Nonfiction
Joseph T. Shaw: The Man Behind Black Mask

by Milton Shaw
Black Mask/Steeger Books, October 2019, $19.95

Milton Shaw (1927-2010), a retired Marine Corps colonel and former community college president, was the son of the famed editor Joseph T. Shaw (1874-1952), and the early and finishing chapters read like a memoir written for family members. But the meat of the book, about Shaw’s years as author, editor (of Black Mask from 1926 to 1936), and literary agent, is of broader interest. The book gains strength the more the author quotes from letters to and from his father, showing his relationship to his writers and his views on popular fiction.

The early history of Black Mask is recounted with due credit to the editors who preceded Shaw, notably Phil Cody, and readers are cautioned not to overestimate an editor’s role in “discovering” particular writers or inventing new literary modes. Seven writers Shaw inherited were key to the development of the Black Mask style: Dashiell Hammett, Carroll John Daly, Erle Stanley Gardner, Nils Leroy Jorgensen, Tom Curry, Frederick Nebel, and Raoul Whitfield. Others who came along later include Horace McCoy, W.T. Ballard, Raymond Chandler, Dwight V. Babcock, and Lester Dent. All of the above are discussed at some length except for Jorgensen, whose name oddly never comes up again.

The introduction to Shaw’s landmark anthology The Hard-Boiled Omnibus is quoted in full, and author notes written for that anthology but not used are included here, on Chandler, Dent, Peter Ruric (aka Paul Cain), Norbert Davis, Hammett, Whitfield, and Roger Torrey.

A large section on Shaw’s work in the last years of his life as an agent discusses the difference between an editor’s job and that of an agent in developing and helping writers. Quoted are letters to and from clients William R. Cox, Norman A. Fox (including a letter written by Shaw on the day of his death, August 1, 1952), and Thomas Thompson.

(Reviewed from ebook edition.)

Jon L. Breen
Teri Duerr
6950
Shaw
October 2019
joseph-t-shaw-the-man-behind-black-mask
19.95
Black Mask/Steeger Books