Fifty Roads To Town Frederick Nebel Mercury Mystery #33 1st PB
Exceedingly scarce 3rd novel by the classic Black Mask pulp writer
Cover art by George Salter
Very Good - Solid spine has slight wear. Pages tight, creamy and supple. Almost no creasing and very light edgewear, which is highly uncommon for these books. Name written on lower front cover and partially erased - still not too obtrusive. A superior copy of the first mass market paperback of a hard boiled classic.
An American Mercury Book # 33. One of only three novels by Nebel, a charter member
of the Black Mask school of hard-boiled crime fiction. Maine setting;
"the first blizzard of the year, blocked roads, stalled buses and a town
filled to bursting with refugees from the storm." Eventually made in a
film with Don Ameche, Ann Sothern, and others.
Largely self-educated,
Frederick Lewis Nebel was sent to live with his grandfather in northern
Canada in order to escape the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic ravaging
New York City. There he soaked up Canadian pioneer history, which he'd
draw upon in the 1920s writing for the pulp, "Northwest Stories", which
is where he'd score his initial success as an author. Nebel spent his
early adulthood working his way across the Atlantic and Europe as a
merchant seaman.
In Paris, he'd met his future wife, Dorothy and
together they wandered back stateside and the couple took up residence
in St. Louis, Missouri where Nebel began his writing career in earnest.
After his first successful sales to "Northwest Stories", he branched out
to other burgeoning pulp publishers, writing effectively across several
genres. Aside from "Northwest Stories", Nebel scored big with "Black
Mask" in 1926. Its legendary publisher Joe 'Cap' Shaw promoted Nebel as
its first star author, probably in an effort to upgrade the image of the
6-year old magazine, which he felt was hindered by the almost
inexplicable popularity of the mindless writing of Caroll J. Daly.
Nebel's characters were denizens of Richmond City; police captain Steve
MacBride and a sometime acrimoniously-teamed local news reporter simply
named Kennedy.
Nebel burned through 37 actioned-packed stories that were
among the most popular entries in the magazine. Nebel went on to create
another memorable hard-nosed character, Donny Donahue that Shaw
promoted as a replacement from the high-profile loss of Dashiell
Hammett. Donny Donahue, a private dick from the Interstate Detective
Agency debuted in 1930 and kept readers happy over the next 3 years.
Although Nebel has several film credits, he maintained a very negative
view of Hollywood. He would often cite examples of how the studios
chewed up his colleagues. Nebel would license the film rights to his
stories (most famously Torchy Blaine) to the highest bidder, steadfastly
declining to write the screenplays. In later years he discontinued
writing crime stories altogether, shifting to romance stories for the
women's magazine market. Plagued with health problems in his 50s his
writing ground to a premature stop. He died in 1967