SSW: MIKE SHAYNE'S TORRID TWELVE edited by Leo Margulies? (and/or Cylvia Kleinman Margulies? Samuel Merwin, Jr.?), Dell Books 1961...a best-of the first four years of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE, 1956-59; and MINK IS FOR A MINX, of similar possibly ghosted editorial responsibility, the only volume of a would-be annual series, 1964 (and taking stories from 1963 issues): Short Story Wednesday

These are the two, and only two that I'm aware of, volumes drawing expressly from Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine (in its first issues more formally, and with more pages, Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine), founded in 1956, the same year as its longtime "competitor" on newsstands,  Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine; by the folding of a much-diminished Manhunt and the similarly struggling US edition of The Saint Mystery Magazine in 1967, while other, short-lived crime-fiction magazines would arise, the US trio of Ellery Queen's, Hitchcock's and Shayne were the reliable (and always monthly, surprisingly--founded on a 12 issues/year basis, Shayne never dropped to bimonthly nor less-frequent) doses of their various flavors of fiction till Shayne folded with the August 1985 issue (of course, the other two continue to be published at this time, and have long been stablemates). 

If EQMM was the magazine, particularly under founding editor Frederic Dannay, devoted to attempts to encourage literary sophistication in cf (and otherwise to be a wide-spectrum magazine within that field, and a bit beyond, often running some mild horror fiction and other related fiction), and AHMM was the magazine (particularly during its independent existence, before sale to then-EQMM publisher Davis Publications in 1975) devoted, not exclusively but frequently, to twist endings and irony, and was a bit more hardboiled on average and less interested in classic detection than Queen's, MSMM was unabashedly in the hardboiled (and "medium-boiled") detective and cf mode, with (particularly in its last years, as edited by Charles Fritch) an openness to a bit of horror and related fiction as well, throughout its run. But, sadly, Shayne was also invariably the lowest-paying of the trio of US newsstand monthlies...but this meant that it both had to, and was glad to, deal with a lot of younger writers, and some such as Livia J. Washburn, James Reasoner, Joe R. Lansdale, Richard Moore, and, earlier on, Bill Pronzini (who placed a lot of his work with AHMM, but would publish another considerable lot with MSMM and its stablemates, often as "Jack Foxx"), either made a notable amount of their earliest sales (James Reasoner is not alone in remembering Sam Merwin, in the first issues and for a longer term again in the '70s, as a particularly helpful editor to James as a young professional writer), or, as in the case of writers such as Talmage Powell, found their primary later market in the magazine. 

Also notable, how little the "original" "Brett Halliday", Davis Dresser, wrote for the magazine...the new "Mike Shayne" fiction in the magazine was regularly ghosted from the beginning.

Cover painting by Robert ("Bob") McGinnis, who contributed covers to the magazine, as well.

The only story I know I'd read previously to looking at these volumes is Robert Bloch's "Water's Edge" (a very good story, as I remember it), from the first issue. 

6 * Foreword * "Brett Halliday" (Davis Dresser) * fw (probably ghosted?)

7 * Death Dives Deep [Mike Shayne], "Brett Halliday" (ghost written by Robert Arthur) * ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine January 1959

62 * The Toy-Head Man · Franklin Gregory · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine August 1959

80 * The Fifth One · D. E. Forbes (DeLoris [Florine] Stanton Forbes) · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine December 1957

91 * The Rites of Death · Hal Ellson · ss Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine October 1956

108 * The Patsy [Johnny Liddell] · Frank Kane · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine August 1957

124 * Water's Edge * Robert Bloch * ss Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 1 No. 1, September 1956] ed. Sam Merwin, Jr. 

145 * Moonflower · Hope Field · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 3 No. 1, April 1958] (35¢, digest)

157 * A Hood Is Born · Richard Deming · nv Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 4 No. 4, March 1959] ed. Cylvia Kleinman (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 128pp+, digest)

191 * The Right Kind of a House · Henry Slesar · ss Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 1 No. 6, February 1957] ed. Leo Margulies (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 160pp+, digest)

200 * Three Wives Too Many · Kenneth Fearing · nv Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 1 No. 1, September 1956] ed. Sam Merwin, Jr. (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 160pp+, digest)

225 * Sunday’s Slaughter · "Jonathan Craig" (Frank E. Smith) · ss Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 1 No. 5, January 1957] ed. Sam Merwin, Jr. (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 160pp+, digest)

242 * The Musical Doll · Helen [nee Weinbaum] Kasson · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 5 No. 2, July 1959] ed. Cylvia Kleinman (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 128pp+, digest)

Can be read here.

Mink is for a Minx: The Best from Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine, 1st Annual Edition [and, apparently, last] Dell Books, 1964, cover by Robert McGinnis.

