Please note:  This paper is online for a brief period of time only, for review by a selected few readers.  Therefore, I’m not taking the trouble to mess with margins, navigation tools, etc.  Just hit “back” on your browser to get out of here.  Thanks.  G.

 

George C. Upper III

Dr. Mary Ellis Gibson

English 531

December 10, 2001

Discovering Unknown Complexity, Recovering Forgotten Texts:

Gender in the Early Fiction of Carroll John Daly

            Readers remember Carroll John Daly, if they do at all, for his contributions to the development of the sub-genre of hard-boiled private detective fiction and the creation of the first hard-boiled private eye, a figure that has gone on to become one of the most recognizable American fictional icons.  Daly published “Three Gun Terry,” the first hard-boiled private-eye tale, in April 1923, months before Dashiell Hammett began publishing his Continental Op stories.  Daly’s stories featuring private investigator Race Williams, who first appeared in The Black Mask in June 1923, became some of the most popular pulp fiction works of the twenties and thirties.  Daly also generated a loyal following with his Vee Brown stories in Dime Detective and his tales featuring protagonist Satan Hall in Detective Fiction Weekly, as well as numerous others.

For a time, the now almost forgotten Carroll John Daly ranked as one of the most popular writers in America—at least among working class Americans.[1]  One oft-referenced statistic in support of this claim is the statement allegedly made by one-time Black Mask editor Harry North that “when he put Race Williams on the cover, the Black Mask sales jumped fifteen percent” (Durham 201).  Estleman (65), Etheridge (100), and Rhum (ix) figure the sales increase at twenty percent.  Regardless of the accuracy of this statistic, or its attribution to North, Daly continues to be known, with Hammett and Gardner, as one of the “big three” of the early Black Mask days (Nolan, “Pioneer” 3).  These three led a 1930 readers’ poll for most popular author, for example (Pronzini 27; Rhum ix).

            Despite his popularity in his own day, or perhaps because of it, few critics credit Daly with any significant contributions to the field of literature outside of the rather limited scope of hard-boiled private detective fiction.  Bill Pronzini states the common scholarly opinion:  “He died in 1958, a forgotten man who had been unable to transcend the hack level of pulp writing” (28).  Two years earlier, Michael Barson described Daly and Race Williams this way:  “Daly was a third-rate word-spinner who hatched a second-rate protagonist who did his thing in these fourth-rate productions best left on the broom-closet’s top shelf in the back” (10).[2]  David Geherin finds virtually no skill whatsoever in Daly’s writing, criticizing his inability to phrase, characterize, plot, or create suspense (14-5).  Regarding 1922’s “The False Burton Combs,” G.A. Finch has noted, “It bears the stamp of all his ‘major’ work:  a disjointed plot, a pseudo-colloquial style […] and as for milieu, that combination of doubtful detail and spurious impression that was to become the trademark of the inauthentic in the worst pulp fiction” (117).  Erin Smith simply calls Daly a “hack” who “never did go highbrow” and therefore gradually faded into obscurity (35).

Nonetheless, such was Daly’s popularity in the twenties and thirties that many critics, perhaps embarrassed by his lack of stature among the early founders of hard-boiled fiction, have falsely credited Daly, and his Race Williams, with various accomplishments.  Chuck Etheridge, arguing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography for Daly’s inclusion in the detective fiction canon, posits that Daly “may in fact have coined the term hard-boiled” (101), although a quick glance through the Oxford English Dictionary disproves that theory (Mark Twain used the term in this context as early as 1886, three years before Daly’s birth).  Philip Durham inaccurately noted that Race was “the original hard-boiled detective” (201)[3], who, along with Hammett’s Op, “played a major role in the development of Black Mask” into the popular hard-boiled venue it became by the middle and later 1920s, particularly under the editorship of Joseph T. “Cap” Shaw after 1926.

