The Crime Fighters

Page 5

Rai Bahadur Jyotish Nath Chaundhuri

He was a Bengali detective, known also as Jyotish Babu, who appeared in The Poisoned Fang (1930) by Kennedy Bruce. He was something of a legend as well as a police officer, with unobtrusiveness as his strongest characteristic. He was also a master of disguises, and had even once killed a Bengal tiger single-handed with only a sword for his protection. Babu spoke every known Indian language-279 dialects-and was also a member of every secret society. Although on occasion he could become very talkative, he was really a small, insignificant, shrinking-looking Bengali.

Slick Chester. See: Colwyn Dane.

Bunny Chipstead

Buncome “Bunny” Chipstead was the son of an English mother and an American father, Samuel P. Chipstead, who had worked his way up from mechanic to famous maker of motor cars. At first glance, Bunny might have been taken for a soldier of fortune come into a rich inheritance, or a big game hunter home on holiday after a hazardous trip. His clean-cut face had a wind-swept bleak expression, but it was redeemed from utter grimness by humorous, very keen grey eyes. He was tanned almost to a leather hue, weighed exactly 135 pounds, and could use his fists or a revolver with equal facility. Chipstead had first drifted into the hazardous game of intelligence during the First World War. He had shown such aptitude and natural skill that afterward he adopted the suggestion made to him that he should become a freelance of the American Secret Service. His creator, Sydney Horler, featured Chipstead in In the Dark (1927; published in the U.S. as A Life for Sale), Chipstead of the Lone Hand (1928) and other novels.

Chisel

He was a valet featured as an elucidator in Hawley Smart’s 1885 melodrama, Tie and Trick.

Peter Clancy

Clancy, a red-haired gentleman type and San Francisco’s (and at times New York’s) sharpest private eye, was featured, along with his faithful companion, that amusing genius Wiggar, his valet, in such books as The Glass Knife (1932), Still No Answer (1958; published in the U.K. as Web of Hate) and And One Cried Murder (1961) by Lee Thayer.

Dr. Richard Clavering

Dr. Clavering, the only son of a doctor, also acted in the capacity of a detective and was featured in stories by Dick Donovan in The New Magazine in 1909.

Tod Claymore

He had been a Wimbledon tennis player and a wing commander during the war, then switched to writing, with detection as a hobby. Novels featuring Tod Claymore, who related the stories and also had his name on the cover as author, included You Remember the Case (1939; published in the U.S. as This Is What Happened) and Appointment in New Orleans (1950). The actual creator of Claymore was Hugh Clevely.

Hamilton Cleek

Cleek was an ex-cracksman who reformed and became a Scotland Yard detective. He was between 25 and 35 years of age, with eyes straight looking and clear, a slender nose, and the fresh shaven, clean-looking face of an aristocrat. All this matched his slim form, which was always faultlessly dressed. He was likewise faultlessly mannered and known as the supernatural detective of crime. The most remarkable thing about Cleek was that he had an india-rubber type of face, with the knack of being able to distort it into any shape or mannerism he desired.. Indeed, author Thomas W. Hanshew titled the book which introduced this character The Man of the Forty Faces (1910; published in the U.S. in 1918 as Cleek, the Master Detective), a collection of short stories. Other books followed, such as Cleek of Scotland Yard (1914) and The Riddle of the Night (1915). Cleek had a cockney assistant, a snub-nosed, ginger-haired youth of nineteen with the rather unusual name of “Dollops,” and they drove about London in a red limousine.

Captain Clew. See: Captain Clue.

Donald Clifford

Donald Clifford, described as the Great Sea Detective, appeared in the Union Jack in a story by S. Clarke Hook. He was a tall, handsome young fellow who smoked black cigars. He had none of the shrewdness in his face that is usually associated with a detective.

Howard Clifton

A private detective created by Escott Lynn, Clifton appeared in True Blue around the turn of the century. His quarters were at 32, Shaftsbury Avenue, London, and he was served by his man Tripp. His cases were shared with his professional colleague, Inspector Dawson of Scotland Yard.

