Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: G-Men, November 1935

As some of you know, I’m a long-time fan of the Dan Fowler series. Fowler, ace agent of the F.B.I., had his adventures chronicled in the pages of the pulp G-MEN (later G-MEN DETECTIVE) for many years, first under the house-name C.K.M. Scanlon and then later under the real names of the various authors who contributed novels to the series. The November 1935 issue of G-MEN, sporting a cover possibly by Richard Lyon, contains the second Dan Fowler novel, which has a great title: “Bring ’Em Back Dead”.

I don’t own this issue, but I do have a copy of BRING ’EM BACK DEAD, a great collection from Black Dog Books that reprints the first three Dan Fowler novels. I read and reviewed the first one, “Snatch!”, a while back, and now I’ve moved on to the second novel in the series. In this one, Fowler and his friend and fellow agent Larry Kendal are after a gang responsible for multiple thefts of silk shipments once they’ve arrived from the Orient and are on their way to wholesalers in the United States. There’s a great sequence on board a train that takes up the first part of the story, with shootouts, chases, and the grisly murder of a young agent. The crooks get away, but with Dan Fowler on their trail, you know they’ll run out of luck sooner or later.

The Fowler novels are a very appealing blend of well-done procedural drama and terrific action scenes. That’s the case in this one as Fowler and Kendal prove to be dogged investigators, as usual, but can also throw a punch or handle a tommy gun with great skill. Beautiful blond Sally Vane, the love of Dan’s life, joins the Bureau after helping out as an amateur in the previous novel and comes in for her own share of the action.

Like “Snatch!”, “Bring ’Em Back Dead” was written by the creator of the series, George Fielding Eliot, under the C.K.M. Scanlon name. Most of the Fowler novels I’ve read have been from later in the series, but I really like these early ones. I give a high recommendation to the Black Dog Books reprint volume, which is available in both e-book and paperback editions.

Since I don’t own the actual pulp issue, I haven’t read the two backup stories, but they’re by Tom Curry, whose Westerns I enjoy, and Joe Archibald, whose work is kind of hit-and-miss for me, but many of his stories are good. I suspect I’ll be reading another Dan Fowler story relatively soon. It’s a great series. And it occurred to me while I was reading this one that it’s a shame Republic Pictures never made a Dan Fowler serial directed by William Witney and John English and starring Clayton Moore as Dan. Well, I can imagine it, can’t I?