Tag: private eye

Pickup on Noon Street x 7

1952 Pocket reissue

cover art by Tom Dunn

better image than previously posted

1956 Pocket reissue

cover art by Robert Maguire

1960 Ace edition from the UK

1965 Pocket reissue (7th printing, October of ’65)

better image than previously posted

June 1973 Ballantine reissue*

cover art by Tom Adams

1977 Ballantine mass market, 3rd print*

cover art by Whistlin’ Dixie

1980 Ballantine reissue

cover art credited to Richard Waldrep

“Pickup On Noon Street” (Detective Fiction Weekly, May 1936, originally titled “Noon Street Nemesis”)

“Smart-Aleck Kill” (Black Mask Magazine, July 1934)

“Guns at Cyrano’s” (Black Mask Magazine, Jan. 1936)

“Nevada Gas” (Black Mask Magazine, June 1936)

these stories were first gathered into a book in 1950, Houghton Mifflin’s The Simple Art of Murder

August 25, 2013

[*covers from owner’s own copies]

[updated 6/6/25]

January 1948 issue ~ cover art by Paul Stevens

January 1948 issue

better image than previously posted

cover art by Paul Stevens

~ Curtis Cluff, “Snow at Waikiki”, 1st of 3 with Honolulu PI Johnny Ford, ‘1st-person narrator, ‘snow=heroin’, 1st of 4 stories in BM

~ Merle Constiner, “Bury Me Not”, ‘Luther McGavock, private detective; he works for Atherton Browne who heads a Memphis-based agency, last of 11 of the McG stories; usually rural setting’, reprinted in Let the Dead Alone: The Complete Black Mask Cases of Luther McGavock (Steeger, 2020), last of 12 stories in BM

~ Norman A. Daniels, “Death is No Stranger”, Rick Trent, ex-PI, ex-con, 1st person narrator, 3rd of 4 stories in BM

~ Robert C. Dennis, “Murder Tops the Cast”, 4th of 6 with ‘William (Willie) Carmody, Confidential Investigations & Margaret O’Leary, writer, Hollywood, WC is first-person narrator’, 4th of 10 stories in BM

~ C.P. Donnel, Jr., “Keep the Killing Quiet”, ‘1st-person narrator’, last of 20 stories in BM

~ George F. Kull, “Red Christmas”, ‘in Reno‘, 1st of 2 stories in BM

©Seattle Mystery Bookshop

Build My Gallows High/Out of the Past

1946 William Morrow, first edition.

Geoffrey Homes, Build My Gallows High, 1946 Morrow hardcover

1956 Ace Double paperback reissue

cover art by Harry Barton

basis for the 1947 film noir classic Out of the Past

better image than previously posted

[post updated 7/3/25]

February 1950 issue ~ cover art by Norman Saunders

February 1950 issue

cover art by Norman Saunders

Robert Martin, “I’ll Be Killing You” (Jim Bennett)

Robert Turner, “Homicidal Hitchhiker”

E.A. Morris, “Fist for a Fighting Fool”

Russell Branch, “If the Frame Fits”

Don James, “Sing a Song of Slaughter” (PI Pete Johns)

Bert Sims,“No Time to Kill” (Hawkshaw Morgan)

Alvin Yudkoff, “You Gotta Die Right”

April 1930 issue ~ cover art by J.W. Schlaikjer

April 1930 issue

better image than previously posted

cover art by J. W. Schlaikjer

~ Ramon Decolta (Raoul Whitfield), “Red Hemp”, Jo Gar, 3rd of 24 stories in BM, reprinted in West of Guam: The Complete Cases of Jo Bar (Altus Press, 2013)

~ J. J. Des Ormeaux, “Murderer’s Night”, ‘modern Western; 1st-person narrator,’ 1st of 5 stories in BM, (pseudonym of Forrest Rosaire)

~ Dashiell Hammett, “The Cyclone Shot”, Ned Beaumont, 2nd of 4 stories that will go together to make up The Glass Key (published 1931), 42nd of 45 stories in BM

~ Nels Leroy Jorgensen, “Your Play, Gentlemen”, 13th of 32 with Stuart “Black” Burton, ‘square-shooting gambler from the Southwest, often entangled with the law’, ‘Burton in NYC, features Kyoto Kara, a Japanese’, 17th of 39 stories in BM

~ Frederick L. Nebel, “Wise Guy”, 10th of 37 with Captain Steve MacBride and local reporter Kennedy ’& the usual company’, reprinted in Winter Kill: Complete Cases of MacBride & Kenney, v.2 (Altus, 2013), 22 of 67 stories in BM

~ Raoul [Fauconnier] Whitfield, “Killers’ Show”, Mal Ourney, last of 5 stories, ‘The Crime Breeders’, presented as separate stories rather than conventional serial’, published in hardcover in 1930 by Knopf as Green Ice, 39th of 67 stories in BM [see also 24 stories as Ramon Decolta]

©Seattle Mystery Bookshop

1978 Random House first edition hardcover

1978 Random House first edition hardcover, a modern classic

cover illustration by Stan Zagorowoski

1st novel with private eye C.W. Sughrue with begins with the masterful and oft-quoted sentence: “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.”

introducing Peter Chambers x 7

1947 Simon and Schuster hardcover

Kane’s debut novel and debut of Chambers

1948 Dell mapback

better image than previously posted

1950 Boardman hardcover from Britain – cover art by Denis McLoughlin

Kane’s first with private eye (Kane preferred “private Richard”) Peter Chambers, a 1947 Simon & Schuster hardcover. The title was changed for the revised 1956 Avon softcover.

cover art by Ray Johnson

1955 Boardman paperback – Denis McLoughlin cover art

1960 Avon reissue – cover art by Ray Johnson

better image than previously posted

1961 Dutch edition