Review: South of the Border - Edwin Truett Long (Red Star Detective, August 1940)

“South of the Border”, which appeared in the August 1940 issue of RED STAR DETECTIVE, is the third and final novel in Edwin Truett Long’s unfortunately short-lived series of mysteries featuring Dr. Thaddeus C. Harker. Doc Harker, as you may remember, travels around the Southwest with his medicine show, driving a big red car and pulling a trailer from which he peddles the world-famous Chickasha Remedies, but this is actually just a cover for his activities as one of the world’s top criminologists and detectives. His two assistants, beautiful Brenda Sloan and burly, bald-headed former circus strongman Hercules Jones, help out with both the medicine show and battling the various criminal schemes Doc Harker uncovers.

As this yarn opens, the three of them are enjoying a well-earned vacation in Nuevo Laredo and taking in a bullfight at the local bullring. But of course, Doc’s curiosity and nose for trouble gets them involved with a private detective and a couple of beautiful blondes who apparently are mixed up in something shady. Then a bullfighter falls in love with Brenda, a sleazy reporter working for a crusading newspaper publisher sticks his nose in, the blondes and the private detective disappear, a Mexican gangster and his henchmen show up, a murdered bellhop is found in Doc’s hotel room, and off we go at a gallop that never really slows down.

As you can tell, Long was definitely of the “Throw stuff at the wall and see if enough of it sticks” school of plotting. In this one, we get all of the above, plus a gang war over a white slavery ring and a beautiful, mysterious brunette who keeps trying to kill the Mexican gangster. Does it all work? Well, let’s not ask inconvenient questions. Is the story a lot of fun to read with its breakneck pace, snappy banter, and colorful characters? It sure is. “South of the Border” is the best of the three Doc Harker novels, the first half being especially strong before getting a little muddled as Long tries to fit everything together.

It’s a real shame that Long passed away only a few years later after contracting an illness while serving as a codebreaker in Burma during World War II. If he had lived and written longer, I think there’s a good chance he would have developed into a better plotter, and we might have gotten dozens of screwball, action-packed mystery novels from him. As it is, we have a handful of novels and scores of short stories, and I’ve never read one that I didn’t enjoy. “South of the Border” is well worth reading. It was reprinted, along with the other two Doc Harker novels, by Altus Press in DR. THADDEUS C. HARKER: THE COMPLETE TALES, which is available from Amazon in e-book and trade paperback editions.

Review: Woe to the Vanquished - Edwin Truett (Edwin Truett Long) (RED STAR DETECTIVE, June 1940)

“Woe to the Vanquished” is the second novel featuring Dr. Thaddeus Clay Harker, traveling medicine showman and top-notch criminologist and detective, and his assistants, former wrestler Hercules Jones and the beautiful Brenda Sloan. It was published in the June 1940 issue of RED STAR DETECTIVE with a great cover by Emmett Watson. RED STAR DETECTIVE is the retitled pulp that ran for one issue as DETECTIVE DIME NOVELS, where the first Doc Harker novel, “Crime Nest”, appeared. As this story begins Doc, Hercules, and Brenda aren’t involved in a case, they’re just on their way to the next stop where they’ll set up and sell the world-famous Chickasha Remedies that are Doc Harker’s stock-in-trade.

But then they run into a meeting of the Valiants of the Flaming Circle, a black-robed Ku Klux Klan sort of organization that firebombs and destroys a school run by a man they consider a Bolshevik. Doc and Hercules wind up being arrested and changed with murder. Crime and chaos ensue. Doc has his hands full sorting everything out and uncovering the truth about what’s really going on. Obviously, not everything turns out the way it appears at first.

The Doc Harker novels were written by prolific pulpster Edwin Truett Long under the transparent pseudonym Edwin Truett. Long was born in Missouri but spent most of his life in Texas, and according to Tom Johnson, who wrote the introduction to the Altus Press volume that collects all three of the novels, “Woe to the Vanquished” takes place in and around a thinly disguised Wichita Falls, Texas. That by itself is enough to make it of interest to me.

I’ve become an Edwin Truett Long fan. He was not the most rigorous plotter in the world, but his stories are fast-moving, full of action, blessed with colorful, interesting characters, and have occasional touches of humor. He was just a good yarn-spinner, and it’s a shame that his service in World War II as a cryptographer in Burma left him with medical issues that took his life in 1945 when he was only 44 years old.

