Review: The Daughter of Genghis Khan - John York Cabot (David Wright O'Brien)

The narrator/protagonist of David Wright O’Brien’s novella “The Daughter of Genghis Khan” is Dr. Cliff Saunders, an American physician who is part of a humanitarian mission aiding the Nationalist Chinese during their war against the Japanese. Since the January 1942 issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, the pulp in which this yarn originally appeared as the subject of H.W. MacCauley's dramatic cover, was actually on the newsstands during December 1941, that means the story was written well before the attack on Pearl Harbor during the period in which the United States was technically a neutral nation.

But neutrality doesn’t mean much during the chaos of war, so when Japanese forces overrun the field hospital in which Saunders and beautiful redheaded nurse Linda Barret are working, they’re both taken prisoner. At least they’re not executed outright. In fact, the Japanese officer in charges wants to deliver them to a neutral area where they’ll be safe. However, before that can happen, a group of Mongol bandits counterattack, and Saunders and Linda find themselves taken to an isolated village in the mountains that’s ruled by a beautiful young woman who claims to be the daughter of Genghis Khan. Not a descendant, mind you, but the actual daughter of the great Mongol conqueror.

That claim is part of the slight fantasy element in this story. It had to have some sort of off-trail bent to the plot, since this was FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, after all, but for the most part, “The Daughter of Genghis Khan” is a pretty straightforward World War II yarn, as Saunders and Linda are forced to choose a side in the bloody conflict between the Japanese and the Mongol bandits. It’s pretty easy to figure out which side they’ll wind up on, of course, but that doesn’t detract from the breakneck action and the colorful characters and setting. This story reminded me a little of Milton Caniff’s immortal TERRY AND THE PIRATES comic strip, and that’s a good thing.

David Wright O’Brien’s writing career was a short one. His first story was published early in 1940, and he was killed while serving in the Army Air Force in 1944 when the bomber he was in was shot down over Berlin. But he published dozens of stories during that handful of years, most of them in the Ziff-Davis pulps AMAZING STORIES and FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. I think it’s safe to say he was a rising star in the science fiction and fantasy fields. “The Daughter of Genghis Khan” was published under his pseudonym John York Cabot because there were two more stories by him in that issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, one under his real name and one under his other pseudonym Duncan Farnsworth. (O’Brien was the nephew of Farnsworth Wright, the legendary editor of WEIRD TALES.) I’ve read several of his stories and really enjoyed all of them so far. His prose is clean and fast-moving with a very nice touch for action.

You can find the issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES containing this story here, and it’s available in other places on the Internet, as well. I need to read more by O’Brien, and I hope I manage to do so soon.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Mask, September 1933

What would 20 cents buy in 1933? Well, it would buy a lot of things I suppose, but one possible answer is that it would buy an issue of BLACK MASK with stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick Nebel, Raoul Whitfield, W.T. Ballard, Roger Torrey, and Eugene Cunningham. That's just a spectacular group of authors. Cunningham is best remembered as a Western author, but he wrote quite a few hardboiled yarns, too. His story in this issue is the first in a series about hotel detective Cleve Corby. Nebel's story is part of his Kennedy and McBride series, Gardner's features the phantom crook Ed Jenkins, Ballard writes about Hollywood troubleshooter Bill Lennox, Torrey's story is about policeman Dal Prentice, and Whitfield's is the first of two about private eye Dion Davies. Several of the stories from this issue have been reprinted, and I'm sure they're well worth seeking out. By the way, the cover of this issue is by J.W. Schlaikjer, who did quite a few covers for BLACK MASK during this era.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, January 1948

It’s been too long since I’ve read an issue of EXCITING WESTERN. This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy. I think the cover is by A. Leslie Ross, but it also looks to me like it might be by H.W. Scott. So I’m hesitant to identify it as the work of either artist. I’m hoping some of you may be able to provide a definitive answer. Whoever painted it, it’s a pretty good cover.

I’ve enjoyed W.C. Tuttle’s Tombstone and Speedy series ever since I started reading it. The novella in this issue, “Strangers in El Segundo”, finds our eccentric range detective duo in the cowtown of the title, and once again, they’ve been fired by their exasperated boss at the Cattleman’s Association. That unfortunate circumstance doesn’t last long, however, as it just so happens the owner of the local bank has written to the Association asking for help, and Tombstone and Speedy are rehired. But wouldn’t you know it, the banker is murdered before they can talk to him and find out why he needed a pair of detectives. That sets off an apparently unrelated chain of events including a stagecoach holdup, an explosion, a kidnapping, and more murders. Tuttle was great at packing these yarns with plot despite their relatively short length. Tombstone and Speedy unravel everything and bring the villains to justice, of course, after some excellent action scenes and plenty of amusing dialogue. This is one of the few comedy Western series I like, because it’s not all comedy. The stories always feature action and mystery and colorful characters, and “Strangers in El Segundo” is no exception.