Nat Clinton. See: Nat the Knife.

Barrington Clive

This famous sleuth appeared in The Surprise, a boy’s weekly, in the early thirties. He was assisted by Kiddy Wix, girl ace of ’tecs, a pretty but penniless orphan.

Horace Clive

Detective Horace Clive appeared in the Penny Pictorial in 1901 in such stories as “The Extraordinary Disappearance at Bournemouth” and “The Doomed Woman of Ilfracombe.”

Kitty Clive. See: Captain Kitty.

Clubfoot

A creation of Valentine Williams, Clubfoot was formerly known as Dr. Adolph Grundt, a master spy. He was utterly ruthless but also possessed tremendous courage, and was featured in a number of novels including The Man with the Clubfoot (1918; published as by Douglas Valentine), Clubfoot the Avenger (1924) and The Gold Comfit Box (1932; published in the U.S. as The Mystery of the Gold Box). At one time he was head of the Kaiser’s personal secret service, but then he became engaged in international espionage on a grand scale. Clubfoot was massively built, paunchy and flabby, but with a hint of tremendous power in the muscular development of his barrel chest and his disproportionately long arms. He had a forbidding face, ape-like in structure, with shaggy tufted eyebrows, and his nose was flat with broad cavernous nostrils. His mouth was a gash separated by cruel lips, with a grizzled toothbrush moustache above it. His hands were large and hairy, and his right deformed foot, which gave rise to his nickname, was shod in a monstrous boot that made him walk with a limp. No one ever knew where Grundt made his headquarters and very few people actually saw him, as he mainly operated through secondary agents.

Captain Clue

He was one of the New York police department’s most famous detectives, appearing in Captain Clue, the Fighting Detective in Aldine Detective Tales No. 67 (the title was spelled “Clew” on the cover). Captain Clue was a short, thick-set, lynx-eyed man with great official bearing.

Clues Ltd.

This was the title of a highly successful and novel detective series which ran in Merry & Bright beginning with No. 335 (1917-1922). Clues Ltd. was a detective club which met once a week at its London premises, with a regular guest of honour at the dinner. Afterwards the guest would contribute to the evening by recounting a yarn. These yarns were narrated by Martin Clifford, with the first story told by Richard Steele, who was vice-president of the club. Detectives who were members of Clues Ltd were Harold Martin, Dr. Leslie Ferguson, Despard Dolland, Mrs. Matmaddox, Arnold Austin, Arthur Seymour, Abel Daunt, Marcus Oswald, Arthur Thornton, Charles Compton, Dr. Malcolm Elving, Richard Clifford, Philip Strange, Michael Storm, Clive Fenton (“Astor”), John Hawke of Scotland Yard, Lester Grand, Neil Stratton, Wilson Fane, Martin Kingston, Edward Kane, Terrence Teale, Seth Martin, Senor Sebastian Valeridos, Tony Purcell, Cosmo Carrington, Fenton Brewster, Austin Melville, Stephen Stone, Leslie Geddes, Ralph P. Ramsden, Simon Forsyth and Maurice P. Fielding.

Sergeant Cluff

This was a popular television series. Detective Sergeant Caleb Cluff was a north country version of the Rock of Gibraltar, though with rather more power of perception. Cluff was usually clad in battered tweeds and grouse feather tweed hat. He was in charge of the small provincial town of Gunnarshaw in Yorkshire. He was even sadder and more terse than Maigret, and one had to pay careful attention to understand his actions. Cluff’s adventures have become known to the majority through the TV series, in which he was portrayed by Leslie Sands, but he was also featured in a number of books by Gil North, including Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm (1960), Sergeant Cluff Goes Fishing (1962) and Sergeant Cluff and the Madman (1964).

