Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Gold Seal Detective, January 1936

I don't know if the cover painting by Rafael DeSoto on this issue of GOLD SEAL DETECTIVE was meant to illustrate the story "Rough-'Em-Up Radigan", but if it wasn't, it should have been! This is actually the first of five novelettes starring Rough-'Em-Up Radigan by Clark Aiken, who was really the great pulpster Frederick C. Davis. I've suggested before that we need a reprint volume called THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF ROUGH-'EM-UP RADIGAN, and I stand by that. Also in this issue are stories by Norman A. Daniels (once as himself and once as by David M. Norman), Paul Chadwick, Frederick C. Painton, Tom Roan, and Darrell Jordan. If you want to check out this issue, it's available on the Internet Archive. I've downloaded it myself, and I hope I get around to reading it in the relatively near future.

Review: Secret Agent X vs. Doctor Death - Will Murray

Will Murray has written the Wild Adventures of Doc Savage, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, The Spider, and Cthulhu, and included in those books such iconic characters as The Shadow, John Carter, King Kong, G-8, Operator 5, the Suicide Squad (the original pulp version), and others I’m probably forgetting. Now he tackles another famous pulp character, along with some more obscure ones, in SECRET AGENT X VS. DOCTOR DEATH.

Secret Agent X, for those of you unfamiliar with the character, was a master of disguise who could pretend to be anybody, almost at a moment’s notice. A former intelligence agent, he has abandoned his former identity to fight crime as the nameless, faceless Secret Agent X. He starred in his own pulp that ran for more than forty issues from Ace Magazines. The character was created by Paul Chadwick and written by Chadwick and various other pulp hands, most notably G.T. Fleming-Roberts.

On the other hand, we know who Doctor Death was. A former academic named Dr. Rance Mandarin, he is a master of both scientific and mystical arts and believes our modern society should be wiped out so Earth can return to a more primitive state. One of the few super-villains to headline his own pulp, he appeared in several short stories and five novels, all of which have been reprinted by Altus Press. (I own these volumes but haven’t read them.) Doctor Death was the creation of Harold Ward, who penned the novels under the pseudonym “Zorro”. (I don’t know what Don Diego Vega, or Johnston McCulley, for that matter, had to say about that.)

Anyway, at the end of the final Doctor Death novel, he was apparently, probably, maybe dead. I think we all know how unlikely that is. And sure enough, in SECRET AGENT X VS. DOCTOR DEATH, the crazed genius has returned and menaces humankind again with a bat-owl that can compel people to commit suicide, a couple of minotaurs, a flock of harpies, a ray that can transmute people and objects into golden-colored stone, and other threats that, again, I’m probably forgetting. Who can stop his campaign of terror?

Well, police detective Jimmy Holm, who battled Doctor Death in his previous appearances, intends to try. So does Secret Agent X, and after clashing a few times with the deadly doctor without much success, he recruits a Secret Circle of fellow pulp heroes: criminologist Wade Hammond (also a creation of Paul Chadwick in a long-running series), occultist Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery (protagonist of five novelettes by top-notch pulpster Frederick C. Davis), the Moon Man (another long-running series by Davis), the mysterious Cobra (star of a short-lived series by Richard Sale, who went on to much bigger things), and high-flying pilot/detective Kerry Keen, the Griffon (from Arch Whitehouse, author of scores of aviation-related pulp yarns). That’s a pretty potent line-up of heroes to battle one guy and his minions, but as this novel slam-bangs along with almost non-stop action, the reader can’t help but wonder if even they can emerge triumphant over Doctor Death.

This is another wonderful pulp adventure from Will Murray, who’s been writing this kind of stuff for decades and does it better than anyone else. I’ve read more than half of the original Secret Agent X novels, and this is a worthy addition to the series as Murray really captures the character, although the menace X faces in this one is considerably different. I’ve also read and enjoyed many of the Wade Hammond stories. Although I’d heard of all the other characters, I hadn’t read any of their exploits, but now I think I’ll have to do that.

So if you’re a pulp fan or just want to read a well-written, strikingly bizarre adventure that barrels along full-tilt, I highly recommend SECRET AGENT X VS. DOCTOR DEATH. It’s available in e-book and paperback editions on Amazon.

And to end on a bibliographic note, Doctor Death’s original stories and novels were published by Dell, while all the other characters in this novel originally appeared in Ace Magazines.

