7/13/1952 Murder scores a knockout

July 13, 1952.  Once upon a time there was TV network called Dumont, and for four years it featured a show called Rocky King: Detective.  On this very night an episode called "Murder Scores a Knockout" premiered, and when I say premiered, I mean it was performed live.  If you don't believe me you can watch it here.

7/2/1951 Boucher goes critical

July 2, 1951.  On this day William Anthony Parker White (doing business as Anthony Boucher)  began reviewing mysteries at the New York Times. He also wrote mysteries and science fiction and co-founded The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.  Many people feel that Boucher's reviews raised the respect of the whole mystery field.  The annual world mystery convention was named Bouchercon in his honor, and the awards given out there are called the Anthonys.

6/22/1958 Steve Carella becomes a daddy

June 22, 1958.  On the day of his sister's wedding 87th Precinct detective Steve Carella becomes the father of twins.  Oh, and tries to prevent his new brother-in-law from getting murdered.  That's the plot of Ed McBain's Til Death.  Literary Review called it “zestful, inventive, and utterly compulsive.”

6/13/1953 Carr does Holmes

June 13, 1953.  Collier's Magazine, with this cover date, featured "The Adventure of the Sealed Room" by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr.  It was part of a series of stories about the Master all co-written by the original author's son and the master of locked room mysteries.  They were collected under the title The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, which always made me wonder: did they know that one meaning of exploit is "use selfishly for one's own end?"

6/8/1950 Armored Car Robbery released

June 8, 1950.  This was the release date for Armored Car Robbery, a movie starring the legendary Charles McGraw and Adele Jergens.  Not legendary?  Well, third place went to William Talman, who later played Hamilton Burger in ten zillion episodes of Perry Mason.

Apparently the clever robber is outsmarted by a cop using the latest 1950-cop technology.  Also the movie seems confused as to whether it is taking place in New York or Los Angeles.  But we all have days like that.

5/28/1954 M is dialed on the big screen

May 28, 1954.  This date saw the release of Alfred Hitchcock's version of Dial M For Murder, starring Ray Milland and Grace Kelly.  It is a tale of adultery, blackmail, and attempted murder, featuring a perfect crime that doesn't go perfectly.

The studio insisted on filming it in 3-D, which acounts for a lot of things being pushed toward the camera, but it basically went to theatres "flat."  The story was by no means flat and neither was the relationship between the director and Grace Kelly which lasted for two more films and certainly influenced the rest of Hitchcock's career. 

5/25/1956 Stuart Bailey shows up, but not on Sunset Strip

May 25, 1956.  The issue of Saturday Evening Post with this cover date featured a short story by Roy Huggins called "Now You See It."  Why is that important?

It was one of three stories to feature a character named Stuart Bailey.  Huggins later based a TV show on Bailey and 77 Sunset Strip was one of the most influential series in the history of TV private eyes.

Huggins went on to have a hand in the creation of The Fugitive, Maverick, and The Rockford Files.

5/18/1955 Kiss Me Deadly at the movies

May 18, 1955.  Well, that is one ugly poster.  On this date Kiss Me Deadly was released, the second movie based on one of Mickey Spillaine's Mike Hammer novels.  Ralph Meeker starred as Miss Marple.  Okay, he played Mike Hammer.  In 1999 it was added to the National Film Registry, along with Laura, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Duck Amuck, among others.

5/16/1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much knows it again

May 16, 1956. People complain  a lot these days that Hollywood has run out of new ideas.  It's all sequels, series, and remakes.  Remember when Gus Van Sant remade Psycho shot by shot, in color?

But he was not the first to  try a do-over on Alfred Hitchcock.  That was the Master himself.  This was the opening day for The Man Who Knew Too Much, based on a movie of the same name Hitchcock directed back in 1934.  The original starred Leslie Banks, Edna Best, and the wonderfully villainous Peter Lorre.  The second try starred Jimy Stewart and Doris Day.  It won an Oscar, a rare thing for a Hitchcock movie.  Unbelievably, it won for Best Song: "Que Sera, Sera."

Hitchcock's explanation for the remake: "Let's say the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional."

4/6/1950 In the Best Families begins

April 6, 1950.  Nero Wolfe first encountered master criminal Arnold Zeck in And Be A Villain.  He confronted him again in The Second Confession.  It was clear that Reichenbach Falls was approaching.  And on this date the final confrontation began...

 The plot of In The Best Families opens on April 6, 1950. In this book Zeck becomes so threatening that Wolfe flees, abandoning his beloved brownstone (leaving the door open, because with him gone there is nothing valuable left, the insufferable egotist).  His loyal assistant Archie Goodwin is left to cope on his own with no knowledge of where his boss has gone (although no one believes that he doesn't know, which makes it all the more frustrating).  But Wolfe hasn't surrendered, he's merely planning, and months later...

For some reason this book seems to attract the worst covers in the whole Stout corpus.  As the one on the right demonstrates.

