George Harmon Coxe

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(1901-1984)

George Harmon Coxe was a journalist, prolific pulp writer, and novelist; an early star of hard boiled crime fiction, and one of Cap Shaw‘s beloved Black Mask Boys.

In a long and prolific career, Coxe put his name to over sixty novels, the last being published in 1975, and hundreds of short stories. His work was adapted for film, radio, television, omics and even a play, and was associated with MGM for a while as a writer. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and he won the Grand Master Award in 1964.

Unfortunately, his name and literary work have drifted into the passages of time and remains largely (and undeservedly) forgotten.

Coxe (pronounced like “cokes”) was born in Olean, New York in 1901. He graduated high school at Elmire Free Academy, attended Purdue for one year following his graduation and shifted his curriculum from engineering to literature, and moved on to Cornell University. For “four or five years”, beginning in 1922, he was a journalist in California, Florida and New York for the Los Angeles Express, the Utica Observer Dispatch, and Santa Monica Outlook, among others.

An admirer of pulp fiction, Coxe — while working his day job at various papers — began writing for them. It was nickel-and-dime stuff, and to maximize his earnings, he initially wrote in many genres, including romance, sports and adventure. But he was especially fond of crime fiction and soon made it his specialty — at the ripe old age of twenty-one.

And he was off! By 1923, Coxe had already sold two stories to Detective Story Magazine, and by the thirties, he was cranking them out regularly for Street & Smith’s Top-Notch, as well as Clues All Star Detective Stories, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, Thrilling Detective, and Argosy.

He would go on to write hundreds more, but his breakthrough came in 1934, when he cracked the Black Mask market for the first time, with “Return Engagement” appearing in the March 1934 issue.

Leaning heavily on Coxe’s background in journalism, the story introduced newspaper photographer Jack “Flashgun” Casey, and it was an almost immediate hit. There had been previous pulp appearances of newspaper reporters who routinely solved crimes, but nobody had tried casting a photographer as the detective. Initially, Black Mask editor “Joseph “Cap Shaw had discouraged Coxe from creating a recurring character, but he later admitted that the character was so well constructed that the series soon became a reader favorite. In fact, Shaw chose the Casey story, “Murder Mixup,” for inclusion in his now-legendary Hard Boiled Omnibus (1946).

A total of twenty-four Flashgun Casey stories eventually appeared in Black Mask, running from 1934-1943, while a final story, “The Man Who Died Too Soon,” made its way into Star Weekly in 1962.

Some of the Black Mask stories were eventually collected in a 1946 Avon paperback Flash Casey, Detective published in 1946 as an Avon paperback. In addition to the short stories, there were five novels starring Flashgun Casey between 1942 through 1964. Those were Silent for the Dead, Murder for Two, Error of Judgment, The Man Who Died Too Soon, and Deadly Image.

Additionally, a couple of films based on Casey were released, Women are Trouble (1936) and Here’s Flash Casey (1938), although fans of the hard-boiled Black Mask Casey may have been disappointed. Still, a well-respected, much-loved radio show was broadcast for years starring the Staats Cotsworth as Caseyc. Also, between 1951 through 1952, the series was adapted to a TV show titled Crime Photographer and starred Darren McGavin.

Another pulp character that Coxe created was Paul Baron, a hard-boiled private detective who was assisted by a scrappy side kick named Buck O’ Shea. Baron appeared in four stories in Black Mask in 1936.

But Coxe quickly saw a future beyond the pulps, and heady with the success of the Flashgun stories, promptly whipped up Kent Murdoch, who became his other best known character. A cleaned-up version of Flashgun, Murdoch was also a photographer for a Boston paper, but whereas Casey was decidedly rough-and-tumble, Murdock was more polished, more urbane and infinitely more suited, Coxe felt, for the more profitable novel market. Murdock did appear in a few stories in the slicks, but he truly flourished in full-length novels — both in hardcover and paperback. The first Murdoch novel was Murder with Pictures, published in 1935, little more than a year after the first Flashgun. 22 more followed.

