Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Street & Smith's Top-Notch, March 1933

This issue of TOP-NOTCH has a good cover by John Coughlin, an artist I associate more with DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE, whether that impression is correct or not. The lead novella is by an author whose name wasn't familiar to me, R.E. Dupuy. But a little investigation revealed a pretty interesting story. Richard Ernest Dupuy was a newspaper reporter who served as an artilleryman in World War I, then stayed in the army and made a career out of it. But he had sold a few pulp stories before the war and took it up again in the late Twenties, placing a story in WEIRD TALES but concentrating on war and adventure yarns for various pulps. That came to an end when World War II began and Dupuy became the Director of Public Information at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, where he reported directly to General Eisenhower. It was Dupuy who announced to the world via radio when the invasion of Normandy began on D-Day. Pretty good for an old pulpster. After the war, Dupuy retired as a colonel and wrote military history books. I've never read anything by him, as far as I recall. There are only three other pieces of fiction in this issue of TOP-NOTCH, all of them by authors who wrote a lot of Westerns: Galen C. Colin, J. Allan Dunn, and Walker A. Tompkins, who has one of his Ozar the Aztec/Lost Race novelettes in this issue under the house-name Valentine Wood. Dunn, of course, wrote a lot of other genres besides Westerns, but he was a stalwart in that field. Quite a few issues of TOP-NOTCH can be found on-line, but this doesn't appear to be one of them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, January 1950

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I think the cover is by Sam Cherry, although I’m not as sure of that as I sometimes am, and I find it pretty interesting. In all the books I’ve written, I don’t recall ever writing a shootout that involves a windmill. It doesn’t strike me as being a very good place to take cover, but maybe this hombre didn’t have any choice.

Range detectives Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith are on hand, as usual, as the issue opens with W.C. Tuttle’s novelette “A Mixture of Mavericks”. The boys are assigned to a case where they’re supposed to settle a dispute over unbranded yearlings, but they wind up with another sort of “maverick”: a baby. And that baby is part of a case involving a mine payroll robbery, a kidnapping, and some fistfights and shootouts. Yep, it’s the old “heroes get stuck taking care of a baby” plot. I’ve used it myself. It nearly always works. It does so in this story, which is funny and action-packed, as well as pretty well-plotted. This is a strong entry in a consistently strong series.

Most of the stories by Lee Bond that I’ve read were parts of series, but “The Desert Builds a Noose” in this issue is a stand-alone, which finds a sheriff trying to discover the truth about the murder of an old prospector. This is a good story, and I like the title. The only problem I had with it is that I found the ending a little muddled, but that could always be just me.

I don’t know anything about John C. Ropke except that he published about 30 stories between 1950 and 1955 and nothing after that. A mixture of Westerns, sports stories, and jungle adventure yarns. “Boomerang” in this issue is a rodeo story about brothers who are both bronc riders. The younger brother is jealous of his older brother’s success. This starts out like a YA story in which lessons are learned. Well, lessons are learned, all right, but it turns a lot darker along the way, which was not what I expected. It’s well-written and packs a punch, enough so that it makes me interested in reading something else by Ropke.

“Devil in the Cook Shack” is by Robert J. Hogan, author of the G-8 series. Hogan did quite a few Westerns, too, and I tend to like his work. This one is a more lighthearted yarn about a young man from the East who inherits his grandfather’s ranch. It’s not really a tenderfoot-makes-good story like you might expect, though. Although the protagonist isn’t an experienced cowboy, he’s spent enough time on the ranch in the past that he’s not totally lost, either. The ranch cook has a man-crazy teenage sister who plays all the ranch hands against each other. There’s also a swindling horse buyer and a gunslinging gambler. It’s a mildly amusing blend of romance and action, a minor effort from Hogan but enjoyable enough.

“Sure Sign of Trouble” is by Donald Bayne Hobart, one of my favorites, and finds a young rancher in conflict with his older neighbor. The twist in this story is pretty easy to spot, but it’s interesting because the final shootout takes place with the protagonist on a windmill platform, just as depicted on this issue’s cover. When that happens, I always wonder if the publisher already had the cover painting and the editor asked the author to write a story to fit it. Hobart is a good enough writer that even though there’s not much to this story, it’s still entertaining.

The last novelette by Nels Leroy Jorgensen I read wasn’t very good, so I was a little wary heading into “Gunflame Survey”, which wraps up this issue. It’s not bad, though. The protagonist is a tough, two-gun surveyor who’s blackmailed into carrying out a phony survey for a land-grabbing villain. Things don’t play out exactly as the bad guy intends, though. Some of the writing is pretty rushed and awkward, and since Jorgensen had been in the business since 1923, I can only surmise that his talents deteriorated some with age. I know all too well how that can happen! Anyway, this story has some decent action and an interesting plot, even if the writing is inconsistent.

