Detective Story Magazines

A deep dive into the golden age of crime, mystery, and hard‑boiled detection — preserved exactly as it originally appeared. This is not a modern ebook bundle. It’s a historical archive. Inside, you’ll find rare detective magazines, pulp-era issues, and companion reference works spanning the early 1900s through the 1950s — the era that defined private eyes, locked‑room mysteries, femme fatales, and gritty street justice.

What this collection is (and what it isn’t)

This collection is built from original magazine scans and source reproductions. Because of that, formats vary by title. That’s normal for archival material — and it’s exactly what allows these issues to exist digitally at all. To make this crystal clear:

📄 PDF‑ONLY TITLES (Historical magazine scans)

These are faithful reproductions of original magazines and reference books. • Preserves original layouts, illustrations, typography, and ads • Ideal for reading on tablets, computers, or larger screens • Best choice for collectors, researchers, and pulp enthusiasts These include rare issues of:

• Detective Story Magazine (1918–1953)
• Dime Detective
• New Detective Magazine
• The Saint Detective Magazine
• True Detective feature collections
• Historical and critical works on detective fiction

Why PDF only? Because these titles were never released as reflowable ebooks. Converting them would destroy the original formatting — and the historical value.

📘 TITLES IN ALL FORMATS (EPUB · MOBI · PDF)

Some titles in this collection were later typeset or reconstructed and are available in: • EPUB • MOBI • PDF These are cleaner, text‑focused editions — perfect for e‑readers like Kindle, Kobo, phones, and tablets. You’ll find here:

• Select Detective Book and Dime Detective issues
• Standalone mystery and detective novellas
• Critical and companion works
• Curated hard‑boiled and classic detective story collections

🔁 About overlapping titles

A small number of titles appear in both sections. Why? Because in some cases:

• One version preserves the original magazine scan (PDF)
• Another provides a reader‑friendly reflowable edition (EPUB/MOBI)

This gives you both the collector version and the practical reading version. You can choose which experience you prefer.

Why this collection is special

This is the raw source material of detective fiction. Before:

• modern crime novels
• police procedurals
• TV detectives
• cinematic noir

There were these magazines. They introduced:

• serialized detectives
• hard‑boiled narration
• psychological crime stories
• the bridge between Sherlock Holmes and modern noir

If you love writers like Chandler, Hammett, Gardner, MacDonald, or Christie — this is where the genre learned how to walk.

Who this collection is for

✔ Classic mystery & noir fans ✔ Pulp fiction collectors ✔ Crime fiction researchers ✔ Readers curious about the origins of the genre ✔ Anyone who enjoys short, punchy mystery stories

Final word

Think of this less as an ebook bundle… and more as a digital museum of detective fiction. If you want perfect uniformity, this isn’t that. If you want authenticity, history, and stories exactly as readers first experienced them — this collection delivers.  

TITLES INCLUDED:

PDF ONLY:

