review of Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, & Martin H. Greenberg edited "Hard-Boiled Detectives"

review of

Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, & Martin H. Greenberg edited

"Hard-Boiled Detectives"

2175. "review of Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, & Martin H. Greenberg edited "Hard-Boiled Detectives""

- the complete version of the review

- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

- published on my "Critic" website July 28 28, 2023

- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticHard-Boiled.html

review of

Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, & Martin H. Greenberg edited

"Hard-Boiled Detectives"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 19; July 20-27, 2023

For the complete review go here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticHard-Boiled.html

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5726142797

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1867063.Hard_Boiled_Detectives

I really had fun reading this. I hearkened back to when I read things when I was 13 or so. There was just the simple pleasure of enjoying the imaginations & skill of the writers. The editors picked 23 stories that appeared in the lifetime of Dime Detective magazine. In the Introduction, it's discussed how detectives were depicted in fiction before the hard-boiled detectives came along:

"Educated and often independently wealthy, he had the leisure to train his intellect and took a dilletante's delight in the mental stimulation a mystery afforded-the more difficult the better. The enormous burden of apprehending master criminals and restoring the social order was to the traditional sleuth a matter of noblesse oblige. He did what was expected of a man of his unusual capabilities.

"The pulp magazines changed all that. Created in 1896 to provide the public with cheap reading material, pulps rapidly became the main source of popular fiction in the United States, proliferating and diversifying to satisfy every taste.

"Without a doubt, the most fertile pulp fiction genre was the mystery-detective field. Between 1915 and 1955 nearly two hundred mystery-detective magazines flooded the newstands." - p ix

"Unlike the majority of popular fiction types, the hard-boiled detective has a known birthday and place of origin: the June 1, 1923 issue of Black Mask in which Carroll John Daly introduced Race Williams, the progenitor of all hard-boiled detectives. The story in which Williams made his debut, "The Knights of the Open Palm," pales in comparison to the countless imitations it spawned, but it laid the groundwork for what we recognize today as the hard-boiled genre. Williams is a rugged individualist, the only person in an entire town with the gumption to take on the Ku Klux Klan." - p x

Wow, I want to read that story. It's interesting partially b/c one of the actors most known for his hard-boiled roles, Humphrey Bogart, had his 1st leading role in a movie called "Black Legion" (1937) in wch he takes on a white supremacist terrorist group of the same name as the title, an actual group of the time.

The above quotes were taken from the introduction by Stefan Dziemianowicz & this intro was written in New York in 1991.

The 1st story, "Hell's Pay Check", by Frederick Nebel, already has one of the standard tropes of these stories in place:

"Strout pushed Blake back and said to Cardigan: "You come down to headquarters tomorrow."

"Like hell I will. If you want me to come to headquarters go get a warrant for my arrest. You got a lame tip somewhere, Strout, and you're trying to make me believe that it's red hot. At your age you should know better than to try that one. It was whiskered before I was born."" - p 9

On to Carroll John Daly's "Crime Machine" & the character of the informer:

"The clawlike fingers opened and closed long after Irving Small placed the lamp back on the table. He stretched out his right hand and took something from the right hand of Vee Brown. For a few minutes his back was to me. He was counting softly to himself. The he spoke over his shoulder. "It ain't more than last time. Regan's worth more than that. It ain't very much."

""It's better than a cold, damp cell."

"Ehe-but not worth the price of a long box."

"Another moment of silence, and Irving Small spoke again. "He's a desperate man. I hope you left nothing behind to-that tells ill of me."

""Nothing. You've had my word on that."

""Ehe-I've had that.." The lips smacked again-and then, "He's at Magna's. Second floor-last room-over the pianie. This is the night for it. He'll leave tomorrow. Magna's is watched. If you hold a police parade there'll be no show."

""There'll be no parade," said Vee Brown." - p 28

Still in the same story the reader reaches the description of certain facial features as indicative of a certain type of personality. I wonder how long this type of typecasting has been going on & if it grew out of any particular system, such as phrenology.

