A Pulp Writer's Challenge to Canadians

Original Detective Stories
Volume 1, Number 1
April 1948

Can a magazine written entirely by one person be considered a book? Of course not, but it does come close. Original Detective Stories was published Voyageur Press, which was owned and operated by author Horace Brown. As far as I've been able to determine, he was the only staff member and only writer. The debut issue features two works of fiction – both by Brown, of course – the first being 'Murder à la Carte.' A "BOOK LENGTH NOVEL – NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED," I first wrote about 'Murder à la Carte' fourteen years ago, wondering whether it may have found a second life as the 1950 News Stand Library novel The Penthouse Killings.

After finally managing to find a copy of the magazine, I can now report that 'Murder à la Carte' and The Penthouse Killings are in fact one and the same.

It wasn't so wild a guess; the covers suggested as much.

I have no idea who provided the cover illustration for The Penthouse Killings, though the style reminds me of several other News Stand Library titles. The Original Detective Stories cover is credited to Jackson Heise, a man who began his career as a child. The 1931 census finds him living at 281 Milverton Boulevard in Toronto with his mother and father. Seventeen at the time, Heise had already left school and seems to have been making decent money through his art, earning $520 in the previous twelve months:*

Original Detective Stories features four more illustrations, masthead included.

The contents page is interesting in that it ignores 'On the Blotter,' the very first piece in this very first issue. A four-paragraph, half-page editorial credited to "The Sergeant," whom I have every reason to believe is Brown himself, it begins:

The bane of a policeman's unhappy lot is the one world "Unsolved."

   The aftermath of War, the spiritual and moral letdown that follows brutal conflict has unleashed murder throughout Canada. Many of these cases are sex crimes of the most atrocious sort. 

In fact, the homicide rate decreased in the years immediately following the Second World War.

'On the Blotter' calls for more police funding and "a tightening of the Law in the matter of of detaining known perverts until cure."

Lest you think you have Brown pegged, as a Toronto alderman he became a staunch defender of hippies and a promoter of tenants rights. We have Brown to thank for helping raise money for the Henry Moore sculpture in Nathan Philips Square after the city council had voted it down.

Horace Brown also founded of the Canadian March of Dimes (now March of Dimes Canada). He himself was stricken with polio at the age of eight months and walked with the aid of crutches. The disease influences 'The Scarf' the second of the magazine's two stories, written under the nom de plume "Leslie Allen."** 

The issue has no ads. Its back cover is taken up with a challenge and appeal: 

Canadian readers and advertisers did not respond. Were the magazines themselves to blame or the distributors and retailers? Frankly, I think the fault lies with Brown himself. The venture was unstable from the start. Original Detective Stories' second issue was the last. It appeared in July 1948, three months after the first. 

Brown's magazine empire had one other title in its fold. Like Original Detective Stories, All Star Western Stories debuted in April 1948, published a second issue in July 1948, and then disappeared.
   

Brown believed that Canadians would rally to the support of Canadian publications and publishing.

He wasn't wrong.

We saw this through much of the second half of the last century and into the early years of this one. I worked for a library wholesaler and major chain for the last fifteen of those years and remember well the number of Canadian titles on the weekly Globe & Mail bestseller lists. 

The newspaper's most recent hardcover fiction list features not one Canadian title. The non-fiction hardcover list has just one, Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Not one title is published by a Canadian publisher.

A question for Canadians: We're boycotting American produce, booze, and travel, so why are we not boycotting American cultural product? 

* Sadly, Jackson's father, a piano salesman, was not working. All evidence suggests that the boy was the family's sole breadwinner. According to the Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator, $520 in 1931 is roughly the equivalent of $10,425 today, which may explain why the Heise family was sharing the small duplex with young marrieds Timothy and Elma Breuls and the bride's mother. 

** Brown had previously used "Leslie Allen" for his 1946 golfing mystery Murder in the Rough.  

Related posts:

Horace Brown: From Penthouse to Pavement

Horace Brown: Fritzi in Flight or a Coincidence
No Whack on the Side of the Head

Quebec City Noir
Whispering City: Horace Brown's Second Encore

No Whack on the Side of the Head

Murder in the Rough
Leslie Allen [pseud. Horace Brown]
New York: Five Star Mysteries, 1946

Having never stumbled upon a murder victim myself, I view sleuths who do so with some suspicion. Believe me, the law will one day catch up with Jessica Fletcher. That said, I'm willing to give private detective Napoleon B. Smith, the star of Murder in the Rough, the benefit of the doubt.

