tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3668066.post108817851602949491..comments2024-03-28T16:17:20.965-05:00Comments on Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine: mybillcriderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02350478005243505108noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3668066.post-1088614942164056852004-06-30T12:02:00.000-05:002004-06-30T12:02:00.000-05:00Bill--
Still figuring out this blog stuff. That ...Bill--<br /><br />Still figuring out this blog stuff. That Torrey post was from me, and I'm Steve Mertz.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3668066.post-1088614853196075582004-06-30T12:00:00.000-05:002004-06-30T12:00:00.000-05:00Hi, Bill--
Just discovered your blog. Am I the o...Hi, Bill--<br /><br />Just discovered your blog. Am I the only one who doesn't know what blog stands for? Perhaps so.<br /><br />Anyway, on Roger Torrey. I'm a die-hard Torrey fan. For some reason I've put off reading 42 DAYS TO MURDER, I think because Torrey's weak point was sustaining a plot once he got it off the ground--might seem like a major weakness except for his notable strength: no one, I mean NO ONE, wrote tougher first-person private eye fiction that Roger Torrey in the years between Hammett and Spillane. His invariably Irish eyes are droll, hard-drinking tough guys, and his scenes of violence are compressed, sharply drawn and mean as a .45 slug in the gut. Frankly, I never cared much his BLACK MASK stories. Like Lester Dent, Torry was a unique writer who straight-jacketed his style to write like Hammett for Joe Shaw. But there are more than 100 pulp magazine novellas from, say, 1941-c. 1947 (usually for SPEED DETECTIVE and PRIVATE DETECTIVE, both low rent markets) where Torrey was a regular and popular cover-name writer. He also wrote short stories/novellas as "John Ryan." These stories are more free-wheeling and darkly humorous in a way that his MASK stories don't even approach. The best bit I've ever read about Torrey was a personal reminiscence by Steve Fisher in THE ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE, maybe 30 years ago. Fisher remembered RT as a hardnosed, down-at-heels alkie from Oregon, who claimed he was raised in a whorehouse and who drank himself to death while living with a romance pulp writer somewhere in Florida in the late '40s.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com