Cleve Adams

September 5, 1895 (age 54)

Chicago, Illinois, United States

Before starting his writing career at the age of 38, Cleve F. Adams tried his hand as a manual laborer, copper miner, private detective, soda jerk, accountant, window trimmer, motion picture art director, chain store operator, and life insurance salesman. By the early 1930s, he and his wife Vera were running a candy store in Culver City, a suburb of Los Angeles. He published And Sudden Death in 1940. Will Cuppy reviewing an early Adams novel in Books, the 1940 And Sudden Death, which had its first incarnation as a serial entitled “Homicide Honolulu Bound,” saw the author as an “up and coming mystifier whose writing style is inclined to go only when love’s afoot.” Cuppy was more positive though when the first Rex McBride book, titled Sabotage, hit the shelves later that year. In another Books review, Cuppy thought that McBride was “so clever at every trick of the game that he’s sure of a place among the leaders.” Isaac Anderson, reviewing the 1941 Adams novel Decoy in the New York Times, acknowledged the extremeness that set Adams apart from the rest of the pulp crowd. Decoy, Anderson stated, was a “thriller with as gory a climax as we have ever encountered.” A Saturday Review of Literature contributor considered the novel a “no holds barred” and “diabolical ... tempestuous” mystery. Evil Star, the 1944 thriller written under the pseudonym John Spain, received mix reviews. Cuppy, writing in the Weekly Book Review, called it “lively,” but noted that its “synthetic ingredients refuse to jell.” Anderson also described the book as a “lively yarn” in the New York Times, but added that the story was a “bit cockeyed.” But by the time Contraband - a smuggling tale set on the Mexican border, with a U.S. Treasury agent as a protagonist - was released in 1950, critics could discern Adams’ talent clearly through the pulp fiction muck. E. D. Doyle, writing in the New York Times, made this distinction clear: “Few practitioners... know how to put these ingredients together with such biting, driving economy.” This opinion of Contraband was shared by a New York Herald Tribune Book Review reviewer, who wrote that the novel was “terse and bloody in the tough tradition, but with the redeeming qualities of wit and sound characterization.” Too Fair To Die was Adams' final novel. He became gravely ill while writing it, so his good friends Robert Leslie Bellham offered to finish it for him. After Adams death, Bellham and Ballard made more revisions and the book was reissued in 1955 in an Ace paperback as Shady Lady.

Cleve Franklin Adams Edit Profile

also known as Franklin Charles, John Spain

writer

Background

Cleve F. Adams was born on September 5, 1895 in Chicago, Illinois, United States.

Career

Before starting his writing career at the age of 38, Cleve F. Adams tried his hand as a manual laborer, copper miner, private detective, soda jerk, accountant, window trimmer, motion picture art director, chain store operator, and life insurance salesman.

By the early 1930s, he and his wife Vera were running a candy store in Culver City, a suburb of Los Angeles.

He published And Sudden Death in 1940. Will Cuppy reviewing an early Adams novel in Books, the 1940 And Sudden Death, which had its first incarnation as a serial entitled “Homicide Honolulu Bound,” saw the author as an “up and coming mystifier whose writing style is inclined to go only when love’s afoot.” Cuppy was more positive though when the first Rex McBride book, titled Sabotage, hit the shelves later that year. In another Books review, Cuppy thought that McBride was “so clever at every trick of the game that he’s sure of a place among the leaders.” Isaac Anderson, reviewing the 1941 Adams novel Decoy in the New York Times, acknowledged the extremeness that set Adams apart from the rest of the pulp crowd. Decoy, Anderson stated, was a “thriller with as gory a climax as we have ever encountered.” A Saturday Review of Literature contributor considered the novel a “no holds barred” and “diabolical ... tempestuous” mystery.

Evil Star, the 1944 thriller written under the pseudonym John Spain, received mix reviews. Cuppy, writing in the Weekly Book Review, called it “lively,” but noted that its “synthetic ingredients refuse to jell.” Anderson also described the book as a “lively yarn” in the New York Times, but added that the story was a “bit cockeyed.”

But by the time Contraband - a smuggling tale set on the Mexican border, with a U.S. Treasury agent as a protagonist - was released in 1950, critics could discern Adams’ talent clearly through the pulp fiction muck. E. D. Doyle, writing in the New York Times, made this distinction clear: “Few practitioners... know how to put these ingredients together with such biting, driving economy.” This opinion of Contraband was shared by a New York Herald Tribune Book Review reviewer, who wrote that the novel was “terse and bloody in the tough tradition, but with the redeeming qualities of wit and sound characterization.”

Too Fair To Die was Adams' final novel. He became gravely ill while writing it, so his good friends Robert Leslie Bellham offered to finish it for him. After Adams death, Bellham and Ballard made more revisions and the book was reissued in 1955 in an Ace paperback as Shady Lady.

Achievements

Cleve Franklin Adams was known as an American writer, who wrote about 80 novels and short stories, which appeared in most of the major detective pulps. Though Adams is not as well remembered today as his contemporary Raymond Chandler, his books represent an important landmark in the unique literary world that emerged from the pulp fiction magazines of the 1930s. He also wrote as Franklin Charles and John Spain.

Besides, he was a founding member of The Fictioneers, a social club for writers that disbanded when most of it's member left to fight in the World War II.