Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, May 25, 1942

I don’t have this issue of SHORT STORIES, and I’m not particularly fond of that Pete Kuhlhoff cover, but Wildside Press just reprinted the lead novella, “Master of Dragons” by E. Hoffmann Price in paperback and e-book editions, and since I just read it, I want to write about it.

Price is a long-time favorite of mine. Some of his stories are better than others, of course, but it seems like he always brought a solid effort to everything he wrote, no matter what the genre or market. Many years ago I got my hands on a copy of FAR LANDS, OTHER DAYS, a massive collection of his adventure stories from various pulps, and I absolutely loved it. I own a copy of that volume now, and I ought to reread it one of these days.

In the meantime, “Master of Dragons” is a World War II espionage yarn. Naval intelligence agent Gil Jordan undergoes plastic surgery to make him look like a shady Australian who may be working as a spy for the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies in the days shortly before Pearl Harbor. When the man is murdered, Jordan takes his place and finds himself up to his neck in a dangerous investigation involving a Japanese society of assassins, a beautiful and mysterious blonde who can’t be trusted, hidden airfields, and a date with a firing squad. Price keeps things moving along briskly, and although there are definitely some pulpish elements, this reads a little more like a serious espionage story of the type that would become more prevalent in the Fifties and Sixties.

I have a strong hunch that it was written a short time before Pearl Harbor, when people suspected the Japanese were about to do something but weren’t sure what, and then the ending was revised before the story was published in May 1942. But like I said, that’s just a hunch. Either way, it’s a good story and I enjoyed it.

Elsewhere in this issue, there’s a really strong line-up of authors, including H. Bedford-Jones, Day Keene, William MacLeod Raine, Caddo Cameron, Robert R. Mill, S. Omar Barker, H.S.M. Kemp, and Phil Richards. SHORT STORIES was a consistently top-notch adventure pulp and this appears to be an above-average issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fight Stories, Spring 1952

I didn't realize FIGHT STORIES was still being published as late as 1952. This was, in fact, the final issue in a run that began all the way back in June 1928. The cover of this last issue is by George Gross, who did a lot of great covers for Fiction House pulps. Jack Kofoed, one of the long-time stalwarts of FIGHT STORIES has a feature inside, and there are some interesting writers on hand, including Larry Holden (who was really mystery writer Lorenz Heller, much reprinted in recent years by Stark House) and Western pulpsters Clifton Adams and Phil Richards, along with names new to me such as Barney Barnett, Burgess Leonard, and Francis Paul Pyne. I think of Robert E. Howard when I think of FIGHT STORIES, of course, but it was a decent market for other pulp writers for a long time.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, July 27, 1929

Remington Schuyler was the regular cover artist for WILD WEST WEEKLY during the late Twenties. I can't say that I'm a huge fan of his work, but I like this one pretty well. WILD WEST WEEKLY always published a lot of series and house-name stories, of course, and this issue is no exception. The lead feature for a number of years was the Billy West/Circle J series, published under the house-name Cleve Endicott. The one in this issue is actually by Phil Richards, who wrote the Kid Calvert series in WESTERN ACES that I liked a lot. Also on hand are J. Allan Dunn with a Whistlin' Kid story as by Emery Jackson; Galen C. Colin with a Lum Yates story as by Collins Hafford; a Looshus Carey story by Houston Irvine (don't know either of those names); a Ranny Kid story by Clee Woods (I've at least heard of Clee Woods and seen his name on many Western pulp TOCs), and non-series stories by Stephen Payne, Archie Joscelyn, Paul S. Powers (twice, as by Philip F. Deere and Kent Bennett), and Gip Akin, whoever he was.

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.

Forgotten Books: The Hell-Born Clan - Phil Richards

Pursued by Sheriff Terry Reynolds, who is both the girl he loves and his most relentless enemy, noble outlaw Kid Calvert is shot and wounded by Terry while he and Dandy McLain, another member of Calvert’s Horde, are being pursued by a posse. Embittered by this, the Kid decides that if he’s going to be harried and hunted as an owlhoot, even though he only breaks the law to help people who need it, then he might as well start acting like a real owlhoot. But before he can do this . . .

The Kid finds an abandoned baby! Terry is framed as a crooked sheriff and is threatened by a lynch mob! A gang of rustlers led by the notorious bandido known as Brazito shoot up the town! A hunchbacked saloon swamper becomes a kill-crazy gunslinger! Herds of stolen cattle disappear into thin air!

Yes, it’s another crazed, breathless, over-the-top adventure of Kid Calvert and Calvert’s Horde from Phil Richards. “The Hell-Born Clan” is the longest and last and best of these breakneck yarns. It appeared in the August 1935 issue of WESTERN ACES, after a four-month gap in the series since the previous story “Senorita Death”. If you’re expecting some resolution since this is the final story, you won’t get it, but you will get an incredible amount of action as guns blaze and horses gallop almost constantly. Somehow in the midst of all that, Richards manages to put together a fairly coherent and complicated mystery plot. Sure, quite a bit of it depends on coincidence, and you’ll probably see the big twist at the end coming, but as far as I’m concerned, he makes it all work.

Over and above that, what runs all the way through this series is the doomed, epic love story between Kid Calvert and Terry Reynolds, the likes of which I haven’t encountered in any other Western pulp—and I’ve read a bunch of them. All the hard ridin’ and shootin’ is just window dressing for this tragic romance. That’s what sets the Kid Calvert stories apart, and what makes the collection of them from Altus Press one of the best books I’ve read this year.

