A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Ringmaster of Doom - Brant House (G.T. Fleming-Roberts) (Secret Agent X, November 1935)

When you saw the title RINGMASTER OF DOOM and the by-line Brant House, you probably thought, “Hey, a Secret Agent X novel about the circus!” I know that’s the first thing that went through my mind. Well, as it turns out, this is a Secret Agent X novel, all right, from the November 1935 issue of the pulp magazine of the same name, but there’s no sign of a circus. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good pulp yarn.

This one finds New York City being terrorized by a series of robberies and kidnappings being carried out by brutal, misshapen fiends who look like Neanderthal men. (And speaking of Neanderthals terrorizing modern-day America, I believe there’s a Spider novel by Norvell Page that features the same sort of menace.) Naturally, Secret Agent X has to investigate, and he starts at a fabulous society party being hosted by one of the rich men targeted for kidnapping. While he’s there he has his first violent encounter with one of the beast-men and also runs into a beautiful, redheaded, evil female spy he first crossed swords with during the Great War. From there it’s one breathless adventure after another as the Agent battles the schemes of the mysterious mastermind who calls himself Thoth, after the Egyptian god of the dead, and even wears an ibis-headed mask to make himself look like Thoth.

You know by now whether or not you love this stuff or think it’s just about the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard of. And you know which camp I fall into. You’ve got your Neanderthals serving as henchmen for a criminal genius. You’ve got said criminal genius lashing his prisoners with an electric whip. You’ve got Secret Agent X escaping death-trap after death-trap by the skin of his teeth. And finally you’ve got a battle royal in a network of abandoned sewers along the East River that’s being flooded. There’s not much time to take a breath in this one, and that’s good, of course, because it is wildly, unabashedly, and wonderfully goofy.

But no circus. That setting was a staple of pulp yarns. I don’t know if any of the Secret Agent X novels takes place in a circus, but it would have been a good setting for the Agent to have an adventure. As it is, RINGMASTER OF DOOM is a lot of fun.

(This post originally appeared on August 6, 2010. Since then, this novel has been reprinted in Volume 5 of SECRET AGENT "X": THE COMPLETE SERIES, published by Altus Press. It's still available in a handsome trade paperback edition from Amazon.)

Review: Crime Nest - Edwin Truett Long (Detective Dime Novels, April 1940)

I’d read a number of pulp stories over the years by Edwin Truett Long, writing under various pseudonyms and house-names, and I always enjoyed them. But I’ve become more interested in him and his work since discovering that he lived for a while on the west side of Fort Worth and is buried on the east side. One of these days, I’m going to drive over to the cemetery and find his grave. But for now, I’m trying to read more of his stories. This time, it’s “Crime Nest”, from the April 1940 issue of DETECTIVE DIME NOVELS, which was published under the transparent pseudonym Edwin Truett. This is the first of three novels featuring Dr. Thaddeus C. Harker, one of the more offbeat characters from the pulp era.

Doc Harker, as he’s often known, is a traveling medicine show huckster, tooling around the country in a bright red coupe and pulling an equally red trailer in which he concocts his cure-all, the world-famous Chickasha Remedy. However, that’s just a cover for his true activities. Doc Harker is actually a brilliant scientific criminologist, and his passion is solving murders and other crimes with the help of two assistants, former wrestler Hercules Jones, who handles the strongarm stuff, and the beautiful Brenda Sloan, whose specialty is infiltrating gangs and gathering intelligence. In “Crime Nest”, our intrepid trio of detectives heads for Abbottsville, a resort town in Texas (although Long never specifies the state) famous for its hot springs. Abbottsville is loosely based on the real town of Mineral Wells.

They’re there in answer to a plea for help from one of Doc’s old friends, who sends Doc a letter explaining that a cabal of criminals from New York and New Jersey have moved in and taken over the town. Doc intends to break their hold on the place and bring them to justice, but the situation gets more complicated when there’s a grisly murder the first night after they arrive.

From there it’s mostly breakneck action with a little detective work thrown in as Long packs in a lot of plot in the span of not much more than 24 hours. More murders, a missing fortune, beautiful women, shootouts, clouts over the head, and lights that go out just as Doc is about to spring a major revelation—we get all that good stuff and more. Long wasn’t a meticulous plotter, but he usually wrestles all those colorful characters and fast-paced action into scenarios that make sense, mostly.

I really enjoyed this yarn and had a grand time reading it. It’s the kind of stuff I grew up on and I still get a kick out of it. One interesting note: the character who sends for Doc Harker is named Arthur Wallace, which just happens to be the name of a pulpster who contributed scores of stories to the Spicy pulps, as did Long. There’s been some mystery as to whether Wallace was a real name or a house-name. Based on Long using the name in this novel, I suspect he was a real guy and that he and Long were friends. That’s only a hunch, though. Maybe somebody will uncover the facts someday.

My friend Tom Johnson was a fan of the Doc Harker series and reprinted all three novels as small-press chapbooks many years ago. I owned all of them but never got around to reading any of them. More recently, Altus Press has reprinted the series in a handsome volume called DR. THADDEUS C. HARKER: THE COMPLETE TALES, with an introduction by none other than Tom Johnson, who provides more biographical information about Long than I’ve found anywhere else. This is where I read “Crime Nest”. The collection is available in paperback and e-book editions, and if you enjoy offbeat pulp detective yarns, I give it a high recommendation.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Kingdom of Blue Corpses - Brant House (?)

“Kingdom of Blue Corpses”, from the December 1935 issue of the pulp SECRET AGENT X, is one of the more oddball entries in the series. It’s very comic-booky (if that’s a word), with a master villain who calls himself the Blue Streak and wears a blue rubber suit, somewhat like a frogman’s outfit, emblazoned with a lightning bolt. His minions – every self-respecting master villain has to have minions, of course – wear black rubber suits that look even more like frogmen and drive around in a sinister black hearse. The Blue Streak’s weapon in his campaign of terror is an electrical cannon that fires lightning bolts, and as a side effect, the corpses of the people struck by it turn bright blue. No explanation is forthcoming for this side effect, but that’s all right. This yarn isn’t very rigorously plotted, even by pulp standards.

