Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Ranch Stories, September 1948

I don't have any idea who painted this cover, but I like it fairly well. I've still never read an issue of THRILLING RANCH STORIES. I'm going to have to, one of these days. This issue features one of my favorite Western writers, Joseph Chadwick, as well as Clee Woods, Joe Archibald (best remembered, I suspect, as an aviation pulpster, but he wrote everything), Harold F. Cruickshank (definitely best remembered as an aviation pulpster), Bruce Douglas, and Marian O'Hearn, as well as lesser-known pulpster Monica Morton. Oh, wait! Monica Morton was really Johnston McCulley, so never mind. Not lesser-known at all. Chadwick and McCulley make this a worthwhile issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, June 1947

We start the year on these Sunday pulp posts with an issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES that sports a really dynamic cover by Norman Saunders. Of course, I repeat myself. Saunders' covers were always really dramatic. However, that may be the best thing about this issue. Hard to say because I don't recognize the names of most of the authors. The ones I do recognize are C.M. Kornbluth, Robert Turner, Joe Archibald, and Ray Cummings. Still, just because I don't know them doesn't mean their stories aren't any good. I don't own this issue and it doesn't appear to be on-line anywhere, so for me, it'll have to remain a mystery. But I do like that cover.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, May 1941

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.

Review: Sneeze That Off (Flying Aces, November 1930)/The Hardware Ace (Flying Aces, February 1931) - Joe Archibald

Regular readers of this blog know that with a few exceptions, I’m not a big fan of comedy in pulp stories. For that reason, I’ve avoided Joe Archibald’s work for the most part, since he specialized in comedy stories in several different genres, although he did some serious yarns as well. One of his most popular series appeared in the air war pulp FLYING ACES and starred Lt. Phineas “Carbuncle” Pinkham, an American pilot from Boonetown, Iowa, who’s assigned to the Ninth Pursuit Squadron in France during World War I. Between 1930 and 1943, Archibald wrote more 150 stories chronicling Pinkham’s adventures. Since I’d read a few other stories by Archibald recently and enjoyed them more than I expected to, I decided to give this series a try by reading the first two stories, “Sneeze That Off” (from the November 1930 issue of FLYING ACES) and “The Hardware Ace” (February 1931).

In “Sneeze That Off”, Pinkham arrives for the first time at the aerodrome where the Ninth Pursuit Squadron is based. He makes a lot of enemies almost right away, including the commanding officer, Major Rufus Garrity (“the old man”), and fellow pilots Howell, Wilson, and Bump Gillis. You see, Pinkham is a prankster, a practical joker, a would-be funnyman addicted to exploding cigars, rubber snakes, dribble glasses, and sneezing powder. His antics rub everybody the wrong way, especially since the squadron has been plagued lately by the German ace von Kohl. Despite his annoying habits, however, Pinkham is a talented flyer and a deadly fighter, even when he’s armed only with some of his tricky gimmicks.

By the time of the second story in the series, “The Hardware Ace”, Pinkham is maybe a little more accepted by his fellow pilots, although they still get annoyed with him most of the time. But most of the squadron’s ire in this yarn is directed toward the stuck-up pilots and officers of a French squadron also operating in the area. Pinkham’s antics just make the situation worse when the two units need to be teaming up to take on a new aerial threat from the Germans. But of course, it’s Pinkham who comes up with a unique way to resolve the situation and defeat the enemy.

These stories are slightly more serious and less silly than I expected them to be, probably because it’s hard to get too wacky when men are fighting and dying all the time. Archibald writes well, too, and manages to make Pinkham a sympathetic character despite his abrasive nature. I surprised myself again by liking these stories considerably more than I expected to, and I can see how Pinkham’s adventures could be kind of addictive. These two, and many more, are available to download as PDF files from the Age of Aces website. I’m sure I’ll never read the whole series, but I definitely plan to continue making the acquaintance of Phineas Pinkham.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Sky Fighters, July 1937

I said a while back that I ought to read some issues of the air war pulp SKY FIGHTERS. Well, I don’t actually own any. But I do own the Adventure House reprint of the July 1937 issue, so I read it. The cover is by Eugene Frandzen, who painted a bunch of them for SKY FIGHTERS.

This issue leads off with the novella “North Sea Nightmare” by George Bruce. I read another novella by Bruce last year and really enjoyed it. This one is set during World War I and centers around two young Navy pilots known as Goldilocks (because he’s small and blond) and the Bear (because he’s big and burly). Goldilocks is the pilot and the Bear is the observer/gunner in a flying boat that does reconnaissance patrols over the North Sea, looking for German ships and submarines. They come up with a daring plan for a raid on the bay where most of the German navy is based. That raid provokes an even more epic battle that may change the course of the war. I like the way Bruce writes, and there’s plenty of good action in this one. Goldilocks and the Bear are good characters, too. But I never found the plot as compelling as in the other story by Bruce that I read, and I didn’t like the ending. So while I still consider this a good story, I found it somewhat disappointing. I definitely want to read more by George Bruce, though.