Hal White is a forgotten author these days, although he turned out dozens of stories for the Western, detective, and air war pulps. I’d read one story by him before and didn’t like it, but his novelette in this issue, “Powder on the Pecos” is very good. It starts out with a stagecoach robbery and moves on to be a story about a young rancher being framed as a rustler by the local cattle baron. The plot is very traditional, but White supplies a mildly entertaining plot twist and has a nice touch with the plentiful action scenes. I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Johnston McCulley is always a dependable author, of course. This January 1948 issue was on the newsstands during December 1947, so McCulley’s story “Undercover Santa Claus” is very appropriate. It’s a heartwarming tale in which an outlaw risks his life to help out the children of an old friend. Most readers will have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen in this one, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

I’ve always enjoyed T.W. Ford’s stories (he wrote hundreds of ’em for the Western, sports, and detective pulps), and his novelette in this issue, “Man-Bait for a Gun Trap” is no exception. In this yarn, a former deputy goes undercover to infiltrate an outlaw town and rescue the brother of the girl he loves. This story is almost all hardboiled, well-written action, but Ford also manages to make the characters interesting, especially the protagonist, who gave up packing a badge and has to learn how to handle a gun left-handed since his right arm got shot up and crippled. The boss of the outlaw town, who seems to have been modeled on Lionel Barrymore, is pretty good, too. This is just an excellent story all the way around, and I really enjoyed it.

Chuck Martin’s short story “Tanglefoot” is almost as good. This is the first in a short, three-story series about Jim “Tanglefoot” Bowen, another former deputy who has to learn how to cope with a handicap, in his case a leg that never healed right after bullets broke a couple of bones in it. Bowen has retired from being a lawman and makes his living as a cobbler and range detective, but he also helps out the local sheriff from time to time, a situation complicated by the fact that the sheriff is in love with the same girl as Bowen. The two of them team up to solve a mystery and round up some outlaws, including some of the men responsible for crippling Bowen, and Martin spins the yarn in his usual straightforward, fast-paced prose. He even throws in some frontier forensics! Bowen would have made a great character for novels, and I’m sorry there are only three stories about him. I think I have the other two, so I’m looking forward to reading them.

Tex Mumford was a house-name, so there’s no telling who wrote the short story “Powerful Hombre” in this issue, but it’s another good one. It’s a lighthearted tale but not an outright comedy about a cowboy who’s too big and strong for his own good. He doesn’t know his own strength, as the old saying goes, and that gets into trouble, as when he encounters a bank robber in this yarn. This is a minor story, but it’s well-written, moves right along, and I found reading it to be a pleasant experience.

I don’t know anything about Leo Charles except that he published four stories in the late Forties, three of them in Columbia Western pulps. “Remember the Knife” in this issue is his own credit in a Thrilling Group pulp. It’s the third story in this issue with a protagonist who’s handicapped. I doubt if this was an intentional theme, but who knows. In this case, the fellow has a bad leg because a horse fell on him when, as a young outlaw, he was trying to make a getaway. He’s gone straight, and nobody in the town where he runs a stable knows about his past. He has an adopted son who also has a crippled leg and needs an operation, so he tries to get the money for it by using his uncanny skill with a knife. Unfortunately, some of his old outlaw compadres show up, and so does a U.S. Marshal. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this one at first. The writing isn’t as good as in the other stories in this issue. But the author won me over with his characters and the genuine suspense the story generates. This is another good one.

And this is a fine issue of EXCITING WESTERN overall, with a solid Tombstone and Speedy yarn and great yarns from Ford and Martin. I was a little disappointed when I realized this issue didn’t have a Navajo Tom Raine story in it, since I really like that series, too, but I wound up thinking it’s one of the best issues of this pulp that I’ve read. If you have a copy, it’s well worth your reading time.

Review: Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin' - Cleve Endicott (Norman W. Hay) (Wild West Weekly, November 28, 1936)

I came across this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY on the Internet Archive, and since it features a novelette with the great title “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”, I decided to go ahead and read that yarn so I could post about it today. It’s the November 28, 1936 issue, and the cover is by R.G. Harris. I’ll read the rest of it and feature it as a Saturday Morning Western Pulp in a week or two.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Billy West/Circle J series in WILD WEST WEEKLY, it was the most prolific Western pulp series with more than 400 entries between 1927 and 1943, written by at least 15 different authors under the house-name Cleve Endicott. The protagonist is Billy West, the young owner of the Circle J cattle ranch in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains, along with his sidekicks, the colorful, grizzled old-timer Buck Foster and feisty, redheaded Joe Scott.

