Of course it's a clown causing trouble on the cover of this issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES. You can't trust those guys! Or maybe he's actually the hero, although I wouldn't bet on that. But you can bet that any cover by Norman Saunders will be dramatic and/or action-packed, and this one certainly is. You've got knives, bullets, and blackjacks! (Hmm, "Knives, Bullets, and Blackjacks!" That wouldn't be a bad title.) Anyway, I don't own this issue, but I'm sure that inside its pages, a reader could find plenty of action. Authors include Emile C. Tepperman (twice, with a Marty Quade story under his own name and a story as by Anthony Clemens), Harold Q. Masur (also twice, once as himself and once as Hal Quincy), G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Cyril Plunkett, Joe Archibald, and several authors unfamiliar to me, James A. Kirch, Arthur T. Harris, Clark Frost, and H.F. Sorensen. I really should have read more from TEN DETECTIVE ACES over the years. It looks like a really good detective pulp.
Nobody could pack more into a pulp cover than Norman Saunders, as this issue of 10-STORY DETECTIVE MAGAZINE illustrates. Another Norman, Norman A. Daniels, has two stories in this issue, one under his own name and one as David A. Norman. Bruno Fischer is on hand under his Russell Gray pseudonym. Harold Q. Masur, later very successful as a mystery novelist, has a story in this issue, as does an author I'm not familiar with, Richard L. Hobart. The other stories all have house-names on them: Guy Fleming, Leon Dupont, Clint Douglas, Ralph Powers, and Harris Clivesey. It wouldn't surprise me if some of those guys were actually Norman A. Daniels, too.
For some reason, I've always liked those TEN DETECTIVE ACES covers with the red borders around them. It's a nice distinctive look. And I always love Norman Saunders covers. This one is no exception. Great action and details and that's a really good-looking woman. The stories inside are by some authors who ain't half-bad, either: Frederick C. Davis, Walker A. Tompkins, Norman A. Daniels, Harold Q. Masur, Joe Archibald, Lee E. Well, Stuart Friedman, plus a couple I hadn't heard of, Ken Kessler and Jimmy O'Brien, plus house name Guy Fleming. A couple of those authors, Tompkins and Wells, are best known as Western writers, but Davis and Archibald wrote quite a few Westerns, too, and Daniels did a few.
This issue of 10-STORY DETECTIVE MAGAZINE features another great Norman Saunders cover, with stories inside by some top-notch authors: Norman A. Daniels (with a second story under his pseudonym David M. Norman), Harold Q. Masur, Walt Sheldon, J. Lane Linklater, and even Walker A. Tompkins, best known for his Westerns, of course. Plus some I haven't heard of, such as Tagre Detbar, Byron Dalrymple, and Thomas Lamar.
Another action-packed Norman Saunders cover on this issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES. I realized recently that one of the featured authors, Carl McK. Saunders (no relation to Norman, since it's a pseudonym) was really Philip Ketchum. There's a collection in the works of some of Ketchum's detective stories under the Saunders by-line, and I'm looking forward to reading it. Also in this issue are stories by Harold Q. Masur, better known as a hardcover mystery novelist with a long series about lawyer Scott Jordan, the prolific and genre-hopping Joe Archibald, and a lead novel by Donald E. Keyhoe (yeah, the flying saucer guy).
