Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective

Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective was the creation of pulp author Robert Leslie Bellem (1894 or 1902 -1968).  The Dan Turner stories took place against the Backdrop of the Hollywood studio machine of the 1940's,  written in the first person with a thick, racy, slang.

"His carcass hadn’t stopped bouncing when I piped a bleached blonde quail barging toward me from a window embrasure in the back corridor where she’d been hiding. She was carrying a Leica minicam equipped with a flash-bulb and reflector; and there was hysteria scrawled on her painted pan as she fastened the squint on the defunct guy.

For a couple of seconds I thought she was going to pull a swoon. Her horrified peepers bulged, and her cheeks went pasty to emphasize the oversupply of rouge that coated them. She came as far as Shelburne’s remnants, then froze. “Oh-h-h, my God—he’s been shot—!”I growled: “Yeah. Why did you do it?” and made a grab for her.

She snapped out of her hypnotized trance, eluded my clutching mitt. Then she whirled her miniature camera at the end of its strap; brought it hissing around in a circle. Centrifugal force blammed it against my temple like a slingshot; took a divot out of my haircut. The impact slugged me to my knees as if I’d been hit with a baseball bat.

Taken from the short story "Killer's Investment" Dan Turner—Hollywood Detective, March, 1943.

Most of the stories are relatively short, 12-15 pages, and usually involve an attractive woman, a Hollywood bigwig, and a dead body. Turner is almost always paired with a police detective Dave Donaldson of the Homicide squad, a "slow burn" straight man contrasting to Turner's unflappable veneer.

If you are looking for character development, story arcs,  or any other sort of redeeming qualities. I might suggest you look elsewhere. These stories are pure brain candy for people with attention deficit disorder.

There are several Dan Turner stories to be found online. I've attached a couple of pdfs along with wikipedia links to Robert Leslie Bellem and Dan Turner along with places to get Dan Turner stories.

 

Dan_Turner-Hollywood_Detective.42.12.Daughter_of_Murder.pdf

Dan_Turner-Hollywood_Detective.42.12.Killers_Union.pdf

Dan_Turner-Hollywood_Detective.43.02.Heads_You_Lose.pdf

Dan_Turner-Hollywood_Detective.43.03.Killers_Investment.pdf

Dan_Turner-Hollywood_Detective.43.05.Dissolve_Shot.pdf

 

 

Robert Leslie Bellem - Wikipedia

Dan Turner - Wikipedia

Robert Leslie Bellem at The Vintage Library

Larry Esteps Plupgen page (a least 46 Robert Leslie Bellem short st...

 

Thanks,

Scott