Theodore Roscoe's Murder on the Way!

Murder on the Way! is a 1935 novel by Theodore Roscoe. It was originally published in the pulp magazine Argosy under the title A Grave Must Be Deep. I can’t tell you which genre it belongs to because I have no idea. And I don’t care. All I know is that it’s insane amounts of fun.

Theodore Roscoe (1906-1992) was one of the grandmasters of pulp fiction and writer some of the finest stories ever written about adventure in exotic settings. He spent some time in Haiti in the early 1930s which gives this novel an air of authenticity.

Patricia Dale (known to her friends as Pete) is more or less engaged to a more or less penniless artist in New York. An artist by the name of Cartershall. Pete always refers to him as Cart. Then a strange little Haitian lawyer shows up. He announces that he is Maître Pierre Valentin Bonjean Tousellines, Comte de Limonade. Pete is in line for an inheritance from her Uncle Eli. He has left a huge fortune and a vast estate in Haiti. All Pete has to do is go to Haiti. So she and Cart fly to Haiti.

It’s all a bit of a culture shock but the reading of the will is a bigger shock. The will is eccentric to say the least (and the method of burial prescribed for Uncle Eli is very bizarre). The seven heirs have been assembled and they’re the most disreputable bunch of cut-throats one could imagine. Several of them are murderers. The entire estate goes to one of them but he must remain at the estate for 24 hours after the reading of the will. If he fails to do that the inheritance passes to the next in line, with the same condition attached. Pete is the last in line. Given that the other six are villainous scoundrels there’s obviously the potential here for murder. Multiple murder.

It’s the kind of setup you might find in an English country house murder mystery and such books were hugely popular in 1935. The seven heirs plus Uncle Eli’s doctor and Tousellines are completely cut off at the estate. The weather has made the roads impassable. Someone has cut the telephone wires. This is the kind of setup you’d find in an Old Dark House movie, and these popular at the time as well.

For most of the book it seems like it’s going to be a story along such lines, albeit in a very exotic setting. And written in a flamboyant outrageous pulpy style and with rollercoaster pacing.

The locals follow the Voodoo religion. Roscoe isn’t making any of this stuff up. Voodoo was arguably the dominant religion in Haiti at the time.

There are a couple of extra complications. Uncle Eli may have been murdered. His doctor thinks he may have been murdered by a zombie. And there is a bandit uprising which could spread to the whole country and the rebels claim to be led by the King of the Zombies. The King of the Zombies being - Uncle Eli!

The expected mayhem occurs. There are lots of murders. All the murders take place in bizarre circumstances.

The local police chief, Lieutenant Narcisse, is perplexed. He suspects everybody. Which is not entirely unreasonable.

Cart and Pete will meet the King of the Zombies. This is one of those tales in which you cannot be quite sure if there’s something supernatural going on or not. Whether that really is the case is obviously something I’m not going to tell you.

This is a murder mystery and a suspense thriller and a horror story and an occult thriller. There’s lots of craziness. There are secret passageways and all the fun things you get in Old Dark House stories.

Murder on the Way! is just wildly entertaining. Highly recommended. And it's in print!

Roscoe revisited some of these themes a couple of years later in the equally superb Z Is For Zombie, also set in Haiti. And if you enjoy jungle adventure tales check out Blood Ritual.

Theodore Roscoe’s Tarantula Tower

Tarantula Tower is the fourth collection of Theodore Roscoe’s stories of the adventures of curio hunter Peter Scarlet and his friend the naturalist Bradshaw. It’s been issued by Steeger Books in their Argosy Library series. The stories were originally published in various pulp magazines between 1933 and 1935.

The stories take place in a variety of exotic settings - central Asia, the Red Sea coast of Africa, the Dutch East Indies (as Indonesia then was) and British India. These are tales of adventure with touches of horror and weird fiction, although without any supernatural elements. There are monsters, but they are human monsters.

The stories generally have a nasty but clever sting in the tail and an atmosphere of the weird and the mysterious.

Although referred to as the Scarlet and Bradshaw stories the two men only occasionally appear in the same story.

Tarantula Tower appeared in Argosy in September 1933. Bradshaw explains where his horror of spiders originated. It started in central Asia, with a broken-down Russian officer who claimed to know where the Russian Crown Jewels had been concealed. They were hidden in a tower on a tiny island in the middle of a lake. He will take Bradshaw there. All he wants in return is a modest cash payment. The jewels are of no use to the Russian officer. He is being trailed by Bolshevik spies who would not let him get away with them.