Review: Men's Adventure Quarterly #13: Fatal Femmes

The latest issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY is out, and as usual, it’s a breathtakingly exciting collection of stories and artwork from the men’s adventure magazines, expertly assembled by editors Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham, ably assisted this time by guest editor Eric Compton and guest contributor Terrance Layhew. The theme this time around: Fatal Femmes!

They lead off with “The Gun Moll Who Hated G-Men” from the July 1957 issue of SEE. The author is David Mazroff, whose work I’ve been familiar with for a long time due to his true crime articles and occasional fiction in MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE. I didn’t know until I read about it in a previous issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY, however, that Mazroff was a career criminal himself and was deeply involved with organized crime. That certainly gives his work an air of authenticity. His story in this issue is a non-fiction piece about the notorious Ma Barker and her sons, and he does a great job of capturing their bloody lives and deaths.

Don Honig, a prolific contributor to the men’s adventure magazine whose work has been reprinted several times in this series, also wrote for the mystery digests. His clever crime story “Mrs. Herman and Mrs. Kenmore” is from the May 1958 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. While AHMM isn’t exactly a men’s adventure magazine, I suspect there was a significant crossover with the readership of those magazines. A guy like me, for example.

W.J. Saber was really Warren Shanahan, and under his real name he wrote one of the novels featuring the comic strip hero The Phantom that were published originally by Avon back in the Seventies. I was an avid reader of those novels and read and enjoyed Shanahan’s entry back then. Under the Saber pseudonym, he wrote extensively for the men’s adventure magazines, including “Rich Lovers Wanted—Apply Mme. Crielle, Champs Elysées” from the January 1960 issue of STAG. It’s a great, lurid yarn set in Paris in the 1920s about young men being murdered and their blood being drained from them, with a dogged police detective determined to get to the bottom of the crimes.

“Kiss Me and Die” by Hiram J. Herbert (TRUE ADVENTURES, December 1960) is another true-crime yarn about the killing spree of a couple of prostitutes and their henchman/fall guy, an AWOL GI. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of true crime stories, but this one works very well and I enjoyed it.

Buz Rowan, like the author of the previous story, is an unknown quantity, likely a pseudonym. His noir crime yarn “Blood for a Nympho’s Flesh”, from the November 1962 issue of ALL MAN, is about crop-dusting, not a subject that comes up very often in such stories, I suspect. But Rowan, whoever he really was, uses it to craft a gut-punch of a story that could have been a Gold Medal novel in miniature.

I’ve read several stories and a novel by Dean W. Ballenger, and his work never fails to entertain. “The Incredible Norwegian Ice Nymphs” (NEW MAN, September 1963) is a World War II yarn about Norwegian women who fight back against the Nazis and prove to be just as deadly as their men. It’s a punchy, very entertaining tale, as you’d expect from Ballenger.

None other than the great pulp author Paul Chadwick, creator of Secret Agent X and Wade Hammond, shows up with “The Ever-Lovin’ Nude Who Watched Her Boyfriends Die” from the May 1969 issue of REAL MEN. This is the only story Chadwick wrote for the men’s adventure magazines, but it appeared three times under three different titles, in three different magazines, to boot! It’s a good story about a serial murderess who uses poison to dispose of her victims, set in France like one of the earlier stories in this volume. You can always count on Chadwick to spin a good yarn, and this one is no exception.

“Vendetta on the Street of Lonely Frauleins” wraps up the fiction in this issue. It appeared originally in the March 1966 issue of MEN and is by Mario Cleri, a prolific contributor to the men’s adventure magazines who just happens to be better known by his real name: Mario Puzo, author of THE GODFATHER and many other bestselling novels. Taking its cue from the contemporary boom in espionage and secret agent fiction, this story features freelance American operative Scarlet Tracy and her partner Charlie Hunt. Scarlet and Charlie are in Berlin to hunt down a British defector with a briefcase full of top secret documents to sell to the Russians. There seems to me to be a definite Modesty Blaise influence in this one, along with echoes of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., The Lady From L.U.S.T., and the other books, movies, and TV shows from that era that featured beautiful female protagonists. I am definitely the target audience for stories like this, and I loved it. If Puzo had turned this into a paperback series, I would have been right there at the spinner rack to pick up each new book as it came out. As far as I know, this is Scarlet Tracy’s only appearance, but it’s a good one.

