Margie Harris (birth and death dates unknown) was a pulp writer from 1930 to 1939. She was one of the most popular authors in the short-lived gang pulp genre. Even in an era of

hardboiled Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence o ...

crime fiction, her stories were unusually hard-edged and bitter. Her best work includes ingenious plotting, remorselessly violent characters, and colorful underworld argot. Most of her early stories appeared in the

Harold Hersey Harold Brainerd Hersey (April 11, 1893March 1956) was an American pulp editor and publisher, publishing several volumes of poetry. His pulp industry observations were published in hardback as ''Pulpwood Editor'' (1937). Early life He was born o ...

-published

pulp magazine Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazine ...

s ''

Gangster Stories ''Gangster Stories'' was a controversial pulp magazine of the early 1930s. It featured hardboiled crime fiction that glorified the gun-toting gangsters of the Prohibition era. It was published by Harold Hersey, as part of his Good Story Magazine Co ...

'', '' Mobs'', ''

Prison Stories ''Prison Stories'', styled as ''Prison Stories: A Collection of Short Storie ', is a collection of prison stories by Nigerian writer Helon Habila. "Love Poem", which is among the stories included in the collection, won the 2001 Caine Prize fo ...

'', '' Racketeer Stories'', and '' Gangland Stories''. When Hersey sold off his assets, Harris continued to appear in the successor to ''

'', '' Greater Gangster Stories''. After the collapse of the gang pulps in 1934, Harris diversified into a variety of crime pulps, ''

The Phantom Detective ''The Phantom Detective'' was the second pulp hero magazine published, after ''The Shadow''. The first issue was released in February 1933, a month before ''Doc Savage'', which was released in March 1933. The title continued to be released un ...

'', '' Thrilling Detective'', '' Super-Detective Stories'', '' Popular Detective'', etc. When the gang genre was temporarily revived in the late 1930s in the pulps, '' Double-Action Gang Magazine'' and '' Ten Story Gang'', Harris was a frequent contributor. Her published output includes fewer than a hundred known stories, low for a pulp writer, but many of them were novelettes or short novels. Little is known of Harris' background. It is believed that "Margie Harris" is a pseudonym. The only biographical information comes from a jocular letter published in ''

''. She claimed to have been a newspaper reporter; and many of her stories featured reporters and references to newspapers. From the cases she covered, she would have been in the Bay Area from approximately 1900-1915 and in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

from 1915-1930 (these ranges are very speculative). Criminals she knew in the Bay Area include Ed Morrell, the so-called Dungeon Man of

San Quentin San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County. Opened in July 1852, San Quentin is the ...

, and his neighbor in the solitary confinement cells, Jacob "Tiger Man" Oppenheimer. In Chicago, she was acquainted with the big-time mobster

Big Jim Colosimo Vincenzo Colosimo (; February 16, 1878 – May 11, 1920), known as James "Big Jim" Colosimo or as "Diamond Jim", was an Italian-American Mafia crime boss who emigrated from Calabria, Italy, in 1895 and built a criminal empire in Chicago based on ...

. Given her background, a birthdate around 1880 is plausible, which would have made her about 50 when her fiction career began in 1930. Harris's last known whereabouts were in

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

. She appears to have lived in Texas during the entirety of her pulp-writing career. She wrote a number of

true crime True crime is a nonfiction literary, podcast, and film genre in which the author examines an actual crime and details the actions of real people associated with and affected by criminal events. The crimes most commonly include murder; about 40 pe ...

articles set in Houston and its vicinity for '' American Detective'', which was published by the same company as '' Greater Gangster Stories''.For example, "I Killed the Man I Baptized," '' American Detective'', September 1936.

Selected stories

*"Death's Trapeze" (first known published story), ''

'', May 1930. *"Gyps That Pass in the Night," '' Gangland Stories'', October 1930. *"While Choppers Roared," '' Racketeer Stories'', February 1931. *"Little Big Shot," ''

'', May 1932. *"The She-Shamus," ''Conflict'', January–February 1934. *"When Dead Eyes Speak," '' The Underworld Detective'', March 1935. *"Crimson Harvest," '' Ten Story Gang'', August 1938. *"Problem for a Ranger" (last known original story), '' Popular Detective'', December 1939 (reprinted in the December 1944 issue).

References

External links

Read stories by Margie Harris at historyradio.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Margie Year of birth uncertain Year of death uncertain American crime fiction writers Pulp fiction writers American women short story writers 20th-century American women writers Novelists from Texas Women crime fiction writers 20th-century American short story writers