Red Drake

Created by W.T. Ballard (Willis Todhunter Ballard)
Pseudonyms include P. D. Ballard, Harrison Hunt, Neil MacNeil, John Shepherd
(1903-80)

With Black Mask editor Cap Shaw buying every Bill Lennox story W.T. Ballard submitted,  Shaw’s boss, Phil Cody, urged him to lay off Lennox for a while. So Shaw suggested Ballard cook up another series character.

The result was RED DRAKE,  a hard-boiled (of course) race course detective (shades of Dick Francis!), who worked, occasionally undercover, for the state racing commission. He’s got a sharp eye for gambling irregularities, be it horses, numbers or poker, boasting at one point that he was “raised with a deck of cards.”

Drake ended up appearing in seven stories in Black Mask, and another eighteen in various other pulps, mostly Crime Busters and Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine–not bad for a stop-gap character.

SHORT STORIES

• “You Never Know About Women” (October 1935, Black Mask)
• “After Breakfast” (December 1935, Black Mask)
• “Blood on the Moon” (April 1936, Black Mask)
• “Fugitive for Justice” (August 1936, Black Mask)
• “A Ride in the Rain” (October 1936, Black Mask)
• “Call a Dead Man” (May 1937, Black Mask)
• “Only Proof Counts” (December 1937, Black Mask)
• “Drake Deals Death” (October 1938, Crime Busters)
• “Tickets for Murder” (February 1939, Crime Busters)
• “Suicide for Killers” (April 1939, Crime Busters)
• “Wise Girl” (May 1939, Crime Busters)
• “Blind Date with Death” (August 1939, Crime Busters)
• “Woman’s Work” (November 1939, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “Murders Aren’t Nice” (February 1940, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “Odds on Death” (April 1940, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “I Stole a Horse” (June 1940, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “Wired for Death” (November 1940, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “You Can’t Forget Murder” (March 1941, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “Flames of Death” (July 1941, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “Men with Guns” (January 1942, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “A Toast to Crime” (May 1942, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “Death Wears a Horseshoe” ( September 1942, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “A Horse on Death” (January 1943, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “Death Rides Iron Horses” (May 1943, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
• “New Orleans Limited” (October 1943, The Shadow)

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.