12/29/39 John Dickson Carr breaks into radio

December 29 1939.  Listeners to the BBC on this evening caught the first work in the medium by that most British of American mystery writers, John Dickson Carr.  "Who Killed Matthew Corbin?" appeared in three parts, running into January. It starred Gordon McLeod as Carr's sleuth Dr Gideon Fell.

Nu recordings are known to survive but Carr recycled the plot for "The Clock Strikes Eight," which you can listen to here.

9/23/1935 The Saint takes over from Sam Spade, for spying, sort of

September 23, 1935.  Secret Agent X-9 was a comic strip, originally written by Dashiell Hammett and drawn by Alex Raymond (better known for Flash Gordon).  X-9 was the only spy in history who was addressed by his secret spy number instead of his name (huh?).  The agency he worked for was equally nameless.

X-9's adventures began in 1934 but on this date the authoring duties transferred from Hammett, the creator of Sam Spade, to Leslie Charteris, better known as the creator of the Saint. Seldom has so much talent been spent on so little a result.

Charteris left the strip a year later but it limped on with a  pseudonymous author (joining the agent and his agency in namelessness, I guess), until 1992.

9/15/1939 Hello, Farewell

September 15, 1939.  On this date Raymond Chandler finished the first draft of Farewell, My Lovely, his second novel about L.A. private eye Phillip Marlowe. In my opinion, his masterpiece.

9/12/1938 When Archie met Lily

September 12, 1938.  This is a day that should be marked with honor on the calendar of all Rex Stout fans.  It is the day that Archie Goodwin met the love of his life, Lily Rowan. This happens in the first chapter of the sixth Nero Wolfe novel, Some Buried Caesar, and it is certainly one of the most memorable openings in that long series.

The fat sleuth is in upstate New York, heading to a flower show, when his car has an accident.  Wolfe and Archie take a short cut through a pasture, which turns out to have a bull in it.  Archie has to run and tumble over a fence, nearly getting mangled to death by an angry beast, and as he struggles to his feet he hears a woman applauding and  cheering as if he were a circus act.  And that, of course, is Lily Rowan.

But my favorite line in the book is from Wolfe: "If you regard it as a rational project to find a legitimate nocturnal pickwasher, go ahead."  You had to be there.

7/31/1930 The Shadow knows what happened today

July 31, 1930.  On this date the Detective Radio Hour, sponsored by pulp publisher Street and Smith, featured a mysterious narrator called The Shadow.  This became so popular that by the following spring The Shadow Magazine sprang forth, starring a much more fully developed character, designed and usually written by the prolific Walter Gibson.  By 1937 The Shadow radio show had the characteristics now so familiar: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  The Shadow Knows!"  He had "the power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see him."  And "The tree of crime bears bitter fruit." 

7/12/1933 Westlake busts in

July 12, 1933.  On this date comic mayhem gained one of its greatest advocates. Donald E. Westlake was born.  He may be the only author bestknown for parodying himself.  His books about the talented but luckless burglar John Dortmunder seem like a funhouse mirror held to the deadly serious books he wrote, under the name Richard Stark about the ruthless thief Parker.

Many of his books were made into movies, and he was nominated for an Oscar for his script of The Grifters, based on a Jim Thompson novel.  The MWA gave him several Edgars and named him a grandmaster.

I once had the honor of sitting with him at a luncheon.  All I had to  do was sneak into the dining room and rearrange the table cards.  Dortmunder and Parker would have been proud.

6/14/1939 Montalban born in Barcelona

June 14, 1939.  Manuel Vázquez Montalbán was born on this date in Barcelona.  He wrote many books and more than a dozen involved a detective named Pedro Carvalho.  The first book (1972) was entitled I Killed Kennedy.  Among Carvalho's bad habits was a tendency to use books from his own library as firewood.  (Shudder.)

4/24/1936 MacKinlay Kantor turns to crime

April 24, 1936. MacKinlay Kantor is best remembered as the author of the Civil War play Andersonville, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956.  His novel Glory For Me was the basis for the excellent movie The Best Years of Their Lives.

But back in 1936 he published a crime story in Colliers Magazine.  "Rogues Gallery" is his most reprinted story, including an appearance in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

4/1/1934 The Mystery Man of Soho

April 1, 1934.  The issue of the British magazine Thriller with this cover date featured "The Mystery Man of Soho," by Margaret Allingham.  It did not feature her upper class detective, Albert Campion. She republished it in her Minibus under the title "A Quarter of a Million."  Nice cover.

3/20/1937 The Murderous Mr. Coon

March 20, 1937.  The issue of Detective Fiction Weekly with this cover date featured "The Murderous Mr. Coon," by Richard Sale.  You can read it here, courtesy of Evan Lewis, an excellent contemporary short story writer.

The story stars Daffy Dill, a New York newspaper reporter with an unfortunate name.

Sale also wrote novels, such as Not Too Narrow...Not Too Deep, and directed some movies, including Let's Make It Legal, one of Marilyn's first flicks.  (Oh, you know perfectly well which Marilyn.)

2/15/1937 Fletch's father is born

February 15, 1937.  Gregory McDonald was born on this date in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.  He achieved his greatest fame as the invention of an ethically-challenged reporter named Irwin Maurice Fletcher.

