The Complete Casebook of Cardigan, Volume 2: 1933

by Frederick Nebel

Frederick Nebel's unforgettable character Jack Cardigan was one of the main reasons behind the success of the legendary Dime Detective Magazine. His hard-boiled P.I. stories were a major influence to other writers of the era, yet only a handful have been reprinted since their original 44-story run eighty years ago. Volume 2 of this series contains the next 11 installments, complete and uncut, with the original illustrations by John Fleming Gould.

"The Murder Cure" (January, 1933), "Me—Cardigan" (February, 1933), "Doorway to Danger" (March 1, 1933), "Heir to Murder" (April 1, 1933), "Dead Man's Folly" (May 1, 1933), "Murder Won't Wait" (May 15, 1933), "Chains of Darkness" (June 15-July 1, 1933), "Scrambled Murder" (July 15, 1933), "Death After Murder" (August 15, 1933), "Murder & Co." (September 15, 1933) and "Murder a la Carte" (November 15, 1933).

376 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 19, 2012

About the author

Largely self-educated, Frederick Lewis Nebel was sent to live with his grandfather in northern Canada in order to escape the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic ravaging New York City. There he soaked up Canadian pioneer history, which he'd draw upon in the 1920s writing for the pulp, "Northwest Stories", which is where he'd score his initial success as an author. Nebel spent his early adulthood working his way across the Atlantic and Europe as a merchant seaman. In Paris, he'd met his future wife, Dorothy and together they wandered back stateside and the couple took up residence in St. Louis, Missouri where Nebel began his writing career in earnest. After his first successful sales to "Northwest Stories", he branched out to other burgeoning pulp publishers, writing effectively across several genres. Aside from "Northwest Stories", Nebel scored big with "Black Mask" in 1926. Its legendary publisher Joe 'Cap' Shaw promoted Nebel as its first star author, probably in an effort to upgrade the image of the 6-year old magazine, which he felt was hindered by the almost inexplicable popularity of the mindless writing of Caroll J. Daly. Nebel's characters were denizens of Richmond City; police captain Steve MacBride and a sometime acrimoniously-teamed local news reporter simply named Kennedy. Nebel burned through 37 actioned-packed stories that were among the most popular entries in the magazine. Nebel went on to create another memorable hard-nosed character, Donny Donahue that Shaw promoted as a replacement from the high-profile loss of Dashiell Hammett. Donny Donahue, a private dick from the Interstate Detective Agency debuted in 1930 and kept readers happy over the next 3 years. Although Nebel has several film credits, he maintained a very negative view of Hollywood. He would often cite examples of how the studios chewed up his colleagues. Nebel would license the film rights to his stories (most famously Torchy Blaine) to the highest bidder, steadfastly declining to write the screenplays. In later years he discontinued writing crime stories altogether, shifting to romance stories for the women's magazine market. Plagued with health problems in his 50s his writing ground to a premature stop. He died in 1967.

Reviews

[Jim Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volume 2 was as good if not better than Volume 1. Please see my review of Volume 1 for details. After Dashiell Hammett, Nebel was probably the best pulp crime short story writer to appear in the pulps in the late 20's and 30's. Unlike Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Nebel was almost entirely a short story writer with only 3 novel that I'm aware of. In this collection of short stories we have one really tough detective dealing with mean streets and shady, and often violent characters, during the depths of the Depression. But while he prefers being a "lone wolf" he does get some support from the head of his detective agency and especially from a very capable woman who is a fellow detective at the agency. Nebel combines a "hard-boiled", macho and often brutal detective with an emphasis on plot, mystery, adventure and good natured comedy.

[Jan Moens · Rating 4 out of 5]

7,5/10