Eric Compton contributes a fine article about fatal femmes in novels, and Terrance Layhew has assembled a wonderful photo gallery of some of the beautiful women from the James Bond films. Both are very worthy additions to one of the best issues of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY so far. But let’s face it, all the issues have been great. If you’re a fan of great art and hard-hitting stories, this volume and all the previous ones get my highest recommendation. You can find the Fatal Femmes issue on Amazon.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Kingdom of Blue Corpses - Brant House (?)

“Kingdom of Blue Corpses”, from the December 1935 issue of the pulp SECRET AGENT X, is one of the more oddball entries in the series. It’s very comic-booky (if that’s a word), with a master villain who calls himself the Blue Streak and wears a blue rubber suit, somewhat like a frogman’s outfit, emblazoned with a lightning bolt. His minions – every self-respecting master villain has to have minions, of course – wear black rubber suits that look even more like frogmen and drive around in a sinister black hearse. The Blue Streak’s weapon in his campaign of terror is an electrical cannon that fires lightning bolts, and as a side effect, the corpses of the people struck by it turn bright blue. No explanation is forthcoming for this side effect, but that’s all right. This yarn isn’t very rigorously plotted, even by pulp standards.

Which doesn’t mean it’s not a lot of fun, as Secret Agent X tries to bring the Blue Streak to justice in a series of extremely fast-moving, action-packed confrontations. As usual, “X” employs several different disguises, and his girlfriend/assistant, beautiful blond reporter Betty Dale, even gets in on the act this time, as “X” disguises her so she can take the place of a young woman he suspects of being involved with the Blue Streak.

The actual identity of the author behind the “Brant House” house-name on this one hasn’t been established, as far as I know. The first part of the story reads like it could be by Paul Chadwick, the creator of the Secret Agent X character and the principal author in the series in its early years. The style changes somewhat during the course of the story, becoming more terse and action-oriented, which has led some readers to speculate that maybe Chadwick started the novel and from some unknown reason, another author finished it. This seems possible to me as well, but at this point, we just don’t know. Whoever wrote “Kingdom of Blue Corpses” did a good job of keeping things moving, even if they don’t always make complete sense.

(Since this post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on May 28, 2010, "Kingdom of Blue Corpses" has been reprinted twice, once by Adventure House and once by Altus Press. The Altus Press edition includes several other Secret Agent X novels. In the comments on the original post, there was some discussion about who actually wrote this one. Some pulp scholars lean toward G.T. Fleming-Roberts, while others think it might be the work of Paul Chadwick. Based on my reading of the story at the time, I even suggested that Chadwick may have started it and Fleming-Roberts completed it. I honestly don't know the answer, but you pays your money and you takes your choice!)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Variety Detective Magazine, August 1938

VARIETY DETECTIVE MAGAZINE was a short-lived detective pulp from Ace that changed its name to LONE WOLF DETECTIVE MAGAZINE and ran for several more years. This is the first issue under the VARIETY DETECTIVE name and sports a Norman Saunders cover, always a good selling point. Inside were assorted house-name reprints from TEN DETECTIVE ACES, DETECTIVE-DRAGNET MAGAZINE, and SECRET AGENT X, along with stories by Lester Dent and Paul Chadwick, certainly the only authors in this issue you've ever heard of, at least that we know about. There's no telling who was hiding behind those house-names. This is probably more of an interesting oddity than anything else, but Dent and Chadwick are always worth reading. In fact, if you want to check it out, the entire issue can be found here.

A Rough Edges Rerun: Secret Agent X: The Sinister Scourge - Brant House (Paul Chadwick)

Like a lot of other stories from the hero pulps, the Secret Agent X novels often feature some mysterious criminal mastermind who wears a mask or a hood or some such. There’s usually some bizarre murder method as well. Those elements appear in this novel, but for once, they’re actually minor. For the pulps, THE SINISTER SCOURGE, from the January 1935 issue of SECRET AGENT X, is pretty realistic. This time around, the Agent is engaged in a grim, gritty battle against a drug smuggling ring that’s flooding the country with a new super-drug. The main touch of typically over-the-top pulp business is the Agent’s uncanny ability to craft perfect disguises as a moment’s notice. Mostly it’s gun battles and fistfights as the Agent works his way higher and higher up the chain of command in the drug ring. At times this yarn reminded me a little of a Mack Bolan novel as Secret Agent X takes on organized crime.

