Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All-Story Detective, December 1949

ALL-STORY DETECTIVE was a short-lived Popular Publications detective pulp that ran for six issues in the late Forties. This was the last issue under that title. The magazine became 15 STORY DETECTIVE but managed only eight issues under that title. But many of the covers were by Norman Saunders, including this "What the heck is going on here?" number, and there were some good authors in its pages. In this issue, those authors include Frederick C. Davis, Bryce Walton, Bruce Cassiday, and Stuart Friedman, as well as lesser-known authors Robert Carlton, Ed Barcelo, and Robert F. Toombs. Like most of the short-run pulps, I'm sure many of the stories were good and the magazines failed for other reasons.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, May 1941

Of course it's a clown causing trouble on the cover of this issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES. You can't trust those guys! Or maybe he's actually the hero, although I wouldn't bet on that. But you can bet that any cover by Norman Saunders will be dramatic and/or action-packed, and this one certainly is. You've got knives, bullets, and blackjacks! (Hmm, "Knives, Bullets, and Blackjacks!" That wouldn't be a bad title.) Anyway, I don't own this issue, but I'm sure that inside its pages, a reader could find plenty of action. Authors include Emile C. Tepperman (twice, with a Marty Quade story under his own name and a story as by Anthony Clemens), Harold Q. Masur (also twice, once as himself and once as Hal Quincy), G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Cyril Plunkett, Joe Archibald, and several authors unfamiliar to me, James A. Kirch, Arthur T. Harris, Clark Frost, and H.F. Sorensen. I really should have read more from TEN DETECTIVE ACES over the years. It looks like a really good detective pulp.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Famous Detective Stories, June 1954

The cover on this issue of FAMOUS DETECTIVE STORIES is by Norman Saunders, and he's by far the best known name involved with this issue. The lead novella is by Wilbur S. Peacock, a fairly prolific pulp author and editor, but the other stories are by writers I'm not familiar with: Norman Ober, Marc Millen, Gene Rodgers, and Wallace McKinley. None of these are known to be pseudonyms or house-names, but they don't ring any bells for me, either. The cover is okay, but I'm not sure if I would have gambled a quarter on this one if I'd seen it on the stands back in 1954. (I was alive when this issue was on the stands, but since I was only a year old, I doubt if I'd have been reading it anyway.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Trails, February 1948

This issue of WESTERN TRAILS features another fine, dramatic cover by Norman Saunders. As usual with the Ace Western pulps, this issue has two stories by J. Edward Leithead, one under his own name and one under his most common pseudonym Wilson L. Covert. I'm a big fan of Leithead's work and there are some other fine authors in this issue, including Walker A. Tompkins, Joseph Chadwick, D.B. Newton, weird fiction icon Kirk Mashburn, Cliff Walters, and Dan Kirby. I don't own this issue and haven't read it, but with that cover and author line-up I have no doubt that it's very good.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: 10 Action Adventures, January 1939

10 ACTION ADVENTURES appeared for only one issue in 1939, despite this being listed as Volume 1, Number 3. The newsstands must have been just a little too crowded for it to find its audience, because it looks like a pretty good adventure pulp. The cover is by Norman Saunders, and inside are stories by E. Hoffmann Price (with his name misspelled on the cover), Arthur J. Burks, Carl Rathjen, Lurton Blassingame (Wyatt's brother and better remembered as a literary agent), William J. Langford, and house-names Paul Adams, Ralph Powers, Rexton Archer, Cliff Howe, and Clint Douglas. I have no idea who wrote the house-name stories, but Price is always a possibility. I wonder if Ace Magazines, the publisher, even intended for 10 ACTION ADVENTURES to continue past this one issue, or if it was some sort of clearing house to get rid of some inventory. Chances are we'll never know, but if anybody is aware of the circumstances, I'd love to hear about it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: 10-Story Detective Magazine, March 1942

Nobody could pack more into a pulp cover than Norman Saunders, as this issue of 10-STORY DETECTIVE MAGAZINE illustrates. Another Norman, Norman A. Daniels, has two stories in this issue, one under his own name and one as David A. Norman. Bruno Fischer is on hand under his Russell Gray pseudonym. Harold Q. Masur, later very successful as a mystery novelist, has a story in this issue, as does an author I'm not familiar with, Richard L. Hobart. The other stories all have house-names on them: Guy Fleming, Leon Dupont, Clint Douglas, Ralph Powers, and Harris Clivesey. It wouldn't surprise me if some of those guys were actually Norman A. Daniels, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, August 27, 1938

I own a couple dozen issues of WILD WEST WEEKLY, but the August 27, 1938 issue isn’t among them. It’s available on the Internet Archive, though, and I picked it to read for a reason which I’ll get around to. The cover is by the legendary Norman Saunders, and it’s a good one illustrating the lead novella, “The Cougar’s Claws”.

