In a previous article I talked about how Robert Leslie Bellem had attempted to blend Science Fiction with a murder mystery before Isaac Asimov. In a different article I talked about how Mickey Spillane had written stories for the comics, some of them even Science Fiction. I guess it should be no surprise then that Spillane and Asimov should come up again. There were a number of writers who had tried to blend the two genres including Robert Bloch and Frank Belknap Long. That Mickey Spillane was another shouldn’t be such a surprise, I suppose.
“The Veiled Woman” by Mickey Spillane appeared in Fantastic #3 (November-December 1952). Like Bellem’s attempt for Fantastic Adventures, the editor seems to have been involved in Sci-Fying things up an otherwise ordinary Mystery tale. This time it is Howard Browne, not Ray Palmer. Browne would edit the magazine until October 1956. Browne himself was no stranger to Mystery fiction, having written four novels about the Philip Marlowe-esque Paul Pine under the pseudonym, John Evans, including Halo in Blood (1946), Halo For Satan (1948), Halo in Brass (1949) and The Taste of Ashes (1957) as well as the non-Pine novel Murder Wears a Halo (1944). Browne would eventually go on to write 125 scripts for television.
Spillane’s reputation as a maverick could be a problem for any magazine with something to lose. This intro tells it like it is: “No modern-day writer is more widely cussed and discussed than Mickey Spillane. Critics regard him as most of us regard the atom bomb, leading magazines dissect him with unloving care. Why? Because the Spillane emphasis is on sex and sadism, his milieu the boudoir and the underworld, his men ruthless, his women svelte, passionate and immoral. That’s why everyone hates Spillane — except his millions of readers and his banker! The editors of Fantastic take pride in presenting the first science-fiction story by Mr. Spillane.”
That last bit is a lie, of course. Spillane wrote “The Man in the Moon” back in 1942 as well as other short two-pagers for the comics. I guess they don’t count. And about that pride — hm — no cover mention. Yah, lots of pride. The only Mystery name to be blazoned on the cover is “Cornell Woolrich” who appeared in the same issue with “The Moon of Montezuma”. This tale is more of a suspense piece set in modern Mexico, but haunted by the ancient past. Woolrich had no interest in becoming Isaac Asimov though he did write a couple of Weird Tales style stories such as “The Kiss of the Cobra” and “Dark Melody of Madness” for Dime Detective Magazine.
“The Veiled Lady” begins with Karl Terris waking from sleep because his wife has heard a burglar downstairs. You know these aren’t ordinary folk when Spillane mentions the wife’s name is Lodi and she grew up in the jungle. Naked, armed with a pistol, Karl goes downstairs to find a man trying to crack his safe. Terris has no compulsion about blowing the top of his head off. After the shot, he finds himself surrounded by enemies, Russian spies who want the strange device he brought from Africa. Their leader is a beautiful blonde. Terris says there is no device but the spies knock him out and run off with his wife as hostage.
Terris is a rich businessman and he puts his staff to work searching for clues, unravelling the identity of the blond. Karl figures out she is Ann Fullerton, a woman supposedly killed in a warehouse fire. The Feds also want Terris’s device and try to hold him. He won’t be held and goes off in search of Lodi. No one will listen to Terris, that there is no device, but Spillane hints once or twice that Lodi always wears a veil. The secret lies there.
Clues take Terris to an importing business where he has a rough time with two thugs, the leader, Luke Ritter, and the fragile Communist, Nekko. After taking these men out, Terris has a clue that leads him to the old radio warehouse that had been burnt in a fire, the place where Ann Fullerton supposedly died. There Karl rescues Lodi with more shooting but gets picked up by the Feds as they leave.
We cut to an inquest where hostile government agents question the couple. Lodi begs Karl to tell the truth. Terris tells how he had been in Africa doing an aerial survey when his plane crashed. He was found by a scout of a mysterious race that live in an underground city. The under-dwellers save Karl and he meets Lodi. They fall in love but Karl wants to return to civilization. Lodi’s people rejuvenate themselves with cosmic radiation. The residue of this process had lead others to believe Karl had a cosmic energy machine. Karl then reveals that the under-dwellers are actually Martians who came to the Earth while humans were still primitives. He proves this by having Lodi take off her veil. Her green skin is all the proof they need.
After the Feds and the reporters are finished with them, Karl and Lodi return to their home. They are held at gun point by Sergei Porkov, the leader of the Russians, and the blond woman, Ann Fullerton. Sergei pumps them for information before cruelly shooting Lodi three times in the chest. Ann kills Porkov, then admits to Karl she is madly in love with him, has been ever since she saw him naked in the livingroom. Karl sleeps with her. When she gets out of the shower, he puts two slugs in her and watches her dies just like Mike Hammer does at the end of I, the Jury.
My reaction to “The Veiled Lady” is probably close to what readers of Fantastic might have been. This mixture of Noir and SF is a strange hybrid, best not repeated. And it wasnt. But questions remain. How much did Spillane write and how much Browne? While i read it I thought I noticed a difference of style when Karl Terris tells of the under-dwellers in Africa. I thought to myself, “Ah, here’s Browne!” But as it turns out I was wrong.
Max Allan Collins, who worked with Mickey and his estate after Spillane’s death, clears up the Mystery in an online comment that says: The only other instance of ghost-writing in Spillane’s case was one done by Howard Browne –“The Veiled Woman.” Browne was editing Fantastic, where the story had been announced with much ballyhoo…then Mickey missed the deadline. Browne wrote the story as a Spillane pastiche essentially over night, to get it to the printer. Mickey was furious, but understood he had put Browne in an untenable position, and decided not to sue. I got this from both Browne and Mickey.
So it turns out Spillane only contributed the title, maybe a plot outline, and the style. Browne wrote the whole thing in what one online commentator called “almost a parody of Spillane’s excesses”. Did Howard Browne out-Spillane the master? You’ll have to decide for yourself. You can read the story here.