In “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”, it’s the day before the holiday and the Circle J’s Chinese cook Sing Lo is on his way back to the ranch with a buckboard full of supplies for the Thanksgiving feast when he interrupts a stagecoach robbery and is taken prisoner by the outlaws. Meanwhile, in town, Buck Foster competes in a turkey shoot to win a prize gobbler and runs afoul of some other hardcases. Unknown to any of our heroes, these two circumstances are connected and will soon lead them into a whirlwind of action.

In fact, this story is almost all action, but it’s well-written and Billy, Buck, Joe, and Sing Lo are very likable protagonists. Despite the thin plot, I found it to be a very enjoyable yarn. The actual author is Norman W. Hay, who wrote more of the Circle J stories than anyone else. If you’re a Western pulp fan and need something to do after your nap this afternoon (I assume everyone takes a nap on Thanksgiving, like I do), I can recommend reading “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate the holiday. As always, I have a great deal to be thankful for, including all of you reading this blog. I appreciate your patience and your continued interest after all these years. That's the First December 1930 issue of TOP-NOTCH MAGAZINE, by the way, and it looks like a pretty good issue with stories by Donald Bayne Hobart, John Wilstach, Ben Conlon, and a Kroom, Son of the Sea yarn by house-name Valentine Wood. (I feel confident in saying that no one else will mention Kroom, Son of the Sea to you this Thanksgiving, but feel free to bring him up around the dinner table if you want to.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: The Feds, October 1936

THE FEDS was a G-Man pulp published by Street & Smith, a company that usually was very successful with anything they put out there. Not so with THE FEDS, which lasted for only 15 issues in 1936 and '37. But its lack of longevity can't be attributed to the generally pretty good covers, including this one on the second issue which is probably collectable because of the presence of all those Ku Klux Klansmen on it. I don't know who painted it. Nor were the writers any slouches. This issue features stories by Steve Fisher, Wyatt Blassingame, W.T. Ballard, Arthur J. Burks, William G. Bogart, Laurence Donovan, Jean Francis Webb, George Allan Moffatt (Edwin V. Burkholder), James Duncan (Arthur Pincus), and house-name Bruce Harley. Probably some good reading there. I don't own this issue and it doesn't appear to be available on-line, but if I did have a copy of it, I wouldn't hesitate to give it a try. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Speed Western Stories, December 1945, Plus Blog Update

This issue of SPEED WESTERN STORIES features two stories by Edwin Truett Long, one under the transparent pseudonym Edwin Truett and one as by Wallace Kayton. Long died earlier in 1945, apparently from an illness he contracted while serving in Burma during World War II, so these may have been some of the last stories he wrote. Or they could be unacknowledged reprints. With a Trojan pulp, one never knows. Elsewhere in this issue are stories by William R. Cox, Laurence Donovan, James P. Olsen, William J. Glynn, and house-name Max Neilson. The cover is probably by H.W. Scott. This issue can be found on-line at the Internet Archive. With a line-up of authors like that, I may have to read it one of these days.

Speaking of issues, I've been dealing with some health-related ones recently. Nothing serious, the blog's not going anywhere and neither am I, but it's left me without the time and energy to get everything done that I wanted to, including updating the blog. However, I'm hoping that normal posting will resume next week, although it may get sporadic now and then. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Leading Western, October 1946

The cover on this issue of LEADING WESTERN is by H.W. Scott, an artist I generally like. This one is okay, but I'm not all that fond of the sketchy, unfinished look which was common on Western pulps in the late Forties and Fifties on covers by Scott and other artists. Inside are stories by some pretty good writers, including Philip Ketchum, Laurence Donovan, Giff Cheshire, Paul Craig (who was also Giff Cheshire), Norrell Gregory, and Harold R. Stoakes. The Trojan Western pulps, like those from Columbia, were low-budget, hit-or-miss affairs, but there are good stories to be found in them if you look. I don't own a copy of this one, but with those authors, I'd be willing to give it a try if I did.

Review: Marihuana - William Irish (Cornell Woolrich)

For collectors, MARIHUANA by Cornell Woolrich writing as William Irish is one of the most sought-after of the legendary Dell 10-Cent editions. I’ve owned several copies over the years, but despite being a Woolrich fan ever since discovering his work in stories reprinted in ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE and THE SAINT MYSTERY MAGAZINE during the Sixties, I’d never read it until now.

MARIHUANA was first published as a novelette under Woolrich's name in the May 3, 1941 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, which was a large-format pulp at the time but still a pulp. Ten years later it was reprinted as a Dell 10-Cent book. Like many of the protagonists in Woolrich’s stories, King Turner, the main character in this yarn, is kind of a sad sack, an average guy who’s depressed over the break-up of his marriage. So a couple of his so-called friends (they aren’t, really) show up at his apartment with a girl he doesn’t know, and they drag him off to a marihuana den (I’m just going to use the spelling the story does) where he smokes a couple of reefers and goes a little crazy from the drug.

