Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, February 1936

I don't know who painted the cover on this issue of TOP-NOTCH -- Tom Lovell, maybe? -- but it's pretty dramatic. TOP-NOTCH was getting near the end of its long run by this point but was still publishing some very good authors. In this issue are stories by Arthur J. Burks, Major George Fielding-Eliot, William Merriam Rouse, Samuel Taylor, and Robert H. Leitfred. The other authors aren't familiar to me: Paul Randell Morrison, Edmund du Perrier, Hal Firanze, and Kurt von Rachen. Wait a minute, Kurt von Rachen was L. Ron Hubbard, so I guess I've heard of him after all. Controversial though he may be, I like Hubbard's pulp stories for the most part, and for all I know, those other guys were fine writers. So this is probably a decent issue. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Detective, May 1934

This issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE sports a creepy, eye-catching cover by Rafael DeSoto. The lineup of authors inside is a strong one: George Harmon Coxe, Johnston McCulley, Norman A. Daniels, George Fielding Eliot, Wayne Rogers, Joe Archibald, and George Allan Moffatt, who was really Edwin V. Burkholder. I don't own this issue, but I think it would be well worth reading if I did.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: G-Men, November 1935

As some of you know, I’m a long-time fan of the Dan Fowler series. Fowler, ace agent of the F.B.I., had his adventures chronicled in the pages of the pulp G-MEN (later G-MEN DETECTIVE) for many years, first under the house-name C.K.M. Scanlon and then later under the real names of the various authors who contributed novels to the series. The November 1935 issue of G-MEN, sporting a cover possibly by Richard Lyon, contains the second Dan Fowler novel, which has a great title: “Bring ’Em Back Dead”.

I don’t own this issue, but I do have a copy of BRING ’EM BACK DEAD, a great collection from Black Dog Books that reprints the first three Dan Fowler novels. I read and reviewed the first one, “Snatch!”, a while back, and now I’ve moved on to the second novel in the series. In this one, Fowler and his friend and fellow agent Larry Kendal are after a gang responsible for multiple thefts of silk shipments once they’ve arrived from the Orient and are on their way to wholesalers in the United States. There’s a great sequence on board a train that takes up the first part of the story, with shootouts, chases, and the grisly murder of a young agent. The crooks get away, but with Dan Fowler on their trail, you know they’ll run out of luck sooner or later.

The Fowler novels are a very appealing blend of well-done procedural drama and terrific action scenes. That’s the case in this one as Fowler and Kendal prove to be dogged investigators, as usual, but can also throw a punch or handle a tommy gun with great skill. Beautiful blond Sally Vane, the love of Dan’s life, joins the Bureau after helping out as an amateur in the previous novel and comes in for her own share of the action.

Like “Snatch!”, “Bring ’Em Back Dead” was written by the creator of the series, George Fielding Eliot, under the C.K.M. Scanlon name. Most of the Fowler novels I’ve read have been from later in the series, but I really like these early ones. I give a high recommendation to the Black Dog Books reprint volume, which is available in both e-book and paperback editions.

Since I don’t own the actual pulp issue, I haven’t read the two backup stories, but they’re by Tom Curry, whose Westerns I enjoy, and Joe Archibald, whose work is kind of hit-and-miss for me, but many of his stories are good. I suspect I’ll be reading another Dan Fowler story relatively soon. It’s a great series. And it occurred to me while I was reading this one that it’s a shame Republic Pictures never made a Dan Fowler serial directed by William Witney and John English and starring Clayton Moore as Dan. Well, I can imagine it, can’t I?

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spy Stories, August 1935

I associate A. Leslie Ross with Western pulp and paperback covers, of course, since he did so many great ones, but he did other sorts of covers, too, such as the one on this issue of the straight-forwardly named SPY STORIES. There are some fine authors inside this issue, too, including E. Hoffmann Price, Major George Fielding Eliot, Frederick C. Painton, Harold F. Cruickshank (not a fan of his work, personally, but he was both prolific and popular), Alexis Rossoff, and Dana R. Marsh, a name unfamiliar to me. SPY STORIES was published by A.A. Wyn, who put out five issues in 1929, took a six-year hiatus, and then published five more issues in 1935. This was the next to last issue. The scan and information are courtesy of the invaluable Fictionmags Index.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: G-Men, October 1935

I’ve read quite a few Dan Fowler novels by various authors over the years, but “Snatch!” goes back to the series’ origin, appearing in the very first issue of the pulp G-MEN, cover-dated October 1935. Dan Fowler is an agent of the Division of Investigation, a name still used by author George Fielding Eliot even though the DOI’s name was changed officially to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in July of that same year. It’s likely Eliot wrote the story before that name change went into effect.

But that’s just a minor point of interest and doesn’t really matter. Although he’s never referred to by name, the chief of the DOI is clearly J. Edgar Hoover, and he assigns Fowler and his sidekick, Agent Larry Kendal, to break up the notorious Gray Gang and bring its leader Ray Norshire, the top name on the Most Wanted list, to justice. Norshire and his gang have been robbing banks all over the Midwest, and they’ve just gone into the kidnapping racket as well, having abducted the infant daughter of a bank president. Fowler gets the assignment because he’s from one of those Midwest states (Eliot doesn’t specify which one) and his father is still a county sheriff there.

