Max Thursday
San Diego’s first fictional private eye.
Last month I wrote about San Diego’s First TV Private Eye. But what about books? What was the first private eye book series set in San Diego? That honor goes to the Max Thursday series by Wade Miller.
Wade Miller was the combined last names of two authors who wrote the series together—Robert Wade and Bill Miller. Wade and Miller were lifelong friends who grew up in San Diego. They attended college together at San Diego State, quitting their senior year to enlist in the US Air Force. Other pen names they used in their career included Walter James, Whit Masterson and Will Daemer. They wrote and published 33 crime novels together between 1947 and 1961. Quite a team!
Today, they are best known for Badge of Evil (1956), which they published under the pen name Whit Masterson. Badge of Evil was the basis for the noir movie classic Touch of Evil (1958), directed by Orson Welles and co-starring Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh.
The six Max Thursday novels are top notch examples of mid-century American hard-boiled detective stories. The first, Guilty Bystander, was nominated for an Edgar Award. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, Anthony Boucher admired the novel for its “Machine gun tempo, tight writing, unexaggerated hardness and unorthodox and overwhelming ending.”
“The room wouldn’t stay still. It kept swinging in slow, creaking circles like a carousel running down. He was lost in a fog – a hot, sticky fog. A voice echoed down an empty street toward him, calling his name. Georgia’s voice. He waited for it to fade away as it always did.”
“Outside the sky was the same monotonous gray. The rain was drying into large puddles on Fifth Avenue. Max Thursday watched the early morning traffic and wished for the clean needles of a cold shower and something scalding to change the taste in his mouth.”
So not only were Bob Wade and Bill Miller authors of the first private eye series set in San Diego, they were two of the best! No less an authority than Dorothy B. Hughes said of them at the time, “Nobody writes the hardboiled mystery better.”
Eight of their books were made into movies, including what may be their best title ever, Kitten with a Whip (1959). The movie version (1964) starred Ann-Margret and John Forsythe.
The partnership was cut short when Bill Miller died of a heart attack in 1961. Robert Wade forged on, writing another 13 novels under his own name and as Whit Masterson. He penned a regular crime fiction review column for the San Diego Union-Tribune until he died in 2012, at the age of 92.
Hollywood’s version of the first Max Thursday novel, Guilty Bystander, is available on YouTube. Don’t expect any San Diego locations, though. It was set and filmed in New York.
The famous 4 minute tracking shot that opens Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, based on Badge of Evil.
More:
Max Thursday series (Guilty Bystander, Fatal Step, Calamity Fair, Uneasy Street, Murder Charge, Shoot To Kill) on Amazon.
San Diego Eyes at the Thrilling Detective website lists more fictional San Diego private eyes, including the Rolly Waters series by yours truly.