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!

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective Magazine, July 1936

Walter Baumhofer did some great covers for DIME DETECTIVE during this era, and here's another of 'em. The lineup of authors in this issue is top-notch, as well: Carroll John Daly with a Vee Brown story, T.T. Flynn, Frederick C. Davis, William E. Barrett, and Robert Sidney Bowen. Excellent writers, every one of them. DIME DETECTIVE was a consistently superb pulp during the mid-Thirties. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Crime Busters, October 1938

Western pulps weren't the only ones that favored a red and yellow color scheme. Here's an example of one on CRIME BUSTERS, a detective pulp that often featured photo covers but not this time. It also specialized in series characters, and the line-up in this issue is full of heavyweight authors. There's a Click Rush story by Lester Dent, a Carrie Cashin story by Theodore Tinsley, a Clay Holt story by Carroll John Daly, a Red Drake story by W.T. Ballard, and a Doc Trouble story by Robert C. Blackmon. I've heard of Click Rush and Carrie Cashin, but I'll admit, the others are new ones on me. Daly's Clay Holt appeared in six stories, the first four in DIME DETECTIVE, this one in CRIME BUSTERS, and a final yarn in BLACK MASK. I'm guessing Ballard's Red Drake was probably a private eye. He appeared in more than two dozen stories in BLACK MASK, CRIME BUSTERS, and STREET & SMITH'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Blackmon's Doc Trouble appeared in 18 stories in CRIME BUSTERS and STREET & SMITH'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. I'll bet these are all good characters and good stories, and if any of you are familiar with them, please feel free to tell us about them in the comments.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Smashing Detective Stories, May 1955

This is an issue from late in the pulp era that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I think the cover art is okay, not great but effective enough. I don’t know who the artist is.

This is also a momentous issue, although you wouldn’t necessarily think that an issue of SMASHING DETECTIVE STORIES, a low-budget, last gasp pulp from Columbia Publications, would ever fall into that category. But it contains the final Race Williams story by Carroll John Daly. That’s right, 32 years after the character made his debut in “Knights of the Open Palm” in the June 1, 1923 issue of BLACK MASK, the series comes to an end with “Head Over Homicide” in this issue.

I’d never read any of the later Race Williams stories, even though I have the Black Dog Books collection RACE WILLIAMS’ DOUBLE DATE and the massive complete stories collections from Altus Press. The only ones I’ve read come from the Twenties and Thirties. So I found “Head Over Homicide” pretty interesting. The story opens with Race rescuing the beautiful, kidnapped daughter of an oil tycoon. But when he returns her to her family, he quickly realizes that not everything is as it seems, and it’s not long until murder rears its ugly head. Or does it?

The writing is a little smoother and more polished than in the early stories but still unmistakably Daly. Nobody else’s writing ever sounded like his. And honestly, it seemed a little out of place to me in a story obviously set in the Fifties with several references to television. But I still enjoy Daly’s voice. This is a cleverly plotted yarn, too, going back and forth on what’s true and what’s not, and Daly keeps a nice final twist on reserve for very late in the story. It could have used more action—there’s hardly any—but all in all, for a final story in the series it’s hardly an embarrassment. I rather enjoyed it.

I was familiar with Arnold Drake as a comic book writer—how can you be a comics fan and not know the guy who co-created The Doom Patrol, Deadman, and the Guardians of the Galaxy?—but didn’t realize he turned out a few pulp stories as well, including “The Lady and the Lawyer” in this one. It’s a private eye yarn, with the detective narrator hired by a lawyer to shadow a beautiful young socialite who he insists is homicidal. The story moves along well, has just enough twists in the plot to be intriguing, but then the ending is completely limp and lacking in drama, a surprise from somebody with Drake’s talent.

Betty Brooks turned out only a handful of stories, all for Columbia detective pulps. Her story in this issue, “The Cocky Robbins Kill”, is about a murder in a small-town hotel during a blizzard. There are a lot of characters, but the plot is well-handled and she did a good job with the hotel setting. This one’s nothing special but well-written enough that I enjoyed it.

I read a science fiction story by Basil Wells a while back that I didn’t care for. His story in this issue, “Red is the Tower”, is about murder on a farm (the tower in the title is a silo), and while it was better than the SF yarn, I still didn’t like it much and found it overly literary and pretentious. Wells may be one of those writers whose work just doesn’t resonate with me. That’s not really his fault.

“He Had To Be Tough” is about a young, scientific-minded police detective trying to convince the grizzled veterans he works with that they ought to give up their strongarm tactics. Then something happens that makes him rethink that, and it’s furious action the rest of the way in this yarn. This is a good, entertaining story despite a late twist that may come from a little too far out in left field. The author is J.J. Matthews, who wrote approximately 120 Western, detective, and sports stories during the Fifties, all of them appearing in various Columbia pulps. Even though this isn’t an acknowledged house name, I have a strong hunch that it is.

If not for a few sales to Fiction House’s JUNGLE STORIES, I would think that Francis C. Battle was a Columbia house name, too. Nearly all of his several dozen detective and Western stories appeared in Columbia pulps. “Ju-Ju for the White Man” is a jungle story, too, as well as an “Off-Trail Crime Story”, as the blurb says. A big game hunter schemes to use witchcraft to get rid of a rival. The ending, while predictable, is effective, and it’s not a bad little yarn.

