The Crime,
Mystery and Gangster Fiction Magazine Index
Philip Stephensen-Payne, Bill Contento and Stephen T.
Miller
These index is compatible with PC, Apple, and Unix computers, and are
read using your existing web browser (Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.)
There is no software to install.
The Crime, Mystery & Gangster Fiction
Magazine Index (or Crime Fiction Index in short) is an attempt to
provide an index to crime fiction magazines in the same style as the classic
Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Weird Fiction Magazine Index compiled by Stephen
T. Miller and William G. Contento. It will be available both in CD-ROM format
from Locus Press
and as a series of luxury hardback volumes from the
Battered Silicon Dispatch Box.
The index is based (with permission) on the two
classic indexes in this field (both now long out of print):
- Mystery, Detective, and Espionage Fiction: A Checklist of Fiction
in U.S. Pulp Magazines, 1915-1974 compiled by Michael L. Cook and Stephen T.
Miller
- Monthly Murders: A Checklist and Chronological Listing Of Fiction
In The Digest-Size Mystery Magazines In The United States And England
compiled by Michael L. Cook
As well as making the contents of these classic
indexes available to a modern audience, the new index also includes a huge
amount of new material, including:
- The magazines indexed in William G. Contento's Mystery Short Fiction
index;
- Contents for many of the issues that were not located for the above
indexes (as well as some issues the previous compilers were unaware of);
- Coverage of many English-language magazines published outside the US
that were excluded from the previous indexes;
- Coverage of many magazines that have been published since the previous
indexes were published;
- Coverage of a small number of magazines that the previous compilers
overlooked;
- Where available, more detailed information on the contents of certain
magazines (including story lengths and details of non-fiction contents).
The new index also corrects many of the errors that
inadvertently crept into the previous indexes.
As can be imagined with a project of this
magnitude (comprising over 12,000 issues from over 550 different magazines), the
compilers would welcome any offers of assistance from anyone who has access to
some of these magazines and is prepared to help out.
In particular:
- The core of the index has been compiled from OCR scans of the two
original indexes, rather than from the magazines themselves, and as such
inevitably reproduce some of the mistakes inherent in those indexes (as well
as undoubtedly introducing some new ones). We would love to hear from anyone
who has a collection (whether large or small) of crime fiction magazines and
would be prepared to compare the relevant sections of the index against
their collections.
- There are still a number of small gaps in earlier magazines (see
here for a full list), but we
would particularly love to hear from anyone who has any copies of a handful
of US magazines for which there are significant gaps:
- Cabaret Stories
- Giant Manhunt
- Midnight/Midnight Mystery Stories/Midnight
Mysteries
- Over My Dead Body!
- Real Detective Tales (and Mystery Stories)
- Red Herring Mystery Magazine
- Scientific Detective (Annual) (not the same as
Scientific Detective Monthly)
- The Underworld (Magazine)
- Although the index contains many hundred issues of magazines published
outside the US, the coverage of these is still woefully incomplete and we
would love to hear from anybody who has crime magazines published in the UK
(particularly reprint editions of US pulps), Australia, Canada, South Africa
or New Zealand (or, indeed, any other country publishing crime magazines in
the English language).