Cabinet 7: Crime & Murder
Marc Brody, Libel was a Blonde. Sydney: Horwitz, 1957. Pulp Literature Special Collections PR9610.B74 L52
____, Killers Don’t Cry. 1st ed. Sydney: Horwitz, 1957. Pulp Literature Special Collections PR9610.B74 K54
____, Baby Your Racket’s Busted. Sydney: Horwitz, 1957. Pulp Literature Special Collections PR9610.B74 B32
The real-life ‘Marc Brody’ was W. H. ‘Bill’ Williams, a journalist and editor for the Melbourne Truth. Between 1955 and 1960, Williams produced some 82 Marc Brody novels, plus reprints, for Horwitz. Great titles to capture readers included Stand in for Sin, Sugar, You’re a Scoop! and Hood for a Honey.
Initially, Brody was a newspaperman in a fictional American city, but with the advent of television, he becomes an on-the-spot ‘crime reporter’. The back cover of Killers Don’t Cry carries the claim that Brody was in Tobruk and ‘married to a former ballet dancer of the Bodenweiser group’. The author photograph is actually Williams, so some of the biographical details about Brody may apply equally to the writer.
The Marc Brody series was so popular that Horwitz produced ‘Collector’s Editions’; three stories combined and repackaged.
Marc Brody, Libel was a Blonde. Sydney: Horwitz, 1957. Pulp Literature Special Collections PR9610.B74 L52
____, Killers Don’t Cry. 1st ed. Sydney: Horwitz, 1957. Pulp Literature Special Collections PR9610.B74 K54
____, Baby Your Racket’s Busted. Sydney: Horwitz, 1957. Pulp Literature Special Collections PR9610.B74 B32