Joshua Clunk

This was another detective (or, more accurately, a criminal solicitor) created by H(enry) C(hrisopher) Bailey, whose main character was Reggie Fortune, q.v. Clunk was less appealing than some of his adversaries-he was a hypocrite of the highest order and a hymn-singing scoundrel. He first appeared in Garstons (1930; published in the U.S. as The Garston Murder Case) and met with a fair amount of success thereafter, though this dubious villain was not to everyone’s taste. On one or two occasions H. C. Bailey arranged a brief meeting between Clunk and Fortune, but the two cannot be considered compatible. Other Clunk novels included Clunk’s Claimant (1937; published in the U.S. as The Twittering Bird Mystery) and The Veron Mystery (1939; published in the U.S. as Mr. Clunk’s Text).

Clutha

He was described by his creator, Hugh Munro, as hard as a chunk of Aberdeen granite and as knobbly as a tree root. Clutha was Scotland’s answer to Philip Marlowe; he was a tough, bowler-hatted, uncrushable dockyard detective with a nice turn of sentimentality and a thorough knowledge of all kinds of infighting and trickery. Clutha was featured in a series of book length tales such as Who Told Clutha (1958), Clutha Plays a Hunch (1959) and A Clue for Clutha (1960).

Derek Clyde

Clyde was featured in Detective Library in 1920, as well as in Thomson’s Weekly News and the Glasgow Weekly Record. He turned up again in the Detective Supplement of the Nelson Lee Library Nos. 423-436, in such stories as “Caught in His Own Trap” and “The Clue of the Silver Butterfly.”

Humphrey Clymping

Friend and associate of Inspector Pellew, q.v., the highly colourful Humphrey Clymping had the head of a Viking, complete with beard, moustache and flowing hair. He was twenty-two years of age but looked a bloated forty; he was enormously strong and immensely lazy. He was sent down from Oxford and went to jail for a brief sentence. He wrote a book, and was the pride of Fleet Street and the joy of the expresso bars in King’s Road, Chelsea. Later Clymping came into the title of viscount, but he refused to sit in the House of Lords and took a job in Gargantua Television. He was featured with Pellew in a series of novels including To Bed at Noon (1960) and The Goggle-Box Affair (1963; published in the U.S. as Through a Glass Darkly).

Detective Inspector Cockrill

A creation of Christianna Brand, Insp. Cockrill appeared in such novels as Heads You Lose (1941) and Green for Danger (1944). Cockrill had short legs and craggy eyebrows. He usually dressed in a droopy mackintosh and rolled his own cigarettes. He had lost at least one case by virtue of his own blunders.

Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee

Dr. Coffee was chief pathologist for Pasteur Hospital. He was a tall man, with long slender fingers, and he had unruly straw-coloured hair. He was married to Julia, and worked with a fat Hindu physician named Dr. Motilal Mookerji, who was precise in his work, murderous with the English language, and usually garbed in a pink turban. Dr. Coffee consistently became involved in murder and proved to be a most clever detective. Lawrence G. Blochman featured him in Recipe for Murder (1952), Clues for Dr. Coffee (1964) and other stories.

Detective Inspector John Coffin

Gwendoline Butler’s Inspector Coffin was born in London in 1930 and lost his father, a seaman, by drowning at sea in 1941. Coffin was educated at various London County Council Schools and worked for a time in the docks as a clerk until he joined the Metropolitan Police, walking a beat in the Borough. At one time he contracted polio but fortunately recovered and became a very tough, intelligent policeman of the modern school. He took a special course at the Institute of Technology and in time became the youngest detective inspector in London. Coffin developed a reputation for dealing with a certain type of murder case, murder that was off-beat and unusual. With his assistant, the unimaginative Sergeant Dove, he appeared in a number of novels including Coffin in Oxford (1962), Coffin Waiting (1963), and A Nameless Coffin (1966).

Al Colby

Colby, a private detective who had served in the Signal Corps of the U.S. Army, was the narrator of his stories. He appeared in The Long Escape (1948) Plunder of the Sun (1949) and The Red Tassel (1950) by David Dodge.

Captain Claude Coldgrip

Captain Coldgrip was featured in several stories in Aldine Detective Tales, including Coldgrip in Deadwood and The Leaf from the Past. He was a fine looking man residing at 127 Mulberry Street, New York. Coldgrip first appeared in Beadle’s Dime Library and was created by Captain Howard Holmes, a pen name of Thomas C. Harbough.