Which doesn’t mean it’s not a lot of fun, as Secret Agent X tries to bring the Blue Streak to justice in a series of extremely fast-moving, action-packed confrontations. As usual, “X” employs several different disguises, and his girlfriend/assistant, beautiful blond reporter Betty Dale, even gets in on the act this time, as “X” disguises her so she can take the place of a young woman he suspects of being involved with the Blue Streak.

The actual identity of the author behind the “Brant House” house-name on this one hasn’t been established, as far as I know. The first part of the story reads like it could be by Paul Chadwick, the creator of the Secret Agent X character and the principal author in the series in its early years. The style changes somewhat during the course of the story, becoming more terse and action-oriented, which has led some readers to speculate that maybe Chadwick started the novel and from some unknown reason, another author finished it. This seems possible to me as well, but at this point, we just don’t know. Whoever wrote “Kingdom of Blue Corpses” did a good job of keeping things moving, even if they don’t always make complete sense.

(Since this post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on May 28, 2010, "Kingdom of Blue Corpses" has been reprinted twice, once by Adventure House and once by Altus Press. The Altus Press edition includes several other Secret Agent X novels. In the comments on the original post, there was some discussion about who actually wrote this one. Some pulp scholars lean toward G.T. Fleming-Roberts, while others think it might be the work of Paul Chadwick. Based on my reading of the story at the time, I even suggested that Chadwick may have started it and Fleming-Roberts completed it. I honestly don't know the answer, but you pays your money and you takes your choice!)

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: "I Was the Kid With the Drum" - Theodore Roscoe (ARGOSY, October 30, 1937)

Theodore Roscoe is probably best known (among those of us who remember him at all) for a fine series of French Foreign Legion stories about an old Legionnaire named Thibault Corday. These ran in the pulp ARGOSY during the Thirties.

But Roscoe wrote a lot of other things for ARGOSY besides Foreign Legion yarns, among them this novelette that takes place in a small upstate New York town called Four Corners, during the early days of the Twentieth Century. That’s such a striking cover image (by Emmett Watson, by the way) that it makes me wonder if the editor at ARGOSY had the cover painting to start with and asked Roscoe to write a story around it. Despite the words “Mystery Novelet” on the cover, you look at that Norman Rockwell-esque picture and expect some lazy, gentle piece of Americana from bygone years, don’t you? Sort of like a visit to Mayberry, only from an even earlier era, right?

And that’s what you get . . . if Andy and Opie had to solve a particularly gruesome case of murder involving spiritualism, adultery, a bass drum, and a dead cat.

“I Was the Kid With the Drum!” is one of the weirdest concoctions I’ve read in a while. It’s narrated in Huckleberry Finn-like fashion by Bud Whittier, the twelve-year-old son of Four Corners’ sheriff. One night while he’s getting into mischief where he’s not supposed to be, behind one of the town’s spookiest old houses, he discovers the bass drum that belongs to the drummer from the town’s band playing by itself. The next day, the drummer’s wife turns up missing. More strange stuff happens, mixed in with the preparations for the big marching band contest among the towns in the area that will take place at the Labor Day County Fair. Bud’s job is to help the drummer carry the big drum, but he’s more interested in playing detective.

If you read this story, you’ll think that you have everything figured out pretty early on, but Roscoe is mighty tricky. He throws a lot of plot twists into approximately 15,000 words, and this is one of those stories where you’ll look back and see that all the clues were there, only Roscoe was slick enough to slip some of them right past the reader. He slipped them past me, anyway, and came up with a really entertaining and satisfying tale. The writing is a little old-fashioned in places, but you have to expect that in a story written nearly 75 years ago.

Now, I understand that you can’t just run out and pick up a copy of the October 30, 1937 issue of ARGOSY on my say-so. But you don't have to, because since this post was published originally in a somewhat different form on January 24, 2010, Altus Press has reprinted "I Was the Kid With the Drum" and the other Four Corners stories in two handsome trade paperbacks, as well as an e-book edition of the first volume. I have these and really need to get around to reading them, although I'll have to reread "I Was the Kid With the Drum" first. Altus Press has a number of other collections of Roscoe's pulp fiction, including the Thibault Corday stories, and even though I haven't read all of them, I don't hesitate to recommend them. Roscoe was always worth reading.

Operator 5 #5: Cavern of the Damned - Curtis Steele (Frederick C. Davis)

The temple of a sinister cult hidden in the middle of Manhattan! A vicious Tibetan prince whipping a beautiful girl almost to death! Influential figures falling under the sway of plotters who want to take over the country! Who can possibly deal with this terrible menace? You know the answer to that as well as I do: Jimmy Christoper, also known as Operator 5, the ace of the American Intelligence Service. Only Operator 5 can possibly thwart this impending catastrophe aimed at the destruction of all regular religions and the takeover of the United States.

But what’s that? Operator 5 is accused of treason and stripped of his standing in the Intelligence Service. All the other operators are tasked with finding and arresting him, and if he puts up a fight, Jimmy Christopher will be gunned down like any other criminal!

Yep, things look pretty bad in “Cavern of the Damned”, the fifth Operator 5 novel that was published originally in the August 1934 issue of the iconic pulp OPERATOR #5. Every issue, author Frederick C. Davis, writing under the house-name Curtis Steele, came up with a new menace to threaten the entire country that only Operator 5 could defeat. This time, the threat posed by the Cult of Zavaa has definite Weird Menace overtones with its hidden temples, robed and turbaned priests and acolytes, and brutal whippings. Davis wrote for numerous different pulps, including the Weird Menace titles, so he certainly knew his way around that genre and utilizes those elements to good effect in this novel.

All the other trademarks of the Operator 5 series are here: Jimmy Christopher has an able assistant in the stalwart Irish lad Tim Donovan. He even takes a break to demonstrate a magic trick for Tim, as he usually does. Beautiful reporter Diane Elliott gets captured by the villains. Jimmy Christopher’s beautiful twin sister Nan is on hand but doesn’t have much to do in this one. Jimmy Christopher’s semi-invalid, retired intelligence agent father lends him a hand, too. The climaxes of Davis’s Operator 5 novels often border on the apocalyptic, and while he reins in that tendency a little this time, the final showdown features plenty of blood and thunder (and lepers).

