For the first time, Race Williams encounters the mysterious masked Red Peril in the biggest case of his hard-boiled career thus far. Story #3 in the Race Williams series. Carroll John Daly (1889–1958) was the creator of the first hard-boiled private eye story, predating Dashiell Hammett's first Continental Op story by several months. Daly's classic character, Race Williams, was one of the most popular fiction characters of the pulps, and the direct inspiration for Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer.