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Re: RARA-AVIS: Whitfield et al.
Have Day Keene's stories been collected? I have to say that though he
wrote some throwaway junk, he is, for my money (which, granted, is not
much), one of the craftiest, smartest, and (frequently) hilarious of the
pulp and early-paperback eras. He writes in a tough-guy manner without
ever taking the stance too seriously. He clearly respects the hard-boiled
genre, and knows its landscape well, but sometimes he almost seems to be
parodying the genre, and it's that ambiguity of tone that I love about
him. His stories are scattered around different collections. His "A Better
Mantrap" is the first story in *Dangerous Dames*, a great collection
edited by Mike Shayne (I love that a fictional detective could be an
editor -- does that still happen?). Anyway, I'd like to put in a plug for
a Day Keene collection. I count 46 uncollected short stories, according to
Twentieth-Century Crime & Mystery Writers. I've fantasized of editing
such a collection myself. O, and Raoul Whitfield is fabulous. I'm trying
to find more of his Jo Gar stuff, something good I can teach in my
novel/short story course next Fall. Michael
====================== =========================================
Michael D. Sharp "My time-wasting abilities are legendary!
msharp@umich.edu If only I could harness them as a force
Department of English for good!" -- Shaun M. Strohmer
University of Michigan
On Mon, 27 Jan 1997, DOUGLAS GREENE wrote:
> Interesting to get some positive response to a possible collection of Raoul
> Whitfield's short stories and those by other hardboiled pulp authors.
> Whitfield wrote some very tough short stories and novelettes, especially about the
> Philippine PI Jo Gar (under the pseudonym Raoul Decolta). Other
> possibilities--without trying to define the absolute hardboiledness
> of their protagonists--include Richard Sale (and his newspaper sleuth
> Daffy Dill, or Captain MacGrail), Ken Crossen (and Mortimer Death),
> MacKinlay Kantor (the Pulitzer prize winner who was an active pulp
> writer in the 30's), the recently deceased William Campbell Gault
> (who wrote some interesting tough pulp stories in the 40s), and
> others--anyone going through Shaw's anthology--or those of Bill
> Pronzini and others--can add names to the list.
>
> Some writers who are still living wrote some good pulp PI
> tales--Talmage Powell, Harold Q. Masur, and the Grand Old Man of the
> Pulps (87 this year) Hugh B. Cave, who wrote about Peter Kane for
> BLACKMASK. Fedogan & Bremer is doing a retrospective of Cave's
> horror writings (he's still an active writer), and I hope they'll
> follow with his PI stuff.
>
> They're about half a dozen uncollected Paul Cain stories--other than those in SEVEN SLAYERS
> (which I think is still available from Black Lizard, or from the
> Blood and Guts Press--a perfect name for a hardboiled publisher!)
>
> Some of Robert Leslie Bellem's stories about Dan Turner and
> Todhunter's Ballard's about Bill Lennox were collected in by Bowling
> Green University Popular press. They're worth reading, even though
> the reproductions from the original pulp pages are swimming with
> broken type.
>
> The problem for a small press publisher like Crippen & Landru is
> selling enough copies of a book to break even--especially when
> you're as amazingly undercapitalized as we are! You have to sell
> primarily to the mystery-specialist bookshops, and they don't like
> ordering books that are not by current writers or the most famous
> writers of the past. Sadly, few modern bookdealers have heard of
> Raoul Whitfield.
>
> To answer a question: Ed Gorman writes a couple series of private eye
> novels about Jack Dwyer and Jack Walsh, and he is often considered
> one of the best current short story writers. He often tends toward
> Dark Suspense. Michael Collins created Dan Fortune, a one-armed PI,
> back in the 50's --Edgar winner for best first novel. His stories may not be quite tough enough for some
> Rara-Avis people, but they're beautifully written and plotted.
>
> Doug Greene
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