4/3/1953 Chester Himes moves to Europe

April 3, 1953.  On this date Chester Himes left the United States for Europe, thinking a Black man might have an easier time in France than in New York.  He joined a group of ex-patriates that included Richard Wright and James Baldwin.

He will always be remembered for his books about Harlem cops Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones.

3/25/1951 Lady, You're Dead!

March 25, 1981.  Ellery Queen's story "Lady, You're Dead!" appeared in This Week magazine on this day.  When it appeared in an Ellery Queen book the title changed to "Driver's Seat,"  which was presumably the one they preferred.

Perhaps this was karma striking back at Frederic Dannay, one half of the writing team, since he had a reputation for ruthlessly changing titles of stories  that appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which he edited.

3/18/1954 Marko Vukcic is murdered

March 18, 1954.  On this date Marko Vukcic was gunned down in New York City.  Besides being the owner of Rusterman's, a posh eatery, he was also the best friend of Nero Wolfe.  His death led Wolfe and Archie Goodwin on one of their most spectular - and frankly unbelievable - adventures.  The Black Mountain found the rotund detective marching his seventh-of-a-ton through the hills of Yugoslavia, his homeland, in search of the killer.  Does Wolfe find him?  Well, duh.

3/11/1952. Douglas Adams meets life, the universe, and everything

March 11, 1952.  On this date Cambridge, England welcomed the newborn Douglas Adams.  He wrote for radio, Doctor Who, computer games, and brilliant, hilarious novels.  He was best known for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, but he also wrote two novels about the unique private eye Dirk Gently, owner of the world's only holistic detective agency.  "We solve the WHOLE crime.  We find the WHOLE person."  His cases involved an electronic monk (who believed in things so you didn't have to) and the god Thor (and his odd relationship with a soda machine).  Douglas, alas, died young, in 2001.

2/22/1952 Five Fingers open

February 22, 1952.  On this day the movie Five Fingers premiered.  James Mason starred in a story of espionage in Turkey during World War II.  It was based on Operation Cicero, a book by Ludwig Carl Moyzisch, which told the true story of Elyesa Bazna, a Nazi spy who  worked as valet to the British ambassador.

It was nominated for two Oscars (Best Director and Best Screenplay).  The MWA gave it the Edgar for Best Motion Picture.  I've never seen it.  Have you?

1/26/1952 The Black Ledger appears

January 26, 1952.  The issue of This Week magazine with this cover date featured "The Mysterious Black Ledger," a short story by Ellery Queen, based on one of their radio scripts. Ellery (the detective, not the writer... well, the detective is a writer, but... oh, you know what I mean) is serving as a courier and the bad guys catch him and try to find the ledger he is carrying...

1/17/1953 A witness becomes irate

January 17, 1953.  This date saw the publication of The Case of the Irate Witness, which is unique among Erle Stanley Gardner's fifty-plus books about Perry Mason.  It is not a novel, but a collection of four short stories and only one is about the famous defense attorney.  In his pre-Mason days Gardner was a massively prolific author of shorts for the pulp magazines, so this was a chance to connect some of them to his most famous creation.

8/7/1951 The Pedestrian appears

August 7, 1951.  The issue of The Reporter bearing this date featured a short story by Ray Bradbury called "The Pedestrian."  It was science fiction.  It was also crime fiction.  Briefly, in the year 2131 a man is arrested for walking down a city street.  (I feel obliged to say that in this case his race had nothing to do with it.)  Bradbury wrote it after being stopped (but not arrested) by cops in southern California for the same offense.  You can read the story here or in his collection The Golden Apples of the Sun.

7/23/1956 First murder in the 87th Precinct

July 23, 1956.  The first recorded murder in the 87th Precinct took place on this date.  It appeared in Ed McBain's novel Cop Hater.  Over the next half century McBain went on to write more than sixty of these police procedurals, killing hundreds of fictional souls.  His series included romances, a ghost story, a political satire... and a great demonstration of how far the genre can stretch.

Mystery writer William DeAndrea once noted with surprise that he had never included McBain when asked for a list of his favorite mystery writers.  He concluded that McBain was like the Beatles in the 1960s.  You didn't bother to list them as one of your favorite bands; they were a given.

4/1/1959 The Deaf Man arrives

April 1, 1959.  One of the great villains of crime fiction makes his first appearance on April Fool's Day, appropriately enough, when Ed McBain's The Heckler opens.  The Deaf Man (he uses a hearing aid and always uses pseudonyms that relate to deafness) is brilliant, dangerous, and sexy.  We never learn anything about his background, true identity, or why he takes great glee in harassing the cops of the 87th Precinct.  Like a Batman villain, he will send the cops clues as to his intentions, but his goal is to use their investigations as part of his own elaborate plots. He is usually foiled by accidents and coincidence, not by the actions of our heroes, and then slinks off to rob another day. He appears in six of the novels, making his last escape in Hark! (2004).