I was a little disappointed that there’s no Navajo Tom Raine story in this issue, since I’ve grown really fond of that series, but a top-notch Tombstone and Speedy yarn makes up for a lot. None of the other stories are exceptional, but they’re all entertaining. This one’s worth a look if you have a copy.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Ranch Stories, September 1948

I don't have any idea who painted this cover, but I like it fairly well. I've still never read an issue of THRILLING RANCH STORIES. I'm going to have to, one of these days. This issue features one of my favorite Western writers, Joseph Chadwick, as well as Clee Woods, Joe Archibald (best remembered, I suspect, as an aviation pulpster, but he wrote everything), Harold F. Cruickshank (definitely best remembered as an aviation pulpster), Bruce Douglas, and Marian O'Hearn, as well as lesser-known pulpster Monica Morton. Oh, wait! Monica Morton was really Johnston McCulley, so never mind. Not lesser-known at all. Chadwick and McCulley make this a worthwhile issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Sea Novel Magazine, November 1940

SEA NOVEL MAGAZINE was a Munsey pulp that lasted for only two issues. This is the first. You can't blame its brief run on Rudolph Belarski, who provided a great cover, and I'd be willing to bet that the novel by J. Allan Dunn that takes up almost the entire issue was pretty good, too, based on Dunn's track record. As far as I can tell, "Northwest to Mutiny" was never reprinted, and this issue doesn't appear to be posted anywhere on-line, so I doubt if I'll ever read the story, but dang, it sounds good, doesn't it? There are some poems and one short story in this issue, as well, by authors I've never heard of: Ethel Talbot Scheffauer, Bob Ferris, Thomas J. Murray, and William Slavens McNutt.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Big-Book Western Magazine, February 1949

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my battered copy in the scan. I thought at first the rather garish cover was by Robert Stanley, but the more I look at it, the less sure I am of that. The initials PKH are carved into the bar, and I’m wondering if those are the artist’s initials or if they’re there for some other reason. If they do belong to the artist, I can’t figure out who it is. But whoever painted it, it’s an action-packed, eye-catching cover.

Those four big novels mentioned on the cover are actually more like novelettes. The first one is “Colt-Cure for Woolly Fever” by Peter Dawson, who was actually Jonathan Glidden, brother of Fred Glidden, who was better known as Luke Short. Jon Glidden was an excellent Western author and has been one of my favorites for a long time. I believe I was in seventh grade when I first read one of his novels. Anyway, as you’re expect from the title, this story is a cattlemen-vs-sheepmen yarn, but that’s the only thing about it that’s standard. Instead of a range war tale, this is actually a clever bank heist story complete with multiple double-crosses and hidden identities, told in a fast-paced, breezy style that’s more humorous than most of the Peter Dawson stories. I figured this one would be good, but it’s even better than that. It’s a terrific story, one of the best I’ve read by Jonathan Glidden.

Everett M. Webber collaborated on some well-regarded historical novels with his wife Olga but also wrote quite a few Western, detective, and general fiction stories for the pulps and slicks. His story in this issue, “Those Who Have Eyes—” is about a small-town sheriff trying to solve a robbery in order to protect his friend, a Chinese man who owns a restaurant. There’s not much to it, but it’s reasonably well-written.

Clifton Adams is another long-time favorite of mine. Many of his stories are set in Oklahoma, where he lived, and deal with the oil business in the early days of the territory, as is the case with “Blood Buys a Black-Gold Empire”. (As I’ve mentioned before, I figure the editors at Popular Publications came up with many of these story titles.) In this story, a range detective from Texas rides north to Oklahoma in answer to a summons from an old friend, a sheriff who has more troubles than he can handle in an oidfield boomtown. Unfortunately, somebody tries to bushwhack our protagonist on his way there, and when he does arrive, it’s just as the sheriff is being murdered, a crime for which the Texan is framed. Convicted and sentenced to hang, he has to break out of jail in order to find out what’s really going on and clear his name. This is a top-notch Adams yarn, well-written, full of action and interesting characters, and I always enjoy oilfield stories. This is a very good one.

“Hell-on-the-Law!” by prolific Western pulpster Tom Roan is also a bank robbery story, and it’s pretty clever in its setup, too. But once the job is pulled, it becomes a really nice chase story as a veteran lawman with a secret of his own goes after the robbers. Roan’s work can be hit-or-miss with me, but this one has excellent characters, plenty of action, and a compelling pace. Another top-notch story in what’s shaping up to be a very good issue.

“Stranger on the Dodge” by Walker A. Tompkins, another old favorite of mine, is actually billed as a novelette, and it’s a good one. A fugitive from a bogus murder charge rides into the middle of a war between sodbusters and cattlemen. It’s a standard plot, but Tompkins puts the familiar elements into play with such skill that the story is a pure pleasure to read.

John Jo Carpenter was the pseudonym of John Reese, who went on to write a number of well-regarded Western and crime novels under his own name, several of which were filmed. His story in this issue, “Last of the Wild Fayettes”, is a romance in which an ambitious young cowboy clashes with a cattle baron over the rancher’s beautiful daughter. Despite being a little on the lighthearted side, there are a couple of brutal, well-written fistfights. This is very much in the vein of such John Wayne movies as McCLINTOCK! and NORTH TO ALASKA, and if it had more plot, it would have made a good movie, too.

