Exclusive to The Mysterious Press: The Legacy of George Harmon Coxe, by James Reasoner

Check out this beautifully written essay on George Harmon Coxe, an exclusive to The Mysterious Press.

There was a time – I remember it well – when you could go into just about any public library in the United States and find a dozen or more novels by George Harmon Coxe on the shelves in the mystery section. And for good reason, too. Coxe's career lasted for 40 years and 63 novels, and he was one of the most consistently entertaining of the hardboiled mystery novelists.


Born in Olean, N.Y., in 1901, Coxe attended Purdue and Cornell, was a newspaperman (a background that would greatly influence his later work), and worked in advertising before he began selling short fiction regularly to the mystery pulps. Beginning in the mid-Thirties, he was successful enough to concentrate full-time on writing fiction and became one of the leading authors in the legendary pulp Black Mask with a series of tough, well-plotted stories about Boston news photographer Jack "Flash Gun" Casey. Flash, as he was usually known, was big, hot-tempered, fiercely loyal to his friends, and a better detective than he gave himself credit for.


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