The Silent Dust, by Bruno Fischer (Signet, 1951). This was the fourth of five Fischer novels to feature Ben Helm, an ex-cop turned private investigator in New York City.
Cover illustration by Warren King.
Showing posts with label Bruno Fischer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bruno Fischer. Show all posts
Thursday, January 9, 2025
Because I Needed a Fischer Fix …
The Silent Dust, by Bruno Fischer (Signet, 1951). This was the fourth of five Fischer novels to feature Ben Helm, an ex-cop turned private investigator in New York City.
Cover illustration by Warren King.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Two-fer Tuesdays: Fingers of Fate
A twice-monthly pairing of book covers that just seem to go together. Click on any of these images to open up an enlargement.
In large part because he’s now been resting in his grave for more than eight decades, English journalist-author Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) is no longer the “synonym for crime fiction” that he once was. Yet, as Michael Mallory reminded us in the Summer 2013 issue of Mystery Scene magazine, Wallace was “one of the most popular writers of the early 20th century, and certainly one of the most prolific, … [turning] out an astonishing 130 novels (18 alone in 1926), 40 short-story collections, 25 plays, some 15 non-fiction books, plus journalism, criticism, poetry, and columns, in a little over 30 years. During his peak it was claimed that one-quarter of all the books read in England were penned by Wallace, and he remains one of the most filmed authors of all time.”
Remember, it was Wallace who penned The Clue of the Twisted Candle (1918), The Angel of Terror (1922), The Green Archer (1923), The Door with Seven Locks (1926), The Forger (1927), the J.G. Reeder detective stories, and half a dozen entries in his Four Just Men series (which inspired a 1959-1960 British TV drama starring Dan Dailey). During the 1960s, British newsstands featured issues of Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine, and Wallace was also credited with writing the first draft of the screenplay for the blockbuster 1933 motion picture, King Kong—though, as this piece in The Guardian recalls, “He died in 1932 while at work on the script.”
Blue Hand is not among Wallace’s better-remembered works. However, one Goodreads reviewer calls it a “ripping yarn,” with “an excellent villain and plenty of dramatic, if far-fetched incident[s].” And Mary Reed, the co-author (with husband Eric Mayer) of the John the Lord Chamberlain mystery series (One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, etc.), says it offers “a few twists [that] will catch the reader by surprise.” She offers this synopsis of its plot:
Having fully appreciated that 1963 cover, let us now turn our attention to today’s other featured front, with its ominous, Gerald Powell-painted illustration. This comes from the 1956 Dell edition of The Restless Hands, by Berlin-born American pulp writer Bruno Fischer (1908-1992). As this article explains, Fischer “was the author of 25 novels and more than 300 short stories, a contributor to Black Mask and Manhunt magazines, and the uncrowned king of the notorious ‘weird menace’ pulps.” The Restless Hands, released originally by Dodd, Mead & Company in 1949, was the third entry in a series
starring cop-turned-private eye Ben Helm. As Kevin Burton Smith observes at The Thrilling Detective Web Site, Helm was “not your typical hard-boiled, Hammeresque eye of the time.” He smoked a pipe, was married to a “loving, striking actress” named Greta Murdock, and earned “much of his living as a criminologist, writing and lecturing in that field.”
Although I haven’t found available online a review of The Restless Hands, I did manage to dig up an image (on the left) of the back cover from the aforementioned Dell edition, which provides this description of the cast members in Fischer’s story:
In large part because he’s now been resting in his grave for more than eight decades, English journalist-author Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) is no longer the “synonym for crime fiction” that he once was. Yet, as Michael Mallory reminded us in the Summer 2013 issue of Mystery Scene magazine, Wallace was “one of the most popular writers of the early 20th century, and certainly one of the most prolific, … [turning] out an astonishing 130 novels (18 alone in 1926), 40 short-story collections, 25 plays, some 15 non-fiction books, plus journalism, criticism, poetry, and columns, in a little over 30 years. During his peak it was claimed that one-quarter of all the books read in England were penned by Wallace, and he remains one of the most filmed authors of all time.”
