The Mopper-Up

by Horace McCoy

Classic detective short by Horace McCoy

69 pages, Nook

First published March 27, 2011

About the author

Horace Stanley McCoy (1897–1955) was an American novelist whose gritty, hardboiled novels documented the hardships Americans faced during the Depression and post-war periods. McCoy grew up in Tennessee and Texas; after serving in the air force during World War I, he worked as a journalist, film actor, and screenplay writer, and is author of five novels including They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935) and the noir classic Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1948). Though underappreciated in his own time, McCoy is now recognized as a peer of Dashiell Hammett and James Cain. He died in Beverly Hills, California, in 1955.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

From "Black Mask", November 1931. Sadly, one of the very very few pulp pieces republished from the extensive list of McCoy's short works. He did quite a bit of work as a screenwriter as well, and this fits that well - a story of a Texas Ranger cleaning up a town in one night, Not his best, by any stretch of the imagination, but a nice example of McCoy's many Texas/cowboy stories/screenplays. *For the McCoy completist only* - but at $0.99, and a half hour read, worth it for those kind of people.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the author of the brilliant noir classics They Shoot Horses, Don't They and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, "The Mopper-Up" is a pulp short originally published in a 1931 issue of Black Mask.

Ted Bender is a Texas ranger deployed to the prohibition-era boomtown of Rondora, where teeming numbers of oil workers have made money quick, and all manner of criminal doings have sprung up to relieve them of it. It's a hotbed of illegal booze, gambling, and gunfights, and Bender is just the guy to mop it up.

Lacks the characterization and dark quirkiness of McCoy's novels, but then it's pretty brief.