Dan Turner, also known as the Hollywood Detective, was a fictional private detective created by Robert Leslie Bellem. His first appearance was in the second issue of the pulp magazine Spicy Detective, dated June 1934, and he continued to appear regularly in that magazine, retitled Speed Detective in 1943, until its demise in February 1947. He also appeared in Hollywood Detective, which ran from January 1942 to October 1950.
Dan Turner was a typical hardboiled private eye, who worked in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles. Most of the stories are set in and around the film studios, and focus on crimes involving people in the movie business – film stars, stuntmen, producers, agents, extras and an endless array of glamorous female starlets. The Dan Turner stories were notorious for their emphasis on sexual content, although this was generally implied rather than described explicitly.
A large number of the Dan Turner stories were written by Bellem himself, who had a good inside knowledge of Hollywood having worked as a film extra. The Hollywood Detective magazine also featured a Dan Turner comic strip, drawn by Max Plaisted. All the Dan Turner stories are written in the first person, in a racy, slang-ridden style that gives them a unique flavor. Guns are never guns but roscoes, and they always go ka-chow!. A woman is never simply a woman but a dame, frail, quail, wren or, if particularly attractive, a doll or cutie.
The murders, follow an exact, rigid pattern, almost like the ritual of a bullfight or a Chinese play. Many of the murder scenes from several different Dan Turner mysteries, bear a remarkable similarity. The murder scenes always involve a roscoe which says Ka-chow!, Chow! Chow!, or Wh-r-r-ang! After the body hits the floor, Dan Turner always comments that the victim is "as dead as an iced catfish" or "as dead as vaudeville" or "as dead as a smoked herring". The only other recurring character in the series was his pal, and sometime-rival, Lieutenant Dave Donaldson of the homicide squad, whose chief purpose seemed to be to get the bodies hauled away.
The six stories and two features was originally published in the March, 1943 issue of Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective magazine and is read by Joe Formichella.
Table of Contents:
Sing A Song of Murder
by Robert Leslie Bellem
The girl from South America was ready to kill the cowboy crooner; but Dan Turner could hardly believe his friend was the heel she claimed he was.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Water-Cooled
by Robert Leslie Bellem
Dan saves a girl in distress—but leaves himself behind the eight-ball.
Chapter 1 Wren in the Rain
Chapter 2 Death on the Set
Chapter 3 Stormy Puzzle
Chapter 4 Bump-Off Tip-Off
Chapter 5 Water Cooler
Satan's Shrine - short story
by Robert Leslie Bellem
He made a getaway in a woman's clothes—but it lead him to a vicious blackmail ring.
Dead Mans Shakedown - short story
by Robert Leslie Bellem
Only a dead man was supposed to know the secret. It looked like blackmail from the grave.
Russian Run-Around - short story
by Robert Leslie Bellem
She wasn't joking. Neither was the gun.
Killer's Investment - short story
by Robert Leslie Bellem
It looked like the old badger game—at first!
Movie Scrap Aids War Effort - editorial feature
Mickey Finn-Chicago Borgia - editorial feature