In Paperback Confidential, Brian Ritt describes Kent Murdoch as being a smarter version of the Flashgun Casey series. Murdoch has a formal education, he’s sophisticated and well-mannered. He’s married to a woman named Joyce and they work as a team solving crimes in Boston’s upper crust. In the Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes, Jess Nevins summarizes the character as a photographer for the Boston Courier-Herald. Because he is more intelligent than the police he can solve the crimes. However, many times he has to clear his own name after being accused of being a participant in the crime. Murdoch’s wife Joyce plays a prominent role in the first six books and then disappears for the rest of the series. Murdoch also teams up with a hardboiled private-eye in this series named Jack Fenner. This Fenner sidekick would star in his own novels as well.

Another pulp character that Coxe created was Dr. Paul Standish, who appeared in ten stories and one novel from 1942 to 1966. The stories appeared in glossy magazines like Cosmopolitan, Liberty, and the American Magazine. Standish was a medical examiner who delved into mysterious deaths. He was aided by a police lieutenant and a nurse secretary. In July, 1948, CBS ran a short-lived radio broadcast starring the character.

Coxe, while succeeding with amateur detective characters like Standish, had a few other professional detectives in his arsenal.

Private eye Max Hale appeared in Murder for the Asking (1939) and The Lady is Afraid (1940). Hale was a wealthy New Yorker who attended the State Police Academy and then just doesn’t have any motivation to solve crimes. He is sort of roped into crime-solving by his secretary Sue Marshall.

Another private investigator, Sam Crombie, appeared in two novels, The Frightened Fiancée (1950) and The Impetuous Mistress (1958).

Coxe also wrote a number of stand-alone thrillers and mysteries that were published by a variety of publishers in both hardcover and paperback, with many of them set in exotic tropical locations, including Cuba, Barbados, Panama, Guyana, Trinidad, Caracas,  and Manila. In the 1930s, Cox’s writing had become so popular that MGM took notice. They hired Coxe between 1936 until 1938 to write screenplays. However, Coxe preferred writing books and stories, and so he kept at it.

It was a wise decision. Always more interested in character development than a clever plot twist (although he had plenty of them in his work), Coxe was at home in novel-writing.

In the March 11, 1971 issue of The Island Packet, Eugene Able interviewed Coxe and he had this to say about his literary work and career:

“When you get my age and have written as many book and stories as I have, you have to be careful not to be repetitive. I like to write a book that has a good story with believable characters. If a reader figures out the mystery halfway through the book, I want the story to be good enough and the characters real enough to make them want to finish it. The trickier you get with your ending, the more you sacrifice the story.”

Coxe had married Elizabeth Fowler in 1929 and they were wed until his death on January 31, 1984 in Old Lyme, Connecticut, survived by Elizabeth, their two children and an impressive body of work.

   

UNDER OATH

  • “… one of the most consistently entertaining of the hardboiled mystery novelists.”
    — James M. Reasoner
  • “Coxe is one of the most reliable writers of his era, from the hard-boiled exploits of Flash Casey to his long much more mainstream Murdoch and Fenner series and several quite good suspense novels written along adventure or international intrigue lines… I’ve always ranked Coxe with Brett Halliday and Frank Gruber as above mid-list writers who created their own niche just outside of the hard-boiled field not quite on the level of Gardner but in the same general ballpark… Coxe isn’t always brilliant, but he is generally better and more entertaining than just reliable, and he was still turning out good books later in his long career.”
    — David Vineyard (July 2018, Mystery•File)
  • “[Coxe is] among the superior writers of mystery fiction.”
    — Rochester Journal
  • “Coxes heroes are people who stick up for each other, easily inspire trust and confidence, and who are maybe just a little bit soft at heart.”
    — Mystery Fancier