Unfortunately, in addition to the factual errors made by these critics, most of their attempts to recover some significance in Daly beyond the historical importance of the invention of an American icon fall short in two respects.  First, they limit themselves to only a few of the better-known works by Daly.  Most of the hundreds of short stories Daly wrote appeared in pulp magazines like Black Mask, which now exist in limited numbers due to the poor quality of the magazine’s paper.  Those issues still intact belong mostly to collectors or to libraries, both of which tend to limit access to these fragile and valuable materials.  Even since 1970, when William F. Nolan re-discovered Daly as the originator of the hard-boiled private eye, only three novels and a handful of short stories—less than fifteen percent of Daly’s total production—have been made available to scholars through reprinting (although Vintage Press has recently made some additional titles available online).

Moreover, scholars have failed to note that Daly’s work appeared in forums other than the three popular pulps mentioned earlier:  Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Detective Fiction Weekly.  In fact, Daly published at least six stories in three additional magazines from 1922 through 1925, including the non-pulp general interest publication The American Magazine, and it seems likely that other stories remain to be discovered through further research.  Many of these stories have survived better than their counterparts in the popular detective fiction pulps, and can provide additional sources of material to critics of hard-boiled or detective fiction.

Second, critics have generally failed to note thematic patterns across the corpus of Daly’s work, in part, no doubt, because they have access only to this limited “canon” of Daly’s fiction.  Some of Daly’s patterns appear in his better-known fiction, but many become more evident when that work is read as a whole, in conjunction with these six “lost” texts.  In fact, Daly’s repetition of scenes and characters from one story to another inspired Geherin to refer to him as “heavily melodramatic and overly repetitious” (15), but such repetition on Daly’s part also serves to show what types of writing the author liked or considered important.  It also appears in many cases to demonstrate a certain playfulness on Daly’s part, as opposed to a simple lack of creative ability.  In fact, to refer to the inventor of an entire sub-genre of fiction—not to mention an American icon almost as recognizable as the cowboy, Santa Clause or Mickey Mouse—as lacking in creativity would appear spurious, at best.  On the contrary:  Carroll John Daly’s complexity as a writer has gone unrecognized until this time because no one has noticed the pattern of gender issues, particularly the theme of androgyny, that appears in his earliest fiction.

            Although critics have for years consistently identified “Dolly” as Daly’s first published story (see, for example, Barson, 104), in reality Daly published “Slivers Finds a Champeen” in Wayside Tales eight months before “Dolly” appeared in the October 1922 Black Mask.  In an early example of what was to become one of his most common techniques, Daly clearly employs androgyny and androgynous naming in “Slivers”:  the young schoolboy protagonist, “Jack,” although known as “the worst boy in town” and essentially proud of that fact, has a penchant for flowers uncharacteristic in tough-guy fiction.

            But not only does Jack care for flowers enough to consider stealing one, but he has a particular fondness for a “Jack-in-the-pulpit” that both he and his love interest, Gloria, refer to as a “Jackie” (132).  Thus Jack, between fistfights and adolescent schoolboy bragging, becomes identified with Jackie, a flower, and with the girl who shares his love for it.  That Jack uses characteristically masculine techniques of deception and physical violence for the characteristically feminine pursuits of protection and nurturing of the weakened Mr. Slivers and his very ill daughter demonstrate Daly’s faith in the power of the androgynous to re-invent a less competitive, less patriarchal society.  Furthermore, Jack’s somewhat defensive tone in explaining his objectives indicates Daly’s awareness that he is advocating a departure from societal norms.

            His own personal background as a writer may have contributed to Daly’s creative naming.  Having the first name Carroll, Daly may have been particularly sensitive to the possibilities of androgyny in naming, particularly while working for an editor like Joseph “Cap” Shaw, who to the title Black Mask “added the subtitle ‘The He-Man’s Magazine.’  According to Nolan, he wanted to publish authors who were ‘six footers,’ but he made an exception to his rule for the 5’ 9” creator of Race Williams.  Relations between the two were difficult, and Daly left Black Mask in 1934; he returned to the magazine after Shaw left and ultimately outlasted the editor at Black Mask by nearly a decade” (Etheridge 103).

