Stories, Novelettes and Short Novellas:

Buried Evidence (October 1926, Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories)

Brains (January 1927, Brief Stories)

The Mug Mauler (June 1927, Brief Stories)

One of Those Men (December 1927, Pep)

Forgotten Flights (January 1929, Brief Stories)

Peaceful Bill (March 1929, Fight Stories)

Wimmin, Wimmin, All Around— (March 1929, Pep Stories)

The Model Model (June 1929, Spicy Stories)

A Shiek in the Night (June 1929, Pep Stories)

The Foolish Fifth (August 1929, Fight Stories)

Low Finance (March 1930, Real Smart)

No Ladies Aloud (April 1930, Hot Stories)

Fists and the Force (July 1930, Fight Stories)

The Old-Timer (September 1930, Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories) [with Maurice Beam (1897-1990) -?]

Never Say Dice! (August 1931, Snappy Stories)
(also in "Knife in the Dark and Other Stories", Pulpville Press, 2005)

[--DESCRIPTION FROM http://pulpgen.com : Here's another story from the Spicy ashcan set. Bellem gives new meaning to the phrase, "You sleep in the wet spot."]

[--Dan Turner is back in "Diamonds of Death" by Robert Leslie Bellem. Dan Turner gets into a bloody tangle of horror trailing the Daglihoff Jewels.]

Scoop! (July 1934, Spicy Detective Stories; also in - Pep Tec Tales, October 1937) as Ellery Watson Calder

[*? = Dead Man’s Head (August 1936 [August 1935*?], Spicy Detective Stories) Dan Turner
(also in "Pulp Friction", ed. Peter Haining, London: Souvenir Press, 1996)

[--"Death by Telephone" by Robert Leslie Bellem. Follow Dan Turner, Hollywood's two fisted detective, through a murderous tangle of love and intrigue among the film stars]

[--Follow Dan Turner, Hollywood's two-fisted detective, through a murderous tangle of love and intrigue among the film stars. A Classic Dan Turner story. It mixes the right blend of action, titilation and sleuthing to make for a great read.]

+ (Sleeping Dogs  (January 1943, Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective) [2nd changed version]) Dan Turner

[--Tate Shevlin pits himself against mighty powers—smashes through incredible oriental horrors—in his last magnificent adventure with the Golden Girl.]

[--Caspian Contraband by Robert Leslie Bellem. "In a Soviet seaport, death is swift, and romance may veil murder. Was she bait for assassins -- this exotic young girl who played her strange role ? "]

[--Lots of groping and a little kidnapping.
--The summer night was warm. Fairmount Park was dark. Bill Clifford's roadster was speedy.]

[--"Temporary Corpse" by Robert Leslie Bellem. Dan Turner didn't like funerals -- and this one looked like his! Another absorbing yarn of Hollywood's ace detective -- and murder from the grave.]

[--"Murder Masquerade" by Robert Leslie Bellem featuring Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective. It was an exclusive Hollywood party -- til Murder crashed the gate.]

The Peacock Clue (July 1935, Spicy Detective Stories) as Ellery Watson Calder

The Black 13 (August 1935, Spicy-Adventure Stories) as Ellery Watson Calder

[--He laid his last five-spot on 13 - and a lovely girl claimed his winnings! What did she know of the grim secret that made him a hunted fugitive?]

[--"Could the headsman win a woman's heart? Could love escape the shadow of a grisly trade?... The weird, powerful story of: a passion choked in blood - and two fates twisted beneath the fatal axe."]

[the main character: Maizie]

[--Movie starlets are disappearing and Turner is trying to find out what's happening to them.]

