Cleve F. Adams. Up Jumped the Devil (1943) 242 pp.
Los Angeles private eye Rex McBride is in San Francisco on the trail of a stolen diamond necklace. Shortly after checking in to his Market Street hotel, McBride returns to his room to find a dead man in residence. The cops think he knows more about the killing than he is letting on and McBride tangles with ex-cons, mob thugs, gamblers, high society dames, government agents, and Nazi spies before uncovering the killer (and recovering the necklace). Along the way, he reveals a distinct love-hate relationship with the city of San Francisco: “McBride got to his feet … ‘Listen, you bastard! I had the misfortune to be born in Los Angeles, but I’m getting tired of paying for it every time I land in this lousy town of yours. Even your cab drivers take it as a personal affront if I inadvertently say Frisco instead of San Francisco. You are so smug you still think this is the only city on the Pacific Coast, and you’re too dumb to look in the census books and find out different … And, since you ask me, I will tell you the God’s truth about your conventions, your bridges and your town. I don’t like them.’ (p. 17)”; “McBride looked out at the slowly darkening sky. Lights were beginning to come on all around the bay; over in Oakland and Alameda across the Bay Bridge; over in Sausalito across the Golden Gate. Out in the middle, Alcatraz Island was a sour note, as gloomy and forbidding as ever. The rest of it was pretty beautiful, and McBride was a little regretful of some of the unpleasant things he had said about San Francisco. (p. 93)”
Baird & Greenwood 13; Herron; Hubin