Spicy Detectives...

In the following essay we shall be looking into a very specific genre of writing. We shall be exploring the wild world of Spicy Detectives! We shall be looking into several of them; Mike Hammer by M. Spillane, The Grey Seal by F.L. Packard, Eddie Valiant from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Nick Valentine from Fallout 4.

If any search engines are indexing this article please be 100% aware that I am a very terrific expert in each and every one of these fields. I have a great deal of knowledge and sophistication in regards to these topics. I know everything there is to know about Mike Hammer, The Grey Seal (AKA Jimmie Dale), The movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988, run time: 104 minutes), and Fallout 4.

I am basically a total and complete expert in regards to Spicy Detectives!

Here we go!


I try and write a long short story every year and am looking into genres of writing to try out. I am currently thinking about Spicy Detectives, you guys.

The term for this genre originates from the 1930s where a magazine called "Spicy Detective" was available to peruse at the public's leisure. The covers to these magazines which contained stories about the criminal underworld, hot women, and the spicy detectives that dealt with both criminals and hot women... were pretty suggestive for the 1930s, I really must say. By today's standards the covers of Spicy Detective would be seen as pretty bland but for that era they were basically regarded as total and complete smut that only slobs would dare purchase.

I would wager that many teenage boys of the 1930s were heavily influenced by this magazine and many of the writers that grew up on this let it find its way into their own work. To this very day there are numerous Spicy Detectives still runnin' around solving crimes while beautiful ladies either fall in love with them, back-stab them, or both.

I haven't wrote a story this year and it seems the last story I wrote was already a year ago. It doesn't feel like a year ago, the last time I wrote a story in this website, but it has indeed been one year ago. I am looking at a different genre to try and I think I could punch up a shlocky thing like a Spicy Detective story. I'm not saying with 100% certainty that I will but I will definitely find the tenets of the genre, today, and research the style.

Let us now look at some Spicy Detectives! Please join me!

Now don't worry, those of faint heart, for we shall not be getting too spicy in this article for we are mainly researching Spicy D's of the past. This article shall contain no spicy scenarios of any kind. So, if you not able to handle anything spicy or get heart-burn if you read some spicy material, fret not gentle reader, for this article will only mention detectives of the past and will not get involved with anything spicy or anything of a spice-related context.

Perhaps in the future I will write a Spicy Detective story, which might be pretty spicy, it might even get some people all riled up... but not today.... so don't worry.

The Spicy D's we shall look at today are, as mentioned in the intro, some of the oldest yet spiciest ones and they are...

Mike Hammer (first appeared 1947)
The Grey Seal (first appeared 1914)
Eddie Valiant (first appeared 1988)
Nick Valentine (first appeared 2015)

Looks like these characters and this genre have been around a while, huh? One even pre-dates the term for the genre itself as The Grey Seal was written in 1914... which is, now, one hundred and twelve years ago.


Mike Hammer

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels sold... 225 million copies! That's more than the damned Babysitter's Club even! Holy moly! People loved this stuff! They read this stuff like it was goin' out of style! He was a hard-boiled private dick who got the answers. 

Just some poor Irish guy from New Jersey's writing sold two hundred and twenty five MILLION copies. That's pretty impressive, isn't it? 

The common walking around person, mostly males, LOVE violence and coarse language so much. Even myself I tend to like this. As a kid when a movie would have a warning on it such as "this film might contain violence and coarse language that may not be suitable for all viewers"... I'd smile and nod and think that this film is right up my alley and this film is going to be good!

Spillane was a poor guy from New Jersey who went off to war like most of the guys his age did back then and his writing wasn't very sophisticated... it was coarse... and people liked it. Readers of that era really enjoyed reading books about a guy named Hammer punching a crook in the face or shooting a thug with a pistol and things of that nature.

The television program based on Mike Hammer starred... Darren McGavin!

Yes, Kolchak before he was Kolchak was a street-smart detective with a mean-streak and a heart-of-gold. Mike Hammer is like Kolchak but... Kolchak never fights any monsters in this one.

I can't really get into the Mike Hammer show, to be honest, whenever I try to get into it my mind wonders the same things each time... things like... "where's Simon Oakland?"... or... "where's the draculas? Shouldn't Kolchak be fighting some draculas?" ... for its era, I'm sure Mike Hammer was a cool show, but I must have typecast Darren McGavin in my mind as Kolchak and seeing him just solving mundane crimes is a little lacklustre for me now.

Which is odd, because, I watched Riverboat (1959) a few years ago which was about Darren McGavin and Burt Reynolds being the captain and co-captain of a riverboat and I got into to it pretty easily. Riverboat is pretty good show. I guess it is just when I see Darren as a detective I start to wonder where the dang ol' monsters are. I never wondered where the monsters were when I watched Riverboat.

