Fredric Brown... California writer?

In case you missed it, Ed Gorman shared some cool news in the comment section from Monday's "Opening Shots" post: there's going to be a new, limited edition of Fredric Brown's carnival noir, Madball. I own a Gold Medal edition of Madball, but I'm afraid to read it, because one false move and the thing will crumble.

This news sent me back to Jack Seabrook's Martians and Misplaced Clues, which is an excellent survey of Brown's work. I was suprised to learn that Brown wrote Madball in Venice, California, along with another mystery novel, The Deep End, and the novelette version of "The Wench is Dead." (A year later, he'd write one of my favorite crime novels, His Name Was Death, in El Segundo.)

For some reason, I always considered Brown a Milwaukee/Chicago/Taos/Tucson writer (with some early years in NYC). I totally forgot about the two and a half years he spent in California. The Venice thing was interesting to me, because I've spent quite a bit of time there over the summer, and even went as far as walking around the neighborhood, looking for Ray Bradbury's old address (no luck; the house was long gone).

Does anybody out there know where Brown lived while in Venice? (Or El Segundo, for that matter?) According to Seabrook, Brown and his wife Beth moved to a small house in Venice "with a goldfish pond and a large yard" in January 1952. They eventually left Southern California and moved to Tucson, Arizona in June 1954 because of Brown's severe allergies. I'd love to track down either place the next time I'm out there.

And in honor of Brown, I'm going to post a bunch of my favorite Brown opening lines for this Monday's "Opening Shots." Check back then.