The island is there. So is the tower. So are the jewels. But it’s not that simple as devious plot twists start to kick in. There’s something very strange, in fact quite impossible, about that tower.

Plenty of menace and creepiness in this clever story in which the mystery is never quite resolved.

Octopus appeared in the January-February 1934 issue of Action Stories. Peter Scarlet is in Somaliland. He doesn’t want to be there but he received a letter from an old buddy. Two old buddies were searching for treasure. Peter Scarlet is experienced enough not to get himself involved in such follies but when a friend needs urgent help that’s a different matter.

Scarlet will encounter the Green God of Sheba which is no god but it’s pretty formidable and dangerous just the same. It seems like the little American curio hunter might meet his doom in a sinister pool at the bottom of a ravine, a pool concealing some unknown horror. Plenty of action and excitement in this story.

Blood of the Beast was published in the March-April issue of Action Stories. Peter Scarlet faces a deadly stand-off with a madman bent on revenge. And the madman possesses the ultimate weapon- a bloodthirsty murderous pet orang-utan! A solid tense little story.

The Evil Eye appeared in Action Stories in June 1934. The setting is the Moluccas in the Dutch East Indies. A Prussian officer who is also a racketeer and a killer served a long prison sentence (which he thoroughly deserved) and died soon after his release.

Three years after his death the five men responsible for sending him to prison receive letters from the dead man. They are told that if they go to his castle and look his portrait straight in the eye they will find the key to a vast treasure.

Peter Scarlet tracks down the Dutchman, Schneider, who painted that portrait. By this time Scarlet is the only one of the five left - the others have all mysteriously disappeared. Scarlet and the Dutchman set out to solve the mystery, and a nasty little mystery it it. A fine story.

Port of Missing Heads was published in Argosy in 1935. The setting is Bhutan. It’s the most outrageous story in this collection. Bradshaw was acting as guide to a rich American on a hunting expedition. The American wanders off from the camp and is never seen again - until his head turns up in the river near the local police outpost. It’s the latest in a long series of decapitated heads found in the river. Apart from the obvious mystery surrounding these men’s fates there seems to be no rational way the heads could have ended up in that particular river.

It has something to do with the popular local superstition regarding the Little Dog. The Little Dog is actually a giant dog, with a tongue of diamond. Many have sought to find Little Dog. It has always ended badly for the seekers. Bradshaw has no choice - he must find the golden dog to clear himself of suspicion of murder. A nicely strange and creepy story.

Final Thoughts

Roscoe was one of the greats of pulp fiction, a solid prose stylist with a deliciously twisted imagination. This collection is huge amounts of fun. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed several of the Scarlet and Bradshaw collections - The Tower of Death, The Ruby of Suratan Singh and Blood Ritual - as well as the miscellaneous story collection The Emperor of Doom and his excellent mystery/adventure/horror novel Z Is For Zombie.

Theodore Roscoe's The Tower of Death

The Tower of Death is a collection of stories by Theodore Roscoe published in the pulp magazine Argosy in 1932. These are tales of the American curio hunter Peter Scarlet and the naturalist Bradshaw. They are tales of adventure in wild and exotic places, adventures laced with considerable dashes of horror.

Theodore Roscoe was one of the great pulp writers, best known perhaps for his Foreign Legion stories but everything he wrote is worth reading.

Bradshaw narrates the first story, The Last Battle. It concerns the final battle of the First World War, a very strange battle indeed fought on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. The story begins in 1920, when an expedition sets out to collect specimens for museums. They encounter a small British outpost, entirely abandoned. This is strange and disturbing. They decide to strike out for a nearby Belgian outpost and it’s abandoned as well. Now things are getting really disturbing but the strangeness has only just begun. A fine story.

In Yankee Beware! Peter Scarlet is on a mouldering steamer on the Caspian Sea, skippered by a giant crazy scoundrel of a Russian named Rachmaninoff. The steamer is carrying a Moslem holy man and a group of Moslem pilgrims. The holy man tells a story Scarlet has heard many times before, the tale of Genghis Khan’s ghost and his fabulous lost emerald crown. Many have set out to find that emerald crown. None have returned. But thanks to some strange twists of fate the holy man promises Peter Scarlet that he will see Genghis Khan’s emerald crown.

