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But the methods of realism are only a tool. In blending the horrible with the ludicrous, alcohol becomes the catalyst. Drink encourages characters endowed with normal human cowardice to plunge gaily into the ugliest and most dangerous situations and carry them off with unexpected turns of drunken ingenuity. The puzzle is no longer a chief attraction. The principal characters are all detectives and all Watsons too.
The Greatness of Gertrude. Because the reading public is divided between those who read detective stories and those who consider them trash, the audience for a good detective story is definitely limited, and much smaller than the audience which can, with luck, be reached by a novel of copulation.
The ceiling for detective stories is 20,000 copies (it was somewhat lower before the war). Any author who sells in the 15,000 to 20,000 bracket is tops. In this bracket are writers like Erie Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Mabel Seeley, Mignon Eberhart, Craig Rice.
Practically speaking, no one goes over 20,000. The few who do so regularly are authors who draw on the non-detective-story audience: such exceptions as Mary Roberts Rinehart, Dorothy Sayers, and of course Gypsy Rose Lee (whose G-String Murders sold nearly 30,000 copies).
Thus the direct return from a detective story, however good, is under $6,000 (10% to 15% royalty on 20,000 $2 books), as compared to perhaps $15,000 on a popular novel (10% to 15% royalty on 40,000 $2.50 books).
In the reprint market, detectifiction may sell prodigiously, but the royalty is small: 1¢ a copy on most paperbound newsstand books (1½ after a book sells more than 150,000). Thus if a Craig Rice book sells 500,000 copies on the newsstands, she makes an additional $6,750.
The publishers of Pocket Books present the Oscars of the reprint business. They are small sterling silver kangaroos, and their name is Gertrude. If one of their author's books has sold more than 1,000,000 copies in Pocket Book form, he receives a Gertrude.
Fortnight ago, before an assemblage of publishers and authors in Manhattan's Rainbow Room, Robert de Graff, president of Pocket Books, presented Gertrudes to Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee) for New Adventures of Ellery Queen, to Dashiell Hammett for The Thin Man, to Thorne Smith posthumously (the prize was accepted by his two daughters) for Topper, to Max Brand posthumously for Singing Guns (a western), to Damon Runyon for Best of Damon Runyon and Damon Runyon's Favorites, and to Shirley Cunningham for The Pocket Entertainer (popular with troops).
In reprint sales Craig Rice is a comparative newcomer. Her first Pocket Book reprint (Trial by Fury), put out only a little over two years ago, has sold over 550,000 copies. The second (Having Wonderful Crime) has sold over 300,000. It is a toss-up whether she or Agatha Christie will first have a little Gertrude in her home.
Craig Rice is also Michael Venning (under whose signature three of her 15 books have been written) and Daphne Saunders (who has signed one of the 15). Michael Venning's biography has been called for by Who's Who and (for a gag) she has posed for his picture wearing a crepe beard, and her husband's coat.