SHORT STORIES & NOVELLAS (Partial)

  • “No Provisions for Picnics” (April 1, 1922, Detective Story Magazine)
  • “Timed to a T” (April 21, 1923, Detective Story Magazine)
  • “Hot Hunches, (ss)  February 1933, Clues All Star Detective Stories)
  • “Mad Masquerade” (April 1933, Clues All Star Detective Stories)
  • “Murder at Eight” (May 1933, Dime Mystery Book Magazine)
  • “Ahead of Head” (May 10 1933, Detective Story Magazine)
  • “Fifteen a Week” (June 10 1933, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “Counter-Evidence” (June 24 1933, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “Invited Witness” (August 1933, Dime Mystery Book Magazine)
  • “Planned Luck” (September 30 1933, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “Material Witness” (October 28 1933, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “Slay Ride” (November 1, 1933, Dime Detective)
  • “The Last Witness” (December 9 1933, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “The Perfect Frame” (December 1933, Thrilling Detective)
  • “Psychology Stuff” (February 1934, Thrilling Detective)
  • “The Missing Man” (March 1934, Phantom Detective)
  • “Return Engagement” (March 1934, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Clip Killer” (April 1 1934, Dime Detective)
  • “One for the Book” (April 1934, Thrilling Detective)
  • “Special Assignment” (April 1934, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Jailed” (May 1934, Thrilling Detective)
  • “Solo!” (May 1934, Clues)
  • “Two-Man Job” (May 1934, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Push-Over” (June 1934, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Final Appeal” (July 7 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “Hot Delivery” (July 1934, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Party Murder” (July 14 1934, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “One-Buck Pay-Off” (July 15 1934, Dime Detective)
  • “Mixed Drinks” (August 1934, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Pinch-Hitters” (September 1934, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “The Flaming Shadow” (October 1 1934, Dime Detective)
  • “Evened Up” (November 1934, ThrillingDetective)
  • “The Murder Schedule” (November 1934, Clues)
  • “The Black Box” (December 1934, Phantom Detective)
  • “When a Cop’s a Good Cop” (December 1934, Mystery)
  • “Greed Crazy” (January 5 1935, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “Murder Picture” (January 1935, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Casey—Detective” (February 1935, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “The Murder Bridge” (February 1935, ThrillingDetective)
  • “Soft Assignment” (February 23 1935, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “Earned Reward” (March 1935, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Hot Assignment” (March 1935, Clues Detective Stories)
  • “Earned Reward” (March 1935, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Women Are Trouble” (April 1935, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Murder Date” (May 1 1935, Dime Detective)
  • “The Seventy Grand Bulle” (June 1 1935, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “Thirty Tickets to Win” (June 1935, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “When a Lady’s Involved” (June 1935, Mystery)
  • “Murder Set-Up” (July 6 1935, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “Buried Evidence” (July 1935, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Murder Debt” (September 1935, ThrillingDetective)
  • “Mr. Casey Flashgun’s Murder” (October 1935, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Murder Touch” (November 9 1935, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “The Dead Can’t Hide” (November 23 1935, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “Going My Way?” (January 1936, The Elks Magazine)
  • “Portrait of Murder” (February 1936, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “You Gotta Be Tough” (March 1936, Black Mask; Paul Baron)
  • “Letters Are Poison” (April 1936, Black Mask; Paul Baron)
  • “Murder Mixup” (May 1936, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Fall Guy” (June 1936, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Trouble for Two” (July 1936, Black Mask; Paul Baron)
  • “Head-Work Payoff, (ss) Ten Detective Aces August 1936, Ten Detectives)
  • “Hell’s Siphon, (ss) Headquarters Detective September 1936, Headquarters)
  • “Too Many Women” (September 1936, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Double or Nothing” (November 1936, Black Mask; Paul Baron)
  • “The Camera Clue” (February 1937, The American Magazine; Kent Murdock)
  • “Peril Afloat, (nv) Thrilling Detective July 1937, ThrillingDetective)
  • “Masquerader” (July 24 1937, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “A Corpse for an Alibi,” (October 1937, Special Detective)
  • “The Fatal Film” (November 26 1938, The Thriller Library #512)
  • “Casey and the Blonde Wren” (August 1940, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Observe and Remember” (1941; reprinted in January 1948, EQMM)
  • “Once Around the Clock” (May 1941, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Killers Are Camera Shy” (September 1941, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Boy, Are You Lucky” (November 29 1941, Liberty)
  • “Murder in the Red” (June 1942, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “The Fourth Visitor” (August 1942, Cosmopolitan; Dr. Paul Standish)
  • “The Doctor Makes It Murder” (September 1942, Cosmopolitan; Dr. Paul Standish)
  • “Blood on the Lens (Part One)” (January 1943, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Blood on the Lens (Part Two)” (February 1943, Black Mask; Flashgun Casey)
  • “Secret Payment” (March 1943, New Detective)
  • “Alias the Killer” (Collier’s August 26 1944, Colliers)
  • “Murder Makes a Difference” (1945, Liberty)
  • “The Painted Nail” (May 5 1945, Liberty; Dr. Paul Standish)
  • “The Canary Sang” (October 1945, Mystery Book; Dr. Paul Standish)
  • “The Unloved Corpse, (ss) Mystery Book Magazine December 1945
  • “Three Guesses to Guilt” (March 1946, Mystery Book)
  • “Cause for Suspicion” (February 1, 1947, Liberty; Dr. Paul Standish)
  • “Speak No Evil” (June 1947, The American Magazine; aka “Seed of Suspicion;” Kent Murdock)
  • “Death Certificate” (December 1947, Liberty); Dr. Paul Standish)
  • “No Loose Ends” (July 1948, Liberty)
  • “Circumstantial Evidence” (September 1949, Liberty; Dr. Paul Standish)
  • “Black Target” (March 1951, The American Magazine; Dr. Paul Standish)
  • “When a Wife Is Murdered” (February 1958, EQMM)
  • “Two Minute Alibi” (August 1958, EQMM)
  • “A Routine Night’s Work” (November 1958, EQMM)
  • “There’s Still Tomorrow” (October 1959, EQMM)
  • “A Neat and Tidy Job” (October 1960, EQMM)
  • “The Man Who Died Too Soon” (March 10, 1962, Star Weekly; Flashgun Casey)