I love this series because Davis was a fine writer and usually followed my motto when writing about Jimmy Christopher’s adventures: “If you’re going over the top anyway, you might as well go ‘way over.” That said, while I had a very good time reading this novel, I didn’t find it quite as appealing as some of the others in the series. I think I prefer the ones where there’s some sort of super-scientific weapon and a hidden mastermind threatening the nation, rather than a bunch of mostly nameless, faceless guys in robes and turbans who slink around getting folks hooked on hashish, which Davis nearly always refers to as “bhang!”, with the exclamation mark. After a while, I was glad I wasn’t playing a drinking game that involved references to bhang! I’d have been drunk for sure.

If you’ve never tried this series, “Cavern of the Damned” probably isn’t one you’d want to start with. If you’re already an Operator 5 fan and haven’t read this one, don’t let anything I’ve said here influence you not to read it. It’s great fun. Doing Operator 5 as a Weird Menace yarn is just a slight misstep, that’s all. It’s been reprinted several times over the years and is available currently in a very nice trade paperback edition from Altus Press.

The Green Lama: The Case of the Crimson Hand - Richard Foster (Kendall Foster Crossen)

The subject of the Green Lama came up in the comments of last weekend’s post about a science fiction pulp containing a story by Kendall Foster Crossen, who wrote the Green Lama series under the pseudonym Richard Foster. That reminded me that several years ago, I started reading the first Green Lama story but set it aside pretty quickly since it just wasn’t connecting with me. I’ve been meaning to give it another try because I know that often in those cases, the fault lies more with the mood I’m in, rather than the story itself. Since the subject came up, and since I own all three Altus Press volumes reprinting the entire series, I figured now was as good a time as any.

The first volume kicks off with the usual informative and entertaining introduction by Will Murray, which in this case explains how Crossen, who was editing DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY at the time, was asked by his bosses at Munsey to create a new series character for DOUBLE DETECTIVE, a pulp that wasn’t doing particularly well. Crossen came up with the Green Lama, inspired partially by The Shadow and partially by a couple of recent books about Eastern mysticism.

The Green Lama is actually wealthy Jethro Dumont, who isn’t the usual bored socialite or playboy who turns to fighting crime. He’s kind of an egghead, actually, who has made extensive studies of medicine, science, and Eastern philosophies and religions. On a trip to Tibet, he converts to Buddhism and becomes a monk, but no sooner has he returned to the United States than he witnesses a gangland killing in which several innocents are slain. Realizing that the police aren’t going to do anything about this, he decides to fight crime himself, using his own natural skills and the tricks he’s learned in the Far East. He doesn’t kill, but he electrifies himself by drinking radioactive salts dissolved in water, so that he can shock crooks with a mere touch, paralyzing them or knocking them out, making them blind or mute, all depending on where he presses his finger.

Yep, you read that right, he turns himself temporarily radioactive, lurks around in the shadows, and chants his catchphrase, “Om! Ma-ni pad-me hum!” Crossen, who footnotes the stories extensively, translates that at one point, but I don’t remember what it really means and I’m too lazy to look it up. It sounds cool and probably strikes fear into the hearts of criminals, that’s all I know.

The first Green Lama novella (pretty close to actual novel length, in fact) appears in the April 1940 issue of DOUBLE DETECTIVE. Crossen entitled it ”The Case of the Crimson Hand”, but it was retitled “The Green Lama” when it appeared in the pulp. The Altus Press reprint restores the original title. The Crimson Hand is a gang leader who wears a mask and a crimson glove on one hand. He steals a new weapon from the doctor who invented it, a radioactive gas that produces a knock-out ray powerful enough to put an entire city to sleep when enough of the gas capsules are spread around. The Crimson Hand and his gang set off on a crime spree, looting Cleveland and announcing that they’re going to take over the entire country, or maybe even . . . the whole world!

Not if the Green Lama has anything to say about it, bub. Aided by reformed gangster Gary Brown, the Lama gets on the trail of the gang, fails to prevent them from looting Cleveland and kidnapping the inventor of the gas/ray, along with a beautiful blonde, but eventually tracks them to their hideout. The Green Lama may not kill anybody, but that doesn’t mean this story is lacking in action. In fact, it’s a veritable slaughter as the bad guys wipe out everybody who gets in their way. A couple of times, it looks like the Green Lama himself has met his doom, but we know better, don’t we?

Eventually, the Green Lama breaks up the gang and captures the Crimson Hand, who turns out to be exactly who you figured he was all along. He has one other helper along the way, a mysterious woman known only as Magga, who feeds him information and turns up in disguise to take an active hand in the adventure when needed.

This first story and the character of the Green Lama himself are so goofy, so over the top, even by pulp standards, that I have to believe Crossen had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he wrote it. I wonder if he expected the series to become as popular as it did, continuing for three years and fourteen novellas that spawned a comic book version, a radio show, and even talk about a TV series in the early days of television that never came about. I had no trouble reading “The Case of the Crimson Hand” this time and enjoyed it quite a bit. The action scenes are good, the pace really rockets along, and the Green Lama may be a little silly, but he’s an interesting character. I intend to read more about him. Whether I’ll ever get all the way through the series, who knows, but if you’re a pulp fan, the Green Lama is worth checking out. The first collection is available in paperback and e-book editions on Amazon.

D'Artagnan - H. Bedford-Jones

I’ve been a fan of the Three Musketeers for a long time, ever since I bought the Whitman edition of the novel when I was a kid and read it. I read the Classics Illustrated comic book version, too, and over the years I’ve watched and enjoyed most of the movie versions. I really liked the BBC TV series from a few years back and that’s how I see the characters in my head now.

So when I was in the mood to read a swashbuckler recently, I picked up D'ARTAGNAN, a pastiche sequel to the original, written by one of my favorite authors, H. Bedford-Jones. It was published originally as a three-part serial in the pulp ADVENTURE in September and October of 1928 and reprinted several years ago by Altus Press.