            Appearing more than a year later in The American Magazine, and heretofore as unrecognized by scholars as “Slivers,” Daly’s “Paying an Old Debt” includes a little girl named Edna Jones but called Eddie; ostensibly by coincidence, one of the two thieves in the story is also named Ed.  Once again, Daly plays with the names of his characters to point toward his theme of androgyny.  The protagonist of the story, known only as “Thomas,” has a criminal past and again engages in “male” violence (as do virtually all Daly’s protagonists), but again he does so in the name of protection and nurturing, this time for the benefit of the young Eddie (who, prepubescent, occupies something of an androgynous position herself).  Furthermore, Thomas leaves his criminal past behind to take a role as family servant, consciously and conspicuously placing himself below Mrs. Jones and her daughter, at least socially.

            Between “Slivers” and “Debt,” Daly published “The False Burton Combs” in the December 1922 Black Mask.  Most scholars consider “Burton Combs” the first hard-boiled detective story, even though its protagonist is not, strictly speaking, a detective, but rather an “adventurer” (Etheridge 102).  Continuing his androgynous naming, Daly christens the heroine of “Burton Combs” Marion St. James—employing not one, but two (potentially) male names.  To further confuse matters, the leader of the trio of bad guys in the story is also named James, or, at least, registers in a hotel under the name James Farrow (170).

            But Daly plays with the names of his other characters, as well.  The hero of Daly’s first hard-boiled piece works for Burton Combs, the son of a wealthy hotel magnate; in “Debt,” Thomas becomes a butler to the nouveaux riche family of Burton Jones.  Thus, not only does Daly seem to be attempting to employ some sort of doubling in both stories, but also he seems to be employing it between the stories through the names of the rich families who pay the protagonists in his attempt to draw attention to those names, and thus to his purposes in bestowing those names on his characters.  In fact, Daly links both these stories to a third, “The Gentleman from Hell,”[4] in which yet another man posing as a servant assumes the name “Thomas” and another criminal goes by “Ed.”  The reader could easily write off one or the other of these similarities as coincidence, but the appearance of both names for characters in similar positions in both stories seems to demand another explanation.

            As further evidence of the complexity of Daly’s character names, the careful reader will note that, although he is referred to as “Thomas,” the protagonist of “Debt” is, perhaps, anonymous himself,[5] like the narrator of “Burton Combs” and Daly’s April 1923 “It’s All in the Game” (published the same month as “Debt,” but in Black Mask).  In fact, even if Thomas is the protagonist’s real name, Daly’s giving him only one name—and an ambiguous name that, although clearly used as a first name in the context of “Debt,” can also appear as a surname—marks this character as a particularly apt bridge between the anonymous heroes of “Burton Combs” and “Game” and the fully-named Terry Mack.  Terry would appear the next month in “Three Gun Terry,” published in Black Mask.

            Of course, Terry Mack’s name continues the pattern of names ambiguous as to gender, and even Daly’s popular Race Williams cannot be said to have a “boy’s name,” except as a surname (and for that matter, would not Mack Terry serve just as well as Terry Mack for a tough-guy private eye?).  “Race” cannot really be said to be a proper name at all, any more than “Gender” would have been.  Even less manly in his name, Tracey Young appears as the protagonist in “The Gentleman from Hell.”

            If these examples seem insufficient to demonstrate a consistent trend of gender awareness in Daly’s early work, two additional recovered stories provide a few more.  Daly’s 1925 “A Sentiment Job” features a tough ex-con, Larry Donnigan, persuaded to reform his violent ways—at least temporarily—by another essentially genderless prepubescent girl, Connie.  Donnigan seems to be one of the few Daly first-person protagonists whose name does not represent some sort of gender play—and Donningan seems to know it:  “My name ain’t fancy but it suits me,” he says (79).

            Furthermore, in “The Lexicon of Youth,” appearing in the same month as the first Race Williams story (June 1923) but in The Argosy All-Story Weekly, Daly’s protagonist Chester Robinson has a best friend Jimmy, and a love interest, Vivian St. James, another woman character with two (potentially) male names.  (Recall that “Burton Combs” featured both a James and a Marion St. James.)  Perhaps most clearly in this story, Daly points to his androgynous ideal:

He [Chester] had made a study of Vivian and tried to copy her dignity, though he was not above dexterously tripping a boy who came within the radius of his nimble legs.  But aside from this slight display of masculine ability he took no part in the general activities.  He was above the common herd. (256)

