Grace "Redsie" Culver
Created by Roswell Brown (pseudonym of Jean Francis Webb, 1910 --)

One of the early female private eyes from the pulps, young, attractive, red-haired GRACE "REDSIE" CULVER's a secretary for "Big Tim" , who runs the Noonan Detective Agency. But don't let that fool you. She's a "fast action girl," Big Tim's "aider-and-abetter," and she's usually involved in cases right up to the neck. Her stories, by Roswell Brown, appearred in the backpages of The Shadow Magazine. According to the grabline of her first adventure, "Gangster guns killed Grace Culver's father, but they could not kill the detective spirit which was a part of the Culver blood." She also seems to have a weakness for double chocolate sodas

She's not exactly hardboiled, but she is smart, competent, brave and independant. And she seems to be unaware of fellow young operative and agency second-in-command Jerry Riker's mad crush on her.

Yes, somehow the men seem to come rescue her near the end of most of her stories, a pulp tradition that more than a few of the supposedly "liberated" female eyes still seem to follow, but at least by the time Jerry and Tim rush in to the rescue, Grace has usually cracked the case. Nobody's bimbo, and an important figure in the development of female private eyes.

Roswell Brown was actually the Shadow Magazine house pen name of of Jean Francis Webb, who contributed plenty of stories in a variety of genres under his own name. He also wrote for several radio shows, including Chick Carter, Boy Detective.

SHORT STORIES

• "Scoop!" (August 1, 1934, The Shadow Magazine/The Crime Master)
• "Dumb Blonde" (September 1, 1934, The Shadow Magazine/Spoils of the Shadow)
• "War Paint" (October 1, 1934, The Shadow Magazine/Murder Marsh)
• "The Bigger They Are" (November 1, 1934, The Shadow Magazine/The Chinese Disks)
• "Double Chocolate" (December 1, 1934, The Shadow Magazine/The Unseen Killer)
• "Millions to Burn" (January 1, 1935, The Shadow Magazine/The Four Signets)
• "Red is For Fox" (March 1, 1935, The Shadow Magazine/Crooks Go Straight)
• "Kitchen Trap" (June 1, 1935, The Shadow Magazine/Murder Every Hour)
• "Thin Air" (August 1, 1935, The Shadow Magazine/The Man From Scotland Yard)
• "Bombproof Baby" (October 15, 1935, The Shadow Magazine/House That Vanished)
• "Crime in the Air " (January 15, 1936, The Shadow Magazine/Castle of Doom)
• "Hit the Baby!" (February 15, 1936, The Shadow Magazine/North Woods Mystery)
• "Phantom Pirate" (March 15, 1936, The Shadow Magazine/The Third Shadow)
• "Sign of the Devil Dog" (June 15, 1936, The Shadow Magazine/Murder Town)
• "The Tatooed Twin " (August 15, 1936, The Shadow Magazine/Terror Island)
• "Tunnel of Terror " (November 1, 1936, The Shadow Magazine/Partners of Peril)
• "Fur Will Fly " (December 1, 1936, The Shadow Magazine/Seven Drops of Blood)
• "Appearance Money" (February 15, 1937, The Shadow Magazine/Quetzal)
• "Torch Song" (March 15, 1937, The Shadow Magazine/Murder House)
• "Return Address" (July 15, 1937, The Shadow Magazine/House of Silence)

RELATED LINKS

• Highlights on the Shadow
  Lurch and DeeAnn's great site, on arguably the greatest pulp figure of them all, with some downloadable short stories featuring Grace Culver and tons of info and stuff on some other great pulp heroes, as well. It's also where I nicked the cool graphic of Grace from....

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Special thanks to Lurch for his great help with this page. Check out his site (above).