There could seemingly never be enough detective fiction magazines. Readers clamored for more hard-hitting action, more flinty-eyed investigators, and more shifty underworld mobsters. So another detective pulp was launched, rather late in the game, in March of 1951 when other pulp magazines were closing down. And it hit it off with its reading audience, selling enough copies to remain on newsstands until February of 1958 when the era of pulp magazines was at an end. The magazine was published by Columbia Publications, who had been in the pulp business since the mid-1930s. Some of its other magazine included Crack Detective Stories, Famous Western, Hooded Detective, and Science Fiction Quarterly. Smashing Detective magazine ran a grand total of 33 issues, and provided readers with quarterly (and for two years bi-monthly) issues of murder and mystery. Smashing Detective Stories returns in these vintage pulp tales, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format.
Table of Contents:
Our Feature Novel
Murder By The Book
by Carroll John Daly
In order to turn his knowledge into evidence that a court would accept, Baldwin Scott had to force the as-yet unknown culprit to play along with Scott’s own plans.
Novelet
In Scarlet Passing
by Mark Carrel
All they knew for sure was that the killer wasn’t left-handed!
Short Stories and Features
Spotlight On Crime
by Harold Gluck
Mr. Gluck tells of some “Further Recollections of a Police Chief”.
A Case Of Immunity
by Francis C. Battle
Sanders had the full protection of the law, but...
All The Angles
by Basil Wells
Lee Dunn was sure he’d thought of everything, this time.
Sgt. Logan’s Three Strange Cases
by Thomas Thursday
And you wouldn’t accept any of these if you saw them in fiction!
The Inspector Had A Hunch
by Walter Kanitz
Everything else had failed to throw light on the mysterious robberies!
Lucky Ludlow
by Wade B. Rubottom
Was it luck — or just a knack for using the slightest turn of fortune?
Perfect Hideout
by Cliff Campbell
In a dead man’s shoes, he thought he’d be safe from prosecution — and he was!
Bait The Hook With A Blonde
by William F. Schwartz
It was like a grade B movie script, except that I didn’t know who’d win!
Special Feature
My Friend Gets His Man
by J.J. Mathews