Steve Harrison

In a letter to H. P. Lovecraft from around September/October 1933 Howard wrote:

Lately I’ve been trying to write detective yarns, something entirely new for me, and haven’t had much success — in fact none, so far, except for a short yarn, “Talons in the Dark”, written in San Antonio last spring, and which Kline, as my agent, sold to a magazine called Strange Detective Stories. Kline has been a big help in teaching me the technique of detective story writing; whether I am able to profit by his teaching remains to be seen. (Kline marketed another yarn for me since I wrote the above.)¹

He also wrote his friend Tevis Clyde Smith cirka October the same year:

How are your parents, and how is business? Kline cracked me into a new market — Strange Detective Stories; don’t know how it’ll pan out.

Strange Detecive Stories bought two Howard stories, “Talons in the Dark” (published in December 1933 under the title “Black Talons”) and “The Teeth of Doom” (published in February 1934 under the title “The Tomb’s Secret” and the byline “Patrick Ervin”) in September 1933, and another, “The People of the Serpent” (published in February 1934 under the title “Fangs of Gold”) in October.

Howard also wrote to August Derleth telling him how busy he has been hammering out “detectives”.

But as early as in June 1935 Howard wrote to August Derleth:

I’ve given up trying to write detective yarns — a job I despise anyway — and am concentrating on adventure stuff.

and again to H.P. Lovecraft on May 13, 1936:

I find it more and more difficult to write anything but western yarns. I have definitely abandoned the detective field, where I never had any success anyway, and which represents a type of story I actively detest. I can scarcely endure to read one, much less write one.

It was pretty clear that according to his letters he didn’t like this genre even though he did several of them very well. It is perhaps excactly the reason these stories have so much appeal, Howard’s instincts fight against the genre and we get a far different sort of tale.

Steve Harrison is the name of the detective that Howard is known for. Brock Rollins is a name that the editors of Strange Detective Stories came up with for volume 5 number 3 (1934) when two Harrison stories were published in the same issue. He operates mainly on River Street and often on the Chinese quarter.

Not your average detective, Steve Harrison is more likely to tear into a fight wth his fists than a gun. More often than not the stories also strays further afield from standard detective fare, adding weird menace and more adventure. Also, few private eyes could boast of a recurring enemy, never mind one as diabolical and evil as Erlik Khan, a descendent of Genghis Khan.