I don't know if those Legionnaires are smuggling the dancing girl into or out of the fort, but either way that's a provocative, eye-catching cover by Herbert Morton Stoops, the long-time cover artist for BLUE BOOK. Inside this issue are stories by H. Bedford-Jones, Gordon Keyne (also H. Bedford-Jones), Michael Gallister (um, also H. Bedford-Jones), a Legion yarn by Georges Surdez, one of the best at that sub-genre, a Red Wolf of Arabia story by William J. Makin, and yarns by Fulton Grant, Kenneth Perkins, and Beatrice Grimshaw, among others. Plus interior art by Austin Briggs. BLUE BOOK was one of the great pulps, and it was issues like this that helped earn it that reputation.
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Another interesting thing about BLUE BOOK was their policy concerning interior illustrations. Almost all pulps used one drawing per story and some didn't even bother with any illustrations at all. I just finished reading issues of ALL STORY and POPULAR MAGAZINE that had no interior artwork.
However BLUE BOOK used several illustrations for most stories and they hired the best pen and ink artists. I still have some original artwork including a beautiful two page driawing by Flanagan from a mid-thiries serial by James Francis Dwyer. BLUE BOOK was one of the best looking pulps around during the twenties, thirties, and forties.
Three (!) stories by Bedford-Jones. He pushed out a lot of stories, and not all of them were good, but he was a good writer and much of his stuff was very good, indeed. This looks like a good one.
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