Davy Crockett's Almanack of Mystery, Adventure and The Wild West: August 2020

Friday, August 28, 2020

Forgotten Stories: "A Gift of the Gods" by Carroll John Daly (1923)

Back in January 1923, four months before Carroll John Daly introduced "Three Gun" Terry Mack, the first hardboiled private detective, "A Gift of the Gods" appeared in People's magazine. This is the earliest known (so far) adventure of a tough-talking kid named Chester Robinson, who appears to have been Daly's first series character. Chester's gutter English got Daly warmed up for the hardboiled narration of Terry Mack and (two weeks later) his longer-lived successor Race Williams.

Chester himself moved to Argosy All-Story Weekly in March 1923, where he appeared in at least four more adventures, and possibly a couple more. My thanks to pulp historian Sai Shankar for pointing the way to these scans on the Internet Archive.