            If Daly most plainly elevates the androgynous figure in “Lexicon,” his approach in “The Gentleman from Hell” appears both more and less subtle.  Daly describes the Latin American antagonist Gaston Gastra (whose name would appear to derive from the Spanish words for expense or cost and squander or waste) in both feminine and masculine terms throughout the story, making him a fit foe for the androgynous Tracey Young.  Gastra wears “make-up on his face,” and struts “like a hen” even as Daly considers him a “catlike creature” (354).  He has a voice both “low, like a woman’s” and “pitched high, with a shrill, feminine note to it” (356).  Nonetheless, Young finds himself “surprised at his [Gastra’s] grip—that lily white hand with its slim, delicate fingers was like bands of steel” (354).

            In reference to the young heroine of the tale, Daly does his best to neutralize the potentially powerful sexuality of an attractive woman of “eighteen, nineteen, twenty—I don’t know—I’m not much on women.  But she’s young and pretty” (349-50).  Daly makes it clear that the relationship between Tracey and Alice does not involve sex, even though the two clearly care for each other and Tracey acknowledges the potential, at least, of sexuality in their relationship.  Daly, however, refuses to portray Alice as an object in that way, and Tracey finds Alice more to his liking when the sexuality is covered over:  “She looked better now—had slipped on a bathrobe and taken the sex interest out of this yarn” (357).

            In fact, both Tracey Young and his client (her father) disapprove of anyone “ogling” Alice, although neither has a sexual or jealous motive for doing so (357).  Given that Daly invokes Shakespeare by describing the father, Joseph, in Shakespearean terms—“sorta like Hamlet’s ghost” (351)—and Young as accepting of Joseph’s position as Shakespeare’s representative—“Hamlet’s ghost would have his hands full trying to faze me” (352)—the reader should note the rather voluminous work that has been done on androgyny in Shakespeare by, for example, Carolyn Heilbrun.  Of course, most or all of this criticism post-dates Daly, but in some cases such androgyny seems quite obvious—Ariel in The Tempest, for example—and, at any rate, Daly certainly could have been, and very likely was, familiar with the Renaissance practice of dressing men in women’s clothing to play the parts of woman characters.  Daly seems to be subverting this practice by dressing Satan—that is, Gastra—in make-up, gloves, and long fingernails (354).

            Daly’s use of androgynous naming and descriptions does not make him unique among writers of detective fiction in the early twentieth century, but it may make him unique among male authors writing for an adult audience.  Perhaps the most famous “girl detective” of this period, Nancy Drew, appeared first in 1929.  Nancy herself has a masculine last name (Drew often being short for Andrew), as does her close friend Bess Marvin—not to mention her other close girlfriend (and Bess’s cousin), George Fayne.  Furthermore, Nancy’s behavior appears to cross traditional gender lines, as well.  As Parry notes, “Some of Nancy’s attributes can be seen as traditionally masculine and understood in relation to her role model and father, noted lawyer Carson Drew.  She is in many ways the son he never had” (149).  This may in large part arise from her somewhat cross-gendered origins:  “Edward Stratemeyer wrote (or plotted) the first three Nancy mysteries under the name ‘Carolyn Keene,’ but he did not live to see the spectacular rise of the new type of heroine he had helped fashion.  His daughter, Harriet S. Adams, took over the series, pseudonym and all” (Mason 49).

            Nancy Drew does not stand as the only example of this technique outside of Daly, either.  Carol Norton (a pseudonym of Grace May North) wrote Bobs, A Girl Detective (1928) in which the title character, sometimes encouraged by her sisters to “be more ladylike” (7), looks forward to working outside the home as an opportunity to “prove there is something in” her, because “Anyone can be a parasite” (8).  A girls’ series begun by Janet Wheeler in 1920 features the adventurous Billie Bradley, possessor, like Daly’s Marion St. James and Vivian St. James, of two male names.  The titles alone of the first two books in these series could form the kernel of an interesting gender study, and indicate that other detective writers played with gendered language during this period:  Billie Bradley and Her Inheritence; or, The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners and Billie Bradley at Three Towers Hall; or, Leading a Needed Rebellion, both published in 1920.  The OED confirms the presence—intentional or otherwise—of at least two double-entendres in the former title, according to usage of the terms “queer” and “cherry” at the time of writing.