The author behind the Brant House pseudonym this time around is Paul Chadwick, the creator of the Secret Agent X character. Chadwick is best known for his novels in this series, as well as a series of novelettes about investigator Wade Hammond that ran in the pulp TEN DETECTIVE ACES. His prose has a sweaty, breathless, almost overwrought quality to it that makes it easy to distinguish, and it works better than usual in THE SINISTER SCOURGE. There are also some welcome touches of wry humor amidst all the blood and thunder. While this novel isn’t really all that typical of the Secret Agent X series, it’s also one of the best I’ve read featuring the character.

A number of Secret Agent X novels were reprinted in the Sixties by Corinth/Regency, an offshoot of the publishing empire founded by William Hamling that also put out Nightstand Books, Midnight Readers, etc., the line of sort-core novels written pseudonymously by Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Robert Silverberg, Evan Hunter, Harry Whittington, and many other authors. Below is the cover from that Corinth paperback reprint. The art is by Robert Bonfils, who provided many of the covers for books published by Hamling.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on May 8, 2009. It's been a good while since I read a Secret Agent X novel. There are only 42 novels in the series and I've probably read more than half of them, but there are still some I need to check out. I really ought to do that.)

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: Western Novels and Short Stories, November 1949

WESTERN NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES was never considered one of the top Western pulps, but there were stories by good authors to be found there, plus the occasional good cover like this one. H.A. DeRosso has a story in this issue, as does veteran pulpster Paul Chadwick, writing as John Callahan. What little I've read by R.S. Lerch has been pretty good, and while I've never read anything by John Latham that I recall, he published several novels as Ace Doubles, so he must have been an entertaining writer.

Forgotten Books: The Weird Detective Adventures of Wade Hammond - Paul Chadwick

(This post originally appeared on December 29, 2006. The "no reruns" policy of last year is biting the dust early this year. But this post is more than nine years old, so I hope some of you haven't seen it.)

I’d read one or two Wade Hammond stories in the past and remembered liking them, so I picked up this recent collection. As noted in the introduction, Hammond is something of an odd amalgamation: he’s a world traveler and adventurer (and he’s obviously done some big game hunting, judging by the trophies mounted on the walls of his apartment), he’s been a newspaper correspondent, and he’s also an unofficial consultant for the police, who have a habit of calling him in whenever there’s some unusual murder.

These stories from the pulps Detective-Dragnet and Ten Detective Aces do a good job of tracing the development of the series during its nearly five-year run. In the early stories, Hammond functions as a pretty standard hardboiled dick, taking on various gangsters and killers. But as the series goes on the murder methods become more bizarre, and soon enough Hammond is facing killer robots, giant tarantulas, ghosts, mysterious balls of deadly purple light that strike from the skies, and walking skeletons. This is a pretty entertaining blend of the hardboiled detective and weird menace genres, and true to the weird menace roots, most of the stories have the old Scooby-Doo resolution, where it turns out there’s a logical explanation for the seemingly supernatural events.

Chadwick, probably best known as the originator of Secret Agent X and author about about a third of the novels featuring that character, was a good solid pulp writer who could handle gritty action scenes and moody, atmospheric horror with equal skill. The only drawback to these Wade Hammond stories is that despite his colorful background Hammond never really comes alive as a character for me. For some reason he remains rather flat. Still, I enjoyed this collection, especially the stories with the more bizarre angles, and I wouldn’t hesitate to read more Wade Hammond stories if I came across them.

UPDATE: The copy of this book I read back in '06 was lost in the big fire, but I recently picked up a replacement copy of it, along with the other three volumes in the series which completes the reprinting of the Wade Hammond stories. I'm sure I'll be posting about them when I get around to them.

Forgotten Books: Ringmaster of Doom - Brant House (G.T. Fleming-Roberts)

When you saw the title RINGMASTER OF DOOM and the by-line Brant House, you probably thought, “Hey, a Secret Agent X novel about the circus!” I know that’s the first thing that went through my mind. Well, as it turns out, this is a Secret Agent X novel, all right, from the November 1935 issue of the pulp magazine of the same name, but there’s no sign of a circus. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good pulp yarn.


