Scott Jordan
Created by Harold Q. Masur (pseudo. includes Helen Traubel)

Quick-thinking, in your face New York attorney SCOTT JORDAN appeared in a string of fast-paced, tightly-plotted novels and short stories, mostly in the fifties and sixties. Whereas Perry Mason, another lawyer with P.I. tendencies soon settled down, Scott never lost his brash, energetic, confrontational style, or his willingness to rough it up for a client. In fact, one blurb proudly proclaims that Scott's "no dried up legal eagle -- he's just as much at home with a .38...as he is in court."

The novels were narrated in the first person, and if they weren't quite as hard-boiled as that enthusiastic blurb promised, they were nonetheless satisfyingly medium-boiled.

Author Masur was himself a lawyer, before turning to writing. He also edited several anthologies of short stories, under the byline of Alfred Hitchcock., and served as president of the Mystery Writers of America in 1973. He also ghosted opera singer Helen Traubel 's The Metropolitan Opera Murders (1951).

TRIVIA

• "Masur often told the story of mentioning in an early novel that his character smoked Camel cigarettes. Some weeks after the novel appeared, he received two cartons of cigarettes from the tobacco company. In his next novel his character drove a Cadillac but the complimentary car never appeared."
  -- Richard Moore

NOVELS

• Bury Me Deep (1947)
• Suddenly a Corpse (1949)
• You Can't Live Forever (1951)
• So Rich, So Lovely, So Dead (1952)
• The Big Money (1954)
• Tall, Dark and Deadly (1956)
• The Last Gamble (1958; AKA The Last Breath)
• Send Another Hearse (1960)
• Make a Killing (1964)
• The Legacy Lenders (1967)
• The Mourning After (1981)
  

SHORT STORIES

• "Widow In Waiting" (1949; 1960, The Name Is Jordan)
• "Richest Man In The Morgue" (1953; 1960, The Name Is Jordan)
• "The Double Frame" (1953; 1960, The Name Is Jordan)
• "The Mourning After" (1953; 1960, The Name Is Jordan)
• ""Rhapsody in Blood" (August 1953, Manhunt; 1960, The Name Is Jordan)
• "Dead Issue" (1954; 1960, The Name Is Jordan)
• "Over My Dead Body" (January 1954, Manhunt; 1960, The Name Is Jordan)
• "Self-Defense" (1955; 1960, The Name Is Jordan)
• "The Woman Who Knew Too Much" (1957; 1960, The Name Is Jordan)
• "Silent Butler" (1960; 1960, The Name Is Jordan)
• "The Corpse Maker" (1965, Come Seven, Come Death)
• "The Graft Is Green" (May 1973, AHMM)

COLLECTIONS

• The Name Is Jordan (1962)

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. And thanks to David Nobriga for his quick eye.

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