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Frederick Nebel

kevinburtonsmith

Pseudonyms include Grimes Hill, Lewis Nebel & Eric Lewis
(1903-1966)

He was born LOUIS FREDERICK NEBEL on November 3, 1903. He dropped out of high school at fifteen, allegedly after only one day of classes. He worked the docks and checked cars. He became a valet and, in some versions of his biography, a sailor on a tramp steamer.

After his stint on the New York docks, Nebel moved to Canada to work on a relative’s farm and fell in love with the wilderness, and fascinated with Canadian history.

He returned to New York, and took a job as a brakeman on passenger trains, and started writing in his spare time, his experiences in Canada giving him a leg up. He began selling tales of the Great White North to Northwest Stories, beginning in 1925. He wrote under his own name, as well as such pseudonyms as Grimes Hill and Eric Lewis.

Soon enough, Nebel applied his blue-collar work ethic to the typewriter. Encouraged by his early success, he began cranking them out with the regularity of an assembly-line, penning up to five thousand words a day, and at one point  keeping five to six series going at the same time. Not bad for a Staten Island kid who had bounced around from job to job and place to place for the early part of his life.

Nebel wrote and wrote, and then he wrote some more. He pounded out tales about rugged adventurers, cowboys and Mounties for such pulps as Action Stories and North West Stories. He eventually turned to crime, and sold his first crime story to Black Mask in 1926, just a few years after Dashiell Hammett (who later became a friend) and Carroll John Daly. Nebel became a charter member of the Black Mask school, the group of writers who worked for that magazine and championed the hard-boiled detective noir style of the 1920s.

Nebel created the Kennedy and MacBride stories for Black Mask, beginning in 1928 — MacBride the cop and Kennedy the hard-drinking reporter of The Free Press, both investigating crime in the corrupt Richmond City.

Around this time, Nebel had met a woman named Dorothy Blank in Paris. She was from St. Louis, and so when they married in 1930, the couple settled in St. Louis, where much of Nebel’s crime and detective fiction is set.

Next up he began yet another series for Black Mask, featuring “Tough Dick” Donahue, of the Inter-State Detective Agency. Donahue was very much in the Black Mask style–a hard, cold operator, very much reminiscent of his buddy Hammett’s Continental Op.

But Nebel wasn’t done– soon after he started a series for Black Mask‘s rival, Dime Detective. For that magazine, he created Cardigan —a similiarly tough Irish detective, who worked for the Cosmos Decetive Agency.  

Meanwhile, Nebel sold the rights to MacBride and Kennedy to Warner Brothers in the 1930’s, but had nothing to do with the adaptations. Perhaps it’s just as well. Somewhere along the line, skinny, drunk-as-a-skunk Kennedy became a wisecracking newswoman, Torchy Blane, and MacBride the object of her affections. Nine films were made in the series.

When pressed about it, Nebel would respond, “Hell, they always change the stuff around. But I don’t mind–as long as I don’t have to make the changes.”

In 1934, Nebel and Dorothy had moved from St. Louis to Connecticut. He hired a new agent and started selling to slick magazines. In 1937, he and Dorothy had a son, Christopher. That same year, Nebel gave up selling to the pulps entirely, and began writing for slick magazines such as Collier’s, and novels: the suspense tales Sleeper’s East (1933) and Fifty Roads to Town (1934), and But Not The End (1936), set in Depression-era New York City.

They stayed in Connecticut until the late 1950s. Then he became painfully ill, so he and Dorothy packed up and moved to Laguna Beach, Calif. Suffering from chronic high blood pressure, his health continued to go downhill. He stopped writing by the mid-1960s. He suffered a stroke in late April 1967 and died on May 3.

One critic notes that Nebel’s work can be divided into two periods: before 1933 and after. Before 1933, he wrote about tough, loner detectives who were up against trouble. After 1933, his stories featured more of a support network — secretaries, reporters, cops and sources.

Maybe marriage made him realize the value of companionship. One thing is certain: while Nebel’s work is not as well known as his buddy Hammett, and while much of his early work has not been reprinted (until recently–editor), he deserves to be read and re-read as a hero of pulpdom.

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Nebel sold the rights to Kennedy & MacBride to Warner Brothers in the 1930’s, but had nothing to do with the adaptations. Some would argue that it was just as well. Because somewhere along the line, skinny, drunk-as-a-skunk Kennedy became a sassy, sexy, wisecracking newswoman, Torchy Blane, and MacBride became the befuddled object of her affections. Nine films were made in the series. On their own terms, the films are kinda fun. When pressed about it, Nebel would respond, “hell, they always change the stuff around. but i don’t mind–as long as i don’t have to make the changes.”

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Respectfully submitted by Hugh Lessig. Additional material by Kevin Burton Smith.
For this short sketch, Hugh says “I am indebted to Katherine Harper, an English professor at Bowling Green State University and the excellent analyses offered at the Pulp Mystery Adventure Web Site (now defunct), the anthology Hard-Boiled, edited by Bill Prozini and Jack Adrian Robert Weinberg’s essay “Cardigan,” found in The Adventures of Cardigan (1988,The Mysterious Press).”

 

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