Forgotten Magazine: Guilty Detective Story Magazine, March 1960

When I saw that this magazine was edited by W. W. Scott, as was Super Science Fiction, I thought that maybe Robert Silverberg had written most of the stories in it, as he often did for Super Science Fiction. However, when I checked the invaluable Fictionmags Index, I saw that he's credited with only three of them.  He's Dirk Clinton, Ray McKensie, and Dan Malcolm.  The name "Ron Garret" looks pretty suspicious to me, since Silverberg and Randall Garrett often wrote as Randall Garrett, but there's no confirmation of that name.  (UPDATE: Robert Silverberg says in the comments that he didn't write the Garret story, so maybe there's a real Ron Garret.)  All the other names look like pseudonyms, but I can't confirm any of them.  Maybe some of you can help me out.

Here's the contents list from the Index:

• A Little Creep with Guts · Christopher Mace 
• You Don’t Own Me · Dirk Clinton 
• Quick Shuffle · Harry Dane 
• Blonde in a Jaguar · John R. Pederson 
• Death of a Wise Guy · Henry H. Guild 
• Thrill Ride to Death · Art Serra 
• Dangerous Doll · Ray McKensie 
• Kid Killers in Cadillacs · Ron Garret 
• Cold, Calculated Murder · Dan Malcolm 

It's not hard to determine the audience for the magazine.  Almost every story has a beautiful woman with "high breasts," "smooth, tanned thighs," and "thrusting knobs."  Okay, the only one with the "thrusting knobs" is "Kid Killers in Cadillacs."  Sometimes it's the breasts that are thrusting, but you know what I mean.

I have to admit that "Kid Killers in Cadillacs" is a great title.   It's a j.d. story, with tons of embarrassingly "hip" period teen slang. The title's misleading, as the kids aren't really killers in the sense you might expect. Just one person gets killed, and that's pretty much in self-defense. The main reason for the story is the scene in which a young woman is forced to strip, is raped, and then gets thrown naked into a swimming pool.

"Cold, Calculated Murder" is a better story about an escaped convict out for revenge who gets the tables turned on him.  He comes to a bad end, which seems to be the main way these stories end.  Most of them are really downbeat, including "Dangerous Doll." Femme fatale is literally true in this one, as it is in "You Don't Own Me."  If you like stories with really downbeat endings, this is the magazine for you, and the titles of "Thrill Ride to Death" and "Death of a Wise Guy" pretty much let you know what you're going to get.  

Literary excellence isn't a qualification that the editor deemed necessary, but these stories are fun to read as artifacts of a time long gone.