Dan Turner was a typical
hardboiled private eye, who worked in the
Hollywood area of
Los Angeles. Most of the stories are set in and around the
film studios, and focus on crimes involving people in the movie business –
film stars,
stuntmen,
producers,
agents,
extras and an endless array of glamorous female "starlets". The Dan Turner stories were notorious for their emphasis on sexual content, although this was generally implied rather than described explicitly. A large number of the Dan Turner stories were written by Bellem himself, who had a good inside knowledge of Hollywood having worked as a film extra. The
Hollywood Detective magazine also featured a Dan Turner comic strip, drawn by
Max Plaisted. All the Dan Turner stories are written in the
first person, in a racy,
slang-ridden style that gives them a unique flavor. Guns are never "guns" but "roscoes", and they always go
"ka-chow!". A woman is never simply a "woman" but a "dame", "frail", "quail", "wren" or, if particularly attractive, a "doll" or "cutie". In his comic essay, "Somewhere A Roscoe...," humorist
S.J. Perelman both praises and skewers the Dan Turner mysteries. In the essay, Perelman says of Culture Publications, Inc., "In
Spicy Detective, they have achieved the sauciest blend of libido and murder this side of
Gilles de Rais. They have juxtaposed the steely automatic and the frilly pantie and found that it pays off. Above all, they have given the world Dan Turner, the apotheosis of all private detectives." Using quotes taken from various Dan Turner mysteries in
Spicy Detective, Perelman pokes fun at Turner's hard-boiled character. (After finding a female body in his closet in "Corpse in the Closet", Dan Turner observes, "It's a damned screwy feeling to reach for pajamas and find a cadaver instead." Perelman comments on this, "Mr. Turner, you will perceive, is a man of sentiment.") ==On film==