By the end of the Thirties, ARGOSY was wrapping up its run as one of the top pulps in the business. It would still publish plenty of excellent fiction for another decade, but it wasn't as strong overall as it was at its peak in the mid-Thirties. Despite that trend, this looks like a really strong issue with a good cover by Rudolph Belarski and stories by E. Hoffmann Price, Eustace L. Adams, Allan Vaughan Elston, Louis C. Goldsmith, Bennett Foster, Frank Richardson Pierce, and an installment of one of the occult detective novels by Jack Mann (E. Charles Vivian). Those are some fine writers. I need to read those Jack Mann novels.
"Three Big Serials Every Week!" boasts this ARGOSY cover, and that's exactly what makes this one of the most frustrating pulps. ARGOSY published a ton of great stories and novels, but if you're like me, you like to have all the installments of a serial at hand before you start reading it. Which means that for a lot of issues, I read the short stories and novelettes but never got around to the serials. I'm pretty sure I owned a copy of this issue many years ago, but I don't think I ever got around to reading any of it. I like this cover by Marshall Frantz, who did relatively few pulp covers but was a prolific interior illustrator. There are plenty of good writers in this issue: Richard Sale, Jack Byrne, John Myers Myers, Robert Arthur, Kurt Steel, and Louis C. Goldsmith. ARGOSY was at its best in the Thirties but remained pretty strong on into the Forties.