Mat Rand is a well-known and widely used house name, so there’s no telling who actually wrote “Jailbreak”. It’s about a convicted murderer trying to come up with an escape plan before he’s executed. Like the previous story, the ending is pretty obvious, but again, it’s well-written and reasonably entertaining.

Despite the presence of Race Williams, nobody is ever going to mistake SMASHING DETECTIVE STORIES for BLACK MASK or DIME DETECTIVE (where Race also appeared), but I had a pretty good time reading this issue. The Arnold Drake story is disappointing because of the ending and I didn’t like the Basil Wells story, but all the others kept me turning the pages and entertained me. If I come across any more issues, I wouldn’t hesitate to give them a try.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, May 25, 1940

Rudolph Belarski contributes a nice, action-packed cover to this issue of ARGOSY. As usual, there's an excellent line-up of authors inside, too: Walt Coburn, Carroll John Daly, Jim Kjelgaard, Budd Schulberg, William Du Bois, and Charles T. Jackson. And only two of those pesky serials in this issue (Coburn and Jackson).

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Mask, May 1938

This cover is by an artist I'm not familiar with, Raymond S. Pease. According to the Fictionmags Index, he did only a handful of pulp covers, all for BLACK MASK during the late Thirties. I like the tropical look of this one, plus the little details like the wine spilling from both glasses. There are some fine writers in this issue, as well: Carroll John Daly with a Satan Hall story, Frank Gruber with an Oliver Quade story, and yarns by Roger Torrey, Steve Fisher, William R. Cox, and Donald Wandrei. That's a nice group of hardboiled pulpsters.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective, September 1935

That's a pretty gruesome but certainly effective cover by Walter Baumhofer on this issue of DIME DETECTIVE. And as usual, the lineup of writers inside can't be beat: Carroll John Daly (with a Race Williams novella), Erle Stanley Gardner, Norvell W. Page, Cornell Woolrich, and O.B. Myers, best remembered these days for his stories in the aviation pulps but also a prolific author of detective yarns.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Action Stories, March 1932

That's a very striking cover by William Reusswig on this issue of DETECTIVE ACTION STORIES. And you'd be hard put to come up with a better group of writers: Frederick Nebel (with a Sgt. Brinkhaus story; I have the Altus Press collection of these stories and really need to get around to reading them), Carroll John Daly, J. Allan Dunn, J. Lane Linklater, Robert Turner, and Edward Parrish Ware. That's a fine bunch of pulpsters. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective Magazine, March 1938

For the last pulp cover post of the year, we have a dandy cover by Walter Baumhofer on one of the iconic pulp magazines, DIME DETECTIVE. Inside this issue, there's a Race Williams story by Carroll John Daly, Raymond Chandler's "The King in Yellow", a Keyhole Kerry story by Frederick C. Davis, and stories by a couple of lesser known writers, William Edward Hayes and Maxwell Hawkins. Baumhofer, Chandler, Daly, and Davis are more than reason enough to think this was a great issue of DIME DETECTIVE. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Smashing Detective Stories, June 1953

Another of the Columbia pulps edited by Robert W. Lowndes, and as usual, he's managed to get some good authors to mix in with others you've never heard of, and neither have I. In this issue of SMASHING DETECTIVE STORIES, you've got Carroll John Daly with a Race William yarn, the prolific Western pulpster who also wrote mysteries Donald Bayne Hobart, and Hunt Collins, author of the cover story, who was really Evan Hunter. Maybe not great stuff, but I'll bet it was fun. The cover scan is from the Fictionmags Index.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective, September 1935

Some days Norman Saunders is my favorite pulp cover artist; some days it's Walter Baumhofer. Today is a Baumhofer day. That's a really striking, evocative cover, and the authors inside this issue ain't bad, either: Carroll John Daly (with a Race Williams story), Erle Stanley Gardner, Norvell Page (a Ken Carter story), and Cornell Woolrich. As I've said many times before, just another day at the newsstand during the pulp era.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Aces, May 1932

Supposedly, BLACK ACES was Fiction House's attempt to imitate the success of BLACK MASK, but it didn't last very long, only seven issues. Its failure wasn't due to the quality of the writers, though. This issue featured stories by Carroll John Daly, James P. Olsen, Eugene Cunningham, Theodore Tinsley, William Chamberlain, and Franklin Martin, all well-regarded pulp authors. And it had a cover by Rudolph Belarski. The newsstands were just too crowded for it to stand out, I suppose.

This is the last weekend pulp post of the year. I hope those of you who read them are still enjoying them. I've started to think that I won't be doing these forever, but I'm not ready to quit yet and plan to be at it for a good while yet.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, August 1940

I think this may be the first trapeze shootout I've ever seen on a pulp cover. Seems pretty dramatic. Inside this issue of DETECTIVE TALES you've got a Satan Hall story by Carroll John Daly, plus yarns by Arthur Leo Zagat, Philip Ketchum, Dale Clark, and more.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Detective, January 1947

The giant horseshoe on this Rudolph Belarski cover for THRILLING DETECTIVE looks like something from a 1950s Batman story with art by Dick Sprang. This pulp is notable for including both Carroll John Daly and Louis L'Amour among its contributors. Two incredibly popular authors from different eras that overlap here.