William Campbell Gault

Uncategorized

Pseudonyms include Roney Scott, Will Duke, Bill Gault, David Crewe & Ray P. Shotwell
(1910-1995)

“I’m proud of what I can do in my field. And I’m proud of the field. I don’t need any false additions to that. If I could write like John Cheever, I’d write like Cheever. Unfortunately I can’t, so I write as well as I can and as fast as I can. And some of it is good.”
— William Campbell Gault

And some of it, my friends, was very good.

Even as a kid, long before I knew or even gave a damn that William Campbell Gault wrote detective fiction, my car-crazy, Hot Wheels-obsessed self had fallen under the spell of his countless books about auto racing, intended for young reader: The Checkered Flag, Dirt Track Summer, Road-Race Rookie, Speedway Challenge, Thunder Road and all the rest were just what I was looking for. Foot to the floor action, male bonding, narrow escapes and the roar of thunder were what I craved, and Gault delivered. If it was offered on the Scholastic flyers we received regularly at St. Stephen’s, I wanted it.

And unlike many books Scholastic offered, I never got the feeling Gault was pandering or talking down to his audience. Never! The messed-up, slightly older kids (Teenagers!) in his books were immediately recognizable; variations on me and my misfit pals, our hopes, our fears. He got us.

So, if he ventured occasionally into areas of his own personal or adult concerns, be it issues of ethnic, racial, class prejudice, or even the shadier practices of advertising, well, so be it. Growing up in the hopelessly, helplessly white Quebec suburban boonies, I was hopelessly, helplessly white, but somehow I knew what he meant, even if I couldn’t quite articulate it back then. I’d already been put through the wringer of schoolyard bullying, and the endless but mystifying English/French squabbles to see his books as safe places.

He was, now that I think of it, possibly my earliest writing hero.

* * * * *

Gault is probably best known, at least in these parts, for being a prolific writer of mysteries. In a long career, he wrote some of the most engaging private eye stuff I’ve ever read (including the Brock “The Rock” Callahan and Joe Puma series), standalones, and countless short stories for the pulps.

Born in Milwaukee in 1910, it didn’t initially seem like being a writer would be a viable career choice  — it took him seven years to get through high school. But still water ran deep, and he secretly wrote poetry in his spare time, signing it with a girl’s name in case one of his fellow members in the juvenile gang he ran with discovered it.

He studied at the University of Wisconsin and went into the hotel biz, managing Milwaukee’s Blatz Hotel from 1932 to 1939. During that time, according to Bill Pronzini, “he entered a story called “Inadequate” in a Milwaukee Journal-McClure Newspaper Syndicate short story contest. The judges found it to be anything but inadequate, awarding it the $50 first prize.”

Encouraged, Gault began submitting  short-shots to the McClure syndicate and such soft-porn mags as Paris Nights and Scarlet Adventuress. He soon moved on to writing short stories about various sports (mostly football and auto racing), and athletes would often find their way into his later private eye fiction. He was concerned with the problems of youth, and often used ethnic characters in both his sports and crime fiction, treating them with sensitivity and respect, something not exactly common in the genre at the time.

At first Gault mostly concentrated on selling to to the sports pulps, and he dabbled in sci-fi along the way, but by 1940, he had begun regularly contributing to the crime and detective pulps, landing stories in Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine, Thrilling Detective, Ten Detective Aces, Detective Tales, Dime Mystery and the like, eventually making it to Black Mask in 1946 with “Hot-House Homicide,” which introduced everyday-Joe private eye Mortimer Jones. Jones would go on to appear in half a dozen or so stories in Black Mask, and would serve as a dry run for Brock Callahan.

By the end of the forties, however, the mighty pulp market had begun to falter, and Gault moved on to what he hoped would be the much more lucrative field of books.

His first mystery novel, a standalone, Don’t Cry for Me (1952), was groundbreaking in its emphasis one the personal and psychological lives of its characters and an brusque acknowledgment of the class-based prejudices of its time. It snagged an Edgar. His second, also a standalone mystery, The Bloody Bokhara (an expanded version of a previously published short story) followed closely on its heels.

His third novel, Shakedown (1953), originally published under his Roney Scott pseudonym, introduced his first great series character, the rather sleazy private eye Joe Puma. Our pal Davy Crockett over at The Almanack suspects it was intended to be a standalone, and I reckon he’s right, because when a slightly less sleazy Puma returned in several short stories, mostly published in Manhunt, and several more novels, starting with End of a Call Girl (1958), they were all published under Gault’s own name.