Scepter of Sargasso (October 1935, Spicy-Adventure Stories) as Ellery Watson Calder

+ revised version: Beyond Justice (April 1942, Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective [Wilmington, Delaware]) Dan Turner
[-- Dan didn't like this beauty contest, even though he was a judge. He liked it even less when the winning beauty was knifed. Was the dead girl's murder an act of vengeance - or a legacy of love?
This is a revised, toned-down version of a story originally published in Spicy Detective Stories, November 1935.]
[--Nothing is left to the imagination when Dan Turner judges a beauty contest of Hollywood cuties.]

[--"A Comet Passes" by Robert Leslie Bellem. The find the girl floating face downward in the swimming pool. And the whole front of her skull had been smashed in! All the clues are here in plain sight! Match wits with Dan Turner to see if you can find the murderer as soon as he can!]

Pancho Diego, Villain (April 1936, Spicy-Adventure Stories) as Ellery Watson Calder

[*? = (January 1942, Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective [Wilmington, Delaware]) Dan Turner
(also in "Dan Turner - Hollywood Detective No. 1 [Bullet From Nowhere]", Girasol Collectables, 2003)]

[--Guns roared in Chinatown. The police took it calmly. "Another tong war," they said. But Hollywood's super-sleuth Dan Turner was always a doubter. Wouldn't it seem more reasonable that somebody had deliberately shot at the girl to keep her from tipping anyone off about the kidnapping?]

Cajun Queen (July 1936, Spicy-Adventure Stories) as Ellery Watson Calder

[--It was the dizziest looking diamond ring Dan Turner had ever seen - and a girl was giving it to him to keep . . . handing him plenty of Hollywood trouble on a platter.]

[--They wanted Frisco Pete for murder. He didn't dare show himself to the girl in the next room. Yet - there are times when even a crook hiding out can't help butting in.]

[--Silverscreen Spectre by Robert Leslie Bellem featuring Dan Turner. "It's impossible; but it's so! Dan Turner takes up the case of the haunted movie, in which an accidentally electrocuted wife comes back to plague her director-husband."]

[--Description from Vintage Library. - Featuring the cover story "From the Sea" by Robert Leslie Bellem... With the smell of brine on his clothes, he came striding out of the past to kill a faithless women and her lover. And even as he enacted his vengeance, he realized he had already accomplished his task, long, long, time ago.]

Murder for Metrovox (November 1936, Spicy Detective [Wilmington, Delaware])

The Lost Company (November 1936, Saucy Movie Tales) as Nelson Kent

The Power-Smashers (November 1936, Spicy Adventure [Wilmington, Delaware])

Powdersmoke Passion (December 1936, Spicy Western Stories) [western]
(also in "Lust of the Lawless", Black Dog Books, 2010)

+ see: Model for a Corpse (February 1950, Hollywood Detective [Springfield, Massachusetts] [2nd changed version]) Dan Turner

[--"DEATH FOR A NAME" by Robert Leslie Bellem (A Dan Turner-Hollywood Detective story) Dan Turner insists that he is a detective, not a blackmailer. Yet when the dynamite is put under the hood of the car...he looks for the girl...]

[--Description from Vintage Library. - Murder Claws: Strike-breaking isn't Dan Turner's idea of a decent way to earn a living. But when Sue-Anne was smacked with the cobblestone, he felt he had to take a hand in the business.]

[the main character: Sonya Petroff]

Brand of the Question-Mark (June 1937, Spicy Western Stories) as Ellery Watson Calder [western]
(also in "Lust of the Lawless", Black Dog Books, 2010)

[--Judge Lynch had a necktie around Clint's neck when the masked figure saved him. From the shadow of the noose Clint Kelso had been brought back to life and love...]

Meat Hunter (June 1937, Spicy Western Stories) as Jerome Severs Perry [western]
(also in "Lust of the Lawless", Black Dog Books, 2010)

[the main character: Celeste Challoner]

[--Description from Vintage Library. - Star Chamber: When a girl slips Dan Turner five C's to keep a date with her, he knows she means business. And its that business that leads him to some queer spots.]

