Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Fiction Weekly, June 15, 1935

I don't know who painted the cover on this issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, but it's certainly eye-catching. George F. Worts, the author of the lead novel, was a fine writer, too, and always worth reading, at least in my experience. He's the biggest name in this issue, although there's an installment of a serial by Anthony Rud, certainly a prolific and popular pulpster, and one of the other authors, H.W. Guernsey, was really Howard Wandrei. Other than that, we have Edward S. Williams, whose name I at least recognize, Mary Plum, Richard S. Hobart, and Maurice Beam. They may have been fine writers, for all I know, but Worts is enough to make this issue worthwhile, especially with that striking cover.

Review: Overboard - George F. Worts

I have a bit of a history with this book. I first saw it in the Nineties, in the dealers’ room at ClueFest, the fondly remembered mystery convention in Dallas. My attention was drawn to that great cover by Rudolph Belarski, and although I’d never heard of the novel, I knew that the author, George F. Worts, was a well-regarded writer for the pulps. Since that copy wasn’t too expensive, I bought it.

And then it sat on my shelves, unread, until it went up in smoke in the Fire of ’08.

Time went by and I didn’t replace that copy of OVERBOARD, but then one day somebody posted the cover on Facebook in one of the paperback groups, and that prompted me to look around and see if I could find an affordable copy on-line (an option I didn’t have back in the Nineties when I bought it for the first time). I had checked a few times before that and found that generally, copies cost more than I wanted to pay. But this time, I found one that wasn’t cheap, but it was within my price range. So I snapped it up, and when it arrived I took it out of the plastic bag, figuring I would read it at last.

The first 60 pages were missing. Which hadn’t been mentioned at all in the listing for it.

Well, I got my money back, but I still couldn’t read the book. If it had been just the first page or two, maybe I would have plowed ahead. But not with that big a chunk of the novel gone. I wasn’t even going to attempt it. Maybe, I thought, maybe I just wasn’t meant to read OVERBOARD. So more time passed.

And then somebody posted that cover again, and I went and checked and found a decently priced copy and took the plunge again. The cover was printed slightly off register (you can see it in the scan, which is my copy), but I didn’t care all that much as long as the book was intact and readable. By now I was determined to read OVERBOARD.

And so I have, probably thirty years after I bought it the first time. Other than that printing glitch, the copy I got is in very nice shape. But is the book actually any good, you might ask?

It absolutely is.

The protagonist is a young woman with the odd name Zorie Corey. (The reason for the name does get an explanation of sorts in the novel.) She lives in a university town in the Midwest and makes a living typing theses, dissertations, and research papers for students and professors at the school. She’s engaged to a somewhat dull and controlling professor of psychology. She lives a meek little life (Worts actually goes a little overboard, no pun intended, on her meekness, but ultimately there’s a reason for that, too) and would like to experience some actual romance and adventure before she settles down to married life.

Well, you know where this is going, don’t you? Her fiancé’s grandfather, a retired admiral, blows into town and wants Zorie’s help writing a book about his life. Her fiancé’s rakehell older brother, who’s been kicked out of the Navy because he’s a Nazi sympathizer, shows up, too, as well as a couple of sinister strangers.

Before you know it, Zorie is whisked off onto a ship bound for Hawaii, where the admiral owns a beautiful estate. Her fiancé and the fiancé’s brother are on board, too, as are the sinister strangers and a beautiful young woman who seems to think that Zorie is actually someone else. Despite the brother being a Nazi sympathizer, Zorie is falling for him, anyway. Then, while taking a stroll on deck on a dark night, someone grabs her and throws her overboard. Through a stroke of luck, she survives that murder attempt, but then, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor . . . 

That’s the first half of the book, and up to then, it’s been a lighthearted but very well written romantic suspense yarn. Things turn a lot more serious after the ship reaches Hawaii and the scene shifts to the admiral’s plantation. Intrigue and danger continue to swirl around Zorie, but the stakes are higher now. There’s still some romance, but suspense dominates the second half of the book, and it’s pretty doggoned nerve-wracking in places.

