Kent Murdock

Created by George Harmon Coxe
(1901-84)

KENT MURDOCK  was a refined, cleaned-up version of author Coxe’s rumpled, fast-talking crime photographer, Flashgun Casey, who appeared in the pages of Black Mask and several novels.

In fact, Murdock was whipped up by Coxe explicitly to the much more lucrative book market less than a year after the first Flashgun story.

Where Flashgun was a big, hot-tempered Boston Mick with a gift for gab and a nose for trouble, given to drink and fisticuffs, Kent of the Boston Courier-Herald was more mature, more professional; urbane and sophisticated.

Respectable, like. The adult in the room. And after a few novels (a suitable amount of time) even married!

His wife, Joyce, often teamed up with him to solve cases, mostly in the Boston area, often involving Beacon Hill types — most notably, perhaps, in Mrs. Murdock Takes a Case (1941).

My guess? Coxe was hoping to cut himself in on some of that big buck Nick and Nora action. Both the novel by Hammett and especially the subsequent film franchise were all the rage at the time. It didn’t quite click, though — after Mrs. Murdock Takes the Case, she pretty much vanished from the series.

Not that Coxe had left the rough-and-tumble pulps behind entirely…

Popping up in about half the novels to lend a hand was Jack Fenner, a local private eye with more than a few rough edges. And Murdock returned the favor, showing up in Fenner (1971) and numerous other entries in the series. In fact, I’m not even sure which books are Fenner books and which are Murdock books at times.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Coxe created a slew of other private eye and private eye-adjacent detectives, including Sam Crombie, Max Hale, Paul Baron, and Leon Morley, but he’s best known for his two crime photographers/amateur sleuths, Flashgun Casey and Kent Murdock, who are basically private eyes with cameras.

UNDER OATH

• “Murdock can be as hard-boiled as anybody, but he does not find it necessary to prove his hard-boiledness.”
  — The New York Times

 

NOVELS

1. Murder With Pictures (1935; with Jack Fenner) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
2. The Barotique Mystery (1936)
3. The Camera Clue (1937; with Jack Fenner) | Buy this book
4. Four Frightened Women (1939; with Jack Fenner) | Buy this book
5. The Glass Triangle (1940; with Jack Fenner) | Buy this book
6. Mrs. Murdock Takes a Case (1941) | Buy this book
7. The Charred Witness (1942; with Jack Fenner) | Buy this book
8. The Jade Venus (1945) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
9. The Fifth Key (1947) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
10. The Hollow Needle (1948) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
11. Lady Killer (1949) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
12. Eye Witness (1949) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
13. The Widow Had a Gun (1951) | Buy this book
14. The Crimson Clue (1953) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
15. Focus on Murder (1954) | Buy this book 
16. Murder on Their Minds (1957) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
17. The Big Gamble (1958) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
18. The Last Commandment (1960; with Jack Fenner) | Buy this book
19. The Hidden Key (1963; with Jack Fenner) | Buy this book
20. The Reluctant Heiress (1965; with Jack Fenner)
21. An Easy Way to Go (1969; with Jack Fenner) | Buy this book
22. Fenner (1971; with Jack Fenner) | Buy this book
23. The Silent Witness (1973; with Jack Fenner) | Buy this book

COLLECTIONS

• Triple Exposure (1959)| Buy this book
  Contains the Murdock novels The Glass Triangle, The Jade Venus, and The Fifth Key.

SHORT STORIES

• “Speak No Evil’ ( (June 1947, The American Magazine; aka “Seed of Suspicion”)

FILMS

• MURDER WITH PICTURES | Buy the DVD | Watch it now!
  (1936, Paramount Pictures)
  Premiere:  September 25, 1936
  Based on characters created by George Harmon Coxe
  and a story by Jack Moffitt
  Screenplay by George Harmon Coxe and Sidney Salkow
  Director: Charles Barton
  Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff
  Starring Lew Ayres as KENT MURDOCK
  Also starring Irving Bacon, Benny Baker, Joyce Compton, Ernest Cossart, Paul Kelly, Anthony Nace, Gail Patrick, Joe Sawyer, Onslow Stevens

COMICS

• FOUR FRIGHTENED WOMEN | Buy this book | Take a peek
  (1950, Dell)
  Based on the novel by George Harmon Coxe
  Cover art by Robert Stanley
  Interior art and adaptation: Unknown
  Touted by some as “the very first graphic novel,” it was part of an ambitious plan by Dell for a series of digest-sized comic books that unfortunately never really caught on. The cover boasted “Over 500 vivid-color pictures tell the story!” Those pictures were drawn by Robert Stanley, best known for his work on Dell’s Mapback line.

COLLECTORS NOTE

• The 1943 Dell reprint of the Kent Murdock/Jack Fenner novel Four Frightened Women (Dell #5 to be exact) was the very first Dell “mapback,” with a front cover by Gerald Gregg and of course a map on the back. So you can imagine how much collectors will cough up for one in mint condition.

COLLECTORS NOTE (POST SCRIPT)

• You can’t have my copy.

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• Ah, Boston, You’re My Home
  Beantown Eyes
• Stop the Presses!
  Reporters, Journalists and Other Newshawks
• My Scrapbook:  Kent Murdock Murder Mystery
  TOLD IN PICTURES

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. And thanks to Glen Davis for a word to the wise.