Jigger Masters

Created by Anthony M. Rud
Pseudonyms include Anson Piper
(1893-1942)

“Now what in the name of the seven sacred sea lions!”
— Jigger’s favourite exclamation

J.C.K. “JIGGER” MASTERS earned his nickname at the ripe old age of eleven when, while working as a  caddy at a Long Island golf course, he stumbled across a corpse with an iron golf club (a “jigger”) rammed down his throat. Weeks went by and the bamboozled local cops were about to give up when in waltzed young Master Masters with the solution to the the case. Not bad for eleven.

The attendant publicity and acclaim must have gone to the kid’s head — by the time he reached thirty, Jigger had a growing reputation as an ace detective, and more than willing to wade into even the most outlandish cases in a series of stories by Anthony Rod in The Green Book Magazine, many of which featured elements of the supernatural. Fifteen years later, Red resurrected Jigger for Detective Fiction Weekly, toning down the other worldly elements slightly (but not the cra-cra), and he became a  more traditional (if rather eccentric) hard-boiled dick, carrying a .32-20 Smith & Wesson in a special holster and a slew of other weapons hidden about his body, including a small phial of deadly poison concealed in his “wiry, black hair.”

Aiding and abetting Jigger in his escapades were a variety of assistants: Mitsui, his “Jap servant;” Tom Gildersleeve, a rough-edged former mechanic; Marshall Vandervoort, a good-natured young man-about-town starved for excitement and Lieutenant Connor of the Essex County police.

Despite the metamorphosis (or perhaps because of it), Jigger remained  a fan favourite, appearing in a slew of short stories, serials and novels, although the gung-ho plotting and bat-shit crazy logic that drives them definitely are an acquired taste. In Son of Gun in Cheek, Bill Pronzini considers them “alternative classics.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthony M. Rud was a prolific author of pulp fiction in several genres, with scores of stories published from 1918 to 1943. His story “Ooze”  was the featured cover story on the very first issue of Weird Tales, and he also worked as an editor for West, Adventure and Detective Story Magazine for several years. When he returned to writing in 1933, he reintroduced Jigger Masters to Detective Fiction Weekly, where he quickly became one of DFW’s most popular recurring series characters. He also wrote Westerns under the pen name of Piper Anson.

SHORT STORIES & NOVELLAS

• “The October Blight” (March 1918, The Green Book Magazine)
• “The Fiery Meteor” (April 1918, The Green Book Magazine)
• “The Vengeance of the Wah Fu Tong” (May 1918, The Green Book Magazine)
• “The Red Billiard-Ball Mystery” (June 1918, The Green Book Magazine)
• “The Miltonvale Nemesis” (July 1918, The Green Book Magazine)
• “The Giant Footprints” (August 1918, The Green Book Magazine)
• “The Specter at Macey’s” (Sep 1918, The Green Book Magazine)
• “The Affair at Steffen Shoals” (October 1918, The Green Book Magazine)
• “The Rose Bath Riddle (Part One)” (September 9, 1933, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Rose Bath Riddle (Part Two)” (September 16, 1933, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Rose Bath Riddle (Part Three)” (September 23, 1933, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Rose Bath Riddle (Part Four)” (October 7, 1933, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Stuffed Men (Part One)” (January 20, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Stuffed Men (Part Two)” (January 27, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Stuffed Men (Part Three)” (February 3, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Golden Bullet” (February 10, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “A Giant in the Swimming Pool” (April 21, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Strange Scent of Murder (Part One)” (June 2, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Strange Scent of Murder (Part Two)” (June 9, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Strange Scent of Murder (Part Three)” (June 16, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Strange Scent of Murder (Part Four)” (June 23, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Strange Scent of Murder (Part Five)” (June 30, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Feast of Skeletons” (August 25, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “Dungeon of the Sun” (September 22, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Golden Magnet Murders (Part One)” (December 8, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Golden Magnet Murders (Part Two)” (December 15, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Golden Magnet Murders (Part Three)” (December 22, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Golden Magnet Murders (Part Four)” (December 29, 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “Riddle of the Severed Finger” (January 19, 1935, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “Terror Cave (Part One)” (May 25, 1935, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “Terror Cave (Part Two)” (June 1, 1935, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “Terror Cave (Part One)” (June 8, 1935, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “Terror Cave (Part One)” (June 15, 1935, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Encyclopedia Murders” (May 15, 1937, Detective Fiction Weekly)
• “The Marque and Reprisal Murders” (August 1937, Pocket Detective Magazine)
• “Fortunes of the Damned” (October 1940, Double-Action Detective)
• “The Exploding Men” (July 1941, True Gangster Stories)
• “The Fatal Furs” (February 1942, True Gangster Stories)
• “Ghost Hotel” (June 1942, True Gangster Stories)

NOVELS

• House of the Damned (1934) | Buy this book
• The Rose Bath Riddle (1934) | Buy this book
• The Stuffed Men (1935) | Buy this book

COLLECTIONS

• The Place of Hairy Death And Other Stories: An Anthony M. Rud Reader (2014) | Buy this book
• The Devil’s Heirloom and Other Tales: The Stories from Weird Tales Magazine (2017) | Buy this book
• The Vengeance of the Wah Fu Tong: The Complete Cases of Jigger Masters, Volume 1 (2018) | Buy this book 
• The Rose Bath Riddle: The Complete Cases of Jigger Masters, Volume 2 (2022) | Buy this book
• The Stuffed Men: The Complete Cases of Jigger Masters, Volume 3 (2023) | Buy this book
• The Death Messenger: The Complete Cases of Jigger Masters, Volume 4 (2025) | Buy this book

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.