(1902- )
Thomas Theodore Flynn was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, wanted to be a writer all his life, and left home early to wander the country and gather the exciting experiences he hoped would inspire his writing. “I have done a little bit of everything,” he wrote of himself in the pages of Detective Fiction Weekly, one of his regular pulp markets for many years, “including hitting the grit, or hoboing . . . ship yard, steel mills, house to house selling, traveling salesman, carpenter, clerk, followed the sea on deck and the engine and fire room, worked in a railroad shop and as a locomotive inspector . . . I believe a fiction writer deals with life as a whole and he or she should know it from all angles.”
Flynn was selling to the pulps by his mid-twenties. He was a regular contributor to Detective Fiction Weekly in the early 1930s, and in 1931 he was invited to contribute to the debut of Popular Publications’ new private eye magazine, Dime Detective. His story “The Pullman Murder” appeared in that premiere issue in November 1931. Flynn continued to write regularly for the magazine for the next 20 years. He wrote about various protagonists in the early years, but from July 1938 almost all of his stories were about an amateur crime solver known as Mister Maddox, a sometime bookmaker and habitue of the nation’s racetracks.
Flynn moved to the Southwest in later years and began to specialize in western fiction. He wrote western stories and serials for top-paying slick magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, and then a series of western novels published by Dell in the 1950s. One of his paperbacks, The Man from Laramie, set in New Mexico, was turned into a magnificent motion picture (1955) directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart.
Works
STORIES
- “Accusing Corpse, The” (May 15, 1934);
- “Black Doctor, The” (Dec. 1932);
- “Blood on the Bluegrass” (Oct. 1940);
- “Blood on the topic” (Jan. 1940);
- “Bookie and the Blonde, The” (July 1940);
- “Bride of the Beast, The” (Feb. 1936);
- “Burning Ice” (Oct. 1937);
- “Date at the Morgue, A” (Feb. 1937);
- “Dead Man’s Debt” (Feb. 1938);
- “Dead Man’s Dough” (Aug. 1944);
- “Death Rides the Favorite” (Oct. 1938);
- “Devil and the Horse Man, The” (Dec. 1941);
- “Devil’s Derby, The” (Apr. 1939);
- “Dragons of Chang Chien” (Apr. 15, 1935);
- “Evil Brand, The” (Nov. 15, 1934);
- “Five Fatal Hours” (Apr. 1, 1935);
- “Four Nights to Doom” (Oct. 15, 1934);
- “Fourteenth Mummy, The” (June 1932);
- “Golden Cipher, The” (Sept. 15, 1934);
- “Happy Murder to You” (Apr. 1942);
- “Horse of Another Killer” (Apr. 1943);
- “Jade Joss, The” (Nov. 15, 1933);
- “Kentucky Kickback” (Apr. 1940);
- “Live and Let Die” (Mar. 1947);
- “Monster of Hangman’s Key” (Aug. 1933);
- “Mr. Maddox and the Gray Ghost” (July 1938);
- “Mr. Maddox Bites the Dog” (July 1943); “Mr.
- Maddox Tips a Homicide”(Aug. 1949);
- “Mr. Maddox’s Haunted Horse” (Mar. 1950);
- “Mr. Maddox’s Phony Finish” (Dec. 1948);
- “Murder in a Dead Heat” (Jan. 1943);
- “Murder in the Saddle” (Nov. 1945);
- “Murder Moon” (July 1936);
- “Post Mortem at Pimlico” (Aug. 1941);
- “Red Dollars” (Dec. 1, 1933);
- “Red Wizard, The” (Dec. 15, 1934);
- “Revel of Death, The”(Dec. 1);
- “Saratoga Slay-Ride” (Sept. 1939);
- “The Pullman Murder” (Nov. 1931);
- “Tijuana Kill Trap” (Aug. 1942);
- “Trot Out Your Murder” (Apr. 1941);
- “Win, Place and Dough” (Aug. 1944)
BOOKS
- Angry Man, The (1956);
- It’s Murder (1950);
- Man from Laramie, The (1954);
- Man from Nowhere, The (1958);
- Murder Caravan (1950);
- Riding High (1961);
- Two Faces West (1954)
