(1910-1995) Also wrote as: Will Duke
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Gault came to be one of the very best of the novelists in the crowded field of Los Angeles private eye fiction. Never a name-brand author on the level of chandler or Ross macdonald (though he was friendly with both of them), Gault nonetheless wrote at a very high level, with a distinctive, personal touch and an avoidance of the easy, sensationalist material that sustained so many of his peers. Gault’s P.I. novels about the series characters Brock Callahan and Joe Puma belonged squarely to the hard-boiled tradition fostered by Black Mask magazine, but they had a unique voice. Callahan in particular was a realistic, reasonable conception, not the ruminative poet/PI. of Chandler nor the bloody avenger of Mickey spillane. A former football star (“Brock the Rock”) turned private investigator, learning his new trade as he goes along, Callahan is mellow, decent, and tough enough, but not prone to proving it. Violence, the hero understands, usually causes more problems than it solves. Typical of Gault’s down-to-earth approach, Callahan was one of the few tough private eyes with a loving, steady relationship (with moody Jan Bonnett, a Beverly Hills interior decorator who often derides his erratic career); he is not exactly monogamous, but his flings throughout the series are low-key affairs. Gault’s depiction of Los Angeles is equally distinct, viewed with insight and dismay but without heavy-handed skepticism or contempt.
Gault’s writing career got off to a slow, bumpy start. Educated at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, he worked in the hotel business for some years, becoming the manager of the Blatz Hotel in Milwaukee. In his spare time he tried writing. He set his sights very low, on the fringe sex pulps that cigar stores sold under the counter. His first sales were to a pair of obscure magazines, Paris Nights and Scarlet Adventuress, the latter an oversized pulp devoted to tales of “the woman adventuress . . . the sort who has a definite goal—love, money, power, or revenge—toward which she steadily forges, using the allure of her body.” Some 50 years later Gault would recall, “They were published in Pennsylvania somewhere, and paid a third of a cent a word. They bought anything as long as you made all the female characters voluptuous. I guess men read them like they read Playboy today. They were supposed to be hot stuff, but the stories were about as sexy as church.” By 1939 he had sold—to Ten Detective Aces—his first crime story. After a sufficiently encouraging number of sales, Gault quit the hotel business and devoted himself full time to freelance writing. The war took him away for several years, but when he returned in 1945 he began writing steadily for the remaining pulps, primarily mystery/detective and sports stories.
Gault’s first novel, Don’t Cry for Me (1952), won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the best first novel of the year. It was a tough crime novel without gratuitous sensationalism, a serious mystery with a controlled, mature narrative voice that could bear comparison with a masterpiece like Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. He followed it with the remarkable The Bloody Bokhara, a mystery set in Milwaukee’s exotic world of immigrant carpet dealers. In 1955 he published Ring Around Rosa, introducing Brock Callahan. He continued with Callahan in hardback and added a paperback detective, Joe Puma, who was less idiosyncratic than Callahan but shared many of Callahan’s superficial characteristics (including suit size and a love for Einlicher beer).
Gault’s mystery novels never enjoyed big sales (his Edgar winner was available for only eight weeks before going out of print), despite good reviews, awards, and some steadfast fans. He had started writing short novels for the juvenile market in the same year as his adult novels, most centered on high school sports or hot-rodding. These proved to be bigger and steadier moneymakers, and after 1962 Gault gave up the mysteries and wrote juvenile fiction exclusively. These topics were not as much fun, Gault would remark, “but one has to eat.” For the next 19 years, the author of End of a Call Girl and Sweet Wild Wench turned out topics with titles like Dirt Track Summer and Cut-Rate Quarterback.
Then, in his seventies and semiretired, and with the encouragement of some writer friends and fans, Gault got a new Brock Callahan adventure into print (as a paperback original from a new developer, Raven House). The novel was wittily titled The Bad Samaritan. The style was nearly as strong as in Gault’s heyday, but there were some differences. Callahan had inherited some big money from a relative and now lived in great comfort in a wealthy California seaside town (modeled on Gault’s own final residence, Santa Barbara). Samaritan was followed by The Cana Diversion, which featured both of Gault’s series characters, Callahan and—until he is bumped off—Joe Puma. Several more new works followed (though some of these may have been written earlier). The topics were twilight classics, a wonderful parting gift from an underappreciated master of American crime fiction.
Works
- Atom and Eve, The (1958);
- Backfield Challenge (1967);
- Bad Samaritan, The (1982);
- Big Stick, The (1975);
- Blood on the Boards (1953);
- Bloody Bokhara, The (1952);
- Bruce Benedict, Halfback (1957);
- Cana Diversion, The (1982);
- Canvas Coffin, The (1953);
- Cat and Mouse (1988);
- Checkered Flag, The (1964);
- Chicano Way, The (1986);
- Come Die with Me (1959);
- Convertible Hearse, The (1957);
- County Kill (1962);
- Cut-Rate Quarterback (1977);
- Day of the Ram (1956);
- Dead Hero (1963);
- Dead Pigeon (1992);
- Death in Donegal Bay (1984);
- Death Out of Focus (1959);
- Dim Thunder (1958);
- Dirt Track Summer (1961);
- Don’t Cry for Me (1952);
- Drag Strip (1959);
- End of a Call Girl (U.K. title: Don’t Call Tonight) (1958);
- Gallant Colt (1954);
- Gasoline Cowboy (1974);
- Hundred-Dollar Girl, The (1961);
- Karters, The (1965);
- Last Lap, The (1972);
- Little Big Foot (1963);
- Lonely Mound, The (1967);
- Long Green, The (1965);
- Million Dollar Tramp (1960);
- Mr. Fullback (1953);
- Mr. Quarterback (1955);
- Night Lady (1958);
- Oval Playground, The (1968);
- Quarterback Gamble (1970);
- Ring Around Rosa (1955), also published as Murder in the Raw;
- Road-Race Rookie (1962);
- Run, Killer, Run (1954);
- Showboat in the Backcourt (1976);
- Speedway Challenge (1956);
- Square in the Middle (1956);
- Stubborn Sam (1969);
- Sunday Cycles (1979);
- Sunday’s Dust (1966);
- Sweet Wild Wench (1959);
- Thin Ice (1978);
- Through the Line (1961);
- Thunder Road (1952);
- Trouble at Second (1973);
- Two-wheeled Thunder (1962);
- Underground Skipper (1975);
- Vein of Violence (1961);
- Wayward Widow, The (1959);
- Wheels of Fortune (1963);
- Wild Willie, Wide Receiver (1974)
As Will Duke:
- Fair Prey (1956)
