Black

Created by Paul Cain
Pseudonym of George Caryl Sims
Other pseudonyms include Peter Ruric
(1902-66)

Tough, hard and cold, private dick BLACK popped up in Black Mask in the thirties. New York City-based, he was caught up in some shady shenanigans a few years earlier, but he’s doing quite well now, “keeping people out. of trouble, not getting them into it.”

Black is his last name; he’s not given any first name in the stories. Not like there were a ton of them — Black only appeared in two: the eponymously titled “Black”in the May 1932 issue, and “Trouble-Chaser” a few years later in April 1934.

But he’s well worth meeting; a prime slice of  hard-boiled fiction that Black Mask excelled in.

Like Dashiell Hammett, there’s that same spare, dispassionate tone in Cain’s work, with events  narrated in a flat, dispassionate manner. Likewise, the detective is cold as an ice truck; a lean, mean detecting machine. He even gets involved in a gang dispute in “Black”, playing both sides against each other, just like The Continental Op in Red Harvest.

As with all Cain’s stories, they’re masterpiece of a “stripped-down prose style that makes… Ernest Hemingway look flowery and… Andrew Vachss seem somehow overblown,” according to Jack Adrian in Hard-Boiled.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In his short literary career, Paul Cain (real name: George Sims) only wrote seventeen or so short stories, all for Black Mask. Five of them were combined to make his one and only novel, Fast One, pretty much a hard-boiled classic, and seven others were collected for his one collection, Seven Slayers. In that small but powerful body of work were even a few private eye tales, most notably the two featuring Black. As George Ruric, he worked as a production assistant and as Peter Ruric as a screenwriter in the thirties and forties, scripting Gambling Ship (allegedly “derived” from Fast One), The Black Cat, Affairs of a Gentleman, Dark Sands, Twelve Crowded Hours, The Night of January 16, Alias A Gentleman, Mademoiselle Fiji and Grand Central Murder.

And if that’s not enough trivia for you, it turns out that Cain may have been the one who suggested that actress Myrna Adele Williams change her name to Myrna Loy, apparently drawing his inspiration from a modernist poet named Mina Loy.

SHORT STORIES

• “Black” (May 1932, Black Mask)
• “Trouble-Chaser” (April 1934, Black Mask)

COLLECTIONS

• Seven Slayers (1946) | Buy this book
  Seven stories, including “Black.”
• The Complete Slayers (2012) | Buy this book
  Long-delayed collection co-edited by Lynn Myers and Max Alan Collins, that greatly expanded 1946’s Seven Slayers , featuring Cain’s sole novel, Fast One, and all Cain’s short fiction written for Black Mask and other pulps. Includes both stories featuring Black, and intros to each story by some of the then-current big shots of crime fiction. And me of all people, probably there to cleanse the palate.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.