"We turned and faced him. Certainly if I didn't know fear before, I knew it now. Rat-like eyes, dominant chin and coarse, evil lips. There wasn't one redeeming feature in that hard, mean face." - p 32

There you have it, the murderer, can't have a story w/o one.

Erle Stanley Gardner's "The Hand of Horror" introduced an idea I don't recall encountering before: a palm-reading detective.

"Sampsel took out the paper from beneath the hand. It was a single sheet of note paper, upon which a message had been printed, in pencil, and the lettering was sufficiently crude to make it appear that the person who had written the message had been inclined to make an attempt to disguise his hand writing.

"FOR GOD'S SAKE SAY NOTHING TO THE POLICE.

OTHERWISE I WILL LOSE MY LIFE!

"Sampsel stared at the scrawled message on the piece of paper, then read it aloud to his secretary.

""You mean that was written by the woman whose hand is in that box?" she asked.

"Sampsel shook his head slowly. "No," he said, "I think it was written by the party who cut off the hand and put it in the box. It looks like a young woman's handwriting, despite that an obvious attempt has been at disguising the salient characteristics."" - p 38

Sampsel the Seer, the palm-reading detective, explains some of what he can determine from a palm:

"There are certain lines of temeprament shown in the hand; certain dangerous tendencies on the part of an individual. Sometimes, by a proper warning, coupled with an exercise of the will, those tendencies can be avoided. If an intelligent attempt is not made, the tendencies are not avoided, and there is future disaster indicated. In the hand which I examined, there were such tendencies.["]" - pp 42-43

Who was the woman whose hand was severed?

""I am going to show you," said Doctor Moffat slowly, "a file of private records, a case history of something that is so weird and so bizarre, I have never previously mentioned it to anyone. I am going to show you the case notes of a dead woman who did not die."" - p 48

Moffat has what turns out to be an assistant who's deranged. Sampsel plays along w/ him to see what will happen:

"Sampsel continued making the buzzing noises with his tongue. He turned, arms still extended, and caught the flash of motion as the hunchback sprang for him.

"Sampsel felt the fangs of the hunchback at the back of his neck. He sank to the floor, the hunchback on top of him. He could feel the heat of the foul breath on his neck, could sense the feverish glitter of the staring eyes. Then Sampsel struggled for a minute, and lay still.

[..]

"THE HUNCHBACK STRAIGHTENED, crooning to himself: "I'm a spider. I'm a spider. Human flies come to my net and I suck out their life blood."

"Then he circled long arms about Sampsel's body. He lifted his motionless burden, and carried it as easily as though his victim had been a child." - p 59

On to the beginning of Max Brand's "Nine Parts Devil":

"EACH OF THE DUMBBELLS weighed fifty pounds. Imagine a filled six-galloon pail. That was the burden which Clovelly shifted in each hand. He had finished the shadow-boxing and the skipping of the rope, together with exercises to develop speed and elasticity. Uncle Henry always had advocated slow, heavy movements which built muscle into a great bulk." - p 65

The detective, Tolan, is cynically suspicious of the charms of a young woman:

""Put on the brakes," urged Tolan. "This kid is a floozie with a Hollywood look and a marble front. She may be working a double-cross for all I know. What I don't like is that she won't take the two of us to Al Champion. She'll show you the way, but she won't show anybody else. Sound her out, Mr. Clovelly. She's hard enough to bust a diamond drill; but I'll be there to help you along."

[..]

