{"id":14875,"date":"2022-10-26T10:00:53","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T14:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=14875"},"modified":"2025-11-05T14:26:52","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T19:26:52","slug":"the-case-of-the-defective-detective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2022\/10\/26\/the-case-of-the-defective-detective\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Case of the Defective Detective’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Awhile back I did a review of a pair of pulp collections<\/a> from Popular Press: The Defective Detective in the Pulps<\/em> (1983) and its follow-up.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>Those two volumes reprinted various “defective detectives,” detectives with some physical disability: blindness, deafness, lameness, and the like. Almost all these characters appeared in Popular Publications’ Dime Mystery Magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was puzzling why no one seemed to have picked up on this by creating new “defective detective” stories. Until now.<\/p>\n

From Pro Se Press<\/a> recently is a thin volume with three short stories, The Case of the Defective Detective<\/em>, from three different authors.<\/p>\n

From Ernest Russell<\/strong>, we have a former police detective with a horribly scarred face, who is still kept on the payroll to solve crimes. He is aided by the fianc\u00e9 of his murdered partner and a police sergeant. You’ll learn how that all came to be, as he looks into a case that appears to be a simple heart attack but is much more.<\/p>\n

Then Gordon Dymowski<\/strong> gives us another former police detective, this one nearly crimpled by a car accident that killed his family and by diabetes. He is aided by a policeman who attends AA. They are given a case of the son of a slain FBI agent. The son committed suicide by his own gun in front of witnesses. But his mother thinks it’s something else. Is it?<\/p>\n

Finally, Gavin Matthew<\/strong> gives us a very different detective. One who is a homeless man in Harlem, dealing with mental issues and maybe psychotropic drugs. He is working to help a mother find her kidnapped daughter when no one else will. Can he succeed or will his “defect” get the best of him?<\/p>\n

Overall, this is a nice, if small, collection from Pro Se Press. I thought the first two where a little too similar in that both were pretty much confided to their homes, with their associates doing the legwork.<\/p>\n

I hope this book will lead to more as the number of such detectives in the old pulps should give a lot of inspiration to new authors. Check it out yourself, and get the original collections as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Awhile back I did a review of a pair of pulp collections from Popular Press: The Defective Detective in the Pulps (1983) and its follow-up. Those two volumes reprinted various “defective detectives,” detectives with some physical disability: blindness, deafness, lameness, and the like. Almost all these characters appeared in Popular Publications’ Dime Mystery Magazine. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":15110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Pulp Super-Fan looks at \"The Case of the Defective Detective.\" #newpulp","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[493,1097,1099,2464,80],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-14875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-pulp","category-review","tag-defective-detective","tag-ernest-russell","tag-gavin-matthew","tag-gordon-dymowski","tag-pro-se-press"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2022\/11\/case-of-the-defective-detective-featured.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-3RV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14875"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21837,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14875\/revisions\/21837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14875"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=14875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}