RARA-AVIS: An Informal Reading List, by Ron Goulart

[This is an appendix to The Hardboiled Dicks (Sherbourne Press, 1965; Pocket, 1967) that Goulart edited.]

Anyone wishing to do further reading in the pulp detective field has to be willing to do some digging. The pulp magazine was an ephemeral form of literature, read and tossed away, and not many copies seem to have survived. The pulp writers did turn out quite a few hardcover and paperback books and I've listed several dozen of the titles below. Most of these books are out of print and to turn them up it will take of scouring of run-down public libraries, long established second hand stores and lending libraries that don't weed out their stock too often.

W.T. BALLARD

• Dealing Out Death

Ballard was a prolific pulp writer in the 30's. His main character in Black Mask was Bill Lennox, a trouble shooter for a movie studio. This novel is about Lennox. Ballard still does an occasional mystery for Pocket Books.

CHARLES G. BOOTH

• Gold Bullets
• Murder at High Tide
• The General Died at Dawn
• Murder Strikes Three

The last book on the list is a paperback issued in the 40's. It reprints three of Booth's Black Mask novelets.

PAUL CAIN

• Fast One
• Seven Slayers

Cain, whose real name was Peter Ruric, appeared in Black Mask in the early 1930's. At times his style becomes as sparse and clipped as that of a McGuffey's Reader and his heroes have a tendency to be so detached as to be nearly invisible. Still there is a cockeyed charm about his work. His only novel that I'm aware of is Fast One, which he wrote on a bet.

RAYMOND CHANDLER

• The Raymond Chandler Omnibus
• Killer in the Rain
• The Simple Art of Murder
• The Long Good-bye

GEORGE HARMON COXE

• Flash Casey - Detective

This Avon pocket book collected together four of Coxe's pulp novelets about Casey, crime photographer.

CARROLL JOHN DALY

• The Snarl of the Beast
• The Hidden Hand
• The Third Murderer

Like some old jazz records, Daly's novels are mostly of historical interest today. For all his toughness Race Williams, and Daly's other detectives, got involved with a great deal of hokum and bad melodrama.

NORBERT DAVIS

• The Mouse in the Mountain
• Sally in the Alley

Davis was funny as well as hardboiled. These novels are excellent.

LESTER DENT

• Dead at the Takeoff
• Lady Afraid
• Lady to Kill

Dent wrote few books under his own name. His detective novels are not as good as his short stories but are worth looking into. Since Dent is supposed to have written all the Doc Savage pulp novels I assume the pocket books currently being issued by Bantam are his. The Doc Savage stories aren't good enough to be read for entertainment and not terrible enough, as Rax [sic] Rohmer and Edgar Rice Burroughs' books are, to be read for fun.

FRANK GRUBER

• The French Key
• Simon Lash: Private Detective

DASHIELL HAMMETT

• Red Harvest
• The Dain Curse
• The Maltese Falcon
• The Glass Key
• The Thin Man
• Blood Money
• The Continental Op
• A Man Called Spade
• A Man Named Thin

The last three titles are paperback collections of Hammett's short stories. Nine volumes altogether were gathered by Ellery Queen.

FREDERICK NEBEL

• Sleepers East
• Six Deadly Dames

The novel, Sleepers East, somehow became a movie called Sleeprs West. Both works helped establish the diea that train travel was fraught with intrigue and adventure. Six Deadly Dames is a pocket book collection of pulp novelets concerning a detective named Donahue.

ROBERT REEVES

• Dead and Done For
• No Love Lost
• Cellini Smith: Detective

Reeves' career lasted only a few years. His work appeared in Black Mask and Dime Detective just before and during World War II. Cellini Smith is vaguely incompetent and these novels are fine examples of the screwball side of the hardboiled school.

RICHARD SALE

• Lazarus #7
• Benefit Performance
• Passing Strange

Raymond Chandler called Lazarus #7 a "gay Hollywoodian gambol." You should read it anyway.

JOSEPH T. SHAW

• The Hard-Boiled Omnibus

So far as I know this is the only other anthology made up complete of pulp detective stories. It contains stories from Black Mask, chosen by the magazine's best and most influential editor. Simon and Schuster put out the hardcover in 1946. Pocket Books issued a shorter version in 1952.

RAOUL WHITFIELD

• Death in a Bowl
• Green Ice
• The Virgin Kills