A List of Montreal's Post-War Pulps: Second Shot

Late last month, I was interviewed by CULT MTL for their cover story on Montreal pulp and the Ricochet Books series. The issue arrived on the stands last week. Since then, I've been contacted by a number of people wanting a list of Montreal's post-war pulps. The only one of which I knew was this 2014 list made for my Canadian Notes & Queries column. I think it has stood the test of time – two years, anyway – but am now wondering whether it shouldn't be expanded.

All depends on one's definition of "post-war," really. For the purposes of the column, I chose the ten years that followed the August 1945 armistice – though, truth be told, I see the period as ending in 1960. Am I wrong? Americans tend to agree... much to do with Kennedy's victory and that torch being passed to a new generation, I expect. Across the pond, certain cousins maintain that it all ended in 1979 when Thatcher moved into 10 Downing Street.

And then a great darkness set in.

This revised list covers pulps set in Montreal and published between the armistice and the end of 1960, the last day of the farthing. Links are provided for my reviews of each. Titles that have been revived as part of the Ricochet Books series are indicated with asterisks.

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

The first novel by magazine writer and editor Cooke, The House on Craig Street is about a kid who thinks he'll make a killing in the advertising game. He does, though this real passion is literature.

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

Allan's second novel – after the recently rereleased This Time a Better Earth – Love is a Long Shot is notable for containing the most disturbing scene in Canadian literature. I've written this before. I'll write it again. It haunts.

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

Newspaperman Palmer's only foray into fiction. A slim novel written with tongue firmly in cheek, its value comes in its depiction of pre-Drapeau Montreal, a time when Dorchester was a street... and was called Dorchester.

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

Easily the best of Cooke's three novels. Heavily autobiographical, like the first, it follows aspiring writer Dave Manley, who joins a crime syndicate in quest of material.

Wreath for a Redhead
Brian Moore
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1951

The very first novel by Moore, a man who would win two Governor General's Awards and be shortlisted for several Bookers.

 "Montreal Means Murder!"

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

Montrose's debut introduces Montreal private dick Russell Teed. Here he's trying to prove the innocence of a Westmount girl accused of murdering her bootlegger husband.

The Executioners
Brian Moore
Winnipeg: Harlequin, 1951

Dangerous men arrive in Montreal tasked with either kidnapping or killing an exiled foreign leader. Mike Farrell, a veteran of the Second World War and more than a few boxing rings, sets out to stop them.

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

Unique amongst the post-war pulps, Flee the Night in Anger divides its action between Montreal and Toronto. Beware the 1954 American reprint, which cuts out a good quarter of the text (including the dirtiest bits).

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

The second Russell Teed book, Murder Over Dorval is set in motion when a Canadian senator is clubbed on the head during a particularly turbulent flight from La Guardia.

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

The third and final Russell Teed adventure is also his booziest. This one involves blackmail, illegal gambling and, of course, a dame... two, in fact.

Intent to Kill
Bernard Mara [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Dell, 1956

The last of Moore's Montreal pulps. A thriller set in a building modelled on the Montreal Neurological Institute. The basis for a more than competent 1958 feature film of the same name. Both are recommended.

The Deadly Dames
Malcolm Douglas
     [pseud. Douglas Sanderson]
New York: Fawcett, 1956

The first Sanderson to be published as a paperback original, The Deadly Dames sees the return or Montreal private dick Mike Garfin (see below), but under another name. By pub date, Sanderson had quit Montreal for Alicante, Spain.

Related titles:

Noirish novels not included because they were first published in hardcover or because they don't take place in Montreal.

Daughters of Desire
Fletcher Knight
Toronto: New Stand Library, 1950

A mystery of sorts that begins in a Montreal nightclub, but quickly shifts to a yacht bound for the Bahamas; the novel itself is directionless. Promises of sex come to nothing, despite the presence of a hooker and a promiscuous heiress.