[--Johnnie Piper's assignment required him to photograph the largest diamond in the world. But the camera guy could barely keep his mind on his work while the old millionaire's niece was around!]

[*? = (April 1942, Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective [Wilmington, Delaware]) Dan Turner]

Reclaimed (September 1937, Spicy-Adventure Stories) as Ellery Watson Calder

[*? = Three-Way Weapons (in the collection of stories and articles: "The Robert Leslie Bellem Magazine", 26 October 2009)]

[--"A mocking melody drew him to this woman of the night... and the spell of her forced him to transform her witching loveliness to canvas. Only Dr. Zarkov knew that Shane was being led toward his wife's death, and toward his own atonement on the gallows."]

Killer’s Method (April 1938, Spicy Detective Stories) as Ellery Watson Calder

+ see: Russian Run-Around (March 1943, Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective) [2nd changed version] Dan Turner

[--DESCRIPTION FROM http://pulpgen.com : This one is a humorous wrestling story which is very much in the vein of Thomas Thursday. ]

[the main character: Del Buchanan]

[--A movie star on the way up...with a lot of ex-wives who want alimony and plenty of it. Would any of them want to pin a murder on him? It was Dan Turner's job to find out!]

[--"It was no dream. The girl was dead and her accomplice would be hanged for murder. Only Dr. Zarkov, surgeon of souls, could explain what had happened, and he was gone! "]

[--"Even before Foster committed the crime, the Surgeon of Souls began his warnings. Which would be stronger - the little old man or the woman who enthralled him so completely."]

[--Bellem dishes out the purple prose and comes up with a fine story about a newspaper man, his old flame, his new flame, and a couple of roscoes.]

[--It was only a hunch, but Dan Turner played it out. Every sign pointed to Kurt's having killed Rozelle. But Dan knew women...]

[--They are partners. They have worked together to develop plans for a new plane. To foil espionage attempts, the plans are divided between the partners. But what happens when one of the partners turns traitor?]

[--DESCRIPTION FROM pulpgen.com : Another great story from that literary master, Robert Leslie Bellem. This one is taken from a classic "weird menace" pulp and is a nice representative of that genre. ]

[--VAIN VICTORY by Robert Leslie Bellem. Foreign governments would have given a lot for plans to the new torpedo, and Jeff knew that spies would be after it. But he didn't know how far they would go! And when the girl he loved helped them trick him...]

[Drunk, Disorderly, and Dead (April 1942, Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective)
--She loved her husband, yet she was determined to create a public scandal. Dan Turner might not have minded so much being her partner in the scene except that her husband was his friend. There was no way for him to guess it was all leading to murder.]

[--Cock fighting--it's just a sport that Sheriff Jim doesn't want to deal with--until a cock kills a man--and then the sheriff has no choice.]

[--Dan Turner could see no other way out. He must take the law in his own hands; but he figured it was worth the risk if it would get Judy Prescott out of the jam she was in.]

[--Macklin believed in the message he delivered before the labor meeting: The government is corrupt; it is time for the workers, the masses, to get their just due. And when Capitalist thugs start a riot to break up the meeting, killing his little crippled friend Obrowski in the process, Macklin vows vengeance.
--Rostoff took all Macklin's blows and still kept coming, like nothing human.]

[--Purgatory, Arizona, lived up to its name when Dan Turner unwittingly took a case to return a poor devil to the chain gang. The fellow's pretty wife needed a doctor, but Dan thought she might be needing an undertaker more!]

+ see: Cat Act (November 1943, Hollywood Detective [Springfield, Massachusetts]) [2nd changed version] Dan Turner

[--'Set at an isolated archeological dig in the "Damnation Range" of Arizona - a supposedly haunted area known as Red Ghost Mesa, where the shades of ancient Indian medicine men are said to "visit weird death on interlopers" - the story features one John Brent, who comes looking for  a missing archeologist named Shafter...' (from the book of Bill Pronzini "Gun in cheek : An affectionate guide to the "worst" in mystery fiction")]

[--Description from Vintage Library. - Reckoning in Red: Only Dan Turner could separate real from phony, read motives correctly, and bring a killer to justice.]

