Rex McBride
Created by Cleve F. Adams (also: John Spain)

Hot-tempered, crude, sexist, racist REX McBRIDE appeared in six novels by Cleve F. Adams.

Adams was a contemporary and, strange but true, a friend of Raymond Chandler. But while Chandler's Marlowe was the classic tarnished knight going down those mean streets, clinging to a personal code of honour, working outside the system, perhaps, but generally staying within the lines drawn by that system, McBride was something else entirely.

As Richard Moore put it on Rara-Avis once, "(McBride) was a cretin, famous for his statement that 'an American Gestapo is goddamned well what we need.' Marlowe became the model for the future, the classic tarnished knight. McBride, for the few who have read him, is one of the most repugnant characters in detective fiction history. Lessons learned."

Adams was the creator of P. I., John J. Shannon, who at least has some redeeming qualities, and even more surprisngly, Violet McDade and Nevada Alvarado, one of the very first hardboiled lady eyes and her Hispanic partner, Nevada Alvarado, who slugged their way through a string of stories in the pulps.

MORE FUN WITH REX

• "A guy can take care of his enemies. Friends are just a plain damned nuisance."

NOVELS

• Sabotage (1940)
• And Sudden Death (1940)
• Decoy (1941)
• Up Jumped the Devil (1943 AKA "Murder All Over")
• The Crooking Finger (1944)
• Shady Lady (1955)

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.