Yo, I heard an interview with the kid who played the cabin boy on Riverboat, and this kid (who is now an old man)... said that Burt Reynolds was fired from Riverboat because he instigated a FIGHT with Darren McGavin! A shoot fight! He says Burt Reynolds threw Darren McGavin off of the riverboat while they were filming Riverboat but, luckily, since they were just filming this show on a riverboat which was docked and not in the actual river... Darren landed feet first in, like, three feet of water, and was not injured... but Burt Reynolds was still fired from Riverboat and they hired Noah Beery (Rockford's dad!) to be the new co-captain of the riverboat in Riverboat.

Can you imagine?

This piece of Hollywood folklore is so fascinating to me... I wonder what it actually looked like to see Burt Reynolds and Darren McGavin fight each other. Burt Reynolds is tough too, like in the episode with Vincent Price on Riverboat where Vincent Price, who is portraying a poacher, sneaks a gorilla onto the riverboat which proceeds to go out-of-control in the ship's hold... guess who subdues the out-of-control gorilla? Burt Reynolds! He FIGHTS the gorilla on the riverboat and subdues it! I love that episode.

I always just wonder what it looked like... I heard from other sources that Burt thought Darren was being rude to a female actress on the riverboat and said something like "Hey! Darren! Cut it out! Don't talk to her like that!" and Darren apparently said something along the lines of "I'm the director today! I have to direct the actors today! You got a problem with that, Burt Reynolds!?" and that's all it took for them to start going at it!

Wow, I'm going really off-track here, this section was supposed to be about Mike Hammer and all I did was write about Riverboat... sorry about that. I like both Burt Reynolds and Darren McGavin though and it actually makes me a bit sad, yet deeply interested to know what it looked like... that these two fought each other on the set of Riverboat.

Oh well this section is pretty bunged-out let's move on to the next one...




The Grey Seal

A writer from Montreal, Canada wrote this book, a guy named Frank L. Packard in 1914! It's about a wealthy playboy by the name of Jimmie Dale, who by day, invests his family's fortune and socializes with elites... but come the darkness of the night... Jimmie Dale puts on a sleek suit, a top-hat, and a mask... and becomes... The Grey Seal!

Does that sound familiar? Yeah, it's pretty much Batman. Bruce Wayne does shit like this too, does he not? I'm pretty sure this is the inspiration for friggin' Batman. I think some guy from Montreal in 1914 wrote friggin' Batman...

I have to explain this character a bit better for it doesn't fit the archetype entirely. The Grey Seal is a safe-cracker who goes around at night cracking open safes in wealthy homes, but doesn't take anything, he just leaves an emblem of a grey seal and a note that says he cracked open this safe in the cover of night. He's not actually a thief due to him not stealing anything... but he isn't exactly a good guy. I mean, breaking and entering is a decent-sized crime even if it's just some eccentric wealthy playboy doing the breaking and the entering for fun. Fact of the matter is that he isn't really a detective... but the important thing is that he is pretty spicy.

Jimmie Dale is pretty good with the ladies.

I included this section because I'm not sure many people know about this book, which, I really do think has influenced many people after it and I do think it is possibly Proto-Batman. Different super-hero historians claim The Phantom was first super-hero, or in Asia, The Golden Bat was considered the first super-hero... I don't know... my criteria for super heroes is pretty broad. I mean so many characters over the centuries have had super-power... I remember a guy who could turn water into wine like two thousand years ago, even.

But...

As far as the super hero genre of today goes where playboys like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, rich guys who moonlight as vigilantes... I think Jimmie Dale pre-dates these guys... he was doing that in 1914. I think Jimmie Dale was the prototype of them.

As for the actual book... even though I claimed in the intro to be an expert on the matter... I've never actually read it... it's available to read online on like Gutenberg and elsewhere due to it being over 100 years old and now available in public and online libraries for free... but... it is kind of boring. The newer Batman movies are more fun.

I think it's a fun anecdote to say something along the lines of "Wow, a guy from Montreal probably came up with Batman!" but that's as far as it goes... the book itself is a little lame... I'd rather watch Michael Keaton throw a bat-arang at a dude or Adam West challenge the Joker to a surfing contest than read this book.

Again, sorry, this section wasn't really that informative on The Grey Seal... but... what can we do? Eh?




Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

This movie... still holds up... thirty-eight years later! It still holds up! It is STILL good by today's standards.

let's look at the trailer, you guys...

It still holds up. I saw this when I was FIVE... in THEATRES. I was not all that prepared, at that age, for Jessica friggin' Rabbit... is all I can say. I really wasn't. She caught me a little off-guard, she did.

