perry Mason & Della Street, though Helen is a little more extroverted than Della. It's obviously a character dynamic that Gardner liked and found useful as a storyteller. We'll see Helen being even more proactive next time we check in on Ken Corning.

Red Dawn

Read/Watch 'em In Order #66

I think Raoul Whitfield's Jo Gar stories rank among the best stories in the hard-boiled genre. I think the 6-part "Rainbow Diamonds" story arc is the best of the Jo Gar series. That being said, "Red Dawn" (published in the May 1931 issue of Black Mask) is arguably one of the weakest in the overall series.

Perhaps it's because its in the middle of the "Rainbow Diamonds" arc, when many serials hit a bit of a lag. But whatever the reason, it is flawed in that it depends on several over-used cliches to move the story along.

I'm not against cliches. When used cleverly and sparingly, they are an effective shorthand to provide both exposition and movement in the plot. But in "Red Dawn," I'm afraid they seem a little too obviously a contrivance.

When the last story ended, Jo Gar was in Hawaii, having recovered one of the ten missing diamonds but having run out of living suspects. Good fortune comes in painful packages, though. One of the original crooks kidnaps Gar, convinced that he has all ten diamonds.

That part I'm okay with--the villain is presented with a reasonable motive for thinking Gar has been lying about having the diamonds. He kidnaps Gar to beat the location of the diamonds out of him.

But its here that Whitfield falls into cliche. First, the bad guy spouts off important information to Gar for no good reason at all--primarily that he has a female accomplice. Gar had no idea she existed before this and there was no reason to tell him. Second, the bad guy comes up with a nasty but overly complex method of killing Gar after he's done with the island detective.

Whitfield, though, still saves the story. There is a high level of tension built into the plot and Gar's cleverness in manipulating the villain with lies and then coming up with a brutal but effective way of beating the assassination attempt makes for great reading. Whitfield is just that good--he might stumble a little this time in plot construction, but he makes up for it with honestly-manufactured suspense and hard-core characterizations.

So the story ends with another dead bad guy, but with nine diamonds still missing. He knows a little more than he did before, though. He knows there's a double-crossin' dame out there somewhere. Find her and he finds the diamonds.

The Man in White

Read/Watch 'em In Order #65

At the end of "Diamonds of Dread," Filipino detective Jo Gar had learned that "the one who walks badly--always in white" was apparently the leader of the gang that had stolen the ten Von Loffler diamonds and murdered a number of people (including Jo's friend Juan Arragon). So when the next story in the serial--"The Man in White"--begins, Jo is on a ship sailing to Honolulu, keeping tabs on a man in a white suit who walks with a slight limp.

But this guy is a former cop himself. And when Jo's cabin is broken into and searched, so is the man in white's cabin. Soon after that, someone tries to put a few bullets into Jo. A steward who could have ID'd the shooter is found with a knife in his back. Is the shooter the man in white, or is there another killer on board?

The situation seems to be getting confusing, but Jo actually has a pretty good idea of what's going on right from the beginning. In fact, so do a lot of the story's readers. Raoul Whitfield was great at plot construction and keeping the level of mystery high. This time, he writes an atmospheric and interesting tale, but the real killer isn't as well-concealed behind the plot twists as Whitfield probably hoped. An attentive reader will have a firm lock on the plot fairly quickly.

It's a tribute to Whitfield's skill as a storyteller that even when he's not entirely successful in constructing the tale--it's still engrossing and entertaining. Like all great heroes in fiction, Jo Gar is someone we want to hang around with. And despite the climax being telegraphed a little bit too obviously, the tale moves along a logical path to a satisfying conclusion.

And that conclusion involves a dying crook managing to speak a few cryptic last words. It's interesting to note how some of the best mystery writers could reuse a particular devise over and over again but still make it work. In the Ellery Queen stories, for instance, murder victims left dying clues with amazing frequency. With Whitfield's Jo Gar stories, there was a tendency for villains to gasp out an important sentence fragment before expiring.

This time, the dying criminal turns out NOT to be the head of the gang, but just one of their allies. Jo Gar recovers one of the ten diamonds, but that means he still has one gang leader and nine diamonds to go. But, by golly, he has yet another sentence fragment to give him a clue to where to look next: "The blind--Chinese--Honolulu--you can find---."

It's a very small clue, but it's enough to take Jo Gar into the next story of the Rainbow Diamonds serial. We'll take a look at that one soon.