NOVELS

COLLECTIONS

FILMS

  • WOMEN ARE TROUBLE
    (1936, MGM)
    60 minutes, more or less
    Premiere: July 31, 1936
    Based on characters created by George Harmon Coxe
    Screenplay by Michael Fessier
    Director: Errol Taggart
    Cinematography: Oliver T. Marsh
    Produced by Michael Fessier,  Lucien Hubbard
    Starring Florence Rice as RUTH NOLEN
    and Stuart Erwin as MATT CASEY
    This fun but hardly essential B-flick took some major liberties with the source material, making feisty young reporter Ruth the heroine, and transforming fellow reporter “Matt Casey” into a  harmless doofus of a co-worker.
  • MURDER WITH PICTURES | Buy the DVD | Watch it now!
    (1936, Paramount Pictures)
    Written by George Harmon Coxe,  Jack Moffitt, Sidney Salkow
    Cinematography: Ted Tetzlaff
    Director: Charles Barton
    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
  • HERE’S FLASH CASEY | Buy the Blu-Ray
    (aka “Meet Flash Casey”)
    (1937, Grand National)
    Premiere: January 7, 1938
    Based on the short story “Return Engagement” by George Harmon Coxe
    Screenplay by John Kraft
    Directed by Lynn Shores
    Starring Eric Linden as FLASHGUN CASEY
    and Cully Richards as Wade
    Also starring Boots Mallory, Holmes Herbert, Joseph Crehan, Howard Lang, Victor Adams, Harry Harvey, Suzanne Kaaren, Matty Kemp, Dorothy Vaughan, Maynard Holmes
    This is a bit more like it. Flashgun Casey is Flashgun Casey (more or less), even if they insist on calling him “Flash.”

