Chiffre

1934 · 16185 — Chicago IL: Tower Magazines Inc. 1934. Mild edge rubbing some small cover rubs slight loss at head of spine mild damp stain to contents. A very good copy. Uncommon. 16185. Large octavo single issue pictorial wrappers. "Four Men Who Loved a Woman" by Ellery Queen. Also Stuart Palmer Hildegarde Withers Maurice Level Hulbert Footner and others. 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. Tower Magazines, Inc. unknown