William Campbell Gault

(1910-1995; also wrote as Roney Scott, Will Duke

"I'm proud of what I can do in my field. And I'm proud of the field. I don't need any false additions to that. If I could write like John Cheever, I'd write like Cheever. Unfortunately I can't, so I write as well as I can and as fast as I can. And some of it is good."

-- William Campbell Gault

And some of it, my friends, was very very good.

Even as a kid, long before I knew -- or cared -- that William Campbell Gault wrote detective stories, my early-teen car-loving self had fallen under the spell of his hot rod books for young adults: The Checkered Flag, Dirt Track Summer, Speedway Challenge, Thunder Road and all the rest were just what I was looking for. Foot to the floor action, narrow escapes and the roar of thunder were what I craved, and Gault delivered. But, even better, I never got the feeling he was talking down to his audience. The crazy, mixed-up kids in his book were recognizable; varations on me and my friends, our hopes, our fears. He got us.

* * * * *

William Campbell Gault was a prolific writer of mysteries and books for young people; in a long career, he wrote some of the most interesting private eye novels I have ever read (two series, featuring Brock Callahan and Joe Puma, respectively), nonseries novels, and many short stories for the pulps.

Born in Milwaukee in 1910, his first big break came in 1936, when he began selling short-shots to the McClure Newspaper Syndicate and such soft-porn mags as Paris Nights and Scarlet Adventuress. He soon moved on to sports fiction, an interest that found its way into his private eye fiction. He also was concerned with the problems of youth, and often used ethnic characters in his fiction, treating them with sensitivity and respect, something not exactly common in the genre at the time.

Gault was never particularly flashy as a writer, but his simple, straightforward style made him one of the most dependable and solid P.I. writers to have written for the pulps (he wrote over 300 short stories for them). His stories were always good reads, and if there were sharper stylists, there were few who were as consistent. A Gault story is always worth reading.

His greatest creation was ex-LA Rams guard turned South California private eye Brock Callahan. One of the first of the compassionate eyes, Brock was also one of first eyes to have a steady girlfriend, (they actually get married in the 1984 comeback, The Bad Samaritan).

In 1984's The Cana Diversion, Brock helps out another Gault PI, the troubled Joe Puma, who had his own series back in the fifties and sixties.

In fact, one of my all-time favorite Gault's is featured Puma, but it's often overlooked because it was published under the pseudonym of Roney Scott. The book is called Shakedown, and it marked the first appearance of Joe, although he's a much different Joe Puma from the down-and-out P.I. of the eighties. However, it's a classic noir tale of a P. I. so corrupt that at times we can't even tell whose side he's on.

Gault was responsible for several other one-shot PI's, who appeared in various short stories, in the pulps and elsewhere, including Honolulu's Sandy McKane, Armenian gumshoe Pierre Apoyan and Mortimer Jones, a predecessor of Brock's who appeared several times in the pages of Black Mask. Despite his acclaim, Gault in fact stopped writing detective fiction in the early sixties, abandoning it for the far more lucrative field of juvenile sports fiction, and only returned to detective fiction in the eighties.

Highly recommended.

TRIVIA

  • Ross Macdonald, another of the last of the pulpers, dedicated his last novel to William Campbell Gault.

THE EVIDENCE

  • "Slopping through life with no discipline, no goal! And they find themselves 40 and empty, and go looking for what they missed in a bottle."
    --     Blood on the Boards