When he accidentally kills somebody, he takes it on the lam and his marihuana-induced paranoia results in several more murders. It doesn’t take long for the cops to get on his trail, and Woolrich skillfully goes back and forth between Turner’s descent into violent madness and the law’s efforts to catch him.

Granted, from our perspective today, this is a pretty silly plot, but when were Woolrich’s plots not a little far-fetched? What makes MARIHUANA work is its relentless pace and Woolrich’s ability to make us sympathize with a protagonist who’s caught up in things he can’t control, even though he’s a killer and an all-around unlikable guy. (Is it just me, or does the description of King Turner—the slight build, the sandy hair, the sunken cheeks—sound suspiciously like Woolrich himself?)

There are a couple of late twists that work pretty well. And even though it's pure coincidence, I can’t help but like the fact that the cop who leads the effort to find Turner is named Spillane.

I’m glad I finally read MARIHUANA. It’s a suspenseful yarn that really had me flipping the pages. Whether you’re a Woolrich fan or have never read any of his work, I give it a high recommendation. If you want to read it but don’t have the Dell 10-Cent edition, there’s a very affordable e-book edition available on Amazon.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Detective, December 1935

This issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE sports a gruesome but eye-catching and dramatic cover by Rafael DeSoto. Nothing good ever comes from a suit of armor on a pulp cover! Inside this issue are stories by Barry Perowne (a Raffles yarn), Arthur J. Burks, Steve Fisher, Dwight V. Babcock, John Scott Douglas, Paul Hawk, Edmond Du Perrier, and the oddly named Tom Erwin Geris, who, if you rearrange the letters, turns out to be none other than Mort Weisinger, who wrote quite a few pulp stories but is best remembered as the long-time editor of the Superman titles at DC Comics during the Silver Age. He had a reputation as quite a curmudgeon as far as the writers and artists were concerned, but I didn't know any of that at the time. I just read the comic books and enjoyed them. I don't believe I've ever read any of his pulp stories, though. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, December 1954

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my taped, trimmed, and tattered copy in the scan, but other than being beat up, it’s intact and fully readable. The cover art is by Sam Cherry, as usual during this era of TEXAS RANGERS. It’s not one of his better covers, in my opinion, but it’s certainly not bad. I don’t think Cherry was capable of painting a bad cover.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, “El Diablo’s Treasure”, is by Roe Richmond. I’ve mentioned many times in the past that Richmond’s Hatfield novels aren’t really to my taste, but I read one now and then anyway because he was a pretty good writer otherwise. This one starts out very promising. Hatfield is in Del Rio, on the Texas-Mexico border, and is already in the middle of his current assignment. He’s supposed to accompany a famous archeologist, the man’s beautiful daughter, and a young mining engineer who’s engaged to the girl, as they search for a famous lost mine in the Sierra Madre of Mexico. Not only is there the potential for gold, but the mine also is supposed to be the hiding place for a fortune in gems left there a couple of hundred years earlier.

Unfortunately, the arrangement with Mexico calls for the party to be escorted by a troop of Rurales commanded by an officer who is actually little more than a bandit, and there’s a gang of actual bandits roaming the area where the search is to take place. Throw in the fact that the archeologist’s daughter is a beautiful hellcat with her eye on Hatfield, angering her fiancée, and there’s plenty going on to wind up with Hatfield getting plenty of trouble heaped on his head.

That’s exactly what happens, as Richmond provides plenty of gritty, well-written fistfights, shootouts, and even some epic battles. There’s quite a bit to like in this novel. However, Richmond makes a serious misstep by never providing any sort of interesting backstory for the fortune that’s supposed to be hidden in the mine. It’s just sort of there, with a couple of vague hints that maybe the Conquistadores left it. There’s also no mention of anyone known as El Diablo, let alone an explanation of why it’s his treasure. Was Richmond simply referring to the Devil? Who knows?

My main objection to Richmond’s Hatfield novels is the presence of the annoying sidekicks he introduced to the series. Hatfield is called the Lone Wolf for a reason! Thankfully, although those characters are mentioned once, they play no part in this novel.

Ultimately, “El Diablo’s Treasure” isn’t a bad yarn. But Richmond shares something with Joseph Chadwick: he just doesn’t have a feel for the Jim Hatfield character. Hatfield never really seems like the same person who’s in the novels by Leslie Scott, Tom Curry, Walker Tompkins, and Peter Germano. If this had been a stand-alone with a totally different Texas Ranger, it would have been a better story. As is, it’s worth reading but not a great example of the series.

