cover art by John Fleming Gould
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Carroll John Daly, “The White-Headed Corpse” (Race Williams)
Michael Sutton, “The Devil’s Portrait”
Jan Dana, “Too Week to Kill” (Acme Indemnity Op)
Dale Clark, “The Short and Merry One”
Roger Torrey, “Fire Test”
Maurice Beam, “Mind Over Matter”
Robert K. Adams, “Curtain Call”
D.L. Champion, “Dumb Dick”
cover art by Fred Craft
~ Tom Curry, “The System”, DeVrite, NYPD undercover ‘secret agent’, 4th of 7, subtitled ‘The Receiver’, 23rd of 39 stories in BM
~ Carroll John Daly, “The Law of Silence”, ‘pt. 2 Crime story (subtitled “The Show-Down”) with Charlie, 1st -person narrator’
~ Carroll John Daly, “Wrong Street”, 2nd story in the issue, last Satan Hall story in BM, 33rd and 34th appearances in BM
~ Erle Stanley Gardner, “Out of the Shadows”, 22nd of 73 with Ed Jenkins, in Chinatown with Soo Hoo Duck, Ngat T’oy and Helen Chadwick, 32nd of 99 stories in BM
~ W.H.B. Kent, “The Killer Finds a Horseshoe”, 3rd of 6 Westerns with Killer Blake, deputy sheriff & agent of the Stock Association
~ Henry Leverage, “The Gopher”, “Tony Fishera, alias ‘The Crawler, aka ‘The Gopher’ – gangster”, 2nd of 2 stories in BM
~ Marion Scott, “Fools Rush In”, ‘Steve Burke, tenderfoot lumberjack, 1st-person narrator’, 2nd of 3 by herself, 17 stories with Earl Scott in BM as a couple
~ Everett H. Tipton, “Hunted”, ‘Western’, 5th of 7 stories in BM
~ Raoul [Fauconnier] Whitfield, “Black Murder”, ‘Verner, Federal man, & greyhound racing; Black Murder = dog’, 20th of 68 stories in BM [see also 24 stories as Ramon Decolta]
~ Clee Woods, “Hoofprints of Law”, ‘Western; subtitled, “A Neck in a Noose”’, author’s sole appearance in BM
©Seattle Mystery Bookshop
December 1940 issue
cover art by Rafael DeSoto
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Carroll John Daly, “The Strange Case of Iva Grey” (Connelly)
Cleve F. Adams, “Murder While You Wait” (Conner O’Melveny)
John Lawrence, “Nothing for Christmas” (Marquis of Broadway)
Merle Costiner, “You’re in My Way (The Dean)
Fletcher D. Slater, “Red Light” (Eddie West)
cover art by Tom Lovell
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Carroll John Daly, “Monogram in Lead” (Race Williams)
T.T. Flynn, “A Date at the Morgue”
John K. Butler, “The Walking Dead” (Rex Lonergan)
Robert Sidney Bowen, “The Man Who Was Two” (Kip Lacey)
John Lawrence, “Broadway Malady” (Marquis of Broadway)
a letter from JKB appeared on pgs. 123-124
Daly, Carroll John. BETTER CORPSES: A RACE WILLIAMS STORY. London: Robert Hale Limited, [1940]. Octavo, pp. [1-6] 7-286 [287-288: blank], publisher’s black cloth stamped in red and silver. First edition. “When better corpses are made, Race Williams will make them” (p. 186). The last Race Williams book, a fix-up novel incorporating the three-part Morse story arc that first appeared in DIME DETECTIVE in 1935 and 1936 featuring Daly’s violent tough-guy detective, Race Williams, who “never bumped off a guy what didn’t need it” and the Flame (The Girl with the Criminal Mind), “a woman of good — a woman of evil. Take your choice.” Carroll John Daly (1889-1958), one of the fathers of the modern hard-boiled private eye and an important BLACK MASK writer, “is not known for literary niceties — his style can best be described as crude but effective … Characterization is minimal and action is everything” (Crider and Pronzini). Race Williams was Daly’s most successful creation, appearing in about 70 stories and eight novels. Lee Server (Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers, 2014) has called Race Williams “the single most popular private eye in the history of the pulps.” Cloth worn and scuffed, slight spine lean, half title leaf and final blank tanned, a sound, good copy in a pictorial 8/3 dust jacket with touch of wear at edges, mainly lower spine end, and mild tanning to spine panel and along rear flap fold. Stunning jacket. From the library of a well-known mystery writer with his library stamp on the front paste-down. Rare. There is no equivalent U.S. edition.
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Peter Paige, “Cash Wale’s Carnival Kill” (Cash Wale)
Theodore Sturgeon, “Die, Maestro, Die!”
Carroll John Daly, “Half a Corpse” (Race Williams)
Larry J. Marcus, “Dead Man Blues”
R.M.F. Joses, “Bad to the Last Drop”
Robert Carlton, “Sealed with a Kiss” (Mike Brent)
John D. MacDonald, “You’ll Never Escape”
later UK edition, includes five pieces from US May 1949 edition
Peter Paige, “Cash Wale’s Carnival Kill”
Theodore Sturgeon, “Die Maestro, Die!”
Larry J. Marcus, “Dead Man Blues”
R.M.F. Joses, “Bad to the Last Drop”
Ted Palmer, “The June Thrill Docket”
stories by Daly, Carlton and MacDonald omitted
cover art by Norman Saunders
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Carroll John Daly, “Race Williams Cooks a Goose”
John D. MacDonald, “Target for Tonight”
William P. McGivern, “Hunt Her in Hell”
Raymond Drennan, Jr., “He Woke Up Dying”
Preston Grady, “Killing’s Too Easy”
Charles Larson, “My Crime – Your Punishment”
cover art by John Howitt
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Carroll John Daly, “Make Your Own Corpse!” (Vee Brown)
Maxwell Hawkins, “Death from Down Under” (Jones & Jones)
Frederick C. Davis, “The Silver Doom” (Oke Oakley)
SMB Noir 