Dark Passions Subdue
Douglas Sanderson
New York: Avon, 1953

The author's debut, this "story of the men who don't belong" deals with homosexuality and the angst of a privileged Westmount boy studying at McGill. Sanderson's "serious novel," it was first published in 1952 by Dodd, Mead.

Hot Freeze*
Martin Brett
     [pseud. Douglas Sanderson]
New York: Popular Library, 1954

The greatest work of Montreal noir... and it's written by a transplanted Englishman. Go figure. Hot Freeze marks the debut of private dick Mike Garfin. It was first published the same year by Dodd, Mead.

French for Murder
Bernard Mara [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Fawcett, 1954

Moore's third pulp, the first not set in Montreal. American Noah Cain stumbles upon a murder scene and spends the rest of the novel running around France trying to find the girl who can clear his name.

Blondes Are My Trouble*
Martin Brett
     [pseud. Douglas Sanderson]
New York: Popular Library, 1955

The second Mike Garfin novel – very nearly as good as the first – sees the private dick doing battle with a Montreal prostitution ring. Originally published in 1954 by Dodd, Mead under the title The Darker Traffic.

A Bullet for My Lady
Bernard Mara [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Fawcett, 1955

Josh Camp arrives Barcelona to search for his missing business partner. A treasure hunt ensues. By far Moore's weakest and silliest novel (writes this great admirer).

This Gun for Gloria
Bernard Mara [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Fawcett, 1956

Disgraced journalist Mitch Cannon, down and out in Paris, is approached by a wealthy American matron who wants his help in finding her daughter. He refuses, but does it anyway.

Hickory House
Kenneth Orvis
     [pseud. Kenneth Lemieux]
Toronto: Harlequin, 1956

By a Montrealer, but set in an anonymous city on the shores of Lake Michigan. I'm reading it right now and would appreciate hearing from anyone who knew the mysterious Mr Orvis.

Murder in Majorca
Michael Bryan [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Dell 1957

The last Brian Moore pulp, published between The Feast of Lupercal and his very best Montreal novel, The Luck of Ginger Coffey. Moore left the city for New York in 1959, much to our loss.

The Pyx
John Buell
New York: Crest, 1960

An unusual, highly impressive first novel in which Catholicism, the occult, prostitution, heroin, wealth and privilege all come into play. The basis for the less impressive 1973 film of the same name, it was first published in 1959 by Farrar, Straus & Cudahy.

C'est tout.

Have I missed anything?

Let me know.

A Man's Struggle with Humiliation

Night of the Horns/Cry Wolfram

Douglas Sanderson

Eureka, CA: Stark House, 2015

Shame he isn't around to see it.

The year Douglas Sanderson died – 2002 – his twenty-two novels were many decades out of print. Two years later, Stark House brought back Pure Sweet Hell and Catch a Fallen Starlet. The last of his Canadian thrillers, The Deadly Dames and A Dum-Dum for the President, followed. With this volume, Stark House revives a fifth and sixth title; a seventh, Hot Freeze, will return this fall as part of the Véhicule Press Ricochet Books series.*

I read and wrote about the second novel in this pairing, Cry Wolfram (a/k/a Mark It for Murder),  a few years back. Night of Horns was something new, though it had always stuck in my mind as Sanderson's only Penguin.

Green bars and everything.

"A man's struggle with humiliation", the publisher's pitch, also stuck. Sanderson's previous thrillers dealt with murderers, drug traffickers, human smugglers, white slavers and political assassins. Here it's humiliation?

The struggling man is California lawyer Robert Race. Better known as Bob, he's made a name for himself by defending the disadvantaged. His latest case involves an immigrant named Garcia who is accused of having interfered with several young girls.

A lost cause.

His greatest victory involved Tony Fontaine, a latino teenager who'd been accused of dealing weed. Not only did Race get him off, he's clothing the kid and paying his way through college. Now twenty. Tony sometimes drops by the flat for a home cooked meal. Who can blame him? That Mrs Race – first name: Eve – is quite a cook… or not. What I know for sure is that she's a looker and is extremely amorous. Two years into marriage, the Races are as randy as ever.