            Given all of the above, the job of the critic becomes investigating what, precisely, Daly attempted to do with the theme of androgyny in his early fiction.  Hélène Cixous has argued that some male writers have broken with tradition to “slip something by” in terms of feminine-gendered writing (350).  This phrasing seems particularly appropriate when discussing Daly, who, writing for a mostly working-class male audience (not to mention an aggressively male editor in the person of Joseph “Cap” Shaw), “behaved as though mastery of the conventions of educated discourse were a waste of time” (Smith 129).  If Daly felt the need to play down his intelligence for his audience, how much more strongly would he have felt to need to disguise his subversive gender messages?  Cixous believes that only poets, “not the novelists, allies of representationalism,” could breach the paternalistic codes this way because of their strong connection to “gaining strength through the unconscious” (350).  However, Daly’s work—with human characters who closely resemble the popular conception of Satan, for example—may not be as representational as it might at first appear.

            Indeed, a character with the physical characteristics of Satan, who exhibits dress and behavior associated with both the masculine and the feminine, appeals to the unconscious in the way that Cixous tells us that good poetry does—by referring to subconscious cultural archetypes.  Certainly, in the Christian or post-Christian culture of most of Daly’s readers, the character of Satan carries powerful subconscious “baggage” with him.  Moreover, June Singer has identified androgyny as

an archetype inherent in the human psyche […] The term archetype is helpful in this context because it indicates the presence of an archaic or primordial type, a universal and collective image that has existed since the remotest times.  Archetypes give rise to images in primitive tribal lore, in myths and fairy tales, and in the contemporary media.  They are, by definition, unconscious; their presence can only be intuited in the powerful motifs and symbols that give definite form to psychic contexts. (20)[6]

The androgynous figure, in fact, pre-dates practically all others by appearing as the central figure in numerous creation myths:  “The myth of the primal being as a cosmic androgyne whose original unity disintegrates into a world of conflicting parts has persisted throughout Western philosophy, theology, psychology, and literature” (MacLeod 13).[7]  An androgynous Satan, then, could conceivably constitute both a doubly powerful archetypal symbol as well as an inversion of the assumption that the earliest form of androgyny appeared in the creator figure—a complexly symbolic figure, indeed, and not one a reader would likely expect to find in the work of a “hack.”

            But Daly sought to accomplish more than simply “slipping by” a few references to the feminine in detective fiction; he hoped to engage the (generally male) reader more actively in the exploration of the androgynous.   Using “Three Gun Terry” as their textual example, Walton and Jones note:

One of the central rhetorical strategies of “tough talk” involves its interpellation of readers; it cements a familiar bond with them.  From their inception, hard-boiled stories used a direct appeal to the audience in the style of the dramatic aside to reinforce an identification between narrator and reader. […] This gesture […] develops an intimate bond of identification between the narrator and a differently constituted readership (127).

Daly, the reader should note, not only utilized this technique of “tough talk” in “Three Gun Terry,” he invented it here and in the other first-person fiction he wrote during the early twenties.  By assuming an androgynous role as first-person protagonist and then inviting the reader to identify with him, Daly thus worked his subversion of traditional gender roles out of his text and into the culture for which he wrote.

            Another of the conventions of detective fiction introduced by Daly is the existence of the protagonist in a marginal space between the law and the criminal.  Richard Slotkin attributes this to the fact that “the hard-boiled detective story began as an abstraction of essential elements of the Frontier Myth” (217).  In fact, Slotkin cites Daly’s Race Williams as the initial transition-maker from western to detective fiction, “less the tracer of clues than the executor of a vigilante type of justice who operates in the moral and social isolation of the ‘Indian-hater’ and usually solves his case with gunplay” (223).  In actuality, however, Daly described protagonists as marginalized or isolated both before and after the appearance of Race Williams in “Knights of the Open Palm.”

