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A LOOK AT SCI FI PULPS
PART 5: SPICY DETECTIVE
1934
From the pages of Spicy
Adventure, Spicy Mystery, Spicy
Detective, and
many more come stories where two fisted heroes are often faced with deadly
decisions with beautiful, scantily clad women hanging in the balance for the
victor. Although extremely tame by today's standards, this sub genre of the pulp
era became known as the most risque and forever placed its stamp on how the pulp
magazine era would be remembered.
Spicy Adventure officially lasted for 95 issues from 1934 through 1942. Robert Leslie Bellem, Hugh B. Cave (Justin Case) , E. Hoffman Price and Lew Merril among others took readers to far off lands where the damsels were of course in distress.
1935
Spicy Detective, also from Culture Publications lasted for 104 issues and featured the legendard Hollywood Detective, Dan Turner.
Published by Culture Publications. 104 issues in total from April 1934 through December 1942 where it was retitled Speed Detective Stories.
One of the most popular characters to come from the pages of Spicy Detective was Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective. Author Robert Leslie Bellem created a hardboiled character fused with humor and spicy.
A number of other top authors also graced the pages of Spicy Detective including E. Hoffman Price, Hugh B. Cave, Norvell Page and Arthur Wallace.
1936
The original Spicy Detective pulps are highly collectable and generally scarce. Luckily our small press publishers are making these available in reprint or replica format. Reprints are generally priced in the $9.95 to $19.95 range with replicas in the $24.95 to $34.95 range. Reprints sometimes retype set the magazine print or only reprint the main stories. Replicas attempt to be as close to possible the original pulp magazines.
http://www.vintagelibrary.com/pulpfiction/genres/spicy.php
Dan Turner, also known as the Hollywood Detective, was a fictional private detective created by Robert Leslie Bellem. His first appearance was in the second issue of the pulp magazine Spicy Detective, dated June 1934, and he continued to appear regularly in that magazine (which was retitled Speed Detective in 1943) until its demise in February 1947. He also appeared in his "own" magazine, Hollywood Detective, which was published by Culture Publications (later Trojan Publishing) and ran from January 1942 to October 1950.[1]
Dan Turner was a typical hardboiled private eye, who worked in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles. Most of the stories are set in and around the film studios, and focus on crimes involving people in the movie business - film stars, stuntmen, producers, agents, extras and an endless array of glamorous female "starlets". The Dan Turner stories were notorious for their emphasis on sexual content, although this was generally implied rather than described explicitly.[2
A large number of the Dan Turner stories were written by Bellem himself, who had a good inside knowledge of Hollywood having worked as a film extra. The Hollywood Detective magazine also featured a Dan Turner comic strip, drawn by Max Plaisted.[2]
All the Dan Turner stories are written in the first person, in a racy, slang-ridden style that gives them a unique flavor. Guns are never "guns" but "roscoes", and they always go "ka-chow!". A woman is never simply a "woman" but a "dame", "frail", "quail", "wren" or, if particularly attractive, a "doll" or "cutie".
1939
In his comic essay, "Somewhere A Roscoe...," humorist S.J. Perelman both praises and skewers the Dan Turner mysteries. In the essay, Perelman says of Culture Publications, Inc., "In Spicy Detective, they have achieved the sauciest blend of libido and murder this side of Gilles de Rais. They have juxtaposed the steely automatic and the frilly pantie and found that it pays off. Above all, they have given the world Dan Turner, the apotheosis of all private detectives."[3]
Using quotes taken from various Dan Turner mysteries in Spicy Detective, Perelman pokes fun at Turner's hard-boiled character. (After finding a female body in his closet in "Corpse in the Closet," Dan Turner observes, "It's a damned screwy feeling to reach for pajamas and find a cadaver instead." Perelman comments on this, "Mr. Turner, you will perceive, is a man of sentiment.")[3]
1940
Perelman also quotes several murder scenes from several different Dan Turner mysteries, noting that they all bear a remarkable similarity. The murder scenes always involve a "roscoe" which says "Ka-chow!," "Chow! Chow!," or "Wh-r-r-ang!" After the body hits the floor, Dan Turner always comments that the victim is "as dead as an iced catfish," or "as dead as vaudeville," or "as dead as a smoked herring."
"The murders," Perelman notes, "follow an exact, rigid pattern, almost like the ritual of a bullfight or a Chinese play."[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Turner,_Hollywood_Detective
1941
1942
http://www.philsp.com/mags/spicy_detective_stories.html
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