“War Bonnets in Wyoming” is a cavalry yarn by Gordon D. Shirreffs, one of the best all-around Western writers who was especially good in the cavalry sub-genre. In this one, the captain who’s in charge of establishing a new fort saves the life of a young Shoshone brave who’s being pursued by hostile Arapahoes. Will this be enough to save the lives of the captain, an Indian agent’s beautiful daughter, and a troop of cavalry later on? I think we know the answer to that, but Shirreffs is such a good writer it doesn’t matter. This story doesn’t have a lot of action, but it’s very suspenseful and I enjoyed it.

Harry Harrison Kroll isn’t somebody I think of as a Western writer. He wrote non-fiction about folklore and Americana, and his fiction is usually of the backwoods, hillbilly variety. But he made a few appearances in Western pulps, including the story “Catchers is Keepers” in this issue. It’s not actually a Western, though. It’s about a riverman on the Mississippi who finds a valuable raft and tries to salvage it, only to end up with trouble and a beautiful girl (but I repeat myself). Out of place though it may be, this is a fairly entertaining story.

Frank Castle got his start in the business assisting and ghosting for Western author Tom W. Blackburn, then went on to write dozens of stories under his own name for the Western pulps in the late Forties through the mid-Fifties. After that he became one of the most reliable novelists in the business, turning out books by the score: Westerns, hardboiled crime, nurse novels, soft-core novels, movie novelizations, and a lot of juvenile TV tie-in novels for Whitman under the name Cole Fannin. I’ve always thought Cole Fannin would have been a great Western pseudonym, but Castle chose to use Steve Thurman instead for the Westerns he didn’t publish under his real name. He also wrote some of the Lassiter novels under the house-name Jack Slade. I really like his work, so I was glad to see that he has a novelette in this issue called “Wild Night in Dodge”.

And a wild night it is. Dodge City is past its hell-raising peak since the railhead has long since moved on westward, but plenty of trouble is lurking there anyway for Kelly Shannon, who brings in a herd from Colorado. Before you know it, he’s met a beautiful redhead who looks just like a long-dead lover of his from Texas, he’s been accused of cheating at cards, he’s been blackjacked and knocked out, and he’s had ten thousand dollars stolen from him. And that’s just the start of a night full of fights, shootouts, double-crosses, and nefarious plans.

This is a terrific story, a 1950s Gold Medal Western novel in miniature. It’s got a hardboiled hero, a beautiful girl, and despicable villains everywhere Kelly Shannon turns. Frank Castle developed a very distinctive style that makes his later novels easy to identify, but it’s just in the formative stages here. The story races along and comes to a satisfying conclusion, and it just makes me want to read more by Castle. 

“Bedlam on the Box X” is by Ben Frank, the author of the Doc Swap series and a writer whose work I’ve grown to heartily dislike. This isn’t a Doc Swap story, so I had a little hope for it, but it’s the same sort of cutesy, allegedly humorous story and I gave up on it after a few pages. Ben Frank just isn’t for me, and I think I’m going to stop trying to read his stories. (I felt the same way about Syl McDowell’s Swap and Whopper series and finally warmed up to it, but I don’t believe it’s going to happen with Ben Frank.)

I don’t know a thing about Garold Hartsock except that he published a couple of dozen stories, mostly Westerns and a few detective stories, in the pulps during the Forties and Fifties. His story “Feud” in this issue is a grim tale about feuding families in Oregon and includes a stereotypical Romeo-and-Juliet element. Hartsock’s writing is pretty good, though, and he kept me turning the pages to the end, which was a major letdown. So, not bad, but not particularly good, either.

And that’s a pretty accurate description of this issue of TEXAS RANGERS, too. The Frank Castle novelette is superb, and the Shirreffs cavalry yarn is very good and well worth reading, too. The Hatfield novel is okay if you’re not expecting too much but frustrating in that it could have been much better, although if you just want to sample one of Richmond’s novels, this would be a good pick because the sidekicks aren’t in it. Otherwise, I’d say that if you own this one, read Castle and Shirreffs and skip the rest.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, Summer 1945

This issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES has a great zero-g cover by Earle Bergey and a few writers inside you may have heard of: Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, Jack Vance, Murray Leinster, and Frank Belknap Long (twice, once as himself and once as Leslie Northern). That's just a spectacular lineup. If you want to read this one, you can find it here, along with a bunch of other issues of THRILLING WONDER STORIES.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Red Seal Western, August 1937

RED SEAL WESTERN is a little-remembered Western pulp these days, but it had some good covers and good authors, too. I think this cover is by Tom Lovell. The cowboy looks like his work, and so does the redhead. Inside this issue are stories by Harry Sinclair Drago, Claude Rister, Dean Owens (almost certainly a typo for Dean Owen/Dudley Dean McGaughey), Cibolo Ford (with his name misspelled on the table of contents), Mel Pitzer, and Wilfred McCormick, one of my favorite authors as a kid for his juvenile sports novels and dog stories. This certainly looks like an enjoyable Western pulp to me.