This one finds New York City being terrorized by a series of robberies and kidnappings being carried out by brutal, misshapen fiends who look like Neanderthal men. (And speaking of Neanderthals terrorizing modern-day America, I believe there’s a Spider novel by Norvell Page that features the same sort of menace.) Naturally, Secret Agent X has to investigate, and he starts at a fabulous society party being hosted by one of the rich men targeted for kidnapping. While he’s there he has his first violent encounter with one of the beast-men and also runs into a beautiful, redheaded, evil female spy he first crossed swords with during the Great War. From there it’s one breathless adventure after another as the Agent battles the schemes of the mysterious mastermind who calls himself Thoth, after the Egyptian god of the dead, and even wears an ibis-headed mask to make himself look like Thoth.


You know by now whether or not you love this stuff or think it’s just about the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard of. And you know which camp I fall into. You’ve got your Neanderthals serving as henchmen for a criminal genius. You’ve got said criminal genius lashing his prisoners with an electric whip. You’ve got Secret Agent X escaping death-trap after death-trap by the skin of his teeth. And finally you’ve got a battle royal in a network of abandoned sewers along the East River that’s being flooded. There’s not much time to take a breath in this one, and that’s good, of course, because it is wildly, unabashedly, and wonderfully goofy.


But no circus. That setting was a staple of pulp yarns. I don’t know if any of the Secret Agent X novels takes place in a circus, but it would have been a good setting for the Agent to have an adventure. As it is, RINGMASTER OF DOOM is a lot of fun, and as usual, it will soon be available in an affordable reprint edition from our friends at Beb Books.

Secret Agent X Authors

Brian Earl Brown posted this list in the comments, and I decided to move it up here to make it easier for people who might be looking for this information to find it. Thanks, Brian!

I've read more than half of these novels and will probably get around to all of them sooner or later.


1.The Torture Trust, Secret Agent X , Feb., 1934 (v1-1) Written by Paul Chadwick)
2. The Spectral Stranglers, Secret Agent X , Mar., 1934(v1-2) Written by Paul Chadwick
3. The Death-Torch Terrors, Secret Agent X , Apr., 1934 (v1-3) Written by Paul Chadwick
4. The Ambassador of Doom, Secret Agent X , May, 1934 (v2-1) Written by Paul Chadwick
5. City of the Living Dead, Secret Agent X , June, 1934(v2-2) Written by Paul Chadwick
6. Hand of Horror, Secret Agent X , Aug., 1934(v2-3) Written by Emile C Tepperman
7. Octopus of Crime, Secret Agent X , Sept., 1934 (v3-1) Written by Paul Chadwick
8. The Hooded Hordes, Secret Agent X , Oct., 1934(v3-2) Written by Paul Chadwick
9. Servants of the Skull, Secret Agent X , Nov., 1934 (v3-3) Written by Emile C Tepperman
10. The Murder Monster, Secret Agent X , Dec., 1934 (v4-1) Written by Emile C Tepperman
11. The Sinister Scourge, Secret Agent X , Jan., 1935 (v4-2) Written by Paul Chadwick
12. Curse of the Waiting Death, Secret Agent X , Feb., 1935 (v4-3) Written by Paul Chadwick
13. Devils of Darkness, Secret Agent X , Mar., 1935 (v5-1) Written by Paul Chadwick
14. Talons of Terror, Secret Agent X , Apr., 1935 (v5-2) Written by Emile C Tepperman
15. The Corpse Cavalcade, Secret Agent X , May, 1935(v5-3) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
16. The Golden Ghoul, Secret Agent X , July, 1935 (v6-1) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
17. The Monarch of Murder, Secret Agent X , Aug., 1935(v6-2) Written by Paul Chadwick
18. Legion of the Living Dead, Secret Agent X , Sept., 1935(v6-3) Written by Paul Chadwick
19. Horde of the Damned, Secret Agent X , Oct., 1935(v7-1) Written by Paul Chadwick
20. Ringmaster of Doom, Secret Agent X , Nov., 1935 (v7-2) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
21. Kingdom of Blue Corpses, Secret Agent X , Dec., 1935(v7-3) Written by Unknown
22. Brand of the Metal Maiden, Secret Agent X , Jan., 1936 (V7-4) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
23. Dividends of Doom, Secret Agent X , Feb., 1936 (v8-1) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
24. The Fear Merchants, Secret Agent X , Mar., 1936 (v8-2) Written by Paul Chadwick
25. The Faceless Fury, Secret Agent X , Apr., 1936 (v8-3) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
26. Subterranean Scourge, Secret Agent X , June, 1936(v8-4) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
27. The Doom Director, Secret Agent X , Aug., 1936 (v9-1) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
28. City of Madness, Secret Agent X , Oct., 1936 (v9-2) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
29. Horror's Handclasp, Secret Agent X , Dec., 1936(9-3) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
30. Death's Frozen Formula, Secret Agent X , Feb., 1937(v9-4) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
31. The Murder Brain, Secret Agent X , Apr., 1937 (v11-1) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
32. Slaves of the Scorpion, Secret Agent X , June, 1937 (v11-2) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
33. Satan's Syndicate, Secret Agent X , Aug., 1937 (v11-3) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
34. The Assassin's League, Secret Agent X , Oct., 1937 (v11-4) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
35. Plague of the Golden Death, Secret Agent X , Dec., 1937 (v12-1) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
36. Curse of the Mandarin's Fan, Secret Agent X , Feb., 1938 (v12-2) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
37. Claws of the Corpse Cult, Secret Agent X , Apr., 1938 (v12-3) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
38. The Corpse That Murdered, Secret Agent X , June, 1938(v12-4) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
39. Curse of the Crimson Horde, Secret Agent X , Sept, 1938 (v13-1) Written by Paul Chadwick
40. Corpse Contraband, Secret Agent X , Dec., 1938 (v123-2) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts
41. Yoke of the Crimson Coterie, Secret Agent X , Mar., 1939(v13-3) Written by G. T. Fleming-Roberts