Set approximately a year after the events in THE THREE MUSKETEERS, this novel is supposedly, according to Bedford-Jones, expanded from an unpublished manuscript by Alexandre Dumas. ADVENTURE plays that up on the cover of the issue containing the first installment of the serial. However, according to the Fictionmags Index, the only material by Dumas is a one-page excerpt from an article that has nothing to do with the book itself. No matter. D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are back, protecting Queen Anne of France from the schemes of the evil Cardinal Richelieu, although D’Artagnan does most of the heavy lifting in this book, befitting the title. Aramis is wounded and barely shows up. Athos and Porthos are busy with other things for most of the first half, although they play major roles in the second half of the book.

The plot, which involves various rings used for identification, missing documents and letters, wild coincidence after wild coincidence, ambushes, swordfights, disguises, and a mysterious child, is almost impossible to summarize. All the political intrigue is so complicated that I’m still not sure I understood everything that was going on. But again, no matter. D’Artagnan and his friends gallop hither and yon and save the day. That’s all that’s really important.

Bedford-Jones’ prose is a little more flowery than usual, which I suppose is understandable since he was writing a Dumas pastiche, and the plot, as I mentioned, is downright murky. But the action scenes, and there are a lot of them, are great. The final climactic battle, in which D’Artagnan, Athos, and Porthos face overwhelming odds in a French tavern, is just terrific, the sort of thing that would have had me bouncing up and down in my chair in suspense and excitement if I’d read this when I was a kid.

The good stuff far outweighs the weaker bits in D’ARTAGNAN. I had a great time reading it. If you’re a Three Musketeers fan like me or just enjoy a good swashbuckler, you should definitely give it a try. It’s available in paperback and e-book editions on Amazon.

The Curse of the Harcourts - Chandler H. Whipple

Since today is Halloween, I want to post about a classic horror yarn that not all that many people are familiar with. But a lot of pulp fans are. I’m speaking, of course, of THE CURSE OF THE HARCOURTS by Chandler Whipple, a collection of six grisly, bone-chilling novelettes originally published in the Weird Menace pulp DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE in 1935 that fit together to form one compelling narrative. These stories were reprinted several years ago by Altus Press in handsome trade paperback and e-book editions.

As John Pelan points out in his excellent introduction, despite being published in DIME MYSTERY, these are not traditional Weird Menace stories. They have historical settings, blatantly supernatural plot elements, and a high degree of graphic violence that isn’t explained away in the end by some logical resolution. No, these are straight out, full speed, blood and thunder horror yarns . . . which happens to be the kind I like best.

The first story, “The Son of Darkness”, appeared in the February 1935 issue of DIME MYSTERY. Set in Normandy, it tells of the visit of an Italian nobleman, Count Pirelli, to the castle of Baron d’Harcourt and his family in the year 1000 (approximately). The baron welcomes Pirelli and even throws a party to celebrate his visit, but when the count tries to seduce d’Harcourt’s daughter, the baron whips him, humiliates him, and throws him out. That causes Pirelli to curse d’Harcourt and all his family and vow to exterminate them from the face of the earth, no matter how long it takes. Since it turns out that Pirelli is in league with Satan and probably can’t be killed, that’s liable to take a while, but he gets a good start on his bloody vengeance in this story.

Two hundred years have passed by the time of “Curse of the Harcourts” from the March 1935 issue. The d’Harcourt family is now English, and the current head of the family, Sir Henry d’Harcourt is in charge of a castle on the border between England and Wales which is besieged by an army of Welsh rebels. Then the castle is infiltrated by Druid sorcerers bent on revenge against the family for disrespecting their gods, revenge that involves human sacrifice and a literal trip to Hell for Henry.

Two hundred years after that, in “Shadow of the Plague” (April 1935), the Harcourt family now lives in London during the time of the Black Plague, and the evil entity that has stalked them through time takes advantage of that deadly disease to further his vengeance.

By the time of “White Lady of Hell” (June 1935), the Harcourt family has shrunk to three—a brother and sister and their mother—and has been exiled to Florence because of political intrigue in England. More than a hundred years has passed since the previous story, but you can bet that the evil Pirelli, who was Florence originally and made his deal with the Devil there, will show up again, and so he does, with the Harcourt siblings barely surviving to carry on the line. Not with each other, mind you. These stories are pretty lurid, but they don’t go quite that far.

In “A Child for Satan”, which originally appeared in the September 1935 issue of DIME MYSTERY, we learn that there were Harcourts living in Salem at the time of the witch trials, because, well, sure, why not? This is the only story in the series with a female protagonist, a young woman who is married to a Harcourt and has an infant son with him. But the evil Count Pirelli wants the child for Satan and will resort to any evil means to get him. In some respects, despite the supernatural menace of the Count, this one does bear more of a resemblance to a typical Weird Menace yarn.

The series concludes with “The Last Harcourt” (October 1935), which takes place in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts in 1932 and features the final showdown between the Harcourts and the satanic Count Pirelli. That showdown has a pretty epic feel to it, too, and then Whipple gives us a nice little twist in the ending.

I enjoyed this series, but I have to give it a qualified recommendation, that qualification being that if you want to read it for Halloween, start at the beginning of October and space out the stories over the entire month, rather than reading the whole thing in less than a week like I did. The sameness of the plots tends to weaken them, and the relentless parade of torture, misery, and death is just overwhelming. I think the series would be more effective with plenty of time between installments, the way the readers of DIME MYSTERY encountered it back in 1935. That said, if you’re a pulp fan, I really think you ought to read THE CURSE OF THE HARCOURTS, because I’ve never run across anything else exactly like it in the pulps. (The art on all those issues of DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE is by Walter M. Baumhofer, by the way.)

Ghost Hills - H. Bedford-Jones

GHOST HILLS, originally serialized in four issues of THE CAVALIER in July and August 1913, is one of H. Bedford-Jones’s earliest novels. The fact that it’s featured on the cover of the issue containing the first installment is an indication that even this early in his career, Bedford-Jones was a popular author and was considered a draw for the readers.

This yarn is a Northern, set in the Canadian wilderness close to the Arctic Circle where the landscape is covered with snow and ice year ‘round and during the summer, when this novel is set, the skies are ablaze with the Northern Lights around the clock. Most of the action takes place in a desolate wilderness known as the Empty Places, which is haunted by the Silent Ones, and to get there, you have to travel through the forbidding Ghost Hills of the title.

