From The Great Detectives by Otto Penzler
The following piece came from Otto Penzler‘s fascinating 1978 book The Great Detectives. Like the blurb on the cover of my battered paperback copy says, “The world’s most celebrated sleuths unmasked by their creators,” and sure enough there are interviews and conversations with twenty-six of them here, with everyone from Chester Gould discussing Dick Tracy to Ed McBain spilling the beans on the 87th Precinct. Private eye fans will lap up behind-the-scene profiles of Lew Archer, Flashgun Casey, Duncan Maclain, Elvis Cole, and Mike Shayne by their creators.
The following profile seems to have been written by the author around 1977.
Flashgun Casey by George Harmon Coxe
I think JACK (FLASHGUN) CASEY might be surprised to find himself included in a volume listing the names and exploits of well-known, perhaps even famous, fictional detectives. That he often found himself involved in a murder case and just as frequently happened to be around at its conclusion, that he was able to contribute something important to the often violent solution of such cases, needs little explanation since his job as a top press photographer took him where the action was and the camera he carried was in itself an instrument of detection.
Casey’s vital statistics and background remain obscure. I’m not sure of his birthplace but I suspect it was not far from Boston; his accent suggests this. There was a high school diploma, possibly a year or two of higher education, although I have no proof of this since he never mentioned it. Physically he stood a straight six two, his weight varying from 210 to 220, a big, rangy-looking man though hardly in a class with the football linemen and basketball players of today. His rugged, not unattractive face became distinctive only when one noticed the dark eyes which were observant, questioning, and occasionally suspicious, but seldom without humorous glints quick to surface. Topping a forehead already beginning to crease was a thick head of dark brown hair which seemed always to be needing a trim.
The reason I can’t be more specific about Casey’s background is that I first knew him as a full-grown adult, already with a top reputation, even though his character had been rounding out in the back of my mind for some time. I had about five years of newspaper work behind me in California, Florida, and New York (City and Upstate). I had read and enjoyed the fiction exploits of reporters from time to time, but I also knew that it was the photographer accompanying such newsmen who frequently had to stick his neck out to get an acceptable picture.
For this was before the days of the long-range telescopic lens, the electronic flash, the strobe, the rapid-sequence shutter. In the beginning Casey had to use what was called a “spread-light,” the flashbulb just coming into use. A “spread-light” was a narrow metal trough into which was tapped a certain amount of magnesium powder, a volatile substance kept in a tightly corked bottle since it was both highly combustible and dangerous when improperly used. Beneath the trough was a handle, a dangling wire trigger for the finger, and a sparking device not unlike that in a cigarette lighter. The resulting brilliant light flash with its puff of white smoke provided the necessary illumination, the effect depending on the amount of powder and the proximity of the photographer to the subject to be recorded. This in turn meant that while the reporter with his pad and pencil could describe a warehouse or dockside fire from a safe distance, the guy with the camera had to edge far closer to get a negative that would merit reproduction.
So why not give the cameraman his due?
If a reporter could be a glamorous figure in fiction, why not the guy up front who took—and still does take (consider the televised war sequences)—the pictures?
At the time I had been selling shorts and novelettes to such magazines as Argosy, Detective Fiction Weekly, and Blue Book. Black Mask, by reputation a difficult market to crack, demanded a story of a style quite unlike the others. Under the skillful guidance of its editor, Joe Shaw, it had become a showcase for such writers as Hammett, Gardner, Nebel, and later, Raymond Chandler. I wanted to be published in that market, and against the advice of my agent, in those days a transplanted Britisher and a fine gentleman named Sydney Sanders, who said my writing was too subjective, I went ahead and wrote the first Casey story. I named him Jack—the Flashgun, reduced later to Flash, was the invention of someone on the magazine—and gave him a young assistant named Tom Wade to serve as a foil. Using a style I hoped would fit the market, I banged away.
To my delight, that first story was accepted (as were all those that followed). By the time I had the good news, and now full of enthusiasm, I was well into my second yarn.
I wrote Joe Shaw to say so. His reply, while cordial, stated flatly that he was not looking for another series character. But since the second Casey was by then completed I sent it off anyway, making it longer since pulps paid by the word. Apparently this second effort was sufficiently professional to make Shaw change his mind because his following letter was simple and heartening, saying in effect, “Write another, George.”
So Casey, having been launched, never appeared in any other magazine. There followed three or four books, published by Alfred Knopf, the first two of which were serialized in Black Mask years later. The editor then was Ken White, who published each in three installments.
As suggested in the opening paragraph, Casey was something of a paradox in that he was not really a detective. What put me straight about this was the sage advice of one of the shrewdest editors I ever met. Along about my third story I had Casey playing the detective’s role and the letter of acceptance warned me always to remember that Casey was not a detective and should not compete with others who were—amateur, private, or official—that in addition to the character of the man himself his job provided the plus factor that set him apart from the others. To quote from memory, Shaw wrote, “Look, George. I have a whole bookful of detectives of one kind or another every issue, but only Casey carries a camera.”
Casey’s involvement in the action and violence necessary for Black Mask—see Hammett’s Red Harvest and The Dain Curse—was usually motivated by personal reasons: an attempt by some shady character to steal a negative others wanted; the occasional invasion of the paper’s darkroom for a similar purpose, or the abuse of an associate; the interference in any manner by some hired hands, with or without a gun, as well as any attempt to damage his equipment. These were the things that prompted an immediate reaction sometimes more reckless than wise.