As a result of the holy man’s promise Peter Scarlet will certainly see strange sights and be plunged into a wild and murderous adventure. A superb rousing tale of adventure, madness and horror.

It’s hard to imagine a greater horror than the one that faces Peter Scarlet in Tower of Death. The tower in question is a Parsee burial tower. The dead are exposed at the top of the tower where they are feasted upon by vultures.

It all starts in Turkestan when Scarlet wants to buy some pearls from a trader named Maqboul, a trader with an evil reputation. Maqboul and his henchman, the hunchback Hamid, have many deaths on their consciences, or they would if they had consciences. There is a suspicion that Maqboul was responsible for the disappearance of a British policeman named Smith. Scarlet and Smith had been very old friends and Scarlet would very much like to bring Smith’s killer to justice.

What Scarlet doesn’t know is that Maqboul has already marked him down for death. Maqboul intends to make no mistake. A reasonable enough plot but it’s the atmosphere of terror that makes it a very good story.

In The Killer of Kelantan Bradshaw the naturalist is in Malaya trying to capture a white elephant. A huge bad-tempered bull white elephant. After capturing him he will have to get the beast on board the ship. Dealing with the elephant is bad enough but Bradshaw soon has other more urgent things to worry about. This story has some terror but a slightly whimsical feel as well. It has the feel of a tall tale told to newcomers by old jungle hands. To some limited extent all of the Scarlet and Bradshaw stories have that feel but it’s much more overt in this tale. It’s a lot of fun.

The Emperor of Doom has shipboard setting. In Sumatra Peter Scarlet had received a threatening letter and had a shot fired at him, apparently an attempt to frighten him into giving up a jewel he had purchased. But Peter Scarlet doesn’t frighten easily, the jewel has been safely deposited in a bank and now he’s on a ship at sea and he feels he is quite safe. And he has his old friend Schneider, a fat Dutch planter, with him.

The voyage becomes a whirlwind of action, intrigue and murder. The murder was carried out by a black-bearded Moslem priest who promptly vanishes. The action just doesn’t let up in this story and Peter Scarlet finds himself in a very awkward situation. He has a puzzle to solve and if he doesn’t solve it his life won’t be worth two cents.

Roscoe uses the shipboard setting with great skill. A fast-paced clever and very exciting story.

The Scarlet and Bradshaw stories are absolute must-reads for all adventure fiction and pulp fiction fans. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Roscoe’s wonderful zombie mystery novel Z is For Zombie, his short story collection The Emperor of Doom as well as two earlier Scarlet and Bradshaw collections, Blood Ritual and The Ruby of Suratan Singh. I warmly recommend all these books.

Theodore Roscoe's Z Is For Zombie

Theodore Roscoe (1906-1992) was an American pulp writer and also a distinguished naval historian. Like most pulp writers he worked in a number of different genres. If you wanted to make a decent living as a pulp writer it was desirable to be able to sell stories to as many different pulp magazines as possible which meant you pretty much had to write in multiple genres. Roscoe wrote excellent adventure tales and dabbled in fantasy and horror and he also wrote murder mysteries. Z Is For Zombie, published in serial form in Argosy in 1937, spans at least three and possibly four different genres. It’s a blend of horror (with voodoo elements of course), adventure in the tropics, spy thriller and murder mystery. And the murder mystery involves an impossible crime.

The setting is Haiti (Roscoe had actually visited Haiti). Dr Jim Ranier is in a waterfront dive in a remote village in Haiti and he’s drunk. That’s not unusual. He spends a lot of time drunk. He had at one time been a very successful surgeon but he lost everything in the stock market crash and now he’s a ship doctor on a tramp steamer and when he’s not drunk he spends his time feeling sorry for himself. He had been married, until his wife broke the news to him that while she was delighted to be married to a rich successful surgeon she had no interest whatsoever in being married to a struggling small town doctor. So Ranier has some valid reasons to feel sorry for himself.

Ranier and a number of passengers from the steamer have gone ashore intending to drive along the coast (getting a look at the real Haiti) before picking up the ship again at Port-au-Prince.

Being drunk he gets into an argument with one of the passengers, a German named Haarman, and he gets slugged and thrown out into the street. He wanders back into the bar and finds himself a quiet corner in which to drink and brood. He notices that Haarman is awfully quiet now. Too quiet. In fact the guy seems dead. He’s not dead, but he’s dying. With a knife wound in the back. But that’s impossible. Nobody could have stabbed him. Someone would have seen it happen. And the knife is nowhere to be found.