His greatest series detective, though, was ex-LA Rams guard turned South California private eye Brock “The Rock” Callahan, who made his debut in 1955’s Ring Around the Rosa, and would go on to appear in thirteen more novels.

One of the first of the compassionate eyes, and in many ways the perfect private eye for the “good old days” of the 1950s. Born in Long Beach, and the son of a policeman who was killed in the line of duty, Brock weighs in at 220 or so, and is over six-foot-tall; a clean-cut, athletic, white, middle class guy with a swell girlfriend and suitably ambitious (if not always realized) professional aspirations. He’s generally optimistic and a firm believer, for the most part, in the decency of other people — in short, the very antithesis of the dark, violent and cynical Mike Hammer.

The acclaim and sales much have been decent, because the prolific Gault was regularly pumping out detective fiction all through the fifties and into the early sixties. He pulled the plug, however, abandoning crime fiction for the far more lucrative field of juvenile sports fiction, and only returned to detective fiction in the eighties.

As Gault himself explained, “My Edgar winner — Don’t Cry For Me — came out in 1952 and was out of print two months later. In 1952, I also wrote a juvenile novel, Thunder Road, which is still in print. So, one has to eat…”

* * * * *

One of the last of the private eye writers to come out of the pulps (he wrote over 300 short stories for them), Gault may have never been particularly flashy as a writer, but he was a consummate pro. His clean, straightforward prose eschewed scenery-chewing action, and instead offered strong and identifiable characterization, solid plotting and sharp-eyed social observations, whether it was a detective story, or a tale about two messed up kids from opposite sides of the track bonding over the rebuilding of an old Chevy V8.

Humanity? Gault’s fiction was soaking in it.

And then, in 1982, Gault brought back Brock “The Rock” in The Bad Samaritan, which found him newly relocated to the quiet beach town of San Valdesto (more or less Santa Barbara, where Gault himself had moved), newly married to Jan, newly wealthy (thanks to an inheritance) and semi-retired from private investigation.

If the new books lacked the snap, crackle, pop! of his earlier work, Gault hadn’t lost a bit of his handling of character or plotting or his deep and abiding empathy. Brock went on to appear in six more novels, one of the great comebacks of the Shamus Game. Of particular note is 1982’s The CANA Diversion, which finds Brock trying to help out another Gault gumshoe, the troubled Joe Puma, who had appeared in his own series of stories and novels back in the fifties and sixties.

In his final years, Gault wrote for Mystery Scene (before I got there!), and in 1984 he was awarded The Eye, the Private Eye Writers of America‘s Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1986 he served as that organization’s president. That same year, his latest novel featuring Brock Callahan, The Chicano War, was published.

Cat and Mouse (1988) and Dead Pigeon (1992), both featuring Brock, followed, while his last book, Man Alive, a non-mystery set in Hollywood novel that he’s originally written years earlier, was finally published shortly before his death in 1995.

In the 2010s, both Mysterious Press/Open Road and Prologue Books began to re-release many of Gault’s novels both in paperback and digitally, but whether you get brand-spanking new editions, or prowl used bookstores and conventions for them, almost anything Gault wrote, for kids or adults, remains worth reading. He still gets us.

* * * * *

   

STRAIGHT OUT OF THE AUTHOR’S MOUTH

  • “My Edgar winner– Don’t Cry For Me–came out in 1952 and was out of print two months later. In 1952, I also wrote a juvenile novel, Thunder Road, which is still in print. So, one has to eat…”
    —William Campbell Gault

UNDER OATH

  • “[Gault] writes with passion, beauty, and with an ineffable sadness which has previously been found only in Raymond Chandler.”
    — Dorothy B. Hughes
  • “[Gault] knows that writing well is the best revenge.”
    — Ross MacDonald
  • “[Gault] can write, never badly and sometimes like an angel.”
    — Fredric Brown
  • “Gault was one of the strongest voices in genre fiction for ethical behavior and racial and political tolerance. His voice was so distinctive, few fans would fail to recognize it in a blind test. Artificial distinctions of genre aside, he was a serious writer, as concerned with social issues and non-simplistic morality as with telling a fast-moving story. Quite a few writers could plot, pace, and people a mystery as well as Gault, but not many could reach a reader as deeply on a gut level.”
    — Jon L. Breen (Mystery Scene #103)
  • “The hallmarks of Bill Gault’s fiction are finely tuned dialogue, wry humor, sharp social observation, a vivid evocation of both upper class and bottom-feeder lifestyles, and most importantly, the portrayal of people, in Fredric Brown’s words, so real and vivid that you’ll think you know them personally.”
    — Bill Pronzini

TRIVIA

  • Ross Macdonald, another of the last of the pulpsters and a fellow resident of Santa Barbara, dedicated his last novel to William Campbell Gault.

