Scribners in 1926, but it proved too far ahead of popular interest in hard-boiled crime novels. McIntyre's greatest success and fame came from his 1936 novel, Steps Going Down, which was selected as the United States entry in the All-Nations Prize Novel Competition. Although it did not win the full competition, its selection won McIntyre an award of $4,000 in cash and gained prominent notices for the book in most of the major literary magazines. Warner Brothers, which sponsored the competition, considered it for filming but declined it in the end. Steps Going Down tells the story of two men trying to evade the police and others as they move through a series of cheap lodgings in the poorer neighborhoods around Philadelphia, encountering a variety of crooks, prostitutes, addicts, zealots, and other characters. Carl van Doren wrote of the book, "There is hardly a page without an act, thought, or speech which is as natural as experience." McIntyre tried to build upon this success with his 1937 novel, Ferment, about union corruption, and Signing Off, his 1938 novel about Italian-American gangsters, but he had to fall back upon writing cheap fiction for newspapers and magazines. He placed fewer and fewer pieces as the 1940s wore on, and he was forced to sell off his collection of dime novels and rely upon the charity of his friends in the last years before his death. Bibliography Mystery novels In The Dead of Night (1908) Ashton-Kirk Investigator (1910) Ashton-Kirk Secret Agent (1912) Ashton-Kirk Special Detective (1914) Ashton-Kirk Criminologist (1918) The Museum Murder (1929) Mooney Moves Around (1939) Death at Dakar (1942) Ninth Floor: Middle City Tower. A Jerry Mooney Story (1943) Death Strikes at Heron House. A Jerry Mooney Story (1944) Plays Hearts of Men: A Drama in Four Acts (1899) In the Toils: A Melodrama in Five Acts (1905) The Bowery Night School: A Vaudeville Sketch (1906) The Swell Cracksman, a Vaudeville Sketch (1906) One Girl in a Thousand (1910) The Dime Lunch: A Vaudeville Sketch ... (1911) "Genius and the Crowd;": A Comedy in Three Acts (1920) Sketches, Skits and Stunts (1922) Juvenile fiction The Young Continentals at Monmouth (1912) In Kentucky with Daniel Boone (1913) Mainstream novels The Ragged Edge: A Tale of Ward Life & Politics (1902) With Fighting Jack Barry (1907) The Street Singer (1908) Blowing Weather (1923) Young Man's Fancy, An Easter Fantasy (1925) Shot Towers (1926)