The big twist that shows up late probably won’t come as much of a surprise, but Worts’ prose is so smooth and entertaining that it doesn’t really matter. OVERBOARD is colorful, humorous, exciting, and just plain fun to read. I stayed up after midnight to finish it, and that hardly ever happens these days and hasn’t for years.

Worts is best remembered for three series he wrote for the pulps: adventure yarns featuring wireless operator Peter Moore, a.k.a. Peter the Brazen; two-fisted Singapore Sammy Shay; and mysteries featuring lawyer Gillian Hazeltine. I’ve read the Singapore Sammy stories and loved them. I have all the Peter the Brazen stories and need to get to them soon, and I have some of the Gillian Hazeltine stories, too.

But this stand-alone mystery novel, which was published in hardcover by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 1943 and reprinted in that iconic paperback by Popular Library in 1950, is superb and well worth reading, too. I’m very glad I finally got around to it. I have a hunch that OVERBOARD will be on my Top Ten list at the end of the year.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy Allstory Weekly, June 16, 1928

We haven't had a pith helmet cover in a while. The one on this issue of ARGOSY ALLSTORY WEEKLY comes to us courtesy of Edgar Franklin Wittmack. As usual, there are some fine writers inside: Edgar Rice Burroughs (with an installment of the serial version of APACHE DEVIL), George F. Worts (with an installment of a Gillian Hazeltine serial), John Wilstach, Edgar Franklin, Charles L. Hall (his only credit in the Fictionmags Index), and the long-forgotten Robert Beith, Charles Divine, Carolyn MacDonald, and Douglas H. Woodworth. As usual with ARGOSY, the serials are the bane of a collector's/reader's existence, but if you were there to pick up the issues every week off the newsstand, I suppose it's a format that worked well at the time.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, July 4, 1931

Yesterday's pulp was dated July 4, 1931, and so is today's. This is an All-Star Number of ARGOSY, according to the cover, and I can't argue with that claim. The cover is by Paul Stahr, who painted many great ones for ARGOSY, and inside are stories by H. Bedford-Jones, Theodore Roscoe, George F. Worts, Robert Carse, Ray Cummings, J.E. Grinstead, William Merriam Rouse, and Lt. John Hopper. You won't find a lineup of pulp authors much better than that one.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, June 17, 1933

Nothing says "pulp" to me quite as much as ARGOSY. If it weren't for all those dang serials, it would be just about the perfect adventure pulp magazine! Take this issue, for example. You've got a colorful, dramatic cover by Paul Stahr, and inside are stories by Erle Stanley Gardner (a Whispering Sands yarn), Talbot Mundy, Theodore Roscoe, Donald Barr Chidsey (with his series character Nick Fisher), George F. Worts (part of a Peter the Brazen serial as by Loring Brent), Fred MacIsaac, Ralph Milne Farley, Cliff Farrell, and Armand Brigaud. To say that's an impressive line-up is quite an understatement! And ARGOSY did that week after week. Truly an iconic pulp. 

Forgotten Books: The Python Pit - George F. Worts

I wouldn’t have guessed that it’s been more than ten years since I read, enjoyed, and blogged about SOUTH OF SULU, the first collection of George F. Worts’ Singapore Sammy stories from Black Dog Books. It seems more recent than that, and the stories are still pretty fresh in my memory, which means they were good ones, I guess. Now I’ve read THE PYTHON PIT, the second Singapore Sammy collection, also published by Black Dog Books, and thoroughly enjoyed it as well.

Singapore Sammy is really Samuel Larkin Shay, red-headed American adventurer in southeast Asia during the 1930s. The character first appeared in 1931 in a series of adventure yarns published in the pulp SHORT STORIES (the ones collected in SOUTH OF SULU). Sammy is searching for his father, a conman named Bill Shay, looking for vengeance because the old man deserted Sammy’s mother, and also because Bill Shay has possession of a will that means Sammy will inherit a fortune if he can get his hands on it.