Ranier is a drunk but he’s still a doctor and he has to try to save Haarman. There’s a small hospital nearby, run by a Dr Eberhardt. And now the weird fiction elements start to emerge. Dr Eberhardt is nowhere to be found. His laboratory has been wrecked. His nurse (and niece although we later discover she’s not really his niece), a German girl named Laïs Engles, is mystified. She reveals that Dr Eberhardt had been working on some very strange research, something to do with reanimating dead tissue. Maybe even reanimating dead people. And there are all those frogs. Hundreds of them. It’s all a bit strange. Things get even stranger when Haarman dies. It appears that after dying Haarman got up and left.

That’s not the end of the strangeness. Not by a long chalk. Laïs Engles recognises Haarman. The last time she saw him was fourteen years ago and he was dead at the time. Now he’s dead again. Maybe.

Laïs has a very strange story to tell. A story of wartime intrigue and top-secret missions and journeys through the Amazon jungles and shipwreck. The poor girl is clearly mad. But Ranier doesn’t think she is mad. He’s convinced she’s telling the truth. Or at least that she thinks she’s telling the truth. Some of it may actually be true. More worrying is the possibility that all of her story is true.

The book now becomes a crazy journey from graveyard to graveyard, with corpses that apparently not only get up and walk, they undertake cross-country travels.

To add to the fun the locals are convinced that they’re dealing with evil voodoo witch doctors and they know how to deal with people like that - you hunt them down and kill them or you burn them out if they’re hiding. There are also people running around with guns taking pot shots at each other and soon there are more corpses. These ones really are dead. Probably.

The really fun part is that because this is a story from an adventure pulp rather than a detective pulp the reader can’t be entirely sure there’s going to be a rational explanation, and indeed it’s hard to imagine a rational explanation that would make sense.

Roscoe knows what he’s doing. He brings all the crazy plot strands together and gives us a wholly satisfying resolution although naturally I’m not going to give you any hints about that resolution. Whether there’s any actual supernatural element involved is something else I’m not going to tell you. There is however a solid murder mystery plot here.

The impossible crime angle might disappoint those who love amazingly complex impossible crimes but this one at least has the virtue of being totally plausible.

The novel was originally serialised in six parts so at times Roscoe gives us brief recaps of previous events. The novel does not appear to have been edited in any way, which is a very good thing. Once you succumb to the temptation to do a bit of editing the danger is that you’ll start thinking your readers are over-sensitive children and you’ll start editing out all the politically incorrect stuff. Happily Steeger Books have reprinted Z Is For Zombie in all its politically incorrect glory.

You can enjoy this book as an outrageous but well-crafted murder mystery but it’s equally enjoyable as an adventure tale and a horror story. Whichever way you take it it’s superbly written (Roscoe’s prose is an absolute joy) and immensely entertaining. Very highly recommended.

I bought this book after reading the glowing review at Beneath the Stains of Time. There’s another fine review at The Invisible Event.

I’ve reviewed a couple of collections of Rocoe’s short stories - The Emperor of Doom and Blood Ritual. They’re both well worth a look.

Theodore Roscoe's The Ruby of Suratan Singh

The Ruby of Suratan Singh is a collection of adventure tales by the great pulp writer Theodore Roscoe. These stories were originally published in various pulp magazines such as Argosy, Far East Adventure Stories and Action Stories in 1929 and 1930. This is the second collection of stories featuring either the American curio hunter Peter Scarlet or the naturalist Bradshaw.

These are tales of adventure in the Mysterious East, in jungles and exotic seaports and anywhere that fortunes can be made without too much concern for ethics of any kind.

These stories are fairly outrageous. They’re really the kinds of tales you’d hear told in a bar and they might be true or they might be just tall tales. That’s what makes them so enjoyable. You just can’t be sure whether to believe them or not.

While these stories are described as the Scarlet and Bradshaw stories it should be pointed out that some feature Scarlet, some feature Bradshaw and some feature both men. In this particular collection Scarlet only appears once (although it’s a memorable appearance). It’s still quite reasonable to describe them as the Scarlet-Bradshaw stories. They all take place in the East at the same time period and they all have a similar feel, a feel of mysteries that may or may not have rational explanations.