William R. Cox was the author of the very first grown-up paperback I ever bought, the Gold Medal Western BIGGER THAN TEXAS, so I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for his work. His town-tamer novelette in this issue, “Hot Time at End-of-Track”, seems to have been loosely based on the early careers of Wild Bill Hickok and Bat Masterson, even though both of those historical characters are mentioned in the story. Marshal John Steel takes on the Texas trail drivers who have Wichita “treed”. For a fairly simple plot, Cox really gives this tale an epic feeling. John Steel, cool under fire but haunted by past tragedy, is a superb protagonist. This is just a great story with complex, well-developed characters.

I always think of Talmage Powell as a crime and detective writer, but he did a bunch of Westerns, as well. “Smoky Lesson” in this issue is about an old gunfighter who visits the town where the woman he once loved is buried, only to find himself mixed up in a war between a crooked saloon owner and a crusading young newspaperman. The twist in this one is pretty obvious but still effective, and Powell’s hardboiled prose is excellent, as usual.

This issue wraps up with the novelette “King of the Washoe Outcasts” by another old favorite, Harry F. Olmsted. This is set in Nevada during the silver boom and about a young, down-on-his-luck miner who decides to turn owlhoot, only to discover that he’s not ready to cross that line. Based on some actual history, this story features a lot of double dealing and characters with actual shades of gray to their personalities, as well as plenty of well-written action. This is another really good story in an issue full of good stories.

In fact, this issue of BIG-BOOK WESTERN MAGAZINE is one of the best Western pulps I’ve ever read. There’s not a bad story in the bunch, and several of them are in the top ranks of work I’ve encountered from their authors. If you happen to own a copy and haven’t read it yet, I give it a very high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, October 25, 1928

I'm sure there must have been some other air war covers on SHORT STORIES, but this one by Edgar F. Wittmack is the only one I recall coming across. It's a good one, too, very dramatic and colorful with that red sun in the background. There's a fine group of authors in this issue including Ernest Haycox, Hulbert Footner, Robert Carse, Tom Roan, Kenneth Perkins, Frank L. Packard, and Carson Mowre.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, December 1936

The excellent cover by Richard Lyon on this issue of THRILLING WESTERN is proof that, just like sitting down to a poker game or going to the barber shop, boarding a stagecoach was an invitation to a gunfight in the Old West! I like this one a lot, probably because this stalwart cowboy looks like Randolph Scott, one of my all-time favorite actors. The lineup of authors inside is top-notch as well: a novella by Leslie Scott writing as A. Leslie, novelettes by Tom Curry, Syl MacDowell, and Chuck Martin, and short stories by Lawrence A. Keating, Edward Parrish Ware, Buck Billings (probably Claude Rister), and Burt Stokes. Various real-life issues are pokin' their snouts in where they ain't wanted again, but I hope to get back to reading some Western pulps very soon!

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Marvel Tales, May 1940

MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES started as a science fiction pulp, as you'd expect from that title, but after five issues, it abruptly changed to a Weird Menace pulp under the name MARVEL TALES. That experiment last only two issues, then it switched back to MARVEL STORIES, then MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES (again), and finally MARVEL SCIENCE FICTION. None of them were successful, but it wasn't for lack of trying. This is the second and final issue under the MARVEL TALES name, with a cover by J.W. Scott that's certainly worth of a Weird Menace pulp. Most of the authors inside were top-notch, although they tended to use pseudonyms, maybe because of the generally disreputable air the whole enterprise gave off. The lead story in this issue is by Nils O. Sunderland, who was really Jack Williamson, and backing him up are Robert O. Wentworth (Edmond Hamilton), Russell Gray (Bruno Fischer), and a couple of guys using their real names, Frederic Arnold Kummer Jr. and George E. Clark. If you want to check out this pulp for yourself, the entire issue can be found here. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, January 15, 1938

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with tape around the edges placed there by a previous owner. I know that tape on pulps gives most collectors the fantods, but it doesn’t bother me as long as it’s not too heavy-handed, probably because I’m more of a reader than a collector. A case like this one is okay. The cover is by Emery Clark, who, if I recall correctly, did some DOC SAVAGE covers for Street & Smith as well. (I know I could look it up on the FMI, but I’m too lazy right now.) I like this cover okay, although I think the best WILD WEST WEEKLY covers are by H.W. Scott and R.G. Harris.

The lead story in this issue is the novelette “Comanche”, published under the house-name Andrew A. Griffin and attributed to Lee Bond, an attribution I agree with. It reads like Bond’s work. The title character is a young troubleshooter for a wealthy ranch owner who has spreads across the West. Comanche’s background is a mystery. He’s white, but he was raised by a band of Comanche Indians until he was ten years old, when he was taken in by the rancher he now works for. Where he came from, nobody knows. But he’s smart, tough, and gun-swift, making him perfect to get to the bottom of the rustling that’s plaguing one of his mentor’s spreads in New Mexico Territory. Of course, the situation turns out to be more complicated than it appears at first. Bond piles on the action and includes a case of mistaken identity to complicate things. Bond’s work tends toward the formulaic at times, but at his best, he was a top-notch Western pulpster, and I really enjoyed this yarn.