Skirts rise, pants drop.

Trouble is that in springing his young charity case Race bribed a witness, and big time crook Al Kresnik knows all about it. He promises to forget everything if the lawyer agrees to pick up a suitcase and hold onto it for a bit. After some hesitation, Race does just that, only to be rolled and very nearly killed. He soon discovers the suitcase gone, along with his wife. This is where humiliation enters the picture.

Turns out that despite the married couple's incessant coupling, Eve had been seeing other men. Top spot was once held by fellow lawyer Paul Taylor, a neighbour from the floor below, but he's since been supplanted by bad boy Tony. It's almost certain that the young drug dealer – let's acknowledge it and move on – was the guy who stole the suitcase and tried to rub out poor Bob Race.

Faced with these harsh truths, the aptly named Race sets off in pursuit of the suitcase, Tony and his wife. It's in this that I found Night of Horns most interesting. Just what is Bob Race after? Retrieving the suitcase might just save his skin, but is he really out to get Tony? Or is it all about Eve?

Night of Horns is typical Sanderson in that the pace is frantic; like pretty much everything else he wrote, it begins and ends in a matter of days. Not much time, but enough for Race and the reader to come to hate Eve.

Do I spoil things in relaying that he finds comfort with a girl named Ginny Ferrer?

Give the guy a break.

Best passage: 

I'd met Mrs Fontaine twice before, once at the court, once at my office when she'd heard that I'd pay Tony's college fees. She had struck me as elderly, ill and pathetic. I guess I wanted her to be like that.
     She opened the door.
     She had on a negligee and a slip. The negligee showed most of the slip and the slip showed most of her breasts. Her feet were bare, her hair hadn't been combed in a while, her eyes were bleary and the rye on her breath would have knocked down a dray horse. 

Trivia: Night of Horns was first published in 1958 London by Secker & Warburg. The first American edition was published by Fawcett under the title Murder Comes Calling. Its back cover features dialogue that does not appear in the novel.

Might this be the work of the same hand that wrote the misleading cover copy on the Fawcett edition of Sanderson's Pure Sweet Hell?

More trivia: Adapted by Terence Dudley for a 1964 episode of the BBC's Detective. Frank Lieberman starred as Bob Race. Eve was played by the beautiful Barbara Shelley.

A Bonus: Another review, followed by much discussion about identity, categorization, markets and other preoccupations at Sergio Angelini's blog. 

Object: A 261-page trade-size paperback, mine is labelled an advance copy but is otherwise identical to the new Stark House edition that is right now hitting American bookstore shelves. Included is a very fine and informative Introduction by Gregory Shepard.

Access: Though Stark House has no Canadian distribution, Night of Horns/Cry Wolfram and its two other Sanderson books are readily available through the publisher's website.

Collectors may feel frustrated in that Secker & Warburg's true first edition is nowhere in sight. Not online anyway. Copies of the Penguin edition are plentiful and cheap. Prices range from £1.75 to £10.00. Condition is not a factor.

Murder Comes Calling, Fawcett's first American edition, was published the same year using the author's Malcolm Douglas nom de plume. Copies of this edition are just as plentiful and nearly as cheap. Prices range from US$3.44 to US$25.00. Again, condition is not a factor.

Good old University of Toronto has a copy of Penguin's Night of Horns. No Canadian libraries hold Murder Comes Calling.

* Full disclosure: I am Ricochet Books' series editor.

The Dreams That Things Are Made Of

Farewell My Dreams [La fin des songes]
Robert Élie [trans. Irene Coffin]
Toronto: Ryerson, 1954 

Farewell My Dreams isn't a title I would've used; "The End of Dreams", the most literal translation, works just fine. No wispy romance, this debut novel is one of the most depressing and rewarding books I've read this year – and there are just thirty-seven more days to go.