This setting gives Bedford-Jones plenty of opportunities for vivid, eerie descriptive passages. His protagonist, footloose American Barr Radison, has come to Canada and thrown in with Tom “Take-a-Chance” Macklin, an agent of the Hudson’s Bay Company who ventured into the far north to find out the source of some rare black and silver fox pelts. They run into a jovial (but still sinister), seemingly half-mad giant Scotsman, Macferris Montenay, who’s in love with the beautiful daughter of a man who runs an isolated trading post. Of course, Radison falls for her, too, which gives Montenay one more reason to hate him. Montenay already thinks Radison is a threat to his plans because he believes the American to be descended from old Pierre Radisson, a famous explorer who vanished somewhere in the Empty Places two hundred years earlier. (This story is set in the early Twentieth Century, roughly the same time as Bedford-Jones wrote it.) According to an old prophecy, one of Radisson’s descendants will show up and claim the empire that Montenay is trying to build.

That’s a lot going on, and Bedford-Jones mixes in a feud between two Indian tribes as well. Naturally, each tribe takes sides in the rivalry between Radison and Montenay. And then there’s an evil half-breed with his own agenda.

Despite all that plot, GHOST HILLS has some pacing problems, as too many pages in the first three-quarters of the book are spent tramping around the snowy wilderness. It’s very well-written in places but doesn’t really get us anywhere. The final quarter of the book is mostly terrific, though, as all the strands of the story come together in a series of suspenseful action scenes culminating in an explosive battle. I say mostly terrific because the ending is something of a letdown again with too much of the action taking place off-screen.

This early in his career, Bedford-Jones’s prose is more old-fashioned and not as smooth as it would be at the peak of his career in the Thirties and Forties. Even so, GHOST HILLS is an entertaining yarn with some good characters and some really creepy, well-done scenes. I guessed the secret of the Silent Ones pretty early on, but that revelation late in the book is still very effective. If you’ve never read Bedford-Jones, this probably wouldn’t be a good one to start with, but if you’re already a fan like I am, I think it’s well worth reading. You can find various e-book editions of it on-line, as a stand-alone book and as part of Bedford-Jones collections, and it’s also available as a handsome trade paperback from Altus Press, part of the H. Bedford-Jones Library.

The Spider: Scourge of the Scorpion - Will Murray

Will Murray is back with his third novel featuring the iconic pulp hero character The Spider, following THE DOOM LEGION and FURY IN STEEL. As in those earlier novels, in SCOURGE OF THE SCORPION Murray brings in some heroes and villains used in other Popular Publications pulps, making it clear that all of Popular’s characters existed in the same universe. This time he teams up The Spider with one of most obscure pulp heroes, The Skull Killer. The Skull Killer is obscure for two reasons: he was never the star of his own pulp but rather functioned as the hero in a couple of pulps that spotlighted the villains, THE OCTOPUS and THE SCORPION. There was only one issue of each, and it’s a common belief in pulp fandom that the lead novel in THE SCORPION was a rewritten yarn that was intended for the second issue of THE OCTOPUS, except the first issue sold so badly that the publisher thought a title change might be helpful. In fact, that may well be what happened.

But regardless of that, Murray comes up with a very clever way to tie together the mystery of The Octopus and The Scorpion and make something totally new out of their history without retconning anything. It’s an audacious approach that succeeds extremely well. I know something about working with other people’s characters and trying to find ways to make sense out of apparent contradictions, and it’s not always an easy thing to do. Murray pulls it off and does a great job.

And of course, he also captures the characters of Richard Wentworth (The Spider), Nita Van Sloan, Ram Singh, and the rest of the supporting cast perfectly. As for the story itself, it races along at a breakneck pace as you’d expect. The Cult of the Purple Eyes, led previously by both The Octopus and The Scorpion, is back, with The Scorpion still in command, and once again he’s turning innocent people into his mindless minions by a method that causes their eyes to change color and become a bright purple. He’s also infecting hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent New Yorkers with a deadly combination of scorpion venom and tetanus that causes them to come down with lockjaw. Wentworth’s faithful assistants Ram Singh and Jackson fall victim to this plague, and Nita Van Sloan is converted into one of The Scorpion’s purple-eyed zombies. Wentworth is left alone to battle against this horrible menace . . .

Oh, wait, he’s not, because The Skull Killer, who defeated The Octopus and The Scorpion the first time, is still around and teams up with The Spider to save New York City. But just when you think they’ve succeeded . . . things get worse.

SCOURGE OF THE SCORPION is a great pulp adventure novel with a very nice blend of shuddery horror and over-the-top action. At one point The Spider, being pursued by bad guys, hides out in a morgue, climbs into an empty drawer, closes it behind him, rolls over, and calmly goes to sleep. You don’t get much more badass than that. As I said, Murray’s plotting is excellent, and everything comes to a very satisfactory conclusion. I had a wonderful time reading this book, and if you’re a pulp fan in general, or a fan of The Spider (I have been for close to sixty years now, since the first paperback reprints), I give it my highest recommendation.

Guns of the Damned - Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount)

THE WESTERN RAIDER was a short-lived Western hero pulp that ran for three issues in 1938 and ’39. It featured the adventures of Silver Trent, a heroic outlaw sometimes known as the Hawk of the Sierras or the Rio Robin Hood. And like the Robin Hood of legend, Silver Trent has a band of colorful followers and fellow adventurers who ride with him, known as Hell’s Hawks. After the three short novels that were published in THE WESTERN RAIDER, Silver Trent returned in ten short stories and novelettes that appeared in STAR WESTERN from 1939 through 1942. I recently read the first Silver Trent novel, “Guns of the Damned”, from the August/September 1938 issue of THE WESTERN RAIDER.

This yarn opens with two Texas cowboys who have crossed the border into Mexico to look for a friend of theirs who disappeared. The friend was trying to find out who’s behind a series of rustling raids, and he’s sent word back that he suspects an outlaw named Silver Trent. His two pards who are searching for him are about to get gun-trapped in a cantina when a mysterious stranger rescues them. No bonus points for guessing that the mysterious stranger turns out to be Silver Trent his own self, and he’s no rustler. In fact, his mortal enemy, a rich but evil Mexican rancher known as El Diablo, is actually behind the raids across the border into Texas, and the two cowpokes are drawn into Silver Trent’s on-going war against El Diablo.

