Frank Kane Archives - Black Mask

Trigger Mortis by Frank Kane

Frank Kane Comments Off

Oct 142012

Her frame was murder,

her past was

blackmail bait.

Johnny Liddell

wanted her.....

alive!

Celeste was rotten...and Johnny Liddell knew it...but he didn't care......

She'd hire him to get back pictures and films of her murky past, which Bare Facts magazine was using as blackmail bait.

But the impetuous redhead couldn't wait for Johnny to do his job. She went to see publisher Murray Carter herself and the next day he was found dead in his apartment, with a bullet in the back of his skull.

So police gave Johnny 48 hours to solve the murder riddle, and the private eye's search led him everywhere from a Harlem dope joint to a boxer's hangout, with trouble all the way!

Print History

Written by Frank Kane (1912-1968)

Horwitz Publications, Inc

PB47 (1960)

Forgotten Books: Johnny Liddell’s Morgue – Frank Kane

Forgotten Books, Frank Kane, mystery fiction Comments Off

Aug 312012

I enjoyed the stories in STACKED DECK, the Johnny Liddell collection by Frank Kane I read a while back, so I went ahead and read JOHNNY LIDDELL'S MORGUE, the other Kane collection I have. Once again the stories come from a variety of sources, several from MANHUNT, at least one from THE SAINT DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, and one, "Morgue-Star Final" from the July 1945 issue of the pulp CRACK DETECTIVE, making it the earliest Liddell story I've read and possibly the first in the series.

"Lead Ache" starts things off with a bang, as Liddell's investigation into the murder of a reporter leads him to a dime-a-dance racket with a sinister secret.

"Frame" is a pretty substantial novelette about a washed-up Broadway star and a diamond robbery allegedly committed by an operative who was working for Liddell. Naturally Johnny doesn't believe his associate was crooked and sets out to discover what really happened.

In "Return Engagement", Liddell's client claims to have murdered a man six months earlier, but according to the newspaper that supposed victim was killed in a hit-and-run accident the night before. Liddell's attempt to discover the truth leads to another murder before he sorts everything out.

"The Dead Grin" finds Liddell investigating another apparent accidental death, this time for an insurance company. The plot in this one starts out looking incredibly obvious, but then Kane springs a nice twist at the end.

"A Package for Mr. Big" is a novelette that begins with a beautiful, mysterious blonde giving Liddell a package to hold for her since she's in danger. It's not long before people are dying and Liddell is taking on the Mob and their hired killers. This story is full of action and the pace never lets up for long.

Liddell's sometimes-girlfriend, reporter Muggsy Kiely, appears briefly in "A Game of Murder". I would have liked to see her play a bigger part in the story. Back when I was reading the Liddell novels, I always liked Muggsy more than I liked the girlfriends/secretaries/sidekicks of most private eyes. She had spunk, and unlike Lou Grant, I like spunk. Anyway, blink and you'll miss her in this one, which is a pretty good story despite that as a beautiful redhead (is there any other kind in Liddell's universe?) involves Johnny in a messy divorce case that includes murder.

"Morgue-Star Final", in which Johnny investigates the murder of a newspaper gossip columnist who's been feuding with a mobster, reads like it might be the first of the series, all right. Liddell isn't quite the same character he is in the later stories. He's more unpolished, and at one point he's described by another character as "a dumpy little man", as opposed to the big, ruggedly handsome guy he is in the other stories. Kane's style is a little different in this one, too, as he always refers to the character by both names, rather than "Johnny" or "Liddell". Slightly inconsistent with the rest of the series or not, it's still a pretty good story.

The book concludes with "Gory Hallelujah!", one of the bad-pun titles Kane was fond of. In this one, Liddell travels to New Orleans, where he maintained an agency at one time, to investigate the suicide of a beautiful young woman. Kane does a fine job with the local color and throws in an action-packed plot involving voodoo and blackmail.

