As the writer of the introduction to Stark House Press’s new edition of Whit Masterson’s Badge of Evil, I’m pleased to help bring fresh attention to a landmark of noir fiction. Masterson—the pen name for the team of Robert Wade and H. William Miller—crafted a tight, morally tangled police procedural that remains as relevant today as when it first appeared in 1956.
Set in a sun-blasted California border town, Badge of Evil follows Assistant DA Mitch Holt as he’s drawn into a web of corruption, planted evidence, and small-town intrigue after the murder of a local businessman. The novel’s pace is relentless, the characters sharply drawn, and the sense of moral ambiguity is ever-present. Wade and Miller’s take on institutional rot and blurred lines between law and criminality still cuts close to the bone.
Of course, the book’s afterlife is nearly as famous as the novel itself. Within months of publication, Universal-International snapped up the rights, and Orson Welles transformed the material into the iconic Touch of Evil. Welles’s adaptation is no straightforward translation; it’s a feverish, nightmarish spin on Masterson’s original, with new characters, a fictionalized setting, and a menacing portrait of authority gone astray. The result is one of cinema’s most influential noirs—a film whose shadowy visuals and swirling camera work have inspired generations.
In my introduction, “Beneath the Tainted Badge,” I explore the origins of Badge of Evil, the Wade-Miller partnership, and the strange journey from page to screen. I look at how the novel became the launchpad for Welles’s vision, and why both book and film continue to speak to anxieties about justice, power, and the American border. I also consider the critical reception, the film’s tumultuous release and eventual restoration, and what it means for a crime novel to be both a classic in its own right and the seed of a cinematic milestone.
For readers drawn to the crossroads of mid-century crime fiction and classic Hollywood noir, Stark House Press’s new edition is a welcome rediscovery. Badge of Evil stands tall as a gripping procedural and the inspiration for one of the greatest experiments in film noir.
The book, complete with my introduction, is available now from Stark House Press and major online retailers. Whether you’re a noir devotee or new to Masterson and Welles, this edition offers a chance to revisit—or discover for the first time—a cornerstone of the genre.
You can purchase the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or directly from the publisher.