Homicide Hunch

Dan Turner was a hard-boiled gumshoe who worked the mean streets and back lots of the film studios of Hollywood, encountering murderers, blackmailers, greedy producers, seductive starlets, desperate has-beens and immoral grifters. Turner was always ready with his “roscoe” to save some “dame” or “frail” from becoming “dead as a smoked herring” or “as dead as vaudeville.”

Homicide Hunch (1943) – It was a screwball situation. Here was Dan, sitting at home and minding his own business, when the knock came at his front door. A short time later he was in a lavish apartment a few miles away, where he had been convoyed at the point of a gun, and a beautiful cutie he had never seen before was calling him “Dan, darling” and implying that they were old sweeties!

Feature Snatch (1943) – The idea was new—and was tops! Whoever thought of stealing a million dollar production before it was released? And behind it was the ransom angle, and there was blackmail, too. Sometimes a detective likes to get his teeth into a case like that. It’s like matching your wits with a genius.

Careless Corpse (1946) – That bogus postman brought Dan Turner a splendid solid whack with a blackjack and it was a highly special delivery—thereby involving the ace movietown hawkshaw with low killery and high finance and dangerous bafflement!

Death Ends the Scene (1948) – That washed-up movie-director was going to knock himself off in order to give his no-good bride a double-indemnity payoff—and, Dan Turner, trying to do a couple of good deeds, found himself facing a murder rap with some very hard gunsels making it tough!

Robert Leslie Bellem (1902-1968), the creator of legendary Hollywood private detective Dan Turner, was the definition of prolific, producing some 3000 short stories over a thirty year career. While his friends knew him as Leslie, his publishers were afraid he would be perceived as being female, and so he used his first name Robert to publish under. Not that it was likely that a woman would have written the Dan Turner stories. . .