Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 111, No. 1. Whole No. 677, January 1998

The Jury Box by Jon L. Breen

© 1997 by Jon L. Breen

The pulps, fragile and disposable fiction magazines printed on cheap paper, peaked between 1920 and 1950. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler gave them the patina of legend, and Quentin Tarrantino’s remarkable film Pulp Fiction generated a fresh spurt of interest. But were the pulps as terrific as reputed?

Editors Ed Gorman, Bill Pronzini, and Martin H. Greenberg, introducing the 550-page trade paperback anthology American Pulp (Carroll & Graf, $12.95), note that “most pulp fiction was cliche-filled and Godawful.” Thus, they have included few stories actually from pulps — far more appeared in the vastly superior digests, including EQMM, AHMM, and the great ’50s magazine Manhunt. The selections — from authors as various as Evan Hunter, Marcia Muller, Yin Packer, John Lutz, Jack Ritchie, Leigh Brackett, Richard S. Prather, William Campbell Gault, Craig Rice, and Clark Howard — are excellent, as are the notes that precede them. Also worth seeking (and also drawing more from the digests than the pulps) is a hardcover instant-remainder bargain from British anthologist Peter Haining, Pulp Fictions: Hardboiled Stories (Barnes & Noble, $7.98).

Even if the pulps were mostly junk, there are still worthy stories to be rescued from their disintegrating pages. Sixteen tales by Howard Browne, most from ’40s issues of Mammoth Detective, are gathered in Incredible Ink (Dennis McMillan, 1581 N. Debra Sue Place, Tucson, AZ 85715; $80), which begins with a fascinating oral history distilled from interviews with Browne, who turned 90 this year. The account of his life as novelist, pulp writer-editor, and screenwriter includes the story of how he came to write the 1952 novelette “The Veiled Woman,” signed by Mickey Spillane. A bibliography and list of screen credits are also included. (You read the price correctly. The book is only available in a boxed edition limited to 350 signed copies.)

I’ve read just enough fiction by the legendary pulp Weird Tales’ most famous contributor, H.P. Lovecraft, to know he’s not my cup of tea, but he was a strong influence on two writers I admire, Robert Bloch and August Derleth. Two new volumes, one hardcover and one paperback, present the most famous works of the supernatural horror icon: Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (Ecco Press, $23), with a substantial introduction by Joyce Carol Oates; and The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft (Dell, $12.95), with introduction and extensive notes by Lovecraft biographer S.T. Joshi, whose four selections are all included among Oates’s ten. But given Joshi’s illustrations and extra editorial matter, collectors may want both.

Pulp writing was either an occupation or an influence on the dark suspense writers represented in two handsome volumes from The Library of America, an ambitious project that until now has included only Raymond Chandler among crime fiction writers. Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and ’40s ($35) includes James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), Horace McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935), Edward Anderson’s Thieves Like Us (1937), Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock (1946), William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley (1946), and Cornell Wool-rich’s I Married a Dead Man (1948). All the entries in Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s ($35) save Patricia High-smith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) originally appeared as paperback originals: Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me (1952), Charles Willeford’s Pick-up (1967), David Goodis’s Down There (1956), and Chester Himes’s The Real Cool Killers (1959). Editor Robert Polito provides outstanding biographical and textual notes.

Richard Matheson’s esteem by his fellow pros surpasses his reputation, considerable as it is, with the reading public. Noir: Three Novels of Suspense (G&G Books, 3601 Skylark Lane, Cedar Rapids, IA 52403; $65), with an introduction by Matthew R. Bradley and an afterword by Ed Gorman, is a 500-copy signed limited edition comprising three of his paperback originals: Someone is Bleeding (1953), Fury on Sunday (1953), and Ride the Nightmare (1959). The last is the best, but all three are gems of pure suspense — comparisons with Wool-rich and Hitchcock aside, the versatile Matheson is unique.

**** Carolyn Wheat: Troubled Waters, Berkley, $21.95. Brooklyn lawyer Cass Jameson looks back on her student radical years in one of the best and most even-handed mysteries to deal with the ’60s’ peace and liberation movements, weighing their positive and negative effects from a presumably wiser middle-aged perspective. It’s also a terrific whodunit. Wheat’s Mean Streak was a deserving Edgar nominee for best novel of 1996. This one is even better.

*** Max Allan Collins: Mommy, Leisure, $4.99. The book version of a successful independent film, written and directed by Collins, is a direct sequel to William March’s classic 1954 novel of psychological suspense, The Bad Seed. In the film, the grown-up Patty McCormack this time plays a murderous mother — her first name isn’t given, but we all know it’s Rhoda — whose child is suspicious of her. You can enjoy this well-calculated novel without knowing The Bad Seed, but only by reading the two novels in tandem can you appreciate how cleverly Collins has reversed March’s situation. (Handily, The Bad Seed is available in a new edition [Ecco, $9.95] with a fascinating biographical introduction by Elaine Showalter. The subject matter of a murderous child and repressed memory makes it surprisingly timely.)

** Ellen Hart: Murder in the Air, Ballantine, $5.99. An old private-eye radio show is revived, its scripts resembling a notorious St. Paul murder case of the ’50s. Hart’s promising premise and nice finishing surprise are not helped by excessive length. (Amateur sleuth Sophie Green-way’s talk-show host husband could use a good call screener.) ** Janwillem van de Wetering: The Perfidious Parrot, Soho, $22. Though now independently wealthy, the Amsterdam trio of Grijpstra, De Gier, and the Commissaris are manipulated into going to the Caribbean to discover the fate of a hijacked oil tanker. The local color is fine as ever, but the passages of philosophical water-treading are too plentiful. If you’re a fan of the series, read it, but anyone using this as an introduction to the series probably won’t be back.

Erratum: In my Sept./Oct. column, I reviewed a novel by Jonathan Kellerman called The Clinic (Bantam ’97). Unfortunately, I attached to the review the title of the author’s previous novel, The Web (Bantam ’96). My apologies to Dr. Kellerman.