Except . . . what I didn’t realize until I got to the end of it is that it’s just the first of a series of six linked novelettes featuring Comanche, so it really doesn’t have much resolution to it. Usually in a case like this, the novelettes would then be put together into a novel published as a hardback. I don’t find any evidence of that being true with these stories, so it’s likely I’ll never know what happens with Comanche after this. (The next week’s issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY with the second Comanche story is available on the Internet Archive. I may read it or I may not, I haven’t decided yet.)

Young Texas Rangers Hungry Hawkins and Rusty Bolivar starred in scores of stories by Samuel H. Nickels, including this issue’s “Prospectin’ fer Gun Trouble”. In this one, Hungry and Rusty help an old prospector protect his claim from a bunch of outlaws. That’s the entire plot. Nickels does an excellent job with the action and Hungry and Rusty are very likable protagonists, but the thin plot kind of works against the story. Also, one of the henchmen wonders why the boss outlaw wants to take over the mine in the first place, since it’s not very productive. That’s a darned good question, and it’s one that Nickels fails to answer. I don’t know if he just forgot and none of the editors at Street & Smith called him on it, but that plot hole is left wide open.

George C. Henderson was a pretty solid Western writer during the pulp era. “War on the Broken Wheel” is a stand-alone story featuring a good pair of protagonists, a couple of deputy U.S. marshals working undercover as surveyors as they try to find out who’s stirring up trouble between the cattlemen and the sodbusters. Again, nice action and characters, but not much plot keeps this story from being as strong as it might have been. I wouldn’t have minded seeing these protagonists again, but it seems this was their only appearance.

Under his pseudonym Ward M. Stevens, Paul S. Powers wrote approximately 150 stories about Kid Wolf, a wandering adventurer and self-styled Soldier of Misfortune. I prefer Powers’ other main series character, good-guy outlaw Sonny Tabor, but I really enjoy the Kid Wolf stories, too. In the novelette “Kid Wolf on Wild Hog Range”, the Kid comes across an injured young prospector who has been attacked by outlaws and left to die at the tusks of a herd of wild javelinas. The Kid saves the fellow from that grisly fate, of course, and learns from him that the outlaws have kidnapped the young man’s partners in order to torture the location of their valuable mine from them. Naturally, Kid Wolf isn’t going to stand for that, so he and the young man set off to right that wrong. Powers was really good at dishing out fast-moving, action-packed prose, and this yarn races along in a very entertaining fashion, ending with an epic fistfight and a suitable comeuppance for the bad guys. An excellent story and my favorite of the Kid Wolf series I’ve read so far.

I’m also a fan of the Shorty Masters series by Allan R. Bosworth, who wrote some really fine Western novels in addition to his hundreds of top-notch pulp yarns. Shorty is a muleskinner and wagon driver who operates a freight line along with his partner, gunslinger Willie Weatherbee, also known as the Sonora Kid. Naturally, the jobs they take on usually result in trouble, as in “The Calaboose at Caliente”, which finds the intrepid due thrown in jail, accused of killing a steer and stealing its hide. Bosworth also works in a jail break, a bank robbery, and a rodeo. Although there’s usually some humor to be found in these stories, they aren’t really comedies, and they include some unusual touches like the mules in Shorty’s team being named after famous musical composers. This story has plenty of action and is very well-written. I’d say that somebody ought to collect the Shorty Masters stories, but there are more than 130 of them, so it would be a pretty big project.

Flash Moran was the hero of about 40 novelettes by William F. Bragg in WILD WEST WEEKLY. A young deputy sheriff in the cattle town of Piute, Wyoming, Flash got his nickname more for his hot temper than for his red hair. In “Ridin’ the Rustler Special”, he’s a long way from his home range on the trail of a murderer when he gets mixed up in a fight defending a hapless tramp who’s caught stealing a ride on a train. Not long after that, Flash himself is the target of a murder attempt. Naturally, everything ties together, with some rustling and a series of train robberies thrown in, to boot. This is a great story. Bragg provides plenty of well-written action with a lot of it taking place on a train thundering through the night on a rendezvous with disaster, and I love that kind of stuff. Flash Moran is likable enough, and the other characters are interesting as well. As far as I recall, this is the first Flash Moran story I’ve read and the first thing by William F. Bragg, as well. I need to read more by him, because I really enjoyed this yarn.

This is a fine issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. The first three stories are all good, despite my having a few quibbles about them, but the last three by Powers, Bosworth, and Bragg are all top-of-the-line Western pulp stories as far as I’m concerned and elevate this to an above average issue of a consistently good pulp. Definitely worth reading if you have a copy on your shelf, as long as you don’t mind that you’re getting only the first part of what’s basically a serial in “Comanche”. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Big-Book Detective Magazine, February 1942

