Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “Big Bill” Thompson in 1916.

  72 The Chicago Daily News of October 12, 1926, estimated that fifty-seven gangsters were killed in Chicago between January 1 and October 11 of that year.

  73 The Mk-2 anti-personnel hand grenade used by American forces in World War I gained this nickname based on the weapon’s appearance.

  “Mills bombs,” British grenades used during World War I (photo by Jean-Louis Dubois, used with permission).

  74 Starrett (1886–1974) was a bibliophile, newspaperman, author, and poet and for many years wrote the “Books Alive!” column for the Chicago Daily News. He was a lifelong aficionado of Sherlock Holmes, an early member of the Baker Street Irregulars, and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. His Sherlockian writings were an inspiration to this editor.

  75 The book was The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago by Frederick N. Thrasher, note 5. Thrasher’s map of Chicago gangland is reproduced below:

  A map of Chicago’s gangs, from The Gangs: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago by Frederick N. Thrasher.

  76 Thrasher’s account of the Sam Cardinelli gang is reproduced in its entirety here:

  “The Sam Cardinelli gang was known as one of the most vicious groups of criminals in Chicago. It was held responsible for many murders and from fifty to one hundred roberries about which evidence was obtained. The nature of its activities may be indicated by a brief summary of some of its more important crimes.

  “Five members of the gang, including Nicholas Viana, the ‘choir-boy,’ entered a soloon and in the course of a hold-up killed the proprietor and one customer. The gang escaped in an automobile driven by Santo Orlando and found later at this home. Ten days later Orlando was found in the drainage canal with several bullets in his body. The police believe that the gang, fearing the arrest of Orlando and that he might confess, murdered him in cold blood.

  “Several months later four members of the gang were arrested by two police officers at Twenty-first and Indiana Avenue. While being searched Viana shot one of the policemen in the groin and the other was also wounded. The gang escaped.

  “On one occasion, Errico, one of the members, planned the hold-up of a South Side poolroom. He entered the place and at his signal Nicholas Viana, Frank Campione, and Tony Sansone entered with revolvers and robbed fifteen customers, Errico among the rest. During the hold-up one of the customers put his hands in his pocket and was immediately shot through the heart by Campione. He died instantaneously. After the trio had fled, Errico remained only long enough to avert suscpicion.

  “Individual shares of the loot in some of these cases were ridiculously small considering the chances taken. The reputed mastermind of the gang was Sam Cardinelli, aged thirty-nine. He did not take an active part in the more important crimes, but is said to have planned them. Most of the other members were young, Viana being eighteen, while several of the others were only nineteen.

  “Cardinelli, Vaian, and Campione were hanged while Errico’s sentence was commuted to life-impisonment because he turned state’s evidence.” (Records of the Chicago Crime Commissionp, 432.)

  The similarities to plot points of Little Caesar are evident.

  77 A novel by Charles-Louis Phillipe first published in 1901 (not published in English until 1932), telling the story of a young prostitute in the Paris slums.

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  ———. Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1950s. New York: Library of America (2015).

  Acknowledgments

  This book, which I hope will be the first of a series, is the product of my fondness for mysteries. That fondness began with the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew but did not really flower until I discovered the Sherlock Holmes canon, in my law school years. The impact of those stories on my life has been enormous, not only in providing a doorway into a second career as a writer but also by leading me to many, many lasting friendships among fellow Sherlockians and mystery authors and readers. Once I finished the Holmes stories, I realized that there was an entire library of books waiting for me—the works of R. Austin Freeman, Dorothy Sayers, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Ian Fleming, Donald Hamilton, Mickey Spillane, and many, many other authors whose work I would come to know and love.

  “Annotating” is a joy for me. It results in the close, careful reading of a book—spending a tremendous amount of time with the text. Therefore, I choose my subjects carefully, and each and every one of the tales here is one of my favorites. It was hard to limit myself to only five books from the 1920s, and it was hard to limit myself to American writers, but choices had to be made, or else this book would have been 5,000 pages in length!

  As usual, as a writer, I have depended on many. My agent Don Maass believed in this book when I thought it would never come to fruition. Claiborne Hancock said yes to publishing it in less time than it took me to write this sentence, and his vision is the bedrock of this work. The book has benefitted greatly from the care and attention of the staff at Pegasus Books, Cecilia Beard, Meredith Clark, Bowen Dunnan, Sabrina Plomitallo-González, and Victoria Wenzel, and especially the beautiful design work of Maria Fernandez. As always, my attorney Jonathan Kirsch was a wise guide. Special thanks to my friend and mentor Otto Penzler, who answered questions for me based on his immense knowledge of the genre and agreed to write an introduction for this volume. Also, many thanks to my reliable editor Janet Byrne for jumping in at the last moment. My writer-friends Laurie R. King and Neil Gaiman gave me great support, and Sherlockian pals Mike Whelan, Steve Rothman, Andy Peck, and Jerry Margolin are constant cheerleaders. My family is always understanding of my deep dives into research and writing mode. Without my wife Sharon, none of my writing would ever be done. She responds to my ideas, asks wonderful questions about matters I might not have noted, listens patiently to my weird tales of exciting research tidbits, and allows me to read every single word, comma, period, and quotation mark aloud to her to compare to the text. She has always been, and remains, “the woman.”

  Leslie S. Klinger

  Malibu, California

  CLASSIC AMERICAN CRIME FICTION OF THE 1920s

  Pegasus Books Ltd.

  148 W 37th Street, 13th Floor

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 Leslie S. Klinger

  The Ho
use Without a Key copyright © 1925 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.

  The Benson Murder Case copyright © 1926 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. © 1954 Claire R. Wright.

  The Roman Hat Mystery copyright © 1929 Ellery Queen, copyright renewed 1956 by Ellery Queen.

  Little Caesar copyright © 1929 by The Dial Press, Inc. Copyright renewed 1956 by W. R. Burnett.

  Introduction copyright © 2018 by Otto Penzler

  All additional material copyright © 2018 by Leslie S. Klinger

  First Pegasus Books edition October 2018

  Interior design by Maria Fernandez

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN: 978-1-68177-861-7

  ISBN: 978-1-68177-926-3 (ebk.)

  Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  www.pegasusbooks.us