It is a well-known fact that without their snitches, the batting average of most city detectives would suffer drastically. Casey also had his sources of information, but with a difference. With the police it is sometimes a few well-spent bucks here and there, but the lever, the weapon they carry, is not the badge or gun but blackmail. Charges of one sort or another on which the officer has evidence to convict are withheld to be traded for information; the threat, always present, of a six-month or two-year stretch becomes surprisingly effective in applying pressure on those who might be reluctant to pass along helpful information.
Casey’s tips came from friends and acquaintances. For small favors given and returned. Because he was by nature a friendly and sympathetic man, it was no big deal for him to come up with a pair of hard-to-get tickets to sporting events at the Garden, or choice seats at Fenway Park. Sometimes a photograph could be cropped to avoid embarrassment to someone in the background. Now and then a picture of no great importance never reached the picture editor’s desk. Such things together with the fact that he was a soft touch with those down on their luck sometimes paid off handsomely. Those who knew him best knew also that beneath the bluff exterior there was a compassionate heart and a wide streak of sentiment.
This sort of edge often brought him to the scene of a crime well ahead of the competition, the source of the tip perhaps a phone call from a taxi driver, a bartender, a waiter, a small-time crook, a minor politician, even on occasion a city cop who owed him. Yes, and women. Perhaps a friendly waitress, a hatcheck girl, a barmaid. Sometimes a jealous mistress, a street hustler, or even a more expensive call girl he had met in the past. For while Casey had never married — that would be unlikely in a Black Mask hero of the day — his sexual appetites were normal and adequately served, not by sweet young things, but by companionable youngish widows and divorcées without ulterior motives, whose needs were compatible with his own.
But like everyone, he had his faults and admitted most of them: a quick impatience, especially with bores and phonies, a touch of irascibility too often quick to surface, a sharp and cutting tongue, frequently regretted, to express displeasure when some wrong, real or fancied, had been done, especially to those who lacked weapons to defend themselves.
On another level, and speaking from experience, Casey has been very good to his creator. In my first book I made my hero a smoothed-up version named Kent Murdock. For some reason, perhaps from inexperience, I thought such a character, not unlike Casey in many ways as a photographer, but better dressed and better mannered, would be more appropriate for a book. Murdock, too, has been good to me and has appeared in far more books. Complimentary letters and personal comments assure me that women like him. But with men, and they have been the helpful and influential factors in my career, it was always Casey and Black Mask, a magazine few women ever heard of.
As an example, my first book, Murder with Pictures, had been turned down by Little, Brown and what was then known as Farrar & Rinehart. Alfred Knopf’s people accepted it with no rewriting or revision, except for a request for a short introductory chapter to indicate that it was indeed a murder story and not a straight novel. Why then did Knopf, certainly second to none in prestige, take my reject and establish a relationship that has lasted forty years? Quite possibly because Bernard Smith, the editor, and Joe Lesser, Alfred Knopf’s right-hand man, were Black Mask readers and Casey fans.
Shortly after starting my first stint with M-G-M a well-known director of big pictures and a noted playwright, neither of whom would I have expected to read Black Mask, and both unknown to me personally, stopped me on a company street to tell me how much they liked my Casey stories. Years later another fan, a vice-president at CBS — there were two or three VPs then instead of thirty — suggested that I create a radio show around Casey. The result was Casey, Crime Photographer, which then gave me six years of welcome royalties for doing little more than writing an audition script and then making suggestions for improvement for the first air shows, written, until he went into the army, by Ashley Buck.
How old is Casey now? Let me illustrate. Some years ago I was a guest at a luncheon given by Alfred and Blanche Knopf for salesmen who had come to town for a week of meetings—this was before Random House entered the picture. A salesman whom I had met before was sipping his pre-luncheon drink right next to me when he said something like, “How old is Kent Murdock these days?”
I thought a moment, recognizing the humor in the question, before replying. Murdock had made his debut in 1935. In my imagination I pictured him as a young man of, say, 28 to 30. Now, twenty years later and I don’t know how many books—this was around 1955—I grinned back at him and said, “About thirty-eight, give or take a year.”
It is the same with Casey. Unlike Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, unlike Ellery Queen, a trio that never seemed to age, Casey got older; his hair showed some gray, the bathroom scales pointing to another ten pounds. I had him in my mind back in 1933 as perhaps 32. In the last book I did about him in 1964, published as always by Knopf, I saw him as a man of 45 or thereabouts. So in a matter of thirty-one years Casey had aged no more than fourteen. Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could all age in a proportionate fashion?
I don’t know where Casey is now. He always was a lousy correspondent. He quit the Express some years back when it merged with another paper. He had some money, and this plus a fat hunk of severance pay should be keeping him well above the ranks of the indigent.
I suspect he is somewhere in the South or Southwest and I have an idea that along with his fishing or golfing or whatever, the local newspaper or the nearest metropolitan one carries a Casey picture credit on an exclusive from time to time, if only to keep his hand in. He may even have found an attractive widow to share bed and breakfast.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. From The Great Detectives by Otto Penzler.
