True Crime, True North

Typically, people consider the pulps a quintessentially American art form. But Canada developed its own pulp magazine industry and Canadian publishers turned out scores of magazines during the Second World War. Canadian pulp producers mimicked (and regularly stole) American material, but they also published stories about Canadian criminals and their captors. While some cases featured big-city crooks most Canadian stories featured criminals who committed their dastardly deeds in the wide-open spaces of the prairie and tundra and the sinister shadows of the western mountains. North of the forty-ninth parallel, the gumshoes were more likely to wear snowshoes.