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Large octavo, single issue, cover by John Atherton, pictorial wrappers. Fiction by Belden Duff, Whitman Chambers, Hulbert Footner, Helgo Walter, Norman Matson, Mary Plum, and Edward Acheson (his full-length novel, DEAD MEN CAN'T WALK); articles by Henry LaCossitt, Leigh Matteson, Edmund Pearson, and Theodore Dreiser ("I Find the Real American Tragedy"). A large format, densely illustrated, bedsheet-sized pulp. "The fiction emphasized the woman's point of view, was often narrated by a woman, and featured as many feminine as masculine detectives. In the rear of the magazine flowered all the usual departments of a more conventional woman's publication . That this magazine would publish much fiction of interest seems improbable. But without effort, it contrived to be superb. ILLUSTRATED DETECTIVE selected outstanding writers who had made their mark in the 1920s and mingled these with rising writers of the 1930s. Over the years, the magazine would publish work by top names in the mystery field, including Ellery Queen, Stuart Palmer, Sax Rohmer, Arnold Kummer, Hulbert Footner, Vincent Starrett and H. Bedford-Jones. The fiction was polished, often strongly compressed, and good enough for a large amount of it to appear later between book covers. The magazine appeared monthly for almost six years, sixty-nine issues, at ten cents a copy. After three years, the title was changed to THE MYSTERY MAGAZINE . Covers were tasteful, bright, and uneventful, relying heavily on the faces of self-confident women. Inside was an astonishing amount of material: eight to ten pieces of fiction, four or more crime-fact articles, and up to ten continuing departments (about half of these slanted directly toward women). When the magazine was at its peak in the early 1930s, it offered material carefully calculated to appeal to most tastes and both sexes . MYSTERY was as meticulously planned as an orchestral score. Its careful variations played upon every shade of reader interest. It was consciously polished, self-consciously feminine. A curious pared sound rang in its fiction, as if the stories had been edited with a chain saw, but the prose flashed with a bright nickel glitter. Slick the magazine may have been, and often over illustrated, but it was also considerably interesting and, for years, excellent." - Cook, Mystery, Detective, and Espionage Magazines, pp. [287]-90. Mild dust soiling to covers, a bright, nearly fine copy. Uncommon. (15699). Seller Inventory # 15699
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