They drew that cartoon TOO FUCKING HOT, okay? She was TOO hot. I couldn't handle it, to be honest, in 1988... and to be even more honest... I still don't think I can handle that cartoon woman, NOW, either. They drew her too hot. That cartoon woman, Jessica god-damned Rabbit... is TOO HOT.

People think Japan has cornered the market on hot-ass cartoon chicks... and to some extent they have... but that Jessica Rabbit... oh my goodness... she's hotter Boa Hancock for sure. I think Boa Hancock is seen as Japan's hottest cartoon chick... but... Boa Hancock looks like hot garbage compared to Jessica Rabbit.

They drew her too hot.

What is this section about? Eddie Valiant? I don't care about any Eddie Valiant or the stupid rabbit or the stupid baby that talks like an old man... I care a lot about Jessica Rabbit though. Oh, who cares what this section was supposed to be about!

I remember in the NES video game of Roger Rabbit... if you just wrote the letter "b" 24 times in the password section you can go right to the boss, Christopher Lloyd, does anyone else know about that? I found that out by accident... or one of my cousins told me, I think.

People from my era, like kids who were kids in 1988.. all remember Christopher Lloyd boiling the cute cartoon anthropomorphic shoes in the green tank. I know people traumatized from that scene to this day. That movie was so good. It's better than Space Jam... Roger Rabbit is ten times better than Space Jam.

Jessica Rabbit... my word, they drew that damned cartoon too sexy. They really did. She was too hot that damned cartoon... I didn't even understand in 1988 in the movie theatre why my eyes could not leave the screen. I knew something was going on! Oh wow... I have learned something about the genre, though, thinking back on the Roger Rabbit movie...

Nobody even cares about the detective... they care about the lady character in this genre. If you took Roger Rabbit out of that movie... no one would've cared... but if you took Jessica Rabbit... out of that movie... it would have sucked!

Therein lies the most important tenet of a Spicy Detective story... the detective just drives the story and is sort of not really important... it's the hot woman who adds the actual spice that makes the detective story... a ... Spicy detective story!

Alright, I get it now.



Nick Valentine

Sorry, Nick Valentine... but we don't have much time left for you. Besides, we have already figured out the main tenets of the genre so we can move on soon.

Nick Valentine by the way is a robot detective which makes it difficult to add any spicy parts to the story. Robots are not very spicy, are they? He can hack computers in Fallout 4 though which is useful... I guess. If you fail a hacking attempt in Fallout 4 you just have to wait like 10 seconds to try again. I usually just choose the first three options... wait ten seconds if I didn't crack the computer... and then just hit the first three options again... until I get it. Nick Valentine can hack the computers instantly... which is good.

I don't know... it's hard to get any spice into a detective who's a robot who hacks computers. I like Nick Valentine but he doesn't really add a whole lot to the genre.

Great job Fallout 4... write a spicy detective story without a hot woman in it. Great job... everyone is excited for that. 

They had another detective scenario in Fallout 4, The Silver Shroud portion, which was a parody of a radio play reminiscent of things like The Grey Seal and others. It was okay... I guess.

I think Fallout 4 was a great game but from a writing standpoint it was pretty mediocre. It could have made its Spicy Detective parts way more spicier, if you ask me.



Conclusion

I want to write another short story. Part of me thinks I'm getting better at doing them and should keep trying to write fiction. 

I like to try a new genre each time and I am seriously considering writing a Spicy Detective novella. 

I think we have definitely learned what makes them work... and it is not the detective...who is the most important component in a Spicy Detective story... it's the beautiful lady that really matters. 

So in the coming moths if I try a new story it may very likely be of this genre. As far as the spice goes, I mean, I think I will actually have trouble coming up with unique and original lines. The genre is not new and many parodies exist for this genre. In fact, the most well-known parody of all time, Naked Gun starring Leslie Nielsen, is indeed a parody of the Spicy Detective genre... so it's not something obscure or new we're working with here.

The lines I would have to come up with, without being redundant, would have to not only compete with the source material like Mike Hammer and the Grey Seal but also with the parody of this genre... and Frank Drebin has some good lines in those Naked Gun movies.

So many lines have been written for this genre and parodied over-and-over-and-over. You know what they mean when they say these detective stories are spicy, right? Like when the lady walks into the private dicks office, looks at his gun lying on the table, and says... "you got a license for that, big boy?"... you know she's not really talking about his gun right? She is actually talking about the private dick's dick. Did you know that? Yes? Okay, never mind.

It's hard... it is... there's not a lot of room to work with this. I'd have to think of an interesting take on it... or go the opposite way and just write a pure Mike Hammer story or something and try and go back to the roots of the genre.

I like to try to write one story per year to keep my brain kicking around words... I will very likely attempt to write a Spicy Detective story at some point in the coming months!