1. Before Sherlock Holmes: How Magazines and Newspapers Invented the Detective Story (Leroy Lad Panek)
2. Bizarre Murderers II (Rose G. Mandelsberg)
3. Detective Bob and the Great Ape Escape (David L. Harriso, Ned Delaney)
4. Detective Book Magazine – December 1949-February 1950 (Joe Barry)
5. Detective Book Magazine – Fall 1940 (Jefferson Farjeon)
6. Detective Book Magazine – Spring 1946-47 (Paul Whelton
7. Detective Book Magazine – Spring 1947-48 (Vera Caspary)
8. Detective Book Magazine – Summer 1946 (James Gunn)
9. Detective Book Magazine – Summer 1949 (Lawrence Goldman)
10. Detective Mystery Novel Magazine – March 1948 (Kurt Steel)
11. Detective Novel Magazine – January 1948 (Alice Tilton)
12. Detective Novels Magazine – February 1943 (John L. Benton, Norman Daniels)
13. Detective Story Magazine  10 December 1918 (J. Allan Dunn)
14. Detective Story Magazine – 16 April 1921 (Arthur mallory, Roy Vickers, Maxwell Smith etc)
15. Detective Story Magazine – 16 April 1927 (Paul Ellsworth Triem)
16. Detective Story Magazine – 18 December 1926 (Christopher Booth, Philip Hubbard, Herman Landon etc)
17. Detective Story Magazine – 19 July 1924 (Johnston McCullev)
18. Detective Story Magazine – 2 July 1921 (Courtney Ryley Cooper)
19. Detective Story Magazine – 2 March 1931 (Mel Watt)
20. Detective Story Magazine – 23 April 1918 (Carolyn Wells)
21. Detective Story Magazine – 23 January 1932 (Hector Gavin Grey)
22. Detective Story Magazine – 23 July 1921 (Adle Luehrmann)
23. Detective Story Magazine – 24 May 1924 (Edgar Wallace, Edward H. Smith, Roy Hinds etc.)
24. Detective Story Magazine – 28 August 1926 (Donald Van Riper, Christoper Booth, Isabel Ostrander etc.)
25. Detective Story Magazine – 9 May 1925 (Hugh Dawson)
26. Detective Story Magazine – March 1953 (John D. MacDonald, John Jakes, Don James etc.)
27. Detective Story Magazine – November 1937 (Johnston McCulley, Walter Ripperger etc.)
28. Detective Story Magazine – Winter 1949 (T.T. Flynn, Agatha Gandy, Samm S. Baker etc.)
29. Detective Story Magazine (1952-11) (Craig Rice, Fletcher Flora, Gordon Shelly etc.)
30. Dime Detective (1952 October 4) (John Bender, Harold Helfer, John Lawrence etc.)
31. Dime Detective Magazine (1949-07) (Robert Turner, Peter Paige, Mel Colton etc.)
32. Dime Detective Magazine (1950-02) (Robert Martin, Robert Turner, Don James etc.)
33. Dime Detective Magazine (1950-06) (Day Keene, Scott O’Hara, Russel Branch etc.)
34. Dime Detective Magazine (1950-11) (T.T. Flynn, Robert Martin, Rufus Bakalor etc.)
35. Dime Detective Magazine (1953-06) (Peter Paige, D. L. Champion, Johanas L. Bouma etc.)
36. Dime Detective Magazine (1953-08) (Dorothy Dunn, Richard Deming, Dan Gordon etc.)
37. From the files of True Detective Magazine: Family Slaughters (Rose G. Mandelsberg)
38. From the files of True Detective Magazine: Greed Killers (Rose G. Mandelsberg)
39. From the files of True Detective Magazine: Medical Murderers (Rose G. Mandelsberg)
40. Hard-Boiled Dames (Bernard A. Drew, Marcia Muller)
41. Hard-Boiled Detectives (Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, Erle Stanley Gardner etc.)
42. Mystery, Detective, and Espionage Magazines (1983) (Michael L. Cook)
43. New Detective Magazine (1945-07) (William Harrison, Dean Owen, Bruno Fischer etc.)
44. New Detective Magazine (1950-05) (Larry Holden, Graham Doar, Wallace Umphrey etc.)
45. New Detective Magazine (1950-11) (Mona Freeman, Harry Carey Jr., Ray Milland etc.)
46. New Detective Magazine (1952-04) (Fletcher Flora, Robert Zacks, Greg Kennedy etc.)
47. Rivals of Sherlock (Robert Barr, Grant Allen, H.G. Wells etc.)
48. The Illustrated Detective Magazine (1930-04) (Mansfield Scott)
49. The Queen’s Awards: Sixth Series (Ellery Queen)
50. The Saint Detective Magazine (1954-09) (Frank Kane, Edgar Wallace, William Irish etc.)
51. The Saint Detective Magazine (1956-09) (Leslie Carteris, Ben Hecht, Hal Ellson etc.)
52. The Saint Detective Magazine (1956-12) (Leslie Carteris, Sax Rohmer, Barry Perowne etc.)
53. The Saint Detective Magazine (1957-10) (B. Traven, Carter Dickson, Leslie Carteris etc.)
54. The Saint Detective Magazine (1958-09) (Edgar Wallace, Wiill Jenkins, Rafael Sabatini etc.)
55. The Saint Detective Magazine (1959-01) (Joseph Conrad, Leslie Carteris, Michael Innes etc.)
56. The Saint Detective Magazine (1959-02) (Craig Rice, Hal Ellson, William MacHarg etc.)

 

ALL-FORMATS:

1. Dan and the Death-Cell Bluff (Richard Deming)
2. Dead Ernest (Alice Tilton, Ray Cummings, Richard Brister etc)
3. Detective Book Fall 1941 (Dana Chambers, Nelson S. Bond, Ted Copp etc)
4. Detective Book Magazine Summer 1949 (Lawrence Goldman, Stewart Sterling, Dan Gordon etc)
5. Detective Story Magazine February 1939 (Cornell Woolrich, Mel Watt, Erle Stanley Gardner etc)
6. Detective Story Magazine May, 1938 (M.I.H Rogers, Richard Wormser, Paul Ellsworth Triem etc)
7. Dime Detective Magazine April 1951 (Robert Turner, Thorne Lee, Larry Holden etc)
8. Dime Detective Magazine July 1949 (Mel Colton, Peter Paige, Johanas L. Bouma etc)
9. Dime Detective Magazine, August 1951 (Stuart Friedman, Larry Holden, Day Keene etc)
10. Dime Detective Magazine, October 1952 (Burt Sims, Carroll Daly, Dick Goggin etc)
11. Hussies Prefer Homicide (Zale Herrington)
12. Manhunt Magazine April 1953 (Henry Kane, Kris Neville, Robert Turner etc)
13. Murder Makes a Ghost (George Chance, Robert Leslie Bellem, Thomas Lamar etc)
14. New Detective February 1951 (Daniel Winters, C. William Harrison, Joel Townsley Rogers etc)
15. New Detective February 1952 (Donn Mullally, Charles Larson, Fredric Brown etc)
16. Proof of the Pudding (Phoebe Atwood Taylor)
17. Sweet Tooth of Murder (Day Keene)
18. The Essential Elements of the Detective Story, 1820-1891 (LeRoy Lad Panek)
19. The Ghost Strikes Back (George Chance)
20. The Hard-Boiled Detective Stories From Black Mask Magazine 1920-1951 (Howard Ruhm)
21. The Hardboiled Dicks (Ron Goulart)
22. Thrilling Detective Magazine October 1947 (C. S. Montayne, Ric Hasse, Allan K. Echols etc)
23. Too Many Detectives (Rex Stout)
24. Yes, Sir, That’s My Slay-Babe (Dime Detective Magazine, May, 1950) (John D. MacDonald)