[--She was bad, that woman! Her husband, the Frake brothers, and Tom-the-Twist, all came to some degree under her evil spell. And, as if she weren't enough trouble aboard the lugger, that pearl had to put in an appearance too!]

[--Why should a lovely movie star want to quit her career, hide out from everybody - including the man who loved her? Dan Turner found more than one mystery when death visited the lonely ranch house and offered an astonishing solution.]

[--The cameras are set, the scene has already been rehearsed; "Shoot!" the director says. . . . What happens is stark tragedy - not of the movie, play-acting variety, but like a chapter out of the deeper drama of life itself.]

[*? = (May 1936, Spicy Detective [Wilmington, Delaware]) Dan Turner
aka: Cooked (in "The Case Files of Dan Turner Hollywood Detective. Volume 2 - The Middle Years", Pulpville Press, 2009)]

[--An ounce of murder-prevention is worth a pound of chasing a killer. So Dan tries to help the girl - only to find that a very fast one is being pulled on him.]

[--"Death Dance" by Robert Leslie Bellem. Dan Turner was always a sucker for dames in distress -- especially if they happen to be young and lovely. but he didn't feel quite so happy about befriending this one after he'd been convinced she was as nutty as a fruitcake, a homicidal maniac!]

+ see: The Million Buck Snatch (June 1936, Spicy Detective [Wilmington, Delaware]) [1st version] Dan Turner

[--It's a big job for a detective to stop a murder from happening - especially if he gets there too late. But with the cutest quail in Hollywood cooled, her killer had to be found.]

[--Description from Vintage Library. - Death in the Doghouse: Murder rears its ugly head in the midst of a radio rehearsal!]

[Description for Death on Location (April 1942, Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective): --A camera never lies about a murder it has recorded. But a murderer can lie, and it's up to Dan to discover who knifed the heroine of the desert pic while she was bathing in her dressing tent.]

[-It's tough to have your client, a lovely movie star, killed almost before your eyes. . . . In trying to solve the murder mystery, Dan Turner nearly co-starred in it as a corpse!]

[--Only a little while ago Dan had seen Kathy and she had been dead - very, very dead. Now, alive as anyone possibly could be, she was sitting up, talking flirtatiously, positively amused at his amazement! What could it mean? Was his mind going?]

[Description for Murderer's Error (April 1942, Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective): --When a woman hits the top in Hollywood, she becomes the target for envy, jealousy, hate, and gossip. And that's how it was with Beryl Bannock. When her secretary was killed, Dan realized that her enemies were playing for keeps and that his job of bodyguarding was not going to be all the fun that it promised to be.]

[--Her current boy-friend always bought champagne, yet it was gin that the red-haired doll spilled! Or was it water? Or vitriol? Or had she really spilled it anyway? Whatever the facts, it made copy for a movie gossip-columnist, and for Dan there were more murders to be solved.]

[Description for Star Chamber (April 1942, Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective): --The girl had paid Dan Turner five centuries and asked him to meet her at eight. Now her ex-husband was trying to hire him, and setting the same hour for an appointment! The whole set-up smelled to Dan, and behind it all was the stronger smell of cooking opium.]

Skyrocket Copper (May 1942, Mammoth Detective) as Ellery Watson Calder

[*Doctor Zeng had been created by E. Hoffman Price (i.e. Edgar Hoffman Trooper Price, 1898-1988) for THRILLING MYSTERY, intended as a one-shot novelette "Fangs of Doom" (November 1941, Thrilling Mystery; reprinted in "Behind the Mask" #5 [Summer 1990], ed.: Fading Shadows Inc., 1990].

