Introduction

The Crime, Mystery & Gangster Fiction Magazine Index (or Crime Fiction Index in short) was an attempt to provide an index to crime fiction magazines in the same style as the classic Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Weird Fiction Magazine Index originally compiled by Stephen T. Miller and William G. Contento. It has now been updated and made freely available online as part of the Fictionmags Index Family.

The index is based (with permission) on the two classic indexes in this field (both now long out of print):

1. Mystery, Detective, and Espionage Fiction: A Checklist of Fiction in U.S. Pulp Magazines, 1915-1974 compiled by Michael L. Cook and Stephen T. Miller
2. Monthly Murders: A Checklist and Chronological Listing Of Fiction In The Digest-Size Mystery Magazines In The United States And England compiled by Michael L. Cook

While Cook & Miller managed to identify and locate a huge number of magazine issues, they were only too aware themselves of some of the shortcomings and omissions in their indexes. From the beginning, a key focus of the current index has therefore been to:

• Locate and index as many as possible of the issues omitted from the previous indexes (see here for details of what is still missing);
• Identify the contents of issues that were announced as forthcoming, but never actually appeared;
• Locate and index as many as possible of the magazines that Mike Cook was sure existed but was unable to locate (and to lay to rest some of the rumours about magazines that really didn't exist);
• Extend the coverage to include magazines and magazine issues published since the previous indexes were written;
• Extend the coverage to include as many magazines as possible published (in the English language) outside the USA, which had generally been omitted from earlier indexes–these are discussed in more detail here.

As well as expanding the “width” of the index, an attempt has also been made, where possible, to expand the “depth” of the index. The previous indexes listed only the fiction content of the magazines and then gave only the author name and story title. The current index attempts also to:

• Identify, roughly, the size of each of the pieces of fiction (see the Item Types section for more detail on this);
• Identify non-fiction in each magazine (sometimes just major pieces; sometimes minor pieces as well);
• Identify the number of pages in each issue and the start page for each item included;
• Identify cover artists for each magazine, where credited, and (in a small number of cases) interior illustrators for the individual pieces;
• Identify any series of stories that featured the same character(s) or setting;
• Identify which author names are pseudonyms and, where possible, who the real author(s) was (see the Notes for a further discussion of this);
• Identify which stories are original and which are reprints including, where possible, identifying the first appearance of all such stories.

All of these areas presented problems of their own – some of which are discussed in more detail here – and are often “best guesses”, but hopefully this is more useful than not making the attempt. There are also a number of titles that users might expect to find in this index which have been explicitly excluded – these are discussed in more detail here.

As can be imagined with a project of this magnitude (comprising over 15,000 issues from over 850 different magazines), the compilers would welcome any offers of assistance from anyone who has access to some of these magazines and is prepared to help out.

In particular:

1. The core of the index has been compiled from OCR scans of the two original indexes, rather than from the magazines themselves, and as such inevitably reproduce some of the mistakes inherent in those indexes (as well as introducing new ones). We would love to hear from anyone who has a collection (whether large or small) of crime fiction magazines and would be prepared to compare the relevant sections of the index against their collections.

2. There are still a number of small gaps in earlier magazines (see here for a full list), but we would particularly love to hear from anyone who has any copies of a handful of US magazines for which there are significant gaps:
   • Mystery Buff
   • Over My Dead Body!
   • Red Herring Mystery Magazine
   • Scientific Detective (Annual) (not the same as Scientific Detective Monthly)
   • True Gang Life

3. Although the index contains many hundred issues of magazines published outside the US, the coverage of these is still woefully incomplete and we would love to hear from anybody who has crime magazines published in the UK (particularly reprint editions of US pulps), Australia, Canada, South Africa or New Zealand (or, indeed, any other country publishing crime magazines in the English language).

A list of all the magazines that are included in the index can be found here while a detailed list of the magazines and issues for which contents information is still needed can be found here.

If you think you can help with any of the above, or would just like more detail on the project, then please – all contributions are welcome, no matter how small! Even though the index has now been published, there will (hopefully) be new editions every year or so which will include new and corrected information.