Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Mystery, May 1940

Rudolph Belarski provides the eye-catching cover for this issue of THRILLING MYSTERY, and spinning the yarns inside are Robert Bloch, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Carl Jacobi, Stewart Sterling, Arthur K. Barnes, house-name Will Garth, and lesser-known pulpsters Russell Stanton and David Bernard. With covers and titles like that, it's no wonder the Weird Menace pulps sold so well for a while.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Mystery, Fall 1944

I don’t own a copy of this pulp, but I recently read the e-book version of it published by Radio Archives. I don’t know who painted the cover. Rudolph Belarski did a lot of covers for THRILLING MYSTERY during this era, but I don’t know Belarski’s work well enough to say one way or the other. THRILLING MYSTERY was long past its Weird Menace days by 1944, but this cover looks like it could have graced a Weird Menace pulp.

Instead, by this time THRILLING MYSTERY was more of a regular detective pulp. The lead novella in this issue, “Monarchs of Murder” by C.K.M. Scanlon, is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. The protagonist is Rex Parker, ace crime reporter for the New York Comet, who is also known as an amateur sleuth. It just so happens that Rex Parker was also the star of the lead novels in the pulp THE MASKED DETECTIVE, which ran from Fall 1940 through Spring 1943 for a total of twelve quarterly issues. Parker was also known as the Masked Detective in those stories, a secret identity known only to his girlfriend, fellow reporter Winnie Bligh, and his police contact, Detective Sergeant Gleason. Years ago, I read several of those Masked Detective stories that were reprinted by Tom Johnson’s Fading Shadows imprint and enjoyed all of them. I’m convinced “Monarchs of Murder” was written as a Masked Detective story, got orphaned when that pulp was canceled, and was rewritten to remove all the references to Rex Parker’s alter ego, which leads to one particularly goofy scene in which Parker dons a pair of goggles to conceal his identity, when he normally would have been wearing his mask in the original series.

The second thing I find interesting about “Monarchs of Murder” is that its authorship has been attributed to my old editor and mentor Sam Merwin Jr., who wrote at least three of the Masked Detective stories in that magazine’s run. (The main author was Norman Daniels, who wrote at least five of the original novels and probably created the character. The others were split up among Merwin, Robert Sidney Bowen, Laurence Donovan, and G.T. Fleming-Roberts.) Merwin was a consistently good writer, although he’s probably best remembered these days for his stints as the editor of various science fiction and mystery magazines. “Monarchs of Murder” finds Rex Parker battling a gang of Fifth Columnist saboteurs targeting the oil and gas industry, but the more Parker investigates, the more it appears something else may be going on. There’s plenty of action as Parker and Winnie are captured by the bad guys several different times and have to escape almost certain death. The plot moves along nicely, the clues are planted in a fair manner, and overall, this is an entertaining and satisfying wartime mystery yarn.

Next up is a novelette by an author I’ve long admired, Robert Bloch. At first glance, “Death is a Vampire” seems like it could have appeared in a Weird Menace pulp. The narrator/protagonist is a reporter, Dave Kirby, and the plot revolves around a spooky-looking house, a sinister guy with a vaguely European name (Igor Petroff), some art treasures, a beautiful blonde, a lawyer and a doctor who may be up to no good, and a supposed vampire running around killing people. But by the time the narrator makes a reference to the movie The Cat and the Canary, it’s pretty obvious that this is a prose version of a Bob Hope movie, with the wisecracking, somewhat cowardly reporter being written by Bloch with Hope in mind. It’s also a very entertaining story, a minor entry in Bloch’s career but a heck of a lot of fun. It was reprinted in the anthology TOUGH GUYS & DANGEROUS DAMES, used copies of which can be found pretty easily and inexpensively.

I think of Donald Bayne Hobart as a Western pulpster, but he wrote a lot of detective fiction, too, including nearly two dozen stories featuring private eye Mugs Kelly that ran in various Thrilling Group detective pulps. “Murder After Lunch” is a Mugs Kelly short story published in this issue, and it’s about first-person narrator Mugs returning to his office after lunch one day to find a dead guy sitting in his chair. Moments later, another guy appears to accuse him of the murder. The cops arrive, Mugs explains (in a pretty bland fashion) who really killed the victim, the end. This story went down easily enough due to Hobart’s veteran storytelling skills, but it sure wasn’t very filling.