Secret Agent X: Monarch of Murder - Brant House (Paul Chadwick)

From the August 1935 issue of the pulp SECRET AGENT X, this fast-moving yarn opens with the Secret Agent surreptitiously boarding an ocean liner at sea that’s bound for New York. It seems that the Agent has discovered an infamous criminal known only as Dr. Marko is trying to slip into the country so he can take over all the gangs and organize them, as well as using his scientific genius to commit terrible crimes. Unfortunately, Dr. Marko is as much a master of disguise as Secret Agent X himself, so it’s going to be difficult to find him among the hundreds of passengers and crew members.

Approximately the first third of this novel is set on the ocean liner, and it’s an excellent sequence featuring the near-constant switching of disguises, whirlwind action, a couple of grisly murders, and a beautiful damsel in distress (not reporter Betty Dale for a change, although Betty does show up later and play an important part in the plot). After the boat reaches port and the action moves onto land, the story loses a little of its momentum as it turns into a more standard capture-and-escape, foil-the-villain’s-evil-plans pulp adventure. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you. MONARCH OF MURDER still manages to be pretty entertaining all the way through.

The author behind the Brant House name in this case is Paul Chadwick, the originator of the Secret Agent X character and the primary author of the series early on in its run. With Chadwick’s work, you can usually count on plenty of action and a few scenes that are genuinely creepy, and MONARCH OF MURDER delivers on both counts. The villain’s true identity doesn’t come as a complete surprise, but it’s not telegraphed as blatantly or as early in the story as sometimes happens in these pulp hero novels.

This one is scheduled to be reprinted soon in an inexpensive edition by Beb Books. It’s one of the better Secret Agent X novels I’ve read, and if you’re a fan of the series it’s well worth reading.

Secret Agent X: Devils of Darkness -- Brant House (Paul Chadwick)

The Man of a Thousand Faces is back facing another evil mastermind in this pulp novel. One constant in the Secret Agent X series, along with all the disguises, is that every criminal the Agent comes up against is the most brilliant, daring, dangerous, etc., that he’s ever faced, and every villainous scheme is the most horrible and earth-shattering. And then the next issue it happens all over again. (This same tendency crops up in the Spider novels by Norvell Page, only more so. But you see it in the Secret Agent X yarns, too.)

This is a pretty good one, with a gang of crooks that has discovered a way to black out all the light in a given area, even during the middle of the day. But of course, they can still see in some mysterious fashion, which allows them to invade and loot banks and other businesses, using metal-tipped whips to lash the blinded, panic-stricken civilians out of their way. The author is Paul Chadwick, who, as far as we know, created the series and the character of Secret Agent X. He wrote the first few novels, anyway, and alternated with other authors on the series for several years after that. Chadwick’s work can be pretty lurid, as demonstrated in the whipping scenes in this novel. He’s also good at keeping up a brisk pace in his storytelling. If you enjoy hero pulp fiction in spite of its occasional excesses – or because of its occasional excesses, like me – then DEVILS OF DARKNESS is well worth reading. It’s never been reprinted, but it’ll be available in the near future from Beb Books.