[* The writer of the first few Jim Anthony stories was Victor Rousseau (pseudonym of Victor Rousseau Emanuel, 1879-1960), a pulp writer of fantasy & SF]

[*? = Last Act (in the collection of stories and articles: "The Robert Leslie Bellem Magazine", 26 October 2009)]

[--When these spells of savagery came over him, Larry was afraid of himself—afraid, too, for the girl he loved. And during his lapses of memory, what horrible things had he done?]

[--Nothing scalds Dan Turner so much as a threatening note. When there's geetus in a case, and when there's a little songbird like Chiquita in the picture, nobody's going to tell Dan to layoff, and get away with it! ]

[--Keeping a cute movie extra on ice in his apartment is bound to get Dan in trouble. And part of it is that a gunman doesn't forget how to play rough just because he's turned screen actor.]

[--Nothing can be so mixed up as a couple of scrambled Hollywood marriages - with everybody wanting to kill everybody else. Dan is on hand to prevent things going quite that far . . .]

[--When a man goes on a bender and tries to kill the woman who has made a success of him, an ounce of prevention is called for, Dan Turner figures, or a pound of murder will be roosting on his doorstep.]

+ (Sleeping Dogs (September 1934, Spicy Detective [Wilmington, Delaware]) [1st version] Dan Turner

[--Follow Dan Turner, Hollywood's two-fisted detective, through a murderous tangle of love and intrigue among the film stars.]

[--There was only one man on the set who could have shot the arrow, yet Dan hated to think Jeff could be guilty. Motive tumbles over motive, and suspect waltzes around with suspect - but there still remains the question: Where did the arrow come from?]

[--The idea was new - and was tops! Whoever thought of stealing a million dollar production before it was released? And behind it was the ransom angle, and there was blackmail, too. Sometimes a detective likes to get his teeth into a case like that. It's like matching your wits with a genius.]

[--It looked like a gift from Santa Claus left on Dan's doorstep, but, unwrapped, it turned out to be as grisly a thing as anyone could hope not to find.]

[--It was a screwball situation. Here was Dan Turner, sitting at home and minding his own business, when the knock came at his front door. A short time later he was in a lavish apartment a few miles away, where he had been convoyed at the point of a gun, and a beautiful cutie he had never seen before was calling him "Dan, darling" and implying that they were old sweeties!]

[--Dan Turner had little sympathy for the dead woman, and a lot for the girl with the pistol. This seemed the time to take the law into his own hands.]

[--At first, Dan Turner thought the girl had shot at him and it didn't make him any the less mad because she had missed. But before he could make her talk, another bullet closed her mouth. That sort of interference in Dan's business, was the last straw! Somebody was going to pay - and plenty.]

[--Whatever it was, it had happened thirteen years ago! Whatever it was, only a dead man was supposed to know anything about it! Yet now Sid Waldring was being blackmailed for it. Completely in the dark, Dan offers to help if he can.]

[--It looked like the old badger game to Dan Turner - at first. Then he realized the movie star had no motive except to escape a frame-up for murder, herself...]

[--Donaldson's crack had been meant as a joke, but the girl who overheard it wasn't in a joking mood. After that, it didn't matter what Dan Turner said. To her he was a Russian wife-deserter, and a bad actor.]

+ see: Brunette Bump-Off (May 1938, Spicy Detective [Wilmington, Delaware]) [1st version] Dan Turner

[--Everybody knew Kilgore had been killed trying to escape from San Quentin. Yet now this girl, who knew all the facts in the case, pleads with Dan to save her from the dead man!]

[--It's rare that Dan encounters dough so dirty that he won't touch it. Even this time, when the ante was boosted enough, he forgot his scruples. Besides there was a feminine angle...]

[--It was a screwy assignment. The Hollywood horror actor thought he was going crazy! "I want you to save me from myself, Mr. Turner," he said. "I'm turning into a werewolf. And I want you to keep me from hurting my wife..."]