            Thus, in “Burton Combs,” the hero “ain’t a crook; just a gentleman adventurer and make my living working against the law breakers.  Not that I work with the police—no, not me” (3).  In “A Sentiment Job,” Larry Donnigan lives and works “just on a line between the cops and the crooks.  I’ve got no use for either of them” (79).  Terry Mack introduces himself this way:  “I ain’t a crook, and I ain’t a dick, I play the game on the level, in my own way.  I’m at the center of a triangle; between the crook and the police and the victim” (43).  Race Williams calls himself “the middleman—just a halfway house between the dicks and the crooks” (18).  Even in “The Lexicon of Youth,” one of Daly’s stories about children, one schoolgirl “approached Vivian and Chester and addressed her words straight between the boy and the girl toward the hedge[8] beyond them” (256).  Clearly, Daly’s characters exist in marginal space.

            Although Jane S. Bakerman argues that early hard-boiled protagonists “are obviously members of the male power structure” and “enact patriarchal roles” (128), she fails to recognize the characteristics of the androgynous in the earliest such protagonists, those of Daly.  Walton and Jones acknowledge Daly as the creator of the marginalized private eye protagonist (although they inexplicably cite Daly’s 1927 The Snarl of the Beast as the work in which he does so, even though they show a familiarity with earlier work, such as 1923’s “Three Gun Terry,” in which Daly’s protagonist is clearly just as marginalized).  They go on to argue that just as the shift from frontier to urban setting (identified by Slotkin) engendered a shift from racial issues to class issues in detective fiction, so that same shift allows the writer to highlight gender issues (191-2).[9]  In regard to the margins, Cixous argues “that writing is precisely working (in) the in-between, inspecting the process of the same and of the other without which nothing can live” (353).  Daly then, utilizes this “in-between” position of his characters to subvert the “historico-cultural limit” of the fiction of “sexual opposition” and begin the creation of a more positive alternative—or at least the possibility of one.  Heilbrun has noted in “Gender and Detective Fiction” that the “move towards androgyny and away from stereotypical sex roles—away, more importantly, from the ridiculing and condemning of those who do not conform to stereotypical sex roles—has […] found greater momentum in the detective story that in any other genre” (5).  Perhaps this results from the foundation laid by Daly in his earliest work, even if it only operated in his readers at a subconscious (archetypal) level.[10]

            Certainly, by the sheer volume of Daly’s references to the leitmotif of androgyny in his early texts, recovered or otherwise (and the examples given here are by no means exhaustive), Daly would appear to be doing something.  Unfortunately, because of Daly’s tendency to play with naming and gender across texts, rather than simply within them, pinning down his precise position or motives on these issues becomes somewhat problematic.  Daly published the short stories referenced in this paper over the course of just over three years, from February 1922 to April 1925—the first 38 months of his writing career, as far as modern scholarship has been able to determine to date.  The fact that these eight stories make up only about a third of Daly’s known publications during this period (and, as stated earlier, more texts may very well remain undiscovered at the time of this writing) further complicates any analysis of Daly’s work, which must be considered as partial and preliminary at this time.  Clearly, because of the complex nature of the gender issues Daly raises in his early work, additional work remains to be done in determining Daly’s contributions to these themes.  Before such work can be done, however, additional texts by Daly must become more readily available for critical study.

Works Cited

Bakerman, Jane S.  “Living Openly and with Dignity:  Sara Paretsky’s New-Boiled Feminist Ficiton.”  Midamerica 12 (1985):  120-35.

Barson, Michael S.  “’There’s No Sex in Crime’:  The Two-Fisted Homilies of Race Williams.”  Clues 2.2 (1981):  103-112.

Cixous, Hélène.  “The Laugh of the Medusa.”  Signs 1.4 (1975):  875-893.  Rpt. in Feminisms:  An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism.  Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl.  2^nd ed.  New Brunswick:  Rutgers U P, 1997.  347-362.

Crider, Allen B.  “Race Williams—Private Investigator.”  Dimensions of Detective Fiction.  Ed. Larry N. Landrum, Pat Browne, and Ray B. Browne.  Popular Press, 1976.

Daly, Carroll John.  “Slivers Finds a Champeen.”  Wayside Tales Feb. 1922:  130-135.

- - -.  “The False Burton Combs.”  Dec. 1922.  The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories.  Ed. Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert.  New York:  Oxford U P, 1996.  162-83.