I've read several issues of BIG-BOOK WESTERN MAGAZINE over the years, but I've never read or even seen an issue of BIG-BOOK DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, Popular Publications' attempt to launch another detective pulp. Unlike its Western cousin, BIG-BOOK DETECTIVE MAGAZINE wasn't successful and ran only eight issues from December 1941 to February 1943. This is the second issue, and based on the good cover (don't know who painted it) and the lineup of authors, the magazine's failure wasn't warranted based on its quality. Authors on hand in this issue are T.T. Flynn, W.T. Ballard, Russell Gray (actually Bruno Fischer), Robert Sidney Bowen, Jackson Gregory Jr., and house-names Daniel Winters, Ray P. Shotwell, and David Crewe. The thing about those house-names is that this being Popular Publications, the actual authors were probably pretty darned good. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, September 10, 1927

William Reusswig did some nice covers, and I like the one on this issue of WEST, when it was still being published by Doubleday and coming out every week. The authors are a mix of familiar names and ones I don't recognize. The familiar: Stephen Payne, Ralph R. Perry, Oscar J. Friend, Kenneth Gilbert, and Homer King Gordon. The ones I don't know: William West Winter, Edwin Hunt Hoover, and Robert V. Carr. Perry wrote a really fine Western novel called NIGHTRIDER DEPUTY. Friend is best remembered probably as an agent and editor, but I've enjoyed the fiction by him that I've read, too. Payne had a long, productive career as a Western pulpster. I don't recall reading anything by Gilbert or Gordon, but they published steadily, too. This looks like a pretty good issue. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Stirrup HIgh/Western Word Wrangler - Walt Coburn

I’ve discussed Walt Coburn’s work here before. He’s one of my favorite Western authors, while at the same time being one of the most maddeningly inconsistent. Today, though, I’m talking about his non-fiction, not his hundreds of pulp stories and dozens of novels. Coburn is the author of two memoirs, STIRRUP HIGH and WESTERN WORD WRANGLER, and they’re both well worth reading.

STIRRUP HIGH is the better of the two. It’s the story of Coburn’s life as a boy growing up on his father’s vast ranch in Montana around the turn of the Twentieth Century. Although there were a few modern conveniences, such as cars and telephones, ranch life in Montana at that time hadn’t changed much from the Old West days (which weren’t so old then, only a couple of decades past). Young Walt was a high-spirited kid, and STIRRUP HIGH is full of his adventures, many of them in tandem with the old cowboy who served as his father’s foreman. Even in Coburn’s worst pulp stories, there’s an air of authenticity, a feeling of “this is the way it really was” when it comes to ranch life, and when you read STIRRUP HIGH, you can see why that’s true. Now, you have to remember that Coburn was a born yarn-spinner, and like a lot of fiction-writers who turn their hands to non-fiction, he can’t resist embellishing a little bit. Some of the dates that he gives don’t quite add up, and some of the stories he tells in this book don’t quite jibe with established facts . . . but I’m not sure either of those things matter. The spirit is true, and STIRRUP HIGH is vastly entertaining.

WESTERN WORD WRANGLER covers some of the same ground but also carries the story on into Coburn’s later life and is fairly unstinting in dealing with some of the mental problems that plagued him throughout his adult years, along with the physical problems that made him give up cowboying and turn to writing. Much of the material in this volume is drawn from “The Talley Book”, the long-running column that Coburn wrote for the magazine TRUE WEST. That makes for a pretty episodic narrative, and WESTERN WORD WRANGLER is not nearly as polished as STIRRUP HIGH. It also doesn’t go into the amount of detail about his writing career that I wish it would have. But it’s still entertaining and filled with information.

Walt Coburn came to a bad end, tormented by alcoholism and finally dead by his own hand because he couldn’t sell his work anymore. His stories have made a small comeback in recent years, with several paperback collections of his pulp stories from Leisure, as well as a number of hardback and large print reprints of his novels. Everything he wrote in the Twenties and Thirties is worth reading, at least based on what I’ve read so far, and good stories can be found in his work from the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties, as well, although you might have to dig a little harder for it. He deserves to be remembered, and STIRRUP HIGH and WESTERN WORD WRANGLER are pretty good places to start.

(This post originally appeared on February 27, 2009. I've continued to read novels and stories by Walt Coburn, although not as frequently as I was doing back then. I still consider him one of my favorite Western writers, though, despite the inconsistency of his later work. I once had him make a cameo appearance in a house-name novel set in the early 1900s. The protagonist was a friend of Coburn's father, so he stopped at the family ranch while passing through Montana. Mention was made of young Walt, who was already quite a yarn-spinner. I hope some reader, somewhere, caught that reference. I never saw any comment about it in any of the Amazon reviews of the book.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Stories, March 1930

Despite having "Thrilling" in the title, as far as I know THRILLING STORIES was not part of the Thrilling Group. Instead, it was a short-lived adventure pulp from 1929-30. This is the fourth and final issue with a cover by an artist I'm not familiar with, John Hoff. His three covers for this pulp are his only credits in the Fictionmag Index. Likewise, the authors inside are mostly unknown to me. I recognize Achmed Abdullah and Bob du Soe, and that's it. The others are Owen Atkinson, W.P. Gardner, Kenneth Duane Whipple, Arthur Styron, Allison W. Ind, Jasper B. Sinclair, and Edward F. Medosch. Their stories may be good for all I know, but it's doubtful that I'll ever find out because I don't expect to have a copy of this pulp in my lifetime.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, November 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with a slam-bang cover by Sam Cherry. I’ve said it many times before, but I really like his work.

