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.

The Year's Best Books in Review — A.D. 2015; Featuring Three Books Deserving Resurrection

Yes, the year's best books in review… the best reviewed here, anyway. These past twelve months haven't been the most active at the Dusty Bookcase. Truth be told, I'd planned on closing up shop last January – and even wrote a post to that effect – but then I heard from readers asking me to go on. I felt the love and returned on Valentine's Day.

And so, this casual exploration continues, if more casually. Between this blog and my column in Canadian Notes & Queries I managed to review twenty-four books this year. That's not nothing, right?

Of the twenty-four, I see four worthy of a return to print, but tradition dictates that I choose three:

The Plouffe Family [Les Plouffe]
Roger Lemelin [trans. Mary Finch]

Roger Lemelin's 1948 best seller spawned an excellent film and our two most popular early television series. A monumental work of cultural and historical importance, I still find it hard to believe the translation is no longer in print.

The Fiend
Margaret Millar

A remarkable novel that dares centre on a sympathetic portrayal of a registered sex offender. That I read no other Millars this year is likely the reason only one of her novels features on this list. In 2012, the Kitchener native took all three spots.

The Adventures of Jimmie Dale
Frank L. Packard

Intricate and cleverly-woven adventures starring the Jimmie Dale – bored playboy by day, crime-fighting Gray Seal by night. Enormously influential and surprisingly entertaining.



I'm right now at work at reviving the unnamed fourth. If successful, it'll be back in print by this time next year. If not, my heart will be broken and I will never speak of it again.

In what must be a record, three of the novels covered here this past year are currently in print:

The Town Below [Au pied de la pente douce]

Roger Lemelin [trans. Samuel Putnam]

Toronto: Dundurn, 2013

The Three Roads

Ross Macdonald [pseud Kenneth Millar]

New York: Black Lizard, 2011

Night of the Horns

Douglas Sanderson

Eureka, CA: Stark House, 2015

I may as well add that The Damned and the Destroyed, Kenneth Orvis's "Relentless Story of the Hell of Drug Addiction", is right now available as an ebook from Prologue Books.

I was involved with three reissues this year, all titles in the Véhicule Press Ricochet Books series:

The Mayor of Côte St. Paul
Ronald J. Cooke

A novel about a young writer working for a crime boss in Depression-era Montreal. Is his motivation the need for material? Money? A dame? All three, it seems. I wrote the Introduction.

Hot Freeze
Douglas Sanderson

The first Mike Garfin thriller sees the disgraced former RCMP officer immersed in Montreal's drug trade. My favourite Canadian post-war noir novel, ow could I not write this Introduction, too?

Blondes Are My Trouble
Douglas Sanderson

The second Mike Garfin thriller. This time the private dick does battle with violent men pushing women into prostitution. The Introduction is by J.F. Norris of Pretty Sinister Books.



Praise this year goes to Wilfrid Laurier University Press and the Early Canadian Literature series edited by Benjamin Lefebvre. Dedicated to returning rare texts to print, there have been six titles to date, the most recent being Frederick Niven's The Flying Years with Afterword by Alison Calder.

Wilfrid Laurier University Press offers a 25% discount on online orders. Amazon and Indigo don't come close to matching those prices.

It's on my Christmas wish list.

Related posts:

Dirty Old Town

The Trouble with Charlie

Whatever Happened to Jimmie Dale?

Discovered Vile

A Man's Struggle with Humiliation

'A Relentless Story of the Hell of Drug Addiction'

A Blockhead Tries Writing for Money

Of Sex and Drugs and Montreal

Dark Blondes

Ricochet Prefers Blondes

The postman brings the third Ricochet Book in as many months. As Series Editor, I couldn't be more proud. One of the greatest Canadian noir novels, Blondes Are My Trouble followed Hot Freeze as the second Mike Garfin thriller. Like the first, it's set in the private detective's hometown of Montreal. And, like the first, the focus is on vice. This time it's prostitution, a racket not even Mike's girl Tessie can escape.

I was introduced to the novel as The Darker Traffic, published in 1954 by Dodd, Mead under Sanderson's "Martin Brett" nom de plume. Blondes Are My Trouble is the title given by Popular Library for the 1955 paperback release.

Better, don't you think?

We think Popular Library's cover is better, too, so have adapted it for the Ricochet reissue. Sure, that dame depicted isn't a blonde, but aren't you intrigued?

This time out I tapped John Norris of Pretty Sinister Books to pen the Introduction.

I think of Hot Freeze as the very best of post-war Canadian noir. John tells me that Blondes is even better.

Could I be wrong?

Acknowledgement: The publication of Blondes Are My Trouble sees the return of all four – or is it three? – Mike Garfin thrillers to print:

Hot Freeze (1954)

The Darker Traffic (a/k/a Blondes Are My Trouble; 1955)

The Deadly Dames (1956)

A Dum-Dum for the President (1961)

The last two are available from Greg Shepard's Stark House Press. It is thanks to Greg that we were able to contact Douglas Sanderson's son and secure the rights to Hot Freeze and Blondes Are My Trouble. Long a champion, in the past nine years Stark House has reissued six Sanderson novels, most recently Night of Horns and Cry Wolfsham.

Related posts:

Of Sex and Drugs and Montreal
Dark Blondes
Ricochet! Ricochet!

Ricochet! Ricochet!

Arriving in bookstores as I write, books seven and eight in Véhicule's Ricochet Books series. Following visits to Niagara Falls (James Benson Nablo's The Long November) and Toronto (Hugh Garner's Waste No Tears), we're returning to Montreal with:

The Mayor of Côte St. Paul by Ronald J. Cooke, the strange story of Dave Manley, a struggling writer drawn into the world of slot-machines and rum-running by a good looking gal who wants nothing so much as to open a lingerie store in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Both work for the Mayor, a sadistic crime boss who takes pleasure in murdering people with darts.

