Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Detective, August 1933

I don’t actually own that many detective pulps (although a 1931 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY was the first actual pulp I ever owned), so when I’m in the mood to read one, I often head for the Internet Archive. That’s where I recently read the August 1933 issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE. I don’t know who painted the cover. While it’s not a great one, it’s certainly not bad.

Ed Lybeck is a mostly forgotten writer these days. A few years ago, Altus Press published a collection of the four stories he wrote for BLACK MASK, which I read and thought was excellent. Lybeck wrote the lead novella in this issue, “Coins of Murder”, in which a Secret Service agent with the unlikely name Everard Kynaston literally stumbles over a case involving murder, a Chinese tong, and a scheme to destroy the American economy by flooding it with a previously unknown supply of gold. The plot is pretty weak, the criminal mastermind might as well be wearing a big sign on his back that reads CRIMINAL MASTERMIND, and the story reminds me a little of some of Sax Rohmer’s later Fu Manchu novels without being anywhere near as good. However, Lybeck’s lean, gritty prose is fun to read, and the opening pages of this yarn are particularly effective. This isn’t as good as the stories Lybeck wrote for BLACK MASK, but it’s worth reading if your expectations aren’t too high.

“The Corpse From Chicago” is a novelette with an intriguing opening: a hotshot gangster from the Windy City is murdered while sitting in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in New York City, surrounded by people, and yet nobody saw who killed him. A tough police detective gets the case and the story is almost non-stop action after that as he uncovers a war between two gangs of crooks trying to take over the marijuana racket. I’d never heard of the author of this one, James H.S. Moynihan, but he published almost a hundred detective and gang stories in various pulps during the Thirties and Forties. This one is okay. I’m not sure the plot completely makes sense, but Moynihan’s terse prose races right along nicely.

“The Giordano Mob” actually is non-stop action, as private detective Ed King goes after the gangsters responsible for the death of a young operative who works for the same agency. King is known as the Speed Demon, for some reason, and refuses to use a gun or knife, relying only on his fists as he battles the bad guys. This story is part of a series of his adventures written by a forgotten pulpster named Barry Brandon. Other than King’s canine sidekick, there’s not much memorable about this one. The plot’s just too thin to amount to much.

“Picture Frame” by H.M. Appel is an actual murder mystery built around photographic tricks and an isolated cabin on the shores of Lake Michigan where a group of men have an informal gun club devoted to skeet shooting. One of them winds up dead, of course, and it’s pretty obvious the killer can be found among the other three. This is the sort of short, bland yarn that showed up frequently in the mystery digests of later decades such as EQMM and AHMM. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s not very compelling.

Perley Poore Sheehan was a prolific, well-regarded author of adventure fiction in the pulps, but he also wrote detective yarns, including a series about a masked crimefighter known as Doctor Coffin, who was actually a retired Hollywood character actor who also owned a chain of undertaking parlors. I think there were 15 of these novelettes, some of which have been collected, but I’d never read any until “The Chicken King” in this issue. And it really has me scratching my head, because this tale of Doctor Coffin battling the head of “the poultry racket” is just terrible. The plot makes no sense, and the writing, other than a few outbursts of lurid violence, is bland and boring. This is the next-to-last story in the series, and it reads as if the author were tired of it. I really ought to try some of Sheehan’s other work, because he couldn’t have been this bad all the way through his career.

Allan K. Echols is remembered mostly as a Western writer, but he wrote crime, detective, and Weird Menace stories, too. “The Murder Trail” in this issue is about a would-be crook who decides to hold up a gambling den in Harlem. Everything goes wrong, and the fellow has to go on the run, after which things just get worse and worse. This is a fairly good story that reminds me of Cornell Woolrich’s work, without being as well-written. It’s bleak as all get-out, with a relentless sense of doom that Echols captures well.

Arthur J. Burks was another very prolific pulpster who wrote just about every genre except Westerns. “The Gun” in this issue is a short story about a hitman. It’s well-written, effective, but doesn’t end quite as dramatically as it might have. This may be the first thing I’ve read by Burks, and it wouldn’t excite me about reading more by him, but his work has a pretty good reputation and I’m sure I’ll try something else by him.

