Robert Leslie Bellem (1902-1968) was an American writer who collaborated with Cleve F Adams as Franklin Charles, and with WT Ballard as John Grange, as well as producing several novels on his own. He also wrote as John A Saxon. Most of his detective writing took the form of stories about Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective. Turner had his own magazine, which later became Hollywood Detective. Cover images can be found here. Turner made a movie appearance in Blackmail (1947), played by William Marshall. In later life Bellem also wrote screenplays for TV shows like Perry Mason and Superman.

Mike Grost on Robert Bellem

An author Daly and/or Rosaire could have influenced is Robert Leslie Bellem. The same constant use of slang was a feature of Bellem's Dan Turner tales, as was the use of a detective-narrator. Of course, Bellem pushed his slang to a point of bizarre (and campily entertaining) self parody, with mountains of grotesque slang expressions clearly invented by the author. You can die laughing reading some of Bellem's absurder prose. He is over the top in a way that Rosaire never is. Still, there is a family resemblance between the three authors. One can see Bellem-like metaphors occasionally in Daly's The Snarl of the Beast (1927). For example, at the end of Chapter X, Race Williams says a street "is as empty as a congressman's mind". One can also find Bellem style metaphors at the end of Chapter 24, and at the end of the second paragraph of Chapter 34. Daly's deliberately matter of fact descriptions of violence also seem close to Bellem's. One suspects that Daly was the author used by Bellem as a model. Daly's Race Williams is a solitary private eye, just like Dan Turner - and Philip Marlowe.

I suspect that Bellem knew how funny his broader effects were, and was deliberately including them for the entertainment of his readers. No one could write prose this outrageous, without having his tongue firmly in his cheek. The Dan Turner stories that are available today in reprints are also notable for the care they take in plotting. They include complex puzzle plots clearly inspired by the Golden Age standards of their time. These plots can themselves be over the top, as in "The Lake of the Left Hand Moon", but Bellem is obviously trying. By any standards, "Gun From Gotham" (a.k.a. "Sleep For a Dreamer") succeeds on all levels, and not just as campy narration. One hopes that there is more work of this quality buried in Bellem's immense oeuvre.

"Death's Passport" (1940) is full of storytelling and plot. It also has a dying message clue and a deductive finale, both just like Ellery Queen. "Dan Turner Deals an Ace" (1944) also has a fair play, deductive finale. Bellem shows the influence of EQ in a number of other ways. "The Lake of the Left Hand Moon" (1943) reminds one a little bit of Queen's "The Lamp of God" (1935) in its puzzle plot, just as Bellem's "Dead Man's Head" (1935) recalls Queen's The Egyptian Cross Mystery (1932). There is a bit of a hint of Queen's The Chinese Orange Mystery (1934) in Bellem's impossible crime tale "Crooner's Caress" (1936), although Bellem's plot is quite different. "Action! Camera! - Drop Dead!" (1950) contains the "strange hiding place for an object" that is the subject of several EQ puzzle plots. The general tone of the Bellem stories, with Dan Turner encountering a host of crazies in Hollywood, recalls the EQ tales, in which Ellery is always encountering Alice in Wonderland situations in New York. Ellery went to Hollywood himself, in four novels. The amusement park setting of "Homicide Highball" reminds one of EQ's "The House of Darkness" (1935). There is also something about the general "flow" of the people through a Bellem tale that seems EQ like.

Many of Bellem's most puzzle plot oriented tales were written in either 1935-1936, or in 1943-1944, the latter two years containing some of Bellem's finest works, such as "Homicide Highball" (1943), "Gun From Gotham" (a.k.a. "Sleep For a Dreamer") (1944) and "Dan Turner Deals an Ace" (1944). Bellem's later stories, from 1943 on, tend to downplay the annoying gore and "spicy" writing that disfigure his earlier works. This might have something to do with change in one in pulps. Bellem's main market for his Dan Turner stories since 1934, Spicy Detective, went out of business in December 1942, and Speed Detective promptly emerged a month later, a thinly disguised version of the earlier pulp. In addition, Dan Turner got his own pulp magazine in 1942.

