Created by Ramon Decolta
Pseudonym of Raoul Whitfield
Other pseudonyms include Temple Field
(1896-1945)
“You are sure of something. That is bad — one should never be sure.”
— Jo-Gar in “West of Guam”
Sure, there were constant references to his “almond-shaped eyes” and “thin, colorless lips,’ but the Gar stories also represented a major change in the way Asians were portrayed in pulp fiction–and arguably in pop culture itself. Criminal mastermind Fu Manchu was popular, yes, but he was all about the Yellow Peril, an unfortunate racist caricature of evil otherness that proved exceedingly popular, and good ol’ Charlie Chan who, while definitely on the side of the angels and portrayed with a great degree of respect, was essentially a supporting player in his first book 1926’s The House Without a Key) and continued to be portrayed, particularly in film, as a slightly comic figure.
Gar was a good guy, too, or at least as “good” as any of the other morally ambiguous dicks of the early pulps. But there was little comic in the way in which he was portrayed. He was as hard-boiled as Hammett’s Sam Spade, but possibly even more cold-bloodedly pragmatic; closer in temperament to The Continental Op.
Nor was there any doubt that Gar meant business–his small, Colt automatic was called into service with alarming frequency, and the dying confessions of men who thought they’d get the drop on “the Island detective” were as much a part of the stories as his seemingly endless supply of brown-paper cigarettes.
Add to that the fact that the mean streets that Gar stalks are in Manila, and you’ve got one of the more original and colourful eyes to appear in the pulps. Working out of his tiny office off the Escolta in Manila, his cases took him throughout the Philippines, and, in one memorable story, he ventured as far as San Francisco. The more than two dozen short stories, almost all originally published in Black Mask, are all worth searching for. They frequently show up in anthologies, and there have been a couple of collections, as well, so you have no excuse.
Ramon Decolta was the pen name of Raoul Whitfield, who was also responsible for several other eyes in the pulps, most notably Ben Jardinn and Donald Free. Whitfield spent much of his early life in Manila, where his father worked for the Territorial Government.
THE EVIDENCE
- Chauffeur, afraid Gar will kill him: “I am a poor man –”
Gar, threatening him with a gun: “Then you have less to live for.”
— from “The Blind Chinese”
SHORT STORIES
- “West of Guam” (February 1930, Black Mask)
- “Death in the Pasig” (March 1930, Black Mask)
- “Red Hemp” (April 1930, Black Mask)
- “Signals of Storm” (June 1930, Black Mask)
- “Enough Rope” (July 1930, Black Mask)
- “Nagasaki Bound” (September 1930, Black Mask)
- “Nagasaki Knives” (October 1930, Black Mask)
- “The Caleso Murders” (December 1930, Black Mask)
- “Silence House” (January 1931, Black Mask)
- “Diamonds of Dread” (February 1931, Black Mask)
The first of the six-part Rainbow Diamonds serial. - “The Man in White” (March 1931, Black Mask)
The second of the six-part Rainbow Diamonds serial. - “The Blind Chinese” (April 1931, Black Mask)
The third of the six-part Rainbow Diamonds serial. - “Red Dawn” (May 1931, Black Mask)
The fourth of the six-part Rainbow Diamonds serial. - “Blue Glass” (July 1931, Black Mask)
The fifth of the six-part Rainbow Diamonds serial. - “Diamonds of Death” (August 1931, Black Mask)
The conclusion of the six-part Rainbow Diamonds serial. - “Shooting Gallery” (October 1931, Black Mask)
- “The Javanese Mask” (December 1931, Black Mask)
- “The Black Sampan” (January 1932, Black Mask)
- “China Man” (March 1932, Black Mask; 1965, The Hardboiled Dicks)
- “The Siamese Cat” (April 1932, Black Mask)
- “Climbing Death” (July 1932, Black Mask)
- “The Magician Murders” (November 1932, Black Mask)
- “The Man From Shanghai” (May 1933, Black Mask)
- “The Amber Fan” (July 1933, Black Mask)
- “The Great Black” (August 1937, Cosmopolitan)
COLLECTIONS
- Jo Gar’s Casebook (2002) | Buy this book
- West of Guam (2013) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
THE DICK OF THE DAY
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. And thanks to Tony Baer for the finishing touch.