“The Killer Was Careful” is a short-short by a forgotten pulpster named John X. Brown, who did only a few detective and air-war stories. It’s about a mild-mannered accountant who uncharacteristically murders a client and steals a bundle of cash and then has to worry about being caught. It’s the kind of twist ending “biter bit” story that would be popular in ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE a couple of decades later. I’m not a big fan of those unless they’re really well-done, and this one is just okay.

The issue wraps up with “The Spell of Death”, narrated by insurance investigator Dick Ames, who is on the trail of an embezzler when murder literally falls in his lap. It’s not a bad yarn, with what should have been an obvious clue to the murderer’s identity, but I overlooked it anyway. The author is A. Boyd Correll, a forgotten pulpster who wrote a couple of dozen detective stories for various pulps.

I enjoyed this issue. The stories by Merwin and Bloch are the stand-outs, with the others being okay but forgettable, but overall, it’s a nice, easy, entertaining read, just the sort of thing I need sometimes.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fantastic Adventures, October 1942

I don't think J. Allen St. John's cover on this issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES is one of his best, but it's still pretty darned good and is intriguing enough to make me want to read the story it illustrates, so I guess it did its job. The whole issue is on-line here, along with lots of other issues of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. Will I ever get around to reading it? Who knows? But there's a good group of writers inside including Robert Bloch, Nelson S. Bond, Don Wilcox, Ross Rocklynne, Leroy Yerxa, Dwight V. Swain (writing as Clark South), James Norman, and Robert Moore Williams (writing as Russell Storm). The lead novel is by house-name E.K. Jarvis, so there's really no telling who actually wrote that one.  

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Mammoth Western, August 1950

That's a dramatic cover on this issue of MAMMOTH WESTERN, painted by Arnold Kohn, an artist I'm not familiar with. I'm very familiar with some of the authors inside this issue, though, which include Harry Whittington, Les Savage Jr., and (here's a name you don't normally associate with Westerns) Robert Bloch. Also on hand are Ziff-Davis regular Berkeley Livingston and house-name Mallory Storm. This issue doesn't seem to be on-line anywhere I can find.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Amazing Stories, December 1950

This cover by James B. Settles is intriguing enough to make me want to read the story that goes with it, so I guess it did its job. I don't have time to read it right now, mind you, but if you want to, you can, because this issue of AMAZING STORIES is available on-line here. E.K. Jarvis was a Ziff-Davis house-name known to be used by Robert Bloch, Paul W. Fairman, Robert Silverberg, and Henry Slesar. 1950 is too early for Silverberg and Slesar. Fairman seems to me to be the best bet. Or the author might have been somebody else entirely. The second story in the issue is also by a Z-D house-name, P.F. Costello. William McGivern is known to have used that one, and since the story is called "Kiss and Kill", certainly a crime fiction sounding title, McGivern might well be the author. I've found that his SF and fantasy stories often have criminous elements. After that, we get some stories by authors using their real names: Clifford D. Simak, Raymond F. Jones, and John Jakes. A pretty good line-up, to be sure. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fantastic Adventures, May 1942

I hate snakes in real life, but for some reason, put one on the cover of a pulp or a book and it always catches my attention. Throw in a scantily clad young woman with a spear, and I'm definitely going to notice a cover like this one by Malcolm Smith. Several of the Ziff-Davis regulars show up in this issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, including David Wright O'Brien (once as himself and once as John York Cabot in a collaboration with another Z-D stalwart, William P. McGivern), Don Wilcox, Robert Moore Williams, and David V. Reed. Also on hand some pretty famous names: Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Nelson S. Bond, Stanton Coblentz, Ralph Milne Farley, and future comic book scripting legend John Broome. FANTASTIC ADVENTURES always had good covers and pretty good writers. I'm not sure why I haven't read more of them. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Amazing Stories, November 1942

Robert Gibson Jones did a lot of great covers for various Ziff-Davis pulps. I like this one on the November 1942 issue of AMAZING STORIES. Inside are stories by Eando Binder (actually Earl and Otto Binder, but you knew that, of course), Robert Bloch, Raymond Z. Gallun, Emil Petaja, David Wright O'Brien writing as Duncan Farnsworth, and John Russell Fearn writing as Thornton Ayre. I've read all those authors except Fearn, and I'm thinking I'll read something by him soon. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Astonishing Stories, February 1943