That novella features Pete Rice, and that’s the reason I read this one. A little background for those of you unfamiliar with the character: Inspired by the success of THE SHADOW and DOC SAVAGE, in 1933 the good folks at Street & Smith decided to launch a Western hero pulp. The result was PETE RICE MAGAZINE. The title character is the two-fisted, fast-shootin’ sheriff of Trinchera County, Arizona, who's assisted by two deputies, scrawny little Misery Hicks (who does double duty as the barber of Buffalo Gap, the county seat) and Teeny Butler, who, in keeping with the nicknaming tradition of pulp characters, is well over six feet tall and weighs 300 pounds. The gimmick of the series, if you can call it that, is that while it has all the Western trappings, it’s set in the modern day, putting it in firmly in the same camp as the Western B-movies of the times starring Gene Autry and others. These Pete Rice novels, and they were full-length novels, were written by veteran pulpster Ben Conlon under the pseudonym Austin Gridley.

Well, PETE RICE MAGAZINE was not a raging success. It ran for 31 issues, approximately two and a half years. I read one of the novels years ago and don’t remember much about it except that I wasn’t impressed and didn’t seek out any more of the series. But . . . after Pete’s own magazine was cancelled, the character moved to WILD WEST WEEKLY, where he starred in 21 more novellas and novelettes. Or did he? You see, the stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY are no longer set in the modern day but take place in the Old West, which prompted a recent discussion between me and a friend about the idea that the Pete Rice in the WILD WEST WEEKLY stories is actually the father or grandfather of the Pete Rice who starred in his own magazine. That seems feasible, other than the fact that in WILD WEST WEEKLY, Misery and Teeny are still Pete’s deputies, and claiming that those characters are also an earlier generation seems like quite a stretch to me. I suspect that in real life, nobody at Street & Smith ever gave the change in time period a second thought other than maybe instructing Conlon to make the stories actual Westerns in hopes that they would help sell WILD WEST WEEKLY. It’s a safe bet that none of the pulp writers and editors dreamed anybody would still be talking about this stuff nearly a century down the road!

Anyway, another difference in the characters in PETE RICE MAGAZINE and WILD WEST WEEKLY is that in the later incarnation, Austin Gridley became a house-name. Ben Conlon continued to write some of the stories, but other authors contributed Pete Rice yarns, too, including Paul S. Powers, who teamed Pete with his popular character Sonny Tabor, leading to a joint byline of Austin Gridley and Ward Stevens (Powers’ pseudonym); Ronald Oliphant, who penned a crossover between Pete and Billy West of the Circle J, under the names Austin Gridley and Cleve Endicott (the house-name on the Circle J series); Lee Bond; and the extremely prolific Laurence Donovan, who also ghosted some Doc Savage novels for Street & Smith. The Pete Rice story in this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY I just read, “The Cougar’s Claws”, is Donovan’s first Pete Rice story.

And after my lukewarm at best reaction to the other Pete Rice yarn I read, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I really enjoyed this one. The Cougar is the leader of an outlaw gang plaguing Trinchera County and has come up with a really grisly way of disposing of his enemies: he wraps them in green bullhide and then lets the sun dry it out so that it shrinks and crushes the victims to death. Pete and his deputies clash several times with the Cougar and his gang, escape from some death traps, and finally expose the real mastermind behind all the villainy. There are some clever twists and Donovan was always really good with action, of which there is plenty. I found Pete and his deputies likable and had a fine time reading this novella. I’ll be on the lookout for more of the Pete Rice issues of WILD WEST WEEKLY.

I think the novelette “Gunsmoke Tornado” is the earliest story I’ve ever read by Dudley Dean McGaughey, the real name of Dean Owen, who gets the credit for this one. I’ve read quite a few of McGaughey’s pulp novels from the Forties and a bunch of paperbacks from the Fifties and Sixties, but “Gunsmoke Tornado” was only his ninth published story. It’s a good one, too, about a drifting young cowhand who signs on with a ranch crew where he faces some hazing. That might have been a story in itself, but there’s more going on than that, and before you know it, our young hero finds himself in danger up to his neck because of a feud between rival ranches. McGaughey’s work has a nice hardboiled tone to it and this story is no exception.  Plenty of tough action makes this one a winner.