I also consistently enjoy the adventures of range detectives Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith as penned by W.C. Tuttle. This issue’s novelette is called “Lovable Liars”, and as it opens, the pair of them are a-foot, having sold their horses and saddles anticipating that their boss at the Cattleman’s Association will send them to their next assignment via train. The boss expects them to ride horseback to the settlement of Smoke Tree, however, and since they sold their mounts and Tombstone then lost all their money trying out his supposedly foolproof system for blackjack . . . Well, the boys wind up riding the train, but they have to hop an illicit ride on a boxcar to do so. And then what happens? Why, the train gets held up, of course, and through a series of coincidences, Tombstone and Speedy are blamed for the robbery!

Clearing their names and corralling the actual train robbers complicates their original mission, which was to solve a murder for which the son of an old friend of their boss has been arrested. Our intrepid duo manage to accomplish all of that, of course, through a combination of luck, banter, fast action, and detective work that’s more clever than anyone gives them credit for. This is a consistently entertaining entry in a series I really like.

Cliff Walters, a prolific contributor to the Western pulps who’s all but forgotten these days, is next up with a story called “Bone Bonanza”, in which a young rancher who fancies himself an artist goes east in search of a career in fine art, only to have things work out differently than he expected. This is a very mild, lightweight story with a few interesting angles, and it’s an easy read that I don’t think will linger very long in anyone’s mind. But it’s a pleasant enough way to pass 15 minutes.

I sometimes wonder if the readers who bought these pulps realized that A. Leslie, Bradford Scott, and Jackson Cole (part of the time) were all the same guy. Some of them must have suspected. Under the A. Leslie name, Leslie Scott contributes the novelette “Washed in Blood” to this issue. The first part of the tale is fairly standard as young cowboy Jim Wayne clashes with three crooked brothers who run almost everything in the county. A saloon shootout leaves one of the brothers dead and Jim on the run as a fugitive. It’s when he holes up in an abandoned mission still being tended to by an old priest that the story becomes one of ghost pirates and hidden treasure. As always with a Scott story, the action is plentiful and well-written, and the settings are vivid. I really enjoyed this one.

I’ve read a couple of stories by Harold R. Stoakes, another forgotten writer, and enjoyed them. “The Red Stallion” in this issue is a modern-day Western about a horse that can’t be ridden and the relationship between a young man and his stepfather. Honestly, this seems less like a Western pulp story and more like something that would have appeared in a slick or even a literary magazine. It’s got enough angst to it that it could have been mawkish, but Stoakes keeps things pretty low-key and makes it work in a well-written story that reminds me of something Larry McMurtry might have written early in his career.

“One Man Wrecking Crew” is a short (maybe 2000 words, tops) story by the always dependable Donald Bayne Hobart. There’s not much plot to it, just some conflict between a young cowboy and a crooked saloon owner and his henchmen, and that’s just an excuse for a brutal fistfight scene. Hobart probably didn’t spend much time on this and picked up a quick 20 bucks or so, but he was enough of an old pro to make it fun to read.

The Navajo Tom Raine series has become one of my favorites. The novelette in this issue, “Ranger Out of Bounds” drops the reader down in the middle of the action as the Arizona Ranger investigates a land-and-water swindle that also involves the kidnapping of a beautiful young woman. The only break in the action comes when Raine is knocked out cold for a while. It’s a bit more complicated plot than usual for Lee Bond, who wrote this entry under the house-name Jackson Cole. Bond’s stories are pretty easy to identify: at least once in the story, the villains will stand around and explain the plot to each other, and the hero will face multiple enemies in a big, final gunfight. I thought this was an excellent story, and as usual, when I finished it I was eager to read more adventures of Navajo Tom Raine.

I don’t know anything about Clark Gray except that he published more than a hundred stories in various Western pulps and that he wrote the two worst Jim Hatfield novels in the whole series, “Lobo Colonel” (TEXAS RANGERS, January 1952) and “Warpath” (TEXAS RANGERS, June 1952). His story in this issue, “Tortilla Tenderfoot”, is about Pedro Gonzales, a reformed rustler who has lived a law-abiding life for years, only to be drawn back into a life of outlawry by the return of his former partner. This is a decent plot, but Gray plays it for laughs and the actual humor to be found in the story is pretty sparse. However, the writing isn’t bad, and although unimpressive, this is a much better story than either of Gray’s Hatfield novels.

All in all, this is a good solid issue of EXCITING WESTERN, due to top-notch series entries by Tuttle and Bond, a very good stand-alone by Scott, and some interesting short stories. It’s worth reading if you have a copy on your shelves.

Review: City - Clifford D. Simak

A couple of weeks ago when I reran my review from 2009 of Clifford D. Simak’s novel WAY STATION, I mentioned that Bill Crider recommended Simak’s novel CITY to me at least 40 years ago and said that I would try to get around to reading it. Well, this may surprise you, but I actually did go ahead and read it. There’s a lot of classic science fiction I’ve never gotten around to, and I’d like to read some of it while I still have the chance. This is as good a place to start as any.

