Mick Cardby

Created by David Hume
Pseudonym of J. V. Turner
Other pseudonyms include Nicholas Brady
(1905-1945)

An exasperated and disappointed Detective Inspector Cardby of Scotland Yard must have wondered “Where did I go wrong?”

That’s because his son MICK CARDBY decided he’d rather earn a living as a private investigator, rather than joining the police department like dear old Dad.

It probably didn’t ease the Inspector’s mind that twenty-something Mick — perhaps taking his cue from the crime fiction wafting in from across the pond — was a rather hard-boiled shamus at that, frequently matching wits against the seedier elements of society, with many of his cases involving gangsters, extortionists and kidnappers.

In fact, in a fascinating post, Bear Alley‘s Steve has argued that

“I’m not 100% certain, but Hume’s Mick Cardby novels might be the first to feature a hard-boiled British private detective. Not the first British hard-boiled stories: Hugh Clevely, John G. Brandon, John Hunter and Edgar Wallace had already featured gangs and gangsters in London; nor the first British private detective of which there had been countless examples; he wasn’t the first fist-swinging crime solver, either, but Mick may have been the first bonafide British private eye fighting gangs and gunmen in the UK.”

Hard-boiled? Sure. Mick’s a bit of a bruiser; a “fuck-around-and-find-out” kind of detective, reminiscent of his American counterparts, like those of Cleve Adams. But there’s also a decidedly British twist or two, notably the reliance on powerful but mysterious master criminal masterminds, à la Moriarty, as antagonists, lurking behind the scenes as the heart of all evil, and Mick seems surprisingly cooperative with the police, frequently working hand in hand with them and his father. There are also plenty of close calls and Gee-whiz! narrow escapes that could have come straight out of a Boys Adventure Annual.

Nonetheless, Mick and his father bickered and bantered through twenty-eight fast-paced novels, with the old man finally relenting in later books, and actually joining his son’s agency, retitled Cardby & Son,  after his retirement from the Yard.

The books, by prolific British writer David Hume, were popular enough back then to inspire three film adaptations. Both Crime Unlimited (1935) and Too Dangerous to Live (1939) were based on Hume’s 1933 novel Crime Unlimited, although Cardby doesn’t appear in either film. In the former film, Mick is called Pete Borden and is a young police officer, while in the latter, at least he’s a private eye, but for some reason his name is Jacques LeClerc. Inspector Cardby is in both, but there’s no father/son connection. 1941’s This Man Is Dangerous (it’s title nicked from a Lemmy Caution novel) is based on Hume’s 1934 novel They Called Him Death, and features a young James Mason as… Mick Cardby, and the father/son dynamic is finally restored.

All three films seem to be decent enough, with the last film generally considered the best of the lot, although the American magazine Photoplay pretty much savaged it., “Seeing as how (James Mason) is now is a big name in the movie game, over comes this picture to show American audiences how he used to look. It’s not much of a film…,” they wrote. “The thrills-and-chills touch flops completely.”

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