Detective

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THE PULPS

DETECTIVE/MYSTERY

Started in the 1920s and perfected in the 1930s, the hard boiled detective was one of the most popular forms to arise from the pulp fiction magazines.

The hard boiled detective was a character who had to live on the mean streets of the city where fighting, drinking, swearing, poverty and death were all part of life. This new type of detective had to balance the day to day needs of survival against the desire to uphold the law and assist justice. Living in the toughest of environments, and required to be tougher than the evil surrounding him, our new heroes had to become "hard boiled".

MORE: http://www.vintagelibrary.com/fiction/genres/hardboiled.php

Their [the pulp] creators toiled for a penny a word and still published on disreputable pulp. These writers submitted to Nick Carter Weekly, Detective Stories, Girls' Detective, Doctor Death, Brief Stories, Argosy All-Story or the more lurid Police Gazette, most of which offered readers 150 pages of fiction for ten or fifteen cents. The early leader was Detective Stories, owned by Smith and Street, which had published The Nick Carter Weekly. 17 Between 1920 and 1950, the prime of hard-boiled fiction, 175 different detective magazines graced the newsracks. Some of the pulp writers, using a dozen names, wrote 1.5 million words a year. "A million words a year is so usual," wrote Frank Gruber, who credited this outpouring to the invention of the typewriter. He noted that earlier pulp novelists had written seventy thousand words a week in longhand. 18

The first significant hard-boiled authors appeared around 1923 and at the same magazine, The Black Mask. See the section about Black Mask for more information.

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Black Mask started life fairly innocuously as a general pulp running all types of fiction from adventure to romance to westerns. However, it was the advent of Joseph T. Shaw as editor in November 1926 that saw Black Mask transformed into what is generally regarded as the finest detective pulp magazine ever published. Even though Shaw was fired in 1936, the magazine continued with a consistently high standard into the early 1950s, reaching a total of 340 issues.

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Black Mask was the most significant of the detective pulps, but it was certainly not the only entry in the field. The "Black Mask School" was perpetuated, and even refined, in the pages of Detective Fiction Weekly, Dime Detective, Thrilling Detective, Ten Detective Aces, and others.

The detective pulps also launched many significant authors in addition to Hammett and Chandler. Erle Stanley Gardner was one of the most prolific and popular of the detective pulp writers. John D. MacDonald and Lawrence Treat had stories published in the waning days of the detective and mystery pulps. As with most genres, the detective pulps had their "spicy" versions that mixed a healthy dose of sex with the detection. Most notable of these was Spicy Detective Stories, which often featured the erotic adventures of Hollywood private eye Dan Turner, written by Robert Leslie Bellem. A totally different tradition in detective fiction, the "weird menace," began in Dime Mystery Magazine. With covers that often combined the ghoulish and the sadistic, Dime Mystery and its spawn offered stories of "impossible" crimes that seemed to be caused by the supernatural, but were eventually revealed by the detective to have a rational solution and a human culprit (oddly enough, the Scooby Doo cartoons seem to be a direct descendent of this sub-genre).

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Detective Action Stories was one of the first four magazines published in October 1930 by the then-new partnership of Henry Steeger and Harold Goldsmith that was to become so well-recognized as Popular Publications. However Detective Action Stories was never a great success, running for only 19 monthly issues until April 1932. It was briefly relaunched four years later (in October 1936) but lasted for only a further 9 issues before folding for good.

Of the same title as an earlier magazine published by Associated Authors, Inc., this pulp magazine first appeared in March 1939 featuring one of the early marijuana stories, and is noted for its garish and weird covers often featuring torture and mayhem.

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Detective Book Magazine was published by Fiction House and emphasized a complete, unabridged, book-length detective novel in each issue, supported by a couple of short stories. Initially it was not particularly successful, running for only 18 monthly issues before folding in September 1931. However it was revived some six years later, in Fall 1937, and continued on a fairly regularly quarterly schedule for a further fifteen years, notching up a reasonable total of 65 issues.

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The detective pulps spawned two hybrid forms which are even more highly collected. First were the weird-menace pulps, in which their victims -- usually women -- found themselves being hunted and tortured by sadistic villains. The first of these was Dime Mystery (December 1932-October 1950), from Popular Publications, which was soon followed by Terror Tales (September 1934-March 1941), Horror Stories (January 1935-April 1941) and Thrilling Mystery (October 1935-Winter 1951). Early issues of these magazines can command up to £100 each. The initial rather more gothic menace soon gave way to more titillating villainy with the leading titles Spicy Detective Stories (April 1934-December 1942) and Spicy Mystery Stories (June 1935-December 1942), copies of which can command well in excess of £100.

Their most notorious contributor was Robert Leslie Bellem whose affected prose style has brought his work a cult following. Covers by HJ Ward, Norman Saunders and HL Parkhurst add to the value. These magazines all became more conventional crime magazines during the 1940s. The other child of the detective pulps was the hero pulp, which are amongst the most cherished of all. Street & Smith led the way again with The Shadow (April 1931-Summer 1949), a spin-off of a radio series. The first issue can fetch up to £3,000 and other early issues range between £150 and £250. Other hero pulps include Doc Savage (March 1933-Summer 1949), the first issue of which is worth around £2,000; The Phantom Detective (February 1933-Summer 1953), The Spider (October 1933-December 1943) and Operator #5 (April 1934-November 1939). Many of these pulps and other similar titles later converted into comic books with which they shared a common market.

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Dime Detective Magazine ran for 274 issues, beginning with the November 1931 issue, and ending with the Fall 1953 issue. The title was so popular that for a brief period (1933-1935), it was published twice a month.

Unfortunately, by the end, it too was cut back to a quarterly before it ended a run of over 20 years.

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Detective Short Stories specialised in unflagging, unsubtle and ferocious action, with covers typically featuring girls in torn clothes, tied up and in fearful danger. Despite the relatively poor quality of most of the stories, the magazine lasted for six years from 1943 to 1947, followed four years later by a single issue from a different publisher.

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More covers and info at: http://www.philsp.com/data/data093.html

1940: The pulp field undergoes an explosion of titles. The Heroic Field is no exception. Standard launches "The Ghost, The Masked Detective, Thrilling Spy Stories" featuring The Eagle, and the first and only original SF hero title, "Captain Future." The Crimson Mask begins appearing in Standard's "Detective Novels." Munsey enters the field for the first time, bringing out The Green Lama in "Double Detective," The Blue Ghost in "Detective Fiction Weekly" and launching "Red Star Mystery, Red Star Adventures, Silver Buck Western" and "Detective Dime Novels," each containing a new hero.

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