Remember, it was Wallace who penned The Clue of the Twisted Candle (1918), The Angel of Terror (1922), The Green Archer (1923), The Door with Seven Locks (1926), The Forger (1927), the J.G. Reeder detective stories, and half a dozen entries in his Four Just Men series (which inspired a 1959-1960 British TV drama starring Dan Dailey). During the 1960s, British newsstands featured issues of Edgar Wallace Mystery Magazine, and Wallace was also credited with writing the first draft of the screenplay for the blockbuster 1933 motion picture, King Kong—though, as this piece in The Guardian recalls, “He died in 1932 while at work on the script.”
Blue Hand is not among Wallace’s better-remembered works. However, one Goodreads reviewer calls it a “ripping yarn,” with “an excellent villain and plenty of dramatic, if far-fetched incident[s].” And Mary Reed, the co-author (with husband Eric Mayer) of the John the Lord Chamberlain mystery series (One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, etc.), says it offers “a few twists [that] will catch the reader by surprise.” She offers this synopsis of its plot:
Legal clerk Jim Steele VC is horrified when told by Eunice Weldon, the girl he loves, that she has taken the post of secretary to the mother of Digby Groat and is going to live in the Groat family home in [London’s] Grosvenor Square.The cover of Blue Hand shown above and on the left comes (quite ironically) from UK publisher Digit Books’ 1963 paperback edition of Wallace’s tale. There is no apparent artist’s signature on the cover, and I don’t find any reference online to who might have created that painting of an apparently frightened blonde woman, a scrubs-sporting doctor, and a menacing azure palm spread above them both. It’s been suggested that this illustration came from the most able hands of Sam Peffer, a British commercial artist who took on a variety of cover-art-creation assignments for Digit during the early ’60s, and once explained that he didn’t sign all of his work for that house. But I don’t find confirmation that Peffer—or “Peff,” as he liked to be identified—gave us this Blue Hand art.
As well Jim might [be] … Among other things, [Digby Groat] is not above menacing his kleptomaniac mother and torturing small animals. His mother will inherit a fortune from her deceased brother on a certain date if her niece Dorothy Danton cannot be found. Since Dorothy disappeared in a boating accident while still a baby, and has not been seen since, it looks as if the Groats will soon be extremely wealthy. But Jim, who is interested in the Danton case, is determined they will never get their hands on the fortune.
The first night under the Groats’ roof, Eunice receives an unseen nocturnal visitor who leaves a card stamped with a blue hand, advising her to flee the house. Despite this ominous warning, after Jane Groat suffers a stroke Eunice stays on. Other blue hand marks appear at the house and soon the reader is in the thick of a plot featuring a mysterious veiled woman, drugs, gangs, derring-do on trains, in planes, and on the high seas, and a lot more besides. Aside: if this had been a film, no doubt the audience would cheer when they see how a minor baddie comes to a particularly spectacular end.
Having fully appreciated that 1963 cover, let us now turn our attention to today’s other featured front, with its ominous, Gerald Powell-painted illustration. This comes from the 1956 Dell edition of The Restless Hands, by Berlin-born American pulp writer Bruno Fischer (1908-1992). As this article explains, Fischer “was the author of 25 novels and more than 300 short stories, a contributor to Black Mask and Manhunt magazines, and the uncrowned king of the notorious ‘weird menace’ pulps.” The Restless Hands, released originally by Dodd, Mead & Company in 1949, was the third entry in a series
starring cop-turned-private eye Ben Helm. As Kevin Burton Smith observes at The Thrilling Detective Web Site, Helm was “not your typical hard-boiled, Hammeresque eye of the time.” He smoked a pipe, was married to a “loving, striking actress” named Greta Murdock, and earned “much of his living as a criminologist, writing and lecturing in that field.”Although I haven’t found available online a review of The Restless Hands, I did manage to dig up an image (on the left) of the back cover from the aforementioned Dell edition, which provides this description of the cast members in Fischer’s story:
Tony Bascomb was the town’s black sheep. He had run away from a murder, and now he was back, and the night after he got back there was another murder.There’s no mention in that text of New York City gumshoe Helm. But then, as The Thrilling Detective’s Smith makes clear, Fischer’s protagonist is “rarely the central character in these multiple-viewpoint thrillers, although he does always seem to be the one to (mostly) tie things up.” Presumably, he sweeps in at some point to accomplish the same thing here.
George Dentz was the town’s frustrated lover. The poetic type. Liked women, in his own nervous way. Capable of cold-blooded murder? Nobody knew.
Mark Kinnard was the town’s hard worker. A big fellow, friendly, a quiet, dutiful son. He’d never had much fun. Hardly the killer type.
