Mystery writer Frederick Nebel made a career choice in 1936, one that he was sure would take him a step up in the world. At the time he was already a success, with three novels and more than two hundred short stories to his credit. Joseph "Cap" Shaw, the editor who molded Black Mask into the archetypal detective pulp, considered him one of the finest writers of hard-boiled prose, on par with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. A major motion-picture studio had purchased the rights to Nebel's two most popular characters and planned to launch a movie series with a coast-to-coast radio broadcast. He was only thirty-three years old, and his future looked bright.

Unfortunately for connoisseurs of detective fiction, success in the low-status pulp magazines was not enough: Nebel longed for acceptance by a mainstream audience. In 1936, at the peak of his storytelling ability, he decided to taper...