Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine - Issues 65, 66 & 67 (1949)

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine - Issues 53, 54 & 55 (1948)

Forgotten Stories: "Sherry Strikes a New Note" by RAOUL WHITFIELD (1943)

Okay, I knew that Black Mask great Raoul Whitfield also wrote aviation fiction, and juvenile adventure novels, but I never expected to find him in a comic book like Calling All Girls. But here he is, in the September 1943 issue, as provided to comicbookplus by movielover. 

Pulp Gallery: COMPLETE STORIES

1929

1931

1932

1929

1932

For Sale! More of Otto Penzler's HAMMETT Stuff

In this batch of collectibles up for bid on the Heritage auction site (HERE), you'll find (among other goodies) a Mercury digest inscribed to Lillian Hellman, a near-complete set of those digests (missing They Can Only Hang You Once), and two letters to Prudence Whitfield, wife of Black Mask writer Raoul Whitfield. I was surprised to see that Creeps By Night contains a story by H.P. Lovecraft. Hard to imagine Hammett as a Lovecraft fan. I want all this stuff, of course, and won't be getting it. Ain't life a bitch? (Thanks again to Artful Art Scott for the news.) 

Forgotten Books: DANGER ZONE by Raoul Whitfield (1931)

After reading Raoul Whitfield's Danger Circus (discussed HERE) I expected Danger Zone to be the same sort of book - semi-juvenile with plenty of action and mystery, but not much plot.

Well. I was right about plot (in fact, this book has so little it's barely worth the name), but wrong on the other counts. While the writing is less sophisticated than that of Whitfield's five mystery novels, there's nothing here - aside from the book's design and illustrations - to indicate it was aimed at a juvenile audience.

In fact, Danger Zone doesn't read like a novel at all, but like the memoir of a young pilot heading off to war. Though I don't know enough about Whitfield's life to say for sure, I suspect this to be a semi-autobiographical account of his own journey to France during WWI. I'll be curious to see what Whitfield authority Boris Dralyuk has to say on the matter.

The story begins with a brief scene in Texas, where our narrator, Cadet Ben Shirley, is making a qualifying flight to get his lieutenant's commission and earn his silver wings. Then it's on to New York, where Ben (now a lieutenant) and two fellow pilots are on board a ship preparing to cross the Atlantic. After many realistic slices of life on board, consuming at least fifty pages of the book, the ship finally leaves harbor and joins a convoy bound for France. There follow many more slices of life involving their duties on board and what they perceive as minor persecutions by small-minded majors. There''s also a lot of talk about  what might happen when they enter the "danger zone," where they're likely to encounter enemy submarines.

Well, they do finally encounter a sub, and one of an untold number of ships in the convoy is sunk, but the scene is quickly over. Ben and his pals are never in any danger, and are mere observers to the action. Nothing else happens (except more life slices) until the final chapter, when Ben takes the air for the first time in France, and then the book ends.

Adding to the memoir feel are numerous footnotes defining military slang and telling us what happens to certain characters during the war or later in their careers.

All in all, this is an interesting book and a good read, it just isn't much of a novel, and the title is false advertising.

I've now read all four of Whitfield's juvenile books and am surprised to report they have almost nothing in common. Silver Wings (HERE) is a collection of sometimes-related moralistic short stories. Danger Circus (HERE) is a mere novelette about melodramatic doings at a circus. Wings of Gold (review coming soon) is a full-length, but simple-minded novel of mystery-adventure set in the New West, and Danger Zone is only marginally fiction. I knew Raoul Whitfield was a versatile writer, but I didn't expect this much versatility in his kids' books.

Forgotten Books: GREEN ICE by Raoul Whitfield (1930)

Green Ice is an appropriate forgotten book—not because anyone is likely to have forgotten it—but because I'd forgotten how good it was.

Over the past couple of years I've read (again) the complete adventures of The Continental Op (many of the later stories more than once) and my brain has become attuned to Hammett's first-person style. And as I've said many more times than once, Red Harvest is my all-time favorite book.

So I was mighty surprised to discover what I had obviously forgotten—that in Green Ice Raoul Whitfield was aping Hammett's style—and doing a dang good job of it.

The story first saw print as a 6-part serial in Black Mask, beginning in December 1929 (along with part 4 of the serialized Maltese Falcon). Though green ice provided the motive for most of the killings, it failed to get the title role. Instead, the serial was called "The Crime Breeders."

Our hero, Mal Ourney, is fresh out of prison, where he served a stretch for a crime he didn't commit. Being an honorable guy, he took the rap for his ladyfriend, and apparently did it without complaint. While in the big house he learned plenty about crime, and devised a mission—to bring down the folks he calls The Crime Breeders, the upper echelon crooks who infect others with the disease and start many an otherwise innocent soul on the road to ruin.

Trouble is, he did too much blabbing about it in prison. Now everyone knows what he's up to, and the Breeders go on the offensive, to stop Mal from eradicating them.

The Hammett flavor is there in the first scene, and sticks till the end. The first human Mal encounters on the outside is his old flame Dot—the one he did the stretch for—but he's over her and gives her the air. As Mal tells the story:

     I turned my back and walked away. Dot kept right on yelling. She was using up a lot of her old words, and she contradicted herself twice in every sentence. It sounded to me like a lot of after-the-gin raving. I got self-sympathetic.

Then:

     The cab door slammed. Her final words were to the point, but they weren't true. Jane Ourney had been a lot of grief to Sam Ourney, but I was their honest-to-god brat. 

Foul-mouthed Dot is the first of many bodies to drop, and each one puts Mal in a deeper hole. While struggling to dig himself out, he runs afoul of a bunch of folk itching to get their hands on a pile of huge emeralds, and joins forces with a liberal-minded cop to sort out who killed whom and why.

I enjoyed Green Ice so much I immediately started rereading Whitfield's second mystery, Death in a Bowl. And guess what? I'd forgotten how good that one was, too. Stay tuned.