Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch Detective, September 1938

TOP-NOTCH DETECTIVE lasted for only three issues, of which this is the first one. That cover has enough going on that I thought at first it might be by Norman Saunders, but it's actually by J.W. Scott. The fact that this pulp didn't last long couldn't be due to the quality of the authors in its pages. This issue features stories by Cleve F. Adams, Arthur J. Burks, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Edward Ronns (Edward S. Aarons), Norman A. Daniels, Henry Treat Sperry, and Orlando Rigoni, as well as a number of other, lesser-known authors. That's a pretty strong lineup and an indication of a pulp worth reading.

Hands Beyond the Grave - Henry Treat Sperry

I’ve gotten interested in the obscure pulp author Henry Treat Sperry, probably because when I looked him up on the Fictionmags Index, I noticed something odd. His first published story was “Hands Beyond the Grave” in the September 1934 issue of TERROR TALES, the first issue of that iconic Weird Menace pulp. Sperry’s second story, though, was “Posies for the Widdy” in the First December Number, 1934, of RANCH ROMANCES. Anybody who can go directly from TERROR TALES to RANCH ROMANCES is my kind of writer!

I don’t have that issue of RANCH ROMANCES, but I do have the facsimile reprint edition of that TERROR TALES published by Steeger Books, so I went ahead and read Sperry's story. It starts off as if Sperry was influenced to a certain extent by H.P. Lovecraft. The narrator of the story is a well-to-do young New Englander named Robert Mercer, who awakens one night to find a sinister, amorphous shape lurking at the foot of his bed. There’s lot of “nameless dread”, “unspeakable terror”, and “too horrified to move”. But then, unlike most of Lovecraft’s protagonists, Sperry has his hero bound out of bed, grab an ornamental javelin off the wall, and attack the lurking presence. It doesn’t do much good, of course: the thing vanishes with an explosion that leaves Mercer senseless. He calls a buddy of his, a doctor who’s also a psychical researcher, and with the help of an elderly female medium, they set out to find out what it is that’s haunting Mercer and why.

That early battle is the high point of the action in this story, which goes back to brooding and being scared, as well as a murder and finally an explanation of sorts. Honestly, I thought this yarn cried out for one more twist that never came, but for a debut story, it’s well-written and flows well, even though you wouldn’t exactly call it fast-paced. More action and dialogue than HPL, though.

I haven’t been able to find out much about Henry Treat Sperry. He was born in 1903 and died in 1938 at age 35. He was married and worked as an assistant editor at Popular Publications, helping with several of the pulps to which he sold stories. His writing career lasted only four years, but during that time he published almost 70 stories, most of them Weird Menace but with a scattering of detective and G-Man yarns, a few Western romances, and even an air-war story or two. One of his Western romances was called “Locoed Cowgirl” (RANCH ROMANCES, First February Number, 1938). I’m sure it was innocent enough, but I can’t help but think that would be a good title for a Weird Menace/Western romance crossover about a seemingly demonically possessed cowgirl. I’d read that.

In the meantime, the other stories in the first issue of TERROR TALES look great, and I plan to read them, too. That facsimile reprint is available on Amazon or directly from the Steeger Books website.