Created by William Campbell Gault
Pseudonyms include Roney Scott, Will Duke, Bill Gault, David Crewe & Ray P. Shotwell
(1910-1995)
An early series chartacter by pulpster Gault, ex-pug MICKEY DOLAN popped up in one of his very first published stories in the April 1940 issue of Ten Detective Aces, and made only a handful of appearances after.
But already what would become many of Gault’s signature trademarks were there, foreshadowing his most popular series character, straight arrow Brock Callahan: slightly rough-around-the edges middle-class ambition, a detective protagonist with a sports background and a stand-up girl by this side.
Mickey’s a former fighter who now runs his own small business, Dolan’s Collection Service, but has aspirations to expand and perhaps offer detective services as well. Mickey, you see, considers himself “a natural detective.”
But his best gal Judy, she of the dark hair and blue eyes, will have none of it. At Judy’s insistence, Mickey quit the ring, just shy of “about two months from the welterweight crown,” and convinced him to get into the collection business.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Besides Brock, William Campbell Gault was also responsible for several other one-shot PI’s, who appeared in various short stories, in the pulps and elsewhere, including Honolulu’s Sandy McKane, and Armenian gumshoe Pierre Apoyan, and then there’s perennial fuck-up Joe Puma, who appeared in numerous short stories and eight novels.
SHORT STORIES
- “Agent for Murder ” (April 1940, Ten Detective Aces)
- “Murder Comes High” (May 1942, Black Book Detective)
- “The Weak’s Wages-Death” September 1944, Ten Detective Aces; with Larry Sternig)
- “Assassin Anonymous” (September 1946, Detective Tales)
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
