Forgotten Stories (lots of 'em): "The Life and Times of DAFFY DILL" by Monte Herridge

(Editor's Note: We are greatly indebted to Mr. Monte Herridge for permission to reprint this piece. It originally appeared in the 2013 PulpFest organ PEAPSTER.)



The Daffy Dill series by Richard B. Sale was a long-running series of 60 stories in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1934-43.  Additionally, one story appeared in Clues Detective Stories in 1935.  The stories were a mixture of short stories and novelettes.  So Daffy Dill was a popular series, and occasionally had cover art devoted to the stories.  Joe “Daffy” Dill is a crime reporter for the New York Chronicle, covering all sorts of crime stories, especially those he accidentally turns up in his work.  Daffy Dill’s age is noted in an issue of DFW: the November 5, 1938 issue, “The Dead Man Had a Dummy” reveals that he is twenty-eight years of age.   He lives on “West Forty-Fifth Street where I dwell in the Castle which is a three-room apartment on the fourth and top floor of an old brownstone house.” (Double Trouble)

Daffy Dill’s female interest is Dinah Mason, “the platinum-haired Westport gal who is the blight of my life and who handles the switchboard of the Chronicle’s frantic traffic.” (The Balinese Dagger, August 22, 1936)  Daffy regularly proposes to her, but she always turns him down. According to Dill, she had turned him down about four hundred times. (The Guy From Superstition) They eventually do become engaged at the end of the story “Gabriel’s Wings” (August 12, 1939), and Daffy buys her an expensive engagement ring which he mentions will take him four years to pay off.  Dinah keeps delaying the wedding, and seems to be in no hurry to get married.  She is a graduate of Alabama University and originally came to New York to be a drama critic.  For a short time in 1936 Dinah Mason became a sob-sister writer for the newspaper, writing human interest stories.  Later on in the series Dinah Mason becomes a movie reviewer for the newspaper, by a short time later in the story “The Guy From Superstition”, December 19, 1936.  She lives on the sixth floor of an apartment building in Central Park West.  Daffy Dill and Dinah Mason dated regularly, and made the Hideaway Club one of their stops. Both Dinah Mason and the Hideaway Club make their first appearances in the first story, “The Fifty Grand Brain.”

Bill Latham, owner of the Hideaway Club, is a minor supporting character in the series from the beginning.  The Club is on Broadway between 43rd and 44th Streets. Another story states that the Club is between 42nd and 43rd Streets.

The editor Daffy works for he and others at the newspaper call “The Old Man” in an irreverent sort of way.  Here is a typical view of him: “The Old Man was sitting at his desk with his green eyeshade down over his face and his bald head glistening like a snake’s spine.  He looked like a little goblin . . .” (The Balinese Dagger)  A competing reporter on the same paper is named Sam “Sammy” Lyons, but he disappears partway through the series.  His name is changed to Harry Lyons in the second story, “A Nose for News.”  Daffy occasionally works with newspaper photographers such as Jimmy Harris (The Balinese Dagger).  Another photographer he works with is Smith “Smootsy” Dobbins (The Dead Man Had a Dummy).

Another member of the series cast is William “Poppa” Hanley, a police lieutenant who is a friend of Daffy’s and is often involved in his stories.  Daffy calls him “the homeliest cop in the world with no exceptions . . .” (Bombs Bursting in Air)  Hanley spends part of his time answering crime calls from Daffy Dill, and part of the time protecting him.  He has saved Dill’s life more than once. Hanley’s first appearance is in the series’ first story, “The Fifty Grand Brain.”  In that story Hanley’s rank is detective-sergeant, and he is later promoted to lieutenant at the end of the story “A Slug for Cleopatra”.  By the time of “The Dead Man Had a Dummy” (November 5, 1938) he was chief of the New York Homicide Bureau.  A bit of an inconsistency occurs in the stories; “A Hearse for Hiawatha” (January 29, 1938) notes that it was Inspector Rentano’s homicide bureau.  Rentano, by the way, was a supporting character in the Candid Jones series.  In the 1936 story “Twenty-Three Million” Inspector Halloran was in charge of the Homicide Bureau and Hanley’s rank was Lieutenant.  Another inconsistency in the series occurs in that story.  At the end of it Hanley is promoted to the rank of Captain, but later stories still refer to him as a Lieutenant.  The same thing also happened in the 1937 story, “Dancing Rats.”  In 1943 Hanley was noted as having been married for twenty-one years and having two kids.  He and his wife dine with Daffy Dill and Dinah Mason at the Hideaway Club in “Death Flies High”.