DR. THADDEUS C. HARKER: THE COMPLETE TALES is available on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions. I’ve read two of the three novels now and really enjoyed both of them, so I don’t hesitate to give this collection a high recommendation if you like off-beat, fast-paced pulp adventure and detective stories.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Speed Western Stories, December 1945, Plus Blog Update

This issue of SPEED WESTERN STORIES features two stories by Edwin Truett Long, one under the transparent pseudonym Edwin Truett and one as by Wallace Kayton. Long died earlier in 1945, apparently from an illness he contracted while serving in Burma during World War II, so these may have been some of the last stories he wrote. Or they could be unacknowledged reprints. With a Trojan pulp, one never knows. Elsewhere in this issue are stories by William R. Cox, Laurence Donovan, James P. Olsen, William J. Glynn, and house-name Max Neilson. The cover is probably by H.W. Scott. This issue can be found on-line at the Internet Archive. With a line-up of authors like that, I may have to read it one of these days.

Speaking of issues, I've been dealing with some health-related ones recently. Nothing serious, the blog's not going anywhere and neither am I, but it's left me without the time and energy to get everything done that I wanted to, including updating the blog. However, I'm hoping that normal posting will resume next week, although it may get sporadic now and then. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spicy Detective Stories, November 1936

I don’t own this pulp, but I recently read a PDF of it downloaded from the Internet Archive. The cover is by Delos Palmer.

Evidently Alan Anderson was a real guy. There’s no indication in the Fictionmags Index that it’s a house-name. He’s the author of the first story in this issue, “The Woman in Yellow”, which is about an American spy trying to retrieve an envelope full of vital military plans from a beautiful brunette while they travel on the Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul. Our protagonist has a partner in this assignment, a beautiful blonde who’s a nightclub dancer in addition to being a spy. Naturally, seeing as this is a Spicy Pulp, both gals manage to lose some of their clothes during the course of the story. The plot is pretty interesting, with a semi-clever twist at the end, but the writing isn’t very good. It’s choppy and hard to follow in places. Not a bad effort, but not a particularly good one, either.

“Killer’s Price” is the first of three stories in this issue by my old buddy Edwin Truett Long. I refer to him as my buddy because I’m starting to feel a real kinship with the guy despite the fact that he died eight years before I was born. But he lived in the North Texas area for a good part of his life, including some time in Fort Worth. He wrote fast, in a variety of genres, and I can see myself having the same sort of career if I’d been born earlier. “Killer’s Price” is bylined Mort Lansing, one of Long’s regular pseudonyms, and it’s part of his series about private detective Mike Cockrell. As the story opens, Mike is on vacation in a coastal city pretty clearly modeled after Corpus Christi when he gets involved in the kidnapping of a millionaire’s daughter. There are a couple of other beautiful blondes mixed up in the deal, along with a villainous bartender and a gang boss. Mike is kept hopping as he tries to straighten out this mess. The story is plotted pretty loosely, but the action races along at breakneck speed and the banter is good. This one is a considerable step up from Anderson’s story.

Next up is a story by that stalwart of the Spicy Pulps, Robert Leslie Bellem, and it features his iconic private detective character Dan Turner. In “Murder for Metrovox”, a beautiful movie star takes a high dive from a high rise and winds up not so beautiful. Was her death suicide—or murder? At the same time, Dan is already mixed up in the case of a missing starlet, and there’s a beautiful stag movie actress involved as well. Naturally, Dan sorts everything out, but not before coming up with good excuses for the still-living babes to take their clothes off, and he manages to guzzle down a bottle of Vat 69 while he’s at it, too. Dan was one of the original multi-taskers. As usual with Bellem’s work, this is a well-plotted, if slightly predictable, yarn. The wackiness seems toned down a little, but it’s great fun to read anyway. I’ve never read a bad Dan Turner story.

“Traitor’s Gold” is by Hamlin Daly, which was a pseudonym for E. Hoffmann Price. Price wrote a lot for the Spicy Pulps under his own name, but Hamlin Daly shows up quite a bit, too. “Traitor’s Gold” is a nighttime romp through a spooky old mansion in the Hudson Valley that’s supposed to be haunted by the ghost of the murdered millionaire who owned it. He had a beautiful daughter, too, and our detective protagonist is in love with her and determined to trap the ghost who’s causing trouble. This isn’t top of the line work from Price, but it moves right along and has a decent plot. I liked it without being overly impressed by it.

The next story in this issue is another of Edwin Truett Long’s contributions, this time writing under the name Cary Moran. “Murder in Music” features sheriff’s department investigator Jarnegan, who only investigates murders. I read this one several years ago in a Black Dog Books chapbook that reprinted several of the Jarnegan stories, and here’s what I said about it then: “Murder in Music” finds Jarnegan investigating the death of a drummer from a jazz band visiting the city. It appears that the man was frightened to death by voodoo. But all is not as it appears, of course, and another band member soon turns up dead, giving Jarnegan two murders to solve.

