Pulp Gallery: NORTHWEST STORIES/ROMANCES

1929

1929

1941

1945

1946

1950

Forgotten Books: THE COMPLETE CASES OF MacBRIDE & KENNEDY by Frederick Nebel

In my estimation, the ten year saga of MacBride & Kennedy was the second most important series ever to appear in the pages of Black Mask. The only thing to top it, you can probably guess, was Hammett's Continental Op.

The reprinting of this series was long time coming. Nebel's agent tried to sell Avon a collection of stories back in 1950, after the publication of the "Tough Dick" Donahue book Six Deadly Dames. But Avon declined. I pitched a volume, to be titled Raw Law, to Dennis McMillan back in the '80s, when he was reprinting stuff by Fredric Brown and Howard Browne, but that failed too.

Thankfully, Keith Allen Deutsch and Matt Moring finally got 'er done in 2013, with this four volume collection of the whole shebang. I was enlisted to write an Intro, allowing me to present all the Nebel info I'd gathered, and thoroughly enjoyed the task. All are still available, totaling thirty-seven slam-bang novelettes. Check 'em out!

Forgotten Books: THE FREDERICK NEBEL LIBRARY from Black Dog Books (2012-2015)

Frederick Nebel's best work appeared in the pages of Black Mask and Dime Detective. You can pick up any of the nine Altus Press volumes featuring MacBride & Kennedy, Cardigan, and Tough Dick Donahue, and be amazed at his command of hardboiled prose. He was one of the top three best writers for those magazines, and you know who the other two are.

But prior to - and while - writing for those detective mags, he turned out a lot of air adventure stories set in the South Seas, a somewhat smaller - but still significant - chunk of Northwest stories, and a lesser number of South Seas adventures without the airplanes. And it was all good stuff. I can't say it rises to the level of his detective work, but it was certainly a cut or two above most pulp fiction in those genres. 

A few years back, Tom Roberts put out these six collections featuring some of those high-flying, cold climate and warm climate adventure stories, and all are well worth your notice. The Black Dog Books site is not accepting orders at the moment, but they're all available as Print On Demand from Amazon. (I had a little involvement with a couple of them myself, but don't let that stop you!)

Altus Press has also done three volumes (so far) covering similar territory, and they're great too. 

In case you missed it, yesterday I posted pics of Black Dog's LESTER DENT LIBRARY (HERE)

Pulp Gallery: DIME DETECTIVE (1933)

Forgotten Stories: "Alone" by FREDERICK NEBEL (1926)

Before becoming "the backbone of Black Mask" (as someone once called him), Frederick Nebel was writing mainly adventure and western stories. The first of these appeared in 1925 in Action Stories, Lariat and North-West Stories. By the time this one appeared, in the August 22, 1926 issue of North-West Stories, he had made over twenty appearances in those magazines, and one in Black Mask. The best stuff was still to come, beginning with the first MacBride and Kennedy story in September 1928, but he was already a better than average pulpster, and apparently possessed a very cool hair-shirt.

Forgotten Stories: "Something to Remember" by Frederick Nebel (1940)

A long, long time ago, someone called Frederick Nebel "The Backbone of Black Mask." Okay, I confess it was me, which may make it suspect, but does not make it untrue. During the mag's glory years under "Cap" Shaw, only Erle Stanley Gardner made more appearances than Nebel. But while Gardner's style varied and sometimes pedaled softly, Nebel's was consistently tough, in the Hammett tradition. 

Thanks to Altus Press, dang near all of Nebel's crime stories are now in print - filling 11 volumes. (His greatest work, the four-volume complete McBride & Kennedy collection, is essential reading for any fan of hardboiled fiction.) Black Dog Books and Altus have also brought back big chunks of his air adventure and Northwest stories. But there are still a few outliers, including most of his stories for the slick magazines. I came across a stack of those in my storage unit the other day, and figured it was time to resurrect one. "Something to Remember" appeared in the November 30, 1940 issue of Collier's.

Recent cool stuff from Black Dog Books

Get 'em HERE.

Altus Gallery: Frederick Nebel's MACBRIDE & KENNEDY