"CLOVELLY COULD HARDLY WAIT to usher Tolan before him into the reception room where Parker, the second man, stood almost invisible against the stiff downward sweep of the great curtains. He stood on guard, as it were, over a slender girl in a flowery spring dress and a very dainty blue hat. She stood up with a smile so pleasant and with eyes so big, so brown, so gentle, that Clovelly knew at once that he could believe whetever she said. The doubt which Tolan had expressed about her was a brutal comment on Tolan himself, not upon this charming girl." - p 69

My reviewer's note to myself regarding tne next passage is somewhat ambiguous to me, "unsatisfactory". I assume it means that I found this ending unsatsifactory:

"He knew that, for her, the dread of the future had not ended; they merely had passed another milestone on a journey, the final destination of which was unknown." - p 91

John Lawrence's "A Burial Is Arranged":

"I gave up trying to speculate on how he might enter the building. That was no concern of mine. If he entered the office-

"I hefted my gun, my jaw hard. I sent quick glances around for a place to stow myself. The couch looked best. It was sunk in a patch of deepest shadow, its high ends would effectually screen me from the opening door.

"Also, it commanded a full view of the safe-or, at least, of the black outline of the safe. I slipped quickly over to the huge deep-seated leather piece, groped for the high end of it, turned and eased myself down into the corner further from the door.

"I sat on a man's face." - p 107

Surprise, surprise! I thought that was a lovely little way to write the reader into a murder. But let's have some action, shall we? Enuf of these still lives:

"I slid up the window, fixed the catch for the fourth time halfway open. I climbed out, sweat running down me in streams, got my feet on the six-inch ledge, knelt till I could get one groping hand up to the scroll-work above, heaved myself erect, trembling.

"It was an almost inaudible job to slam the window down, but as I did, I heard the click of the lock shooting into place.

"There I hung, literally, by toes and fingers, with the wind whistling about me, and the dread certainty that if I were discovered, I faced my ultimate, indisputable finish." - pp 115-116

We reach in cognito in William E. Barrett's "A Man's Last Hours":

"He wore the regulation dinner jacket, and there was nothing to make him apart from other men or to make him remembered. He preferred it like that. If once he attracted too much attention, he was through.

"There were men placed at his wheel who would kill him within twenty-four hours if they knew his real identity." - p 123

&, then, the hired assassin:

""What's your racket?"

""Musician, once."

"There wasn't any need to throw a question beyond that. It was too apparent what the man was today. He was a deathly sick, whipped dog. Culver had hit upon a theory in the split seconds between the moment when he noticed the gun under the napkin and the moment when he dove for it. He hadn't changed that theory since. Now he cracked it, his hard, direct stare fixed on Benny Pond's pale face.

""Somebody hired you to shoot Menger," he said. "Probably fixed it for your family to get the money. Sold you the idea that you wouldn't live to take the rap. Right?"

"Benny Pond stared sullenly at the table-top. He didn't attempt to answer.

"Culver guessed again. "You've got a wife and kids, haven't you?"" - p 128

Norbert Davis, "Something for the Sweeper":

""I mean, did you think he broke some windows, like he usually does?"

""He makes a habit of breaking windows?"

"She nodded. "Oh yes. But only plate glass ones."

""Particular, huh? What does he break windows for?"

"Her sallow face flushed slightly. "He sees his image. You know, his reflection. And he thinks he is following himself again. He thinks he is spying on himself. And so he breaks the windows."

""Well, maybe it's a good idea," said Jones. "Is he ever troubled with pink elephants?"

""Yes, he is. He often sees them walking on the ceiling when he wakes up in the morning."" - pp 132-133

But what about the detective's feet?, you ask.

""Sarah," said Morganwaite. "I can't believe it. I can't think she'd do that."

""People do," said Jones. He stretched his feet out on the stairs, grunting painfully. "Chilblains-I get 'em every spring. They're killing me. Ever have 'em?"

""No," said Morganwaite." - p 140

D. L. Champion's "Footprints on a Brain" presents us w/ a detective who's a malevolent manipulator.

""Well," he bellowed again, "why don't you make a move? Why don't you get your own butts. You ain't a cripple. Are you?"

"Alhoff's ghastly smile grew broader, more horrible. Slowly he pushed his chair away from the desk. When he spoke his voice was frozen honey.

