Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All-Adventure Action Novels, Spring 1939

ALL-ADVENTURE ACTION NOVELS was a Fiction House pulp and ran for only three issues in 1937, ’38, and ’39, not finding success even though it had good covers and some fine authors appeared in its pages. I don’t own any of the issues and have never even seen any copies, but I do own the Adventure House facsimile reprint of the third and final issue from Spring 1939. I read that reprint recently and really enjoyed it.

Although all five stories in this issue are listed as novels in the Table of Contents, we know what that means. They’re actually novelettes and novellas. The first one is “Drums of the Desert” by Thomas J. Cooke. It’s about an American adventurer in Egypt who has gotten his hands on the sacred flag of the Mahdi, which is worth a fortune. A schemer who knows about the flag forces a beautiful French girl to lure the hero into a trap, which winds up with him being the prisoner of a Taureg band. A deserter from the French Foreign Legion figures in the plot, too. It’s a well-written yarn with enough action to be satisfying. I don’t know anything about Cooke, except that he wrote eight stories which appeared in various Fiction House pulps. I have a hunch it might have been a pseudonym, but I have nothing on which to base that except a gut feeling.

A couple of brief discussions here on the blog and on Facebook made me realize I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by George Bruce, even though he was a major pulp author for a long time. He’s best remembered as a writer of aviation and air war yarns. His novella in this issue, “The Iron Man of Devil’s Island”, has an aviation element to its plot, but it’s also a prison tale, as you’d expect from the title. The two storylines—an American airliner forced by bad weather to land in the South American jungle and a former French flying ace from World War I escaping from Devil’s Island—run in parallel for a while before coming together. When they merge, it’s with a predictable twist that’s still very effective. Not as effective as the ending, though, which, as Maynard G. Krebs used to say, made me get all misty-eyed. It took me a little while to warm up to this story. Bruce’s style isn’t exactly long-winded, but he does tend to go on, and while I think a lot of modern writers take the whole “show, don’t tell” thing too far, Bruce goes to the other extreme at times. Overall, though, I really enjoyed “The Iron Man of Devil’s Island”. It drew me in and had me turning the pages and makes me look forward to reading something else by George Bruce.

Albert Richard Wetjen wrote South Seas stories about several different characters including Stinger Seave (who I teamed with G-Man Dan Fowler for a story in a recent anthology, DOUBLE TROUBLE), Shark Gotch (one of the great names of pulp fiction, as far as I’m concerned), and Typhoon Bradley. “Red Typhoon”, the Wetjen novelette in this issue, is actually an unacknowledged reprint of the first story in the series, “Captain Typhoon”, which appeared originally in the September 1931 issue of ACTION STORIES. It reads like the first story in a series, too, introducing us to Captain Typhoon Bradley, his brother Bob, and their search for a mysterious island that’s not on any of the charts. They have to team up with some shady characters in order to find what they’re looking for, and of course double crosses and action ensue. Bradley gets his ”Typhoon” nickname, another indication this is actually the first story in the series. One thing I really like about Wetjen’s work is that all his series are connected. Supporting characters from one, and even sometimes protagonists, will show up in a different series. He never seems to have done much with the concept, but it’s still a nice touch.

John Starr was a Fiction House house name. He’s credited with the French Foreign Legion yarn, “Riders of the Burning Sands”, in this issue. Based on the idea that a house name was often used to keep an author from having two stories in the same issue, I’d say the most likely suspect in this case is Victor Rousseau. George Bruce was a big name; you wouldn’t waste one of his stories by putting a house name on it. The Wetjen story is a reprint. Cooke is a possibility, too. But having read “Riders of the Burning Sands”, I’m convinced it’s by Rousseau. Stylistically, it reads just like him. It’s a good story, too, about an American who winds up in the Foreign Legion because of a misunderstanding and a murder, and how he has to survive not only a brutal sergeant but an attack by natives as well. Lots of good action in this one and a satisfying resolution.

Victor Rousseau appears under his own name with “Ruby of Revolt”, a story of political intrigue set in India. Rousseau, one of the early practitioners of science fiction before it was even called that, wrote tons of adventure stories for the Spicy pulps under several different names, and he was a top-notch storyteller. This involves an American working for the British Secret Service in India, trying to track down a magnificent ruby known as the Eye of Kali, which will determine who rules one of the country’s provinces and whether or not there’s a bloody uprising. There’s a beautiful, mysterious dancer involved, too. I don’t know if Rousseau ever read Talbot Mundy or Robert E. Howard, but starting out, this story reminded me of Jimgrim and El Borak. Then, halfway through, it takes a sudden, bizarre twist that brings in a science fiction/horror angle to the plot. It’s goofy, but Rosseau makes it work, probably because the whole thing races along at such a fast pace. Rousseau was no Mundy or REH, but this is a very entertaining story.

In fact, every story in this issue is entertaining, either very good or excellent, and I was impressed with ALL-ADVENTURE ACTION NOVELS. The reprint is still available on Amazon if you’re a fan of pulp adventure fiction and want to check it out.