Northern Stories of Frederick Nebel.
Defiance Valley: The Complete NORTHWOODS Stories of Frederick Nebel Volume 1
The Northwestern Genre was created in 1903 by one man and one novel: Jack London’s THE CALL OF THE WILD. And faded in 1953 when the magazine North-West Romances (originally called North-West Stories) put out its last issue.
But for fifty glorious years, the Northwestern thrived! Inspired by the turbulent Klondike Gold Rush of 1898, the whole world seemed drawn to the land of hidden treasure, persevering prospectors, ruthless outlaws and stalwart red-coated policemen. As well as to that frozen land of whitewater rivers, vast forests, savage wolves and half-wolf sled dogs.
The new genre drew avid devotees. And gave them hundreds of Hollywood movies and New York published books. Thousands of magazine stories. As well as popular radio shows. Broadway plays and musicals. Comic books.
By the 1920’s, they even had a pulp magazine dedicated exclusively to the Northwestern genre. North-West Stories. Two more magazines would follow. Real Northwest Adventures and Complete Northwest Novel Magazine.
Those publications were always looking for new writers.
After walking out of high school on his first day there, fifteen year old New Yorker Frederick Lewis Nebel moved to Canada, where he worked on his great-uncle’s homestead.
He was a young man looking for challenge and adventure and found it. He loved the Canadian wilderness, eagerly exploring it and learning about it’s history.
His adventures formed the basis of his first fiction sale.
At age 22, he saw the publication of his short story “Trade Law” in the July, 1925 edition of North-West Stories.
In 1926, Frederick Nebel sold his first Black Mask mystery magazine story, “The Breaks of the Game.” For the next few years he would sell his action yarns to both magazines.
Nebel built a loyal following by creating popular series characters.
His first series character was Corporal Chet Tyson of the Mounted Police, for North-West Stories.
Among his most popular Black Mask characters were the detective team of police Captain Steve MacBride and newspaper reporter Kennedy. Other Nebel characters were Donny “Tough Dick” Donahue, Sgt Brinkhaus, Jack Cardigan, Bill Gales & Mike McGill and The Driftin’ Kid for Lariat Stories Magazine.
The prolific writer also published pulp fiction under the names Lewis Nebel, Eric Lewis and Grimes Hill.
He would go on to have his stories published in top mystery magazines from Dime Detective to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. And in the prominent Cosmopolitan, Liberty and Saturday Evening Post. As well as being adapted into radio scripts and Hollywood screenplays.
Warner Brothers made ten movies based on his MacBride and Kennedy stories. Warners changed the hard-drinking tough guy Kennedy to Torchy Blane, “The Lady Bloodhound with a nose for news.” When asked how he felt about the character change, Nebel replied, “Hell, they always change the stuff around. But I don’t mind — as long as I don’t have to make the changes.”
NORTHWOODS Stories of Frederick Nebel Book Review – Mountie Pulp Fiction
When Altus Press released its first collection of Fred’s Northern yarns, it was a time for us Northwestern aficionados to celebrate.
The Table of Contents hooked us:
“Trade Law”
“The Firelight Patrol”
“Stuart of the City Patrol”
“Raw Courage”
“The White Peril”
“Eskimo Sorcery on Baffin Island”
“Defiance Valley”
“Trail Tales of the North: The Freight of Honor”
“The Black Fox Skin”
“Trail Tales of the North: Law of the Trapline”
“Trail Tales of the North: Patrol of Courage”
“The Big Moon Lake Patrol”
“Trail Tales of the North: Alone”
“Trail Tales of the North: Cache Law”
“East of Big Moon”
“Tell It to the Mounted”
From the beginning, Nebel was up to the job.
He knew that central to each Men’s Pulp Fiction yarn was a physically tough, strong-willed hero. And he gave us those:
“One of the players was a tall, lean, hardbitten man in his thirties, black-haired and black-eyed, with the hall-mark of command stamped on his dark, weather-seared face. The right arm of his tunic that hung on his chair bore just above the elbow the downward-pointed V’s that showed his rank of corporal.” (“East of Big Moon”)
“Constable Stuart was six feet and a product of the Lake Temiskaming country. And he had a body that was tough and wiry, for the lumber camps around North Bay and Cochrane had claimed him before the Mounted. He had a mild, level eye that could turn cold as ice, and his hand was always ready to shoot out in friendship and just as ready to shoot out doubled up. Stuart had been a bit of a roughneck in his early youth. But at twenty-seven he was calm and cool and went off the handle only on rare occasions.” (“Stuart of the City Patrol”)
Soon Nebel was selling longer stories. “The White Peril,” a novelette. “Defiance Valley,” his first novella, serialized in three issues of North-West.
