I have said before that my favorite stories tend to have at least one of three qualities: a great concept, heightened language, or a surprise ending. Helms' story scores on the first two and makes a shot at the third.
Here's the concept: Tommy Crane fought in World War I, joined the Boston Police, and then figured he could make more money by joining a detective agency. But like a lot of "detectives" in the twenties his job wasn't to solve crimes; it was to stop Bolsheviks, being defined as anyone who wanted to form or join a union. This is a part of the private dick business I don't remember anyone writing about before.
By heightened language I mean that the words are there for something more than just telling the story. In this case, they tell you a lot about character:
Three of us -- me, Everett Sloop, and Warren Johns -- were sitting in the Kansas City office in August of 1923, trying to stay cool and counting the minutes until we could shove off and grab a cool beer down the street. Jess Coulter, our commander, walked in and scowled when he saw us.
"You guys packed?"
"We goin' somewhere?" Johns asked.
"Rawlings, Kentucky."
"Don't much care for Kentucky," Sloop said.
"There's the door," Coulter said. "Nobody's holding you here."
That shut Sloop up but good.
In Kentucky they get to work beating up strikers but things go wrong when they attack the union office. The wrong people die and there's a mystery to solve. Good story.
Rob,
ReplyDeleteI just read this story today and loved it! So glad it's on your blog. I felt like I was reading something from the pages of Black Mask!
Bob D.
I liked the sorry quite a bit, and the strike-breaking was really what a lot of detective agencies did, including the Pinkertons. I think Dashiell Hammett might have written a story or two along this line when he was doing early short stories for Black Mask.
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