CITY is a fix-up novel composed of eight novelettes that appeared originally in the pulps ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION and FANTASTIC ADVENTURES between 1944 and 1951, plus a short story written for an anthology in 1973. The stories are: “City”, ASTOUNDING, May 1944; “Huddling Place”, ASTOUNDING, July 1944; “Census”, ASTOUNDING, September 1944; “Desertion”, ASTOUNDING, November 1944 (this is actually the first story in the series Simak wrote, although it wasn’t published first); “Paradise”, ASTOUNDING, June 1946; “Hobbies”, ASTOUNDING, November 1946; “Aesop”, ASTOUNDING, December 1947; “The Trouble With Ants”, FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, January 1951 (Simak’s title for the story was “The Simple Way”); and “Epilog”, ASTOUNDING: JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL ANTHOLOGY.

When Simak put the eight novelettes together in a book published by Gnome Press in 1952 (“Epilog” wasn’t written until years later), he wrote notes between each story in the voice of a future historian as bridging material. Even so, CITY reads more like a collection than an actual novel because of the vast sweep of time it covers and the varying protagonists. However, there’s enough continuity between the stories that I think it’s best to read them in this form. They wouldn’t make as much sense if they were read out of order.

As for the tale (no pun intended) itself, even though I hadn’t read this book, I’ve known for a long time what it’s about: a world in which humans have all but disappeared and things are run by robots and sentient, talking dogs. Come to find out, though, that set-up doesn’t really take shape until well past the halfway point of the book. Instead, the stories cover the gradual decline of humanity and its eventual exodus from Earth, except for a few stragglers. Sure, there are some robots and dogs, but humans—to be specific, several generations of the Webster family, who are all doctors and scientists—are the protagonists. Eventually, though, it’s just the robots, led by the nigh-immortal butler Jenkins, and the dogs, and they face the same sort of challenges the humans did. Will they be more successful in overcoming them?

Anybody who knows me very well knows that I love dogs. There are some good dogs in this book, although somewhat oddly, we never get to know any of them very well. Simak does a good job, though, of writing them as dogs, not as humans with four legs and a tail. Some of my favorite parts of this book are the between-story notes, in which academics named Tige, Bounce, and Rover argue about the origins of the stories and whether or not humans really existed or were just made up as some sort of doggish fairy tale. These sections are clever and very funny.

And that humor is welcome, because, man, overall this is a bleak book! Humans make the wrong decisions and things fall apart over and over again. There are glimmers of hope here and there, but mostly I was just left shaking my head in despair.

That’s where my problem with this book lies. There’s very little action, mostly just people sitting around talking or interior monologues (and you’d be surprised how many interior monologues robots can have). The concepts are huge, sweeping, and compelling, but there’s not much to the book other than the concepts. If I had actually read this 40 years ago, or better yet, when I was in junior high or high school, I think the ideas would have been enough to blow me away. As it is, CITY is probably not the best book for a tired old man who’s inclined to gloominess to be reading.

I think I’ve gotten shallow in my dotage. Mostly when I read, I just want to be entertained. CITY is an impressive book, very well-written and thought-provoking, but its entertainment value is slight. You might react entirely differently to it. I can certainly see why it’s considered classic science fiction, and I’m glad I read it, but for me, it was somewhat of a disappointment.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, April 1951

Even late in the pulp era, you could still find some mighty good reading in the magazines that remained. This issue of DETECTIVE TALES features stories by John D. MacDonald, Hugh B. Cave, Cornell Woolrich, and Leslie Turner White, along with lesser-known authors Dan Gordon, Don James, and P.B. Bishop. Granted, the Cave, Woolrich, and White stories are reprints from DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, but hey, if you've never read a story before, it's as good as new to you, right? I don't know who painted this cover, but it's pretty effective, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Golden West Magazine, February 1937

That's a pretty graphic clinch for a Western romance pulp cover. It was painted by Harry Fisk, who did several dozen pulp covers and interior illustrations. I wasn't familiar with his name or work, but he seems to have been a decent artist. This incarnation of GOLDEN WEST MAGAZINE didn't last very long, only half a dozen issues in 1936 and '37. There's a later GOLDEN WEST ROMANCES from the Thrilling Group, but it also ran for only six issues in 1949 and '50. But to get back to this one, there are only four stories in it, three of them by fairly well-known Western authors: Charles M. Martin, W.D. Hoffman, and Kenneth Sinclair. The fourth story is by Lulita Crawford Pritchett, who published quite a few stories in RANCH ROMANCES among other Western romance pulps. I don't recall ever hearing of her, though. I was curious enough to do a little investigating and found that there's a website devoted to her and her work. Pretty interesting stuff, too. You never know what you're going to find when you start looking into the backgrounds of some of these pulp authors.

Review: On the Dodge - D.B. Newton

Jim Bannister rides into the town of Antelope, Colorado, on the morning of the Fourth of July, but he’s not there to celebrate. Bannister is a fugitive from the law, the victim of an unjust murder conviction and a death sentence. But he escaped from jail and is now on a quest to clear his name, and there’s a chance that a man he hopes to find in Antelope can help with that goal.

