A few days ago Evan Hunter's two Gold Medal books under the
name Curt Cannon were discussed and James Reasoner said he
thought the stories were originally published in the digest
magazine "Manhunt" under another name, perhaps Matt Cordell.
That sounded close but not quite right to me. Now that I am
back on the same side of the Atlantic with my issues of the
magazine, I was able to refresh my memory.
Turns out the stories were published under Evan Hunter's
byline but the character's name in the magazine stories was
Matt Cordell. I was surprised at how early the stories
appeared. Matt Cordell debuted in the very first issue of
"Manhunt" in the January 1953 issue. The story was "Die Hard"
and the blurb read "Cordell was washed up. His license was
gone, his wife was gone, and his self-respect was gone. All
he had was a glass of whiskey and a dead man on the barroom
floor."
That's a great blurb and also an accurate one. Looking over
"Die Hard" again after many years, it reaffirms my memory
that the Cordell stories (Cannon in the book publication)
were the hardest of hard boiled. Here is the opening:
"The bar was the kind of dimly-lit outhouse you find in any
rundown neighborhood, except it was a little more ragged
around the edges. There were blue and white streamers
crowding the ceiling, arranged in a criss-cross pattern
strung up in celebration of some local hero's return a long
time ago.
The mirror behind the bar was cracked, and it lifted
one half of my face higher than the other. A little to the
right of the bar was a door with a sign that cutely said,
"Little Boys." The odor steeping through the woodwork wasn't
half as cute."
These stories may be Hunter's purest efforts in the hard
boiled tradition. They retain a toughness that can, in one
aspect at least, shock even today. Cordell is a private eye
who lost his license after pistol-whipping his new bride's
lover. The wife is gone but Cordell's interaction with women
in this story (and I believe others in the series) is brutal
even for the era.
Looking over the first issue of "Manhunt" again, it is very
impressive. The lead story was the opening installment of
Mickey Spillane's "Everybody's Watching Me." This was a time
when no one sold more copies of a magazine or book than
Spillane. But the issue also contains new stories by William
Irish
(Woolrich), Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald), Richard S.
Prather (a Shell Scott story), Frank Kane (a Johnny Liddell
story), Hunter, and others less remembered today.
The magazine's references to this issue and upcoming issues
listed both Millar and John Ross Macdonald separately as
attractions. The second issue would contain a Lew Archer
story. It is a reminder to me that Millar had a pre-Lew
Archer reputation for this type story His back cover bio in
this first issue of Manhunt calls his novel BLUE CITY "one of
the finest, toughest most realistic novels ever to appear
between covers."
While I have some issues of "Manhunt," I wish I had picked up
more back when they were obtainable at reasonable
prices.
Richard Moore
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