Our Characters:
Davis Morgan. Born about 1908. Left his parents' Idaho farm for the city where he became employed by a politician until 1929. He does not discuss that part of his life, but he is known to have been involved in rum running during Prohibition. Reformed and became a detective. First appeared in Series Three. Lives with Neda, daughter Rosa, sister Talitha and dog Buster at the Lerchenzeiler Apartments, with office at the Tirebiter Building.
Davis often takes cases that turn out not to bring in a fee, something
of a sore point with Neda.
We know he was still living in 2008, spending the winters in Costa Rica.
ONE NIGHT IN AUGUST OF 1937, TYPICALLY HARD-BOILED PRIVATE EYE DAVIS MORGAN WAS TAILING A CLIENT HE SUSPECTED WAS A WRONG GEE—A CIRCUS STRONGMAN. HE WASN’T THE ONLY ONE. A VERY SHORT WOMAN FELL IN LINE, AND PRETTY SOON WHAT WAS MEANT TO BE A MINOR CHARACTER WAS THE READERS’ FAVOURITE.
IT WASN’T MUCH LONGER BEFORE NEDA BECAME DAVIS’S WIFE AND FELLOW DETECTIVE. DAVIS ALSO MARRIED INTO THE DIMITROV FAMILY—MATRIARCH RAYNA AND HER 14 (?) CHILDREN.
NEDA AND DAVIS APPEAR IN THE SERIES “DARK CITY STORIES.” THEY ARE USUALLY IN THE MORE LIGHT-HEARTED ADVENTURES, WHILE THE DOZENS OF OTHER REGULAR CHARACTERS CARRY THE LOAD IN THE OTHERS. DARK CITY STORIES TAKE PLACE 73 YEARS AGO, BUT SOME OF NEDA’S HAVE TAKEN PLACE IN THE 1920'S, 1930'S AND 2014. AT THIS WRITING SHE IS 109 YEARS OLD, AND STILL TRIPPING OVER BODIES.
Louise M. Soares Brown. Born in Hawaii, of Portuguese and Polynesian descent, in 1904. Her father is Mateus Soares. She was married to and abandoned by Alden Brown at an early age. They had a daughter who died as an infant. Former mistress of political fixer George Eiler, who tried
to have her killed and was himself killed by Miles Cole. (People have
tried to kill her at least four times.) She is moderately well off,
having inherited property from Miles and her long-lost husband
Alden. Acerbic, but fond of Neda. Semi-friendly with Charity. She lives
at the Camille Apartments. In one of the longest story lines, Louise
had cosmetic surgery while at the same time another woman
was, unknown to her, was having surgery to look like
her and take over her identity.
Woodrow Sasaki, DDS, is a third generation American
and a guy who will take a drink between patients.
He has an office over a Japanese restaurant and
has sublet part of it to Jake Winter and then
to Pieter Vansant. When the series ended he
and his wife were in a concentration camp.
Ayaka Murata Vansant. She is the receptionist/secretary for Dr. Sasaki and
his tenants. We don't know a lot about her life, but she emigrated
from Japan to the U.S. at an early age as a picture bride. For some
reason the marriage did not last long, and she found work as
a servant in the home of Dr. Sasaki's parents. Later she went
to work in his office and, in 1940, married Pieter Vansant.
She was interned in 1942.
Pieter Vansant appeared first as an unnamed cop. Born in 1890, he spend his whole worklife as a cop before retiring in 1938. He decided to become a pulp writer and took an office in room 221B, 1668 Post St., formerly occupied by Jake Winter. He and Miss Murata were married in September, 1940. He went with Ayaka when she was interned in 1942.
Pieter's father was born in the Dutch East Indies, and he still has relatives there. He was married to Helen when Charity was born in 1912. They were divorced some time after 1915.
Charity Vansant. The daughter of Pieter and Helen, she was born in 1912.
She is a reporter with the Pacific Argus, and extremely career oriented--
which resulted in the break up of her engagement to lawyer Nick Wolfe.
She gets along with Louise, but is generally indifferent to other people.
At the end of the series she was planning to get married and move to
Minnesota to run her new husband's newspaper.
Larger than life--and most of the other characters--Rayna Dimitrova was born in the 1890's in Bulgaria. She started having children at 14, beginning with Stephan Vitinov (1906-1937), whose father was a Bulgarian. Then there was Miroslav, who may have been a stepson. He was followed by the triplets, (1908) Neda and Ivanka Kasarova and Boris Kasarov. Their father, a Turk, fled Bulgaria when the wars with Turkey started in 1912. Their brother Jaromir was born in 1910. Albena Vasilescu, who lives in the same city as Neda, was fathered by "a Romanian who was invading us" during the Balkan Wars. After the Great War, Rayna relocated to Budapest (probably because her cousin Georgi was a Communist leader in Bulgaria) and married Captain Antel Szabo, father of the twins Milena and Pepa Szabo (1922). There were five (?) later children including the "junior triplets" from her 1930's marriage to Neda's father. So far they have not figured into any of the stories. She and Neda frequently tell how the entire family lived in a single room over a sauerkraut factory, a pig sty, a tripe shop and other unpleasant places. Of course they were really at least middle-class.
During the course of Dark City Stories, she has visited Neda in the U.S., hung out in Egypt with King Farouk, and returned to the U.S. working for a Balkan anti-fascist group. What else she has been up to is anyone's guess.
Milena and "Pepa" (real name Margo) are the twin daughters of Rayna and Captain Antel Szabo.
They first appeared in "Murder in Manzanillo" as agents of (we think) the British government. In that story, Pepa showed her ability to charm men, while Milena prefers
to shoot them. The turned up again in Havana. Both times Ray Tilley was involved.
Pepa encountered Ray again in Uruguay.
Ray Tilley is a Stanford graduate and a swing musician, but he makes his living as a freelance insurance investigator. A somewhat shady character, he doesn't balk at making deals with criminals to recover stolen loot.
He is supporting a woman who lives in a nursing home, but we do not know exactly who she is.
He has been sapped, seduced, shot and drunk under the table by Pepa Szabo, whom he knows as Sophie, in Panama, Costa Rica, Cuba and Uruguay. Naturally after all that, she is the love of his life.
Neda may be the readers’ favourite, but Joey Benet--
"Snowy Joey" to his detractors--is the most
fun to write. Everybody calls him a “little rat,”
and maybe he is. Leaving Alabama as a youth,
he made a life as a very petty criminal,
eventually ending up on the Pacific coast.
Neda may be the readers’ favourite, but Joey Benet--
"Snowy Joey" to his detractors--is the most
fun to write. Everybody calls him a “little rat,”
and maybe he is. Leaving Alabama as a youth,
he made a life as a very petty criminal,
eventually ending up on the Pacific coast.
His antagonist is Inspector Best, a guy who
might just lighten a victim’s wallet before
calling for body removal. Both Joey and
Best owe a lot to the characters in the old
radio series “Pat Novak, For Hire,” and
“Johnny Madero, Pier 23.”