Of Montreal, Notes and Queries

Spring arrives, bringing a new issue of Canadian Notes & Queries. Number 89 – for those keeping count – this one is devoted to Montreal, the very finest city in all the Dominion.

There, I've said it. Again.

My column this time around is a modest introduction to the city's post-war pulp novels, ten in total, published between August 1949 and December 1953.* A remarkable, all too brief period, it saw the first two books by Brian Moore, the second by Ted Allan, and the debut, wet decline and soaked disappearance of Russell Teed, Montreal's greatest private dick. Regular readers will recognize the titles, all of which have been featured here these past five years:

The House on Craig Street
Ronald J. Cooke
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1949 

Love is a Long Shot
Alice K. Doherty [pseud. Ted Allan]
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street
Al Palmer
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

The Mayor of Côte St. Paul
Ronald J. Cooke
Toronto: Harlequin, 1950

Wreath for a Redhead
Brian Moore
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1951

The Crime on Cote des Neiges
David Montrose
     [pseud. Charles Ross Graham]
Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1951

The Executioners
Brian Moore
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1951

Flee the Night in Anger
Dan Keller [pseud. Louis Kaufman]
Toronto: Studio Publications, 1952

Murder Over Dorval
David Montrose
     [pseud. Charles Ross Graham]
Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1952

The Body on Mount Royal
David Montrose
     [pseud. Charles Ross Graham]
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1953







Other contributors to CNQ #89 include: Meaghan Acosta, Asa Boxer, Kate Beaton, Michel Carbert, Bill Coyle, Jesse Eckerlin, Trevor Ferguson, Elizabeth Gill, Mary Harman, Kasper Hartman, David Homel, Cory Lavender, David Mason, Donald McGrath, Leopold Plotek, Eliza Romano, Robin Sarah, Mark Sampson, Norn Sibum, Marko Sijan, JC Sutcliffe, Zachariah Wells, Kathleen Winter, and Caroline Zapata.

The country's very best magazine vendors are selling CNQ #89 for $7.95, but what you really want to do is take out a one-year subscription – available here – at twenty dollars. In so doing you will not only ensure that the magazine is brought directly to your door or post office box, but will also receive a subscriber-only collectable. This issue it's "Mountain Leaf" by Peter Van Toorn. Friends will be envious.

* I'm following the OED here: "popular or sensational writing that is regarded as being of poor quality". Letters of complaint should be sent to oed.uk [at] oup.com.

Pulp Noir à Montréal

The new edition of Canadian Notes & Queries lands, and with it comes another Dusty Bookcase sur papier. This time the spotlight plays upon Ted Allan's Love is a Long Shot. Not the Love is a Long Shot for which he was awarded the 1984 Stephen Leacock Medal, but a cheap, pseudonymous pulp novel from a quarter-century earlier.

Published by News Stand Library in September 1949, two months before newspaperman Al Palmer’s Sugar-Puss on Dorchester Street, this Love is a Long Shot holds the distinction of being the first pulp noir novel set in Montreal. As I write in CNQ, it ain't that pretty at all. The cover depicts, but doesn't quite capture, one of the darkest, most horrific scenes in any Canadian novel.

There's more to the issue, of course, including new fiction by Nathan Whitlock, new poetry by Nyla Matuck and – ahem – praise for A Gentleman of Pleasure from George Fetherling.