""You have come to the crux of the matter, Sergeant," he said softly. "And I'm afraid I must correct you. I am a cripple."

"Corrigan stared down at the chair in which Alhoff sat. He looked foolishly at the two stumps which ended Alhoff's body where his legs should have begun." - p 145

Alhoff, despite his limitations & his viciousness, nonetheless manages to DETECT:

""And the manuscript?"

""Was on the desk in front of him. The last chapter was written. Apparently, he had completed the book."

""Where is it now?"

"Corrigan plucked the large manila envelope from under his arm. "Here," he said.

"Alhoff took it and placed it on the desk. He nodded his head slowly and assumed an expression that he'd swiped from Warner Oland in the movies. I grinned at him.

""All right, Inspector," I said. "Who do I arrest?"" - p 151

That story was written in 1938 when, I reckon, just about any American reader wd've recognized the reference to Warner Oland, the actor perhaps most associated w/ his playing of Charlie Chan in the movies. I made a movie about him:

402. "CHAN(geling)"

- a media analysis of yellowface in Warner Oland movies by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

- made from January to February, 2014

- edit finished on February 21, 2014

- 30:05

- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/XMP8mU1OfSY

On to Raymond Chandler's short story version of "Lady in the Lake":

"I WAS BREAKING a new pair of shoes in on my desk that morning when Violets M'Gee called me up. It was a dull hot damp August day and you couldn't keep your neck dry with a bath towel.

""How's the boy?" Violets began, as usual. "No business in a week, huh? There's a guy named Howard Melton over in the Avenent Building lost track of his wife. He's district manager for the Doreme Cosmetic Company. He don't want to give it to Missing Persons for some reason. The boss knows him a little. Better get over there, and take your shoes off before you go in. It's a pretty snooty outfit."

"Violets M'Gee is a homicide dick in the sherriff's office, and if it wasn't for all the charity jobs he gives me, I might be able to make a living. This looked a little different, so I put my feet on the floor and swabbed the back of my neck again and went over there." - p 165

I might as well contrast that to the beginning of the novel, eh?! I mean, who's gonne try to stop me? YOU! Tough Guy?! Don't make me laugh! I mean I just had an appendectomy & the stitches might rip.

"The Treloar Building was, and is, on Olive Street, near Sixth, on the west side. The sidewalk in front of it had been built of black and white rubber blocks. They were taking them up now to give to the government, and a hatless pale man with a face like a building superintendent was watching the work and looking as if it was breaking his heart." - p 1, FIRST SIGNET BOOKS EDITION, September 1976

Let that be a lesson to you. Gotta love this Chandler guy, whoever HE is, for his great descriptions:

"I MADE SAN BERNARDINO in less than two hours and for once in its life it was almost as cool as Los Angeles, and not nearly so sticky. I took on a cup of coffee and bought a pint of rye and gassed up and started the grade. It was overcast all the way to Bubbling Springs. Then it suddenly got dry and bright and cool air blew down the gorges, and I finally came to the big dam and looked along the level blue reaches of Puma Lake. Canoes paddled on it, and rowboats with outboard motors and speedboats churned up the water and made a lot of fuss over nothing. Jounced around in their wake, people who had paid two dollars for a fishing license wasted their time trying to catch a dime's worth of fish.

"The road turned two ways from the dam. My way was the south shore. It skimmed along high among piled-up masses of granite. Hundred-foot yellow pines probed at the clear blue sky. In the open spaces grew bright green manzanita and what was left of the wild irises and white and purple lupine and bugle flowers and desert paint brush. The road dropped to the lake level and I began to pass flocks of camps and flocks of girls in shorts on moto-scooters, walking all over the highway, or just sitting under trees and showing off their legs. I saw enough beef on the hoof to stock a cattle ranch." - p 176

Whew! He crammed alot into those 2 paragraphs. He meets the local all-for-the-price-of-one official. One might mistakenly believe he's a country bumpkin. Don't be fooled.