- - -.  “Paying an Old Debt:  A Burglar’s Story.” The American Magazine Apr. 1923:  12+.

- - -.  “Three Gun Terry.”  Apr. 1923.  The Black Mask Boys:  Masters in the Hard-Boiled School of Detective Fiction.  Ed. William F. Nolan.  New York:  William Morrow, 1985.  43-71.

- - -.  “Knights of the Open Palm.”  June 1923.  The Great American Detective.  Ed. William Kittredge and Steven M. Krauzer.  New York:  New American Library; Scarborough, Ontario:  New American Library of Canada; London:  New English Library, 1978.

- - -.  “The Lexicon of Youth.”  Argosy All-Story Weekly June 16, 1923:  254-262.

- - -.  “The Gentleman from Hell.”  Argosy All-Story Weekly Jan. 31, 1925:  342-70.

- - -.  “A Sentiment Job.”  Argosy All-Story Weekly Apr. 11, 1925:  79-91.

Durham, Philip.  “The Black Mask School.”  Tough Guys of the Thirties.  Ed. David Madden.  Southern Illinois P, 1968.   Rpt. in The Mystery Writer’s Art.  Ed. Francis M. Nevins, Jr.  Bowling Green, OH:  Bowling Green U Popular P, 1970.  197-226.

Estleman, Loren D.  “Plus Expenses:  The Private Eye as Great American Hero” (“Off the Record” column).  Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Sep. 1983:  64-72.

Etheridge, Chuck.  “Carroll John Daly.”  The Dictionary of Literary Bibliography.  Vol. 226.  Detroit, MI:  The Gale Group, 2000.

Gardner, Erle Stanley.  “Getting Away with Murder.”  The Atlantic Monthly Jan. 1965, 72-5.

Heilbrun, Carolyn.  “Keynote Address:  Gender and Detective Fiction.”  The Sleuth and the Scholar:  Origins, Evolution, and Current Trends in Detective Fiction (Papers from a Symposium held 18 October 1986).  Ed. Barbara A. Rader and Howard G. Zettler.  Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture 19.  Westport, CT:  Greenwood Press, 1988.  1-10.

Kittredge, William, and Steven M. Krauser.  Introduction.  The Great American Detective.  Ed. by Kittredge and Krauser.  New York:  New American Library; Scarborough, Ontario:  New American Library of Canada; London:  New English Library, 1978.

Margolies, Edward.  Which Way Did He Go?:  The Private Eye in Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, and Ross MacDonald.  New York:  Holmes & Meier, 1982.

Mason, Bobbie Ann.  The Girl Sleuth.  Athens, GA:  U of Georgia P, 1975.

McCann, Sean.  Gumshoe America:  Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism.  Durham, NC:  Duke U P, 2000.

Nolan, William F.  “Carroll John Daly:  The Forgotten Pioneer of the Private Eye.”  The Armchair Detective 4.1 (1970 / 1971):  1-4.

- - -.  The Black Mask Boys:  Masters in the Hard-Boiled School of Detective Fiction.  New York:  William Morrow, 1985.

Parry, Sally E.  “The Secret of the Feminist Heroine:  The Search for Values in Nancy Drew and Judy Bolton.”  Nancy Drew and Company:  Culture, Gender, and Girls’ Series.  Ed. Sherrie Inness.  Bowling Green, OH:  Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1997.

Ruhm, Herbert.  Introduction.  The Hard-Boiled Detective Stories from Black Mask 1920-1951.  Ed. by Ruhm.  New York:  Vintage Books, 1977.  viii-xviii.

Slotkin, Richard.  Gunfighter Nation:  The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America.  New York:  Atheneum-Macmillan; Don Mills, ON:  Maxwell Macmillan Canada:  1992.

Smith, Erin A.  Hard-Boiled:  Working-Class Readers and Pulp Magazines.  Philadelphia, PA:  Temple U P, 2000.

Symons, Julian.  Mortal Consequences:  A History—From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel.  New York:  Harper & Row, 1972.

Walton, Priscilla L. and Manina Jones.  Detective Agency:  Women Rewriting the Hard-Boiled Tradition.  Berkeley, CA:  U of California P, 1999.

 

Additional Works Consulted

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