Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Popular Detective, November 1937

I don't know who did the cover on this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE, but it's intriguing. And they definitely want you to that there's a Charlie Chan story in this issue, since it's mentioned twice. However (and that's a big however), it's not a lost tale by Chan creator Earl Derr Biggers, who died four years earlier in 1933. No, this story featuring Charlie Chan was written by journeyman pulpster Edward Churchill. Now, I usually enjoy Churchill's work and this may well be a good story, but I have to wonder if publisher Ned Pines cut a deal with Biggers' estate to publish a new Chan story, or if he just did it anyway. We'll probably never know. At any rate, it's the only non-Biggers entry in the series until the 1970s, when several different authors wrote Chan stories for CHARLIE CHAN MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Which, come to think of it, was owned and published by Leo Margulies, who worked as editorial director for Ned Pines. Hmmm. Anyway, elsewhere in this issue are stories by T.T. Flynn, one of my favorite Western writers who also did mysteries and detective yarns, Robert Sidney Bowen, and Ray Cummings. That's a talented bunch.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: G-Men Detective, April 1946

“Escape From Alcatraz”, from the April 1946 issue of G-MEN DETECTIVE, is another of the Dan Fowler stories that’s available on-line. It was published a couple of issues after “Diamonds Across the Atlantic”, also written by Edward Churchill, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago.

I thought that other Churchill story was okay, but “Escape From Alcatraz” is considerably better. It opens with the escape of the title, as gangster Killer Joe Boyd makes a successful getaway from the Rock and then disappears. The FBI, represented by our heroes Inspector Dan Fowler and Special Agent Larry Kendal, tracks him to a small town in Washington state not far from the Canadian border. Fowler and Kendal take off for the Pacific Northwest while Special Agent Sally Vane tries to track down the escaped killer’s girlfriend.

Then Churchill springs a nice twist in the plot pretty early on, and the case takes on a broader sweep that involves police corruption, smuggling, and a missing fortune in cash and negotiable bonds.

“Escape From Alcatraz” reads like a fairly realistic law enforcement procedural at times, although there are plenty of shootouts and fistfights and chase scenes along the way, too. Churchill certainly doesn’t forget that his story is being published in a pulp. His style is a little flat at times, but he keeps things moving along at an entertaining clip. Also, it’s hard not to like the trio of Fowler, Kendal, and Vane. They’re not exactly Perry Mason, Paul Drake, and Della Street, but a little of that same camaraderie comes through at times.

I read the e-book version of the Fowler story and don’t own the pulp, but as you can see, the cover is a good one and actually represents the lead novel pretty well. There are some good authors with stories in there, too, including Roger Torrey, Norman A. Daniels, and Robert Sidney Bowen. If you happen to have a copy of this one, it ought to be worth pulling down from the shelf and reading. Or you can find the whole thing on the Internet Archive here.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: G-Men Detective, Winter 1946

I don’t own a copy of this pulp, but the Dan Fowler lead novel, “Diamonds Across the Atlantic” by Edward Churchill, used to be available as an inexpensive e-book. It appears to be gone from Amazon now, but it's still on my Kindle, so I read it recently. I’m going to be writing a Dan Fowler story myself in a few months, so I have to get in the proper frame of mind. Not to mention, I always enjoy the Fowler yarns that appeared in G-MEN and G-MEN DETECTIVE.

This story finds Inspector Dan Fowler of the F.B.I. on the trail of a gang that robbed a train traveling between New York and Detroit. Assisted as usual by fellow agents Larry Kendal and Sally Vane (Fowler’s girlfriend, but they can’t really get serious because they have jobs to do; you know how that goes), he soon discovers that the robbery is connected to a bunch of Nazi saboteurs smuggled into the country on a fishing boat that docked in Boston. The object of the robbery is a secret at first, but I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler (it’s right there in the title) to reveal that what everybody’s after is a bunch of industrial diamonds that the failing German war machine desperately needs. (By the time this issue was published, the war had been over for almost a year, but clearly, this Fowler novel was written much earlier.)

The trail of the Nazis and the diamonds leads from Detroit back to New York and then on to Miami and ultimately Brazil. Our heroes get shot at, knocked out, and thrown off speeding trains. There’s plenty of action, as well as some actual detective work by Fowler. The Fowler novels were never actually police procedurals, but they came close at times. Everything wraps up in a satisfying, high-flying climax.

Edward Churchill wrote ten Dan Fowler novels, some under his own name and some under the house-name C.K.M. Scanlon. He also wrote several dozen other stories for various detective, sports, and aviation pulps. He’s not much remembered these days, probably because his writing style was a little flat and bland at times. But on the other hand, he could put together an exciting, interesting plot, as he does in “Diamonds Across the Atlantic”. I wouldn’t put this one in the top rank of Dan Fowler stories, but I enjoyed it quite a bit and it probably won’t be long before I read the other Churchill entry I have, “Escape From Alcatraz”.

The rest of this issue, according to the Fictionmags Index, features stories by Norman A. Daniels (writing as Wayland Rice), Johnston McCulley, David X. Manners, and Curtiss T. Gardner. Daniels and McCulley are always worth reading. I haven’t sampled any work from the other two. But it looks like a good issue overall, with a nice cover.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: G-Men, April 1938

I like this cover because it has a good-looking redhead and a Tommy-gun on it. Which may make me a bit shallow, but as usual, I don't care. I've enjoyed every Dan Fowler novel I've read, although some are certainly better than others. "The Devil's Playground", the novel in this issue, has the C.K.M. Scanlon house-name on it, and there's no attribution for it in the Fictionmags Index, so I suppose we don't know who really wrote this one. Edward Churchill, who has a short story in this issue under his own name, was writing some of the Fowlers during this time period, so he might be the author behind the house-name. Or not. Either way, I'm sure I'd like it.