Introduction On Racism Epigraphs A History of the Pulps A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Glossary and Character Taxonomy Breakdown by Country of Origin Bibliography Table of Contents The Best of the Encyclopedia
McDade, Violet. Violet McDade was created by Cleve F. Adams (Canavan & Kleinschmidt, Engelhardt & Dewey, Rex McBride, Steve McCloud, Bill Rye, John J. Shannon) and appeared in fifteen stories in Clues from 1935 to 1938, beginning with “Page Violet McDade!” (Clues, Jan. 1935).
Violet McDade used to be a circus fat lady. She remains obese, but is now a private detective. “Violet McDade in a night club is as conspicuous as an elephant in an aquarium. It isn’t altogether her prodigious size, nor is it her atrocious taste in clothes. Rather, it is a combination of these things added to the manner of a precocious child bent on attracting attention.” Beneath her bulk is a lot of muscle, and she is as tough, if not more so, as any of her male counterparts. She can be as rough as they are, as well, although she has the de rigeur sentimental heart. She is nobody's fool and is very money conscious. She works in Hollywood and environs, smashing through whatever difficulties stand between her and solving a case and catching a criminal. She is a capable detective, her weight never slows her down in pursuit of a criminal, and she is quick and accurate with her guns.
McDade’s partner is Nevada Alvarado, a Mexican of Aztec descent who isn’t quite as smart as McDade but is just as tough. Alvarado is slim, dark-haired, and attractive. She is often driven crazy by McDade, whose approach and attitude is often grating, but Alvarado makes more money with McDade than she would anywhere else, and stays with McDade despite her personality.
* I'm including the Violet McDade stories in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because they're fun. There aren't a lot of female hardboiled detectives in the pulps. And there were a small handful of pulp stories in which a fat woman was the protagonist. But Cleve Adams was skilled enough as a writer to not only merge hardboiled detective stories with fat woman protagonist stories but to make the results sing. The McDade stories are classics; they're well-told, very well-characterized, starring an instantly memorable detective and her almost-as-memorable partner/sidekick. Adams goes out of his way to emphasize what a good detective McDade is, so that being a fat woman doesn't become the point of the character, but instead just a secondary aspect of the character. Too, the degree of racism in the stories is comparatively low for mid-1930s detective pulps; it can be argued that Adams was deliberately trying to be anti-racist in his portrayal of Nevada Alvarado's character and in how others treat her. It's all good stuff and well worth searching out.
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