There are too many stories in this series for space to give a rundown on each, but a selected number will be described.

In two of the stories Daffy Dill costars with Candid Jones: “Flash!” and “Death of a Glamor Girl.”  Both characters appeared on the cover of “Flash!”, thus promoting both series.  Daffy Dill also makes a brief appearance in the Candid Jones story “You Can’t Print That!

“The Fifty Grand Brain” is the first story in the series and the supporting cast is already present.  Daffy Dill comes across a drunken moll at the Hideaway Club and gets her to confide in him.  She reveals the murder in her apartment of her boyfriend, a crooked undertaker involved with gangsters.  He was supposedly involved in planning the theft of a brain from a deceased scientist which they were going to hold for ransom.  So two cases intersect for Daffy Dill, as he investigates both.

“A Nose for News”, the second story in the series, finds Daffy in a number of stressful situations.  First, through no fault of his own, he is fired from the newspaper for a typo where the word “cook” was published as “crook”.  Next, he deals with some criminals at a nightclub to help a rich man’s daughter get out of trouble.  Succeeding that, the woman is then kidnapped and Daffy has to rescue her and write it up in order to get his newspaper job back.  He is put in jail for a short time as an accessory in the kidnapping.  It all works out in the end, though Daffy has a little help from the police.


In “The Ghost Wore Boots” Daffy Dill and Hanley are summoned to a rich man’s residence on the edges of Manhattan Island.  Supposedly a ghost has been seen by several people at the mansion, and they want answers. Then the body was found to have been taken from his casket.  This is a rare story in the series; Daffy actually covers up for the murder because the victim was a low-life in every respect.

In “The Mute One,” Daffy comes across a jewel theft on board a ship.  He quickly figures out the members of the gang and their methods of getting the valuable jewel ashore and in their hands.  Double-crossing by the gang members makes Daffy’s work more difficult and dangerous.  He winds up with two bullets in him as result of recovering the stolen jewel.  Not surprisingly, there are snakes involved in the story.  A fair number of Sale’s stories in the pulps involved snakes.

In “A Slug for Cleopatra” Daffy Dill is handed two assignments by his editor to work on.  On is covering a man who is doing a Houdini-like stunt in the river, the other is managing an interview with an actress who also is the girlfriend of the stuntman.  When he comes across murder by someone who is obviously in two places at the same time, he is puzzled for a while until the solution comes to him.  Bill Hanley is the beneficiary of Daffy’s work, earning a promotion as a result of the case.  This story was made into a Hollywood movie in 1937 entitled “Find the Witness.

“Cocked Dice” sees Daffy Dill getting back into action after recovering from a bullet wound in a previous adventure.  He mentions that he spent a month in the hospital.  In this latest story Daffy comes up against a strangler that he identifies with a lot of luck, and has to get the proof on him and catch him.  He is almost killed in the attempt to capture the murderer.

In “The Bumper-Offer” Daffy receives a tip that his fellow newspaperman Harry Lyons (both of whom dislike each other intensely) is under threat of execution by an underworld hitman.  So Daffy goes out of his way to try to save Lyon’s life, for some strange reason even risking his own life in the process.

In “Man Bites Dog” Daffy Dill investigates a supposed suicide that he thinks is really murder.  In addition, six hundred thousand dollars is missing from the dead man’s stock brokerage company.  Added to this, he has a case where the partner of the dead man supposedly offered to pay a well-known criminal to murder him so that the company would benefit by his insurance money.  An offer he later withdrew when he found out his partner was dead.

