In the 1960s, Holloway House was looking to bring black fiction to the mainstream. Those who contributed included the slick ex-pimp Iceberg Slim, Donald Goines with his tales of brutal, bloody violence, and the enigmatic Roosevelt Mallory.
Not much is known about Roosevelt Mallory. A black writer who came up in the days before the net, finding information on him has been incredibly difficult.
What we do know, however, is his creation.
Radcliff. The playboy hitman who flew in private jets, dressed in fine tailored suits, and had little regard for human life.
The Vet Without A Conscience
It is a common trope amongst pulp fiction heroes for them to be ex-military. And in the 1970s, most PIs, renegade heroes, and stone cold hitmen were Vietnam vets.
(So much so, in fact, that I made the vigilante hero of my own 70s-set crime fiction series a Vietnam vet who served in the special forces during the war…)
Radcliff, Roosevelt Mallory’s own contribution to pulp fiction lore, was no exception. But while Remo Williams or Robert Sand were vigilantes who were largely fighting on the side of righteousness, Radcliff was not.
On the contrary, Mallory’s character is out for himself. He’s amoral, looking at people as just another prospective client or target, and his ultimate pursuit in life is the finer things.
He wants bread. Lots of it.
A real cool cat that swaggers about in only the finest tailored suits and rose-tinted, gold-rimmed shades, he doesn’t care about politics, “his people”, or the political struggles of the time.
Where Iceberg Slim’s heroes were products of a broken system, seen fighting the Man and society every step of the way, it could be argued that Radcliff sees himself as part of the system.
He’s using his own particular talents to make bank, which gives him a swanky pad in the Satan Cruz Mountains and allows him to fly everywhere by Lear jet. In-between jobs for the mob, he still finds time to romance beautiful women, much like James Bond.
While other black pulp fiction heroes dealt with black issues happening to black characters, Roosevelt Mallory’s hero just happens to be a black man.
Radcliff is a part of the rich elite, rather than someone set apart from it. A man with enough money to do what he wants, when he wants. He’s not struggling to survive on the mean streets or to get out of the pimp life or carve a niche for himself among his white counterparts.
In the book San Francisco Vendetta, when Radcliff meets his activist friend Barry, a man who thinks that violence against those in power is a way to change a corrupt system, writer Mallory makes it clear that his anti-hero doesn’t want any of that.
He kills because he can. Because he’s good at it. And because it makes him lots of money.
This makes the Radcliff novels interesting. Their central character isn’t a cat that we like, but he’s one that has a personality that we can easily understand. One that many a gangster rap song has as its protagonist.
Radcliff’s adventures have him going from working for the mob to taking it on in an increasingly outrageous series of globe-trotting adventures. There are shootouts, set ups involving lookalikes, killings, and plenty of action. They also maintain continuity, something Roosevelt himself was keen on doing.
According to an article published in the March 1974 issue of Measure, the writer saw an unnamed Blaxploitation film in theatres and took umbrage with its plot.
“There were all these tough things going on—but no continuity. Bad Writing! I knew I could write a believable script, so on evenings and weekends I dashed off the first draft of Harlem Hit. I also took a course in how to sell a script, which led me to my publisher. He liked the story, but asked me to rewrite the ending so that Radcliff survived. That way we could develop a Radcliff series,” he is quoted as saying.
In comparison to his contemporaries, Roosevelt Mallory’s pulp fiction books tone down the sex and violence so much that most readers would be surprised to learn that they were published by the same publisher that put out Pimp (Iceberg Slim)and Whoreson (Donald Goines).
Unfortunately, this means that while the books are fun, they can feel as if they’re lacking flavour or any kind of real, social impact. Which may be a part of the reason that Mallory’s work isn’t as well remembered as any of the other pulp fiction writers he was published alongside.
It doesn’t help that his books are incredibly hard to find these days.
You’re going to have go sifting through secondhand bookstores or eBay listings to collect them, and I can’t seem to find them being republished by anyone.
If you know any publishers, maybe it’s time to get in touch with them?
The Enigmatic, Obscure Pulp Fiction Writer, Roosevelt “Rosey” Mallory
Roosevelt Mallory himself is an enigma.
Finding information on the man is difficult, because it doesn’t seem to exist. Apart from the one profile in Measure, which was an internal publication for Hewlett Packard, there isn’t much talk about him anywhere.
According to said profile, in stark contrast to his pulp fiction alter-ego Radcliff, Mallory was a “very nice guy” who had taken up a job at HP’s Data Systems training department as a TV-director.
He didn’t get there easy, either.
Born on an Alabama farm to a poor family, Mallory would go on to witness the violent, hardscrabble life of people in a Birmingham ghetto. This would convince him to work hard at school, where he became a top student and respected athlete, before he dropped out and joined the army.
He would then go on to join the Coast Guard, where he became a computer tech and electronics instructor. When he was discharged, he continued to learn about computers before joining Hewlett Packard in 1966 as the company’s first “professional computer instructor”.
At the time of the profile, 50,000 copies of Radcliff’s first pulp fiction adventure had been sold, and the other three were on the way.
Roosevelt Mallory seemed to be living alright off the earnings from his pulp fiction writing, enjoying tailored clothes and fine wines, while also making time to fish, golf, and ski.
(Although, taking into account Holloway House’s creative accounting, one wonders how much better off he could have been…)
The artist responsible for the incredible covers of the Radcliff novels, Monte Rogers, has said that Mallory was a “nice guy” who was “very soft spoken”. Rogers used the writer himself as the image for Radcliff.
Roosevelt “Posey” Mallory died in July, 2007, at the age of 66. His obituary lists a large family, so we can hope that he had a great life, even if he only wrote four books.
A Pulp Fiction Writer Worth Remembering
All art is worth remembering, whether it is good or bad. And Roosevelt Mallory’s pulp fiction Radcliff novels are definitely not bad art.
They’re fun reads. Full of adventure, with a strong central character. A product of their time, perhaps, but no less entertaining for it.
They are also the only thing we readers have of Roosevelt “Rosey” Mallory. Pulp fiction writer. Star school athlete. And superstar computer tech.
If You Enjoyed This…
Then tune in next week at the same time when I look at a writer known for the evocatively titled The Black Gestapo.
Just go ahead and stick around to join the wild world of pulp fiction.
And be sure to check out this incredible article, which helped me track down the HP profile on Roosevelt Mallory.
See you cool cats next week.
(You’re only a cool cat if you subscribe, by the way. If you don’t, then you’re just cool…)