I’m familiar with Lee Bond mostly from the long-running Long Sam Littlejohn series he wrote as backup stories in TEXAS RANGERS, but he did several series for WILD WEST WEEKLY, including one featuring drifting cowpokes Calamity Boggs and Shorty Stevens. Shorty is, well, short and feisty, just as you’d expect. Calamity is tall and husky and full of doom and gloom, an extreme pessimist who always believes the worst is about to happen, which is, I’m sure, how he got his nickname. Bond doesn’t explain that in “Calamity Hubs a Frame-Up” in this issue, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s easy enough to just jump right into this yarn in which our two rambling heroes find a recently abandoned line shack, decide to spend the night there, and wake up the next morning to find themselves the prisoners of a posse out to hang them for murder and rustling. As you might suppose, eventually they sort things out and everything gets resolved in a big gunfight, as things usually do in a Lee Bond story. Bond moves things along well and was always excellent when it comes to the action scenes. This is the third very good story in a row in this issue.

I’ve written here before about how Elmer Kelton and I enjoyed talking about Western pulps whenever we’d get together. I think I may have been the only one of his friends who was a pulp fan. He told me several times that WILD WEST WEEKLY was his favorite pulp when he was a kid growing up on a ranch in West Texas, and Sonny Tabor was his favorite character. Paul S. Powers wrote the Sonny Tabor series under the pseudonym Ward M. Stevens. More than 130 novelettes and novellas between 1930 and 1943 is quite a run. Some of those stories were crossovers featuring Sonny Tabor meeting up with other series characters from WILD WEST WEEKLY, including Kid Wolf (also a Paul S. Powers creation), Pete Rice, and Billy West and the Circle J outfit.

But who was Sonny Tabor? He was a good-guy outlaw, falsely accused of some crime (I don’t know the details) and on the run from the law, blamed for every bit of outlawry that occurs any time he’s around, and sometimes even when he’s not. The novelette in this issue, “A Murder Brand for Sonny Tabor”, is actually the first one I’ve read. The youngest of three brothers who own a ranch together is gunned down, shot in the back, and the name Tabor is carved into his forehead. The dead man’s brothers and the local law blame Sonny, of course, and he has to uncover the real killer to clear his name of this charge, anyway, although he’ll still be wanted for dozens of others. This is a really well-written story and I found myself liking Sonny and rooting for him right away. I have quite a few more issues with Sonny Tabor stories in them and I’m glad of that because I really enjoyed this one.

I was familiar with Allan R. Bosworth as the author of several excellent Western novels, but I’ve discovered in recent years that he also wrote scores of stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY under house-names, as well as contributing to the magazine under his own name. He used it on his long-running series about freight wagon driver Shorty Masters and his sidekick Willie Wetherbee, also known as the gunfightin’ Sonora Kid. In “A Hangin’ on Live Oak Creek”, all Shorty and Willie want to do is run a trotline and catch themselves a mess of catfish for fryin’ up. Instead, they find a fella who’s been lynched, but luckily they come across him before he’s choked to death. Rescuing him puts our heroes smack-dab in the middle of a fight between ranchers and rustlers. There’s a nice twist in this one. I saw it coming, but that didn’t make it any less satisfying. Also, I like the way Shorty names the mules in his team after classical music composers. That’s a nice touch I wasn’t expecting. Another really good story.

One of WILD WEST WEEKLY’s specialties was the series of linked novellas that could then be combined and published as a fix-up novel. Walker A. Tompkins was the master of this format, writing many of them for the pulp. His story in this issue published under the house-name Philip F. Deere, “Death Rides Tombstone Trail”, is the third of six to feature a Wyoming cowboy named Lon Cole who is in Texas working as a trail boss and also getting mixed up in various adventures. In this one, he’s between trail drives and takes a job as a special guard for a stagecoach carrying a shipment of gold. Of course, the stagecoach is held up. Lon is grazed by an outlaw bullet and knocked out so they think he’s dead and ride off leaving him there. He goes after the varmints, of course, and discovers they’re a gang known as the Secret Six and are led by a mysterious mastermind known as The Chief. This is nothing we haven’t all seen before, but Tompkins is good at it. Even though the story has a beginning, middle, and end, it’s weakened slightly by being part of a bigger whole, but I had a good time reading it anyway. The six Lon Cole stories were combined into the novel THUNDERGUST TRAIL, published under Tompkins' real name by Phoenix Press in 1942. I own a copy of that book but haven't read it. When I get around to it, I'll have already read a chunk out of the middle of it, but I don't think that'll bother me too much.