Friends in youth, Marcel Larocque and Bernard Guerin enter middle-age connected only through respective marriages to sisters Jeanne and Nicole. No one is happy. Pudgy Marcel, a Montreal journalist, stares too long at his wife's youngest sister and dreams of past infatuations. Privileged Bernard, a lazy lawyer, wanders aimlessly, half-hoping that something will interest. When offered a seat in Quebec City, he goes through the motions, but stops in his tracks at the sign of the first obstacle. Meanwhile, the wives suffer.

Though the plot suggests otherwise, this is much more than a novel of mid-life crises. Démon de midi takes on new meaning as Marcel's mental illness, so very subtle in the early pages, comes to dominate his actions.

Six decades after first publication, La fin des songes remains in print; not so the English-language translation. I doubt this has anything to do with Irene Coffin, though her work is clumsy and talents ill-suited. The language is stilted, her dialogue peppered with words like "shall" and "forsooth".

Yes, forsooth.

Beaver Hall Hill is "Cote Beaver Hall" and Montreal's great commercial street appears variously as "Ste.-Catherine" and "Sainte-Catherine". The biggest gaff of all comes when the translator has Bernard announce that he is looking to be elected federally.

My advice? Read it in the original if you can. Read the translation if you can't. Either way, you'll be both depressed and rewarded.

A coincidence: Remember Douglas Sanderson's The Deadly Dames? Sure you do. That's the thriller in which a woman is killed by a streetcar rounding Peel and Ste-Catherine. Well, the very same corner features in La fin des songes:

He stopped a taxi which took him to the corner of Peel and Ste.-Catherine. The street-cars were making an infernal din and the crowd, as dense as at noon, flowed slowly. He landed in a tavern where smoke and bad lighting gave the beer drinkers a phantom-like appearance. It suited his mood well, but Bernard began to laugh. "I surely am not going to live in the atmosphere of detective stories."  

The critics rave: La fin des songes received the Prix David and has been described as the great novel of la Grande Noiceur. Reception of the English-language edition was enthusiastic – the exception being a critic I know only as "A.G.P.". Here he is in the 4 March 1955 edition of the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph:

When the psychologically sound people must face a reality that continues to be fairly rugged and seek escape through the medium of fiction, to depress them with neurotic maunderings is to substitute a stone for nourishing bread.

The critic later provides these words of advice:

There is an abundance of material in French Canada for more cheerful and more constructive themes. Judged by the standards of Mr. Elie's [sic] literary school these may be less dramatic but, so far as I have been able to feel their collective pulse, the contemporary reading public, by a large majority, want to be amused and to laugh. At the very least, it would be interesting for him to provide this sort of escape by way of change of pace, if nothing more.

A.G.P. makes the mistake of identifying Bernard as "Bertrand". Pay him no mind.

Object: An attractive 213-page hardcover bound in pale blue cloth with burgundy print, my copy belonged to my father. The dust jacket sells other Ryerson novels by Ada Pierce Chambers, Will R. Bird, Gaie Taylor and E.M. Granger Bennett. I'm a proud owner of the Bird title – bought for a buck last year in London.

(Cliquez pour agrandir)

Access: John Glassco once stole a copy of the first edition from the Royal Edward Laurentian Hospital; you'll find it with most of his other books at Queen's University. A total of twenty-three Canadian libraries have copies of the Coffin translation.

Though uncommon. decent copies of the Ryerson edition begin at under ten dollars. One copy – and only one copy – of the American edition, published in 1955 by New York's short-lived Bouregy & Curl, is on offer for US$14,

La fin des songs is currently available from Bibliothèque Québécoise, For some reason, I prefer Fides' earlier  Bibliothèque Canadienne-Français edition, even though the building on the cover does not appear in the novel. I purchased mine through the mail from a Montreal bookseller who claimed it was signed by Élie.

It wasn't… and the condition was much worse than described.

Coke Adds Death (where there isn't any)

Pure Sweet Hell
Malcolm Douglas [pseud. Douglas Sanderson]
Greenwich, CT: Gold Medal, 1957

After two chapters I picked up pen and paper to do some figuring. As far as I can determine, Pure Sweet Hell was Sanderson's ninth novel, coming less than five years after Dark Passions Subdue, his queer, lavender-tinged debut. Some might not find this impressive. In the 'nineties, V.C. Andrews averaged better than two books a year. And she was dead.