That’s about as complicated as the plot of this novel gets. It’s basically just a series of shootouts, captures, escapes, and epic battles, pausing occasionally to introduce more supporting characters from Silver’s friends, which include a priest with a hard right hook, a melancholy Mexican gunman tortured by religious guilt, a drunken doctor, a fast-gun gambler, an old geezer, and, of course, a beautiful girl.

Silver Trent himself is a bigger-than-life character, the sort of mythical figure who can out-shoot, out-fight, and out-ride anybody that shows up so often in Frederick Faust’s work. In fact, he reminds me quite a bit of Faust’s Silvertip, and while I have no way of knowing, it wouldn’t surprise me if the similarity in names wasn’t entirely a coincidence. Silver needs to be as competent as he is, because he’s evenly matched with El Diablo, about as despicable a villain as I’ve run across in a pulp Western.

Keeping everything moving at a breakneck pace is author Stone Cody, who was really Thomas Mount, a bit of a colorful character himself who I wrote about a while back in my review of his novel THE GUN WITH THE WAITING NOTCH. I really enjoy Mount’s over-the-top prose, such as this bit from late in the book:

The battle cry of Silver’s men!

In brazen-clanging Spanish and hard-bitten American—a sound like a trumpet call, that the desert knew and quivered to, that the mountains had flung back triumphantly in a hundred slashing whirling fights, that echoed still, fearfully, in the dreams of men who listened to it and lived to tell the tale.

“To Silver! Hell’s Hawks for Trent!” And now the sudden, staccato thunder of the guns!

Great literature, maybe it ain’t. But great literature generally doesn’t make me literally pump a fist in the air like I did when I read that line about the thunder of the guns. And that goes a long way toward explaining why I write like I do.

Altus Press/Steeger Books has reprinted the entire Silver Trent series, and I own all six volumes. I’ll be reading the rest of them soon. If you love Western pulp adventure as much as I do, I give them a very high recommendation. I love this stuff.

The Complete Cases of the Rambler, Volume One - Fred MacIsaac

I’ve seen Fred MacIsaac’s name on the cover of many, many pulps over the years. He was very prolific for two decades, the Twenties and Thirties, and sold to most of the top pulps, turning out mostly mystery and adventure yarns, with the occasional foray into science fiction. Despite my familiarity with his name, though, I’d never actually read any of his stories until recently, when I tackled a collection of his mystery stories from Altus Press, THE COMPLETE CASES OF THE RAMBLER, VOLUME ONE, which includes an excellent introduction by Ed Hulse.

The Rambler is itinerant reporter Addison Francis Murphy (although in his first appearance, his name is Addison Dexter Murphy), a lanky, redheaded young man who has a habit of getting fired from whatever newspaper job he’s working, but that doesn’t keep him from getting all kinds of scoops and breaking big stories, as well as tackling all kinds of crooks and winding up in danger most of the time. He’s brilliant but prefers being a tramp and drifting around to staying in one place and building a career.

Art by Paul Stahr 

His first appearance is in “The Affair at Camp Laurel”, which was published in the October 8, 1932 issue of ARGOSY, the only story in the series to appear in that venerable pulp. The other Rambler stories were all published in DIME DETECTIVE. This debut is more of an adventure yarn, without much detecting going on as Murphy infiltrates an isolated upstate New York hunting and fishing camp belonging to a rich man who has started behaving eccentrically after being missing for a while in Africa while on an expedition. Yeah, it’s kind of a complicated back-story, and not everything turns out exactly as you might expect. MacIsaac spins the yarn in a breezy, fast-moving style that’s pretty enjoyable.

Art by William Reusswig

By the time Murphy shows up again in the April 1, 1933 issue of DIME DETECTIVE in the story “Alias Mr. Smith”, he’s acquired a new middle name (as mentioned above), he has black hair instead of being a redhead, and his nickname is now The Rambler (that name is never used in the first story). He’s in Boston, and he gets himself a job on one of the papers there by promising to turn up an explosive story. He does that by getting in the middle of what appears to be an open-and-shut murder case in which the victim named her killer before dying. Murphy insists that the alleged murderer is innocent, which brings him to the attention of corrupt politicians, gangsters, and hired killers. Sure enough, Murphy uses an unusual clue to break the case wide open. This story is a little more complicated than the previous one but races along in the same entertaining style.

Art by William Reusswig 

As the third story, “Ghost City Set-up”, opens in the September 1, 1933 issue of DIME DETECTIVE, Murphy actually has some money in his pocket, several hundred dollars, in fact, as he rides across country on a train bound for San Francisco. The reason Murphy is flush is a neat bit of meta-fiction before the concept even existed. It seems that a while back, Murphy met a guy who wrote stories for the pulp fiction magazine and told him about an adventure he had at an isolated hunting camp in upstate New York—“The Affair at Camp Laurel”, of course, which the pulpster (clearly MacIsaac himself) turned into a story and sold to a “major magazine” (ARGOSY). So this explains why some of the details are different in that first story. The writer didn’t remember them correctly when he wrote it.

Of course, that doesn’t explain why Murphy is a redhead again in this one, but hey, let’s not get fanatical about this. Especially when the stories are so gosh-darned entertaining. This time, Murphy spots a rich, beautiful society dame who’s in the process of getting a divorce. When she gets off the train at Reno, and so does a gangster Murphy also recognizes, our intrepid reporter’s nose for news scents a story. Instead of continuing on to San Francisco, he gets off the train in Reno, too, and soon finds himself up to his neck—and deep in an abandoned mine—in a wild, dangerous affair with millions at stake. As usual, it’s great, breakneck fun.

Art by John Howitt

Murphy makes his next appearance in the June 1, 1934 issue of DIME DETECTIVE, in a story called “Go-Between”. He’s made it to California, but not San Francisco. Rather, he’s in Malibu, where he wakes up with a hangover in the beachfront bungalow of a beautiful movie actress. Before you know it, the girl’s been kidnapped, and the gangsters who snatch her force Murphy to act as the go-between for the delivery of the ransom. More complications arise, of course, as the story races along at a breakneck pace in MacIsaac’s breezy, very entertaining style.

