Calvin Kane
Created by Russell Gray (pseud. of Bruno Fischer)

CALVIN KANE was a pulp-era private eye whose "severely deformed body made him look like a refugee from a side-show attraction," according to Don hutchison, pulp historian. This "defective detective," with his withered and useless right leg, and twisted and deformed body, was forced to crawl along the floor, using his extremely powerful arms, thus earning him the nickname of "The Crab Detective." According to another pulp expert, Robert Jones, the Kane series was "simply too grotesque to last." A toned-down version of Kane was Gray's second pulp eye, polio victim Ben Bryn, who was evidently easier for readers to take. Kane, and later Bryn, were regulars in Dime Mystery.

Author Russell Gray (a pseudonym of Bruno Fischer) was one of the more prolific popular writers of the genre, starting out in the weird menace pulps back in the thirties, and eventually moving into the paperback market of the fifties, where he wrote tons of great stand-alones, as well as several novels featuring detectives Ben Helm and Rick Train.