FBI Novels of the Late 30s and '40s

[AmateisGal]

Hoping my fellow Loungers can help me here.

I'm looking to read some novels where the main character is an FBI agent or the FBI plays a crucial role in the plot, and it's set during the late '30s and the 1940s. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Benzadmiral]

The only thing that comes to mind, Amateisgal, is the series of novels about FBI agent "Rip," John Ripley, done by the husband-and-wife team, the Gordons, in the Fifties and Sixties. (They also wrote Undercover Cat, which Disney called That Darn Cat! in the movie version.) Unflattering portraits of FBI agents appear in at least one of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels of the '30s-'40s period (Over My Dead Body), as well as later (1965) in The Doorbell Rang. But the agents aren't the leads, though the FBI is crucial to the plot of the latter.

 

[LizzieMaine]

J. Edgar Hoover kept a very tight control on the portrayal of FBI agents in popular culture during the Era -- if an author crossed him by depicting an FBI man unfavorably, things could start to happen to that author that were not pleasant. He frowned on novels because they were more difficult to control, but he did sanction a few rather fawning non-fiction books, with "The FBI In Peace and War" by Frederick Lewis Collins being the most widely known. This book was published in 1943 with Hoover's official imprimatur, and subsequently Collins sold the radio rights for a considerable sum. Hoover did *not* sanction the radio show based on the book, and Collins found himself the target of Bureau harassment. Hoover then arranged with radio writer Jerry Devine to produce a rival, "official" FBI radio program, "This Is Your FBI."

Hoover specifically did not want FBI men portrayed as individual personalities. Agents were to be shown as completely faceless, completely subsumed to the Bureau, with the Bureau itself as the "star" of the story. Any portrayal which failed to follow this requirement led to problems with the Bureau. The well-known 1930s agent Melvin Purvis found this out to his chagrin when he tried to sell his own life story -- and ended up on Hoover's enemies list for the rest of his life.

Likewise, Hoover went after Matt Cvetic, the so-called "Communist for the FBI, " who had falsely suggested that he had been an actual FBI agent, rather than a paid informer, in a book, a radio show, and a series of magazine articles. Cvetic, an alcoholic dissembler who was never wound too tight to begin with, was completely repudiated by the Bureau, and Hoover had him placed in his permanent "persona non grata" file.

Pretty much the only successful fictional character of the Era that Ican think of who was identified as an FBI agent without Hoover's sanction was Jack Cole's remarkable shapeshifting comic book hero Plastic Man, who was clearly portrayed as an FBI special agent, albiet a highly bizarre one. Why Hoover let this go by when many less peculiar portrayals were suppressed is anybody's guess, but when the character was revived in the 1970s, he was shown working for the fictitious "NBI" instead.

 

[Benzadmiral]

J. Edgar Hoover kept a very tight control on the portrayal of FBI agents in popular culture during the Era -- if an author crossed him by depicting an FBI man unfavorably, things could start to happen to that author that were not pleasant. He frowned on novels because they were more difficult to control . . .

No wonder Rex Stout was on Hoover's hit list and had such a thick file. According to Wikipedia:

"Stout was one of many American writers closely watched by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Hoover considered him an enemy of the bureau and either a Communist or a tool of Communist-dominated groups. Stout's leadership of the Authors League of America during the McCarthy era was particularly irksome to the FBI. About a third of Stout's FBI file is devoted to his 1965 novel The Doorbell Rang."

 

[RBH]

If you would like to read a true account of the early FBI. Then Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann is an excellent read.

https://www.amazon.com/Killers-Flower-Moon-Osage-Murders-ebook/dp/B01CWZFBZ4

Western writer Matt Braun has a fictionalized novel based on the Osage murders that is also very good.

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/b/matt-braun/black-gold.htm

 

[MikeKardec]

If you are writing something beware of various "FBI myths" common in our culture like Agents only carrying guns and making arrests after 1934. If I remember correctly FBI agents carried firearms, under the same laws that many private citizens did and made citizen's arrests in the course of their duties. I believe arrest powers and uniform duty weapons and permissions were codified in '34 for agents covering the whole country. At one time I thought I heard that agents needed some legal or accounting training as a prerequisite to joining the bureau. Worth checking on. I've never bothered to verify this stuff but our family had a couple of FBI agents as friends when I was a kid.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In the 1930s, Hoover required that agents be college graduates between 25 and 35 years of age, and while a degree in law or accounting was preferred it wasn't necessarily required. The law requirement is obvious, and the accounting angle makes sense when you consider the heavy emphasis on scientific recordkeeping that prevailed in the bureau.