Death of a Friend

Read/Watch 'em in Order #64

Raoul Whitfield was one of the many great writers who contributed strong hard-boiled tales to Black Mask magazine.

Whitfield created a number of hard-boiled detectives, but Jo Gar is the most unusual and arguably the best of his creations. Whitfield had lived for a time in the Philippines while growing up (his dad worked for the Territorial Government), so he drew on this experience to give us Jo, a Spanish-Filipino P.I. who works out of an office in Manila. He used the pen name Ramon Decolta for the Jo Gar tales.

The Jo Gar stories are short, sharp, and often violent tales, with Jo often having to bring his Colt automatic into play before he could wrap things up. As Jo's entry at the Thrilling Detective website phrases it: There was no doubt Gar meant business -- his small, Colt automatic was called into service with alarming frequency, and the dying confessions of men who thought they'd get the drop on "the Island detective" were as much a part of the stories as his seemingly endless supply of brown-paper cigarettes.

But Jo was smart as well, often working directly with the police and helping them stay on the right track by picking up on clues they would miss.

His usual police contact was Juan Arragon--a cop who inevitably ended up suspecting the wrong man and would need Jo to find the real killer. But, despite this, Juan was friendly and appreciative of Jo's help. The two were friends and, except for a few stories that took Jo out of Manila, Juan was a series regular.

So when Juan is abruptly killed in the story "Diamonds of Death," it's a bit of a shock.

This story was published in the February 1931 issue of Black Mask. It was the 10th Jo Gar story published and the first in a series of six dealing with the theft of 200 grand worth of diamonds.

The story starts out with a bang--Jo happens to be nearby when a diamond merchant is robbed and, in fact, one of the getaway cars collides with the horse-drawn taxi in which Jo is riding. The robbers also killed two men during the heist. Juan Arragon responded to the crime, commandeering a car to pursue them. But both Juan and the car he was in vanish.

Not long after, Juan's body is found in Jo's office. It looks as if Juan had made it there on his own and manage to write a note before he died. But Jo notices several clues that show the note is a forgery--an attempt to lure him into a trap. The crooks fear him more than the official police.

The criminals have, in fact, planted several false leads, which results in a police car being ambushed by a pair of thugs with machine guns. The private eye is nearby when this happens. He plugs one of the bad guys. "The one who walks badly--always in white," mutters the wounded man before dying. Dying men in fiction seem to be legally required to talk in cryptic sentence fragments.

Jo decides not to pass this information on to the cops. In fact, he tells the police chief that he's out of it--it is, after all, a police matter.

But Juan had been his friend. Jo will trail the killers on his own.

All the Jo Gar stories are good, but I think this particular story arc is the best of the lot. The plot is well-constructed and moves along at a brisk pace, while Jo Gar is an effective and likable protagonist. Whitfield gives us not just an unusual setting in these stories, but a detective who both fits the profile of the standard hard-boiled detective while simultaneously defying stereotypes. We'll continue to follow the Island Detective through the next five stories as he leaves the islands to track down the stolen diamonds and the killers of his friend.

Never Help a Drunk

If you're an amateur detective, you usually depend on just happening to be nearby when a murder is committed. For people like Jessica Fletcher, this works fine. It doesn't work for me--no matter what, everyone I know absolutely refuses to get murdered so that I can use brilliant deductive reasoning to solve the crime.

If you're a pro, though, you shouldn't have to depend on chance. A private eye such as Frederick Nebel's "Tough Dick" Donovan can reasonably expect clients to come to him.

But coincidence still rears its head from time to time. In the short story "Red Pavement," (published in the December 1932 issue of Black Mask) Donovan stops to help a drunk. They share a cab and when the drunk finds out Donovan is a P.I., he hires him to meet a girl at Penn Station while he (the drunk) sobers up. Then someone drives past the cab and shoots the drunk dead.

Donovan still feels he should meet the girl and break the news to her. But that leads to the girl coming into possession of a bag containing $14,000. Then the girl (and the money) disappears and the police are looking askance at Donovan because the dead guy was involved in a robbery a few years before and the money was never recovered.

So Donovan has to find the girl and the money--hopefully while the girl is still alive. Otherwise, he might end up in the slammer simply because he stopped to help a drunk. This all leads to a nice twist at the end.

I really enjoy Nebel's Donovan stories. Hard-boiled to the extreme, but (like Hammett and Chandler) always rooted in humanity, these fast-moving yarns among the best in the genre. "Red Pavement" drops Donovan into a case in an unexpected manner then forces him to play a dangerous long shot find the girl and drag himself out of the frying pan he's put himself in. And it provides a valuable lesson: don't help a drunk unless you're prepared to also solve a murder.