“Green Mamba” refers to a poisonous snake.  Another appearance of one of Sale’s favorite topics, snakes.  This time a green mamba snake is missing from a scientist’s laboratory, which happens to be right next door to a millionaire’s home where the millionaire is mysteriously poisoned by snake venom.  A vial of snake venom is also missing.  Daffy Dill is called to the scientist’s place to check a news report, and makes a connection with happenings next door.  A mystery to solve, in this story.

“I Cover Crime” finds Daffy first being summoned to a murder on a ferryboat, then summoned to a rich family’s place on Fifth Avenue.  There he is asked to help find a stolen jewel, in return for a reward. He ties the two cases together, the murder victim being the rich family’s butler.  The rich family’s son is also missing, making for a fairly complex case for Daffy Dill.

In “Twenty-Three Million” Daffy Dill is involved against his will in the investigation into the escape from prison of gangleader Bomber Malone and the activities of his gang. A somewhat violent story as Daffy has to really shoot straight a number of times in order to stay alive.

“The Strangler Without Hands” finds Daffy Dill investigating the deaths of a number of businessmen who have died strangely.  They seem to have been strangled, but witnesses claim no one was near the victims.  The first takes place at the Hideaway Club, and the owner, Bill Latham, is quite perturbed at what he saw.  Daffy accidentally finds the real cause of the deaths, but has a scheme to outwit the killer.  Hanley plays along, as usual.  In this story Hanley is wounded by a shot from the killer, and exclaims that he had never before been shot in his eighteen years as a policeman.

“The Balinese Dagger” is a short story that ends all too quickly.  Daffy Dill is filling in for the waterfront reporter who is ill, and attends the publicity for the arrival of the S.S. Aranthic ship with detective Kirk Rainsford escorting a valuable ruby from India.  When Rainsford is murdered, the killer is sought by Daffy. However, the killers find Daffy first and matters end up in a shootout.  For once, Lieutenant Hanley is on the scene as a result of his own efforts.  Plus, he was following Daffy.

In “Double Trouble” Daffy is asked to investigate two deaths, and finds that the supposedly separate incidents are connected. One, of a millionaire, was a natural death that turns out to be murder.  Daffy is promised a fee of a thousand dollars to investigate the millionaire’s death.  A third murder occurs before Daffy can pin down the killer.  At stake are millions of dollars in inheritance that the millionaire’s estate left to his relatives.  Usually Daffy or Hanley kill or wound the criminal in each story, but this is the first time that Dinah Mason herself shoots the criminal.

“The Guy From Superstition” involves the murder of an out of town character named Black Mesa Dean, and connects up to shady dealings of a rich man and his lawyer.  After another murder, Dill searches the newspaper morgue for old news clippings and puts his finger on the probable clue and motive.  Unfortunately for him, he has to defend himself from an angry killer with a knife.

“Dancing Rats” involves Daffy Dill, along with Lieutenant Hanley and Dinah Mason, in a mystery involving a freighter just in from the Far East with a load of tea.  Many people have died mysteriously in connection with the ship, and Daffy is determined to find out why.  Also mix in a missing British female long-distance flyer, and a shipping company executive and his enforcer, and the mystery is even murkier.  The cover of this issue shows one of the ship’s “dancing rats” that give the story its title.  Supposedly, Hanley was made a captain as result of this case.

“Flash!” is probably one of the best stories in the series.  It is told entirely by using telegrams, telephone conversations, letters, radio news flashes, and excerpts from newspaper articles.  Daffy Dill joins up with cameraman and insurance investigator Candid Jones in a chase after kidnappers of a two year old girl.  She is the daughter of a rich ex-gangster, and the kidnappers are former members of his gang.  There is no mystery in this story, just an account of the tracking and apprehension of the various members of the gang.  Lieutenant Bill Hanley is involved in the story in various forms.


“Quoth the Raven: "Nevermore!"” is about the murder of an actor who recites Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem on stage with the aid of a trained raven who says the word “Nevermore” and flies around.  With a little luck, Daffy succeeds in exposing the killer in a highly melodramatic fashion with the aid of the raven.

“Give, Ghost, Give!” sees Daffy Dill attempting to aid Thardo Cardena, a respected professional magician.  Daffy and Dinah are backstage at one of the magician’s performances, and witness the discovery of the murder of one of Cardena’s assistants on stage.  There were no witnesses and no motive for the killing.  A motive comes to light later, when criminals target Cardena’s access to fifty thousand dollars that is to be awarded to the first one relating a message from a deceased friend of Cardena’s.