Review: Goddess of the Fifth Plane - William P. McGivern

I really enjoyed that William P. McGivern science fiction novella I read a while back, so I tried another novella of his from the pulp FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. This one falls more into the fantasy category, or at least science-fantasy, since it does have a sort of science fictional element to it.

“Goddess of the Fifth Plane” appeared in the September 1942 issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES and earned the cover painting by Harold W. Macauley. It’s a good cover, too. Not exactly how I pictured the title character but relatively close. And Macauley did a great job on her sidekick.

The protagonist of this yarn is Vance Cameron, a wealthy American explorer and adventurer who is in London as the story opens because he’s volunteered to use his aviator skills as a fighter pilot for the R.A.F. He doesn’t stay in London long, though, because a mysterious painting shows up in his flat, depicting a beautiful young woman and a fierce creature resembling a horned lion. Wouldn’t you know it? The painting is actually an interdimensional gateway, and Vance finds himself in another realm, up to his neck in a civil war between a deposed queen and the bad guy who has seized his throne. There’s a little political intrigue, but mostly two-fisted, swashbuckling adventure ensues as Vance fights to help the beautiful queen reclaim her kingdom. He finds a novel but very effective way to do it, too, as the plot takes a twist or two that are at least slightly surprising.

I really enjoyed this colorful, well-written yarn. It reminded me of some of the science-fantasy stories by Henry Kuttner that I’ve read. The action barrels along in a very pleasing fashion that would have had me enthralled if I’d read it when I was a kid sitting on my parents’ front porch. Reading it now as an old geezer, I was still very much entertained. If there’s still a ten-or-twelve-year-old in you who loves this stuff as much as I do, I highly recommend “Goddess of the Fifth Plane”. It’s been reprinted in the e-book THE WILLIAM P. McGIVERN FANTASY MEGAPACK. I plan to delve into that collection again soon.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, August 27, 1938

I'm not a big fan of giant floating head covers, but this one by Emmett Watson isn't bad. Rather atmospheric, in fact. As always with ARGOSY, this issue has some good authors inside: Donald Barr Chidsey, Bennett Foster, Richard Howells Watkins, Howard Rigsby (best remembered for paperbacks written under that name and as by Vechel Howard), and Robert E. Pinkerton, as well as the lesser-known Frances Shelley Wees, C.F. Kearns, and John Randolph Phillips. The stories by Chidsey, Foster, and Wees are serial installments, also common in ARGOSY. "Lost House" by Wees was published in hardcover by Macrae in 1938. "Cut Loose Your Wolf" by Foster was published in hardcover as TURN LOOSE YOUR WOLF by Jefferson House in 1938. I think the original title is better. And Chidsey's "Midas of the Mountains" was only a three-parter, probably closer to a novella than an actual novel, and as far as I know, it's never been reprinted. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western Stories, February 1954

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my slightly ragged copy in the scan. I think the cover is by A. Leslie Ross, but I’m not absolutely sure about that. “15 Action-Packed Stories”, the cover proclaims, but what it doesn’t tell you is that eight of those are actually Special Features, Fact Features, and Departments—filler, in other words—leaving only seven pieces of actual fiction in this issue.

The lead story is “Judge Bates’ Boothill Court” by Lee Floren, the next to last entry in his Judge Bates series that started in 1940 and lasted for 26 stories, the last one being published in 1955. The stories appeared at first in various Popular Publications pulps and then moved over to various Columbia Publications pulps, where the majority of them appeared. After that, Floren used Judge Lemanuel Bates and his sidekick Tobacco Jones in several novels. Bates is the judge in a Wyoming cowtown and Jones is the local postmaster, and together they also own a ranch. They wind up involved in assorted mysteries.

Since Lee Floren was a very inconsistent writer, I always go into one of his stories with fairly low expectations. That way, if it turns out to be a good one, I’m pleasantly surprised. “Judge Bates’ Boothill Court” is one of the good ones, I’m glad to say. Bates and Jones travel to a different town for once as Bates is called on to replace another judge who’s been wounded in an ambush. As it happens, the young man accused of trying to kill the other judge is well-known to Bates and Jones, and they don’t believe he’s guilty. Not surprisingly, somebody tries to kill both of them soon after they arrive, and they’re off on a case that involves danger, a few pretty girls, and a villain who’s so obvious that he might as well be wearing a sign on his back. While there aren’t any surprises in this yarn, Floren spins it with skill and enthusiasm, and there are only a few instances of the clumsy writing he’s prone to at times. I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

The long-running series by Lon Williams featuring Deputy Marshal Lee Winters is well-regarded, and it’s unusual because many of the stories feature supernatural elements. I’ve read several of them, though, and so far, I’m not a fan. “Misfortune’s Darling” in this issue is the first one I’ve read that doesn’t have anything supernatural in it. Instead, Winters investigates a series of murders and robberies plaguing travelers in his area. There’s a side plot that serves no real purpose. I realize this is damning with faint praise, but this is the best of these stories I’ve read so far. I’m willing to read more, but my patience with them is getting stretched kind of thin.

