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.
I'm not sure I've ever heard of ALL STAR ADVENTURE FICTION, let alone come across a copy. But I'm also not sure why it's not better known and wasn't successful at the time, running for only seven issues. It had decent covers by J.W. Scott, including this one, and some fine authors. This issue features stories by Donald Barr Chidsey, J. Allan Dunn, Frank Richardson Pierce, Lemuel de Bra, Rollin Brown, and Arthur Hawthorne Carhart, all of them fine pulpsters who appeared regularly in the top magazines. Their stories here may well have been rejects from ARGOSY, ADVENTURE, etc., but they were probably still pretty good.
This cover is by H.W. Wessolowski, best remembered for his science fiction pulp covers, usually billed as Wesso or H.W. Wesso. But he did a number of covers for pulps in other genres, such as this issue of CLUES. Oddly enough, a number of the authors in this issue are probably best known as Western writers: T.T. Flynn, Tom Curry, Edward Parrish Ware, Oscar Schisgall, and Johnston McCulley. Although to be fair, all of those guys were very prolific in the detective pulps as well. Also on hand are John Wilstach, Richard Howells Watkins, Eric Taylor, and Lemuel de Bra, none of whom I actually think of as mystery writers. But they were good writers, and being good pulpsters, they could do a lot of different things in order to make a sale. Which makes me think this would be an entertaining issue.
That's a nice, evocative "red sun" cover by Edgar Franklin Wittmack on this issue of SHORT STORIES. And you certainly can't argue with the great bunch of writers inside: H. Bedford-Jones, W.C. Tuttle, William Chamberlain, James B. Hendryx, Lemuel de Bra, and Cliff Farrell, among others. Jacland Marmur is listed on the cover but according to the Fictionmags Index doesn't actually have a story in this issue. Still plenty of good adventure reading there.