"A LARGE WHITE CARD in the window, printed in heavy block capitals, said: Keep Tinchfield Constable. Behind the window was a narrow counter with piles of dusty folders on it. The door was glass and lettered in black paint. Chief of Police. Fire Chief. Town Constable. Chamber of Commerce. Enter.

"I entered and was in what was nothing but a small one-room pineboard shack with a potbellied stove in the corner, a littered rolltop desk, two hard chairs and the counter. On the wall hung a large blueprint map of the district, a calendar, a thermometer. Beside the desk telephone numbers had been written laboriously on the wood in large deeply bitten figures.

"A man sat tilted back at the desk in an antique swivel-chair, with a flat-brimmed Stetson on the back of his head and a huge spittoon beside his right foot. His large hairless hands were clasped comfortably on his stomach. He wore a pair of brown pants held by suspenders, a faded and much-washed tan shirt buttoned tight to his fat neck, no tie. What I could see of his hair was mousy brown except the temples, which were snow white. On his left breast there was a star. He sat more on his left hip than on his right, because he wore a leather hip holster with a big black gun on it down inside his hip pocket.

"I leaned on the counter and looked at him. He had large ears and friendly gray eyes and he looked as if a child could pick his pocket." - p 181

No, I'm not going to tell you what happens - any more than I'm going to read the soles of your feet.

Merle Constiner's "Strangler's Kill":

"PEDOMANCY

Fortunes Divined from the Soles of Your Feet

Learn the Secrets of Love, Hate, Riches

SPECIAL CONSULTATIONS IN:

LIBANOMANCY CATOPTROMANCY

RHABDOMANCY ALEUROMANCY

FEE NEGLIGIBLE" - p 202

Personally, I prefer LIBIDOMANCY. But we haven't had a hobo character yet. Don't you think it's about time we did?

""No boss. I can't even describe nobody."

""Listen," the Dean pleaded. "Think. Was he tall? Short? Thin? Heavy? Was he light-complected or dark?"

"The bum smiled helplessly. "That there stuff's too much for me. I can't describe him but I can tell you who he was-if that'll be any help. He was Sprigsey O'Hare."

""Sprigsey O'Hare! Are you sure?"" - p 209

But, I ask you: Do we care?! Do we really care?! I, for one, wd rather read encrypted bridge something-or-anothers planted in the newspaper to foster crime:

"NORTH

S-K9385Q

H-(None)

D-KA45

C-287" - p 212

"He closed his eyes. "I think our elderly visitor was a bridge addict who followed the column in the paper. I imagine she has encountered these messages before this-for I am sure they have appeared in the past. The first few times she was no doubt astounded and confused at the unorthodox presentation-it is likely that the hands presented no problem at all. In any event, it is certain that no bridge problem was ever set up in such a manner-note how the suit sequences are jumbled numerically. This is so symptomatic as to preclude the possibility of mere typographer's error."

"I had noticed this myself. The proper arrangement for Spades in North's hand should have been KQ9853-from the highest to the lowest-instead of K9385Q." - p 213

""I like that whelp," he mused. "I don't know why, but I do. . . . Tell me, Ben, what do you know about the name Michael?"

""Only that it's as Irish as the shamrock," I retorted.

""Wrong on all counts. A common fallacy. No, it's not Irish but Latin. It is from the Hebrew Mikael which, I believe, means: Who is like God? It is a very popular name and found in many languages. In Italian it is Michele, in Spanish it is Miguel, In French it is Michel."" - p 216

This subject interests me b/c my given name is Michael but I don't recall learning about the meaning of it until I was in my 50s. My friend Michael Pestel & I collaborated on an installation/performance called "Harps & Angles" & since we're both Michaels I proposed that the name we use in connection w/ the project be "Who is like God?s". Not only did I like being able to add the "s" after the "?" but the whole religious reference tickled me b/c I'm an atheist. For those of you who will now no longer be able to sleep until you witness a movie from this project I give you this: - on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: http://youtu.be/Qk_UOY0c1bk - on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/harps-angles-performance-version .