"Action! Camera! - Drop Dead!" shows Bellem's ability to have a surface series of events, which contain some hidden events concealed inside. This "story within the story" effect is part of Bellem's mystery plotting technique. It helps Bellem develop the complex plots of some of his best work.

Bellem's work is distinguished by the sympathy he has for his characters. Whether ordinary people or Hollywood hotshots, they come across as likable human beings. "Homicide Highball" (1943) is a good example of this. His tales are generously warm hearted, pleasant wish fulfillment fantasies of detective adventures in Hollywood. The description of the Venice amusement park in the story also shows Bellem's flair for architecture and geography, as does the house boat setting in "Moon". This architectural imagination is also typical of Golden Age writers. "Homicide Highball" is also one of his most sustained narrations.

Bellem's "Preview of Murder" (1949) focuses on a new detective, Hollywood stuntman turned private eye Nick Ransom. The narration of this story is more subdued than the Turner stories, although it eventually includes some unique Bellem stylings and aphorisms. The story continues Bellem's interest in architecture. The opening of the tale describes in detail a cheap hotel with a special apartment in it. Later on, the story will explore a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. There is also a good description of the night sky, a long time Bellem trademark. Bellem's stories also betray a continuing interest in still photography, especially its technical aspects. Many also take place on movie sets, and involve the technology of film making.

"Homicide Spike" (1948) is way too gruesome as a whole, but it contains Dan Turner's delightful encounter with a woman psychiatrist in the second half of Chapter 2. Psychiatry was really getting big in the USA in 1948, and was usually treated with religious reverence. Bellem's story is not a satire, but it shows plenty of his good natured gusto. I especially liked the dreams. Bellem often contained dream sequences. They were part of his characters' strong expressions of personality.

Los Angeles pulp writers, such as Bellem, Raymond Chandler ("Trouble is My Business", 1939), and John K. Butler ("The Saint in Silver", 1941), have featured chauffeurs prominently in their tales. Perhaps chauffeurs were a more conspicuous part of the L.A. world than other cities. Before any of these writers, Carroll John Daly included a chauffeur as a character in his Florida based The Hidden Hand (1928) - see Chapter 10, and Race Williams' only friend in Daly's The Snarl of the Beast (1927) seems to be his chauffeur Benny. Perhaps this just suggests again how influential Daly was on later hard-boiled writers. Often times these chauffeurs are figures of menace. They are also often very macho, and exemplars of male sexuality. Dan Turner goes undercover in a chauffeur's uniform at the start of "Hair of the Dog" (1947). The chauffeur who highjacks Dan Turner in Chapter 2 of "Drunk, Disorderly and Dead" (1940) gets the funniest line in the story. Both of these tales are fairly minor as mysteries, although the treatment of the gun in "Hair of the Dog" is nicely managed. It shows Bellem's interest in deductive finales, offering both a fairly ingenious puzzle plot, and a clear logical indication of the murderer.

"Gangster Gloves" (1931) is an early, pre-Dan Turner, Bellem tale, in which boxer Monk Graham battles corruption inside and out of the ring. It shows Bellem's skill with the Least Likely Person, another example of Bellem's links with Golden Age techniques. The hero also owns a small garage, working as an auto mechanic - another tie of Bellem to working class, auto-oriented characters, like his chauffeurs.

An entertaining Dan Turner movie was made for television in 1990. The film was scripted by John Wooley, who edited Bellem's recent story collections, Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective and Roscoes in the Night. Wooley's introduction to Roscoes in the Night has a lot of useful biographical information on Bellem.

The Dan Turner stories in Spicy Detective were the subject of a humourous review by SJ Perelman: "Somewhere a Roscoe..."

Bibliography

Blue Murder (1938)

The Window With the Sleeping Nude (1950)

No Wings on a Cop (1950)

Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective

Roscoes in the Night

As Franklin Charles with Cleve F Adams

The Vice Czar Murders (1941)

As John A Saxon

Liability Limited (1947)

Half-Past Mortem (1949)