Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, October 1948

A pegleg, a pith helmet, a pistol, a dagger, and a dead body! You don't get much more adventure pulp than this cover by Peter Stevens on, what else, ADVENTURE. This issue is also of interest because it contains the novella "Jewel of the Java Sea" by Dan Cushman, which I assume he expanded into the novel of the same title that Gold Medal published a few years later. Also on hand are Georges Surdez, Jim Kjelgaard, Max Kesler, and William Fuller, along with lesser-known authors Robinson McLean, Ian Lasry, and Richard S. Porteous, who wrote under the odd pseudonym "Standby". I don't own this issue, but if I did, Cushman and Surdez would be enough to prompt me to read it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, January 1946

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by Robert Stanley. I’m so used to seeing his work on mystery and Western pulps and paperbacks, I’m not sure I would have recognized it in a pure adventure setting like this. But it’s a good cover and I like it.

If you’re like me, you saw “One For France and One For Me” by Georges Surdez and thought, “Ah, a French Foreign Legion yarn!” Surdez was famous for them. But no, this novella (and it’s almost long enough to be an actual novel) takes place entirely in France. Captain Norman Kenton, an American pilot who was shot down over France during the war, returns several months after V-E Day to look up the members of the Resistance who helped him avoid capture by the Nazis. It’s not just gratitude that motivates Kenton. One of those Resistance members was a beautiful young woman.

But he runs into more trouble than he expects and finds himself involved in black marketeering, a vengeance quest against people who collaborated with the Germans, murder, espionage, and tragedy. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Well, it’s actually just okay, because the plot pokes along at an exasperating pace, and a lengthy flashback in the middle of the story derails things even farther. I generally like Surdez’s work, and the final scene of this one, which takes place in a courtroom, is pretty good, but things just take too long to get there. Good plot, good characters, not so good execution.

The next story, “Un-Reversible Error” by Wallis Reef, also involves a court case, as you might guess from the title. It’s a contemporary (for the time the pulp was published) Western mystery with the protagonist being an old sheriff. The tone is a little light without the story being an actual comedy. The plot involves a hoodlum who looks like he’s going to get away with murder until the sheriff comes up with a surprise. Not an outstanding yarn, but fairly entertaining.

Stuart Cloete’s name is familiar to me. I think I may even own a few of his novels set in Africa. His short story in this issue, “A Death in the Family”, is a grim tale about two twin brothers discussing a family tragedy that took place in the trenches of World War I. The whole thing is a little slow and bland until Cloete springs a wry, triple-twist ending that took me by surprise and redeems the story for the most part.

“The Peacekeeper” by Hugh Fullerton is a short bit of folklore/tall tale about Finn McCool. Or something. I can’t be more precise than that because I didn’t read much of the story before saying, “Nope, not for me.” Something about Fullerton’s style just grated on me.

“Blood and Guts” by William Langer is much better. It’s a well-written, character-driven story about an Army medic seeing his first action during an assault on a Japanese-held island in the Pacific.

“You Ain’t Gonna Believe This” is a Runyonesque tale about a prizefighter with four arms. Lawton Ford’s story evokes a few smiles, but no outright chuckles.

“The Shadow of a Mountain” by William Arthur Breyfogle is set in an unnamed Central American country where the German general who’s in command of the army stirs up a war with a neighboring country. There’s also a volcano that’s about to erupt. This starts out like it’s going to be a comedy but turns pretty grim before it’s over. Not a bad story, but decidedly odd.

It's not surprising that my favorite story in the issue is by Day Keene, who had a good career in the pulps before becoming one of the top paperback authors of the Fifties and Sixties. “In the Halls of Montezuma” is a crime yarn that also has a military angle, as a prizefighter-turned-gangster sets out getting his revenge on the guy who caused his fall from grace. The big twist at the end is completely predictable, but Keene was such a good storyteller that it doesn’t matter.

The final story in the issue, “The Mule That Loined Brooklyn” by Nick Boddie Williams, is similar in one way to Surdez’s “One For France and One For Me”. It’s about a downed pilot trying to escape from the enemy in World War II, only Williams’ story is set in Burma, the enemies are the Japanese, and the story is more of a farce than anything else. It’s okay, but lightweight enough to float off.

With that lineup of stories, this issue never rises above the merely okay level and flirts with below average. Day Keene’s story is good but definitely a minor entry in his body of work, and it’s the highlight. Langer’s story about the Army medic is also worth reading. There are some good issues of ADVENTURE from this era, but this one is pretty forgettable.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, November 1943

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The cover is by Maurice Bower, an artist I’m not familiar with who did quite a few covers for ADVENTURE during this period. It’s an okay cover, not one of my favorites by any means, but it promises excitement inside and that’s what it was supposed to do.