Oh.. but where was I? Surely, I wasn't at Frederick C. Davis's "You Slay Me, Baby":

""Send it right back-unopened," the man urged. "Re-address it to-to the occupant of Room 404 at the Heights Hospital. You'll see that Miss Lorne does that? Returns it unopened?"" - p 251

Why?! Why, that's like the beginning of a mystery - very mysterious n'at. If you must know, Miss Lorne & I have been cohabitating in that rm on the 13th floor for 6 yrs now & no-one's been the wiser. Whaddaya trying to pull there, Buster? 404, my ass.

Julius Long's "No Minimum for Murder":

""But you're playing such long odds. Why don't you play a color instead of a number?"

""The hell with the red and the black. They're good only for the title of a novel."" - p 325

Not exactly the place where one wd expect to run across a reference to Stendahl, eh?! C.M. Kornbluth & his "A Ghoul and his Money"? Maybe.

"I arrived at Vleetsburg by nightfall and registered at the Commercial House, a ramshackle institution whose rates were most disproportionate to its lack of comfort. After an uncomfortable night I breakfasted on my usual dry toast and glass of warm water. Refreshed, I set out for the local library." - p 334

A hero who's not drinking bourbon & coffee as soon as he gets up? Where's his potomania going to come from? How will he numb the pain when he gets beaten?! But, but.. this is a PRISSY SCHOLAR AS A DETECTIVE!!

"A postprandial stroll found me in the vicinity of Miss Henderson's pottery shed as the sun was going down. I went within and waited for possibly ten minutes before hearing a heavy foot stumbling on the shed's entrance.

""You are late, Mr. Cuppy," I said cooly.

"The man had an electric torch which he rudely turned full in my eyes. "How'd ye know 'twas me?" he demanded.

""Tut, sir!" I chided him. "It's futile for a layman to match wits with the trained intellect of a scholar. It was the veriest child's play to assemble those facts which have come to my attention."" - p 338

Hank Searls, "A Dish of Homicide":

Try ordering that dish at a hoighty-toighty restaurant - but make sure to do it in French.

"I WAS SITTING at my desk, wondering about the office rent, when the door opened and in walked the most beautiful assemblage of female parts that had ever shrugged into a mink coat. She had hair the color of burnished copper and dead white skin and her eyes were as green and hard as emeralds.

"Suavely, as in a movie, I stood up, knocking over my chair. She's come to the wrong office, I thought. The theatrical producer is three doors down.

""Good morning," I said. It was three P.M.

"She laughed. "Relax, buster. Are you Mike Blair?"

""Unless you're from the finance company."" - p 357

That beginning's so classic I cd milk dingleberries from the finance company's chair legs. Gotta love it. But then the truth comes out:

John D. Macdonald's "The Man from Limbo":

""Here's looking up your address, Lieutenant."

""Here's to the next mayor."

"Wally sat down heavily in a frail chair which creaked under his weight. "What are you after, Regan?"

"Dolph frowned. "Should I be after something?"

"Wally grinned mirthlessly. "Aren't we all, boy? Only you better understand something. Every dime I've got is in this campaign. I've got to get in. And once I'm in, boy, I can't move very fast. Slow and easy will do it. I've got a lot of do-gooders to dump over the side before I start producing."

"Dolph perched on the table. "Maybe I'm stupider than I look."

""No, Lieutenant. There's nothing at all stupid about you. That's what worries me. Here I am, all set to move into the driver's seat, and you have to show up."" - p 406

There you have it, 23 stories written by 23 writers who might just not have studied writing in university, who might actually know a thing or 2 from experience. & these stories were POPULAR. They present CRIME & CORRUPTION & whatnot & people actually enjoyed reading about it. Maybe the readers even learned something about psychology & deviousness & such-like in the process.

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