Harley Tate and Diana Ware are partners in a private detective agency, and in “The Taveta Necklace”, they’re hired to keep a fabulously valuable necklace from being stolen during a high society party. Naturally, trouble ensues, including several murders, in this fast-paced, entertaining yarn that’s credited to George Sanders. In fact, it’s the only piece of fiction credited to Sanders in the Fictionmags Index, and there was one other Harley Tate/Diana Ware yarn published under the name Alan Anderson, so I think it’s pretty safe to say that this George Sanders was a pseudonym. Did Alan Anderson write this one, too? Now that I don’t know. I liked it considerably better and thought it was better written than Anderson’s “The Woman in Yellow”, elsewhere in this issue. This will probably have to go down as another unsolved mystery of the Spicy Pulps, though.

“Death on the Half Shell” is the third Edwin Truett Long story in this issue. It’s part of the Johnny Harding series, which, haphazardly enough, was published under three different pseudonyms during its run: Cary Moran, Mort Lansing, and Carl Moore, the byline on this particular story. Johnny Harding is a feisty little gossip columnist who frequently stumbles over dead bodies. He’s the protagonist of Long’s novel KILLER’S CARESS, which was published under the Cary Moran name. In this story, he's digging for information about a lottery that appears to be a swindle, when a beautiful informant winds up dead after consuming a poisoned lobster. More murders take place as the story gallops through a night of action. I enjoyed KILLER’S CARESS, and I like this story a lot, too. They could have made a good B-movie series about Johnny Harding starring, say, Jimmy Cagney, although Cagney was too big a star by then. But he’d fit the character perfectly.

Robert A. Garron was really Howard Wandrei, so it’s not surprising that his story “The 15th Pocket” is one of the best-written stories in this issue. A police detective investigates the murder of a wealthy lingerie manufacturer whose body is found in the back seat of an empty cab stalled in traffic. The Spicy Pulps are probably the only place you’d find a character who’s a lingerie tycoon! This isn’t a particularly complicated yarn, but the plot holds together all right and it moves right along with smooth prose. Wandrei’s stories are always good.

With stories by Bellem, Price, Long, and Wandrei, you’d expect this issue of SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES to be a good one, and so it is. I really enjoyed it. Sure, the stories are a little formulaic, but so is most fiction, not just pulp. Space them out a little and they read just fine. If you’ve never read a Spicy Pulp, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

Review: Crime Nest - Edwin Truett Long (Detective Dime Novels, April 1940)

I’d read a number of pulp stories over the years by Edwin Truett Long, writing under various pseudonyms and house-names, and I always enjoyed them. But I’ve become more interested in him and his work since discovering that he lived for a while on the west side of Fort Worth and is buried on the east side. One of these days, I’m going to drive over to the cemetery and find his grave. But for now, I’m trying to read more of his stories. This time, it’s “Crime Nest”, from the April 1940 issue of DETECTIVE DIME NOVELS, which was published under the transparent pseudonym Edwin Truett. This is the first of three novels featuring Dr. Thaddeus C. Harker, one of the more offbeat characters from the pulp era.

Doc Harker, as he’s often known, is a traveling medicine show huckster, tooling around the country in a bright red coupe and pulling an equally red trailer in which he concocts his cure-all, the world-famous Chickasha Remedy. However, that’s just a cover for his true activities. Doc Harker is actually a brilliant scientific criminologist, and his passion is solving murders and other crimes with the help of two assistants, former wrestler Hercules Jones, who handles the strongarm stuff, and the beautiful Brenda Sloan, whose specialty is infiltrating gangs and gathering intelligence. In “Crime Nest”, our intrepid trio of detectives heads for Abbottsville, a resort town in Texas (although Long never specifies the state) famous for its hot springs. Abbottsville is loosely based on the real town of Mineral Wells.

They’re there in answer to a plea for help from one of Doc’s old friends, who sends Doc a letter explaining that a cabal of criminals from New York and New Jersey have moved in and taken over the town. Doc intends to break their hold on the place and bring them to justice, but the situation gets more complicated when there’s a grisly murder the first night after they arrive.

From there it’s mostly breakneck action with a little detective work thrown in as Long packs in a lot of plot in the span of not much more than 24 hours. More murders, a missing fortune, beautiful women, shootouts, clouts over the head, and lights that go out just as Doc is about to spring a major revelation—we get all that good stuff and more. Long wasn’t a meticulous plotter, but he usually wrestles all those colorful characters and fast-paced action into scenarios that make sense, mostly.

I really enjoyed this yarn and had a grand time reading it. It’s the kind of stuff I grew up on and I still get a kick out of it. One interesting note: the character who sends for Doc Harker is named Arthur Wallace, which just happens to be the name of a pulpster who contributed scores of stories to the Spicy pulps, as did Long. There’s been some mystery as to whether Wallace was a real name or a house-name. Based on Long using the name in this novel, I suspect he was a real guy and that he and Long were friends. That’s only a hunch, though. Maybe somebody will uncover the facts someday.