All agents in the pre-WWII era were white males with the exception of five African-American men recruited by the old "Bureau of Investigation" during the post-WWI Red Scare to infiltrate "subversive Negro groups." Only one of these agents remained with the Bureau after 1930, and was the only African-American FBI man from then until after WWII.

The only depiction of an African-American agent in popular culture during the prewar period was a character that had a brief run in "Amos 'n' Andy" during mid-1938. Apparently Hoover objected to this, because the character was abruptly dropped and when he reappeared in 1942, his status as an FBI agent was retconned away and he simply became an "inventor." There were no female agents in the FBI until after Hoover's death in 1972.

Starting pay for the typical FBI man in the mid-1930s was just short of $3000 a year, which was a lot of money at a time when the average working-class family survived on about $1300 a year.

 

[AmateisGal]

Thanks, all, for the discussion. It's very helpful!

I'm doing research for my novel which takes place in 1942 Lincoln, Nebraska. My main character is an FBI agent tracking down a former German American Bund member who may or may not be spying for the Abwehr. I just want to make sure I get the details right! I found The FBI-KGB War by Robert J. Lamphere, former special agent, who went to law school and then decided to become an FBI agent right as WW2 was starting. I was able to glean some pretty good details from that. For example, when they were out in the field, they had to call in every two hours to check for messages. As Lamphere put it, "Some of the FBI discipline verged on thought-control."

Mike, according to Lamphere, they were issued .38 pistols. Lizzie, Lamphere was making $3200 a month after seven months as an agent. I can only assume it went up from there!

 

[MikeKardec]

I believe that my Uncle worked in a munitions factory in the Grand Island area during WWII.

Occasionally Agents were known to carry Colt 1911 semi automatics in .38 Super and the fancy new "registered magnum" Smith and Wesson .357s ... definitely the Rolls Royce of revolvers in those days. As automobile getaways rose, especially among mid west bank robbers, both pistols were valued because they shot quite high velocity rounds and were thought to be better at penetrating car bodies. With all of J Edgar's control freakery, the one area that seems to have been open to some interpretation, at least when working away from DC, was the choice of sidearm. Unlike today, the .38 Special of that era may have been a bit anemic but the Colt Police Positive that many agents were issued was a trim and light, easy to wear all day. These days everyone gives their hero a trick gun so all this may be a bit much.

Law enforcement, back in those days, was kind of obsessed with the idea shooting through car bodies. Besides considering the pistols mentioned above, they even produced a steel tipped .38 Special round that was supposed to perform better at penetrating bodywork. My own, experiments AHEM -- screwing around -- suggests that car bodies (even from the heavy weight 1950s) are FAR from bullet resistant but window mechanisms and the like can occasionally stop some from getting into the passenger compartment. Police are usually told to get out of the car and put the engine between them and a shooter. On more modern cars with heavy wheels and big brakes those are some cover too. Hollywood makes everything from water barrels to dumpsters to Yugos or Smart Cars "bullet proof" because they like to have a lot of idiots blazing away at one and other. At some point the FBI standardized on Smith .357s and stuck with them for quite awhile.

There's a, possibly apocryphal, story about J Edgar sending out a memo to "watch the borders" that sent Agents scurrying to places like Brownsville, TX. He was actually reminding them that he liked clean and well defined margins on the reports that were sent to him. He was at heart a clerk.

 

[AmateisGal]

MK, if your uncle worked at a munitions plant in Grand Island, it would have been the Cornhusker Ordnance Plant. (I'm writing a book on Nebraska during WW2 to be published in September).

Here's more info on it: http://journalstar.com/news/local/j...cle_a944142c-9c1f-52a3-a016-416476a00741.html

Fun fact: the woman in the photo with the head scarf? Only after I used that pic in my last book (on the German POWs in Nebraska) did I find out that it was my ex-father-in-law's mother. Small world!

 

[MikeKardec]

MK, if your uncle worked at a munitions plant in Grand Island, it would have been the Cornhusker Ordnance Plant. (I'm writing a book on Nebraska during WW2 to be published in September).

Thanks for that info! It's now filed away as family history.

I happen to have a 1937 application for a position with the FBI. Some of the document is illegible but I could type it or sections of it out if you would find that useful.

The most amusing line on it asks: "What is the lowest entrance salary you will accept?" That's unlikely to be a question intended to separate the wheat from the chaff; attempting to get idiots to quote a high number so that they can be disregarded. There seem to be no other questions intended to weed out oddballs. Is it possible that the earlier referenced numbers of around $3,000/month are from a later period? I don't know, it would seem ridiculous to assume that a totally squared away agency wouldn't have a clearly defined pay scale.

Recognize that the application (Division of Investigation, US Department of Justice -- Application for Appointment) has a series of boxes on it allowing it to be used for the positions of Special Agent, Special Agent Accountant, Stenographer, Typist, and two illegible lines one of which might read Manager.