Printed once by pre-romance Harlequin in June 1950, the Ricochet edition is the first in more than sixty-five years.

Hot Freeze by Douglas Sanderson, post-war Canada’s greatest noir novel, introduces "inquiry agent" Mike Garfin, ex-RCMP (he made the mistake of bedding a suspect's wife). In this first of three or four adventures, he's hired to figure out what exactly is going on with one of Westmount's spoiled bisexual teenaged sons.

Published in 1954, by Dodd, Mead (New York) and Reinhardt (London), then in 1955 by Popular Library (New York), this edition is the first in sixty years.

Both The Mayor of Côte St. Paul and Hot Freeze feature Introductions by yours truly – my first since David Montrose's The Crime on Cote des Neiges (or, if you prefer, Meurtre à Westmount).

Long-time readers will recognize both titles. I first wrote here about Hot Freeze in the earliest days of 2011. The Mayor of Côte St. Paul consumed not one, not two, but three posts later that same year.

The Mayor of Côte St. Paul and Hot Freeze are available from the usual online sources, better bookstores and, of course, Véhicule itself.

I would be remiss in not recognizing the role played by Greg Shepard of Stark House Press in the Hot Freeze reissue. In recent years, Stark House has reissued six Douglas Sanderson novels, including A Dum-Dum for the President, the third – or is it fourth? – Mike Garfin thriller. 

Related posts:

Of Sex and Drugs and Montreal

A Blockhead Tries Writing for Money

Write Short Stories the Dave Manley Way!
Ronald J. Cooke, No Blockhead

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 Christmas Offering of Books – 1914 and 2014

The image is small, but the selection is huge. This full page advert from the 2 December 1914 Globe & Mail gives good idea of the books Canadians received during the first Christmas of "the Great European War". Mixed in with the expected - de luxe editions of Dickens, new fiction from popular novelist Alice Hegan Rice, cookbooks, Boy Scouts' books and hymn books (Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist) – we find poetry by W.H. Drummond, Robert W. Service, Pauline Johnson, and Katherine Hale. There are also these "New Books by Distinguished Canadian Authors":

Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich - Stephen Leacock
His Royal Happiness - Mrs. Everard Coates
The Patrol of the Sundance Trail - Ralph Connor
You Never Know Your Luck - Sir Gilbert Parker
The Miracle Man - Frank L. Packard
Hoof and Claw - Charles G.D. Roberts
Seeds of Pine - Janey Canuck
Recollections and Records of Toronto of Old - W.H. Pearson

The Leacock and Packard are recommended. I've not read the rest.

(cliquez pour agrandir)

With just twelve days left until this Christmas, time has come for some suggestions, beginning with this year's favourite reads. Before I do, it needs be pointed out that 2014 proved the least rewarding in my casual exploration of Canada'a suppressed, ignored and forgotten. Of the thirty-two titles reviewed here and in Canadian Notes & Queries, I can count on one hand the number that deserve to be returned to print. Tradition dictates I pick three. These are they:

Intent to Kill 
Michael Bryan [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Dell, 1956

Brian Moore's sixth pulp, the third to be set in Montreal, proved riveting. It's a shame that these early titles have been kept out of print, but you have to admire the writer's estate for honouring his wishes.

The Iron Gates
Margaret Millar
New York: Dell, 1960

That The Iron Gates ranks as one of the year's best should come as no surprise – two years ago Millar took all three spots. "Arguably the most talented English-Canadian woman writer of her generation," I wrote in the Canadian Encyclopedia.

Fasting Friar
Edward McCourt
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1963

Before finding Fasting Friar, I'd never thought much about McCourt – he once won Ryerson's All-Canada Prize, right? – but its subject, censorship, did attract. A flawed yet interesting novel featuring what may be the most reluctant protagonist I've ever met.  


Given this year's slim pickings, I may as well mention the also rans: Grant Allen's The Devil's Die. and A Lot to Make Up For by the late John Buell. Used copies of the five are easily found for sale online.

Two books reviewed these past twelve are currently in print:

The first, Douglas Sanderson's Pure Sweet Hell (1957), is paired with Catch a Fallen Starlet (1960) in an edition available from Stark House Press. Both favourites, I rank them just beneath Hot Freeze and The Darker Traffic, the first two Mike Garfin novels, as the best things the man ever wrote. Stark House has no Canadian distributor, but books can be bought through the Stark House Press website.

I'm not so enthusiastic about Cherylyn Stacey's How Do You Spell Abducted? (1996), a slight, slim YA novel about an estranged father who runs off to the States with his three children. Michael Coren had a field day with this one, misrepresenting the book in the Financial Post and Books in Canada. Politician Julius Yankowsky (MLA, Edmonton Beverly-Belmont) got so riled up that he called for the thing to be banned. Buy it, if only to stick it to both men.

The year saw two books reviewed in previous years return to print; I was involved with both:

All Else is Folly
Peregrine Acland
Toronto: Dundurn, 2013

This 1929 novel of the Great War – by a veteran of the Great War – was praised by Ford Madox Ford, Bertrand Russell, Frank Harris and Robert Borden. This new edition, the first in over eight decades, features an Introduction by myself and James Calhoun.

The Long November
James Benson Nablo
Montreal: Véhicule, 2013

Featured on my 2010 list of books deserving a return to print, this 1946 novel received a good amount of attention in its day. Subsequent neglect can be explained – but only in part – by the author's early death. The new edition includes an Introduction by yours truly.


Go get 'em!

The Globe & Mail, 12 December 1914