Decoy Doll

1956

Pulp PS3501 D21735 D42

London: Original Novels Foundation

‘McBride checked into the Lewis & Clark Hotel in Copper Hill so closely behind his quarry that he could smell her perfume.’ So begins Decoy Doll, a formulaic tale by Cleve F. Adams (1895-1949), a prolific pulp writer, who outdid Raymond Chandler with his brooding and corruptible Private Investigator. This title is one of the 900 or so Australian pulp fiction publications that form the Pulp Fiction Collection in Special Collections. The covers are often lurid – ‘high-octane’; the titles grab your attention (Nude in a Boat, No Blonde is an Island, or If the Coffin Fits), and the story lines are something else: awkward dialogue, simple plots, and improbable coincidences. There is a lot of ‘cleaning up the streets and righting wrongs’.