Frederick Nebel

[1] Nebel was one of the most important writers for Black Mask, publishing a total of 67 stories in the magazine, second only to Erle Stanley Gardner.

He also wrote prolifically for Dime Detective before moving on to more "respectable" work such as his thriller novel Sleepers East, which was made into a film, and magazine writing for Colliers, Cosmopolitan, and Good Housekeeping.

[1] Shaw encouraged his authors to develop series characters, and Nebel created the detective duo of Captain Steve MacBride and newspaper reporter Kennedy of fictional “Richmond City”.

[3] Nebel created Donny “Tough Dick” Donahue at the request of Shaw for a character similar to Dashiel Hammett’s Sam Spade.

[1][7] Following the huge success of The Maltese Falcon, Shaw wanted more Spade stories but Hammett, a personal friend of Nebel’s, had quit the pulps for Hollywood.

[1] In 1933, Little, Brown published Nebel’s first novel, Sleepers East, based on his early experience as a brakeman on passenger trains.

[1] The New York Times, while critical of the genre conventions of a story set on a train, praised Nebel for providing "thrills a-plenty."

[7] His story “The Bribe” was adapted into the 1949 movie by the same name, starring Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, and Vincent Price.

[4] Under Brandt’s guidance, Nebel began selling to higher-paying slick magazines such as Collier's, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Liberty, McCall’s, Redbook, The Saturday Evening Post and Woman’s Home Companion.

[1] John Locke, "East by Northwest: Nebel's Passage to China," in The Complete Air Adventures of Gales & McGill, Volume 1: 1927-29 (Boston, MA: Altus Press, 2017)