Some of the stories are amusing, some are quite dark and macabre. They’re an enticing blending of adventure fiction and weird fiction with occasional dashes of science fiction and horror. Roscoe’s plotting was always pretty solid. He had a knack for giving his stories a nice little sting in the tail, and for giving his stories just the right touches of ambiguity.

Scarlet and Bradshaw are not mere pulp fiction tough guys. That’s not to say that they aren’t tough, you don’t survive in the jungle very long without a certain amount of grit, but there’s more to them. They’re genuinely interesting offbeat characters.

Roscoe was also very adept at creating an atmosphere of dread and subtle uneasiness.

Roscoe was one of the grand masters of pulp fiction and these stories are among his greatest achievements.

The Stories

Moon Up is a very strange story indeed, a jungle adventure set in India but with a hefty dash of science fiction. Reven Staffard is staying in the jungle bungalow belonging to the naturalist Bradshaw. Staffard is supposedly hunting tigers but he hasn’t seen any tigers and he’s getting fed up. Then a bizarre old man wanders out of the jungle. His name, he declares, is Dr Gulick Habighorst. He has come to India for the moonlight. Apparently the moonlight in India is particularly suited to his experiments. Dr Habighorst has been conducting research on lunar rays and claims to have made an amazing discovery. He has discovered a means of using rays of moonlight as a kind of death ray. With a special lens he can use moonlight to reduce any object to its component atoms. Dr Habighorst’s lunar rays are the most potent destructive force ever discovered.

Staffard assumes the man is insane. Until Dr Habighorst demonstrates his invention.

Dr Habighorst wants Staffard to finance his further researches.

The crazy old scientist’s demonstration is impressive but there are eyes in the night watching. The eyes belong to men who want that death ray.

A very fine story with a nice twist to it.

The Blue Cat of Buddha is a treasure hunt story. Bradshaw is shipwrecked. An American singer who failed to find success in Tin Pan Alley rescues him. The singer, Johnny Ash, has gone to the East to make his fortune in order to win the love of his girl back home. The singer also saves a frail old Buddhist monk. The monk has a strange tale to tell.

The legend of the blue cat of Buddha, a giant carved cat that guards the entrance to a cavern which is a fabulous treasure trove, had attracted many a fortune-hunter. Maybe some of those fortune-hunters found that cavern. None survived to tell of it. But the old monk claims to know the secret that can unlock that treasure.

Bradshaw thinks that seeking the treasure is a terrible idea. He knows the East. He knows the quest can lead only to madness and death. But Johnny Ash is determined and Bradshaw owes him his life so he has to tag along. There are others seeking the treasure, six dangerous desperate men. A thoroughly enjoyable tale.

The Little Gold Dove of Gojjam finds Bradshaw in Abyssinia, lost in a forbidden valley with a young Englishman named Tupper. Bradshaw saves an Abyssinian from a lion. The Abyssinian, curiously enough, speaks English. He learnt the language in New York. He returned to Africa in search of a legend - the legend of Noah’s Ark. And he tells Bradshaw and his companion a part of the legend they had never heard before - the legend of Noah’s gold. The dying Abyssinian even tells them where to find the Ark. It’s in a hidden lake.

It’s all nonsense of course but something persuades Bradshaw and Tupper to search for the hidden lake. What they find is impossibly strange. Perhaps there is a rational explanation. Perhaps it was all just a legend after all. Perhaps. Another delightfully offbeat tale of adventure.

Claws features American curio hunter Peter Scarlet. He’s in one of the roughest sleaziest bars in the East which is the last place his friends Bradshaw and Schneider expect to find him. And why does he have his gun with him? Why does he want to listen to the crummy piano player? It’s the past that has drawn Scarlet to this bar in Penang. A terrible event in the past has drawn three men to this bar. A good story.

In The Ruby of Suratan Singh Bradshaw tells how he found the ruby in question. During the Indian Mutiny a nabob named Suratan Singh had fled from the vengeance of the British, taking with him the most valuable jewel in his possession. Bradshaw encounters an old woman who claims not only to know where the ruby is, she claims to have been there when Suratan Singh fled.

The quest for the ruby almost costs Bradshaw his life. And at the end we get the kind of nice little twist that Roscoe tends to throw in, the kind of twist that makes Roscoe not just a fun pulp writer but a superior pulp writer.