Over the years, I’ve read quite a few of the pulp novels featuring the Lone Eagle, an American pilot/intelligence agent named John Masters whose adventures appeared in the pulp THE LONE EAGLE (later renamed THE AMERICAN EAGLE and AMERICAN EAGLES). The stories appeared under the house-name Lt. Scott Morgan but were written by several different authors, most notably F.E. Rechnitzer, who created the series. I always enjoyed the Lone Eagle stories because Masters was just as much of a spy as he was a pilot, and most of the novels had him operating extensively behind enemy lines as well as engaging in aerial dogfights. He often crossed paths with the mysterious and dangerous R-47, a seductive female German agent who became a recurring villainess. The first two novels in the series are reprinted in a very nice double volume from Black Dog Books called WINGS OF WAR, which is still available on Amazon in e-book and trade paperback editions.

I said all that to say this: this issue of SKY FIGHTERS features a Lone Eagle novelette, also called “Wings of War”, and it’s the only time a story about the character appeared anywhere other than in his own pulp. I don’t know what brought that about. It’s possible one of the Lone Eagle authors turned in a manuscript that was too short and the editors at the Thrilling Group just decided to run it in SKY FIGHTERS rather than asking the author to expand it. Or maybe the story was written to order at novelette length in order to publicize the Lone Eagle’s own pulp—although that seems an odd thing to do several years into a magazine’s run. (THE LONE EAGLE debuted in 1933.) Regardless of its origins, “Wings of War” is a good story, with Masters going undercover as a German soldier returned in a prisoner exchange so that he try to find out why the Germans seemingly have abandoned a vital area along the front. Masters suspects the wily Huns are just setting a trap for the Allies. He’s right, of course, but he discovers what’s really going on only after another encounter with R-47, and as usual, their meeting almost proves fatal for Masters. There’s plenty of action, a plausible if far-fetched scheme by the Germans, and a smashing climax. I enjoyed this story, and it reminded me that it’s been too long since I read one of the full-length Lone Eagle novels.

“Luck of the Damned” is John Scott Douglas, a versatile and prolific pulpster who wrote scores of aviation, adventure, Western, and sports stories in a career that lasted from the mid-Twenties to the early Fifties. It’s about a young pilot who’s convinced he’s jinxed, especially on his birthday. So when his commanding officer orders him to fly a dangerous mission on that particular day, he has to battle not only the enemy but also his own superstition. This is an entertaining story that I thought wasn’t quite as strong as it might have been with a different twist, but it’s still worth reading.

Robert Sidney Bowen is one of the big names in aviation and air war pulp. He wrote a lot of other things, too, including boy’s adventure novels and mystery and detective yarns. I’ve been reading his work for close to 60 years now and always enjoy it. Just a very solid, dependably entertaining writer. His story in this issue, “Fledgling’s Finish”, is no exception. A young pilot volunteers for a suicidal bombing run on a castle that’s the center of the German communications network. When his commander refuses to let him, he takes it on himself to make the effort anyway. Most of the story is written from the point of view of the commanding officer, which proves to be an effective and suspenseful tactic. I really enjoyed this story.

Joe Archibald’s specialty was humorous stories. He didn’t just write them for the air war pulps (although he did a bunch of them), he turned out humorous yarns for the Western, detective, and sports pulps, too. I’m not a big fan of his work, but sometimes I find his stories mildly amusing. That’s a pretty good description of “A Flyer in Cauliflowers”. This is part of a series featuring two American pilots named Ambrose Hooley and Muley Spink (the narrator). The plot concerns a prizefight between an American flier and a British pilot to determine who deserves credit for shooting down a couple of German planes. There’s also a captured German ace who escapes and has to be hunted down. As I said above, it’s mildly amusing and moves along fairly well, so it’s a readable story. Not much more than that, mind you, but I did finish it, which is more than I can say for some of Archibald’s yarns.

Hal White wrote dozens of Western, detective, and aviation stories for the pulps between the mid-Twenties and the early Fifties, but that’s all I know about him. His story “Fly High and Die” wraps up this issue. It’s about a squadron of fighter pilots who believe they’ve been cursed by a dead German ace. Anytime they fly higher than 8000 feet, something terrible happens to them. Of course, there’s more to it than that. The actual solution to the mystery struck me as a little bland, but overall the story is okay.