According to fawning sidekick Leslie Allen, who claims to have been present, Napoleon B. was playing a round of golf at New York's Briar Hill when he sliced his Superlastic into italicized "Hell's Half-Acre", the choked green wilderness that borders the seventh hole. A good walk spoiled is ruined completely when the search for the missing golf ball turns up the warm corpse of wealthy eccentric Mrs Josiah Cartwright. Everyone is certain that the poor woman was killed by the ball hitting her head, but Napoleon B. comes to believe otherwise. Suspicion, naturally, falls upon Mrs Cartwright's heirs: no-good stepson Jack, incredibly handsome nephew Cyrus, and Allen's objet d'amour, beautiful stepdaughter Gale.

Where The Penthouse Killings, Horace Brown's 1950 mystery, has too many characters, here their number is so very small. Ignoring late entries, we have only Jack, Gale and Cyrus, coroner Thomas Bryce and Adam Johnson, the Cartwright family lawyer. There's also Napoleon B. and Allen, of course, along with Inspector Joe Brownlee, but this reader was correct in discounting them as persons of interest.

When Jack is murdered, Gale is nearly blown to bits by her stepmother's booby-tapped coffin and Napoleon B. dodges assassination by air rifle, accusatory fingers point to handsome Cyrus, "North American skeets champion, a successful manufacturer of small arms, including some adaptations of high-powered German compressed-air rifles, and an active leader in boys' work."

But Cyrus is just too obvious, isn't he?

The break in the case occurs when Napoleon B. grabs Gale and begins to "whipsaw her lovely face." Allen looks on:

   "Cut it out!" I yelled. "Napoleon B., are you crazy?"
   He was paying no attention. The methodical blows were not easy ones.
   "The police are in the house." Blow. "They'll be here in a moment," Blow. "Are you going to talk?" Blow. "Are you?" Blow. "Are you?"
   There was blood on her cheek. It all took only several seconds. He was talking through his teeth. I knew it was no use to interfere.
   "Yes!" The word was faint: "Yes!"

The information she's kept to herself brings things to the sharpest of points. When the murderer is finally revealed, some fifty or so pages later, there is no surprise.

Having stood by during the bloody inquisition, is it any wonder that Allen does not get the girl in the end?

Trivia: While cover copy would have you believe that Napoleon B. Smith is destined to become "one of your favorite fiction sleuths," he disappeared after Murder in the Rough.

Dedication:

According to Myrna Foley, the author's daughter, Newman was content to let rent payments lapse until her father was able to make a sale. The rental in question, a house on Fairport Beach Road in Dunbarton (now Pickering), still stands.

Here's to Harry A. Newman, K.C.!

Object: A slim, digest-size paperback in glossy paper wraps, apparently 60,000 words in length.

The cover illustration, which I quite like, is wrong to feature blood on the golf ball.

Access: A scarce title. The Toronto Public Library has a lonely non-circulating copy somewhere in its stacks, but that's it for Canada. Only two copies are listed online – both Very Good copies, they're priced at US$60 and US$85.

Horace Brown: Fritzi in Flight or a Coincidence?

A quick follow-up to yesterday's post with something spotted earlier today. Above is the April 1948 debut of Original Detective Stories, devoted to Horace Brown's "Murder à la Carte", a "BOOK LENGTH NOVEL – NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED". I've never come across a copy, so can only wonder whether this might just be the first appearance of The Penthouse Killings. The woman falling to her death is blonde and, I think it fair to say, could be known as "the dame with the —." Finally, like the unfortunate Fritzi, she wears a red dress on the evening of her murder. This last detail was particularly important to sometime suitor Squire Adams:

"Who is going to notice the bloodstains on the material, unless looking for it. If they are noticed, what will they be? Ordinary stains to be removed by dry-cleaning. If the blood comes off in the water or cleaning fluid, it is simply the dye running."

As I say, there were no more Squire Adams mysteries.

Original Detective Stories was a short-lived magazine from Brown's own Global Publishing Company, located in the media centre known as Pickering, Ontario. The second and final issue featured "Death to the Prime Minister" by Leslie Allen, one of Brown's pseudonyms. Over at Fly-by-night, bowdler has posted a piece on Murder in the Rough, a short "FULL-LENGTH MYSTERY NOVEL" that was also published under the nom de plume.

It's Horace Brown Week!

Update: I'm informed by bowdler, who has seen Brown's papers in Montreal, that "Murder à la Carte became The Penthouse Killings." Barring a bit of rewrite, the original title makes no sense. The most one can say is that in The Penthouse Killings the missing body of Fritzi Hahn is eventually discovered hanging from meat hook in a freezer. A reedy link with restaurants, but I've got nothing more.

Related post: Horace Brown: From Penthouse to Pavement