Silent Are the Dead

Jack "Flashgun" Casey Mystery #1

by George Harmon Coxe

Flash Casey snaps a photo that holds the key to a corrupt lawyer's murderCasey shouldn't have had to go back for more pictures of Stanford Endicott. He was at the court with the other newspaper photographers when the wealthy lawyer was arraigned, and got pictures of him smiling as he put on a hat to hide his bald head. But before Casey can get the negatives developed, a pair of urchins steal his camera case and expose the plates to the sun. At his editor's orders, Casey visits Endicott's office for another round of photos. The picture he takes there is altogether more Stanford Endicott, dead on his office floor. Casey hears a sound in the next room and knows the murderer is close. He gives chase out the front door, and takes a picture just as the killer drives away. Suddenly, Flash Casey has a bigger story than he bargained for.

Genres: Mystery

238 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

George Harmon Coxe was an American writer of crime fiction.His series characters are Jack "Flashgun" Casey, Kent Murdock, Leon Morley, Sam Crombie, Max Hale and Jack Fenner. Casey and Murdock are both detectives and photographers. He started writing officially from around 1922, his work being for nickel and dime pulp fiction of the time. To earn money, he originally wrote in many genres, including romance and adventure stories, but was especially fond of crime fiction, his character "Jack (Flashgun) Casey" becoming a popular radio show through to the 1940s. He wrote a total of 63 novels, the last being published in 1975. He was associated with MGM as a writer.

Married to Elizabeth Fowler in 1929, Coxe had 2 children.

He was named a Grand Master in 1964 by The Mystery Writers of America.

Reviews

[Adele Symonds · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a netgalley e-book in return for an honest review.

Book Review – Silent Are The Dead by George Harmon Coxe




Genre: Fiction-Adult: Mystery, Detective, Suspense, Thriller



Disclaimer: This is a marketing copy e-book sent to me by NetGalley in return for an honest review.



george harmon coxe
Author profile



born: January 01, 1901 in The United States


died: January 31, 1984
George Harmon Coxe was an American writer of crime fiction.His series characters are Jack “Flashgun” Casey, Kent Murdock, Leon Morley, Sam Crombie, Max Hale and Jack Fenner. Casey and Murdock are both detectives and photographers. He started writing officially from around 1922, his work being for nickel and dime pulp fiction of the time. To earn money, he originally wrote in many genres, including romance and adventure stories, but was especially fond of crime fiction, his character “Jack (Flashgun) Casey” becoming a popular radio show through to the 1940s. He wrote a total of 63 novels, the last being published in 1975. He was associated with MGM as a writer.
Married to Elizabeth Fowler in 1929, Coxe had 2 children.

He was named a Grand Master in 1964 by The Mystery Writers of America.


Casey, Crime Photographer (radio) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A classic mystery from one of America’s first crime authors!

Flash Casey snaps a photo that holds the key to a corrupt lawyer’s murder.

Casey shouldn’t have had to go back for more pictures of Stanford Endicott. He was at the court with the other newspaper photographers when the wealthy lawyer was arraigned, and got pictures of him smiling as he put on a hat to hide his bald head. But before Casey can get the negatives developed, a pair of urchins steal his camera case and expose the plates to the sun. At his editor’s orders, Casey visits Endicott’s office for another round of photos. The picture he takes there is altogether more interesting: Stanford Endicott, dead on his office floor.

Casey hears a sound in the next room and knows the murderer is close. He gives chase out the front door, and takes a picture just as the killer drives away. Suddenly, Flash Casey has a bigger story than he bargained for.



My Review



This is a crime mystery/thriller that I really enjoyed. It is the first in the Jack ‘Flashgun’ Casey, Mystery series.

Jack Casey is a newspaper photographer who seems to end up having all sorts of unavoidable bad luck leading him to get in trouble with his editor for not have the required photographs but he ultimately ends up with the scoop of the week. He has a knack of being in the right place at the wrong time and has a brilliant investigative mind which helps him to unravel the mystery with greater effect than the local detective Logan.

I felt sorry for Logan because Casey kept withholding information from him for important reasons to Casey, but this hampered Logan from deducing the truth without Casey’s help. For a newspaper photographer he has a huge amount of empathy and compassion for his subjects and a set of moral values unique to himself.

The plot has plenty of action, twists and turns, murders and intrigue, deception and cover-ups and a very skilful twist at the end. It is fast paced with complications to the investigation aplenty but also easy to follow without confusion which makes this a masterfully written plot.

There were a few editing issues in the copy I read but these may not have made it into the final copy on sale. Either way the book is so good and strong that the editing issues (which are minor) bear less importance, therefore I award this book 5/5 stars – I loved it.

[Gregory Moses · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Harmon Coxe wrote over sixty novels over the span of forty years. He was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1964, the seventh person to be granted that award (eighth? Thank you, Ellery Queen, for making this such a pain to talk about), and his character of “Flashgun” Casey became very famous, jumping from pulp magazines to novels to radio show to television show to movies. Nowadays, Coxe is one of those numerous forgotten writers preserved from complete oblivion by Mysterious Press, a digital publishing outfit that specializes in putting out classic mystery novels. Such is fame.

This book doesn't completely escape its pulp roots (there's a totally extraneous scene where Casey gets to prove how tough he is by winning a fist fight with an ex-boxer, and he gets held at gunpoint so often that it started to seem silly), but it's better than I expected; while the first half seems kind of starry-eyed, a twist midway through gives the novel teeth, and it ends in a surprisingly downbeat and ambiguous way.

As a mystery, the plot is clear, and the clues make sense. Unfortunately, the characters were not as well-drawn as I'd have liked. The various bad guys all kind of blended together, as did the female supporting characters, as did Casey's co-workers; besides Casey and his cop friend, only one character, the uncle of a woman who's caught up in the crime, felt really distinct.

[Ethan Hulbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually enjoy George Harmon Coxe mysteries a lot more, but then I usually read his Kent Murdock series. This book was from his Flash Casey series and it was significantly weaker.

Also - the ebook cover has a negative of a dead woman on it as the cover art - there was never any dead woman in this book. Obviously this is not Coxe's fault as he published this in 1941, lol, but whoever picked the art for the digital/library edition clearly didn't even read it.

There was a lot of excitement in the first half of this book but then it went on for way too long in the second half, and got much more boring. A lot could've been cut here. The plot was overly complicated and loaded with unnecessary characters and side plots that piled up and became hard to keep track of. The ending was good though, and the whole thing was satisfying overall. I liked it, but I definitely expected better.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remarkably modern

I encountered Flash Casey on Radio Classics. Based on those old radio shows I wasn't expecting such a nuanced and rounded character. Coxe is an excellent story teller and constructs a complex but consistent narrative.

[Scott Shjefte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Purchased this item on October 1, 2023, from Amazon for free. Photographer digs deeper and deeper as there is really too much to find. Story too complex to be believable with many people of ill-repute.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

An OK read. Unnecessarily complicated plot. Very dated and not in a good way.