[--"I think my wife is being blackmailed," the guy opened up. And Dan agreed to protect the dame while she kept her secret tryst. It wasn't until after she'd kept her clandestine appointment that he had a real idea of how big a job he'd taken upon himself.]

+ see: Cat Act (February 1941, Spicy Detective [Wilmington, Delaware]) [1st version] Dan Turner

[--Dan wasn't even working for the movie star when she slapped his face and fired him in the most public way possible! To make matters worse, the whole thing was right under the nose of the gabbiest gossip columnist in Hollywood.]

[--The cash customers paid plenty out to watch her emote on the screen. They looked upon her as a brunette angel, but there were a lot of substantial citizens in Hollywood who knew Linda for a rat.]

[--They were making a cowboy picture, and of course the Indians' arrows had all been blunted. Nevertheless it was an arrow with sharpened tip that came out of the welter of battle to kill the lovely star!]

Strike Up the Gland (January 1944, Super Sports: Vol. 5 Number 2)

[--In the flash of lightning Dan got a look at his prisoner - a man without a face, a zombie! And listening to his story, Dan suddenly felt that, here in the movie colony, he had at last found a real man!]

[--To win a girl's confidence Dan Turner turns actor. He should have known from the first that Hollywood is full of actors - and actresses.]

[--Trying to trip up a kidnaper, Dan Turner finds himself in the middle of a murder mess. Behind it all looms up the hoodoo cab, license number, 8-BA-11. Accidents, lawsuits, and now a murder! But what can you expect of a cab, handicapped like that, and with a girl driver to boot?]

[--As much as he disapproves of murder, Dan Turner hates blackmail even more. And as much as he loves a client who puts cash on the line, Dan's common sense tells him there's little percentage in trying to cover up for a killer. All of these factors, and more, confront him in The Case of the Millionaire Producer with the Puritanical Sweetheart.]

[--For years Ace had been asking for trouble. This time it looked as if he were really going to get it. There were so many people just yearning to send flowers to his funeral that it was hard to find any one who knew him who wouldn't be a suspect if he died suddenly.]

[--If you tangle with a burglar and a corpse - both of them female and beautiful and very prominent - you're apt to steam four ways at once, the way Dan Turner did.]

[--It looked like a shakedown that could go on forever, with the ex-soldier movie star as the fall guy - and then Dan Turner was bopped into a couple of falls himself for a splendid start to the hereafter.]

[--A special kind of trap had been provided to guarantee a most spectacular ending for the male movie star. And the killer suspects had figured some highly colorful dodges in order to confound Dan Turner, the surging shamus of this cinemaland!]

[--What was the grim mystery in this disappearance of the fat gag writer's cousin? Hollywood's ace gumshoe, Dan Turner, had to meet and combat a heap of rough to-do before he neared the finish.]

[--The clean-living young movie star had emoted his final scene in the audible tintypes. He was now knifed deader than a poached egg, and maybe there'd been more in his life than was suspected by his associates. In any case, Dan Turner, having been in at the kick-off of this murder game, decided he'd throw his weight around until the final whistle!]

[--Things had been so dull in Dan Turner's private-eye business that he didn't know where his next murder was coming from. But the dainty little manicurist named Malloy thought she knew - and it turned out she was right.]

[--There was a butler who looked like Frankenstein, but wasn't; there were a couple of old maids who wore funny-smelling perfume and who had odd dispositions; there was an assortment of other odd characters. And most of all there was a comely corpse who was present and a set of valuable ruby rocks that were missing - and before Dan Turner reached the peak with this mob, he was missing part of his health.]

[--Dan Turner was out for the gravy, and he got it - right in the kisser! Which made Hollywood's ace private dick almost as mad as the corpse's bodyguard, who, in friendly fashion, beat the bejunior out of his pal Dan. All in all, it was the whackiest murder case in his career!]

