fred macisaac – SMB Noir

April 1939 issue ~ cover art by John Fleming Gould

April 1939 issue

cover art by John Fleming Gould

better image than previously posted

T.T. Flynn, “The Devil’s Derby” (Mr. Maddox)

Raymond Chandler, “Pearls are a Nuisance”

Fred MacIsaac, “Murder at the Beauty Show” (Rambler Murphy)

John Lawrence, “Old Wives’ Tale” (Marquis of Broadway)

Dale Clark, “Mercy Killing”

with a simple listing of his name on the cover, along with those of his colleagues, the editors could not have been aware that they were publishing one of Raymond Chandler’s masterpieces. The Big Sleep had been published just two months before, on February 6.

August 6, 1932 issue

August 6, 1932

November 1936 issue ~ cover art by Malvin Singer

November 1936 issue

cover art by Malvin Singer

November 1936 issue

cover art by Malvin Singer

better image than previously posted

Frederick Nebel, “Make Mine Murder” (Cardigan), reprinted in The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Vol. 4 (Altus Press, 2012)

Leslie T. White, “So You Won’t Talk, Eh?” (Duke Martindel)

Erle Stanley Gardner, “Two Sticks of Death” (Small, Weston & Burke)

Fred MacIsaac, “The Corpse in the Taxicab” (Rainbow Murphy)

“The Tongueless Men”

– Chapter 1: John Lawrence, “The Blonde with the Purple Tongue”

– Chapter 2: T.T. Flynn, “The Vanishing Prelate”

– Chapter 3: Carroll John Daly, “The Broken Bank”

– Chapter 4: Frederick C. Davis, “The Lost Stairway”

– Chapter 5: Warren E. Barrett, “Only Two Swords”

[Taylor notes in his Companion: ” This is the fifth anniversary issue. To celebrate, a contest was built around a round-robin story, ‘The Tongueless Men’, where readers were supposed to identify which writer did each chapter.“]