Created by Edward Y. Breese
(1912-79)
JOHHNY HAWK, an “odd-job man for emergencies, a trouble shooter and a free-lance free-lance”, showed up in a series of solid short stories that appeared in mystery digests like Mike Shayne and Alfred Hitchcock in the late sixties to mid-seventies.
Edward Y. Breese was born in 1912 in Trenton, New Jersey, and graduated from Princeton University in 1934. He served in world War II as an aerial gunner, and only began writing professionally in the fifties, when he was already in his forties, but certainly mde up for lost time, pumping out stories, mostly Westerns and crime fiction, under his own and assorted pen and house names, including Brett Halliday, Zane Grey, Ned Buller, Edward Buller and Y.B. His work appeared  in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Zane Grey Western Magazine. As “Brett Halliday,” he wrote over thirty Mike Shayne stories for Mike Shane Mystery Magazine.
UNDER OATH
- “My favorite recurring character in Mike Shayne Mystery Mag was Johnny Hawk. I remember picking up each issue when it came and going through the contents, looking for a story by Edward Y. Breese. That’s the story I’d read first.”
— Tom Sweeney
SHORT STORIES
- “Dreamsville” (November 1968, AHMM)
- “Cover” (April 1969, AHMM)
- “Fast Riders” (June 1969, AHMM)
- “Dead Man’s Passage” (January 1970, MSMM)
- “Little Man With The Big Mouth” (February 1970, MSMM)
- “A Trip to the Islands” (February 1971, MSMM)
- “Murder on Lazy River” (May 1971Â MSMM)
- “Pied Piper Calling” (February 1972, MSMM)
- “Escape Me Never” (June 1973, MSMM)
- “The Mafia and the Specialist” (March 1974, MSMM)
- “Storm und Drang” (March 1975, MSMM)
- “Compliments of Johnny Hawk” (January 1976, MSMM)
- “Johnny Hawk and the Big Man” (November 1976, Mystery Monthly)