My friend Tom Johnson was a fan of the Doc Harker series and reprinted all three novels as small-press chapbooks many years ago. I owned all of them but never got around to reading any of them. More recently, Altus Press has reprinted the series in a handsome volume called DR. THADDEUS C. HARKER: THE COMPLETE TALES, with an introduction by none other than Tom Johnson, who provides more biographical information about Long than I’ve found anywhere else. This is where I read “Crime Nest”. The collection is available in paperback and e-book editions, and if you enjoy offbeat pulp detective yarns, I give it a high recommendation.

Review: Killer's Caress - Cary Moran (Edwin Truett Long)

In 1936, Culture Publications, the publisher of the Spicy line of pulps, decided to branch out into hardbacks, using the same authors who filled the pages of their pulps. The result was a company called Valhalla Press, which managed to put out only two books before somebody decided it was a bad idea: PASSION PULLS THE TRIGGER by Arthur Wallace (a name that may or may not have been a pseudonym, nobody seems to know) and KILLER’S CARESS by Cary Moran, who was actually a young writer living in Texas named Edwin Truett Long. PASSION PULLS THE TRIGGER is a real rarity. I’ve never seen a copy in the wild and it can be found for sale on-line only now and then.

But KILLER’S CARESS is a different story. It’s been reprinted a couple of times, most recently by Black Dog Books. That edition is still available in trade paperback and e-book editions on Amazon. I’ve had a copy for quite a while, and after seeing something about it on Facebook recently, I was prompted to read it.

The protagonist of this novel is gossip columnist Johnny Harding, who writes a popular newspaper column called Johnny-On-the-Spot. As such, he knows everybody from bartenders to bigshot politicians, from hat check girls to ruthless gangsters and gamblers. He has a beautiful redheaded assistant and a big lug of a driver. One evening when he’s headed out to make his rounds of the nightspots and hunt material for his column, he’s nearly rubbed out by a couple of hired killers. Later in the evening, he runs into the rich, sleazy playboy who has inherited the newspaper where he works. Said playboy has enemies all over the place including his estranged actress wife who’s trying to divorce him, a gambler and nightclub owner, the above-mentioned hat check girl, a news photographer he’s fired, and Johnny himself. The way the guy keeps getting threatened, you know he’s going to wind up dead and Johnny is probably going to be blamed for it.

But that’s not exactly what happens. Somebody winds up being murdered, all right, but it’s a friend of Johnny’s, and that sets him off on a whirlwind of action, detection, and seduction. Johnny’s furious quest to avenge his pal reminded me very much of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels, although Johnny, while a tough little mug (I kept seeing a young Jimmy Cagney in my head), is no Mike Hammer. The fact that he has a pal on the homicide squad and a competent knockout of an assistant also reminded me of the Hammer novels, and I can’t help but wonder if Mickey ever read KILLER’S CARESS.

Eventually there are more murders. The pace seldom lets up, and Long crams a lot into a story that takes place in about 48 hours. Everything leads up to a great scene on a gambling ship that includes not only a gathering of the suspects and an explanation of who committed the crimes, but also features a big shootout as the cops raid the boat.

The plot is really complex, but it’s one of those that seems to make sense, especially if you squint your eyes a little and hold your mouth just right. The big appeal to me is Long’s breathless, breezy style, which he was already perfecting in dozens of stories for the Spicy pulps under various pseudonyms and house-names. I had a great time reading KILLER’S CARESS. It reminded me of the hardboiled yarns I grew up reading, and I give it a high recommendation.

I’m also very much interested in the career of Edwin Truett Long, especially since I found out that he’s buried in Fort Worth, about 20 miles as the crow flies from where I’m typing this. But more about him in another post sometime, when I’ve read more of his work.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Spicy Western Stories, September 1939

The cover of this issue of SPICY WESTERN STORIES is credited to Delos Palmer in the Fictionmags Index, and I don't doubt that's right, but Allan Anderson must have seen this cover at some point and been impressed by it. At first glance, I sure took it for Anderson's work. This issue includes stories by some Spicy stalwarts: E. Hoffmann Price, James P. Olsen (writing as James A. Lawson), Edwin Truett Long (writing as Luke Terry), and Laurence Donovan (twice, once as himself and once as Phil Strange). There's also a story by house-name Ken Cooper, and two by little-known authors Hart Williams (his only credit in the FMI) and Alf Foote (only two stories listed in the FMI). My hunch is that those last two were pseudonyms, but really, who knows? Not me, that's for sure. This issue doesn't appear to be on-line, so if you don't own a copy (I don't), you'll have to be content with looking at the cover. But at least it's a good cover.