These stories are about as traditional (or old-fashioned, if you prefer) as they come, which makes them very satisfying literary comfort food for somebody like me who grew up reading hardboiled private eye yarns. I don't think this is quite as strong a collection as STACKED DECK, but I enjoyed it and think it's well worth reading. An e-book edition is available from Prologue Books, and if you're a private eye fan, too, you should check it out.

Crime Fiction Alpabet 2012: Letter K

Crime Fiction Alphabet, Frank Kane Comments Off

Jul 312012

This week over at Kerrie's spot at Mysteries in Paradise we are on the Letter "K" for her 2012 Edition of the meme Crime Fiction Alphabet. My contribution will be.......

Crime Fiction Alphabet: K is for Frank Kane

Frank Kane was born in Brooklyn in July 1912, and by the time he was 19, he had graduated from New York City College, earning a BS. He attended St. John's Law School, but prior to graduating, his first daughter was born. He was told "better get a job and get some money pretty quick!" So he left law school and began to put his writing skills to use. He served a couple of years as a columnist for the New York Press, was Editor-in-Chief for the New York Trade Newspapers Corporation, and an associate editor for the New York Journal of Commerce. He also worked in public relations, as an advocate and spokesperson for the Liquor Industry. He apparently spent time on "the hill," in D.C., working with government officials to end the prohibition of consumption of alcohol. He did much work with the liquor industry throughout his career. After World War II, he returned to public relations, as well as freelance writing, and later, radio and television production. His writing for a New York newspaper led to a syndicated Broadway column called New York From Dusk To Dawn, which profiled Hollywood movie stars visiting New York. The column was later made into a radio show, on which Kane featured popular movie personalities. He went on to pen scripts for some of the most popular radio programs on the air, including six years as the writer for The Shadow. Kane went on to write for a multitude of radio programs. In the detective-adventure genre, he spent three years writing Gang Busters. He also wrote for Counter Spy, The Fat Man, Casey, Crime Photographer, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, The Lawless Twenties and Nick Carter, Master Detective. He also created Call the Police for Lever Brothers, and created, wrote and produced Claims Agent for NBC, which was based on Kane's character, Jim Rogers. And in 1947, Frank Kane was selected to write the Coast Guard documentary You Have To Go Out, starring Robert Young. But it was as the author of mystery novels about the adventures of Liddell that Kane was best known. Kane's first novel, About Face, placed detective Johnny Liddell in Hollywood to solve the murder of an ex-racketeer who became a power in the movie industry. The book could have been taken from the front pages of the newspapers at the time (1947), except that the novel was written months before the Bugsy Siegel murder. His novels, under his own name, and the pseudonym of Frank Boyd, sold multi-millions of copies in hard cover and paperback, and were translated into more than 17 languages. In the 1940's, '50's, and '60's, Kane wrote between close to 40 books, most featuring Johnny Liddell. He also claimed Liddell was the hero of more than 400 short stories featured in top detective magazines such as Manhunt, The Saint Detective Magazine, Private Eye and Pursuit.

The Novels

· About Face (1947, aka "Death About Face," " The Fatal Foursome"; Johnny Liddell)

· Green Light For Death (1949; Johnny Liddell)

· Slay Ride (1950; Johnny Liddell)

· Bullet Proof (1951; Johnny Liddell)

· Dead Weight (1951; Johnny Liddell)

· Bare Trap (1952; Johnny Liddell)

· Poisons Unknown (1953; Johnny Liddell)

· Grave Danger (1954; Johnny Liddell)

· Red Hot Ice (1955; Johnny Liddell)

· A Real Gone Guy (1956; Johnny Liddell)

· Key Witness (1956)

· The Living End (1957; Johnny Liddell)

· Syndicate Girl (1958)

· Trigger Mortis (1958; Johnny Liddell)

· Liz (1958)

· Juke Box King (1959; Mickey Denton)

· The Line-Up (1959; novelization of the TV series)

· Trial by Fear (1959)

· The Flesh Peddlers (1959; by Frank Boyd)

· A Short Bier (1960; Johnny Liddell)

· Time To Prey (1960; Johnny Liddell)