Hey, maybe that's what I'm doing wrong. I'm not helping enough drunks! By golly, I'll get to solve a murder yet!

Who's Got the Diamond?

Frederick Nebel isn't as well known as Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, but by golly he oughta be!

Like Hammett and Chandler, Nebel often wrote for Black Mask, contributing excellent hard-boiled tales to the magazine that largely gave birth to the genre. A very prolific writer, Nebel also wrote detective, adventure and Western stories for other pulp magazines as well.

For Black Mask, Nebel created two important series. The first were the stories featuring Police Captain Steve MacBride, who was working to clean up a corrupt city--often getting help from perpetually drunk reporter Jack Kennedy. This are great stories and I might very well eventually use five inter-connected MacBride/Kennedy tales as part of my Read/Watch 'em in Order series.

MacBride, by the way, eventually made it to the big screen in a series of B-Movies, with the drunken Kennedy transformed into perky girl reporter Torchy Blaine.

Nebel's other important Black Mask creation was the "Tough Dick" Donahue, a private eye working for a big agency--a character introduced in 1930 to replace the Continental Op after Hammett left the magazine.

Hammett was the Master, but Nebel's Donahue stories still managed to fill the void. Sharply written in the sparse but fully descriptive prose that marks the best hard-boiled yarns, the Donahue stories combined intricate but well-constructed plots with truly surprising twists and some of the best chase scenes and fight scenes I've ever read:

Jess roared and blazed away, and Ames staggered backwards, as his own gun thundered. Donahue fell on the gun in the woman's hand, tore it from her feeble grasp. He whirled on Jess, charged him and jammed the muzzle against his side, press the trigger. The explosion was muffled by by Jess's clothes. 

Jess heaved away, groaning. He started running. Donahue streaked after him. Swinging into University Place, Jess twisted and sent two shots at Donahue. One nailed Donahue in the left leg, and he skidded against the building. He clawed his way to the corner and saw Jess running north on

University Place. He toiled after him, hopping on one foot, dragging the other.

As you can gather from that excerpt, Donahue is not one to give up. The second, third and fourth stories from the series were published in the December 1930 through February 1931 issues of Black Mask. The three are interconnected, with the events of one story leading into the next--though all three could be read individually and still leave you satisfied that you've read a complete tale.

The stories involve the search for a stolen and very valuable diamond. A traveling artist was unwittingly used to smuggle the diamond into the U.S., but then he was murdered. The villains involved have a hard time trusting each other and Donahue stirs things up further as he investigates. Stirring up things even more is a beautiful femme fatale named Irene Saffarrans. (A name that seems to fit the character type perfectly. Poor girl probably never had any choice but to become a femme fatale.)

Donahue catches a killer at the end of "The Red-Hots," the first story in the series, but the diamond is

apparently lost. But in "Gun Thunder," Donahue discovers that the diamond might still be around and people are once again getting shot in pursuit of the thing. This time, Irene gets in a little too deep and Donahue sends her up as he finally recovers the jewel.

Or does he recover it? The diamond he finds is a fake. In "Get a Load of This," he acts on a theory as to who might have the real thing. But his suspect is murdered and the chase for the diamond is on once again. To complicate matters further, yet another femme fatale puts in an appearance. 

Throughout the story, Donahue remains determined to run down the bad guys, following up clues and hunches in a logical manner that allow the stories to function properly in procedural terms. But the great prose and dialogue tie together with Donahue's mixture of brains and guts elevates everything to classic hard-boiled storytelling that really sit next to the Continental Op stories without being out-of-place. 

Nebel's success in the pulps eventually led him to move on to the better-paying slick magazines. This by itself is fine--he had earned his success. But in later years, he often declined to allow his Black Mask work to be reprinted. He wrote: "I think it served its purpose well when it was first published but I honestly cannot see what purpose it would serve now." 

In his introduction to a recently published collection of the Donahue stories, pulp historian Will Murray states that Nebel is as important to the genre as Hammett and Chandler AND that it was Nebel's decision not to reprint his hard-boiled stories that dropped him into obscurity. I would agree with this. Gee whiz, the man was GOOD. 

Cover Cavalcade

Despite the important contributions that Black Mask made to detective fiction, it didn't usually have the greatest covers. This one's an exception, though--it's an eye-catching image.