Unfortunately, there’s a range war brewing in the area, and even though the town is full of Independence Day festivities, trouble is lurking right under the surface and quickly crops up, catching Bannister right in the middle of it.

I’ve been a fan of D.B. Newton’s Western novels for more than forty years. I first discovered them in the late Seventies when he was writing hardback Westerns for Doubleday’s Double D line under the pseudonym Dwight Bennett (his first and middle names, of course). It wasn’t long before I found out that he was also a prolific contributor to the Western pulps and even wrote a few of the Jim Hatfield novels in TEXAS RANGERS under the house-name Jackson Cole.

Eventually, when I became a writer myself, my first Westerns were entries in the Stagecoach Station series, which was created by D.B. Newton, who also wrote a number of them. I’ve always liked the fact that I shared a house-name with someone who wrote Jim Hatfield novels.

In the Sixties, Newton wrote an eight-book series for Berkley featuring a hero named Jim Bannister who was a fugitive from the law but not really an outlaw. ON THE DODGE is the first of those novels, all of which are in the process of being reprinted by Piccadilly Publishing. I just read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Newton drops the reader down at a point where all hell’s fixin’ to bust loose, and I always appreciate an author who doesn’t waste any time getting the story going. Newton is from the same school of Western writing as L.P. Holmes and T.T. Flynn. He uses traditional plots but elevates them to a higher level with fine writing, well-developed characters, and moral and emotional complexity. ON THE DODGE has a real air of Greek tragedy about it, along with plenty of action and a very human and likable protagonist.

I had a paperback copy of the Berkley edition of ON THE DODGE for many years but never got around to reading it. That’s a good thing in a way because now I can read the new editions as they come out from Piccadilly. This one is a superb hardboiled Western that’s available in e-book and paperback editions. It gets a high recommendation from me. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Clues Detective Stories, March 1941

I don't know who painted the cover on this issue of CLUES. It's okay, but I'm not overly impressed with it. However, I am impressed with the contents. There's a Race Williams novella by Carroll John Daly, a novelette by Norvell Page, and short stories by Lawrence Treat and Edward S. Aarons writing as Edward Ronns. That's a pretty good lineup!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, December 1945

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my brittle, battered, and tattered copy in the scan. The dramatic, eye-catching cover, as usual, is by Sam Cherry, who never painted a bad cover as far as I’m concerned, although of course I like some better than others.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, “The Timber War”, has been attributed to Tom Curry, but I believe that’s incorrect. I’m convinced this one is actually by Leslie Scott. The terms “skalleyhooting” and “big skookum he-wolf”, common in his work, are used numerous times. There are quite a few vivid descriptive passages, although maybe not as many as you often find in a Scott novel. My theory is that Scott could always fill a few pages with description when he needed to, but also that whenever an editor needed to cut a few pages, those lengthy portraits of the landscape would be his first target. The plot, which finds a hidden criminal pitting two opposing forces—in this case, loggers and cowboys—against each other for his own benefit, is also classic Scott. To be fair, that’s a common Western plot no matter who the author is. I’ve written a few loggers vs. cowboys yarns myself. But this one, including the villain’s identity and the motivation for his scheming, is pure Scott and easy to see coming if you’ve read as many of his novels as I have. As further evidence, most of Curry’s Hatfield novels feature a proxy hero who winds up with the pretty girl. That happens in “The Timber War”, too, but it’s pretty much an afterthought, not a major part of the plot like it usually is with Curry. That’s my reasoning, but basically it boils down to knowing a Scott novel when I read one, and that’s what I think this is.

But is “The Timber War” any good, you ask? Oh, heck, yeah. Hatfield is sent to get to the bottom of the trouble brewing between Justin Flint’s logging crew and Clyde Cranley’s Double C ranch outfit. Sabotage has taken place on both sides. Tensions are running high and threaten to break out into open warfare. Hatfield gets ambushed a few times, helps out both sides, and figures out what’s really going on. There’s plenty of well-written action, and the pace never lets up for long. It’s formulaic, but nobody ever worked that formula better than Scott. I had a great time reading this, as I nearly always do with his work.

“Tenor on Horseback” is the only credit in the Fictionmags Index for Matt Sprague. Was that a pseudonym, or just the only story that Matt Sprague managed to sell? I don’t know, but I can say that this story about a couple of ranchers getting mixed up with an opera company touring the West is pretty polished and entertaining. It’s a humorous yarn without ever descending into slapstick, and there’s a nice twist at the end. I liked this one more than I expected to.

The issue wraps up with a story by an author I always expect to enjoy, Johnston McCulley. “Merry Christmas, Ranger” is about a Texas Ranger’s encounter with two outlaws when all he wants to do is make it home for Christmas so he can propose to the girl he wants to marry and then resign from the Rangers. The plot is pretty simple, but McCulley executes it very well and his fast-moving prose is always fun to read. The holiday is just a minor plot device; the story could have been written just as effectively without it. But the whole thing is enjoyable, and I’d say it’s another winner for McCulley.

This whole issue is a winner, in fact. All three stories are top-notch, and I greatly enjoyed reading this pulp. It’s well worth your time if you have a copy.