“The Key” is a minor short story in the series, involving a murder that Daffy Dill and Lieutenant Hanley accidentally stumble upon at an actors’ hotel.  It takes Daffy almost no time to discover the murderer’s identity.

In “Ghost of a Chance” there are a couple of mysteries that Daffy has to solve, and he does so easily, helping Lieutenant arrest the culprits and participating in a shootout with the criminals.  The safe in a business office has been robbed of miscellaneous papers and the watchman killed.  Also the former CEO of the company is kidnapped and doped up.  Daffy clears up the mysteries and proves their connection to each other.

“A Hearse for Hiawatha” has Daffy Dill investigating the murder of a blind man named Charles Kimball and the death of his seeing-eye dog named Hiawatha.  Poppa Hanley wakes Daffy up from a sound Sunday sleep and insists that he come with him to the crime scene.  More murders take place before Daffy corners the killer.

“Die, Hamlet!” involves Daffy Dill in a murder that had not even occurred yet.  Sir Arnold Spence, a British Shakespearean actor who specialized in the role of Hamlet, invites Daffy as well as Dinah Mason to a dinner party at his penthouse.  He requests that Daffy investigate his murder if it takes place at the dinner.  Daffy finds that Poppa Hanley has also been called in to investigate.

In “Come Out of That Grave” Daffy and Lieutenant Hanley come up against Nick Jerome, a local racketeer who is into insurance fraud as a new way to get some money.  When murder becomes a part of his racket, Daffy and Hanley are after him.  Hanley comes to Daffy’s rescue at the end.

In “The Dead Man Had a Dummy” Daffy Dill investigates the death of a former racketeer kingpin who had been released from jail just a short time previously.  The dummy was the racketeer’s favorite companion, and even took it to jail with him.  He learned ventriloquism in order to use the dummy.  The dummy disappears from the man’s possession after he died, and Daffy Dill sees it as something he can use to find the killer.

In “Jimjam” Daffy is involved in a shipboard murder.  One of the officers of the ship S.S. Pymlion was murdered while Daffy and other newsmen were aboard the ship gathering news from the ship’s passengers.  This story has a dying message written down by the murder victim.  Just one word: “Jimjam”.  The ship’s officers are being murdered one after another, and Daffy has to try to figure out the identity of the killer by doing some real detective work. Lieutenant Hanley is also on the case.  This is one of the better stories in the series.

“Three Wise Men of Babylon” finds Daffy Dill on the trail of a multiple murderer who seems to have a list of men from the same town of Babylon, Iowa that he is killing.  However, he makes the mistake of trying to use Daffy as an alibi and finds that this was an error.  A short story rather than a novelette like most of the previous Daffy Dill stories.

“Death of a Glamor Girl” is the second team-up of Daffy Dill with Investigator and cameraman Candid Jones.  Like the earlier story, this one is told in letters, telegrams, and news broadcasts.  The duo head for Hollywood to investigate the murder of a glamorous movie actress, and find a cold welcome from everyone in Hollywood.  Most of the people in the studios and police don’t like the idea of outsiders investigating a case in their area.

“Gabriel's Wings” sees Daffy Dill investigating murder on the Gettysburg battlefield.  This story has a larger part than usual for Daffy’s editor on the newspaper, the Old Man (never was given a real name).  The two are on their way by road past the battlefield when they have a tire blowout.  Stopping to change the tire, they heard eerie noises and a woman’s scream.  They found out later it was a murder they heard.  Daffy goes back to the area to investigate, this time taking Dinah Mason with him to help.

“Goodbye, Gravescratcher” is an odd story in the series. It primarily deals with Daffy Dill’s old gun, the .31 Gravescratcher as he calls it.  The plot of the story has Daffy promising to help a fellow reporter on another newspaper escape danger from a Nazi thug and hitman. However, things aren’t as they seem, and Daffy winds up in a dangerous situation.

