From the Thrilling Detective Vault #1: Joe Gaylord

As has been pointed out several times -- a blog is hard work. And I've been sadly derelict of duty.

So I've decided to rip off a few entries from The Thrilling Detective Web Site and post them here, sort of as a tease for the site, and as a way to satisfy those folks who complain I don't blog often enough.

And so, without any further ado, here's our first-ever entry from the Thrilling Detective Vault (Number one in the series -- Collect them all!!!!)

JOE GAYLORD
Created by M.S. Marble

If your name is Gaylord, you better be one tough joe.

And Joe Gaylord is just tough enough to make the cut in DIE BY NIGHT (1947), his sole appearance.

Don't get me wrong -- even if it was eventually reprinted as a Graphic Mystery in 1955 and was presented in its artwork and back cover blurb as a hard-boiled romp, this one owes at least as much to Agatha Christie (and romance novels and possibly a few mind-altering substances) as it does to the hard-boiled school.

The set-up is pure Christie at first glance -- a private investigator for Gaylord Research in San Francisco is visiting his wealthy, eccentric Aunt Hattie in Hollywood, who runs a sort of rooming house for assorted screwballs she's befriended. But that's nothing compared to Olympus, the estate next door, where "girls frolick in the gauzy costumes of nymphs and goddesses" and "men cavort... in the robes of Jupiter, Mars and Pluto."

Suffice it to say that Aunt Hattie disapproves of the neighbours.

Of course, everyone here -- in both houses -- is a "type," drawn in sometimes very broad strokes, and everyone has a deep, dark secret tucked away. And eventually murder rears its ugly head, leaving good nephew Joe to try to make sense of it all.

Fortunately, our man Joe's up to the task. Although he tries to pass himself off as a mere researcher who doesn't even tote a gun and spends most of his time in libraries, he displays a suitable amount of sang-froid when things turn nasty.

And of course there's a girl. This one's called Stevie, and Joe describes her as "a hell of a good-looking girl with plenty of it." She in turn thinks he has a "stern and stormy soul " but that she's "madly in love" with him anyway. As the book opens, Joe and Steve meet "cute" on the train to Los Angeles, unaware that they will soon be neighbours, with Steve staying next door at Olympus. In fact, she's the one who discovers the first body and comes running to Joe for help. In true hard-boiled, red-blooded he-man tradition, Joe kisses her to calm her down. I mean, gee, what else can a guy do?

And it's those little eyeball-rolling touches of hokum, plus a few shrewd observations and some deft passages that make this book such a pleasant way to kill a few hours.

THE JOE GAYLORD NOVELS
Die By Night (1947)

Well, that's it. If this little exercise floated your boat, lemme know. And if your interest is piqued, rest assured that there's plenty more where that came from.