Brock “The Rock” Callahan

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Created by William Campbell Gault
Pseudonyms include Roney Scott, Will Duke, Bill Gault, David Crewe & Ray P. Shotwell
(1910-1995)

“Well, what had I brought to this trade? Three years in the O.S.S. and my memories of a cop father. Along with a nodding acquaintanceship with maybe fifty lads in the [Los Angeles Police] Department. That didn’t make me any Philip Marlowe. Work alone wouldn’t do it, nor determination; I was a fraud in my chosen profession. So many are, but that didn’t make me any more admirable.”
— Brock Callahan

One of the best, and also one of the very last P.I. writers to have written for the pulps (he wrote over 300 short stories for them), William Campbell Gault was best known for creating ex-LA Rams guard turned Beverly Hills private eye BROCK “THE ROCK” CALLAHAN. Brock was one of the first of the so-called “compassionate” eyes, and also one of first eyes to have a steady girlfriend, successful interior decorator Jan Bonnet.

In fact, Brock was in many ways the perfect private eye for the “good old days” of the 1950s. Born in Long Beach, and the son of a policeman who was killed in the line of duty, Brock weighs in at 220 or so, and is over six-foot-tall; a clean-cut, athletic, white, middle class guy with a swell girlfriend and suitably ambitious professional aspirations. He’s generally optimistic and a firm believer, for the most part, in the decency of other people — in short, the very antithesis of the dark, violent and cynical Mike Hammer.

Brock’s biggest fault may be that he likes Einlicher beer a little too much.

Brock appeared in seven novels between 1955 and 1963, when Gault pulled the plug with Dead Hero, opting for the far more lucrative world of writing sports novels (mostly football and motor racing) for the burgeoning YA market. But to the surprise of many, Brock popped up almost twenty years later, in 1982’s The Bad Samaritan, finding him relocated to the quiet beach town of San Valdesto (more or less Santa Barbara), married to Jan, newly wealthy (thanks to an inheritance) and retired from the private investigation racket.

Only problem? Trouble, whether he’s retired or not, remains his business.

Brock went on to appear in six more novels, one of the great comebacks of the Shamus Game. Of particular note is 1982’s The CANA Diversion, which finds Brock trying to help out another Gault gumshoe, the troubled Joe Puma, who had appeared in his own series of stories and novels back in the fifties and sixties.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In fact, prolific William Campbell Gault , one of the lat PI authors to writer for the pulps, was responsible for several other private eyes in his long pulp career, including Honolulu’s Sandy McKane, Armenian gumshoe Pierre Apoyan, debt collector (and wannabe detective) Mickey Dolan and Mortimer Jones, a predecessor of Brock’s and Puma’s who appeared several times in the pages of Black Mask. Gault won the 1953 Edgar Award for Best First Novel for the standalone mystery Don’t Cry for Me, and the Shamus Award for Best P.I. Paperback Original in 1983 for Brock Callahan novel The CANA Diversion, and  The Eye in 1984 for Lifetime Achievement, both by The Private Eye Writers of America. In 1991, he was also presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at that year’s Bouchercon.

UNDER OATH

  • “Brock Callahan is surely one of the major private detectives created in American fiction since Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.”
    — The New York Times
  • The hallmarks of Bill Gault’s fiction are finely tuned dialogue, wry humor, sharp social observation, a vivid evocation of both upper class and bottom-feeder lifestyles, and most importantly, the portrayal of people, in Fredric Brown’s words, so real and vivid that you’ll think you know them personally.”
    — Bill Pronzini

TRIVIA

  • Ross Macdonald, another of the last of the pulpers, dedicated his last novel, The Blue Hammer, to William Campbell Gault.

NOVELS

SHORT STORIES

  • “April in Peril” (1986, Mean Streets)

TELEVISION

  • BROCK CALLAHAN
    (1959, CBS)
    30 minutes
    One episode
    B&W
    Based on a charactor in the novels by William Campbell Gault
    Produced by Columbia Pictures Television_
    Executive Producer: Harry Ackerman
    Starring Ken Clark as BROCK CALLAHAN

    • “The Silent Kill” | Watch it now!
      (Pilot episode,August 11, 1959)
      Written by Sterling Silliphant
      Directed by Don Siegel
      Starring Ken Clark as BROCK CALLAHAN
      With Randy Stuart as Jan Bonnet
      Also starring Richard Shannon, Barbara Darrow, Richard Deacon, Brett Halsey, Doug Odney
      and Los Angeles Rams coach Sid Gillman as himself.
      Talk about a rarity. A pilot for a Brock Callahan series. Although the dialogue’s a little, well, dated. When Jan discovers a man hanged and calls Brock at a Rams game, asking IF she could call the cops, Brock replies, “No, Jan. Don’t you do anything. I’ll call the police… try not to think.” As George Atkins points out, “THAT kind of dialog would certainly go over big these days!” But the episode’s real problem, despite the fact is was written by Sterling Silliphant and directed by Don Siegel, is that it was just rather dull.

BEER

  • Einlicher

FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Dale Stoyer for this sharp eye, and to George Atkins, for the lead to the pilot.

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