In “The Nervous Corpse” Daffy investigates the murder of a fellow newspaper reporter on the Chronicle.  He finds other murders that follow that one that are connected, and quickly finds the link between them.  Who would kill Zerina, the Headless Woman?  Daffy also acquires a new gun in this story.

“Bombs Bursting In Air” is a short story late in the series, and Daffy comes up against American Nazis and their bomb threats.  He quickly divines what is occurring and why, and solves the case quickly, although at the risk of his and Lieutenant Hanley’s lives.

In “Detour—to Death” Daffy receives an out of town telephone call from a Dinah Mason in distress, and has to go to her aid.  He enlists Lieutenant Hanley to go with him, even though Hanley is out of his jurisdiction.  They meet up with some New York gangsters and a firefight ensues.  The story ends with Daffy receiving a draft notice from the government, but this is not referred to in the next story.

“Death Flies High” is the last story in the series, published in the by-then Flynn’s Detective Fiction by Popular Publications.  A woman asks Dinah Mason for help, and she in turn goes to Daffy to ask him to help her new friend.  Dinah and Daffy are still engaged in this late story, and nothing else seems to have changed.  Daffy gets involved in a case that at first seemed simple, then grew more complex with multiple murders, smuggled jewels, and death threats.  The murders were committed by someone on the loose with a South American blowgun and curare-tipped darts.

This is an excellent series, with a wide variety of stories of varying lengths.  There is humor in the stories, but it is well integrated into them.  With as many stories as were published, it must have been a popular series with the readers.  It is deserving of reprinting, though it might take multiple volumes to do so.  Sale had five other series running in Detective Fiction Weekly at one time or another:  Candid Jones, Captain McGrail, Casey Mason, John the Cobra, and Owl-Eye Venner.

The following article appeared in the October 2, 1937 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly:

     “Went to Washington and Lee University, and began my professional writing days there. Married Arline Walker while I was a sophomore. That was five years ago. I am now the proud father—and I mean proud—of an eight months old daughter, Lindsey, who delights my heart by making passes at my typewriter.
“I was a cub reporter on the Pelham, N. Y., Sun for a few years, and got most of my newspaper experience—if you can call it such—there. Thus was Daffy Dill born.
     “Am a man of many hobbies and devote more time to them than I should. I am an ardent model railroad fan and am now third owner of a fine little railroad. Also like photography. Had done little of it until Lindsey made her arrival. Taking pictures of her made me camera conscious and I went into it further, including motion pictures. Thus was Candid Jones born.
     “Have authored two novels: Not Too Narrow, Not Too Deep, published in this country by Simon & Schuster and soon to be made into a motion picture by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; Is a Ship Burning? to be published this spring in London by Cassell, Ltd. A third, Monday Island*, is in the works.
     “Have traveled the country a bit from New York to Miami to Hollywood. Speaking of Hollywood: I now have a movie playing the theaters entitled Find the Witness, which was originally a Daffy Dill story called A Slug for Cleopatra.”

The following photograph and biographical sketch are from Blue Book, probably 1942: 


*"Monday Island" (mentioned by Sale in the DFW piece above) was most likely a working title for Cardinal Rock, reviewed HERE. Not Too Narrow . . . Not Too Deep is HERE, and Is A Ship Burning? is HERE 

Gotta warn you - Daffy is habit forming, but his adventures are hard to come by. I know of only three that have been reprinted. I encourage you to seek out "A Nose for News" in The Hardboiled Dicks, "Double Trouble" in Hardboiled Dames and "Three Wise Men of Babylon" in The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps.

BUT - Once our salute to Daffy completes you'll have access to a total of five more stories, and have a pretty dang good idea why Daffy was one of DFW's most popular characters.

FRIDAY: "The Dancing Corpse" HERE
SATURDAY: Daffy Dill cover gallery HERE
SUNDAY: "A Dirge for Pagliaccio" HERE
MONDAY: "A Slug for Cleopatra" HERE
TUESDAY: Daffy Dill interior art HERE
WEDNESDAY: Find the Witness (the almost Daffy movie) HERE
THURSDAY:"Death on High Iron" HERE
and TOMORROW, another story: "The Murderous Mr. Coon"