9 * Death of a Dead Man [Mike Shayne] · Brett Halliday (ghost written by Dennis Lynds) · nv Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 13 No. 1, June 1963]

47 * Partners of the Dark [Phil Egan] · Alson J. Smith · nv Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 12 No. 6, May 1963] 

61 * Truck Drivers Like Girls · Dorothy Madle · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 13 No. 5, October 1963] ed. Cylvia Kleinman (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 128pp+, digest)

93 * Murder Slick as a Whistle · Arthur Porges · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 13 No. 4, September 1963]

100 * The Marrow of Justice [Victor Fiala] · Hal Ellson · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 12 No. 6, May 1963]

105 * Man on the Run · Dennis Lynds · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 12 No. 4, March 1963]

123 * Death, My Love · "John Douglas" (Dennis Lynds) (as Phil Stephensen-Payne notes, and Terry Zobeck reminds me to mention)  · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 12 No. 3, February 1963]

137 * Mink Is for a Minx [Chip Stack] · Tighe Jarratt · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 12 No. 4, March 1963]

152 * Murder of an Unknown Man · James Holding · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 13 No. 3, August 1963] ed. Cylvia Kleinman (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, digest, cover by Robert Maguire

162 * Corpus Delicti · Talmage Powell · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 13 No. 3, August 1963] ed. Cylvia Kleinman 

The April 1963 issue of MSMM can be read here (though none of the collected stories in this volume were taken from that issue); the May issue here; the June '63 issue here.

Previous citations: Kevin Burton Smith (with L. J. Washburn and others)

Bev Hankins: Mink is for a Minx

J. Michael Pierce's better images of the Torrid Twelve front and back covers, the latter in tribute to Bill Crider's memory (and Back Cover meme on his blog).

For more of today's short story reviews, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: DAMES, DANGER, DEATH, reportedly edited by Leo Margulies (Pyramid 1960)

The '40s month on Rara-Avis gave me an incentive (however weak, given that most of its contents are from the legendary Manhunt magazine's heyday a decade later) to read Leo Margulies's 1960 Pyramid Books antho Dames, Danger, Death. The major 1940s entry, the only one copyrighted and probably the only one written in the '40s, is a "real" Brett Halliday (Davis Dresser) Mike Shayne story, "Death Goes to the Post," from the underappreciated Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine in 1942 (not as literate as EQMM, nor as impressive as Black Mask or Dime Detective in their best years--but as a magazine a wide-ranging assortment of nearly all the kinds of pulp, and wartime digest, crime fiction in the issues I have read, most of those actually from a British reprint run). Unsurprisingly, this early Shayne is a hell of a lot fresher than most of the ghostwritten items hacked out for Margulies's Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, and one can here see the seeds of Hammer and all the less-romantic children of Marlowe, the less emotionally-distant offspring of the Continental Op.

The book opens and closes with two pseudonymous stories by Salvatore Lombino, at time of writing not yet, I think, legally Evan Hunter, and only jokingly "Curt Cannon," who with "Now Die in It" offers about as deft a parody/pastiche-straddler of Hammer (from a 1953 Manhunt) as was Howard Browne's "The Veiled Woman" from a slightly earlier issue of Fantastic. "Curt Cannon" is both author and protag, doncha know, much like Ellery Queen, and he gets tied up with teenagers who run "nightclubs" of sorts out of their families' rec-rooms, and the nymphomaniac who patronizes one in particular. She, like some of Hammer's companions, can't get enough abuse-as-foreplay. It's a nice touch that this percussive fellow starts out as a down-and-out flophouse resident, reminiscent of what I've read about Barry "Mike Barry" Malzberg's later Executioner-style series, The Lone Wolf books, wherein apparently no bones are made about the protagonist being a deteriorating sociopath.

"Classification: Dead," as by Richard Marsten, is mostly notable for the depth of hatred Lombino/Hunter evinces for both abortionists and abortion as a concept. Henry Kane has a decent Peter Chambers story here, "Sweet Charlie"; Frank Kane, a more ridiculously terse attempt at an ultra-hardboiled Johnny Liddell story, "Sleep Without Dreams" (somehow, it doesn't surprise me that Liddell stories would eventually pop up in the bottom-of-the market Web Detective by the turn of the '60s). Richard Prather's Shell Scott story "Squeeze Play" bounces along as nicely as you'd expect; Richard Deming's "Optical Illusion" is disappointing when compared to his later work, which I usually enjoy, but is a solid if unexciting example of the criminal-with-scruples-and-injured-vanity taking on his rivals. Best in the book is Jonathan Craig's "A Lady of Talent," a police procedural of sorts in this book supposedly of PI stories, and the story which really gets at the urban High Lonesome of hardboiled, with a fully human touch that the others tend to lack. Perhaps because this is a Margulies antho, or so I gather from the others attributed to him and published by Pyramid at about the same time, wherein he was (and his ghost-editors were) more interested, apparently, in overlooked and interesting than in actually Good work. Nonetheless, this is a valuable core-ssmpling of the Manhunt/MSMM-style story, one of the dominant modes of short crime-fiction in the 1950s and '60s, and still influential through the various hardboiled short-fiction venues since.

Please eee Patti Abbott's blog for more "forgotten" books for this week, and previously.