Pure Sweet Hell was the first Sanderson since Dark Passions Subdue to have had neither a British edition or French translation. This I don't get, because it ranks with Hot Freeze as one of his very best.

Like Hot Freeze, the novel's plot revolves around the drug trade. In place of Mike Garfin, ex-RCMP, we have Anthony Bishop, current FBI, who has been assigned to investigate cocaine traffickers at work in the Mediterranean. The G-man arrives in an unnamed Spanish port, trawling through its busy streets and bars like a sailor on shore leave… which is his cover. The faux-seaman's jacket pocket holds two Lucky Strikes packs filled with cocaine. The Bureau's idea, which isn't really much, is that Bishop will sell the drugs, then follow the white lines to the local kingpin. Things get off to a bad start when his contact, a fellow FBI agent and old friend, dies from a knife to the back.

Pure Sweet Hell was published just seven months after Final Run, Sanderson novel #8. Both take place over the course of a single night. Of the two, Pure Sweet Hell is by far the superior; it rings true in a way that its predecessor does not and the writing is stronger:

He wouldn't go under. The darkness was black glue. I couldn't see to punch him scientifically.

Sanderson can always be relied upon for a good fight scene, and there are a dozen or so here. You can also expect some very memorable characters. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Sanderson's people are anything but types. My favourite here is live-wire whore Pepita, who having won the lottery enjoys a night off.

Those unfamiliar with Sanderson will find Pure Sweet Hell a pretty good entrance to his work – which isn't to say that it's without flaws. The final chapters are heavy with explanation, a wasted effort to tie up ends that are already entwined. I never quite understood what the FBI was doing in the Mediterranean. But my greatest complaint, which may seem silly, concerns concussions. Four of the novel's twenty-four chapters close with Bishop losing consciousness – three times from blows to the head delivered after a good beating.

At the end of it all, when the bad guys are all dead or locked up, shouldn't he be checked over by a doctor or something?

Trivia: Sanderson's unnamed Spanish town is Alicante, in which he lived for much of the latter half of his life. Bishop's night of adventure begins at La Goleta, a restaurant that exists to this day. Call 34 965 21 43 92 for reservations.

Object: A slim mass market paperback comprised of 143 pages of dense type. The cover art is by Barye Phillips, the man responsible for the very best cover to John Buell's second best novel.

His cover illustration for Pure Sweet Hell isn't quite in the same league. That's meant to be a drunken Pepita, except that Sanderson describes her as wearing a vivid orange dress. She'll later don her best frock. If the author is to be believed, no Spanish woman of the time would've be caught wearing red slacks. He has one policeman note, as if "about to share a dirty secret", that "in the United States the ladies they wear the trousers like the men."

Phillips also provided the cover of Brian Moore's pseudonymous Murder in Majorca.

Seems he liked drawing blinds.

No pun intended.

Addendum: The back cover copy to Pure Sweet Hell is so bad that it needs be addressed.

One of the novel's great strengths lies in Bishop's narration. Where Sanderson's G-man is sharp and a straight shot, Gold Medal's copywriter makes him out to be a tiresome braggart. The Bishop of the book would never claim that half of town was out to get him or brag that "two dazzling dames" fought over him "like dogs over a bone". Neither is true. "I tell you it was a damned energetic night" just isn't his voice – nor is this:

Just call me Pied Piper Bishop, legging it furiously through town for my life, while out behind me streamed an assortment of cutthroats – followed by a blonde and a brunette – both magnificently heaving.

Call you Pied Piper Bishop? Thanks, I'd rather not.

Access: At US$4.50, the cheapest copy of the first edition listed online comes from a crook in Tulsa who has the gall to charge US$30 for shipping. At the other end we have a Near Fine copy being sold by a Massachusetts bookseller for US$20. Add in his shipping charge and it'll still cost you less than the one in Oklahoma.