THE EVIDENCE

  • “Slopping through life with no discipline, no goal! And they find themselves 40 and empty, and go looking for what they missed in a bottle.”
    — Blood on the Boards

SHORT STORIES

  • “Hell Driver’s Partnership” (1937, Ace Sports)
  • “Crime Collection” (January 1940, 10-Story Detective Magazine)
  • “Agent for Murder ” (April 1940, Ten Detective Aces; Mickey Dolan)
  • “Marksman” (September 1940, Clues; aka “Nobody Wants to Kill”)
  • “Picture of Doom” (December 1940, Ten Detective Aces)
  • “The Revolt of Widow Murphy” (May 24, 1941, Detective Fiction Weekly)
  • “Killer’s Game” (Winter 1941, Detective Book Magazine)
  • “Alibi for Sale” March 1942, Ten Detective Aces)
  • “Murder Comes High” (May 1942, Black Book Detective; Mickey Dolan)
  • “The Things You Never See” (May 1942, Strange Detective Mysteries)
  • “Curio for a Killer” (June 1942, Ten Detective Aces)
  • “Beat of His Heart” (July 1942, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
  • “The Door to Hell” (July 1942, Dime Mystery)
  • “The Last Act” (August 1942, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine)
  • “They Die by Night” (September 1942, Detective Tales)
  • “Three Men in a Hearse” (September 1942, Flynn’s Detective)
  • “Death Has Yellow Eyes” (September 1942, Dime Mystery; as Roney Scott)
  • “Hell on Wheels” (Fall 1942, Detective Book Magazine)
  • “The Golden Web” (December 1942, Detective Tales)
  • “Four Kings and a Jack” (December 1942, Thrilling Detective)
  • “Dead Man’s Hand” (Winter 1943, Thrilling Mystery)
  • “Dark Is the Night” January 1943, Detective Tales)
  • “Death and the Little Daisy” (January 1943, Mammoth Detective)
  • “The Corpse Wore Gloves” (February/March 1943, 5-Detective Mysteries)
  • “Dead of the Night” (March 1943, Street & Smith’s Mystery Magazine)
  • “The Man Who Died Too Often” (March 1943, Strange Detective Mysteries)
  • “Death Pays the Winne” (April 1943, Thrilling Detective)
  • “The Devil’s Agent” (May 1943, The Shadow)
  • “Money Is the Motive” (May 1943, Clues Detective Stories)
  • “Black Market Pay-Off” (Summer 1943, Detective Book Magazine)
  • “The Mighty Dead” (August-September, Fantastic Universe; sci-fi)
  • 1953″Murder No Object” (Fall 1943, Detective Book Magazine)
  • “The Open Grave” (November 1943, The Shadow)
  • “Whistle in the Dark” (November 1943, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine)
  • “Dead Man’s Hand” (Winter 1943, Thrilling Mystery)
  • “Mr. Meek Goes to Hell” (July 1944, Ten Detective; with Larry Sternig)
  • “Three Strikes on Satan” (August 1944, 10-Story Detective Magazine; with Larry Sternig)
  • “The Weak’s Wages-Death” September 1944, Ten Detective Aces; with Larry Sternig; Mickey Dolan)
  • “Shadows in the Night” (December 1945, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine)
  • “Assassin Anonymous” (September 1946, Detective Tales; Mickey Dolan)
  • “Hot-House Homicide” (September 1946, Black Mask; Mortimer Jones)
  • “Five-Star Filly” (September/October 1946, Five-Novels Magazine)
  • “They’d Die for Linda” (September 1946, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine)
  • “And Dust to Dust” (October 1946, The Shadow)
  • “Curtain Call for the Corpse” (November 1946, Detective Tales)
  • “Tin-Pan Alibi” (November 1946, Dime Detective)
  • “Dirt-Track Thunder” (1946,  Argosy)
  • “The Cold, Cold Ground” (January 1947, Black Mask; Mortimer Jones)
  • “No Weeds for the Widow” (February 1947, Detective Story Magazine)
  • “A Murder For Mac” (March 1947, Dime Detective; Mortimer Jones)
  • “Pick-Up” (March 1947, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine)
  • “Two Biers for Buster” (March 1947, Dime Detective)
  • “Pale Hands I Loathed” (April 1947, Detective Story [UK])
  • “The Man in the Street” (May 1947, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine)
