First published in Manhunt Magazine in 1953, Dirge For a Nude is a fun and atmospheric little pulp noir story from Jonathan Craig, who became a writer through a very circuitous route.

According to online articles and sources, he was born in Santa Barbara in 1919. During the Great Depression, his family emigrated to Kansas City, and at a very young age he began supporting his family when his father became ill, eventually working at the Kansas City Star. He served in the Navy from 1942 — 1946, becoming head of a Pentagon research and analysis section for the Department of Defense. He even accompanied Truman to a Postdam conference in 1945. Quite a pedigree for a guy who began writing in the pulps in 1949, a decision which prompted him to leave government work to write full time by 1952.

He began by writing pulp westerns, but as the western cycle began to wane, he branched out to the detective side in 1953. Not limiting himself to genre, he even wrote some Gothic novels using Jennifer Hale as his moniker during his career. Apparently he wrote over 450 short stories for various pulp magazines. Dirge For a Nude is an early example of Jonathan Craig’s (Frank E. Smith) style, before he began writing the Peter Stelby and Stan Ryder novels, where he gained some notoriety.

Set around a piano player in a smoky new dive called the Cavern Club, one has to suspect Craig’s time in Kansas City, known for its jazz and blues music, influenced his pulp stories. It’s late at night when Dirge For a Nude begins, and Marty Bishop is itching to get off so he can show the auburn-haired hat-check girl, Julie Cole, a new bauble he’s bought for her. But then his ex-girlfriend Gloria Gayle walks in, with her blue-black hair and curves that stop traffic. Even though she dumped him for a light-heavyweight prizefighter, she is bored, and wants Marty back. She even has twelve grand to entice him to run off with her to Mexico. But Marty’s no sap, and he blows her off. Next thing you know, she’s lying across the front seat of Marty’s Caddie, as dead as she is nude.

Marty knows he’s been set up to take the fall, and drives around with Gloria’s body trying to find the killer. It seems obvious, but there’s a twist, and a terrific noir ending. At less than twenty pages, this is a fun one to read between bigger stories, and will make any fan of pulp want to read more from Jonathan Craig. ( )

When you look up Jonathan Craig to see who he was, you see that Jonathan Craig is a pseudonym for Frank E. Smith and he is credited with having written over 100 books and perhaps 300 short stories and was one of the mainstays of the Manhunt magazine in the early to mid-1950’s. His better known pulp-era books include So Young, So Wicked, The Case Of the Beautiful Body, The Dead Darling, Junkie, and Case of the Petticoat Murder. He was well-known for having written a police procedural series about the Sixth Precinct.

Dirge for a Nude is one of his short fiction pieces and it originally appeared in Manhunt in 1952. It begins with the narrator (Marty) playing in a jazz club and looking forward to his date with the hatcheck girl. Gloria Gayle walks in and is immediately the center of attention. She had blue-black hair that couldn't be real, but was, and skin as smooth and white as a new piano key. A couple of months earlier Gloria had made "the world go round" for Marty, but that was before she had taken up with Al Prince, a prize fighter.

Now she tells Marty that she has twelve grand in her bra and they're heading to Mexico City. When he refuses, she makes a scene and when she leaves: "Every eye in that place followed that lithe, swivel-hipped walk of hers." And the next time he sees her, it's her nude corpse laying across the front seat of car.

Great story. Quick reading. ( )