The Phantom Buddha is a kind of Oriental ghost story. The Malays engaged in building a railroad are being whipped into a frenzy by rumours that the phantom of the Buddha is about to appear to them in a small valley deep in the jungle. The young engineer Carter is well and truly spooked but his older colleague McInerny insists that it’s all hokum. Bradshaw isn’t certain. It may be a hoax but he is inclined to think that rather strange things do happen in the East. It’s an enjoyable little tale on the theme that seeing is believing, sometimes. A neat little story.

Final Thoughts

Pulp fiction doesn’t come much better than this. Roscoe gives us fine prose style, subtle weirdness, exoticism and adventure. Incredibly entertaining and very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed an earlier collection of Roscoe's Scarlet and Bradshaw stories, the excellent Blood Ritual, and another fine Roscoe short story collection, The Emperor of Doom.

Theodore Roscoe's Blood Ritual

Blood Ritual is a collection of adventure tales by celebrated pulp writer Theodore Roscoe. These stories were originally published in various pulp magazines such as Action Stories and The Danger Trail between 1927 and 1929.

These tales feature either American curio hunter Peter Scarlet or the naturalist Bradshaw. These are stories of adventure in the Mysterious East, in jungles and exotic seaports and the deserts of Arabia and anywhere that fortunes can be made without too much concern for business ethics, or any other kind of ethics.

The stories are quite short and mostly they’re quite simple. They’re like campfire yarns but they always have one twist at the end and it’s usually a good one.

Theodore Roscoe (1906-1992) was an American naval historian and a prolific pulp writer.

In Jungle Joker Peter Scarlet finds his jungle bungalow taken over by a madman. He is subjected to a reign of terror. There seems to be no escape. Not only is this madman armed, he is accompanied by his pet Joker. Joker is a savage orang-utan. Any attempt to free himself of his tormentor would expose Scarlet to certain death at the hands of the enraged ape.

Framed is a bit more interesting. A murder takes place in a bar. Whether there were any actual eye-witnesses is uncertain, although there is certainly a witness who claims to have seen everything. His evidence is enough to send a young man to prison. Peter Scarlet was there, but doesn’t seem to have seen anything. There’s a twist of course, and it’s a moral twist.

Wolves of the Yellow Sea is great fun. It’s a tale of piracy and pigs. A junk with a crew of Malay cut-throats encounters even more bloodthirsty Arab pirates. The pirates are prepared for a desperate fight but they are not prepared for what is in store for them on this junk. A clever, amusing, exciting and witty little tale.

The Phantom Castle of Genghiz Khan concerns a legend of a castle that sank below the waters of a lake, but periodically (so the legend goes) the castle rises for a short while from the lake. To add some spice the legend also tells of a fortune in jewels concealed in the castle. Of course it’s only a legend. Or is it? This is one of those tales that seems like it must involve the supernatural but Roscoe comes up with a remarkably cunning non-supernatural explanation. It’s a tale that offers danger and riches to a man with both courage and greed and it has a nice twist to it. And it’s a wonderfully atmospheric story.

Blood Ritual is a tale of madness, of a man who has spent too much time alone and away from civilisation. And then there is the endless heat, and fever that can be avoided only by large doses of quinine and sometimes the doses are a little too large. If there happens to be a vicious two-handed battle-axe lying about the whole situation can get quite dangerous. Peter Scarlet had been in tight spots before but this time he fears his end has come. A nifty little story.

In Claws of the Night Peter Scarlet has made an extraordinary find in a cave on the shores of the Dead Sea. He has to make certain arrangements with the authorities and will be gone for a couple of days but that’s no problem as the trove will be guarded by a young English engineer named Cameron. He is a man who can be trusted absolutely since he has no vices, except music and that’s hardly a vice that can be exploited. The treasure will be safe. Nothing can go wrong. But of course it does. A pretty decent story.

Sun-Touched concerns two young American engineers with a great fondness for music. They have an unfortunate encounter with three very disreputable fakirs and one of the young Americans suffers an unusual curse. A good and original little story.

In The Idol Breaker both Peter Scarlet and a brutal French sea captain are after a fabulous golden Buddha. The statue resides in a cave and it has a legend attached to it. The meaning of the legend is clear but the details are obscure. Those details are about to become all too clear. It is unwise to offend a Buddha. Another fine story.