The first thing I noticed about this issue is that it has a story by Georges Surdez in it. Surdez is always good. But when I opened it up, the story by him is actually the first installment of a two-part serial set in World War II. Boo! I don’t own the issue with the second part, and it doesn’t appear to be online, so I wound up skipping this one. I also skipped the final installment of “The Fleet in the Forest”, a five-part historical serial about the War of 1812 by Carl D. Lane. It was published as a novel. Maybe I’ll read it one of these days, as I find the War of 1812 interesting.

The next thing I noticed is that there are three non-Western short stories by authors best remembered for their Westerns. “Collision Hazard” by L.L. Foreman is one of several stories in this issue set during World War II. It’s a tale of naval action centered around a tugboat, not the usual vessel you’d think of in a story like this. But it’s an excellent yarn, very tense and well-written. Foreman was one of the best Western pulpsters and he demonstrates his skill here, too. “Message to Manakas” is by Hal G. Evarts Jr. (son of the early Western novelist Hal G. Evarts Sr.) and is another World War II yarn about a soldier of Greek descent being infiltrated into Crete to deliver a message to the leader of the Greek underground. It’s well-written but maybe not quite as exciting as it should have been. “Break-Through” by Robert E. Mahaffey, one of the regulars in various Popular Publications Western pulps, is a short-short about a couple of GIs driving a truck in North Africa. It has a twist ending that I didn’t see coming, and that makes it effective.

“Gray Is For Apple” is another short story set during the war, a nice little yarn about an Australian soldier in the New Guinea campaign who’s a fantastic marksman despite a handicap he has to overcome. The author, Christian Folkard, was an Australian journalist and war correspondent who published only three stories in the pulps, in 1943 and ’44. This is the first of that trio, and it’s a good one.

The novelette “One Little Slip” is a Northern by H.S.M. Kemp, who wrote plenty of them for various pulps. It’s a cleverly plotted tale in which a Mountie solves a murder. I liked it quite a bit.

The other novelette in this issue is “Red Justice” by William Du Bois. It’s part of a series about an army officer named Captain John Carter (Really? That’s the name you want to use?) who battles the Seminole Indians during the 1830s. There’s a lot of back-story from the other entries in the series, I didn’t care for the protagonist, and the writing never resonated with me. I read it, but I didn’t care for it.

There’s also an article by Hugh B. Cave about PT boats that’s actually an excerpt from his non-fiction book on the subject LONG WERE THE NIGHTS. Cave’s work is always worth reading, and I’ve been interested in PT boats ever since being a fan of McHALE’S NAVY in its original run 60 years ago, so I read and enjoyed this article even though I usually skip the non-fiction content in fiction magazines.

So this issue of ADVENTURE is a really mixed bag. None of the stories are outstanding, but the ones by Foreman, Evarts, Mahaffey, Folkard, and Kemp are all okay, entertaining yarns without being all that special. Don’t rush to your shelves for this one, but if it’s handy you might find it worth reading.

One more note: in the back of this issue and others of the era is a column called “Lost Trails”, where readers can write in, in hopes of reconnecting with friends or relatives they’ve lost track of. Most of these notes are fairly bland, if vaguely poignant, but one in this issue caught my eye: “Louis Sixt, probably known as Bob Six, last heard of Gananoque, Ont., and Vancouver, B.C. Age about 26, height 4’ 10”, weight 135 lbs., gray eyes, back-brushed straight brown hair. Scrapper, gambler, seafaring man. Anyone having knowledge of his whereabouts please write his brother Paul Sixt c/o Adventure.” What a great description! And now I want to write a series of pulp yarns about a scrappy little guy named Bob Six knocking around and having adventures all over the world. I’ll probably never do it, of course, but it’s fun to think about. Just out of curiosity, I tried to look up Louis Sixt and his brother Paul, but I couldn’t find out anything about them. Maybe one of their descendants will read this and email me one of these days. Stranger things have happened, as the saying goes.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Blue Book, August 1941

I don't think this cover is as good as many others by Herbert Morton Stoops, but this is an important issue of BLUE BOOK anyway. It's the last one that was a true pulp. Trimmed, maybe, but still a pulp. The next issue it went to the larger quarto size. As usual with BLUE BOOK, H. Bedford-Jones is well-represented in the Table of Contents with three stories, one under his own name and one each as by Gordon Keyne and Michael Gallister. Also contributing to this issue are Richard Wormser, Georges Surdez, Lemuel de Bra, Robert R. Mill, Raymond S. Spears, Jacland Marmur, and little-known writers John Upton Terrell, George Agnew Chamberlain, Charles Wellington Furlong, and George Weston. With Bedford-Jones anchoring their stable, BLUE BOOK always had good authors in its pages.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, July 30, 1923