UPDATE: I've discovered belatedly that I've posted this cover before, several years ago. I've been posting pulp covers on the weekends for well over a decade now, so I suppose it's inevitable that a rerun creeps in by accident now and then. As I said above, though, it's a good cover, so I'm going to leave it here. Anyway, this post has a little more information in it than the original one did.

Saturday Morning Bonus Pulp: Speed Western Stories, October 1945

I'm thinking the cover on this issue of SPEED WESTERN STORIES is by H.W. Scott, but as always, I could be wrong about that. It's a nice dramatic scene no matter who painted it. Inside are stories by three Trojan Publishing Corporation stalwarts: Laurence Donovan, Edwin Truett Long (as Luke Terry), and Victor Rousseau (as Lew Merrill). The other authors are three little-known but apparently real pulpsters, Felix Flammonde, Frank D. Compagnon, and Frederick W. Bales. Long died July 13, 1945, so this must have been one of his last stories. He's buried in Fort Worth and I've thought about going to see if I could find his grave. It might be nice to have a picture of me standing by the final resting place of such a prolific pulp author. But so far I haven't gotten around to it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Private Detective Stories, May 1939

H.L. Parkhurst provides the eye-catching cover for this issue of PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES. "Intimate Revelations of Private Investigators", indeed! The cover story by Roger Torrey is a novella, and knowing Torrey's work, it's probably good. There's also a novelette by Edwin Truett Long writing as Dale Boyd, a novelette by Howard Wandrei writing as Robert A. Garron, and a couple of stories by forgotten pulpsters George Shute and James H.S. Moynahan. Quite a few issues of PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES can be found on-line, but this doesn't appear to be one of them. Looks like an issue worth reading if you ever come across a copy. 

Murder in Music - Cary Moran (Edwin Truett Long)

In a career that lasted approximately ten years, from the mid-Thirties until his death in 1945, Edwin Truett Long wrote hundreds of stories under more than a dozen pseudonyms, mostly for the Spicy pulps. Most of them were stand-alones, but he did a few series as well, including eight stories about Jarnegan, a sheriff’s office detective in a mid-sized city who investigates only homicides. Seven of the stories appeared under the name Cary Moran, while one, for no apparent reason, was published under the name Clint Morgan. MURDER IN MUSIC is a Black Dog Books chapbook from 2006 that reprints four of the Jarnegan stories.

Art by H.L. Parkhurst

“Fatal Facial” is from the September 1936 issue of SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES. The president of one of the local banks has absconded with a fortune in negotiable bonds, and the town is in a tizzy, of course. Jarnegan doesn’t want to investigate the case because he specializes in murders, but he gets a corpse soon enough and it doesn’t take him long to realize that the man’s body—beaten beyond recognition—is connected to the missing bank president. And of course, since this is a story for SPICY DETECTIVE, there are several beautiful babes in various stages of undress mixed up in the business, too.

Art by Delos Palmer

“Murder in Music” (SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES, November 1936) finds Jarnegan investigating the death of a drummer from a jazz band visiting the city. It appears that the man was frightened to death by voodoo. But all is not as it appears, of course, and another band member soon turns up dead, giving Jarnegan two murders to solve.

Art by H.J. Ward

From the January 1937 issue of SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES, “Murder in the Sheriff’s Office” centers around a beautiful redheaded taxi dancer who manages to get herself bumped off in, you guessed it, the sheriff’s office when she comes there to say that she fears for her life. With good reason, obviously. And soon there’s a second murder for Jarnegan to investigate, as well. Long managed to pack quite a few homicides in these short stories.

Art by H.J. Ward

“Case of the Limber Corpse”, from the May 1937 issue of SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES, is the final story in the Jarnegan series. In this one, Jarnegan’s investigation into the murder of a munitions magnate is complicated by an angry hillbilly father who wants to force Jarnegan into a shotgun wedding with his daughter . . . and then use that shotgun to blow Jarnegan’s head off. As with the other stories, it’s a fairly complex plot that features another murder and various beautiful, semi-dressed women.

These aren’t fair play mystery stories. With the third person objective style, the reader is seldom if ever privy to Jarnegan’s thoughts and Long blatantly conceals some of the clues. Other clues are introduced and then promptly forgotten, probably a result of the speed with which Long wrote these yarns. However, none of that detracts from the snappy patter, the hardboiled characters and plots, and the headlong pace of the action. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection and wouldn’t mind reading the rest of the stories in the series. Long was an inconsistent writer, but more often than not, I find his stories to be a lot of fun. In looking up his listing on the Fictionmags Index, I noticed that he passed away in 1945, when he was only 41 years old. I’m curious as to why he died so young, and it’s a shame we lost the stories he might have written if he’d lived.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spicy-Adventure Stories, February 1938

