Hal Moore
The documented author credit
Hal Moore is the byline printed above Just a Bit Too Fast in the March 16, 1929 issue of Argosy All-Story Weekly. The magazine's contents identify it as a complete short story and advertise quick thinking and a gunfight as its attractions. That contemporary record establishes the literary credit without supplying a secure personal biography. The name should not be merged with the later American general and military memoirist simply because they share a familiar form of address. Read in its magazine context, the story offers a compact opportunity to consider speed as both an advantage and a potential source of error.
A policeman who can narrate his embarrassment
Just a Bit Too Fast gives its action to a first-person police narrator whose voice makes room for professional vanity and comic discomfort. The telling therefore does more than record an encounter with a criminal. It invites readers to compare the authority an officer is supposed to possess with the much less dignified experience of being hurried into an uncertain situation.
Just a Bit Too Fast
The narrator, a local police officer, has been assigned to accompany visiting Detective Halloran in pursuit of a notorious bank robber. Their information seems promising, but an apparently ordinary car outside a branch bank brings them into an encounter for which confidence is no preparation. Thought-and-a-half Morgan uses disguise, timing, and the officers' own assumptions to seize control of the room. What follows is a rapid contest over who can anticipate the next move before appearances change again. Hal Moore tells the adventure in a slangy first-person voice that notices professional vanity as readily as immediate danger. The story's humor depends on the distance between the heroic account a policeman might prefer and the awkward, hurried experience of trying to keep up. English story from Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 16, 1929.
Keep pace without accepting every boast
Notice when the narrator pauses to characterize a colleague or explain a mistaken expectation. Those remarks influence how the reader receives the next burst of action. The robber’s nickname makes anticipation itself a subject: being quick may mean acting promptly, but it can also mean having already considered what someone else will assume. Distinguish the narrator’s retrospective wit from the limited knowledge available to him during the encounter.