Later that same year, Worts moved the series over to ARGOSY. The first four stories to appear there are the tales collected in THE PYTHON PIT, starting with “Sapphires and Suckers”, a novella which was serialized in two parts under the title “Singapore Sammy” in the December 12 and December 19, 1931 issues of ARGOSY. It serves as an adequate introduction to the character for anybody who hadn’t read the earlier stories in SHORT STORIES, explaining about Sammy’s quest to find his father. He gets mixed up with a beautiful young woman whose father is a dangerous criminal and who, in partnership with Bill Shay, has sold the young woman’s fiancee a worthless sapphire mine. Or is it worthless? That becomes the question, leading to intrigue, double-dealing, and considerable danger for Sammy. He’s good at staying a couple of steps ahead of everybody else, though . . . except for his father, who always seems to give him the slip.

More than a year passed before Sammy reappeared in the three-part serial “The Python Pit”, in the May 6, 13, and 20, 1933 issues of ARGOSY. At 30,000 words, this is almost a novel. Sammy and his sidekick, Lucifer “Lucky” Jones, reluctantly agree to take a beautiful young woman to the remote island where her father has been mauled by a tiger. The problem is, the island, called Konga, is rumored to be inhabited by a race of gigantic cannibals and haunted by the ghosts of all their victims. They set sail on their schooner, the Blue Goose, anyway. Sammy expects to run into trouble, and that’s what happens, since nothing about the situation is exactly what it appears to be at first. There’s a ton of action in this one, and Sammy comes face to face with Bill Shay again. Worts massages the back-story in this one, revealing that the villainous Shay is actually Sammy’s stepfather (whether that was the intention all along, I don’t know, but I sort of doubt it). He also introduces another recurring character to be a thorn in Sammy’s side, the lovely but treacherous Shanghai Sally. Worts manages to get all this in without ever letting up on the breakneck pace and the vivid writing, which makes “The Python Pit” one of the best pure pulp adventure yarns I’ve read in a long time.

Singapore Sammy next appears in “Isle of the Meteor”, a complete novelette published in the August 19, 1933 issue of ARGOSY. Lucky Jones is off on another adventure when this yarn takes place, so Sammy has to handle all the danger himself when he agrees to help out a dying sea captain and deliver a cargo of supplies to an isolated island where a group of communist-leaning, anti-war Americans established a colony during the Great War (World War I, to us). Of course, when Sammy gets there, surprises are waiting for him, most of them quite perilous, including another encounter with Shanghai Sally. Bill Shay is mentioned in this one but doesn’t appear. It’s a good, fast-moving tale with some particularly brutal scenes near the end.

The final story in this volume is “A Whisker of Buddha”, originally published as “Buddha’s Whisker” in the May 26, 1934 issue of ARGOSY. Sammy is in bad shape when this one opens, having had ownership of the Blue Goose stolen out from under him and Lucky Jones while he was drugged, by none other than Shanghai Sally, of course. He wakes up in Rangoon, in a fog from the mickey Sally slipped him, but then some of the local criminals start approaching him, wanting to hire him for a big job. This tells Sammy something big is up, so he finds Lucky and before you know it, they’re up to their necks in an adventure that involves infiltrating a secret ceremony that can get them killed and stealing a small, jewel-encrusted chest that’s supposed to contain an authentic hair from Buddha’s beard. This is the weakest story in the collection because it takes a while to get going, but once it does it’s pretty darned good, with lots of exciting scenes.