Graveyard Serenade (July 1946, Private Detective Stories) as Ellery Watson Calder

[--A great classic Dan Turner tale with the broads, the blood and Dan Turner's answer to anger management therapy: guns.]

[--That bogus postman brought Dan Turner a splendid solid whack with a blackjack and it was a highly special delivery - thereby involving the ace movietown hawkshaw with low killery and high finance and dangerous bafflement! ...]

[--The beauteous bride of that aging flicker star had a good sound reason for hitch-hiking, all right - but when she picked Dan Turner's car for that lift she thereby led him into one of the locoedest killery setups ever to run wild, even in movietown!]

[--Dan Turner was startled to discover why the monocled publisher-gambler didn't answer the big detective's questions - the guy was dead, although he looked alive! And from there on in the gumshoe trail became rougher and rougher with bruising bumps!]

[--The fat gentleman evidently had a very special reason for wanting that glamorous cinema queen to affix her signature to a page in his little book - and Dan Turner saw it turn out to be a book of doom, with complications that would have tried the tempers of the Devil!]

[--Dan Turner wasn't ordinarily the sort of shamus who messed around with disguises, but here he was now pretending he was a chauffeur and watching an old goat who evidently craved to become a gunsel in connection with his romantic activities - and before this odd escapade caromed into murder, Dan already had earned his fee!..]

[--That beef-blowing movie studio detective, Little Jack Horner, attended his boss's card party, at which various guests were being cheated, to find a card-expert corpse - with two knives in it - created in the dark almost under his nose, and then it became a dangerous job indeed!]

[--At first it looked like a very ordinary case of movie-studio labor trouble, and Dan Turner didn't crave to be a strikebreaker - but when homicide started to bust out like June all around him, he decided to try dire murder-case breaking!]

[--Just why was that glamorous female star, whose rise in the movie firmament had been swift as that of a meteor, taking a runout powder on her career forever? Was it just blackmail? Dan Turner had been hired to find out - and when his employer became suddenly defunct a highly dangerous angle blossomed from the setup.]

[--Hollywood's dying Guru accuses famed screen star Lola Dulac of killing him, but hard-boiled sleuth Nick Ransom doesn't take anybody's word for anything - without proof to back it up!]

[--That washed-up movie-director was going to knock himself off in order to give his no-good bride a double-indemnity payoff - and, Dan Turner, trying to do a couple of good deeds, found himself facing a murder rap with some very hard gunsels making it tough!]

[--The victim was no longer alive to deny or confirm his murderer but Homicide Donaldson was trying to finger Dan Turner for the kill - because in a Sunset Strip gin mill the Ace private eye had uttered public threats to feed the victim crooner a load of venom . . . it was evident that Dan was in a king-size jack-pot!]

[the main character: Steve Devlin]

[--Nothing could surprise Nick Ransom in that zany funeral home after the sweet chick welcoming him at the door - and the corpse greeting him in the parlor!]

[the main character: Don Palmer]
[--Faced-paced, with beautiful dames, missing bodies and an ending with a twist. This is what hard-boiled pulp fiction is all about.]

+ see: Robots Can't Lie (Winter 1941, Fantastic Adventures Quaterly: Vol. 3 Number 5) [1st version] [SF]

+ see: Death's Diary! (February 1937, Spicy Detective [Wilmington, Delaware]) [1st version] Dan Turner

Headline to Kill (March 1950, Hollywood Detective) as Ellery Watson Calder

 ??? R. L. Bellem or pulp-writer John A. Saxon (1886-1947) ???

