Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Clues Detective Stories, April 1939

That's a pretty daring cover on this issue of CLUES DETECTIVE STORIES, especially for a pulp published by Street & Smith, an outfit that could be a little stodgy from time to time. The art is by Modest Stein, not a favorite artist of mine, but I have to admit, I like this one quite a bit. Inside are stories by Donald Wandrei, Otis Adelbert Kline, J. Allan Dunn, J.J. des Ormeaux, Robert C. Blackmon, and Harry Lee Fellinge, all of them prolific and dependable pulpsters. I don't own this issue or any issues of CLUES, as far as I recall, but it seems like a pulp that would have been worth reading.

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.