H.J. Ward provides another typically lurid cover on this issue of SPICY-ADVENTURE STORIES. Inside are some of the usual Spicy authors: Robert Leslie Bellem (as Jerome Severs Perry), E. Hoffmann Price, Hugh B. Cave (an Eel story as Justin Case), Edwin Truett Long (as Dale Boyd and Charles Daw), and two authors not known to be house-names, Ross Flynn and Wyreck Brent. However, both guys published only a few stories and only in various Spicy pulps, so I wouldn't put too much faith in those being their real names.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Private Detective Stories, June 1937

This is the first issue of PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES, from the same folks who brought us SPICY DETECTIVE, SPICY WESTERN, etc. It’s available in an e-book edition from Radio Archives, and I’ve been reading it recently, a story or two at a time between editing projects.

The headliner in this pulp, not surprisingly, is Robert Leslie Bellem’s legendary private eye character Dan Turner. The Turner yarn in this debut issue is a novelette called “Murder on the Sound Stage”, one of the longer Turner yarns I’ve read. Unfortunately, that uninspired title goes with the old plot about an actor being murdered on set when somebody fires a gun with a live round in it at the same time as a gun with a blank in it goes off. The victim had known that his life was in danger and had summoned Dan to the studio to protect him, but it was too late. The guy gets croaked right in front of Dan’s eyes . . . but not until Dan has encountered a beautiful blonde with murderous intentions of her own.

From there the action takes off hellity-blip and involves a beautiful brunette Russian babe (the dead gink’s wife) and a redhead who works as an extra in the galloping snapshots. All the ruckus takes place in the space of one night, and it’s a crowded night because Bellem crams in a lot. There are two more murders—or was it three?—and Turner gets bashed on the conk at least once before everything gets wrapped up in a fairly improbable manner.

As usual, there’s a considerable amount of enjoyment to be found in Bellem’s fast-paced prose. The guy could sling words, no doubt about that. And his plots were often complex and well-constructed. That’s not really the case here, and that’s what keeps this yarn from belonging in the top rank of Dan Turner stories. Worth reading, but a lot of them are better.

Next up is a true crime feature by C.A.M. Donne (Donald Cameron), “Vengeance of the Severed Hands”, about a husband who murders his wife and dismembers her to get rid of the body. I have no idea if it’s actually true or if Cameron, who wrote quite a bit for the Spicies, just made it all up. But it's written well enough that I didn’t skip it, which I often do with non-fiction features in pulp magazines.

“Pair of Tramps” is bylined Mort Lansing, but that’s a pseudonym for the very prolific Edwin Truett Long, who was one of Trojan Publishing’s stalwarts, writing under numerous pseudonyms and house-names. The protagonist in this one is a down-on-his-luck former private detective named Bane, who had to go on the run when he was framed for a crime by a local gambler. He’s come back to the city from which he fled to try to borrow some money from his former girlfriend, who happens to be the mistress of the gambler who framed him. That doesn’t work out, but Bane then meets a beautiful redhead, a former showgirl who happens to be up to her pretty neck in a murder case involving her husband, her rich father-in-law, and a knife in the neck.

I generally enjoy Long’s work, but “Pair of Tramps” is an excellent story, probably the best thing by him that I’ve read so far. The action never lets up, the plot is satisfyingly twisty, and the prose is top-notch, the sort of terse poetry that reminded me a great deal of Paul Cain’s work. Not as good as Cain, mind you, but almost as good as Cain is pretty darned good.

I’ve probably read some stories by Howard Wandrei writing as Robert A. Garron in various Spicy pulps, but as with Long’s story, Wandrei’s “Wrong Number” in this issue really impressed me. The tough, likable protagonist of this one, private detective Noel Athens, is hired to find the daughter of a newspaper tycoon. The girl has run off with a gangster. Yes, it’s a wandering daughter job, and the plot is pretty straightforward, but the writing is excellent, enough so that I’m going to keep my eyes open for more stories by Wandrei. (I have a couple of collections of his science fiction and fantasy stories under his own name and will get around to those eventually, I hope.)

“Nailed With Silver”, a novelette by E. Hoffmann Price, introduces Jeff Dargan, a private eye who went on to star in several more yarns published in PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES. In this one, he’s in Saint Augustine, Florida, enjoying a break after wrapping up a jewel robbery case, when he suddenly finds himself up to his neck in more trouble involving a beautiful brunette who wants Dargan to help her get some evidence for her divorce case against her husband, a sugar tycoon who owns a company based in Cuba. Well, there’s a murder, of course, along with another beautiful woman, some crooked politicians, and shoot-outs and fistfights galore. Price was another stalwart of the Spicy pulps, along with his prodigious output elsewhere, and I’ve never read a story of his that wasn’t at least enjoyable. I wasn’t sure about “Nailed With Silver” at first. The plot seemed pretty muddled. But then darned if Price didn’t pull everything together so that it made sense. I would up liking this one quite a bit.