Pretty good cover by Milton Luros on this issue of ASTONISHING STORIES, Popular Publications' science fiction pulp. And you certainly can't argue with the quality of the authors inside: Leigh Brackett, Henry Kuttner, Robert Bloch, and James MacCreigh, who was really Frederik Pohl. There's also a story by Walter Kubilius, a name that's familiar to me but I don't really know why. I do know this looks like a fine issue, though.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Strange Stories, June 1940

From very late in the Weird Menace boom, this issue from the Thrilling Group's entry in that genre has an eye-catching cover and some good authors mixed with several I've never heard of. On hand are Henry Kuttner (twice, once as himself and once as Keith Hammond), August Derleth (also twice, once as himself and once as Tally Mason), Robert Bloch, Hamilton Craigie (who I think of as more of a Western writer, even though he turned out stories in just about every genre for the pulps), and Don Alviso (likewise). The ones I'm not familiar with include Jack B. Creamer, Earle Dow, John Clemons, O.M. Cabral, and Maria Moravsky. It looks like a pretty entertaining issue, even if the Weird Menace pulps were running out of steam by then.

The Robert Bloch Centennial: Shooting Star/Spiderweb

(The material in this post originally appeared in somewhat different form on April 24, 2008 and May 27, 2008.)

I love the old Ace Doubles. The Westerns and the science fiction doubles were fairly common in this area when I was a kid, and I read a bunch of them. But for some reason I never saw any of the mystery doubles until 1981, when I came across a couple of shelves of them in a junk store. Needless to say, I grabbed them all.

There have been efforts to revive the Ace double novel format over the years, but the Hard Case Crime release of Robert Bloch’s SHOOTING STAR and SPIDERWEB may be the most successful yet. Of course, both of these novels were actually first published as Ace Doubles, although not back to back with each other.

The narrator of SHOOTING STAR is Mark Clayburn, a Hollywood literary agent/private eye. I don’t think I’ve ever come across that particular combination before, and it makes Clayburn different from other private eyes who specialize in cases involving the movie industry, such as W.T. Ballard’s Bill Lennox and Robert Leslie Bellem’s Dan Turner. Bloch’s familiarity with the pulp magazine markets gives this element of the novel a welcome touch of realism. There’s also a little tuckerizing going on, for example an undertaker named Hamilton Brackett. And the whole thing is told in an appealingly breezy, fast-moving style.

Unfortunately the plot, which involves Clayburn trying to find out who murdered a cowboy movie star so that the producer who hires him can sell the dead star’s old movies to television (shades of Hopalong Cassidy), never develops into anything more than a very generic private eye plot. I kept waiting for Bloch to come up with a twist on a par with making his hero a literary agent as well as a detective, but that never happens. The writing is smooth and Mark Clayburn is a likable character, but the other characters never came alive for me. SHOOTING STAR isn’t a bad book, and I enjoyed reading it, but it’s certainly a minor entry among Bloch’s novels.

SPIDERWEB is the other half of the Robert Bloch double from Hard Case Crime. I enjoyed SHOOTING STAR, but SPIDERWEB is a darker, better book, I think.

The narrator is Eddie Haines, a radio announcer from the Midwest who heads to Hollywood in the early Fifties with the intention of being a success as a TV show producer, or an announcer if he can’t sell his pitch for a TV series. Of course, neither of those goals works out, and he’s on the verge of killing himself in despair when he meets Professor Otto Hermann, a “psychological consultant” to the movie community who’s actually a swindler and conman. Hermann recruits Eddie to join his group of henchmen and gives him a new identity as the author of a successful self-help book. Eddie realizes that the professor is a crook and that he’s turning into a crook himself, but everything still goes along fine until the professor decides to target a state senator for blackmail and use the senator’s niece as part of the plot. It just so happens that Eddie has fallen in love with the niece . . .