Chief Inspector Coldwell. See: Leslie Maugham.

Honourable Rufus Colin. See: Slick the Dude Detective.

Chief Inspector T. B. Collett

T. B. Collett of Scotland Yard, an amiable man, had the rank of chief inspector, but nobody ever called him chief. His office at the Yard was as comfortably furnished as a commissioner’s, and yet he did not appear on lists in reference works about Scotland Yard. Officially he was liaison between the Yard and foreign police forces, and had at one time been stationed in India. He lived in the Records Office in his spare time and wrote confidential memoranda which nobody at Scotland Yard had ever read, but they were carefully docketed at the Home Office. Collett carried a warrant and had the power and ability to arrest. No one disliked him and no one was jealous of him. He had a teak complexion due to the many years he spent in India. Collett appeared in Edgar Wallace’s The Coat of Arms (1931; published in the U.S. as The Arranways Mystery), which also featured Carl Rennett, sometime police captain in St. Louis. This American was a capable man who had made a lot of money speculating in stocks, and had married his daughter to a man of title.

Inspector Collier

Detective Inspector Collier of New Scotland Yard was featured in The Mystery of the Kneeling Woman (1936) and many other novels by Moray Dalton. Collier was assisted by Sergeant Duffield.

Jem Collingham

Jemima-or, Jem, as she was known-was a pretty eighteen-year-old girl with light brown hair. She also had fair cheeks that when whipped by the wind glowed like the centre of a pale pink rose. This young Victorian elucidator appeared in a melodrama entitled A Sensational Case (1898) by Florence Warden.

Collins and McKechnie

These special agents of the railroad police were created by Bert and Dolores Hitchens and appeared in F.O.B. Murder (1955) and The Man Who Followed Women (1959).

Detective Sergeant Robert Colson

Colson, a shrewd police officer, appeared in V. L. Whitechurch’s The Templeton Case in 1925. A quick-witted man, he was also a slow and careful thinker. When he had discovered any clue, his method was to work out every possible explanation for it, mentally raising objections to each deduction. More than once this habit of his had prevented his acting on hasty and erroneous conclusions, and he well knew the value of it. Colson lived in a small, pleasant house, and was a married man.

Thatcher Colt

Thatcher Colt, Police Commissioner for the City of New York, was urbane and assiduous. He was excellently portrayed in films by Adolphe Menjou. Fulton Oursler was his creator under the pseudonym Anthony Abbot, chosen because it would be one of the first names in any catalogue. For the same reason titles of the Thatcher Colt novels would normally begin with “About”, such as About the Murder of the Night Club Lady (1931; published in the U.K. as The Murder of the Night Club Lady).

Charles Compton

Compton appeared in “Clues Ltd,” the detective series in Merry & Bright.

Lieutenant Seth Condon

Lt. Condon of the Homicide Division, San Francisco Police, was aged forty-one and gaunt, with a weathered and craggy face, a hard mouth, and direct eyes. His passion and relaxation was the opera. He was featured in Murder May Follow (1959) by Susan Morrow, in which he was accompanied by his assistant, Sergeant Frasca, a man of Italian origin.

Fergus Conners

Conners was a sharp-eyed, well-developed young man with short cropped hair. He appeared in No. 57 of Aldine Detective Tales, The Irish Detective.

Le Droit Conners

Samuel M. Gardenhire’s Le Droit Conners appeared in the stories contained in the collection entitled The Long Arm (1906). This mystical detective, with a fondness for painting beautiful women, had a luxurious studio in a skyscraper on New York’s Staten Island. He was an extremely handsome man with large piercing black eyes and black hair, long and slightly curled at the temples, with a strange tint of red. Conners was a lover of Edgar Allan Poe-in fact, he had a bust of this great writer-and solved crimes by brilliant reasoning and deduction.