It also lays the groundwork for the next story, the only full-length novel in the series, THE MONSTER OF THE LAGOON, which I also happen to have in reprint. As much as I enjoyed THE PYTHON PIT, I’ll probably get to it fairly soon.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, July 8, 1933

"World's End", the serial by Victor Rousseau that starts in this issue of ARGOSY, sounds pretty apocalyptic. The cover by Paul Stahr makes the situation look pretty dire, too. Maybe somebody who's read this one can tell us what it's about. Elsewhere in this issue are stories by Charles Alden Seltzer, Robert Carse, and George Worts writing as Loring Brent with an installment of a Peter the Brazen serial.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, October 17, 1931

A pretty good Mountie cover by Paul Stahr on this issue of ARGOSY, and dang, look at those authors! All-Star Number is right. Erle Stanley Gardner (a "Whispering Sands" story), Johnston McCulley (an installment of "Zorro Rides Again"), George F. Worts, J. Allan Dunn, and Frank L. Packard, among others. That's a bunch of good reading there, I'll bet.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, July 25, 1931

A striking cover on an issue featuring W.C. Tuttle, F.V.W. Mason, George F. Worts, Fred MacIsaac, and Richard Howells Watkins. Further evidence of why ARGOSY was one of the top pulps in the business for many years.

The Argosy Library from Altus Press

Altus Press Announces The Argosy Library

The First Series of Releases Features Popular Authors Such as Lester Dent, Otis Adelbert Kline, W.C. Tuttle, and George F. Worts

March 18, 2015: Altus Press today announced the premiere of its new line of books: The Argosy Library series.

Founded at the end of the Nineteenth Century by publishing tycoon Frank A. Munsey, Argosy Magazine quickly became one of the most popular—and prestigious—fiction magazines of its day and spawned a publishing revolution.

Known as one of the most literate pulp magazines, Argosy published thousands of short stories and novels, many of which features some of the most influential series characters in popular fiction.

With the inauguration of The Argosy Library, Altus Press plans to bring back into print the best of the Frank A. Munsey Company, sourced from its suite of sibling titles such as Argosy, The All-Story, and Flynn’s Detective Fiction Weekly, among others.

The Argosy Library expects to showcase the varied mix of genres that made Argosy one of the most popular pulps of all time, and Series 1 does just that by showcasing adventure, mystery, western, science fiction, fantasy, and crime stories by some of Munsey’s most popular authors such as Lester Dent, W. Wirt, Otis Adelbert Kline, W.C. Tuttle, George F. Worts, and Theodore Roscoe, among others.

The Argosy Library will be released in series of ten books at a time—in matching trade dress—and will be available in softcover, hardcover, and ebook editions. In addition to being available separately, each series of releases can be purchased as a single, heavily-discounted set.

Series 1 of The Argosy Library is expected to be released in May.

For more information, please visit Altus Press.com.

Titles in Series 1 of The Argosy Library:

Genius Jones

by Lester Dent, introduction by Will Murray

The gold-dusted saga of a red-bearded young giant, raised in the Arctic on seal-meat and encyclopedias, who descends on civilization with a loud and solid crash. In his search for wisdom and adventure, the man Jones doesn’t have Aladdin’s lamp—but he doesn’t really need it…. Never before reprinted, it’s the longest novel Lester Dent ever published, and one of the most famous. This edition restores text cut from its original publication. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

271 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

When Tigers Are Hunting: The Complete Adventures of Cordie, Soldier of Fortune, Volume 1

by W. Wirt

The sagas of Jimmie Cordie and his crew were among Argosy’s most popular series when it was brought to that magazine during its early ’30s renaissance. Quite clearly an inspiration for the creation of Doc Savage, this edition collects his first nine adventures. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

240 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

The Swordsman of Mars

by Otis Adelbert Kline

Harry Thorne, explorer and swordsman, had scarcely more than heard of the Red Planet, Mars—when an amazing thing happened…. Otis Adelbert Kline is well-known as one of the best fantasy/adventure contemporaries of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This edition is sourced from the original magazine text and includes all of the original illustrations. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

237 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

The Sherlock of Sageland: The Complete Tales of Sheriff Henry, Volume 1

by W.C. Tuttle, introduction by Sai Shankar

Once voted Adventure Magazine’s most popular author, W.C. Tuttle introduced the world to one of his longest-running, and most popular series characters, Henry Harrison Conroy, in the pages of Argosy. Collected here are the first four stories. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

