Gang Pulp

Writer’s Digest, September 1930

When the Climax Comes and the Lights are Flashed on, the Racketeer Must Find His Wrists Encircled in Handcuffs. While the Law Pants and is Proud of its Catch.

Before Mr. Volstead put over his celebrated law, crook stories and yarns dealing with a criminal hero never ended happily for the members of the underworld. It was a rule among writers to have the law come out on top at all times in such stories.

There was a mighty good reason for this. Editors demanded such stories because the highly-organized mobsters, racketeers and crooks of today didn’t exist before Prohibition; the public was accustomed to seeing the forces of law and order win over criminals in all stories where crime and the law were in conflict. And editors, being sound businessmen as well as judges of a good story, gave the public what it wanted.

But the coming of Prohibition changed that very quickly. Since booze was outlawed, and bootlegging made millionaires overnight of those who defied the law, highly-organized rackets of every conceivable type began to flourish as well.

Then a new type of crook story began to appear. The Big Time magazines featured them and the pulps soon followed suit. No longer did the crook or gangman inevitably “get his” in the climax! No longer did the forces of law and order “win out” in the denouement over the crooks, the criminals and thugs! The new type of crook story featured a mobster or a gang all through the tale, not only at odds with the public and with the law, but with other gangs or mobsters; and the crook hero or heroes of these tales won signal triumphs without being in any way punished for their lawlessness.

Mr. Harold Hersey published Gangster Stories and Racketeer Stories for a time with signal success. The authorities claimed that the stories in Mr. Hersey’s two lurid periodicals gave added impetus to crime and fostered criminals, and in New York City, particularly, his magazines were forbidden on the stands until he agreed to change them radically.

Hence Mr. Hersey’s new crook story periodicals will not feature gangs and crime triumphant in the future. The mobmen and criminals will not be permitted to come “out on top” any more!

And take Black Mask for example also: Erle Stanley Gardner, a very skillful and well-known writer of this type of fiction, had been exploiting a crook hero in a series in this magazine for a long time — “Ed Jenkins, the Phantom Crook.” Now Mr. Jenkins, if you will notice, is aiding the law in Mr. Gardner’s stories, and is aligned with it against mobmen and gangsters!

Some time ago, when it was an fait for the criminal to triumph over the law, I wrote a yarn of this type, in which my crook hero sensationally came out on top in the finish. It was submitted to Prize Detective Magazine and came back with a polite note from the editor. Mr. Mann stated: “In our stories, the crook can never win, therefore we can’t use your story in its present form.” So I made a simple revision of the climax, with a bit of a twist to it in which a member of the crook hero’s mob turned out unexpectedly to be a “dick,” and the crook hero “got his” plenty, instead of triumphing! And Mr. Mann took that story.

Fashions in fiction change with the times. When Prohibition came into being, it was orthodox and accepted technique to have crime punished in the ending of any story dealing with criminal leading protagonists. Then the wave of crime all over the country following the bootlegging racket exploitation by gunmen gave writers nifty new ideas for crook yarns, and a flood of sensational gangster stories swept these United States.

The kids who used to read dime novels seized on the new type of magazine with whoops of joy. The stories far exceeded in danger, suspense, thrills and excitement the most gory dime novel yarns they had ever read! But they grew up, these youngsters; they became adolescents and young men, and many of them got dangerous ideas from the racketeer and gangster stories. Many a prison warden can tell you, grimly, that plenty of his “cons” are in “stir” now because they got the idea of becoming gangmen and racketeers solely from these stories, which pictured crime and organized rackets and mobs so alluringly.

Naturally, clergymen, the Police, civic bodies, and so on, all protested against the type of crook and gangster story in which crime was pictured so attractively, with the law getting a “sock in the eye” in the finish instead of the criminals. So editors were forced to change fashions in fiction of this type again.

Hence, if you are ambitious to write the gangster story, make sure that your crook hero, your gang chief, your mobs, your racketeers, never beat the law in the climax of your stories. This type of yarn commands one of the juiciest markets today, now that the air magazines and the Western story magazines are not as “hot” as they were in their demands for material.

Practically every detective magazine can use a fast-moving gangster story in which the criminal leading protagonist or protagonists are engaged in a duel of wits with a detective or detectives, and in which the detective or detectives finally triumph. If your gangster or gang has a feud with another mobster or mob, and the law is after both and wins out in the end, that’s an even better bet for the detective magazines.

You don’t have to follow the usual formula for a detective story at any time. No murder need be the mystery in the beginning of the tale which a detective sets out to solve in the orthodox way. The gangster story depends on its thrills, its suspense and its fast-moving action for its punch, and there need be no mystery in it whatever. Clever and unusual stuff pulled by both the criminals and the detectives is what counts tremendously in these yarns. If you have the Erle Stanley Gardner flair for making masterly criminal minds do their stuff until some cleverer gent representing the law outwits them in the end, you can write your own ticket with editors right now!

Stereotyped yarns will not sell. Your racketeers and gangsters must be as clever as Satan. They must have the most devilish and ingenious and devious minds you can create out of an imagination running riot, in addition to their deadly skill with lethal weapons. For example, in my gangster story one gang chief had a feud with another one. He visited the enemy in his lair. He gave him fifty “grand” notes in a wager that he’d walk out of his gambling hell with the stolen “ice” he’d been gypped out of by his rival. The latter had him covered by the invisible machine guns of four mobmen in a spy gallery, in addition to menacing him with his own automatic pistol. The first gang chief seemed to have no chance whatever to walk out alive from that gambling hell. Suddenly, as his enemy sneeringly counted the fifty “grand” notes, he slumped unconscious to the floor, also the four mobmen in the spy gallery! The notes had been sprinkled with a deadly, invisible poison which engendered a lethal gas, and the crook who had invented that formula had also invented a tiny gas mask so small it didn’t even bulge out a coat pocket. The first gang chief whipped out the mask from his pocket and as the five mobsters passed out, he donned it, got the “ice” for which he had come, and coolly sauntered from the gambling hell!