“Lee, chum, with weather like this we could make the old patrol in jig time. Then I could squat at the post, smoke the inspector’s cigars and wait peacefully until my resignation papers arrive.”
The speaker was Pat Quinlin of the Mounted, a young-old looking man, lean, blue-eyed, with a chiseled face seamed with the fine-weather lines that are the legacy of men who live in the open. The two were lounging on the sled and smoking their pipes while they “spelled” the nine dogs.
And so Quinlin, after eight years service to King and Country, dreamed of his life as an owner of a Northern trading post.
But their quiet patrol was about to become long and hard.
There would be murder. Betrayal. Capture and escape. And they would end in a viper’s nest called Defiance Valley.
This yarn gave Nebel room to spread his wings. He mixed gun fights, knife and fist fights, with romance and suspense — all pulp fiction essentials — and with skill and energy. He also wrote the best blizzard scene I’ve ever read. Maybe he’d survived such a storm himself in his own youthful Northcountry travels…
With “Defiance Valley,” Nebel was hitting his stride. The hidden valley deep in the Far North was a popular theme in mid-century pulp fiction. But Nebel wrote an exciting, realistic take on it.
“True, gripping experiences…”
A popular feature in each edition of North-West Stories, “Trail Tales of the North,” appeared for years. “True, gripping experiences of men and women who have blazed new trails and old on the great Northern frontier. This story is told by a man who has been there…”
Canadian A De Herries Smith, for instance, not only wrote some of the best fiction for that magazine, he was also the Northern Editor for The Edmonton Bulletin. As such he recycled his newspaper reports into articles for North-West, credited as “Anon.” And Trail Tales, published under one of his pseudonyms, mostly Owen Finbar, sometimes Derek West.
Other top pulp fictioneers who wrote Trail Tales just made ’em up.
“Complete Northwoods Volume 1” reprints five of Nebel’s Trail Tales.
Each tale involves a group gathered around a campfire or in Free-trade Jim’s Northern store. The narrator — referred to as “Mr Writer Man” — as well as trader Jim and Ramblin’ Dad, a retired Mountie, are together in every account but one.
Nebel describes Ramblin’ Dad as, “Old he was, gnarled and twisted, but tough as hickory. He had poked around every place in Canada worth poking. Long years of lonely campfire nights had made him a gifted story teller.”
I’ve gotta admit that I really enjoyed these old tales of old Northern trails. And the men who traveled them. May we all have a friend like Ramblin’ Dad, “wherever he may be.”
With “East of Big Moon,” Nebel introduced Mystery to his Northwoods yarns…
Outside the night was cold and clear. Stars winked. A moon shone. The lake-ice cracked with a subdued boom. Within the cabin it was warm and quiet and cheerful.
“It’s your move, Chet,” said the red-haired constable.
“S’ I see,” droned the corporal studiously, and then moved.
Corporal Chet Tyson and Constable Ike McClusky, of the Big Moon Lake Patrol, were playing a rousing game of checkers.
Then they heard the sharp bark of a rifle in the night.
NORTHWOODS Stories of Frederick Nebel Book Review – Mountie Pulp Fiction
Did you like this Northern Fiction Book Review?
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An extensive look at the writers who created the magnificent Mythology of our North-West Mounted Police. My Top 10 Mountie Fiction Writers in some detail — and a look at many other authors. Amply illustrated with marvelous magazine and book covers. FREE TO READ ==> The GREATEST AUTHORS OF NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE FICTION
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Complete Northwoods Stories of Frederick Nebel Book Review, Defiance Valley, Frontier of Vengeance, Frederick Nebel, Lewis Nebel, Eric Lewis, Grimes Hill, Corporal Chet Tyson, MacBride and Kennedy, Sgt Brinkhaus, Jack Cardigan, Donahue, Gales & McGill, The Driftin’ Kid, Volume 1, Volume 2.
Canadian Mountie, Mounty, North-West Stories, North-West Romances, Real Northwest Adventures, Complete Northwest Novel Magazine, Lariat Stories Magazine, mystery writer Frederick Nebel, pulp art, pulp fiction, Western writer.