Richard Brister is a fairly dependable Western writer. His story in this issue, “Big Man in This Town”, is about a banker who turns to murder to save his failing institution. But of course things don’t play out the way he hopes. This isn’t a bad story and is decently written, but there’s not much to it.

The same can be said of John T. Lynch’s short-short “Hassayampa Hassle”, a tall tale about a whiskey drummer who drinks from a magical river that’s supposed to prevent people from telling the truth. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but it’s not really funny and just sort of ends without making any kind of point.

I’ve read a few stories by A.A. Baker that were okay, but “Death at the China Mine” in this issue isn’t one of them. It’s about a mine cave-in and a stagecoach carrying a lot of cash, I think. The plot is so muddled and the writing so poor that I just skimmed through it.

“The Golden Spike” by Gene Rodgers is a little better. A golden spike is used to complete the last link in a railroad in Oregon, and a couple of outlaws decide to steal it out of the ground. Again, things don’t play out according to plan. This short-short is somewhat entertaining, and at least it has a beginning, middle, and end.

Finally, we come to Seven Anderton’s novelette “Peaceful Pilgrim”. Thank goodness for Seven Anderton, I say. This story is about a hired gun who’s tried of fighting in senseless range wars, so he decides to go back to where he came from, the Pecos country in West Texas. So what happens as soon as he gets there? He gets mixed up in a range war, of course, as the local cattle baron decides to force all the small ranchers and sodbusters out of the valley any way he has to, including burning them out and killing them. But standing in his way is the protagonist Hank Sawyer, who finally has something worth fighting for besides pay.

You can tell from that description that this is a very traditional plot we’ve all read and seen many times before. But Anderton’s writing is top-notch as always, Hank Sawyer is a good protagonist, and there are some well-done action scenes. The only flaw in this story is that the ending isn’t as dramatic as it could have been, a tendency that I’ve discovered is common in Anderton’s Westerns. He seems to prefer not to give the reader the kind of action-packed showdowns that I like in my Western reading. That’s his choice, and I’ll still read his stories because his prose is very good, but that keeps him from becoming a real favorite of mine.

This is a very typical issue of a Columbia Western pulp edited by Robert W. Lowndes: a couple of good but not great stories by Floren and Anderton and the rest poor to mediocre. I’ll keep reading them because from time to time Lowndes got his hands on a real gem despite not being able to pay much. But I’ve learned not to expect a great deal from them. The covers are usually pretty nice, though.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, September 1939

I think this is a Tom Lovell cover on this issue of DETECTIVE TALES, but I'm not absolutely certain. I am certain, though, that there's a great lineup of authors in these pages: Norbert Davis, Cleve F. Adams, Wyatt Blassingame, William B. Rainey (also Wyatt Blassingame), Emile C. Tepperman, Philip Ketchum, William R. Cox, Stewart Sterling, and Ray Cummings. Every one of those guys was a prolific, top-notch pulpster, and I'm sure this was a well-above average issue. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Ace High Stories, February 1954

WESTERN ACE HIGH STORIES was one of the last Western pulps from Popular Publications and managed only six issues in 1953 and 1954. It's not to be confused with ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, which was published by Clayton and then Dell from 1921 to 1935, then from 1936 to 1951 by Popular Publications, where it was known variously as ACE-HIGH WESTERN MAGAZINE, ACE-HIGH MAGAZINE, and ACE-HIGH WESTERN STORIES. WESTERN ACE HIGH STORIES, which we're concerned with today, lacks the hyphen in the title. Maybe Popular was trying to cash in on some nostalgia for the earlier versions when they brought back a similar title in '53-'54, or maybe they just had a lot of stories in inventory they needed to burn off. I don't think the cover of this issue is a particularly good one, but it is another example of the iconic "poker game interrupted by a fight" scene that's so common on Western pulps. There are actually some really good authors in this issue: Gordon D. Shirreffs, Frank Castle, J.L. Bouma, Roe Richmond, Bruce Cassiday, and house-names Lance Kermit and David Crewe. I suspect Bouma wrote one or both of those house-name yarns, but that's just a guess on my part. Really, the authors could be almost anybody. I don't own this issue, and I don't recall ever seeing any issues of WESTERN ACE HIGH STORIES. That's a lineup of authors worth reading, though. 