If you think this is fairly clever, however, you should read the gifted Mr. Gardner’s stories. He invents things in his yarns which would make your hair acquire a permanent wave! The point is, though, you can’t simply depend on stickups, hijacking, machine-gun play, and stereotyped stuff like that in your gangster stories. These may enter incidentally into your plots, of course, but they should be merely trifles, a part of your atmosphere. Your mobster and racketeer “heroes” must continually put over totally unexpected things of the cleverest kind — fast ones that will make the reader fairly gasp with their satanic ingenuity.

Did you ever read one of Mr. Gardner’s yarns in Black Mask where the villain had a pocket flask with a trick compartment for poisoned booze and another trick one for the right stuff? If a guy drank from the wrong side of that flask — good night! And how about that fountain pen which is really a deadly pistol that shoots tear gas bullets? I used that one in my story very effectively in the climax, and I got the idea from a newspaper account of a Chinaman in real life who sold those cute toys by the gross to gangsters.

The cleverer and more Machiavellian your gangsters are the more chance you’ll have to put these stories over. It is not enough to make your mobmen mere roughnecks who depend on their gats and machine guns alone; you must give them brains of the most cunning sort, too — minds which will continually invent the trickiest stuff with which to outwit the law or their rivals. Then if your detective hero is even cleverer than the criminals he’s after, and if he wins out in the climax in a most unexpected, stupefying way, your yarn will be according to present-day demands, provided, of course, that the plot and the action are equally clever and move at top speed.

Suspense! That’s what you need more than anything else in this type of story, too. Mr. Gardner’s yarns are masterly chiefly because of this element, in addition to their cleverness. Every incident, every situation, every crisis and complication must pack a wallop, must hold the reader breathless with uncertainty as to what the next development will bring. Thrill the reader all the time! Keep him gasping! Don’t let his interest flag for a moment! Not only physical action alone will do the trick for you, remember. It must be brains against brains — deadly ruthless cunning against equally deadly ruthless cunning — the gangster, or gangsters pitting their wits and rattlesnake minds against a “dick” who is wise to every fast one the underworld “can pull.” Combine powerful suspensive mental action with equally gripping physical action, and do it without a moment s let-down, and you’ll have a real gangster story.

Read these stories for inspiration. And above all, if you want to get new stunts for your gangster stories, read the papers! Truth is always stranger than fiction, and the news stories every day prove this overwhelmingly. A coal truck is sent out by a bank with twenty-one thousand dollars hidden under a pile of coal to throw gangmen off the scent! A mysterious murderer “bumps off” two different men who had been petting in lovers’ lanes with their sweeties; sends notes to the police saying he’s going to bump off sixteen more male petters, and defying the police to prevent him from doing so!

The newspapers are a gold mine for the writer of gangster stories. They will provide you with stunts of the most ingenious and diabolically clever variety to amaze your readers. Not only are the detective magazines eager for clever gangster yarns, but also out-and-out action magazines like Short Stories, Adventure, and so on, welcome them. And, if you can write artistically enough, the pulps are not your only market. The slick-paper lads will take your gangster yarns too. The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, and American Magazine can be favorably impressed if you’ve got the goods they like.

If you’re wondering what to write next, if that’s the burning question in your mind, make a stab at the gangster story. It’s one of the most promising and lucrative markets to try for right now. It bids fair to be so for several years to come. Following are some of the magazines that use the new gangster story:

And here are Mr. Hersey’s magazines, grouped together for your benefit. Address ’em all to Mr. Hersey, Good Story Publishing Co., 25 W. 43rd St., New York City. He’s rather peculiar when he sends you back a yarn — he doesn’t use rejection slips of any kind! But don’t imagine your story hasn’t been read thoroughly nevertheless, even if you do get it back in your return envelope with nothing but the script. Mr. and Mrs. Hersey both read every yarn carefully, and you’ll get fast decisions. A wonderful market for the clever unknown writer — Mr. Hersey doesn’t give a darn about big names — it’s the story that counts with him, first, last and always. The wise scribe will study the following periodicals first, then go after ’em like a tiger! Here they are:

All paying 1¢ a word on acceptance. Mr. Hersey used to pay on publication until recently, and I can’t recommend this group for your offerings highly enough!

A final word: The slick paper magazines and book publishers are flirting coyly with the gangster story. If you have a book-length gangster novel of genuine merit and artistry, try ’em with it. If, though, it’s only a short or a novelette, the pulps are your best bets always. You all know the requirements of magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Liberty, American. If you believe you write distinctively enough for these fellows, submit your short gangster yarns and novelettes to ’em.

Two out-and-out action magazines that are also worth trying with your gangster stories are Short Stories, Garden City, L.I., and Adventure, 233 Spring St., New York City. Adventure, A. A. Proctor, editor, demands a very high literary standard and pays 2¢ a word on acceptance; and Short Stories, Roy de S. Horn, editor, is also keen for good writing and pays the same rate on acceptance.

In addition, H. S. Goldsmith, formerly with Detective-Dragnet, and Harry Steeger, ex-editor of the Dell Publishing Co., have formed a corporation entitled Popular Publications, Inc., 220 E. 42nd St., New York City, and one of their projected magazines, Gang World, will be a gangster periodical.