Fowler and Kendal take off for the Midwest, and when they reach Fowler’s hometown, he meets up with an old flame, telephone operator Sally Vane, whose father is also a lawman, a detective on the local police force. But Fowler soon becomes suspicious that the elder Vane may be mixed up with the Gray Gang, an unexpected and unwanted complication.

Despite the title, the kidnapping angle of this novel is wrapped up in the first half of the yarn, and the rest of it is devoted to running down Ray Norshire and his minions and uncovering the real mastermind behind the gang. (The mastermind’s identity won’t come as much of a surprise to regular pulp readers.) It’s a fast-moving blend of investigative procedure and wild shootouts, chases, captures, and escapes. Given everything that’s gone before, the ending maybe isn’t as dramatic as it could have been, but it’s still satisfying.

It's been quite a while since I read anything by George Fielding Eliot, a prolific contributor to the detective, adventure, and war pulps, but for some reason, I had it in mind that his writing was a little stodgy. Not so in this story, anyway. At times it reminded me a little of Norvell Page’s crazed, over-the-top Spider novels. Which is a good thing, mind you. Now I’m eager to read more by Eliot. After the pulp era, he went on to a career writing military and historical non-fiction, so maybe that’s where I got the idea. I’m glad to be proven wrong.

It's also interesting to see the first appearance of Sally Vane, who is Fowler’s long-running romantic interest in the series and an FBI agent. I didn’t know she started out working as something else.

I read an e-book reprint of the lead novel and don’t own the original pulp, but the three backup stories are by Howard R. Marsh, Westmoreland Grey, and none other than an old favorite of mine, Leslie Scott writing under his A. Leslie pseudonym. Scott is best remembered as a Western writer, of course, but he wrote in other genres as well.

With “Snatch!”, the Dan Fowler series gets off to a great start. I’ll be reading more of them in the near future. (As I may have mentioned, I’ll be writing a Dan Fowler story for an anthology later this year, so I’m trying to get in as much of the proper mindset as possible.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, January 1936

Seems like a lot of guys picked up tripod-mounted machine guns and waved them around on pulp covers. I know I've seen that sort of cover more than once, probably on another issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES. This issue has a fine group of writers inside, including Hugh B. Cave, G.F. Eliot (billed as Major George F. Eliot in this issue), Leslie T. White, Oscar Schisgall, Jackson Cole (who could well have been Schisgall, since that started out as a personal pseudonym for him, before it became a house-name), and Gunnison Steele (who was always Bennie Gardner). Eliot's not the only one to use his rank, either. There's also a novelette by Lieutenant Seymour Pond.

UPDATE: Annnnd the reason that cover looks familiar to me is that I've posted it before, about four years ago. So this is an accidental rerun. I've been doing this long enough that I need to start checking on that before I schedule the posts.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, January 1936

This isn't a great machine gun cover, but it's a good one. And the authors in this issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES are mighty good: Hugh B. Cave, Leslie T. White, George Fielding Eliot, Oscar Schisgall, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), and house-name Jackson Cole.

Forgotten Books: Snatch! - C.K.M. Scanlon (George Fielding Eliot)

Over the years I've read quite a few of the Dan Fowler novels from the pulp G-MEN, but I'd never read the first novel in the series, from October 1935, until now. Fowler, stalwart agent of the Division of Investigation (later the F.B.I.), starred in more than a hundred of these pulp novels written by various authors. SNATCH!, by George Fielding Eliot writing under the house-name C.K.M. Scanlon, is the story of Fowler's first big case, as he's assigned to break up a gang of vicious bank robbers that has been plaguing the Midwest. As the novel opens, however, the robbers have gone in for kidnapping instead, snatching the young daughter of a bank president. Fowler, with the help of his friend and fellow agent Larry Kendal and beautiful Sally Vane, the daughter of a local police detective, sets out to crack the case.

The Dan Fowler yarns are early examples of procedurals, as a lot is made about the various methods used to track down criminals. The kidnapping plot is only about the first third of this novel, despite its title. In the middle third, Fowler goes undercover in a prison to try to find the mastermind behind the gang, and the final third is spent rounding him up. There's plenty of action, mostly chase scenes, tommy gun battles, and explosions. Tragedy strikes some of the characters, but Fowler presses on doggedly until he finally brings his quarry to justice.

Some of the Dan Fowler stories are more over the top than others. This one is fairly realistic with no real supercriminal or wild schemes. Eliot's meat-and-potatoes writing style adds to that realism. Despite the fact that Fowler gets in a lot more shootouts than most federal agents really did, it's easy to image that investigations in the Thirties really were this way. SNATCH! is an enjoyable hardboiled tale. Some of the later novels in this series are better, but this is a pretty good start. It's been reprinted several times. I don't know if any of those editions are still in print, but copies shouldn't be too hard to find if you're interested.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spy Novels Magazine, April 1935

I'm a sucker for covers featuring a classy babe with a gun, like this one on SPY NOVELS MAGAZINE. Inside are stories by E. Hoffmann Price, Major George Fielding Eliot, Frederick C. Painton, and more. SPY NOVELS lasted only a few issues but looks like it had some decent yarns in it.