Leigh Brackett – Queen of Mystery

To Science Fiction fans, the name Leigh Brackett is heard with the sound of the blaster or the hum of an energy sword in the background. She wrote the first version of The Empire Strikes Back and many classic space opera stories. (For those go here.) But commercially speaking, the Mystery genre was much more rewarding for Leigh. It got her into the movies.

There is a classic story about how Howard Hawks, the movie producer read No Good From a Corpse (1943), and said “This guy Brackett can write.” Later when he met her he found out Brackett was a woman. But that didn’t really matter, because she could write. Hawks put her on a special contract where she worked directly for him and not the studio. This lead to her writing The Big Sleep with William Faulkner. She tells how Faulkner divided the novel up into chapters and each wrote from them separately. What ever! It worked and the film is a loved genre cornerstone.

Leigh would go onto write such classics as Rio Bravo (1959), Hatari (1962) , El Dorado (1966) and Rio Lobo (1970). She would return to Raymond Chandler with The Long Goodbye (1973) and then The Empire Strikes Back in 1978. She finished the film while dealing with cancer. She died March 18, 1978.

Leigh’s magic as a writer transcends genre. She lost action and this made her perfect for Westerns as well as space opera. She brought some of the Raymond Chandler style to her space stories. Brackett knew the power of the cowboy, the Private Detective, the space adventurer better than anyone. She deserves as many queendoms as we can give her.

No Good From a Corpse (1943)

“Murder in the Family” (Mammoth Detective, March 1943)

“The Misfortune Teller” ( Flynn’s Detective Fiction, March 1943) (aka “The Death Dealer”)

“Red-Headed Poison” (Flynn’s Detective Fiction, April 1943) (aka “The Case of the Wandering Red Head”)

“Design For Dying” ( Flynn’s Detective Fiction , June 1944)

“I Feel Bad Killing You” (New Detective, November 1944)

“No Star Is Lost” (Thrilling Detective, July 1944)

“Murder Is Bigamy” (Thrilling Detective, July 1945)

Stranger at Home (1947) with Craig Rice under the name George Sanders

An Eye For an Eye (1957)

“So Pale, So Cold So Fair” (Argosy, July 1957)

Fear No Evil (1958) (aka The Tiger Among Us) filmed as 13 West Street (1962)

“The True Death of Juanito Rodriguez” (Cosmopolitan, February 1965) reprinted in Argosy UK, July 1965.

Silent Partner (1969)

No Good From a Corpse (1999) collects the 1943 novel and the best of the short stories.