The Art of Detection: From Sherlock Holmes to Sam Spade By Lee Barwood

It was freedom, reckless and wonderful. It was the allure of faraway lands, the beckoning whisper of a beautiful woman, the thrill of a duel to the death.
It was the pulps. And to thirty million readers, it was their passport to grand adventure.
The most final and irreversible crime is murder. Murder is sometimes personal, often bloody, usually messy and almost always cause for investigation-and that includes the science of investigating a crime.
More than the subject of hit CSI television dramas, the science of forensics has evolved and improved over the years. (Forensic analysis has been documented at least as far back as the "Eureka" legend of Archimedes, 287-212 BC-even though, surprisingly, police only started using fingerprints for evidence in 1892 when Juan Vucetich solved a murder case in Argentina by cutting off a piece of a door with a bloody fingerprint on it.)
In the pages of famous (and sometimes infamous) detective novels, the heroes have captured the hearts of readers all over the world with realistic portrayals of deception and fatal retribution. They have also captured the minds of readers through intelligent investigation and equally realistic portrayals of the art and science of detection.
Undoubtedly the most famous literary detective is Sherlock Holmes. His creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, would have never been able to conjure up the master of deduction himself had it not been for his academic work as a student at the University of Edinburgh-first with Dr. Joseph Bell, who specialized in criminal psychology (after whom Holmes was modeled), and later with Professor Andrew Maclaglan, a forensic medicine expert, who taught Doyle how to observe the details and clues that led to the precise causes of death.
The same is true of Dashiell Hammett, creator of Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles. Hammett grew up on the mean streets of Philadelphia and worked as a private detective with the Baltimore and San Francisco branches of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency-and had the cuts and scars from scraps with criminals to prove it.
For his detective fiction, L. Ron Hubbard interviewed law enforcement officials, police officers and federal investigators. He even developed a long-term friendship with New York's chief medical examiner. The coroner shared his professional expertise with Hubbard and other members of the New York Chapter of the American Fiction Guild members over lunch, members who would, as Ron recounted, "go away from the luncheon the weirdest shades of green."
While Sherlock Holmes has been embedded in popular culture first by Basil Rathbone and then by Robert Downey Jr., and Sam Spade has been immortalized on the screen by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon-like the very first tough private eye, Race Williams-these detectives first found fame in the pages of the pulp fiction all-story magazines that serialized their stories to millions of Americans up through the 1930s and 1940s before the TV set took the world by storm.
But no matter the form-TV show, movie, eBook, audiobook or paperback-a good detective story is just bloody enjoyable.

Lee Barwood is the author of several mystery and fantasy novels, including A Lingering Passion and the award-winning tale, A Dream of Drowned Hollow. Visit her online at leebarwood.com. Get a FREE desk calendar at http://www.goldenagestories.com/news/today-in-history-email-signup

From 'The Lone Ranger' To '3:10 to Yuma,' Pulp Fiction Westerns Fuel the Silver Screen By Lee Barwood

It looks like the Lone Ranger is once more about to have a reason to shout "Hi-yo, Silver! Away!" to his white stallion, accompanied by his ever-faithful companion Tonto.
Rumors are swirling around Hollywood that Johnny Depp's film The Lone Ranger has finally gotten the green light, and with fellow Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski, production should soon be underway.
But the movie won't follow in the footsteps of the original Clayton Moore Lone Ranger TV and movie renditions of the '40s and '50s. Reportedly, it will focus on Tonto, with Native American spiritual and occult aspects weaved in with special effects. Needless to say, it should be entertaining.
The Lone Ranger has become an enduring representation of American culture. The character first appeared in a 1933 radio show on radio station WXYZ. The show featured a fictional masked ex-Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion, fights injustice and villainy in the American Old West.
The owner of WXYZ, George Trendle, wanted a western, and Fran Striker, a self-described hack writer, started writing. He created a vigilante lawman in the Lone Ranger who protects the criminal justice system by working outside of it, the perfect type of hero for the Depression Era.
But perhaps the best description of the Lone Ranger character is embodied in "The Lone Ranger Creed" by Fran Striker:
- I believe that to have a friend, a man must be one.
- That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.
- That God put the firewood there but that every man must gather and light it himself.
- In being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for that which is right.
- That a man should make the most of what equipment he has.
- That 'This government, of the people, by the people and for the people' shall live always.
- That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.
- That sooner or later...somewhere...somehow...we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.
- That all things change but truth, and that truth alone, lives on forever.
- In my Creator, my country, my fellow man.
Needless to say, the radio show was a huge hit and it was the inspiration for the equally popular TV show that ran from 1949-1957, comic books, movies and pulp fiction magazines of the same name.
On the radio show, the title character was played by George Seaton, Earle Graser and Brace Beemer. On TV, the Lone Ranger was Clayton Moore and Tonto was played by Jay Silverheels.
Of note, other famous western movies based on stories originally published in the popular pulp fiction magazines of the 1930s-1950s include Hondo, starring John Wayne, based on Louis L'Amour's short story "The Gift of Cochise," and the critically acclaimed 3:10 to Yuma starring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, based on the Elmore Leonard story of the same name, which was published in the 1953 edition of Dime Western Magazine.