And okay is a good description of this issue as a whole. The Lone Eagle story is excellent, the Robert Sidney Bowen story is very good, and even though I found the George Bruce story a little disappointing, it’s still a good story and makes me want to read more by him. The other stories are mildly entertaining but forgettable. I probably won’t go hunting for more issues of SKY FIGHTERS, but if I come across any, I won’t hesitate to grab them, either.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Popular Detective, June 1945

The cover of this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE caught my eye and intrigued me enough to read a PDF of the issue downloaded from the Internet Archive. Carnivals were common settings for pulp detective yarns and I’ve always enjoyed carny fiction. I don’t know who did this cover, but there’s a lot going on and I like it.

It's also an extremely accurate representation of a scene in the short story “Clown of Doom” by John L. Benton, a Thrilling Group house-name commonly used by Norman A. Daniels but also by Oscar J. Friend and Donald Bayne Hobart. The narrator/protagonist is named Ed Rice, which instantly rings some bells and raises some questions. Was John L. Benton, in this case, actually Emile C. Tepperman, and is “Clown of Doom” really an entry in Tepperman’s long-running Ed Race series which ran as back-up stories in THE SPIDER? Maybe an editor at Popular Publications rejected the story so Tepperman changed one letter in his hero’s name and sent it over to the Thrilling Group? Ed Race, after all, was a juggler and trickshot artist who had many adventures set in the carnival world.

Well, I can’t prove it, of course, but my answer to both of the questions I posed above is “I don’t think so.” For one thing, Ed Rice, in this story, is a spieler, a ballyhoo guy, not a marksman or juggler. The story is told in slangy, present-tense, first-person narration that doesn’t sound anything like Tepperman’s Ed Race stories. And the fact that the scene on the cover exactly matches the action in the story makes me believe that a lot more likely scenario is that this yarn was written to match an already existing cover painting. The author was probably one of the regular contributors to POPULAR DETECTIVE and the other Thrilling Group detective pulps. Whatever the truth of this situation is, the story is a pretty good one, a fast-paced yarn about a murder at a traveling carnival.

Elsewhere, the issue leads off with the novella “Motto For Murder” by Frank Johnson, also a Thrilling Group house-name used mostly by Norman A. Daniels. My hunch is that he didn’t write this story, but he might have. Private eye Rufus Reed and his two partners, his wife Pat and his younger brother Johnny, are hired to find out who’s been knocking off defendants in high-profile murder trials right after they’ve been found not guilty. It’s a fairly interesting plot and there are some excellent action scenes, but the characters are all kind of bland and I never was as intrigued as I hoped to be. Not a terrible story, but certainly forgettable.

“Pilot to Murderer” is by Walt Sheldon, a prolific pulpster who went on to a career as a well-respected paperback novelist in the Fifties and Sixties. It has a great concept: the crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber on a top-secret mission discovers that there’s a murderer among them. It's up to the pilot, who also narrates the story, to figure out who the killer is. This is a terrific story that lives up to the idea. I really need to read more by Sheldon.

“Death By Proxy” by M.D. Orr is part of a series featuring British Intelligence agent Archie McCann, who battles Japanese espionage plots in New Guinea while pretending to be an anthropologist. This is the first one I’ve read. In this story, a would-be assassin turns up dead, so Archie has to solve the murder of a man who tried to kill him. The setting and the concept are great, and Archie is a likable, interesting protagonist, but the writing never worked up much urgency or suspense for me. Still, there’s enough to like that I’d be interested in reading more in the series.

Mel Watt’s novelette “The Chair Is Not Cheated” features as its sleuth an actor who plays the villainous Dr. Coffin on a radio crime drama. He has to turn detective in real life when a friend of his is accused in what seems to be an open-and-shut case of murder. What really happened is pretty predictable, but the story moves along at a decent pace. Watt could have done more with the radio background, too. Although it reads like the start of a series, this is the only “Dr. Coffin” story of which I’m aware.

Joe Archibald wrote a long (approximately 70 stories) series about private detective Willie Klump, all of which appeared in POPULAR DETECTIVE except the final two, which were published in THE SAINT DETECTIVE MAGAZINE and MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE. These are comedy detective yarns, a sub-genre which, like comedy Westerns, I don’t usually care for. I had never read a Willie Klump story before, and I’m not a big fan of Archibald’s work in general, so “The Witness Share” in this issue kind of had two strikes against it to start with. But there are always exceptions, so I was willing to give it a chance, and I’m glad I did. Willie is a hapless, wise-cracking narrator who, like W.C. Tuttle’s Tombstone and Speedy, isn’t as dumb as he seems at first. In fact, he’s fairly sharp as he solves a case of jewel robbery and murder.  I enjoyed this story quite a bit more than I expected to, and I’d be happy to read more about Willie Klump.

