The Best American Noir of the Century

Howard Browne (1908-1999) was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and from 1929 worked for more than a dozen years in various jobs, many of them in department stores, before becoming a full-time writer and editor. Beginning in 1942, he worked for nearly fifteen years as the editor of several Ziff-Davis science-fiction magazines (a genre he actively disliked, preferring mysteries), including Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. During this time, he wrote numerous stories for pulp magazines, as well as several novels under the pseudonym John Evans, most successfully the somewhat controversial series about Chicago private detective Paul Pine. The Pine novels were probably closer in style to Raymond Chandler than any other writer (with the exception of the early Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald) of his time. Halo in Blood (1946) was the first; Halo for Satan (1948) is about a manuscript purportedly written by Jesus Christ; Halo in Brass (1949) deals with the then-unmentionable subject of lesbianism; and The Taste of Ashes (1957) was published under his own name and is among the earliest works of fiction to deal with child molestation.

Browne went to Hollywood in 1956 and wrote more than 100 episodes of numerous television series, including Playhouse 90, Maverick, Ben Casey, The Virginian, and Columbo. He also wrote numerous screenplays, notably Portrait of a Mobster (1961) with Vic Morrow playing Dutch Schultz, The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) with George Segal and Jason Robards, and Capone (1975), with Ben Gazzara.

In 1952, while Browne was editor of Fantastic, he called his friend Roy Huggins (creator of such famous television series as Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Fugitive) and asked him if he could write a detective story with fantasy elements in it. Huggins agreed, but when the time came to turn to it, he was too busy writing a screenplay to do the story. Since Browne already had the cover of the fall issue of the magazine ready to go, with Huggins’s name on it, he wrote “Man in the Dark” himself, under the “pseudonym” of Roy Huggins.

I

She called me at four-ten. “Hi, Poopsie.”

I scowled at her picture in the leather frame on my desk. “For Christ’s sake, Donna, will you lay off that ‘Poopsie’ stuff? It’s bad enough in the bedroom, but this is over the phone and in broad daylight.”

She laughed. “It kind of slipped out. You know I’d never say it where anyone else could hear. Would I, Poopsie?”

“What’s all that noise?”

“The man’s here fixing the vacuum. Hey, we eating home tonight, or out? Or are you in another deadline dilemma?”

“No dilemma. Might as well —”

“Can’t hear you, Clay.”

I could hardly hear her. I raised my voice. “Tell the guy to turn that goddamn thing off. I started to say we might as well eat out and then take in that picture at the Paramount. Okay?”

“All right. What time’ll you get home?”

“Hour — hour’n a half.”