Overall, this is one of the best Western pulps I’ve read in a long time. Every story in this issue is very good to excellent, and several of them really make me want to read more about the characters. If you’ve never read an issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY, it would make a good introduction to the magazine, I think. If you’re a long-time fan like me, it’s well worth downloading and reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Variety Detective Magazine, August 1938

VARIETY DETECTIVE MAGAZINE was a short-lived detective pulp from Ace that changed its name to LONE WOLF DETECTIVE MAGAZINE and ran for several more years. This is the first issue under the VARIETY DETECTIVE name and sports a Norman Saunders cover, always a good selling point. Inside were assorted house-name reprints from TEN DETECTIVE ACES, DETECTIVE-DRAGNET MAGAZINE, and SECRET AGENT X, along with stories by Lester Dent and Paul Chadwick, certainly the only authors in this issue you've ever heard of, at least that we know about. There's no telling who was hiding behind those house-names. This is probably more of an interesting oddity than anything else, but Dent and Chadwick are always worth reading. In fact, if you want to check it out, the entire issue can be found here.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: North-West Romances, Summer 1944

Since we had a little snow here recently, this seemed like a good time to post the cover from an issue of NORTH-WEST ROMANCES. And of course, it's always a good time to post a Norman Saunders cover, although I wouldn't put this one in the absolute top rank of his work. It's still dynamic and eye-catching, though. I don't own this issue, but it looks like a good one with stories by William Heuman, Archie Joscelyn, and Curtis Bishop (all best remembered for their Westerns but perfectly capable of writing excellent Northerns, as well), along with lesser-known authors Paul Selonke, Michael Oblinger, William Rush, Francis James (who was really the very prolific James A. Goldthwaite), and Q.C. Nindorf. I always enjoy Northerns and really need to read more of them.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: 12 Adventure Stories, August 1939

Popular Publications had 10 STORY WESTERN and FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES. Ace Magazines Inc. almost split the difference with 12 ADVENTURE STORIES, a short-lived (five issues) pulp that sported excellent covers by Norman Saunders and stories by a horde of house names. The featured author in this issue, Alexis Rossoff, was a real guy who wrote scores of stories for various adventure, detective, sports, and air-war pulps. The only other author in this one who's not known to be a house name is Alonzo Kirby, and since this is his only credit in the Fictionmags Index, he may well be fictional, too. For the record, the other by-lines in this issue are Paul Adams, Eric Lennox, Rexton Archer, Arthur Flint, Cliff Howe, Chester Brant, Leon Dupont, Ronald Flagg, Clint Douglas, and John Gregory. So there's really no way of knowing who wrote these stories. Given that Ace was considered a salvage market, there's a good chance some or even all of them are stories that were rejected by ARGOSY, ADVENTURE, BLUE BOOK, and SHORT STORIES. But that doesn't necessarily make them bad yarns. I've read plenty of good stories in various Ace pulps.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, August 1950

FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES was a reprint pulp, but it reprinted some great science fiction and fantasy, sometimes obscure, sometimes well-known classics. And it had new, often great covers by some fine artists. This issue contains only two stories, both of them in the classic category: THE TIME MACHINE by H.G. Wells and DONOVAN'S BRAIN by Curt Siodmak. I've read them both, although not in this pulp. The dramatic cover illustrating a scene from THE TIME MACHINE is by one of my favorite cover artists, Norman Saunders.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Complete Western Book Magazine, February 1952

I don't own this pulp, but it looks like a fine issue of COMPLETE WESTERN BOOK MAGAZINE, starting with the usual excellent cover by Norman Saunders. Inside are stories by a really strong group of authors: D.B. Newton (twice, once as himself and once under the house-name Ken Jason), Philip Ketchum, Dean Owen, H.A. DeRosso, Frank Castle, and Kenneth Fowler. An issue that's almost certainly worth reading if you're fortunate enough to have a copy.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine, April 15, 1939