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.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, March 1954

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I’m not sure who did the cover. It might be A. Leslie Ross. The hats look like his work, and so does the sketchiness of some of the details. But I’m not completely convinced it’s by Ross. As always, I’d love to hear what some of you think. NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE lasted only two more issues after this one, so it was on its last legs, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t still a good Western pulp.

I’ve come to realize that Roe Richmond was a pretty good hardboiled Western author despite my dislike for his Jim Hatfield novels in TEXAS RANGERS. His novelette “Bullets Speak My Name!” leads off this issue. The first half of this story is mostly domestic drama as Marshal Jim Elrod tries to reform his wastrel best friend Tucker Brody. Jim and Tuck grew up together, but then Tuck married the girl Jim might have. Now Tuck neglects his family to gamble and carouse with the bad element in town. A murder for which Tuck is blamed raises the stakes even more and leads to several gritty action scenes. Richmond keeps things moving along at a reasonably fast clip and wraps things up in a satisfying way. This is a solid story, nothing special but definitely entertaining.

Will Cook has a solid reputation as a Western writer, but I haven’t been impressed by what I’ve read from him. His story “The Devil’s Double” resembles Richmond’s novelette in that it’s mostly domestic drama. Instead of best friends, we have brothers clashing in this yarn. One is stalwart, the other a ne’er-do-well. The action is sparse, nobody in the story is particularly sympathetic, and I didn’t care for it. So it didn’t change my opinion of Will Cook’s work. Maybe the next one I encounter will.

“Death Rides My Guns!” is the cover story by Richard Ferber. It’s almost entirely very gritty action as a young man fights to reclaim the ranch that’s been stolen from him by his three half-brothers. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but this is the second story in a row in this issue in which the conflict is between brothers. I liked Ferber’s story considerably more than Will Cook’s.

H.A. DeRosso is well-known for the emotional, and sometimes physical, torment he heaps on his characters. In “Two Bullets to Hell”, railroad troubleshooter Sam Lane returns to his home to seek revenge on the man he blames for the murder of his brother-in-law, while at the same time keeping the ranch going that his widowed sister now owns. It’s a very well-written yarn, as you’d expect from DeRosso, and has several twists and turns in the plot. The only real problem with it is that none of the characters are the least bit likable, even the ones you’d think would be sympathetic. It’s a bleak, bitter story. I admire the writing, but I didn’t find it particularly enjoyable.

William Heuman is one of my favorite Western authors, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a cavalry vs. Indians story by him. He generally wrote about lawmen, outlaws, and gunfighters. His story in this issue, “Dead Man’s Pass”, is a cavalry story with a slight twist. It’s set in Oregon instead of somewhere in the Southwest, as such stories usually are, and the Indians are Modocs, not Apaches or Comanches. A group of cavalrymen are pinned down and outnumbered, and the only way for them to escape involves a daring plan almost certain to result in the death of the officer who leads it. However, one of the lieutenants who would normally lead such a breakout is the son of the major in command of the troops. It’s a compelling moral dilemma, and Heuman comes up with an interesting way to solve it. The writing is excellent. I thought the ending might have been a bit too abrupt, but overall “Dead Man’s Pass” is a very good story.

Stone Cody’s novelette “The Kid From Hell” was published originally under the title “The Lost Gunman” in the November 1937 issue of STAR WESTERN. Cody was actually Thomas E. Mount, who also wrote under the pseudonym Oliver King. Mount is one of my favorite Western pulpsters and was also a pretty interesting character in real life. You can read more about his background here in my review of his novel THE GUN WITH THE WAITING NOTCH. “The Kid From Hell” is an amnesia story, something that you come across now and then in the pulps. Young Dave Walker and the old-timer who raised him are gunned down by hired killers working for the range hog who wants their ranch. The old-timer is killed, and Dave is thrown into an empty boxcar on a passing train. The gunmen figure he’ll be dead by the time he’s found. But he survives, of course, except he doesn’t remember who he is or how he got shot. And when he recovers, he falls in with a gang of outlaws . . .

Mount packs enough plot into this novelette for a novella or possibly even a novel. In fact, I think it would have been even better at a longer length since he has to cover quite a bit of ground in a hurry at times. But it’s still a very, very good yarn. I really like the way Mount writes. The characters are interesting, the dialogue is good, the action is plentiful, and even his shorter stories have an epic feel to them. I definitely intend to read more by him.

The stories by Mount and Heuman are certainly the highlights of this issue, but Richmond and Ferber turn in pretty good stories, too. The DeRosso was slightly disappointing but still readable, and the one by Will Cook was the only story I didn’t like. So I’d say this is a good issue of NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE, worth reading if you have it on your shelves.