"Disaster Was Indiscriminate. And It Had Taken Murder Out of My Hands."

(1) "The Shock."

By C. K. M. Scanlon.

Short short short story (1 page).

First appearance: Popular Detective, October 1936.

Short short short story (1 page).

Online at The Pulpgen Archive (HERE).

   "Perfect crime? Far from it!"

YOUR mama probably never said there'd be days like this:

  "Without warning the floor beneath me cracked open like a coconut rind. A savage, rending sound, magnified into distance, pressed about my eardrums. The walls cavorted and split, and shattering glass exploded like doom opening for the cohorts of hell. Screams rose up all around me. A weight dropped loose from the suddenly cobwebbed ceiling, and my head took the full impact. I lost consciousness at once...."

Principal characters:

~ Inspector Shelting, Randolph, Tess, the head physician, and the unnamed narrator.

References:

- "Long Beach, California" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "Catalina Island" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "the strength of a Samson among the Philistines" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "March 11th, 1933" (Wikipedia HERE).

(2) "Filed in Person."

By C. K. M. Scanlon.

First appearance: Popular Detective, February 1939.

Short short short story (1 page).

Online at The Pulpgen Archive (HERE).

(Parental note: Mild profanity.)

   "There was the scrape of a match and a soft gasp from the girl. It was now or never."

THE D.A. gets conked, a material witness gets menaced, and a desperado gets buzzed. Case closed . . .

Principal characters:

~ John Barstow, Diana Wayne, and Gunner Overholt.

Resource:

- "C. K. M. Scanlon" didn't just write fiction but was "himself" a fiction. A story with the Scanlon byline could have been by any of the following, as FictionMags informs us:

  Scanlon, C. K. M. (fl. 1930s-1950s); house pseudonym used by Joe Archibald (1898-1986), W. T. Ballard (1903-1980), Robert Sidney Bowen (1900-1977), D. L. Champion (1902-1968), Edward Churchill (1902-1960), Ray Cummings (1887-1957), Tom Curry (1900-1976), Norman A. Daniels (1905-1995), Lester Dent (1904-1959), Laurence Donovan (1885-1948), George Fielding Eliot (1894-1971), Whitney Ellsworth (1908-1980), G. T. Fleming-Roberts (1910-1968), Charles Greenberg (fl. 1920s-1960s), Frank Gruber (1904-1969), Donald Bayne Hobart (1898-1970), Henry Kuttner (1915-1958), Johnston McCulley (1883-1958), George A. McDonald (fl. 1920s-1940s), Sam Merwin, Jr. (1910-1996), Frank Philipp (fl. 1990s), Jean Francis Webb (1910-1991) & Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986).

- Previous Scanlon stories that caught ONTOS's attention: "Footprints" and "Blood for Breakfast" (both HERE) and "Page the Murderer" (HERE).

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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