In The Brass Goddess Peter Scarlet runs afoul of murderous cut-throats determined to steal a fabulous gem from him. Scarlet is equally determined not to give up the gem. The cut-throats have devised what they consider to be a fool-proof method of torture in order to persuade him. Unfortunately for them they don’t know as much about the local goddesses as Scarlet does. This one has a nice little additional twist at the end. A very good story.

Scarlet wants very much to find a gem known as the Floating Opal and he would also like to know what became of the young English trader John Bourncamp who had this jewel in his possession a few years earlier. In Doom Dungeons the Rajah Ranjit Ji lures Scarlet to his remote mountain castle by suggesting that he can give the American curio-hunter the information he seeks. It is the beginning of an ordeal of terror. Peter Scarlet will also learn that it pays to be nice to snow leopards. This is a sinister tale, and a good one.

The Thirteenth Knife is a story of a quiet Argentinian artist in the Orient, of a bar fight, and of revenge. It is revenge achieved with exquisite style and in an entirely appropriate manner. A very fine story.

Scum of the East is superb. A young American woman is searching for her boyfriend, an engineer who had been employed to open up a tin mine deep in the jungle. He hasn’t been heard from since. She fears that he’s gone native. To find him she’ll need a guide and the only guide with sufficient knowledge of the area is a white man known only as Scum, who has well and truly given in to dissipation. Drink, drugs, women, he’s done it all and now he’s a shambling wreck of what was once a man. Bradshaw and his pal, the Dutch trader Schneider, can’t possibly let the girl go off into the jungle with only Scum as a companion so they decide to tag along.

The jungle is infested with venomous reptiles and tigers but these turn out to be the least  of the hazards the little expedition has to deal with. This is a story that makes you think it’s going to be predictable but Roscoe has some nifty tricks up his sleeve.

This collection is superior grade pulp fiction. Blood Ritual is very highly recommended indeed.

I reviewed another collection of Theodore Roscoe’s pulp stories, The Emperor of Doom, a few years back.

Theodore Roscoe's The Emperor of Doom

The Emperor of Doom is a collection of short stories by Theodore Roscoe, published in various pulp magazines between 1927 and 1933. They are mostly tales of adventure in the Foreign Legion or in the Mysterious Orient. And they’re a great example of pulp fiction at its most characteristic.

The Foreign Legion stories are interesting, presenting a very unheroic and non-romanticised view of that famous military organisation. Roscoe’s stories focus on the savage discipline and the brutalising effects of that discipline combined with poor pay and miserable conditions, constant danger, and the effects of gathering together such a collection of violent and desperate men.

In Foley of the Foreign Legion one of the officers betrays his men, and two soldiers choose desertion as the only option for survival. Blood and Ice shows us the sorts of men who were attracted to the Foreign Legion - vicious cut-throats who would murder their own mothers.

This is a long way from the rather romanticised world of Beau Geste.

There are three Foreign Legion stories. The remaining nine stories take place in the East, and again they are a world away from the usual romantic tales of adventure. Scum of the East tells us what the East can do to a man, how it can destroy him completely and leave behind nothing but a ruined shell.

Whispering Rubies and The Phantom Castle of Genghiz Khan are more traditional adventure tales, but they’re also very clever and original stories. Roscoe has a particular liking for stories involving sudden geological changes - lakes that appear and disappear, or islands that appear and then sink again.

Roscoe’s villains are extremely devilish. Borgan in Devil Dance and Captain Rachmaninoff in Yankee Beware are not merely vicious and corrupt - they are almost inhumanly so. They are devils in human form. There are no supernatural elements in any of these stories. Roscoe’s interest is in purely human evil and malevolent supernatural entities would simply be redundant.

Quite a few of the stories take place party of wholly at sea, and while the sea can be a cruel mistress it’s always other people that you really to fear. Greed is a major motivating force although for many of his villains the sheer joy of having power over their fellow humans is more important than mere greed.

Even Roscoe’s heroes are not conventionally heroic. They are often broken men who are offered one last of redemption, as in Scum of the East and Devil Dance. Or they’re criminal themselves, as in Penang Pearls. If they play the hero they do so reluctantly.

Roscoe’s view of the world is a dark and cynical one. Good often prevails, but it does so in unexpected and ironic ways, and it’s always a near-run thing.

The style is pulpy in the extreme. These are two-fisted tales of action and adventure and that’s what they deliver. Highly recommended.