This issue of the iconic Western pulp WESTERN STORY sports a particularly striking cover by Norman Saunders. And it's an all-star issue as far as the authors represented in its pages, too: T.T. Flynn, Harry F. Olmsted, Ray Nafziger, Cliff Farrell, Tom Roan, Tom Curry, and Frank Richardson Pierce. Man, that's a strong line-up! The Flynn story is "Death Marks Time in Trampas", which was the title story in a collection published by Five Star in 1998 that was my introduction to his work. I've read a bunch of his novels and stories since then and enjoyed them all.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fast Action Detective and Mystery Stories, January 1957

As you can see right on the cover (which is by the always excellent Norman Saunders, by the way), FAST ACTION DETECTIVE AND MYSTERY STORIES was a retitling of SMASHING DETECTIVE STORIES, making it one of the last detective pulps. Other than Richard Deming and Thomas Thursday, all the authors in this issue are unknown to me: Harlan Clay (I take that back, I've seen this name in Columbia Western pulps), Francis C. Battle, Saul Anthony, Peter Norcross, and Marc Miller. Although I'm sure the Deming story is good, the Saunders cover may well be the best thing about this issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Trails, May 1941

That's a great, action-packed cover by Norman Saunders on this issue of WESTERN TRAILS. Dean Owen is probably the best-remembered of the authors inside. Other pulpsters on hand in this issue are Cliff Walters, Jay Karth, Art Kercheval, Jack Sterrett, Duane Yarnell (who went on to write a couple of good hardboiled novels for Gold Medal in the Fifties), and one I haven't heard of, P.H. Branford. I'm sure it was an entertaining issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Aces, June 1942

This is kind of an unusual issue of WESTERN ACES because it doesn't have a story by J. Edward Leithead in it. His yarns appeared in almost every issue of WESTERN ACES during the Forties, sometimes several in an issue under his real name and pseudonyms. It seemed that way, anyway, which is okay with me because I really like his work. But even though there's no Leithead, this issue does have a good cover by Norman Saunders and a lead story by one of my other favorite Western authors, Walker A. Tompkins. Also on hand are Tom J. Hopkins, Stephen Payne, Orlando Rigoni, R.S. Lerch, and a handful of lesser-known pulpsters. I've enjoyed every issue of WESTERN ACES I've ever read and I'm sure this one is entertaining, as well.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Super Western, August 1937

This is the first issue of a short-lived Western pulp from Ace. Four issues were published under this title, plus a dozen more as VARIETY WESTERN and ALL-NOVEL WESTERN. Calling this one SUPER WESTERN might have been pulp hyperbole, but it actually had pretty good credentials, starting with a cover by Norman Saunders. Inside are stories by Tom Roan, Norrell Gregory, Joe Archibald, W.H.B. Kent, forgotten pulpster Glenn A. Conner, and house-name Cliff Howe. Not quite super, maybe, but no publisher was going to put out a pulp called PROBABLY PRETTY GOOD WESTERN . . . even though that's what it was.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Best Western, August 1953

Norman Saunders' work is instantly recognizable on the cover of this issue of BEST WESTERN, and he's probably the best-known name associated with this issue, too, although Noel M. Loomis and Lauran Paine are well-regarded as Western pulpsters and novelists. The other stories are by Robert L. Trimnell, Paul L. Peil, Theodore J. Roemer, and Jim Brewer. And of course, this is yet another appearance of our old friends The Stalwart Cowboy, The Beautiful Redhead (she may be angry, but she's not gun-toting this time), and The Wounded Old Geezer. I have got to write those three into a book.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective, August 1952

Even this late in its run, DIME DETECTIVE looks like a pretty darned good pulp. This issue has a Norman Saunders cover, and the line-up of authors inside is really strong: John D. MacDonald, Richard Deming, Talmage Powell, Philip Ketchum, Larry Holden (Frederick Lorenz), Harry Widmer, Dane Gregory, and Albert Simmons. Some of those aren't as well-known as the top guys, of course, but with a Popular Publications pulp, chances are their stories are pretty entertaining.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, November 1942

For some reason, I've always liked those TEN DETECTIVE ACES covers with the red borders around them. It's a nice distinctive look. And I always love Norman Saunders covers. This one is no exception. Great action and details and that's a really good-looking woman. The stories inside are by some authors who ain't half-bad, either: Frederick C. Davis, Walker A. Tompkins, Norman A. Daniels, Harold Q. Masur, Joe Archibald, Lee E. Well, Stuart Friedman, plus a couple I hadn't heard of, Ken Kessler and Jimmy O'Brien, plus house name Guy Fleming. A couple of those authors, Tompkins and Wells, are best known as Western writers, but Davis and Archibald wrote quite a few Westerns, too, and Daniels did a few.