Pulp Publishing Houses

Though Horwitz started out printing “Sporting Weekly” (1920), comics, and

Sporting Western (1945-50) by the mid 1950s it preferred detective fiction and especially those by single authors such as Carter Brown, K T McCall (1957-58), Marc Brody (1955-60) and reprints of overseas crime fiction. In the mid 1950s, it employed three writes: Alan Yates, W H (Bill) Williams and then C J McKenzie. Carter Brown and Marc Brody books were punished in tandem: two titles each month; later more local writers were added (unpublished memoirs). Australian authors such as John Cleary, Ruth Park and J E Macdonnell were also published by Horwtiz; but only softcover fiction (????) . To supplement the 24-titles per month production schedule, Australasian rights to overseas crime were acquired from paperback companies such as New American Library, Fawcett Publication and Dell. (unpublished memoirs).

Cleveland (1953-present) started with the Cleveland Books series which included westerns and a few crime novels; other series such as Cougar and PB Books printed a mixture of fiction but moved exclusively to westerns. It also printed American Detective Magazine and American Crime Magazine; Other crime series include: American Detective Novels (same title but different series); Cleveland Detective; King Cobra, Long Island Detective and Max Strong in the early 1960s (Robert Dudgeon). New York Detective, Silhouette Detective; some of which had titles by Australian authors Des R Dunn , Frank Greenop (Robert Dudgeon), and G M Alexander. then the Larry Kent series (1954-6?) published mainly westerns. It also had a number of novels some of which were designated “Cleveland Detective” Deadline Detective on the cover. E Hamiton Clay and Gordon Alexander and Steve Hawk contributed.

Australian crime fiction also came from Action Comics/Leisure Publications/H John Edwards. It published a number of detective series including: Action Detective Magazine (which often had more than one story); Downtown Detective; Leisure Detective, Lovely Lady Series, West End Detective and Thrilling Detective (for a fuller list of series see Flanagan). Calvert Books also published Carl Dekker books (written by Keith Hetherington, John Laffin, Gene Janes aka Muriel Watkins and Audrey Armitage) Longer fiction appeared in ‘books’ series such as Anchor, Aztec, Red-Back Mystery Novels. Popular Detective; ; Writers include Alan Yates, Bleeck, Kevin Slattery and Benn Raymond and Peter Williams.

Overseas crime fiction was also reprinted by Phantom Books, Star Books, Original Novels (1953).

Currawong was one of the first companies to churn out a variety of Australian fiction; some of it was crime fiction---the Vole Molesworth novels in particular are more about detection than science fiction. Frank Johnson printed some fiction; as did Invincible Press whose Mystery series started in the 1940s—writers Philip Richmond, many of the titles are overseas reprints. In the late 1950s Webster Publications, launched by a book maker with more money than sense, employed printed McKenzie to write Kane series(another journalist private investigator) and Jason (G Stannus and Hugh Munro).