![]() Except, of course, he doesn’t just go away, there’s more going on and we finish with the expected gun play. The formula suddenly reappears, Mack is paid off and we’re done. He’s hired by the girl’s uncle to find a missing secret formula (isn’t every formula secret, in fiction?). ![]() And to keep him from having a stroke of apoplexy, I tell him my trade.”Ĭruising the streets, looking to drum up some business, Mack foils a kidnapping. You don’t take me for no Sir Lunchlot, do you? This is business with me. A little windy, that but you get my game.” When it comes to shooting, I don’t have to waste time cleaning my gun. “Sometimes they (crooks) gun for me, but that ain’t a one-sided affair. If you want to sneer at my tactics, why go ahead but do it behind the pages – you’ll find that healthier.”Īnd in the second paragraph, it’s more of the same: “My life is my own, and the opinions of others don’t interest me, so don’t form any, or if you do, keep them to yourself. The tone is set from the first sentence from Mack: Mack was clearly a prototype for Race Williams, who would appear in some forty-ish stories and six serials/novels for Black Mask, and again as many in other publications. Mack only appeared in one more short story, (“Action! Action!” – Black Mask, January, 1924) and also in one novel ( The Man in the Shadows, 1928). In case you’re wondering, Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op made his debut in “Arson Plus” in October of that year. In June, 1923, the first Race Williams story, “Knights of the Open Palm,” appeared in Black Mask and it is this story which many folks erroneously point to as the first one to feature a hard boiled private eye. And on May 15, 1923, “Three Gun Terry” gave us Three Gun Terry Mack, first of the unnumbered hardboiled private eyes to follow for almost a century. ![]() In April of 1923, “It’s All in the Game” (which I’ve yet to read), with an unnamed protagonist, was printed. He is a completely one-dimensional character and it’s B-grade pulp. ![]() He is ‘a gentleman adventurer’ (though not of the Victorian Era kind) who agrees to take on someone’s identity and then proceeds to ooze toughness all over Nantucket. Combs is not a private eye, so that’s not the answer. In December of 1922, Daly’s “The False Burton Combs” appeared in Black Mask Magazine, and the hard-boiled school was born. Another Hint – if you answered Carroll John Daly and Race Williams, not bad, but you’d only be half right. Quiz time: Who invented the hard-boiled school of fiction? And who was the first hard-boiled private eye? Hint – Dashiell Hammett is not part of the answer. You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep ![]()
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