Created by Bob Shields
Not exactly a private eye, maybe, but nobody bothered to tell former baseball jock turned night-time radio broadcaster and full-time shit magnet DUKE VALENTINE that. He wades into all sorts of murder and malicious mayhem in at least five stories in the short-lived and sleazy digest Off Beat Detective Stories in the early sixties. There may have been more.
I say that because while Valentine was never featured as the cover story, he always made his way to a cover mention, and the stories were always the lead-offs in each issue. Also, his “first” appearance in Off Beat (July 1960) boasted a two-line, above-the-masthead come-on, “Blazing New Duke Valentine/Drive the Knife Deep! by Bob Shields” spread across the top of the cover, suggesting readers may have already been familiar with the character.
Or maybe not.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I couldn’t find out much about Bob Shields (it may have been a house pseudonym), but he’s credited with a dozen or so stories in the sleazier, bottom-tier digests of the late fifties/early sixties, including Shock Mystery Tales Magazine, Sure-Fire Detective Stories, Off Beat Detective Stories, Two-Fisted Detective Stories and Saturn Web Detective Story Magazine. Stories regularly featured scenes of bondage, rape, torture and “creamy white thighs.”
SHORT STORIES
- “Drive the Knife Deep!” (July 1960, Off Beat Detective Stories)
- “Frame Me in Satin!” (September 1960, Off Beat Detective Stories)
- “Bribe Me with Lust!” (November 1960, Off Beat Detective Stories)
- “Mistress of Madness!” ( January 1961, Off Beat Detective Stories)
- “Blond Bombshell!” (March 1961, Off Beat Detective Stories)
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