RADIO

  • FLASHGUN CASEY
    (aka “Casey, Press Photographer,” “Crime Photographer,” “Casey, Crime Photographer”) 
    (1943-1955, CBS)
    Written by Alonzo Dean Cole (with some help from Coxe)
    Directed by Alonzo Dean Cole
    Produced by Alonzo Dean Cole
    Starring Staats Cotsworth as FLASHGUN CASEY
    With Jan Miner as Ann Williams
    and John Gibson as Ethelbert

TELEVISION

  • Darren McGavin as Casey.

    CASEY, CRIME PHOTOGRAPHER
    (1951-52, CBS)
    53 30-minute episodes
    Premiere: April 19, 1951
    Broadcast live from New York City
    Based on the stories by George Harmon Coxe
    Writers: James P. Cavanagh, Ben Radin, Alvin Sapinsley, Carol Warner Gluck, Harry W. Junkin, Edmund Morris, Alonzo Deen Cole, Max Ehrlich, Raphael Hayes, Gail Ingram, Harry Ingram, Harry Kurnitz, Sheldon Reynolds, Robert J. Shaw, John T. Chapman, Nelson Gidding
    Directors: Curt Conway, Sidney Lumet
    Music: Morton Gould
    Producers: Charles Russell, Martin Manulis
    Starring Richard Carlyle as FLASHGUN CASEY (April-June 1951)
    with John Gibson as Ethelbert (April-June 1951)
    Also Darren McGavin as FLASHGUN CASEY (June 1951-1952)
    with Cliff Hall as Ethelbert (June 1951-June 1952)
    Also starring Jan Miner as Ann Williams
    Donald McClelland as Captain Logan
    And Archie Smith as Jack Lipman
    with The Tony Mottola Trio as The Blue Note Cafe Musicians

COMICS

  • CASEY — CRIME PHOTOGRAPHER
    (1949-1950, TimelyPublications)
    Four issues
    Artists: Vern Henkel
    Editor: Stan Lee
    Tie-in to radio show, featured photo-covers of Staats Cotsworth, who played Casey on the radio show. But after four issues, Marvel changed the title and theme of the comic book to Two-Gun Western.
  • FOUR FRIGHTENED WOMEN | Buy this book | Take a peek
    (1950, Dell)
    Based on the novel by George Harmon Coxe
    Art by Robert Stanley
    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.

AUDIO CDS

  • Casey, Crime Photographer Collection: Snapshots of Mystery (2012) | Buy this set
    This Radio Spirits collection rounds up 16 tales from the show’s long, long run.
  • Cox, J. Randolph, & David Siegal
    Flashgun Casey, Crime Photographer: From the Pulps to Radio & Beyond     | Buy this book
    (Bear Manor Media, 2011)
    An exhaustive deep-dive into the world of Casey, featuring extensive (and detailed) listings of every one of his appearances in the fiction, radio, film, television and beyond.

REFERENCE

  • “Mystery Master: A Survey and Appreciation of the Fiction of George Harmon Coxe”
    J. Randolph Cox (no relation) digs deep. Very deep. (February, May, August 1973, Armchair Detective)
  • Cox, J. Randolph, & David Siegal,
    Flashgun Casey, Crime Photographer: From the Pulps to Radio & Beyond     | Buy this book
    (Bear Manor Media, 2011)
    Cox again, this time co-autoring this impressively exhaustive deep-dive into the world of Casey, featuring extensive (and detailed) listings of every one of his appearances in the fiction, radio, film, television and beyond.

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Eric Compton of The Paperback Warrior, with a little tweaking and additional info by Kevin Burton Smith.

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