Art by John Howitt 

At the end of “Go-Between”, Murphy is sailing off to the South Seas. When “Murder Reel” (DIME DETECTIVE, August 15, 1934) opens, he’s returned from that voyage and landed in San Francisco at last, where he gets a job with one of the local papers and is assigned the story of a mysterious woman who registered in a hotel under a phony name, was murdered a few days later, and is still unidentified. The only clue in the case is a possible connection with a local politician. There’s plenty of colorful action in this yarn and Murphy is as appealing a protagonist as ever, but it’s the weakest Rambler story so far because the solution to the murder involves two really far-fetched coincidences that stretch credulity past the breaking point.

Art by Walter Baumhofer

“Heir-Cooled”, from the June 15, 1935 issue of DIME DETECTIVE, wraps up this first volume of the Rambler’s cases. It’s a considerable improvement on the previous tale. Murphy is back in New York, investigating a jewel robbery and the heart attack death of a financier that may not be natural causes at all. The case has threads that stretch all the way to Miami and the Bahamas, although Murphy doesn’t leave the Big Apple except for a short journey when he gets taken for a ride by gangsters. He survives, of course, but not without some fine action from MacIsaac. It’s another very enjoyable story.

I had enough fun reading all of these yarns that I was left wanting more. Fortunately, there’s a second volume of Rambler Murphy stories from Fred MacIsaac, and I already own a copy, so I suspect I’ll be moving on to it in the reasonably near future. Meanwhile, if you’re a fan of pulp detective stories, I give THE COMPLETE CASES OF THE RAMBLER, VOLUME 1 a high recommendation.

Tarzan, Conqueror of Mars - Will Murray

As I’ve mentioned here before, my introduction to the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs was the 1963 Ace paperback reprint of A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS, loaned to me by my sister’s boyfriend. Shortly after that, I bought the Whitman edition of TARZAN OF THE APES, and by the time I was finished with those two, I was a Burroughs fan for life. If I had to choose between his two best-known series, I’d have to say that I prefer the Mars books to the Tarzan novels, but only by a whisker.

So beyond any shadow of a doubt, I am, through and through, the target audience for the new novel by Will Murray, TARZAN, CONQUEROR OF MARS. And just as I would have expected, this crossover between the two series is great.

This is the third of Murray’s novels authorized by the Burroughs estate to feature Tarzan and his first crack at John Carter. He captures both characters just about perfectly, and the sections of the book narrated by John Carter are so good I want to see a solo novel starring the Warlord of Mars. The plot finds Tarzan transported to Mars in the same mysterious fashion that John Carter was in A PRINCESS OF MARS, the first book in that series. The first half of this book is a travelogue of sorts, a staple of early science fiction, as Tarzan encounters first the great white apes of Barsoom (as its inhabitants call Mars) and then the fierce, four-armed green men, while exploring the planet and searching for some way to get back to Earth. Then this storyline intersects one featuring John Carter . . . and things do not go well.

Murray makes great use of the concepts created by Burroughs and adds some of his own, coming up with new threats to menace our heroes and expanding the geography of Barsoom. The real virtues of this novel, however, are the great action scenes and the way Murray so vividly recreates Burroughs’ style and voice. TARZAN, CONQUEROR OF MARS really does read as if ERB himself wrote it. Reading it transported me back to those great days when I was first discovering so many authors who became life-long favorites. Simply put, this is great stuff, and I’m grateful to Will Murray for writing it and Altus Press for publishing it.  

Forgotten Books: Spawn of the Flames - Wayne Rogers

Several years ago, Altus Press published a series called TERROR TRIOS, each volume of which reprinted three Weird Menace novellas by leading authors in that genre. SPAWN OF THE FLAMES focuses on Wayne Rogers, who was notable for writing some of the most violent Weird Menace stories in the pulps.

Rogers’ real name was Archibald Bittner. For many years he was primarily an editor, helming such iconic pulps as ARGOSY and SHORT STORIES. However, he also dabbled in writing using the Wayne Rogers name and eventually concentrated on that end of the business. During the Weird Menace boom, he was one of the most prolific and highly regarded pulpsters turning out those stories, as well as occasionally filling in on pulp hero series such as Operator #5 and The Spider.

Art by John Newton Howitt

“Spawn of the Flames”, the title story in this volume, was published originally in the June 1936 issue of TERROR TALES. The protagonist is a young man who was born in a crematorium and fears that he has grown up to have a split personality, one of whom is a vicious pyromaniac and torture killer. He comes home because his father is ill and on the verge of death, bringing his fiancee, his best friend, and his best friend’s girlfriend with him. His lawyer and stepmother are on hand, too. Some of them won’t survive, as “Spawn of the Flames” becomes as violent and sadistic as any slasher movie or splatterpunk novel. I’m not a fan of such graphic stuff in movies, but it doesn’t bother me as much in prose. Rogers’ style is incredibly fast-moving, which also helps. This is one of those stories where the plot only makes sense if you squint your eyes and hold your mouth just right, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Art by John Newton Howitt

“The Devil’s Step-Daughters” (TERROR TALES, February 1936) is set in the idyllic-seeming town of Malstead in New Hampshire, where the narrator, lawyer Ted Walton, is engaged to the oldest of three beautiful sisters who are believed to be descendants of a witch who lured young men to their deaths back in the Seventeenth Century. When a wave of grisly murders strikes Malstead and sinister black-robed figures begin prowling the streets, the placid façade of the town is shattered forever. As a mystery (which most Weird Menace tales, at their heart, really are), this one is pretty easy to figure out, and Ted Walton is an even more ineffective protagonist than you usually find in yarns like this. However, it does have Rogers’ breakneck pace and brutal action scenes going for it, so while it’s not as enjoyable as “Spawn of the Flames”, it’s still pretty entertaining.