The issue wraps up with “The Crimson Blade” by “John L. Benton”, a well-known Thrilling Group house-name, so there’s no telling who actually wrote it. A scene in the story matches the cover illustration, which makes me think the painting came first and one of the regular authors wrote the story to match. In this one, a cop investigates the murder of a society doctor who’s rumored to be pushing dope to wealthy women. It appears that a low-class junkie killed the doctor, but the cop believes the guy was framed and sets out to prove it. This is a solid little yarn that’s well-written. The plot might have been better with another twist or two, but it works okay.

Overall, I can’t really recommend this issue. I found a couple of the stories almost unreadable, and the best ones were no more than okay. Maybe this isn’t a fair comparison, but the same month this issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE was on the stands, BLACK MASK featured stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick Nebel (a Donahue story), Raoul Whitfield, Roger Torrey, Norvell Page, and Donald Barr Chidsey, while DIME DETECTIVE had stories by T.T. Flynn, Frederick Nebel (a Cardigan story), Leslie T. White, and John Lawrence. Next time I’m in the mood for a detective pulp, I’ll probably go for one of those titles.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, December 1932

Pith helmet alert! Seeing bullets whizzing through Stetsons was common on Western pulp covers, but I don't recall ever seeing any Injury to a Hat covers involving pith helmets. Surely, there must have been some. Allan K. Echols, author of the cover story in this issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES, was best known for his Westerns, but obviously he wrote some jungle yarns, too. Something about this one seems to me like the cover painting might have existed first and Echols wrote the story to fit it, but that's pure speculation on my part and could be entirely wrong. The other authors in this issue make it a pretty strong lineup: Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Arthur J. Burks, Anthony M. Rud, Wayne Rogers, Perley Poore Sheehan (with a Captain Trouble story--I have a collection of those and need to get around to reading them!), and Thomson Burtis. Those guys were all popular, prolific pulpsters who knew how to spin a yarn.

Forgotten Books: Abu, the Dawn-Maker -- Perley Poore Sheehan

Unseen since it was first serialized in the early pulp ALL-STORY CAVALIER WEEKLY, Perley Poore Sheehan’s novel ABU, THE DAWN-MAKER is the story of a slave revolt and native uprising on the coast of East Africa. Abu, a white barbarian with the soul of a poet, is the slave of an Arab merchant. When he finds a mysterious golden talisman called the Double Eye, only to have it taken away from him by the merchant, who then gives him a beating, Abu breaks free and goes on a rampage. Seeing what’s going on, the Arab’s other slaves join in the rebellion, and the result is a brutal bloodbath during a party at the merchant’s house.

I don’t know if Robert E. Howard ever read this story, but it’s certainly possible. In the opening chapters, Abu is very reminiscent of Conan and other Howard heroes as he wreaks havoc on his enemies and leads a rebellion against the rich, powerful, and evil masters of the unnamed African nation where the story takes place. There’s slaughter right and left for a while, but then Abu emerges victorious and has to deal with ruling an unexpected kingdom while also trying to expand it. There’s also the matter of Khadija, the beautiful blond prisoner who was supposed to be the bride of the overthrown Arab merchant. She and Abu fall in love at first sight, but Abu has sworn a vow of poverty, sobriety, and chastity until he has spread his empire over the entire world and freed all the slaves everywhere.

Well, you know that’s not going to work out.

From that point, the story’s pace slows down considerably, but it never loses the reader’s interest. Long-time pulpster Sheehan packs in enough political intrigue, African mysticism, unrequited romance, and inevitable tragedy to keep things percolating nicely. Eventually, the British authorities get wind of what’s going on and send warships steaming toward the African coast to deal with the rebellion. The action heats up again, and everything leads to a powerful, if somewhat puzzling, ending.

As you’d expect from a story published 95 years ago, the writing is a little old-fashioned in places, but a lot of it is surprisingly terse and modern. There’s also some of the casual racism of the time period, although it’s not as prevalent as you might expect. Still, you should be aware of it if you’re considering reading this story.

Which you can do without having to hunt up six issues of an obscure pulp magazine published in 1915, thanks to Beb Books, which has it scheduled for an upcoming reprint. ABU, THE DAWN-MAKER is an entertaining blend of action and epic drama that often reads more like a mainstream historical novel than a blood ‘n’ thunder pulp yarn. If you’re the type of reader who can put your mind in early 20th Century mode, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy it, too.