Dime Mystery Magazine [v39 #1, October 1949] (Popular Publications, Inc., 20¢, 114pp+, pulp)
Details taken from Table of Contents. |
Well, isn't that a hell of a line-up of writers...St. Clair, MacDonald, Gault, "Keene", Powell, Siegel and Holden, even if I've barely read the last two...much as I've never before read the work of Ms. "Lix Agrabee" (one of the more flagrant pseudonyms I've run across) as far as I know (Helen D. Conway has only four stories as by Agrabee listed in the FictionMags Index, all a cluster in Dime Mystery in 1947-49, and nothing much else pops up for her in a quick set of searches).
What's notable about these folks, for the most part, is that they are writing better than serviceable pulp prose, as one might expect, even in this late pulp issue...inasmuch as all of them except, I think, Holden (and Conway) were going on to sustained careers in post-pulp-era publishing, several already contributing to higher-paying or more widely-respected markets by 1949. They were already writing fiction here and elsewhere that could fit in "slicks" or "little" magazines, paperbacks and Best of the Year annuals. Even if all but one of these short stories, in this penultimate issue of Dime Mystery (already costing the newsstand browser two dimes, and about to have its name changed, for a few more issues before folding, to 15 Story Mystery) are simply good reading, usually with excellent detail if not breaking much in the way of new ground.
And so much burial ground to break, since all the short stories in this issue save St. Clair's involve corpses (or presumed corpses) that need to be disposed of (in a variety of bucolic settings), but just keep coming back or refuse to stay where they were left or go where they should--or are they simply ghosts? Well, mostly corpses. The legacy of Dime Mystery as one of the original "shudder pulps" when that form was being more or less invented at Popular Publications in the early '30s gets its last licks in as this late issue features essentially all conventional but more or less "off-trail" crime fiction.
Margaret St. Clair's "Nightmare Lady" is a turning worm story with an unsurprisingly (for its author) feminist edge (likewise, an openness to taking premonition dreams seriously), wherein a long-suffering sister/aunt, who has served as caretaker to her brother and his two children since the death of his wife, decides she won't allow him to crush the spirit of his daughter, her niece, through his bitter selfishness and stubbornness. Rather more deftly played out here than in too many episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: not too long after...
John D. MacDonald's "The Last Rendezvous" is also a revenger's tale, somewhat more improbable but neatly enough done, involving a husband and his young sister-in-law who play a kind of vicious turnabout trick on a drunken lout, who had caused the death of their wife/sister in such a way it couldn't be easily proven in court. Thus, in a small way, an early movement in the direction of The Executioners, filmed inadequately twice as Cape Fear.
"Day Keene" (Gunard Hjerstedt)'s "The Laughing Dead" is closer to its author at full display of his powers, wherein a very mean piece of human furniture kills a distant cousin of his wife in an opportune encounter on a lonely road, but has the damnedest time taking care of the corpse, which seems to keep popping up and/or refusing to be disposed of/temporarily hidden as well as it might be. Also depends on some rather improbable coincidences, but is a little less in need of being indulged by the reader than the plot of the MacDonald, though at least one of the coincidences is rather quickly papered over.
While all the rest of these are at least well-enough-written and indicative of the better work these people would do elsewhere, "The Corpse Came Back!" (surprise!) by "Lix Agrabee" is a notable exception, trying breathlessly yet almost always clumsily to get across the rising desperation of its protagonist, telling us frequently in the same sentence two or three times what is happening/has just happened, just in case we wouldn't believe it the first time...which is odd, since the thin plot of this one, disenchanted poor boy bumps off his doting, but (very) slightly overbearing, wealthy young wife, is the least improbable of the quartet (even if the resolution is about as awkward as most of the prose). Less odd, though, given that pulps usually paid by the word, and this reads a bit like the clumsier passages in later Harold Robbins/Jackie Collins-style "glam" fiction, particularly when describing wardrobe selections in repetitious detail or with lines such as: "He leaned out, palms spread to balance himself, laughing insanely now that calm sanity had come to him, knowing as he did so that he must pull himself together and, as soon as possible, pull himself out of the whole thing."
Dime Detective, of course, was at its height one of the most important of crime-fiction magazines in the field, a notable heir to Black Mask, and its stablemate Dime Western had a similar influence in its field; Dime Mystery was always a bit overshadowed by its littermates except in its shudder primacy years, but I'll be reading at very least the William Campbell Gault story here, and the other work by some of the better writers as pops up in this issue and others archived on-line.
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6 comments:
Sounds like a great issue, Todd. St. Clair is one of the more under-rated authors of her time; I've most of her stories (and those by "Idris Seabright") to be rewarding. John D. needs no introduction, although I fear his star is waning so many years after his death. Same too with Gault. Ramble House is keeping Keene to the forefront, but their reach is very limited. Talmadge Powell is usually worth reading but, again, he has faded from sight. I don't think I've read any Holden and I never heard of Seigel. This is an issue I'd be happy to read -- and I probably will!
Wow! That's a Keene story not collected by Ramble House, yet. Do you have an original copy of this pulp, or is it a reprint?
Love that cover! I'm reading the spring 1950 issue of Mystery Book Magazine right now, with a Wade Miller novel called "Murder Has Girl trouble." I'm enjoying it.
Jack: MYSTERY BOOK was a pretty consistently good magazine, however arrayed. This is one of the better pseudo-shudder covers on DIME MYSTERY, I'd agree. Not sure yet if it has much to do with any of the longer stories.
Cullen: glad to widen your access to feed your Keene jones! (I directed him to the archive at the link at the end of the Table of Contents above.)
Jerry: I certainly don't underrate St. Clair...and I'm certainly glad Dover Books was finally able to disgorge the Ramsey Campbell selection of her short stories they had commissioned after a year or so's delay. That's only a slightly wider reach than Ramble House, but every little bit probably helps...I think it'll be some time before MacDonald is forgotten, or Gault though probably less, and Talmage Powell (everyone including spell-checkers thinks he should have a D in his name) was a bit more in pulp-writing mode even in his later career, which might or might not enable revivals more readily...one of his later, BOTY stories was Rather Closely Followed without credit in a film a decade or so back, one wonders what if anything was made of that.
Well, as long as we're around to scandalize their names...
Oh, to have a name like Lix. Thanks, Todd.
I'm still, at the back of mind, trying to work out what kind of off-color joke, perhaps in the Vulgate, "Lix Agrabee" might've been intended to suggest.
I think the kids, when they read this, might forgive you for not so blessing them, Patti, at least eventually, but for yourself, even now, there are legal means if it seems too attractive to be merely nickname or pseudonym.
For my part, I'm mostly worried about the similarities of sentence construction in the prose of Ms. Conway here and myself...
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