Overall, this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE is a really mixed bag. None of the stories are terrible and I had no trouble finishing all of them. Only one, “Pilot to Murderer”, is outstanding, but “Clown of Doom” and “The Witness Share” aren’t bad. The others all have something going for them, even if they didn’t have me flipping the digital pages with a great deal of enthusiasm. I don’t mean to damn with faint praise here. This issue is okay and I’m glad I read it, and I found enough to like that I might read another issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE in the reasonably near future. Just not right away.

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.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Rodeo Romances, April 1947

RODEO ROMANCES seems to have been more oriented toward actual romance stories than the other two Western romance pulps published by the Thrilling Group, RANCH ROMANCES and THRILLING RANCH STORIES. Most of the covers are very placid depictions of happy couples. This one, however, features some good ol' bulldoggin' in a painting by Sam Cherry. I've been to quite a few rodeos, and the bulldogging is always exciting, not to mention dangerous for the cowboys competing. The authors in this issue are mostly familiar names: Johnston McCulley, Joe Archibald, Harold F. Cruickshank, Stephen Payne, and Cliff Walters.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, May 1935

You never know what you're going to find in a sarcophagus, as Rafael DeSoto illustrates on this cover. Over the years I've read quite a few stories that first appeared in TEN DETECTIVE ACES, but I've never read or even owned an actual issue of the pulp. Plenty of fine fiction appeared there. Authors in this issue include Frederick C. Davis (with a Moon Man story), Paul Chadwick (with a Wade Hammond story), Emile C. Tepperman (with a Marty Quade story), Tepperman again as Anthony Clemens (with a Val Easton story), Joe Archibald (with a Dizzy Duo story), and non-series yarns by Harry Widmer, Margie Harris, and J. Lane Linklater. There are a bunch of issues of this pulp available on the Internet Archive. I ought to read some of them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Super Western, August 1937

This is the first issue of a short-lived Western pulp from Ace. Four issues were published under this title, plus a dozen more as VARIETY WESTERN and ALL-NOVEL WESTERN. Calling this one SUPER WESTERN might have been pulp hyperbole, but it actually had pretty good credentials, starting with a cover by Norman Saunders. Inside are stories by Tom Roan, Norrell Gregory, Joe Archibald, W.H.B. Kent, forgotten pulpster Glenn A. Conner, and house-name Cliff Howe. Not quite super, maybe, but no publisher was going to put out a pulp called PROBABLY PRETTY GOOD WESTERN . . . even though that's what it was.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Popular Detective, October 1943

I feel like I should know who painted the dramatic cover on this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE, but I don't. As always, artist IDs are more than welcome and will be greatly appreciated. It's a striking scene, whoever painted it, with that life or death struggle going on in the foreground. The lead novel in this issue is by my old editor, friend, and mentor, Sam Merwin Jr. Also on hand are prolific pulpsters Laurence Donovan and Joe Archibald, house name John S. Endicott (in this case, Donovan would be my guess, but who knows?), a couple of authors I've never heard of, Nita Nolan and H. Wolff Salz, and finally one of the more intriguing names on the Table of Contents, Len Zinberg, who had already begun using the pseudonym under which he would write some very well-regarded crime and mystery novels in the Fifties and Sixties, Ed Lacy. I hadn't realized he was selling to the pulps as early as this.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, April 1948

There's a lot going on in this cover by Sam Cherry, more than you might realize at first glance. We have our stalwart hero in a red shirt . . . or is he a hero? He's clearly been wearing the mask that just fell down around his neck, and there's a bag of stolen bank loot lying beside him. He's been lassoed, his horse is running away in the background, and there's a guy on the porch behind him probably shooting at him. He must have been trying to make his getaway after robbing the bank when somebody dabbed a loop on him. But that's a Lone Ranger/Masked Rider type of mask, not a bank robber mask. So I don't really know what's going on, but it's a good cover anyway, as you'd expect from Sam Cherry. Inside this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES are stories by Wayne D. Overholser, Clifton Adams, Barry Cord (Peter Germano), Talmage Powell, Joe Archibald, Thomas Calvert McClary, Kenneth Fowler, Wallace Umphrey, and the obscure Ruland Waltner. FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES included features and articles in that count, so there are actually only nine pieces of fiction in this issue, but they look like pretty good stories.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, November 1942

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.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Popular Detective, June 1943

Well, that's certainly a creepy cover. I don't know the artist, but this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE caught my eye, so he did his job. The Dr. Zeng novella by "Walt Bruce" is actually by W.T. Ballard and Robert Leslie Bellem. Also on hand in this issue are Norman A. Daniels, Dale Clark, Joe Archibald, William Morrison (really Joseph Samachson, the guy who created the Martian Manhunter for DC Comics), Lee Fredericks, and Ted Coughlan. Not an all-star line-up, maybe, but I'll bet it's a pretty entertaining issue. The Dr. Zeng story, along with the others in that series, has been reprinted by Steeger Books in the volume DR. ZENG ARCHIVES. I have a copy but have never read it. One of these days . . .

