South of Sulu -- George F. Worts

This is a very handsome trade paperback from Black Dog Books reprinting five of George F. Worts’ novelettes from the pulp SHORT STORIES starring Singapore Sammy, a brawny, redheaded adventurer whose real name is Samuel Larkin Shay. I’d read some of the later Singapore Sammy stories published in ARGOSY, but evidently the character got his start in SHORT STORIES. And these yarns are absolutely top-notch pulp adventure, too.

In the stories, Sammy is roaming the tropics, mostly Malaysia and the South Pacific, searching for his ne’er-do-well father, who abandoned his family when Sammy was two years old. When Bill Shay left his wife and child, he took with him a will leaving a fortune to Sammy from his grandfather, and of course Sammy wants that will back, along with revenge on his father for deserting them.

Naturally Sammy gets involved in all sorts of adventures while he’s looking for his father: stealing a blue fire pearl from an evil maharaja, crossing swords with a crooked gem merchant known as the Cobra, getting trapped in shark-infested waters, hunting down a rare pink elephant, and braving an attack by an octopus to recover some sunken treasure. Some of this is a little over-the-top – what else do you expect from pulp stories? – but Worts was such a good writer that he makes it all believable and keeps the pace racing along. These are fine examples of two-fisted South Seas adventure yarns, and I had a great time reading them.

That excellent George Rozen cover, by the way, is actually from the September 10, 1938 issue of ARGOSY and has nothing to do with Singapore Sammy other than the fact that the lead story in that issue is entitled “Southbound to Singapore”. It’s by the prolific pulp editor and writer Roy deS. Horn rather than Worts. But who cares? It’s a heck of a cover and equally appropriate for this book.