Norman Conquest

He was a Bulldog Drummond type of character, a man of quick decisions and nerves like tungsten steel, from the pen of Berkeley Gray, otherwise Edwy Searles Brooks. It was freely acknowledged by all who knew him intimately that this hell-for-leather young adventurer attracted trouble as inexorably as a magnet draws iron. Conquest often delivered criminals that the police could not touch, delivered them into the hands of the law with enough charges to send them to the gallows or to stow them away half a lifetime. In the early stories we met Joy Everard, known to Conquest as Pixie, who was his fiancé, but she soon became Joy Conquest, his wife. Together they were the owners of Conquest Court, one of the exclusive blocks of flats in Park Lane, outstanding for its Spanish-style architecture and gay green shutters, not to mention Fred Freeman, the foyer attendant. While Conquest was an unpredictable law breaker, his greatest friend was Superintendent Bill Williams, affectionately called Sweet William by Conquest. Conquest originally appeared in The Thriller and was later featured in over fifty novels.

It is interesting to note that, following Brooks’ death in 1965, Conquest Calls the Tune in 1967 was written by his widow and son. When Mrs. F. Brooks also died in 1968, Conquest in Ireland (1969) was written by the son, Lionel Brooks.

Conrad Detective Agency

Housed in a roomy old building in Rupert Street, just off Piccadilly, the Conrad Detective Agency was headed by Clive Conrad, tall and well-built and just short of being handsome. His sleepy-looking eyes and habit of yawning unexpectedly had earned him the nickname of the Dormouse. His very beautiful wife Alice had red hair, green eyes, an amazing complexion and a perfect figure. The third partner in the Agency was Reginald Fortescue Watt, who had a tendency to corpulence and had lost a great deal of his hair. He looked like a well-trained butler or even a bishop, and was a good cook and an excellent shot. Frank King wrote a series of books about the characters, including Enter the Dormouse (1936), That Charming Crook (1958) and The Two Who Talked (1958).

Clive Conrad. See: Conrad Detective Agency.

The Continental Op

This nameless and faceless but certainly not characterless hero was Dashiell Hammett’s first private eye. The Op was on the payroll of the fictional Continental Detective Agency of San Francisco (based on the Pinkerton Agency, for which Hammett worked at one time) and appeared in numerous short stories in Black Mask, including such Hammett classics as “Dead Yellow Women”, “One House,” “The Gatewood Caper”, “Corkscrew”, and the brilliant “The Big Knockover.” He was also featured in two novels, Red Harvest (1929) and The Dain Curse (1929), the latter being notable for having an extraordinarily involved plot line. The Op was as tough as Spade, as cynical as Beaumont, and as flip as Nick Charles. Villains usually referred to him as “that fat little guy,” and he always seemed to be involved in a running battle with his boss, the “Old Man,” over expenses. He was the very first of the “hardboiled dicks.”

Barney Cook

This six-year-old was office boy and assistant to Walter Babbing, q.v., of the Babbing Detective Bureau. Cook was quick witted and alert. He was also plump, had brown eyes and black hair, and lived with his mother and sister in Hudson Street, New York. His father was a policeman who had been killed in the line of duty. Cook’s creator was Harvey J. O’Higgins, who featured him in The Adventures of Detective Barney (1915).

Cool Colorado

Colorado was the son of a Pawnee woman, and it was said that Wild Bill was the father of this detective. He appeared in Aldine Tip Top Tales No. 19 in Cool Colorado, the Half Breed Detective. He was called by that name because he was cool by nature and a native of Colorado. A stoutly-built young man with enormous physical strength, he usually dressed in rough garments. His face was a strange one, dark in hue, with massive strongly marked features. His hair was as black as a raven’s feathers and worn long in the fashion of the Scouts.