AKA Fletch.  Fletch won the Edgar for Best First Mystery; Confess, Fletch win for Best Paperback Mystery, the only time a novel and its immediate sequel both received Edgars.

The plot of Fletch was a one-of-a-kind high concept strike of genius: a millionaire hires a homeless beach bum to kill him (he's terminally ill, or so he says), not realizing the bum is actually a reporter.  The Chevy Chase movie screwed up the plot thoroughly, by the way, but I am sure it made McDonald a lot of money.  Good. 

2/12/1931 van de Wetering is born

February 12, 1931.  Janwillem van de Wetering was born on this date in Rotterdam.  He died in Maine in 2008.  In between he discovered Buddhism and wrote a lot of popular books.

Many of them were mysteries and involved Amsterdam cops named Grijpstra and de Gier.  He received the French Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere in 1984.

1/24/1932 Chan takes a chance

January 24, 1932.  This day saw the release of Charlie Chan's Chance, the third movie starring Warner Oland as the Honolulu detective.  It was vaguely based on Earl Derr Biggers novel Behind That Curtain.  It is now believed to be lost and I don't miss it a bit.

1/23/1937 There is a Corpse Next Door

January 23, 1937.  The issue of Detective Fiction Weekly with this date on the cover featured a story by the great Cornell Woolrich entitled "The Corpse Next Door."  Someone is stealing the protagonist's milk bottles and he objects.  Things get out of hand and soon there is more than spilled milk to cry about.

In 1980 Mark Reichert directed a film adaptation called Union City, starring Dennis Lipscomb and Debby Harry (yes, of Blondie fame).

1/22/1934 Secret Agent X-9 gets commissioned.

January 22, 1934.  If the comic strip Secret Agent X-9 never became a household name you can't blame its pedigree.  The artist was Alex Raymond, who drew Flash Gordon.  The writer was Dashiell Hammett, and if I need to tell you what else he wrote, why are you reading this blog? 

The strip started on this date.  After Hammett left Leslie Charteris took over for a while.  He is better known for creating The Saint. 

The strip ran until 1996.

9/19/1936 The False-Face Murders

September 19, 1936.  On this day Detective Fiction Weekly served up the first third of "The False-Face Murders" by Judson Phillips.   You can read it here.  Phillips was better known for the mysteries he wrote later under the name Hugh Pentecost.  He scored more than 100 books in all. 

5/29/1937 Flash!

May 29, 1937.  The issue of Detective Fiction Weekly with this cover date featured a new story by Richard Sale.  It was the first that included both of his most popular characters.  Daffy Dill was a reporter and Candid Jones was a photographer and insurance investigator.

Award-winning mystery writer Evan Lewis selected this story for the Mystery Classics section of the May 2015 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  He said that "'Flash!', told entirely through letters, telegrams,news reports, radio bulletins and one-sided phone calls, was one of the most unusual stories in the magazine's long history.  And it's a great introduction to the wild world of Richard Sale."

If you want to read it you had better get your hands on the May 2015 issue of AHMM.  Easier to find than a 1937 DFW.

5/20/1939 And Then There Were None...

May 20, 1939.  Agatha Christie seemed determined to try every possible variation of the murderer-suspects-victim-detective combination.  This date saw the publication in the Saturday Evening Post of the first episode of the American edition of And Then There Were None, one of her most audacious explorations of her chosen field.

Ten people, all with shady pasts, are guests on an island.  There is no way off.  And somebody is killing them all, one by one...  The climax is breathtaking.

The New York Times Book Review: "The whole thing is utterly impossible and utterly fascinating. It is the most baffling mystery that Agatha Christie has ever written, and if any other writer has ever surpassed it for sheer puzzlement the name escapes our memory. We are referring, of course, to mysteries that have logical explanations, as this one has. It is a tall story, to be sure, but it could have happened."

2/22/1930 Edward D. Hoch arrives

February 22, 1930.  On this date Edward D. Hoch was born in Rochester, New York.  He wrote more than 950 stories.  This included at least one tale in every issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine for an incredible 34 years.

Thirty years ago I attended an Edgars Symposium sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America.  The moderator of one panel bragged that everyone on his panel was an MWA Grand Master.  Ed Hoch immediately and politely corrected him; he had received an Edgar for Best Short Story but he had not been made a Grand Master.

I could hear astonished murmurs from the audience.  Even back then his published output was unbelievable.  In 2001 the MWA fixed their oversight.

He died, still in Rochester, in 2008.

2/14/1930 The Maltese Falcon rises

February 14, 1930.  A lot of great event choices for Valentine's Day, but let's go with the publication on this date of one of the classic mystery novels of all time.

Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon first appeared in Black Mask Magazine  in five installments. There are about 2,000 differences between the two texts, about one-third of them being more than just copyediting.  Six editions sold out that year.

If by any chance you are one of those people who saw the John Huston/Humphrey Bogart flick (the third movie based on the novel)  but haven't read the book, let me urge you to do it.  For one thing, you will learn who searched Brigid O'Shaughnessy's apartment while she was sleeping with Sam Spade.  (It's mentioned in the movie but never explained.)  You'll be surprised.

And then there is the Flitcraft Parable, as it is known.  This little tale that Spade tells Brigid was left out of the movie but it may have led to more critical discussion than any other four pages in Hammett's works.  Don't you want to read it for yourself?