Allan K. Echols is best remembered for his Westerns, I think, but he wrote quite a few detective yarns, too. His story “Sweet and Hot” wraps up this issue. It concerns a fixed horse race that turns out not to be fixed, a $20,000 bet, and a private detective framed for murder. While it’s not a particularly memorable story, it’s well-written and moves right along.

So, all of this plus a brutally effective cover by H.J. Ward makes this a pretty good first issue of PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES, setting it up for a nice long run. The stories by Long, Wandrei, and Price are really good, and the Bellem yarn is entertaining if not top of the line. I had a great time reading the ebook version of this memorable pulp debut.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Fiction Weekly, July 20, 1940

Foreign Legion covers showed up frequently on ARGOSY and ADVENTURE, but I don't recall seeing any on DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY until I came across this issue on the Fictionmags Index. I don't know who did the cover, but I think it's a pretty good one. It illustrates a story by Robert Carse, who did plenty of good Foreign Legion stories for ARGOSY. Since ARGOSY and DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY were both published by the Frank A. Munsey Company, it's possible Carse wrote this, sent it to ARGOSY, and somebody at Munsey decided to run it in DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY because of its title. Not that it matters, but I find speculation like that interesting. Also on hand in this issue are Hugh B. Cave, Lawrence Treat, David Goodis, Edward S. Aarons (writing as Edward Ronns), and Edwin Truett Long (writing as Edwin Truett). That's a really nice group of authors, and for a change, no serials! (Serials being the bane of a collector's existence, of course, and Munsey ran a ton of them.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spicy-Adventure Stories, November 1938

Looks like the Skipper traded Gilligan for a different little buddy. I'm talking about the monkey, of course. This is another good cover by H.J. Ward on one of the Spicy pulps. The stories inside this issue of SPICY-ADVENTURE STORIES are all by stalwarts of the Spicy line: Robert Leslie Bellem, E. Hoffmann Price, Victor Rousseau (as Hugh Speer), Edwin Truett Long (as Jose Vaca), Laurence Donovan (as Larry Dunn), and Wyatt Blassingame (as William B. Rainey).

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Spicy Western Stories, May 1940

Many of the usual suspects are on hand for this issue of SPICY WESTERN STORIES. The cover is by H.J. Ward. Inside are stories by Laurence Donovan (twice, once under his own name and once as Larry Dunn), Edwin Truett Long (also twice, as Luke Terry and Dale Boyd), James P. Olsen as James A. Lawson, and a couple of little-known authors who might or might not have been pseudonyms or house-names, George Vail and Carson West.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Spicy Western Stories, June 1942

Good old SPICY WESTERN STORIES. Covers don't get much more garish than this one by Allen Anderson. It's sure eye-catching, too. Most of this issue's contents are reprints from four or five years earlier with the titles and house-names changed. Laurence Donovan has one of the two original stories, and one of the reprints appears to be by him, as well, since it was published originally under the name Larry Dunn, which as far as I know was a personal pseudonym for Donovan. The other original story is by Edwin Truett Long writing as Wallace Kayton. The rest of the TOC is a hodge-podge of house-names.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spicy Mystery Stories, January 1936

This cover by H.L. Parkhurst is pretty lurid and bizarre even by Spicy pulp standards . . . but it sure catches the eye, doesn't it? Inside are stories by the usual top-notch suspects: two by Robert Leslie Bellem (as himself and as by Jerome Severs Perry), two by Edwin Truett Long (as Cary Moran and Mort Lansing), two by E. Hoffmann Price (as himself and as by Hamlin Daly), Hugh B. Cave (as Justin Case), Colby Quinn, and Charles A. Baker Jr., who may or may not have been real. It's pretty easy to see why most of the Spicy pulps were sold under the counter back in 1936, no matter how tame they may seem today.

Classic Adventure Pulp: The Spicy-Adventure Megapack - Robert Leslie Bellem, Victor Rousseau, et al.

 

I’ve been reading this big e-book anthology for the past year or so, a story or two (or three) between novels, or when I just didn’t have the attention span for anything longer, an all too common condition these days. I’ve also discovered that they’re also great to read while sitting and waiting at the doctor’s office, fast-paced and always interesting. The contents are as follows, all of them originally published in SPICY-ADVENTURE STORIES, with a few exceptions as noted.