A.G. Peck, an artist I'm not familiar with, painted the evocative cover on this issue of ADVENTURE. As usual, the line-up of authors inside is very strong: Harold Lamb, J. Allan Dunn, Georges Surdez, Hugh Pendexter, J.D. Newsom, Karl W. Detzer, Bill Adams, and Raymond S. Spears. Arthur Sullivant Hoffman was still the editor at this point. ADVENTURE was a great pulp, issue after issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Blue Book, May 1939

As far as I'm concerned, BLUE BOOK was at its peak in the mid-to-late Thirties, although it remained at a pretty high level on into the Forties. But that's the era when it had great authors and a long run of consistently excellent covers by Herbert Morton Stoops. Here's one of them, illustrating a story from H. Bedford-Jones' series "Trumpets From Oblivion". Bedford-Jones had two other stories in this issue, an installment of "Ships and Men" (a "collaboration" between him and the fictional Captain L.B. Williams) and one under his Gordon Keyne pseudonym. Other authors in this issue are Will Jenkins (better known under his pseudonym Murray Leinster), Georges Surdez, Karl Detzer, and Fulton T. Grant. That's a great bunch of pulpsters.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, March 1943

This is the final issue of ARGOSY published by the Frank A. Munsey Company before Popular Publications took over the magazine the next month. I used to own a copy of this issue--I remember that fine cover by Peter Stevens--but I don't think I ever got around to reading it. That's a shame, because inside are stories by H. Bedford-Jones, Norbert Davis, E. Hoffmann Price, Georges Surdez, Robert Carse, Tom W. Blackburn, William R. Cox, and Stewart Sterling. That's a great bunch of authors, but just par for the course where ARGOSY is concerned. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Blue Book, April 1942

By the spring of 1942, most of Herbert Morton Stoops' covers on BLUE BOOK were war-themed, not surprisingly, and so was a lot of the content. This issue has a great line-up of authors including H. Bedford-Jones, Richard Sale, Georges Surdez, Frederick Painton, Richard Howells Watkins, Jacland Marmur, a Tiny David story by Robert R. Mill, and a Free Lances of Diplomacy story by Clarence Herbert New. BLUE BOOK really packed in the great reading.  

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1941

And the people who ride the subway in New York think they've got it bad! At least they don't have an alien coming through a wormhole and shooting a ray gun at them. Or maybe they do, I don't know, I've been on a New York City subway car. I do know, however, that there's a mighty good line-up of authors in this issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES: Henry Kuttner, Clifford D. Simak, Eando Binder (probably just Otto Binder on this one), Robert Arthur, Robert Moore Williams, and Maurice Renard, translated by a much more familiar name to me, Georges Surdez. I really like the SF pulps from this era. That's an Earle Bergey cover, by the way, although it doesn't really resemble the "space babes" covers he's more famous for.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Blue Book, March 1942

During the war years, BLUE BOOK got away from using historical covers as much and added some contemporary ones to the mix. This one by Herbert Morton Stoops features British tanks in the North African campaign and is excellent. BLUE BOOK always had a great blend of fiction as well, and this issue is no different with stories by H. Bedford-Jones (a BLUE BOOK regular, and this issue is a little unusual in that it has only one story by him, with nothing by his pseudonyms Gordon Keyne or Michael Gallister), Georges Surdez, Peter B. Kyne, Arch Whitehouse, Irvin S. Cobb, Jacland Marmur, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, and Samuel Taylor.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, March 1940

That's an intriguing cover on this issue of ADVENTURE, and inside are stories by H. Bedford-Jones, W.C. Tuttle, Georges Surdez, Luke Short, Frank Gruber, and J.J. des Ormeaux. Looks like a mighty fine issue to me.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, March 1943

By 1943, ARGOSY was owned by Popular Publications and was no longer a weekly, but it was still publishing plenty of good fiction. Consider the authors in this issue: H. Bedford-Jones, E. Hoffmann Price, Norbert Davis. William R. Cox, Georges Surdez, Tom W. Blackburn, Robert Carse, and Stewart Sterling. That's a really powerful line-up. Nice cover, too. I used to have this issue, but I don't believe I ever got around to reading it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, December 1938

Ho-hum. Another issue of ADVENTURE with a great cover and iconic writers like H. Bedford-Jones, Walt Coburn, Georges Surdez, and William Chamberlain. You'd think they would have gotten tired of putting out one of the best pulp magazines ever published.