  • “The Walls Are Hard and High” (May 1947, Detective Tales)
  • “The Constant Shadow” (July 1947, Black Mask; Mortimer Jones)
  • “The Pewter Urn” (July 1947, G-Men Detective)
  • “The Book of the Damned” (October 1947, Detective Short Stories; with William Fredric Kruge)
  • “The Girl Next Door” (October 1947, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine)
  • “Hibiscus and Homicide” (October 1947, Thrilling Detective; Sandy McKane)
  • “The Case of the Sleeping Beauty” (November 1947, Black Mask; Mortimer Jones)
  • “A Tombstone for Taro” (December 1947, Detective Story Magazine)
  • “Dead-End Road” (January 1948, Dime Mystery)
  • “The Heart Guy” (January 1948, Sports Novels Magazine)
  • “Satan’s Children” (February 1948, Dime Mystery)
  • “Red Runaround” (March 1948, Black Mask; Mortimer Jones)
  • “Wakiki Widow” (March 1948, Detective Story; Sandy McKane)
  • “The Silent Suckers” (March 1948, Detective Tales)
  • “Nightfall” (May 1948, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine; Tony Barry)
  • “Home to Die” (June 1948, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine)
  • “White Hands I Fear!” (June 1948, Dime Mystery)
  • “Don’t Bet on Death” (July 1948, Black Mask; Cary Vaughn & Ned Orlow)
  • “Fallen Star” (September 1948, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine; Galvey Brown)
  • “The Man Who Couldn’t Die!” (October 1948, Dime Mystery)
  • “Blood for the Murder Master!” (April 1949, Dime Mystery; Joe Welkin)
  • “The Longest Count” (June 1949, Dime Mystery)
  • “Fallen Star” (September 1948, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine)
  • “The Threatening Trio” (October 1948, 10-Story Detective Magazine)
  • “The Man Who Couldn’t Die!” (October 1948, Dime Mystery)
  • “The Bloody Bokhara” (November 1948, Black Mask)
  • “Hot Shot, Big Shot–Dead Shot!” (February 1949, Detective Tales)
  • “A Bier for Baby” (March 1949, New Detective Magazine; Mortimer Jones)
  • “The Last Guest” (Spring 1949, Detective Novel Magazine)
  • “Blood for the Murder Master!” (April 1949, Dime Mystery)
  • “The Longest Count” (June 1949, Dime Mystery)
  • “In the Bag–” (Summer 1949, Doc Savage)
  • “Some Other Body” (July 1949, New Detective Magazine)
  • “What Do You Want… Blood?” (July 1949, Detective Tales)
  • “Send Me Your Killers!” (August 1949, Detective Tales)
  • “A Colt for Carlton” (August 1949, Short Stories; sports; horse racing)
  • “All That Murder Can Buy” (October 1949, Detective Tales)
  • “Return to Terror” (October 1949, Dime Mystery)
  • “Redhead, Stay Dead!” (December 1949, Detective Tales)
  • “Slay You in My Dreams” (December 1949, Dime Mystery)
  • “Never Marry Murder” (December 1949, Dime Mystery; as Roney Scott)
  • “Dog Eat Dog!” (January 1950, Detective Tales)
  • “A Time to Kill” (January 1950, New Detective Magazine)
  • “Home Is Where the Corpse Is” (February 1950, Detective Tales)
  • “Moment of Flame” (February 1950, 15 Mystery Stories)
  • “The Cackle Bladder” (March 1950, Detective Tales; aka “The Corpse and the Cackle Bladder”)
  • Death Is My Shadow” (March 1950, New Detective)
  • “Keeper of the Cat-Bride” (April 1950, 15 Mystery Stories)
  • “This Way to the Morgue” (April 1950, Detective Tales)
  • “The Last Count” (June 1950, Detective Tales)
  • “Hot-Rod Homicide” (June 1950, Detective Tales; as Roney Scott)
  • “No Grave So Deep” (June 1950, 15 Mystery Stories)
  • “Satan’s Protege” (August 1950, 15 Story Detective)
  • “So Dead, My Love!” (August 1950, 15 Mystery Stories)
  • “See No Evil” (September 1950, New Detective; aka “See No Murder”)
  • “Blocking Brother” (Fall 1950, Popular Football)
  • “Creature of Habit” (October 1950, 15 Mystery Stories)
  • “Death Watch” (October 1950, Thrilling Detective)
  • “The Big Time” (November 1950, Detective Tales)
  • “Dead-End for Delia” (November 1950, Black Mask)
  • “Ace in the Hole” (January 1951, Sports Novels Magazine; golf)