Art by Tom Lovell

This volume wraps up with “The Mummy Pack Prowls Again”, from the April 1937 issue of DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE. This novella also takes place in a small New England town, Waterville, which is plagued by the sudden outbreak of a mysterious malady that turns its victims into living mummies by withering their flesh until they’re just skin and bones. This affliction also drives them mad and makes them seek human flesh. In other words . . . they’re zombies, in the sense that the word is often used now. The narrator, Warren Craig, is the city manager (protagonists in Weird Menace usually have mundane occupations like that, instead of being cops, private eyes, etc., probably to make them more identifiable for the readers). Compounding the horror is the fact that his beautiful fiancee falls victim to the sinister illness. This one isn’t quite as gruesome as the other two yarns, possibly because it was published in DIME MYSTERY, the flagship of Popular Publications’ Weird Menace line, rather than the generally more graphic TERROR TALES.

Having read these three stories, my first impression is that Wayne Rogers’ work in this genre is a little too violent for my taste, or maybe I just read them too close together. (I did space them out with other stuff in between but still read all three in the span of a week and a half.) That said, I’d read more by him because his action scenes are very good and he knows how to maintain the sort of breakneck pace that I like. I can see why he was a popular writer. For now, if you’re already a fan of Weird Menace stories I can certainly recommend SPAWN OF THE FLAMES. If you’ve never sampled the genre before, this might not be the best place to start.

Overlooked Old Time Radio: Here Comes McBride

I enjoy old time radio programs and have ever since I started listening to syndicated reruns of THE LONE RANGER, THE SHADOW, THE GREEN HORNET and GANGBUSTERS in the early Sixties. There are a lot of shows available on-line, and I wish I had more time to listen to them. I may have to start making some time.

The most recent program I've listened to is HERE COMES McBRIDE, which my friend Brian Ritt told me about. From May of 1949, it stars Frank Lovejoy as private eye Rex McBride, who appeared in pulp stories and novels by Cleve F. Adams. I've read and enjoyed some of them but had no idea there had ever been a radio show based on the character. I don't know how many episodes there were, but only one, the first one, appears to have survived.

McBride is actually an insurance investigator based in Los Angeles in the radio version. But as the episode opens, he's in San Francisco on a case, trying to track down a valuable stolen necklace. Unfortunately, he finds a corpse in his hotel room and winds up having to solve that murder, and another that follows it, while navigating the usual troubled waters of nightclubs, crooked gamblers, suspicious cops, beautiful but maybe not trustworthy dames, etc. It's standard private eye stuff but done pretty well, and Frank Lovejoy, an actor I've always liked, is good as McBride. If they had ever made any Rex McBride movies, he would have played the character quite well, I think.

One nice thing about this program is that Cleve Adams is mentioned in the opening credits "above the title", as it were. I always like to see the guy who created something acknowledged. The episode itself was written by someone named Robert Ryf, who wrote some early cops-and-robbers TV in addition to his radio work.

This single episode of HERE COMES McBRIDE is available in several places on-line. I downloaded it here, and you can also just listen to it there if you don't want to download it. Also, SABOTAGE, the first of Adams' novels about Rex McBride is in print from Altus Press, if you want to check out the original version of the character.

Forgotten Books: Ki-Gor--and the Paradise That Time Forgot - John Peter Drummond

KI-GOR—AND THE PARADISE THAT TIME FORGOT, from the Fall 1940 issue of JUNGLE STORIES, seems to mark the arrival of yet another new writer behind the John Peter Drummond house-name, especially during the first half of the novel, which is more low-key and realistic than the volumes that have come before. Ki-Gor and Helene come across an expedition led by three Americans: a brutal, alcoholic doctor; his meek, long-suffering wife; and an equally meek anthropologist who is the couple's friend. They're supposed to be in Africa to hunt gorillas, but really the wife and friend are trying to force the doctor to dry out from his booze binges. This domestic drama is a decidedly odd fit for a jungle adventure story.

Then part of the way through, everything lurches sideways and this becomes a lost race yarn, and one with a fairly interesting and plausible basis, too. Naturally, Ki-Gor, Helene, and the bickering Americans get trapped in the hidden valley where the lost race lives and wind up in danger. Then another abrupt shift in the plot and danger from another source rears its head. This story gets a little schizophrenic after a while.

There's no Tembo George, no Bantu tribesmen. Ki-Gor's sidekick is a pygmy named Ngeeso, and he's a pretty good character. Ki-Gor and Helene now live on an island in the middle of a river, something I don't remember from previous stories. But overall, KI-GOR—AND THE PARADISE THAT TIME FORGOT is well-written other than not being able to make up its mind what sort of story it's going to be. It has just enough going for it to be readable and entertaining, in a very minor way. At the very least, it's an improvement over the previous novel in the series.

Forgotten Books: Hell's Recruit - Phil Richards

Phil Richards' second novel (or novella, to be more accurate) featuring Kid Calvert and the Calvert Horde is "Hell's Recruit", which appeared in the March 1935 issue of WESTERN ACES with the usual great cover by Rafael DeSoto. In this very fast-paced yarn, everybody is after the notorious bank robber Eagle Hawn: our band of noble owlhoots, the forces of the law led by Sheriff Terry Reynolds, and a gang of Mexican bandits ramrodded by the evil and mostly insane Blade Morales. The reason all these factions want to get hold of Eagle Hawn is because he's pulled off a series of robberies and has cached a fortune in stolen gold, but no one knows where it is except him. And while everybody is chasing after Hawn and his loot, Kid Calvert and Terry Reynolds once more have to deal with their doomed love affair—doomed because they're on opposite sides of the law and always will be.

If anything, this story is even more melodramatic and over-the-top than Richards' previous effort, "Horde of Hated Men". The breathless, breakneck action seldom slows down, and when it does, there's enough angst to fill up two or three normal Western pulps. This oddball blend of shoot-em-up and soap opera works better than it has any right to and really kept me flipping the pages (well, digital pages, since I'm reading the ebook edition of THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF KID CALVERT). However, modern readers should be aware that "Hell's Recruit" is about as politically incorrect as it can get. This doesn't bother me, since I know when it was written and published, but it might some people. It also has a fairly large hole in the plot involving the hidden gold, and I would have sworn that Terry Reynolds was a brunette in the first two stories, not a blonde as she is here.

But despite all that, I had a heck of a good time reading "Hell's Recruit". I really like the Kid and his band of heroic outlaws. There are two more novellas in their saga, and I'm eager to read them.