Beware, in 1960 Gold Medal went back for a reprint, something a good many of the listings fail to mention.

I recommend the 2004 Stark House edition, which not only pairs Pure Sweet Hell with another favourite, Catch a Fallen Starlet, but includes an insightful Introduction by John D. Sanderson, the author's son. Thrilling Detective's Kevin Burton Smith provides even more context. The cover painting is by Alicantina artist Marina Iborra.

Stark House has no Canadian distributor – buy it from the publisher!

Not a single copy of any edition is held in a Canadian library.

A Dick's Deadly Dames

The Deadly Dames

Malcolm Douglas [pseud. Douglas Sanderson]

Greenwich, CT: Gold Medal, 1956

Douglas Sanderson's fifth novel, The Deadly Dames was the first to be published as a paperback original. Not quite the same as "straight to DVD", of course, but I don't think it's such a coincidence that this book is by far the weakest of the lot.

With The Deadly Dames we have a new publisher, a new nom de plume and a new hero. Sort of. That hero, Bill Yates, shares something with Mike Garfin, the protagonist of Sanderson's two preceding books: both are Montreal private investigators, both are the sons of French Canadian mothers and both have Scotch landladies.

As with Garfin's outings – Hot Freeze and The Darker Traffic – things start rolling when the private investigator is hired by someone of considerable wealth. In this case, the client is Philip Corday, a spoiled lush who hopes to get the goods that will allow him to divorce his cheating wife Grace. Yates has only just accepted the job when an expensively dressed woman tries to hire him away. Minutes later, she's crushed under the wheels of a streetcar rounding the corner of St Catherine and Peel. And so, what began as a bland divorce case takes a deadly turn. Pun intended.

St Catherine and Peel, Montreal, 1956

Mike doesn't stick around. No pun intended. Hoping of catch Grace and her lover, he heads north to the Corday country home. Things become complicated when he confuses the unfaithful wife with her beautiful older sister. Some PI.

Bodies pile up quickly in The Deadly Dames – nine corpses in 160 pages – but our man Yates is not one of them. Dozens of shots are fired in his direction, but none find their mark. He's beaten senseless repeatedly, but bounces back with superhuman speed. Not even a broken nose slows him down. Good thing too, because the action in this novel clocks in at well under 72 hours.

A lazy novel, the fast pace is provided by characters that exist for no other reason than to propel the plot. There's Corday's chatty Russian housekeeper, a talkative cop with an encyclopedic knowledge of Montreal's underworld and a rural hashslinger who likes nothing more than to listen to the police waveband. As for Yates, he's not so much Mike Garfin under a different name as a pale imitation. There's not much to him, and yet every woman, bar none, throws herself at him.

I lie.

There was that lady who was run over by the streetcar, but she never had a chance.

Worst sentence: "In that dress, in those surroundings, she looked like a poem that got printed by accident in an anthology of prose."

Object: A slim mass market paperback with vibrant cover image by Bob Peake, whose work graced this pretty pink book belonging to my mother:

Warner Brothers Presents My Fair Lady
New York: Warner Brothers Pictures, 1964

Access: The first edition enjoyed one lone printing. A handful are listed online, with decent copies gong for under ten dollars. I could find no library copies outside Ohio State University's William Charvet Collection of American Fiction. Yep, "American Fiction". The first British edition, published in 1961 by Consul, is both less attractive and less common. Two crummy copies are listed for sale online at £2 and £5.

Translated by Laurette Brunius, in 1956 Galimard published a French language edition titled Du Rebecca chez les femmes. The original features no character named Rebecca.

In 2006, a half century after the Gold Medal edition, The Deadly Dames was paired with Sanderson's next novel, A Dum-Dum for the President, and returned to print by the dedicated people at Stark House. The twofer is blessed with a very fine essay by expat Montreal critic Kevin Burton Smith, and an all too brief interview with the author. My copy, a second printing, was bought south of the border. The book is unavailable in Canada.