Mrs. Bertha Cool

Big Bertha Cool was the first half of A. A. Fair’s (otherwise Erle Stanley Gardner’s) team of Cool and Lam Detective Agency. Bertha went into the investigation business when her husband died, and the firm was originally called B. Cool Confidential Investigations until Donald Lam, a former employee, became a partner. Bertha Cool had a cluster of diamonds on her fingers, weighted 165 pounds, and was somewhere in her late fifties or early sixties. She was as tough, hard and rugged as a coil of barbed wire, loud and boisterous of voice and manner, and said to have avaricious-some called them greedy-little eyes. She had flowing white hair which gave her a deceptively motherly appearance. She wore bifocals and loose clothing and smoked cigarettes. She was set in the Marie Dressler mode and appeared in many novels such as Owls Don’t Blink (1942) and Beware the Curves (1956). See the Donald Lam entry for further details.

Montague Cork

Mr. Montague Cork, Managing Director and General Manager of the Anchor Accident Insurance Co., Ltd., was in his early sixties. He had a big nose and dewlapped eyes, and often looked like a wrinkled old bloodhound nosing out a trail. He had celebrated a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with his wife Phoebe. Cork could sniff out a suspicious claim on his insurance company at once, an ability he attributed to a lifetime trained in the business. MacDonald Hastings featured him in a number of novels, beginning with Cork on the Water (1951). Other novels included Cork in Bottle (1953) and Cork in the Doghouse (1957).

Sergeant Cork

A.T.V. began production of “Sergeant Cork’s Case Book” early in 1963. It was a series of hour long programmes devised by Ted Willis, with subsequent scripts by Bill Craig, Alan Prior, Bill Macilwaith, Arthur Swinson, and others. The stories were set in Victorian London and concerned a pioneer policeman who worked in Scotland Yard. This was in the C.I.D.’s very early days before modern methods made crime detection the science it is now. Cork was a policeman ahead of his time in an illiberal age, shrewd, sagacious, unconventional, a man both loved and feared in a London lit by gaslight, a man who fought an almost lone battle to convince his superiors that his methods were not a waste of time. The stories gave insights into the origins of certain methods of crime detection which are now taken for granted. John Barrie played the part of Cork with great distinction, showing him to be thickset, middle aged and the possessor of great intelligence. Cork’s assistant was Bob Marriott, played by William Gaunt.

Sergeant Cork’s Casebook (1965) and Sergeant Cork’s Second Casebook (1966) by Arthur Swinson were adaptations from the original scripts.

Captain Cormorant

Cormorant had a face that was mild mannered and clean shaven. His nose was a little sharp like the bill of a hawk, his animated eyes were rather deep-set and dark, and his hair was full of grey. Cormorant’s hands were soft and perfect in shape, and he stood 5 ft. 7 in. in his stockings. Although he was aged 60, he still possessed the litheness of young manhood. He had been a detective for 30 years-not attached to any police force but an independent-but not one in a hundred knew his real name. Hardly ever did he fail to get his prey. Captain Cormorant appeared in Aldine Detective Tales No. 123.

Inspector Cornford

Milward Kennedy (M. R. K. Burge) introduced Insp. Cornford in The Corpse on the Mat (1929; published in the U.S. as The Man Who Rang the Bell, as by Robert Milward Kennedy), and Cornford also appeared in Corpse Guard Parade (1929).

Peter Correlly

New York policeman Peter Correlly was a tall, sallow young man with a perpetual stoop. His carriage suggested weariness and his apparent thinness deceived many good judges into the belief that he suffered from ill-health, but he was neither weak nor thin. He had the appearance of being chronically tired, but that was another deception. Edgar Wallace featured him in The Golden Hades (1929).

Mark Corrigan

Corrigan, a man in his early thirties, got into the U.S. Intelligence Service the hard way-via the Army Investigation Department and the private eye business in Philadelphia. Corrigan related his own adventures in The Big Squeeze (1955) and many other novels, in which he was also credited as the author.

Phil Corrigan. See: Secret Agent X9.

Inspector Cosgrove

Inspector Cosgrove of the Metropolitan Criminal Investigation Branch of the Australian Police in Brisbane appeared in Cosgrove: Detective (1933) by Murray M. Innes.

Detective Coulson

Rex Coulson, an adventurer type of detective and the creation of Jack Mann, was a lean and lithe six-footer. He was featured in Reckless Coulson (1933), Coulson Alone (1936) and other novels.