The Complete Guide to Manhunt Part 1

Manhunt was the best crime digest ever published. I've been working on a book on the magazine for well over ten years. One of these days, I might just finish it. Bits of it have been published here and there but most of what you'll see here on this blog has never been published. It's a massive project, featuring a lot of words (the chapter on 1953, its first year, is 13,000 words alone), lots of graphics, and it's getting bigger every day. I'll present this project a bit at a time, beginning with a (revised) piece I wrote for Paperback Parade several years ago explaining my obsession with Manhunt.

FOR THE LOVE OF MANHUNT

by Peter Enfantino

First the numbers:

- 14 years (1953-1967)

- 114 issues

- over 500 authors

- over 1100 stories

- over 13,000 pages

- over 6,000,000 words

- countless writers influenced

Some of the guilty parties: Charles Williams, Donald E. Westlake (and Richard Stark), Ed McBain (and all his aliases), Gil Brewer, Craig Rice, Jonathon Craig, John D. MacDonald, Mickey Spillane, Richard Prather, Leslie Charteris, David Goodis, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Harry Whittington.

January 1953

April/May 1967

First published in January 1953, Manhunt’s rep was built on the contributions of Spillane, McBain, Whittington, and Goodis. That’s why these digests are so collectible. Most of the Manhunt elite never had their short stories collected. That’s why you’ll pay big dollars for key issues. But there are those of us who collect the digests for more than just the beautiful cover art of Dick Shelton or Ray Houlihan, or a rare Harlan Ellison appearance, or just the general musty odor of the pages. For those of us who actually read the gritty crime stories between the covers, Manhunt is a treasure trove of great writing.

What strikes you when you read Manhunt is the fact that there are so many good stories by so many writers that aren’t household names (well, at least hardboiled households). Norman Struber, whose “Badge of Dishonor” shows us an early example of the anti-hero; Stuart Friedman, author of the powderkeg “The Secret,” wherein an innocent man is murdered for a crime he didn’t commit. Then there’s Frank Kane, author of several stories featuring hardboiled PI Johnny Liddell. Kane is often overlooked when great authors of the 1950s are discussed, perhaps because so many of the Liddells seemed jokey. Kane’s “Key Witness,” a rare non-Liddell novella, is anything but comic. An innocent bystander turned good samaritan is terrorized by the punks he witnessed commit murder. His transformation from good citizen to victim is starkly portrayed. In “Seven Lousy Bucks” by C. L. Sweeney, Jr., Joe’s got it made: no job, drinks his life away and prostitutes his wife, Clare, for booze money. When his wife fails to bring home more than ten bucks after serving a john, Joe blows his top. Violent, harrowing look at two bottom-of-the-barrel individuals. These four stories appeared over the space of three issues! If I had the time and space, I’d extoll the virtues of “Deadly Beloved,” a Joe Puma novella by William Campbell Gault, or “Hunch” by Helen Nielsen, wherein a grizzled, pessimistic cop discovers that the chief suspect in a series of brutal murders is his own son, or dozens more well-written celebrations of con jobs, robbery, murder, and adultery.

My own personal Manhunt collecting odyssey began in 1993 after a conversation with author Ed Gorman. Ed was writing a piece on Gold Medal paperbacks for a magazine I was editing at the time (you can say it Pete — The Scream Factory! -JS), and Manhunt kept popping up in the conversation. Ed let on that Manhunt had been an important part of his formative years. That sparked an interest in me and when, while browsing through a vintage paperback catalog, I came across a cheap copy of the January 1956 issue (“Seven Brutal Shockers!”), I took the plunge. Seven years later, I had the high bid on the September 1955 issue (one of the pricier digests because of its Charles Williams novel) which completed my set. I’d estimate a total price at about $1200.00.

Aside from a few bumps in the road, assembling a set of Manhunt is not an impossible task for the collector with enough patience and funds. Most issues can be found for $15-20 apiece. If condition is not a factor (who are we fooling... of course it is), you can find them for half that amount. Before the advent of the internet and eBay several years ago, collectors depended on Black Ace Book catalogs or the annual Vintage Paperback shows like those held in New York by Gary Lovisi and California by Tom Lesser. Now, it’s not uncommon to find two dozen issues of Manhunt on eBay on any given day. Of course, there are the issues that will cost a lot more than fifteen or twenty bucks. In addition to the aforementioned Charles Williams (who contributed three novels to Manhunt), expect to pay more for issues with work by John D. MacDonald (4), David Goodis (4), or Mickey Spillane (3), to name just a few. I also had a hard time finding the last couple issues (this might have been due either to poor distribution or a decline in print run) and the less desirable Giant Manhunts (the publisher would bind three, sometimes four, recent back issues together and sell them for half-a-buck).

One of the scarcest: Bedsheet-sized Giant Manhunt

Then there’s the matter of those pesky bedsheets. Beginning in March 1957 and continuing through April 1958, Manhunt was published as a magazine (aka “bedsheet”), rather than a digest, in an effort to boost sales (MH’s publisher, Flying Eagle, was convinced that MH was lost behind the larger-sized magazines on the newsstand). Years later, this would cause innumerable problems for the collector. Because of its awkward size, the bedsheet wasn’t to be found with its digest brothers. Chances are, you’d find them in a box of old Saturday Evening Posts in an antique store. The scarcity drove the price up. Though not as scarce as the similar Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine bedsheets (which can fetch upwards of $100 each), you’re still going to shell out $50-75 each for the twelve MH bedsheets. But, when you consider the insane prices found in the comic book collecting world, it’s still a fairly cheap hobby.

After returning to digest size, Manhunt just wasn’t the same again. Though the classic authors would make an appearance now and then, most of the authors were new, untested writers. Writers not heard of before and, in several instances, never heard of again after Manhunt’s demise. Evan Hunter and Charles Williams gave way to Robert Page Jones and J. Simmons Scheb. Not exactly esteemed names in a crime aficionado’s book. The general look of the magazine began to suffer as well. The magazine’s frequency was dropped first to bi-monthly and eventually quarterly. Reprints (of both covers and the fiction inside) became a fact of life. The beautiful hardboiled paintings adorning the covers gave way to out of focus shots of women cringing against brick walls. If you’re looking for the quality, stick to the first six years.