Rebecca Sprague was the town’s beauty. These three men wanted to marry her, but two women had been strangled, and one of the three was the slayer. Nobody knew which, least of all Rebecca.
She had a choice: lose the man she loved, or take a 3-to-1 chance on marrying a brutal killer!
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Up in Arms
I was going through some files of book images today, and I happened to notice a remarkable similarity between the fronts of three different vintage works by hyper-productive American pulp writer Bruno Fischer (1908-1992). Although they’re painted by at least two separate artists, the editions of his work featured here—Stairway to Death (Pyramid, 1957, with cover art by Harry Schaare; originally titled So Much Blood, 1939), Knee-Deep in Death (Gold Medal, 1956, with cover art by Lu Kimmel), and Murder in the Raw (Gold Medal, 1957, artist unidentified)—all feature beleaguered or belligerent men with unconscious, or perhaps deceased, women in their arms. Is Fischer to blame here for reusing similar events over and over in his fiction, or did the artists get a little … well, carried away?
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Two-fer Tuesdays: Frozen Assets
A twice-monthly pairing of book covers that just seem to go together. Click on either of these images to open up an enlargement.
Because I live way out here in more temperate Seattle, I’m missing all the snowstorm woes currently being inflicted upon New England. But that doesn’t mean the cold has not been on my mind. In fact, my wife and I spent a good chunk of last night watching “Blizzard 2015” TV coverage, and I woke this morning with the desire to devote this week’s Two-fer Tuesday installment (the first since early December--my apologies) to the chillier side of mystery fiction.
Above and on the left, you’ll find the 1957 Signet New American Library paperback edition of The Flesh Was Cold (a book originally published in 1950 as The Angels Fell). This “medium-boiled detective thriller” was the 11th novel by Bruno Fischer (1908-1992), a Berlin-born sports reporter turned pulp-fictionist, who in the late 1930s ran as a Socialist candidate for the New York state senate. And though The Flesh Was Cold was not technically an entry in Fischer’s post-World War II series about New York City private investigator Ben Helm (who apparently doesn’t make a showing until the novel’s second half), it is often lumped in among those.
Credit for the illustration fronting this edition of The Flesh Is Cold belongs to the renowned Robert Maguire.
Now please direct your attention to the paperback façade opposite Maguire’s. I hadn’t intended to revisit the bulging portfolio of Robert McGinnis, after my month-long celebration of his creativity last October. However, this front from the 1962 Signet paperback issue of Carter Brown’s The Ice-Cold Nude, featuring series P.I. Danny Boyd, provides excellent proof of McGinnis’ many talents as a painter, not to mention his fondness for the female form. The painter later created another, different cover for the 1969 Signet edition of The Ice-Cold Nude, which you can enjoy here.
Because I live way out here in more temperate Seattle, I’m missing all the snowstorm woes currently being inflicted upon New England. But that doesn’t mean the cold has not been on my mind. In fact, my wife and I spent a good chunk of last night watching “Blizzard 2015” TV coverage, and I woke this morning with the desire to devote this week’s Two-fer Tuesday installment (the first since early December--my apologies) to the chillier side of mystery fiction.
Above and on the left, you’ll find the 1957 Signet New American Library paperback edition of The Flesh Was Cold (a book originally published in 1950 as The Angels Fell). This “medium-boiled detective thriller” was the 11th novel by Bruno Fischer (1908-1992), a Berlin-born sports reporter turned pulp-fictionist, who in the late 1930s ran as a Socialist candidate for the New York state senate. And though The Flesh Was Cold was not technically an entry in Fischer’s post-World War II series about New York City private investigator Ben Helm (who apparently doesn’t make a showing until the novel’s second half), it is often lumped in among those.
Credit for the illustration fronting this edition of The Flesh Is Cold belongs to the renowned Robert Maguire.
Now please direct your attention to the paperback façade opposite Maguire’s. I hadn’t intended to revisit the bulging portfolio of Robert McGinnis, after my month-long celebration of his creativity last October. However, this front from the 1962 Signet paperback issue of Carter Brown’s The Ice-Cold Nude, featuring series P.I. Danny Boyd, provides excellent proof of McGinnis’ many talents as a painter, not to mention his fondness for the female form. The painter later created another, different cover for the 1969 Signet edition of The Ice-Cold Nude, which you can enjoy here.
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