FORGOTTEN BOOKS #510: THE DIME DETECTIVES: A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF THE DETECTIVE FICTION PULPS By Ron Goulart


Ron Goulart’s The Dime Detectives: A Comprehensive History of the Detective Fiction Pulps has been on my shelves since it was published in 1988. I’ve read Goulart’s excellent Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of the Pulp Magazines. The Dime Detectives focuses on pulp magazines like Black Mask, Detective Fiction Weekly, Crimebusters, Thrilling Detectives, Dime Detective, and Spicy Detective from their formation in the 1920s, to their popularity in the 1930s, to their decline in the 1940s, to their demise in the 1950s. Goulart discusses some of the great pulp writers of those decades: Dashiell Hammett, Robert Leslie Bellem, Carroll John Daly, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, Hank Searls, John D. MacDonald, John Jakes, and many others. If you’re a fan of pulp detective fiction, you’ll love The Dime Detectives. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Chapter 1: The Dime Detectives 1
Chapter 2: Nick Carter Strikes Again 11
Chapter 3: The Black Mask School 21
Chapter 4: “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” 51
Chapter 5: The Hard-Boiled Decade 74
Chapter 6: The New Wild West 96
Chapter 7: Dan Turner and the Spicy Gang 120
Chapter 8: Dangerous Dames 135
Chapter 9: Gentlemen of the Press 149
Chapter 10: The Phantom Detectives 167
Chapter 11: Screwballs, Oddballs, Etc. 186
Chapter 12: A Hearse of a Different Killer 205
Chapter 13: Dead and Done For 231
Bibliography 239
Index 247

17 thoughts on “FORGOTTEN BOOKS #510: THE DIME DETECTIVES: A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF THE DETECTIVE FICTION PULPS By Ron Goulart

  1. Jeff Meyerson

    I’ve read several of Goulart’s books on “the old days”(as well as a fair amount of his fiction) but I’m pretty sure I haven’t read this one. Another one for the list!

    Reply
      1. george Post author

        Jeff, I read CHEAP THRILLS years ago. But, I’ve had THE DIME DETECTIVES on my shelves for decades and finally got around to reading it.

    1. george Post author

      Jeff, I finished reading THE DIME DETECTIVES and immediately ordered a bunch of books from ALTUS Press. Goulart makes you want to read the writers from that era!

      Reply
  2. wolf

    I’ve read several of his novels and collections – always liked his weird sense of humour.
    But I’d rather read more stories from those years than articles on them – a few of the authors I remember.

    Reply
    1. Todd Mason

      Well, then, Wolf, try William F. Nolan’s THE BLACK MASK BOYS…which mixes hitory of BLACK MASK with examples of stories by some of its best writers. And also Carroll John Daly.

      Reply
      1. Todd Mason

        Well…maybe not too much at one time. He really wasn’t very good, even if very influential on Mickey Spillane and other hardboiled writers.

    2. george Post author

      Wolf, I started reading SF in the late 1950s. The Pulps were dead by then so I never really read much of the fiction of those years until publishers like ALTUS Press started reprinting those wonderful stories.

      Reply
      1. Todd Mason

        Not quite true, George, but they were certainly on their last legs. About the only pulp pretty much still publishing in its 1950s format and with the same sort of content after 1960 was RANCH ROMANCES (and it became RANCH ROMANCES AND ADVENTURES in the latter ’60s), but Columbia and a few other diehards had pulps, or even launched new titles in the format, going into 1960…

      2. george Post author

        Todd, when I started buying SF digests–AMAZING, GALAXY, FANTASTIC–in the early 1960s, there wasn’t a pulp format zine in sight on the shelves. I did pick up a few SF pulps in used bookstores over the years, but sadly their condition was poor. Pulps were not designed to last: poor paper quality, cheap glue, etc.

      3. Todd Mason

        Yep, they were meant to be low-budget production items…with the rare exception, such as the latter years of BLUE BOOK as a fiction magazine, sometimes referred to as a “slick in pulp format”–though it had become almost a men’s sweat magazine, like SAGA and TRUE and the US ARGOSY, not too far into the ’50s, in a radical change in direction. The last issues of the formerly digest-sized FANTASTIC UNIVERSE in 1960 were nearly the last gasp of the sf pulps…even Columbia’s SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY had folded in 1958. (The UK ARGOSY remained a fiction magazine, and a digest more or less, up till being “merged” into a book-review magazine in ’74.)

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