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, September 1946

Under the editorship of Kenneth S. White, ADVENTURE was still a good pulp in the late Forties. In this issue, that starts with a cover by Peter Stevens that I really like, illustrating an oil field story by Thomson Burtis. Also on hand in this issue are William Campbell Gault, Jim Kjelgaard, Joe Archibald, Wilbur S. Peacock, Hal G. Evarts, and Bill Adams, among others. This issue is available on-line here, and I'm intrigued enough that I'll probably read the Burtis story, if nothing else, because of my fondness for oil field yarns. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, November 1936

That's a nice dramatic cover by an artist I'm not familiar with, William E. Luberoff. TEN DETECTIVE ACES was a solid pulp, although it never reached the heights of BLACK MASK or DIME DETECTIVE. The contents of this issue include stories by top-notch pulpsters such as Frederick C. Davis (a Moon Man story), Philip Ketchum writing as Carl McK. Saunders (a Captain John Murdock story), Roger Torrey, Joe Archibald, and Phil Richards, who I remember from writing the great Kid Calvert series over in WESTERN ACES. Also on hand are the more obscure Robert S. Fenton, Albert Barry, Marion Gailor Squire, and Harry Adler. Albert Barry has only one story in the FMI, and when I see that I always wonder if it was a one-shot house-name, but I'm sure there were plenty of writers who managed one or two sales in their career and that was it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, December 1943

Well, that's probably the best-looking gas jockey I've ever seen. Jerome Rozen did the cover for this issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES. Any pulp that leads off with a W.T. Ballard yarn is probably going to be worth reading. Also on hand in this issue are solid pros Robert Turner, C. William Harrison, Joe Archibald, and Ralph Berard (Victor H. White), among others. The heyday of TEN DETECTIVE ACES was in the Thirties, but it was still a pretty good detective pulp in the Forties.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, November 1945

If not for the fact that this issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES was published in 1945, I'd say the blonde in this cover by Albert Drake looks like Marilyn Monroe. The authors inside are an odd mix, the best known of them remembered mostly for things other than mysteries. Emil Petaja was a science fiction author, Joe Archibald made his name with aviation stories, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner) is on hand with a rare non-Western, and Glenn Low, despite writing quite a few Western and detective yarns for the pulps, achieved his greatest success as an author of soft-core sleaze novels in the Fifties and Sixties. If you want to check it out for yourself, the whole issue is available to read on-line.

Saturday Morning Western Pulps: Western Trails, November 1939

This great cover by Rafael de Soto from WESTERN TRAILS was also used on one side of an Ace Double Western (see below). WESTERN TRAILS and later Ace Books were both owned by A.A. Wyn, so I'm sure this isn't the only case where covers from the Ace Western pulps later showed up on Ace Double paperbacks. This particular issue looks like a good one, with stories by L.P. Holmes, Wayne D. Overholser, Tom J. Hopkins, Claude Rister, and Joe Archibald, among others. I've found WESTERN TRAILS and its sister publication, WESTERN ACES, to be consistently good, and of course I love the Ace Double Westerns. I think I've read Leslie Scott's THE BRAZOS FIREBRAND, but it's been so long ago I'm not sure anymore. Maybe I'll dig it out and read it again.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top Detective Annual, 1952

That line "The Year's Best Mystery Story Anthology" makes it sound like the stories in this pulp are the best (in the editor's judgment) published in the past year, right? Well, you'd be wrong if you thought that. This is actually just a regular reprint pulp, with stories that go back to 1934 in their original appearances. Most are from various Thrilling Group pulps published during the Forties. But I'm willing to overlook that bit of hyperbole when you get a good Sam Cherry cover, along with writers such as Fredric Brown, William Campbell Gault, Murray Leinster, Stewart Sterling, Wyatt Blassingame, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Dwight V. Babcock, Ray Cummings, and Joe Archibald. The stories may be reprints, but if you haven't read them before, they're new. And those are some good authors.