Positions do seem to be open to Naturalized and even Non Citizens ... or at least they are given lines to express the details of their status.

The application asks for 5 personal references, "not relatives, former employers, fellow employees or school teachers, and who are more than 30 years of age, are householders or property owners, business or professional men or women (including your family physician, if you have one) of good standing in the community, and who have known you well during the past 5 or more years."

It also wants to know the names of "clubs or societies or other similar organizations of which you are a member." I assume that Communists were approached for possible clandestine work or disapproved and Masons tended to get approved ... I say that only because I know that up into the 1990s large numbers of State Department office holders were Masons. I also suspect that at some point the Bureau either started hiring a fair number of Mormons or Mormons began applying in number. My vague memory is that a number of agents I met were LDS.

It also asks if you have ever been arrested and for the details of the arrest.

 

[AmateisGal]

Thanks for that info! It's now filed away as family history.

I happen to have a 1937 application for a position with the FBI. Some of the document is illegible but I could type it or sections of it out if you would find that useful.

The most amusing line on it asks: "What is the lowest entrance salary you will accept?" That's unlikely to be a question intended to separate the wheat from the chaff; attempting to get idiots to quote a high number so that they can be disregarded. There seem to be no other questions intended to weed out oddballs. Is it possible that the earlier referenced numbers of around $3,000/month are from a later period? I don't know, it would seem ridiculous to assume that a totally squared away agency wouldn't have a clearly defined pay scale.

Recognize that the application (Division of Investigation, US Department of Justice -- Application for Appointment) has a series of boxes on it allowing it to be used for the positions of Special Agent, Special Agent Accountant, Stenographer, Typist, and two illegible lines one of which might read Manager.

Positions do seem to be open to Naturalized and even Non Citizens ... or at least they are given lines to express the details of their status.

The application asks for 5 personal references, "not relatives, former employers, fellow employees or school teachers, and who are more than 30 years of age, are householders or property owners, business or professional men or women (including your family physician, if you have one) of good standing in the community, and who have known you well during the past 5 or more years."

It also wants to know the names of "clubs or societies or other similar organizations of which you are a member." I assume that Communists were approached for possible clandestine work or disapproved and Masons tended to get approved ... I say that only because I know that up into the 1990s large numbers of State Department office holders were Masons. I also suspect that at some point the Bureau either started hiring a fair number of Mormons or Mormons began applying in number. My vague memory is that a number of agents I met were LDS.

It also asks if you have ever been arrested and for the details of the arrest.

This is fascinating! Thank you for sharing!

 

[Benzadmiral]

Thanks, all, for the discussion. It's very helpful!

I'm doing research for my novel which takes place in 1942 Lincoln, Nebraska. My main character is an FBI agent tracking down a former German American Bund member who may or may not be spying for the Abwehr. I just want to make sure I get the details right! I found The FBI-KGB War by Robert J. Lamphere, former special agent, who went to law school and then decided to become an FBI agent right as WW2 was starting. I was able to glean some pretty good details from that. For example, when they were out in the field, they had to call in every two hours to check for messages. As Lamphere put it, "Some of the FBI discipline verged on thought-control."

Mike, according to Lamphere, they were issued .38 pistols. Lizzie, Lamphere was making $3200 a month after seven months as an agent. I can only assume it went up from there!

Wait -- thirty-six thousand dollars a year in 1942? Or was that later? The KGB didn't come into existence until something like 1953 or -54, right?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Soviet security agency in the early forties was the NKVD -- the Russian abbreviation for "People's Commisariat of Internal Affairs." It became the KGB -- "Committee for State Security" -- in 1954.

I think $3200 a year is more like it. J. Edgar himself was making less than $20,000 per year in 1942.

 

[AmateisGal]

Wait -- thirty-six thousand dollars a year in 1942? Or was that later? The KGB didn't come into existence until something like 1953 or -54, right?

Whoops! Yes, $3200 a year.

 

[2jakes]

I'm doing research for my novel which takes place in 1942 Lincoln, Nebraska. My main character is an FBI agent tracking down a former German American Bund member who may or may not be spying for the Abwehr. I just want to make sure I get the details right! I found The FBI-KGB War by Robert J. Lamphere, former special agent, who went to law school and then decided to become an FBI agent right as WW2 was starting. I was able to glean some pretty good details from that. For example, when they were out in the field, they had to call in every two hours to check for messages. As Lamphere put it, "Some of the FBI discipline verged on thought-control."

I have no information to add except that I'm fascinated by the topic
or subject that you write about whether it's a movie, event or books.
When your novel comes out, I would love for you to sign copy for me.
Thank you.