THE SHANGHAI JESTER, by Robert Leslie Bellem (July 1934)

BLACK MURDER, by Carl Moore (Edwin Truett Long) (April 1935)

SUEZ SOUVENIR, by Jerome Hyams (Robert Leslie Bellem) (SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES, September 1934)

THE HOUSE OF WEIRD SLEEP, by Charles R. Allen (January 1935)

CAVE OF THE CRISS-CROSS KNIVES, by C.C. Spruce (April 1935)

HOT BLOOD, by Arthur Wallace (April 1935)

THE MOON GOD TAKES, by Robert Leslie Bellem (SPICY MYSTERY STORIES, December 1936)

SMUGGLER’S ISLAND, by Atwater Culpepper (April 1935)

TALISMAN OF DOOM, by James W. Marvin (Robert Leslie Bellem) (April 1935)

TATTOOED BLONDE, by Ellery Watson Calder (Robert Leslie Bellem) (April 1935)

WHITE MEAT, by Don King (Gunard Hjertstedt, better known as Day Keene) (April 1934)

RED BAMBOO, by Jason Lyttell (SPICY MYSTERY STORIES, June 1935; apparently Lyttell’s only published story)

THE BLACK 13, by Ellery Watson Calder (Robert Leslie Bellem) (August 1935)

THE ISLE OF MONSTERS, by Jane Thomas (August 1935)

TUFFY AND HIS HAREM, by Nick Anderson (August 1935; the second of only two stories by Anderson)

QUEEN OF THE FLAMING ARROWS, by Frank E. Marks (September 1936)

VALLEY OF BLOOD, by Lew Merrill (Victor Rousseau) (September 1936)

LUST TO KILL, by Jose Vaca (Edwin Truett Long) (March 1937)

MARRIAGE FOR MURDER, by C.A.M. Donne (Donald Clough Cameron) (March 1937)

MESSAGE TO MORGAN, by Guy Russell (March 1937)

RIVER OF FIRE, by Ken Cooper (March 1937)

SKY GODDESS, by Clive Trent (Victor Rousseau) (March 1937)

LEAF OF THE LOTUS, by Guy Russell (May 1937)

THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER, by Clark Nelson (house name) (December 1939)

ADVENTURE'S END, by Robert Leslie Bellem (April 1935)

As you might expect, these stories tend to run together after a while, which is why you need to space them out. Also as you might expect, they’re all lurid, over the top, and very politically incorrect. But they’re full of action and enormous fun to read, at least for me. The Spicy level is really pretty tame. Girls tend to lose their clothes fairly often, leading to frequent flowery descriptions of their anatomy, but that’s about it. The stories all fade to black before anything actually happens.

With seven stories, more than a fourth of the total, Robert Leslie Bellem dominates the table of contents, which comes as no surprise. And every one of Bellem’s stories is good, with “Talisman of Doom”, a World War I espionage yarn under the name James W. Marvin, standing out in my memory. For sheer luridness, it would be hard to top “White Meat” by Day Keene (I’m going to call him that since that’s the name he’s best known by) and “River of Fire” by Ken Cooper. I didn’t know Keene had written for the Spicy Pulps, but I’m not surprised. I don’t know anything about Cooper except that he was fairly prolific, although nowhere near Bellem-level.

Honestly, some modern readers are going to find these stories offensive. There’s little characterization, and the plots are rushed and don’t always make sense. But I thoroughly enjoyed this collection, and it’s going on my list of top ten favorite books I read this year. I’m just a little sad that I finished it and don’t have more of them to read when I don’t feel like tackling anything else.

But wait. What’s this I see on my Kindle? THE E. HOFFMANN PRICE SPICY ADVENTURE MEGAPACK, you say? Fourteen stories by another of the prolific contributors to the Spicy Pulps who doesn’t have any stories in the collection I just finished? Well, all right. I know what I’ll be reading between books and in doctor’s offices for a while.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spicy-Adventure Stories, January 1937

A lurid but eye-catching cover by H.J. Ward on this issue of SPICY-ADVENTURE STORIES. This one has a particularly good line-up of authors inside: Robert E. Howard (writing as Sam Walser) with one of his Wild Bill Clanton stories, Robert Leslie Bellem (of course) as both himself and Ellery W. Calder, Hugh B. Cave as Justin Case, Victor Rousseau as Lew Merrill, Edwin Truett Long as Clint Morgan, and a couple of authors writing under (apparently) their real names, Alan Anderson and Carson West. I love all the Spicy pulps, although they're best in small doses. I can read two or three stories in a row and still find them very enjoyable. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spicy Mystery Stories, April 1942

The usual good cover by H.J. Ward on this issue of SPICY MYSTERY STORIES, the Spicy line's sort-of-Weird-Menace pulp. Inside are stories by the usual group of authors under the usual mix of pseudonyms and house-names: Robert Leslie Bellem (at least twice), Hugh B. Cave (as Justin Case), Laurence Donovan, Edwin Truett Long, Colby Quinn, and more. I really like the Spicy pulps, as most of you know. I find them consistently entertaining, although formulaic enough that I have to space them out some.