The Land of Beginning Again  (April 1921, People’s Favorite Magazine) as John A. Saxon [poem]
Going Back (May 1921, People’s Favorite Magazine) as John A. Saxon [poem]
The Red Leather Legion (September 1931, Fight Stories)  as John A. Saxon
Diamonds in the Dark (June 1935, Thrilling Detective) as John A. Saxon
Deadline for Murder (August 1935, The Phantom Detective) as John A. Saxon
Return of the Gun-Prodigal (September 1936, Star Western) as John A. Saxon
Owlhoot Trail to Glory (December 1936-January 1937, New Western Magazine) as John A. Saxon
Badlands Benediction (March 1937, Dime Western Magazine) as John A. Saxon
The Corpse that Screamed (March 1937, Clues) as John A. Saxon
Range-Branded! (June 1937, Five-Novels Monthly) as John A. Saxon
Death Freight for Santa Fe (November 1937, Star Western) as John A. Saxon
North—To Hell (1937, first publication - ?*);  (also in - Max Brand’s Western Magazine, September 1951) as John A. Saxon
Greater Than Gunflame (August 1938, Dime Western Magazine) as John A. Saxon
The Boothill Pardon (October 1938, Ace-High Magazine) as John A. Saxon
Never Look for Murder (December 1938, Top-Notch Detective) as John A. Saxon
Showdown for a Gun-Ghost (January 1939, Western Yarns) as John A. Saxon
Corpse Harvest (June 1939, Thrilling Detective) as John A. Saxon
Give It to ’Em, Leatherneck! (Fall 1939, Fight Stories) as John A. Saxon
Satan Sides a Gunman ( September 1939, Popular Western; also in - The Masked Rider Western Magazine, Fall 1950) as John A. Saxon
Heir to a Lobo Legacy (April 1940, Western Aces) as John A. Saxon
Hot Seat Payoff (July 1940, G-Men Detective) as John A. Saxon
Bullet Broadcast (September 1940, Gangland Detective Stories; also in - Yankee Gang Shorts #8, 1942) as John A. Saxon
The Valley of Hate (September 1940, Popular Western) as John A. Saxon
Gun-Swifts of Gila Valley (Fall 1940, Exciting Western) as John A. Saxon
Stand Your Hands (October 1940, Big Chief Western) as John A. Saxon
West Is West (December 7 1940, Wild West Weekly) as John A. Saxon
Call Me at Midnight (July 1941, G-Men Detective; also in - Fiction Quarterly [Canada] Spring 1942) as John A. Saxon
Mirror of Murder (August 1941, Popular Detective; also in - Popular Detective [Canada], January 1942) as John A. Saxon
Señor Fury (July 1944, Fifteen Western Tales) as John A. Saxon  [short story - vignette]
Death in a Crystal Casket (June 1945, Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine; also in - Detective Story Magazine [UK], January 1953) as John A. Saxon
Wheels Rolling West (January 1946, Fighting Western) as John A. Saxon 
The Music Box Kid (November 1946, Lariat Story Magazine) as John A. Saxon
Murder Under Glass (date unknown); (also in - Swan American Magazine #2, 1946) as John A. Saxon

Fatal Make-Up (October 3, 1936, Detective Fiction Weekly) as John A. Saxon
[--The Crimson Stain on That Lethal Blade Was Not Blood - Yet Without a Question It Marked the Murderer!]
character: Buck Whalen, a Hollywood private detective.
[--- Saxon was a pseudonym for Robert Leslie Bellum, best known as the creator of Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective. Dan Turner appeared in dozens of stories, starting in Spicy Detective and later graduating to his own eponymous pulp. "Fatal Make-Up" also stars a Hollywood detective, Buck Whalen, but this story contains none of the prurient prose or over-the-top hard-boiled pastiche that define the Dan Turner mysteries. The closest we get is this line, as Buck Whalen wakes up after a knock-out: "His mind began to function, jerkily. It was darker than the inside of a cow in that closet."
The Dan Turner mysteries were usually first person, and this one's in the third. But except for the name change, this may well be a Dan Turner mystery neutered for the DFW market. It has the Hollywood milieu; the starlets, producers, and backlot action. Not a great story, but an interesting provenance. (mark.pruett from pulp-yahoogroups)]