SHORT STORIES

  • "Marksman" (September 1940, Clues)
  • "Picture of Doom" (December 1940, Ten Detective Aces)
  • "The Door to Hell" (July 1942, Dime Mystery Magazine)
  • "I'll See You in Hell!" (September 1942, Dime Mystery Magazine)
  • "Death Has Yellow Eyes" (September 1942, , Dime Mystery Magazine; as Roney Scott)
  • "Four Kings and a Jack" (December 1942, Thrilling Detective)
  • "The Man Who Died too Often" (March 1943, Strange Detective Mysteries)
  • "Money Is the Motive" (May 1943, Clues)
  • "Dead Man's Hand" (Winter 1943, Thrilling Mystery)
  • "The Weak's Wages-Death" September 1944, Ten Detective Aces; with Larry Sternig)
  • "Assassin Anonymous" (September 1946, Detective Tales)
  • "Hot-House Homicide" (September 1946, Black Mask; Mortimer Jones)
  • "Five-Star Filly" (September/October 1946, Five-Novels Magazine)
  • "They'd Die for Linda" (September 1946, Detective Story Magazine)
  • "The Cold, Cold Ground" (January 1947, Black Mask; Mortimer Jones)
  • "No Weeds for the Widow" (February 1947, Detective Story Magazine)
  • "A Murder For Mac" (March 1947, Dime Detective; Mortimer Jones)
  • "Two Biers for Buster" (March 1947, Dime Detective)
  • "The Constant Shadow" (July 1947, Black Mask; Mortimer Jones)
  • "Pale Hands I Loathed" (August 1947, Detective Story [UK])
  • "Hibiscus and Homicide" (October 1947, Thrilling Detective; Sandy McKane)
  • "The Case of the Sleeping Beauty" (November 1947, Black Mask; Mortimer Jones)
  • "A Tombstone for Taro" (December 1947, Detective Story Magazine)
  • "Dead-End Road" (January 1948, Dime Mystery Magazine)
  • "The Heart Guy" (January 1948, Sports Novels Magazine)
  • "Satan's Children" (February 1948,, Dime Mystery Magazine)
  • "Red Runaround" (March 1948, Black Mask; Mortimer Jones)
  • "Wakiki Widow" (March 1948, Detective Story; Sandy McKane)
  • "White Hands I Fear!" (June 1948, Dime Mystery Magazine)
  • "Don't Bet on Death" (July 1948, Black Mask; Cary Vaughn & Ned Orlow, P.I.s)
  • "The Man Who Couldn't Die!" (October 1948, Dime Mystery Magazine)
  • "Blood for the Murder Master!" (April 1949, Dime Mystery Magazine)
  • "The Longest Count" (June 1949, Dime Mystery Magazine)
  • "Return to Terror" (October 1949, Dime Mystery Magazine)
  • "The Bloody Bokhara" (November 1948, Black Mask)
  • "Slay You in My Dreams" (December 1949, Dime Mystery Magazine)
  • "Never Marry Murder" (December 1949, Dime Mystery; as Roney Scott)
  • "Home Is Where the Corpse Is" (February 1950, Detective Tales)
  • "The Cackle Bladder" (March 1950, Detective Tales; aka "The Corpse and the Cackle Bladder")
  • "The Last Count" (June 1950, Detective Tales)
  • "Hot-Rod Homicide" (June 1950, Detective Tales; as Roney Scott)
  • "See No Evil" (September 1950, New Detective Magazine; aka "See No Murder")
  • "Dead-End for Delia" (November 1950, Black Mask)
  • "Ace in the Hole" (January 1951, Sports Novels Magazine; golf)
  • "None But the Lethal Heart" (January 1951, Dime Detective)
  • "Sunday's Dust" (July 1951, Blue Book)
  • "Cloud Over Elysium" (December 1951, Blue Book)
  • "The Crowd Screamed" (June 14, 1952, The Saturday Evening Post)
  • "Racing Fever" (April 1953, Argosy)
  • "The Bleeding Heart" (May 1953, Detective Story Magazine)
  • "The Unholy Three" (May 1956, Manhunt; Joe Puma)
  • "Kill if you Have To" (October 1956, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine)
  • "Deadly Beloved" (October 1956, Manhunt; Joe Puma)
  • "Death of a Big Wheel (April 1957, Manhunt; Joe Puma)
  • "Don't Crowd Your Luck (May 1957, EQMM; Joe Puma)
  • "Take Care of Yourself" (July 1957, Murder; Joe Puma)
  • "No Client of Mine (July 1957, Mercury Mystery Magazine; 2003; Joe Puma)
  • "Conspiracy" (August 1957, AHMM)
  • "Don't Call Tonight" (October 1957, Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine)
  • "Stolen Star (November 1957, Manhunt; 1990, Detective Story Magazine #9; 2003, Marksman and Other Stories; Joe Puma)
  • "Stolen Star" (November 1957, Manhunt)
  • "Take Care of Yourself (1957, Murder; 1987, The Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction; Joe Puma)
  • "April in Peril" (1986, Mean Streets; Brock Callahan)
  • "The Kerman Kill" (1987, Murder in Los Angeles; Pierre Apoyan)
  • "The Sister" (Winter 1994, New Mystery)
  • "An Ordinary Man" (1996, New Mystery)

NOVELS

............

COLLECTIONS

  • Marksman and Other Stories (2003; edited by Bill Pronzini)... Buy this book
    Unbelievably, the first collection of Gault's pulp and digest magazine short fiction. Includes six Joe Puma stories.
  • Joe Puma, P.I. (2010)... Kindle it!
    Five stories featuring Joe Puma.

TELEVISION

  • DEAD END FOR DELIA
    (1993, Showtime)
    Aired as episode of Showtime's crime anthology,     Fallen Angels
    Based on the short story by William Campbell Gault
    Teleplay by Scott Frank
    Directed by Phil Joanou
    Starring Gary Oldman, Meg Tilly, Gabrielle Anwar

RELATED LINKS

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

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