Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 3, March, 1953

Mugged and Printed

MICKEY SPILLANE’S books have sold more than 20,000,000 copies in all editions, and the tide is still rolling. Though Everybody’s Watching Me is still running in this magazine, his agent has already received three movie offers for it. The Hollywood boys, incidentally, all ask the same question you’re probably asking: who is this tough Vetter, anyway?

BRUNO FISCHER, whose novels, The Paper Circle, The Silent Dust, The Restless Hands, and others, were written during his rigid nine-to-five working schedule, lives alongside the Hudson River in up-state New York. He says he can’t think of a more pleasant way of making a living. His fiction is always tough and outstanding.

LESLIE CHARTERIS, creator of The Saint, describes himself: “Dark brown hair and eyes. 6 ft. 4 inches. Visible peculiarity: monocle, miraculously retained in eye. Have been knifed in low brawls in Paris and Marseilles — each time hurt the knifer more than he hurt me. First novel, Esquire, written and accepted at 19 just before chucking Cambridge. God Save the King.”

CRAIG RICE is on hand with a new John J. Malone story and a strange, shocking ending. A former police reporter and press agent, her books include Having Wonderful Crime, Home Sweet Homicide, The Fourth Postman, and Trial By Fury. The little criminal lawyer also appears in a television series.

HAROLD Q. MASUR, a successful lawyer until he decided he’d rather present case histories in stories than in court, offers The Mourning After, a Scott Jordan story. Some of Masur’s top-notch Scott Jordan novels include Bury Me Deep, Suddenly A Corpse, and You Can’t Live Forever. His most recent book, an Inner Sanctum Mystery, is So Rich, So Lovely, And So Dead.

ROBERT PATRICK WILMOT, whose Triple-Cross marks his first appearance in Manhunt, caused a sensation with his first novel, Blood In Your Eye. The New York Times labelled him one of the best mystery writers to come along since Raymond Chandler. You’ll understand the Times’ enthusiasm when you’ve read his exciting story, Triple-Cross.

WILLIAM LINDSAY GRESHAM is perhaps best known for his novel, Nightmare Alley, which Twentieth Century-Fox brought to the screen. His stories are always tough and realistic; witness, Teaser.

RICHARD S. PRATHER, FRANK KANE, and EVAN HUNTER, no strangers to Manhunt, are back with stories featuring characters made famous in their many books. Prather, author of Bodies In Bedlam, Way of a Wanton, and many others, leads off this issue with a new Shell Scott novelette; Kane, who’s written Slay Ride, Bare Trap, Green Light for Death, etc., has a new story, Payoff; and Hunter, author of The Big Fix and others, is back with Dead Men Don’t Dream.