Murder from the East

Race Williams #7

by Carroll John Daly

"Murder from the East" is a book that has a bit of international intrigue, the menace of terrorisms, beautiful adventuresses, and a very tough guy private eye, Race Williams, the first in the hard-boiled mode and the model for all those that would follow. The plot, a foreign entity infiltrating the United States, that establishes local groups to operate from, terrorizes the population with senseless cruel murders, and kidnaps Government employees to gain access to secret information, is modern, one could say, contemporary.

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

With a single screen writing credit to his name, Carroll John Daly is an unlikely mention as being the originator of the private eye... but he just might be. And he was, by contemporary accounts, a strange guy; born in Yonkers, New York in 1889, he most certainly was neurotic, agoraphobic and had a severe fear of dentists. These considerable obstacles to a conventional career were fortuitously offset by the genetic good fortune of having a sympathetic wealthy uncle who encouraged his writing efforts. Daly began to make a name for himself in the nickel and dime pulps in the early 1920s. He was 33 when he managed to get published in the fledgling Black Mask. His character Terry Mack is significant as the first tough-talking private eye (debuting in May, 1923) ever to appear in the pulp genre. Daly's characterization was pretty crudely drawn and he quickly created another character in the same vein, the twin-toting .45 gumshoe Race Williams. Black Mask hired a visionary editor, Joe "Cap" Shaw in 1926, who almost immediately took an intense dislike to Daly's one-dimensional writing style. Shaw conceded to his popularity for the time being, while methodically building up a stable of far greater writing talent. Criticism aside, Daly's 'The Snarl of the Beast' (1927) has the distinction as being acknowledged as the first private eye novel ever published. As Joe Shaw groomed other writers, contemporary critics began to condemn Daly, accusing him of subverting the morals of society and bemoaning the quality of his writing. The mind-numbing void the Race Williams character filled in Black Mask became less important in the early 1930s as the magazine featured vastly superior stories written by the likes of Raoul Fauconnier Whitfield and John K. Butler. Daly and Shaw argued continually over the quality of Daly's writing, and to a lesser extent money and to the delight of Joe Shaw, Daly walked off the magazine in late 1934. Daly would sporadically reappear in Black Mask after Shaw left the publication in 1936, but would fade into obscurity, ending his writing career ignobly by writing comic book dialog. He died in 1958, unappreciated and virtually forgotten by those working in the genre he largely helped create.

* Complete list of his short stories.

Reviews

[Jas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, my. This was a vacation into pastime fiction, the tough-guy detective sub-genre. It's all there, from the grin he gives when someone explains that doing X is impossible (right out of Conan the Cimmerian's stylebook) to the two 44s he likes to carry to the nonchalance about needing to kill some bad guy to the female characters (Bond, James Bond, anyone?), every one of whom (ranging from innocent little thing through several levels of BAD)finds him irresistible--too bad but all too predictable--to racist stereotypes. Written in the '30s, it uses not-well disguised Japaneses as its bad guys, and though the first-person narrator (natch) carefully calls them vaguely Eastern or "Eurasian" (these are used to melt more seamlessly into our society as agents) sometimes he likes to describe them as yellow, which is always a sickening yellow tone, and evilly slant-eyed. Hey, let's have Bogart or Robert Mitchum do a movie of this. All we have to do is clean up the references to the sneaky and utterly evil Japs. Raymond Chandler wasn't above this attitude, by the way. I took a detour into him a few years back. One of the movies Mitchum had made featured a shootup of a black bar by the cops--great scene--but left out that what's his-name the narrator's referring to it in the text as "a dinge joint." Not that he was afraid of any dinges, of course. I'd bet you never had heard the word before.

OK, vacation over. No more bimbos on the beach and strong drink at the bar. But if you want to study this genre, here's some of its early generation.

[Stephen Terrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was a bit disappointed in this book. While the novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane still hold up, not so with Daly. His plot twists, characters, and even his writing seem rather hackneyed when looked at with a modern perspective.

It's interesting to read if you want to see the evolution of the hard-nosed detective genre, but on its own, I really wouldn't recommend it.

[Paul Raymer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is certainly not a great book from a literary standpoint. That being said, from a writer's standpoint it is a great reference. Numerous times the writer puts the protagonist in a situation where he is most certainly going to die only to be saved at the last moment. That is an art. There is a dinner party that is also a classic. This book was published in 1935. It will stay on my reference shelf.

[Barry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like a comic strip with just words. This entry level Hard Boiled novel almost defines the genre. Worth reading.