In noirish fashion, things get worse from there, as Eddie tries to do the right thing but it won’t quite seem to work out. Bloch keeps the story perking right along, but under the smooth prose and snappy patter is a pretty bleak look at Southern California and gullible humanity itself. SPIDERWEB is a fine novel, and Hard Case Crime has done a good thing by bringing it back into print.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Weird Tales, July 1940

I used to own this issue of WEIRD TALES and read it many years ago, but I'm afraid I don't remember much about it except the H. Bedford-Jones story. But elsewhere in the issue are stories by Frank Gruber, Robert Bloch, Seabury Quinn, Manly Wade Wellman (writing as Gans T. Field), and Frank Owen, so I'm sure there's plenty of good reading there.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Strange Stories, August 1939

This cover is by Earle Bergey, although you might not guess that to look at it. Not a space babe in sight. But plenty of good authors, including Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner, E. Hoffmann Price, Carl Jacobi, August Derleth, and Norman Daniels.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Weird Tales, July 1943

This cover by Franklin Wittmack is on the mild side for WEIRD TALES, but what a fine issue this is. I read it a number of years ago and still recall most of the stories. In addition to Robert Bloch's classic "Yours Truly--Jack the Ripper", there are tales by H. Bedford-Jones, Ray Bradbury, Otis Adelbert Kline and Frank Belknap Long, Frank Owen, Allison V. Harding, and the underrated Harold Lawlor. I know the magazine's glory days were supposedly over by then, but I really like the 1940s issues of WEIRD TALES that I've read.

Spiderweb -- Robert Bloch

SPIDERWEB is the other half of the recent Robert Bloch double from Hard Case Crime. (Yes, I’m reading a lot of HCC books these days, for some reason – like they’re good.) I enjoyed SHOOTING STAR, but SPIDERWEB is a darker, better book, I think.

The narrator is Eddie Haines, a radio announcer from the Midwest who heads to Hollywood in the early Fifties with the intention of being a success as a TV show producer, or an announcer if he can’t sell his pitch for a TV series. Of course, neither of those goals works out, and he’s on the verge of killing himself in despair when he meets Professor Otto Hermann, a “psychological consultant” to the movie community who’s actually a swindler and conman. Hermann recruits Eddie to join his group of henchmen and gives him a new identity as the author of a successful self-help book. Eddie realizes that the professor is a crook and that he’s turning into a crook himself, but everything still goes along fine until the professor decides to target a state senator for blackmail and use the senator’s niece as part of the plot. It just so happens that Eddie has fallen in love with the niece . . .

In noirish fashion, things get worse from there, as Eddie tries to do the right thing but it won’t quite seem to work out. Bloch keeps the story perking right along, but under the smooth prose and snappy patter is a pretty bleak look at Southern California and gullible humanity itself. SPIDERWEB is a fine novel, and Hard Case Crime has done a good thing by bringing it back into print.

Shooting Star -- Robert Bloch

I love the old Ace Doubles. The Westerns and the science fiction doubles were fairly common in this area when I was a kid, and I read a bunch of them. But for some reason I never saw any of the mystery doubles until 1981, when I came across a couple of shelves of them in a junk store. Needless to say, I grabbed them all.

There have been efforts to revive the Ace double novel format over the years, but the Hard Case Crime release of Robert Bloch’s SHOOTING STAR and SPIDERWEB may be the most successful yet. Of course, both of these novels were actually first published as Ace Doubles, although not back to back with each other. I’ve just read SHOOTING STAR, and I’ll get to SPIDERWEB fairly soon, I hope.

The narrator of SHOOTING STAR is Mark Clayburn, a Hollywood literary agent/private eye. I don’t think I’ve ever come across that particular combination before, and it makes Clayburn different from other private eyes who specialize in cases involving the movie industry, such as W.T. Ballard’s Bill Lennox and Robert Leslie Bellem’s Dan Turner. Bloch’s familiarity with the pulp magazine markets gives this element of the novel a welcome touch of realism. There’s also a little tuckerizing going on, for example an undertaker named Hamilton Brackett. And the whole thing is told in an appealingly breezy, fast-moving style.

Unfortunately the plot, which involves Clayburn trying to find out who murdered a cowboy movie star so that the producer who hires him can sell the dead star’s old movies to television (shades of Hopalong Cassidy), never develops into anything more than a very generic private eye plot. I kept waiting for Bloch to come up with a twist on a par with making his hero a literary agent as well as a detective, but that never happens. The writing is smooth and Mark Clayburn is a likable character, but the other characters never came alive for me. SHOOTING STAR isn’t a bad book, and I enjoyed reading it, but it’s certainly a minor entry among Bloch’s novels.