Parent company Doubleday Founded 1928 | Distribution Worldwide | |
Publication types Fiction, mystery, crime | ||
The Crime Club was an imprint of the Doubleday publishing company, which later spawned a 1946-47 anthology radio series.
Contents
Many classic and popular works of detective and mystery fiction had their first U.S. editions published via the Crime Club, including all 50 books of The Saint by Leslie Charteris (1928-1983). The imprint also published first editions in Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu series.
The Crime Club began life in 1928 with the publication of The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan, and ceased publication in 1991. In the intervening 63 years, The Crime Club published 2,492 titles.
Radio
Stories from this imprint were first dramatized on The Eno Crime Club, a detective series broadcast on CBS from February 9, 1931 to December 21, 1932, sponsored by Eno Effervescent Salts. The Crime Club novels were not adapted for the later Eno Crime Clues, heard on the Blue Network from January 3, 1933 to June 30. 1936.
The Crime Club returned on the Mutual Broadcasting System as a half-hour radio series with adaptations from the Doubleday imprint. Each installment was introduced by the series host, The Librarian, portrayed by Barry Thomson and Raymond Edward Johnson (who was better known as the host of Inner Sanctum Mysteries). The series began December 2, 1946 and continued until October 16, 1947.
Film
In the late 1930s, Universal Pictures made a deal with Doubleday to use The Crime Club imprint for a series of 11 Crime Club mystery films. These films were released from 1937 to 1939, starting with The Westlake Case.