As I've said before, mid-Thirties ARGOSY is one of my favorite pulps. It might be my top favorite if not for the abundance of serials. I love the covers by Paul Stahr, though, and you can't beat the assortment of authors. In this issue, you'll find stories by W.C. Tuttle, Theodore Roscoe, F.V.W. Mason, Frank Richardson Pierce, and Eustace L. Adams, top writers, all of them, as well as the lesser-known Sinclair Gluck and Tip Bliss. Never having read anything by Gluck or Bliss, they may top-notch, too, for all I know. The serial installments are by Pierce, Adams, and Mason, so if I were to read this issue (I don't own a copy), I would probably skip those stories, which knocks out a considerable chunk of wordage, but I'm sure I would enjoy the others.
I'm not crazy about the cover by Duncan McMillan on this issue of SHORT STORIES, but it has a certain evocative quality about it. And the list of authors inside is great: H. Bedford-Jones, James B. Hendryx, F.V.W. Mason, Jackson Gregory, and George Bruce Marquis. With writers like that, I certainly would have been willing to give it a try.
There's an eye-catching cover for you. I don't know who the artist is. But the authors in this issue of DETECTIVE ACTION STORIES include Erle Stanley Gardner, F.V.W. Mason, J. Lane Linklater, Howard Morgan, and Earl and Marion Scott. Those last three, I don't know anything about, but any issue with Gardner and Mason is probably well worth reading.
The first issue of a short-lived pulp devoted to adventure fiction. It appears there were only four issues of SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE before it went down for the count with the rest of the Clayton magazine line. But the four stories in these pages were from top-notch authors of pulp adventure fare: F.V.W. Mason, Victor Rousseau, S.B.H. Hurst, and Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. The cover art is by Jerry Delano, who did the covers for all four issues.
WESTERN ROMANCES was Dell's attempt to compete with RANCH ROMANCES, I supppose, and judging by this issue, they did a pretty good job of it, at least where the quality of the cover and fiction is concerned. That's a nice Oklahoma Land Rush cover by Sidney Riesenberg. Inside are stories by top-notch pulpsters Murray Leinster, F.V.W. Mason, J.E. Grinstead, Anthony M. Rud, and Kenneth Perkins. The editor was Archibald Bittner, who also wrote pulp fiction as Wayne Rogers.