· Johnny Staccato (1960; novelization of the TV series; by Frank Boyd)

· Due Or Die (1961; Johnny Liddell)

· The Mourning After (1961; Johnny Liddell)

· Dead Rite (1962; Johnny Liddell)

· Crime Of Their Life (1962; Johnny Liddell)

· The Conspirators (1962)

· Ring-a-Ding-Ding (1963; Johnny Liddell)

· Hearse Class Male (1963; Johnny Liddell)

· Johnny Come Lately (1963; Johnny Liddell)

· Barely Seen (1964; Johnny Liddell)

· Final Curtain (1964; Johnny Liddell)

· Fatal Undertaking (1964; Johnny Liddell)

· The Guilt Edged Frame (1964; Johnny Liddell)

· Esprit De Corpse (1965; Johnny Liddell)

· Two To Tangle (1965; Johnny Liddell)

· Maid In Paris (1966; Johnny Liddell)

· Margin For Terror (1967; Johnny Liddell)

Forgotten Books: Stacked Deck – Frank Kane

Forgotten Books, Frank Kane, mystery fiction, Prologue Books Comments Off

May 112012

Frank Kane's private eye character Johnny Liddell began appearing in the detective pulps in the mid-Forties, but he became more well known as the star of a series of novels beginning with ABOUT FACE in 1947. A few of the Liddell novels were published in hardback, but most were paperback originals published by Dell, with fine covers by Robert McGinnis, Ron Lesser, and Victor Kalin. Kane has a reputation for being a generic writer who's a little too fond of punning titles and is also notorious for repeating descriptions, bits of business, and lines of dialogue from book to book. I'm not sure if this rises to the level of self-plagiarism (I'll address that issue later in this post), but I've read quite a few of Kane's books and found them pretty entertaining.

STACKED DECK is a collection of novelettes and short stories starring Johnny Liddell. There's no indication of where they originally appeared, but my guess is that they're from mystery digests such as MANHUNT, MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE, and THE SAINT MAGAZINE. I know Kane's work appeared in all of those places. Also, some of the stories appear to have been original to this collection.

"Dead Set", the opening story, finds Johnny far away from his usual stomping grounds in New York. He's in Hollywood untangling a case involving a beautiful starlet, a gossip columnist, some transplanted East Coast mobsters, blackmail, and murder. In "Dead Drunk", Johnny is back in New York working on an insurance fraud case in which a rival private eye is mixed up. "Dead Reckoning" is about Johnny protecting a sultry redheaded torch singer with a secret (a perfect part for Christina Hendricks) from a vicious mobster. "Dead Run" opens with Johnny looking down at a murder victim, a washed-up crooner and movie star who's trying to make a comeback, only to run into a bullet. "Dead Wrong", about a hit-and-run accident that may be murder, features Kane's attempt to write "beatnik" dialogue. It's way out, daddio. In "Dead End", motivated by the suicide of a beautiful blonde, Liddell goes after a pornography ring. "The Killing" concerns Liddell's efforts to prevent some gangsters from fixing a horse race. In "A Grave Matter!", a beautiful redheaded cigarette girl has already been murdered when the story opens, and Johnny has to find her killer.

I thought all of these stories were a lot of fun. Not classics of the genre, by any means, but for somebody like me who grew up reading hardboiled private eye stories (and watching private eye shows on TV), they're very enjoyable.

As for the self-plagiarism charges, I think some of it stems from the fact that Kane had certain phrases and bits of business that he liked to use again and again. Most prolific writers do that, I think. I've written so many Westerns I've probably written some paragraphs that are almost identical, purely by accident.

Kane does carry it to extremes now and then, though. In this collection, "Dead Wrong" and "A Grave Matter!" despite having completely different plots, have scenes that are almost word-for-word the same. I never would have noticed that, of course, if they hadn't been in the same collection. Some editor at Dell must have been dozing a little at the switch back in 1961.

That said, I really enjoyed STACKED DECK. An e-book edition is available from Prologue Books, and if you like good old-fashioned, two-fisted private eye yarns, I highly recommend it.