269 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

Gone North

by Charles Alden Seltzer

When Jim Fallon started for the Hudson Bay country, he wasn’t sure whether he was on a man-hunt or a wild goose chase—but he found his quest was fraught with real enough peril. Among the best novels ever written by one of Argosy’s most popular authors. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

220 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

The Masked Master Mind

by George F. Worts

One of Argosy’s most popular authors pens this never-before reprinted novel of a trail of crime that ran from sleepy Maple Hollow to Steel City. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

265 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

Balata

by Fred MacIsaac

Trees of living gold in the Amazon jungles, guarded by alligators, poisoned darts and rival hunters—such was the lodestone that drew an American expedition, and the unwilling Pete Holcomb…. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

216 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

Bretwalda

by Philip Ketchum

’Twas the mightiest weapon the eyes of man had ever beheld; its mystic name meant “Ruler of Briton.” And from over the Northern Sea came a Viking’s thrall—the only man in the world who could wield that fearsome steel—to save good King Alfred and the homeland he scarce remembered. Collecting—for the first time—all 12 stories of the Bretwalda saga. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

479 pages / $29.95 softcover / $39.95 hardcover

Draft of Eternity

by Victor Rousseau

A groundbreaking science fiction, post-apocalyptic & time travel classic from the early days of The All-Story by an underrated writer. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

183 pages / $17.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

Four Corners, Volume 1

by Theodore Roscoe

Mystery runs rampant in the quiet, upstate New York town of Four Corners…. Easily one of Roscoe’s best-written series, Volume 1 collects the first half of this lost masterpiece of the pulps. Part of The Argosy Library of classics.

201 pages / $19.95 softcover / $29.95 hardcover

(Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to these. It's a great time to be a pulp fan!)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, June 20, 1936

ARGOSY usually had great covers, and here's another one, this time heralding the beginning of a long historical serial by George Challis, who was, of course, Frederick Faust, better known as Max Brand. Much, if not all, of Faust's Western fiction has been reprinted at one time or another, but I wish somebody would reprint more of his historical fiction. What little I've read of it was top-notch. This issue also features another of my favorites, W.C. Tuttle, and a couple of top-of-the-line pulpsters in George F. Worts and Fred MacIsaac.

South of Sulu -- George F. Worts

This is a very handsome trade paperback from Black Dog Books reprinting five of George F. Worts’ novelettes from the pulp SHORT STORIES starring Singapore Sammy, a brawny, redheaded adventurer whose real name is Samuel Larkin Shay. I’d read some of the later Singapore Sammy stories published in ARGOSY, but evidently the character got his start in SHORT STORIES. And these yarns are absolutely top-notch pulp adventure, too.

In the stories, Sammy is roaming the tropics, mostly Malaysia and the South Pacific, searching for his ne’er-do-well father, who abandoned his family when Sammy was two years old. When Bill Shay left his wife and child, he took with him a will leaving a fortune to Sammy from his grandfather, and of course Sammy wants that will back, along with revenge on his father for deserting them.

Naturally Sammy gets involved in all sorts of adventures while he’s looking for his father: stealing a blue fire pearl from an evil maharaja, crossing swords with a crooked gem merchant known as the Cobra, getting trapped in shark-infested waters, hunting down a rare pink elephant, and braving an attack by an octopus to recover some sunken treasure. Some of this is a little over-the-top – what else do you expect from pulp stories? – but Worts was such a good writer that he makes it all believable and keeps the pace racing along. These are fine examples of two-fisted South Seas adventure yarns, and I had a great time reading them.

That excellent George Rozen cover, by the way, is actually from the September 10, 1938 issue of ARGOSY and has nothing to do with Singapore Sammy other than the fact that the lead story in that issue is entitled “Southbound to Singapore”. It’s by the prolific pulp editor and writer Roy deS. Horn rather than Worts. But who cares? It’s a heck of a cover and equally appropriate for this book.