  • “Made to Measure” (January 1951; Galaxy Science Fiction; sci-fi)
  • “None But the Lethal Heart” (January 1951, Dime Detective; Calvin Calvano)
  • “Murderer’s Way” (February 1951, Detective Tales)
  • “And Murder Makes Four!” (March 1951, Detective Tales)
  • “Blood on the Rocks” (March 1951, Popular Detective; Dick Callender)
  • “The Big Fix” (June 1951, Detective Tales)
  • “Sunday’s Dust” (July 1951, Blue Book)
  • “I’ll See You in My Dreams” *September 1951, Imagination; sci-fi)
  • “Deadly Cargo!” (October 1951, Detective Tales)
  • “A Little Murder Music, Professor!” (December 1951, Detective Tales)
  • “Cloud Over Elysium” (December 1951, Blue Book)
  • “Father, May I Go Out to Kill?” (February 1952, Detective Tales)
  • “There’s Got to Be an Angle” (April 1952, Dime Detective; Joe Puma)
  • “The Crowd Screamed” (June 14, 1952, The Saturday Evening Post)
  • “The Long Night” (Fall 1952, 5 Detective Novels Magazine)
  • “Racing Fever” (April 1953, Argosy)
  • “The Bleeding Heart” (May 1953, Detective Story Magazine)
  • “The Huddlers” (May 1953; sci-fi)
  • “Death for Sale” (September 1953, Detective Story Magazine)
  • “Dead Man’s Town” (September 1953, Detective Story Magazine; as Roney Scott)
  • “Sweet Rolls and Murder” (October/November 1953, The Saint Detective Magazine)
  • “Night Work” (July 1954, The Saint Detective Magazine)
  • “The Woman Obsession” (September 1954, Fantastic Universe; sci-fi)
  • “Punk’s Widow” (October 1954, Fifteen Detective Stories)
  • “Home Sweet Homicide” (December 1954, Fifteen Detective Stories)
  • “But the Prophet Died” (January/March 1955, Dell Mystery Novels Magazine)
  • “The Sacrificial Lamb” (August 1955, The Saint Detective Magazine)
  • “Who’s Buying Murder?” (December 1955, The Saint Detective Magazine)
  • “The Unholy Three” (May 1956, Manhunt; Joe Puma)
  • “Kill if you Have To” (October 1956, MSMM)
  • “Deadly Beloved” (October 1956, Manhunt; Joe Puma)
  • “Kill if You Have To” (October 1956, MSMM)
  • “Be Smart, Really Smart” (December 1956, The Saint Detective Magazine)
  • “Title Fight” (December 1956, Fantastic Universe; sci-fi)
  • “I’ll Be Waiting” (January 1957, MSMM)
  • “Death of a Big Wheel (April 1957, Manhunt; Joe Puma)
  • “Don’t Crowd Your Luck (May 1957, EQMM; Joe Puma)
  • “Blood of the Innocent” (July 1967, The Saint Detective Magazine)
  • “No Client of Mine (July 1957, Mercury Mystery Magazine; Joe Puma)
  • “Take Care of Yourself” (July 1957, Murder; Joe Puma)
  • “Conspiracy” (August 1957, AHMM)
  • “Don’t Call Tonight” (October 1957, Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine)
  • “Stolen Star (November 1957, Manhunt; 1990, Detective Story Magazine #9; Joe Puma)
  • “Million Dollar Gesture” (January 1958, AHMM)
  • “April in Peril” (1986, Mean Streets; Brock Callahan)
  • “The Kerman Kill” (1987, Murder in Los Angeles; Pierre Apoyan)
  • “The Sister” (Winter 1994, New Mystery #2)
  • “An Ordinary Man” (1996, New Mystery #4)

NOVELS

COLLECTIONS

  • Wheels of Fortune: Four Racing Stories (1963; YA sports) | Buy this book
  • Marksman and Other Stories (2003; edited by Bill Pronzini; Joe Puma) | Buy this book
  • Unbelievably, the first collection of Gault’s pulp and digest magazine short fiction. Includes twelve stories, including six featuring Joe Puma.
  • Noir Masters: Joe Puma, P.I. (2010; Joe Puma) | Kindle it!
    Five stories featuring Joe Puma.
  • Hot-House Homicide (2025; Mortimer Jones) | Buy this book

TELEVISION

  • DEAD END FOR DELIA
    (1993, Showtime)
    Aired as episode of Showtime’s crime anthology, Fallen Angels
    Based on the short story by William Campbell Gault
    Teleplay by Scott Frank
    Directed by Phil Joanou
    Starring Gary Oldman, Meg Tilly, Gabrielle Anwar

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

 

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