The Perfect Frame

Timothy Dane #1

by William Ard

Rare Book

182 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

aka Ben Kerr, Mike Moran, Jonas Ward, Thomas Wills.

William Thomas Ard has been one of the most elusive writers in the collecting world.

Odd for a man who was one of the most popular hardboiled writers of the 1950s. He was praised by critics from the St. Louis Dispatch to the New York Times.

Few imagined the dark side of the city and the entertainment business better than William Ard. When he turned his gaze west, he gave life to one of the genre's most enduring heroes.

Today his name is all but forgotten. His hardboiled titles are scarce. His paperback titles in fine condition are nearly impossible to find.

While he went by many names, he is essentially a man of two faces. Ard was the creator of hard-hitting detective Timothy Dane of New York and an even harder living and loving detective, Lou Largo, of Florida.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short history of William Ard’s series about the New York private eye Timothy Dane.

The ‘Timothy Dane’ books by William Ard are certainly a product of the 1950’s. Collecting them can be a challenge due to the same book being republished under a new title at different times. The series began with the book 1 “The Perfect Frame” (1951). The next book (book 2) appeared under three titles, the original title of “38” (1952), was next re-published under the title “You Can’t Stop Me” (1953), and last but not least re-published once again under the title of “This Is Murder” (1954). Book 3 in the ‘Dane’ series is “The Diary” (1952). Book 4 in the series had two titles “A Private Party” (1953) then again as “Rogue’s Murder” (1955). Up next is book 5 titled “Don’t Come Crying to Me”(1954), and book 6 “Mr. Trouble” (1954). Once again book 7 “Hell Is a City“ (1955) got a renaming when it was republished in a more provocative title as “The Naked and the Innocent” in (1960). Book 8 appeared as “Cry Scandal” (1956). Mr. Ard’s last book in this series (book 9) was “The Root of His Evil” (1957), then re-published the following year as “Deadly Beloved” (1958).

If collecting this series is of interest, the paperback publications win hands over fists. There are some fantastic covers done for the books which the secondary market has obviously taken note of. The paperbacks of Mr. Ard’s average between forty and fifty dollars, whereas the hard covers can be found for a much lower price point. That is if collecting Good Girl art is of any motivation.

I found “The Perfect Frame” to be a much better book than the follow up “.38”. “Frame” is a good-humored private eye thriller somewhat in the style of Richard S. Prather although Mr. Ard seems to have some trouble ending his books in a fully satisfactory way.

Ard was only 37 when he died of cancer in 1960.

Hardcover First Edition 1951 182 pages

The M. S. Mill Co. and William Morrow and Co.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first of nine Timothy Dane novels that William Ard put out in a short career that ended with his death at age 37. In it, we are first introduced to private eye Timothy Dane who is so hard up for business that he takes a questionable job from a silky blue-eyed blonde who wants Dane to trail her husband to a dive bar where Dane quickly gets the crap beaten out if him.

He knows she’s not Evelyn and Walter Huntington is not her husband. What’s more he learns he’s not the first detective tricked into going to that dive bar to take a beating. Dane, here, is not quite the swashbuckling figure you think a private eye should be.

The story doesn’t get any better when Sally confesses a local hoodlum tricked her into it by drugging her and taking explicit photos of her. Why the hood wanted Dane to go there and get beaten makes no better sense.

Nor does it get better when he tracks down Huntington to his insurance agency. Instead, the story gets queerer and queerer as if Dane just keeps falling down the rabbit hole.

Murder, arson, pornographers, and blackmail all appear in this mess that Dane chooses not to walk away from even when he’s paid thousands to take a hike. Through it all, Dane remains the innocent stooge who can’t stop trying to be the knight in shining armor.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chock full of tax fraud and pornographic pictures of good girls. Timothy Dane, the P.I. trying to make sense of it all, gets beat up a lot. This book is like early Mike Hammer, only better.

[Alonzo Church · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dane is the usual private eye with mounting debts, a pending eviction, a revolver in hock, and a cynical attitude towards the gorgeous women who pick his name out of a phone book. So when a well formed blonde with a maybe likely story but cold hard cash asks to do a meeting at scummy, dirty bar, he doesn’t blink. He just promptly gets in to trouble and more trouble. The only mystery here is why anyone would think he won’t get through all the trouble a-ok, even while he’s beating thugs up and getting beat up by thugs.

I like hardboiled private eye fiction a lot, but when somebody so evidently is shooting for being merely average in a very large field, I am not impressed. Most of the plot is predictable, and I had the villain spotted half-way through. The one possible point of interest turns out to be a red herring, alas.

If you stumble on this in audiobook — the reader is very good. It’s just the book that’s forgettable.

[Mark Rabideau · Rating 3 out of 5]

A completely average noir detective novel. One you can skip without feeling bad.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely great. A Chandler type story about Federal Tax Stamps on Marine insurance policies. Complications, hard-boiled, dames, mobsters, black mail.