Gang Pulp

The Author & Journalist, July 1930

When is a detective story not a detective story?

When, of course, it is something else again. As, for example, a mystery story, or an adventure story, or a horror story, or a ghost or weird story, or — special emphasis on this, if you please — a gangster story.

The gangster story, more than any other, is now masquerading as a detective story. As a matter of fact, it is nothing of the sort; but, so closely are the two related, it is sometimes difficult to tell one from the other.

Of late there has been a big boom in this type of story. They are appearing with increasing frequency in my manuscript mail. Magazines which ostensibly are devoted to detective fiction and nothing else are featuring them more and more. Other magazines are publishing them exclusively. Even the slick-paper periodicals and the book publishers are flirting with them coyly.

Whether this popularity is due to the nationwide fame of our jolly gangsters, or to editorial demand, or to a mistaken idea that such stories are detective fiction, is beside the point. The point is that the stories are being written by writers everywhere, and hence deserve our attention.

Because of this — and also because Mr. Hawkins suggested it — I am going to address myself in this chapter to an examination of the gangster story.

I believe I have read as many gangster stories, good and bad, as the next man. Every day I am deluged with them. I have bought what I considered the best of the lot (and at this moment am overstocked) and sent the rest back.

And those that went back outnumbered the others in the ratio of 200 to one.

Why do gangster stories go back home? For the same reasons, precisely, that earn a round-trip ticket for detective stories. In the first place, the writers obviously have no story to tell. A score of typewritten sheets, filled with what purports to be the argot of the underworld and a half-dozen assorted killings, do not make a story. Yet that is the substance of these manuscripts.

The gangster story, like its cousin, the detective story, must have a plot if it’s to see the light of printer’s ink; and the plot should be worked out just as carefully. Merely to describe how the gangs of “Scar” Rongetti and “Hophead” Zookus settled their feud amid the blazing of automatics and machine guns, and how the police rushed in, when the fireworks were over, and sent the wounded to the hospital, the dead to the morgue, and the living to the station, isn’t going to persuade an editor to order a check. Before you write your story, make sure that you have a story to write. Analyze its plot, if any. If the plot doesn’t stand up, throw it away and try another.

While you’re at it, see if you can give it an original twist. These gangster stories, though something new in literature, have already become terribly standardized, just as have the detective stories — and, for that matter, everything else, from automobiles to radio sets.

So remarkably alike are most gangster stories that if you read, at random, a dozen or so in my manuscript mail you would think that one person wrote them all. All have the same lack of plot, the same impossible slang, the same style and action, and the same beginning and end.

This applies, of course, to those stories that are palpably hopeless, that are rejected after a cursory reading. But the same thing is true, in a lesser degree, of those that get into print. Here, too, we find standardization — stories cut from the same pattern and built from a common formula.

For some inexplicable reason, the writers seem afraid to strike out in a new direction and explore fresh fields. And it seems to me they are overlooking an opportunity of tremendous importance. They concern themselves only with the superficial and refuse to look deeper.

Gang murder — putting men on the spot and bumping them off — is not the really significant thing. The significant thing is this: A handful of illiterate hoodlums, who can scarcely speak the language of our country, have obtained a stranglehold on our great cities, have accumulated vast fortunes, have shown open contempt for both federal and state laws, and have been quite unmolested, while doing so, by any of the constituted authorities.

They have nothing to fear, apparently, from state or federal government. They fear only each other. The so-called “‘big shots,” such as AI Capone, may (and do) commit any crime, from murder down, knowing very well that nothing will be done to them, unless it’s done by some rival gangster. Their bootlegging activities involve contraband liquor by the trainload and their income runs into millions — and not one of them, so far as I’ve observed, has ever served an hour in jail for it. (But try to peddle a pint of gin, and see how far you will get!)

Here, then, is the magnificent spectacle of a group of half-breed gorillas bulldozing the most powerful government on earth — and getting away with it. And our writers, industriously turning out gang stories, ignore that picture completely and display interest only in the incidental extermination of the vermin.

The truly great gang story — and one will be written before long, I think — will not deal with the fighting among these underworld lice, but with their relation to men in public office. That they are closely allied, in a business way, with the very officials who are paid to prosecute them is too evident for argument.

Chicago has long had the reputation of being the fountainhead of this national evil, and it is accepted as a commonplace that Chicago is the world headquarters for gangsters of every stripe. But these honors, statistics show, really belong to New York City. Chicago’s reputation is due less to its gang activities than to its vigorous press-agenting. The Chicago gangsters are more spectacular, and therefore make better publicity.

New York’s gang killings, however, outnumber those in Chicago. In the first 135 days of this year 153 deaths were recorded with the New York police, or an average of more than one murder a day. As for other crimes of major proportion, such as highway robbery, burglary and the like, 135 or more are reported every week.

Grover Whalen, who resigned last month as Police Commissioner of New York, is authority for the statement that his city has more than 50,000 gangsters and racketeers. Their net income is in excess of three hundred million dollars a year. This doesn’t include one hundred millions paid out in graft. The New York police know of 996 gang hangouts in their city.

And so, you see, when choosing a locale for your gangster story you needn’t necessarily choose Chicago.

America’s gangdom is the most conspicuous blot on its civilization. As such, it is worthy the attention of your best writers. And it is reasonable to assume that the gang story — now reaching a point where it is second in popularity only to the detective story — may soon occupy a place in Literature With a Purpose.

Meanwhile, however, my readers are probably more interested in hitting the magazines than in producing social documents, and would rather hear something on How to Write a Gang Story.

In the main, the same technique applies here that is requisite for the successful detective story. There must be a well-constructed plot, an element of suspense and mystery, and a dramatic climax; and the best way to attain these is to have a complete working synopsis of your story before you start writing it.

Also, it is best not to make your story a too faithful transcript of actual life. Better describe your bootlegger or hijacker — or whatever his racket is — as the average person pictures him. Only take care not to glorify him. There is nothing heroic about these hoodlums.

Have a care, too, about your slang. Gangsters, of course, use a language all their own, and while some of their words are clear to everybody, others are quite unintelligible. Before putting a slang word in the mouth of one of your characters, ask yourself if that word is generally understood. If it isn’t, omit it. Many of the manuscripts dealing with gangdom are a hodgepodge of weird expressions that are as foreign to most readers as ancient Chinese.

When gangsters themselves try to write — as occasionally one of them does — they are almost incoherent. An eloquent illustration of their muddled talk may be found in Danny Ahearn’s late book, How to Commit a Murder. published by Ives Washburn. This book, according to the foreword, was dictated to a stenographer by Ahearn, who is a notorious gangster and old-time racketeer, and is published verbatim. Consider the following gem, plucked at random from Danny’s book:

You get the idea, I trust. If you permit the gangsters in your story to talk as gangsters actually talk, you’re going to have a muddled jargon that will make your story seem ridiculous. Best play safe in writing your dialogue by striking a happy medium between the way gangsters really talk and the way they’re supposed to talk. Thus you get realism.

And realism, other things being equal, has sold many a story to the magazines.