At this late date, we’ll never know whether Richards was aware the series was coming to an end, or if he assumed that the Kid would ride again. But I’m really sorry there are no more of these to read. I hope the Kid and Terry finally found some peace and happiness together . . . but I think it’s more likely they died side by side, with guns blazing as they battled against evil-doers.

Forgotten Books: Senorita Death - Phil Richards

First of all, is that a great title or what? "Senorita Death" is the fourth Kid Calvert "novel" to appear in the pulp WESTERN ACES (in the April 1935 issue, to be precise, with the usual fine cover by Rafael DeSoto), and it's also the shortest one in the series. Perhaps because of that, author Phil Richards drops us right down in the middle of the action as good-guy outlaw Kid Calvert is trying to find out what's behind the disappearance of several wealthy men in the bordertown of San Pablo. His investigation takes him to a cantina where the beautiful Dolores Estrada is singing. Is beautiful gun-totin' sheriff Terry Reynolds finally going to have some competition for the Kid's owlhoot heart?

Well, maybe, but there's not really much time for romance in this yarn, because the action hardly ever stops. Except for when the Kid is wounded in one of the many gunfights and passes out or gets hit over the head by a villain and knocked cold. The rest of the time there's lots of powder burning and a somewhat muddled plot about land speculation and the nefarious goings-on at the inappropriately named Peaceful Ranch.

As always, Richards' prose is breathless and terse and full of movement. Action and dialogue and plot all hurtle forward at breakneck speed. I'm sure most modern readers would think this stuff is awful, but I'm continuing to enjoy the heck out of the Kid Calvert series. There's only one more to go, and I'll get to it soon.

Forgotten Books: Hell's Recruit - Phil Richards

Phil Richards' second novel (or novella, to be more accurate) featuring Kid Calvert and the Calvert Horde is "Hell's Recruit", which appeared in the March 1935 issue of WESTERN ACES with the usual great cover by Rafael DeSoto. In this very fast-paced yarn, everybody is after the notorious bank robber Eagle Hawn: our band of noble owlhoots, the forces of the law led by Sheriff Terry Reynolds, and a gang of Mexican bandits ramrodded by the evil and mostly insane Blade Morales. The reason all these factions want to get hold of Eagle Hawn is because he's pulled off a series of robberies and has cached a fortune in stolen gold, but no one knows where it is except him. And while everybody is chasing after Hawn and his loot, Kid Calvert and Terry Reynolds once more have to deal with their doomed love affair—doomed because they're on opposite sides of the law and always will be.

If anything, this story is even more melodramatic and over-the-top than Richards' previous effort, "Horde of Hated Men". The breathless, breakneck action seldom slows down, and when it does, there's enough angst to fill up two or three normal Western pulps. This oddball blend of shoot-em-up and soap opera works better than it has any right to and really kept me flipping the pages (well, digital pages, since I'm reading the ebook edition of THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF KID CALVERT). However, modern readers should be aware that "Hell's Recruit" is about as politically incorrect as it can get. This doesn't bother me, since I know when it was written and published, but it might some people. It also has a fairly large hole in the plot involving the hidden gold, and I would have sworn that Terry Reynolds was a brunette in the first two stories, not a blonde as she is here.

But despite all that, I had a heck of a good time reading "Hell's Recruit". I really like the Kid and his band of heroic outlaws. There are two more novellas in their saga, and I'm eager to read them.

Forgotten Books: Horde of Hated Men - Phil Richards

Good guy outlaws Kid Calvert and Calvert's Horde are back in the pages of WESTERN ACES with the February 1935 issue, in the novel (more like a novella) "Horde of Hated Men". There's a new author as well, with a little-known pulpster named Phil Richards replacing Lawrence A. Keating, who wrote the first Kid Calvert novel published the previous November. This installment opens with the Horde racing to rescue one of their own, gambler Dandy McLain, who has been framed for murder and is about to be strung up by a lynch mob. Needless to say, the Kid and his friends are able to save Dandy, and then they plunge into trying to solve the mystery of who is killing miners in the boomtown of Beaver Creek. While this is going on, the Kid also has to deal with his doomed romance with Terry Reynolds, the beautiful young woman who has taken over as sheriff from her late father.

This is about as slam-bang a Western pulp yarn as you'd ever want to read, full of shootouts, fistfights, narrow escapes, and races with death. There's also a fairly clever murder method. I spotted the real killer, but it took me a while. Richards, who wrote a couple of hundred Western, detective, and sports stories for the pulps between the mid-Twenties and the mid-Fifties without ever attracting much notice, has a really breathless, breakneck style that reminded me a little of Leslie Scott's work, although not as heavily descriptive.

The Masked Rider was sometimes referred to as The Robin Hood Outlaw, but that description actually fits Kid Calvert quite a bit better. The Masked Rider had only his Yaqui sidekick Blue Hawk. The Kid's got his whole Horde, a band of Old West merry men that includes Giant Anderson (aptly named since he's a really big guy), dour gunslinger Nate Willstock, the above-mentioned Dandy McClain, soft-spoken oldster Grama Sinton, and boozehound cook Peel Rogers. Characterization never goes much beyond those shorthand descriptions, but they're all likable galoots.

All five novels in the Kid Calvert series have been reprinted in a single volume by Altus Press, and if you're a fan of the Western pulps, especially the more action-packed variety, I think they're worth reading. At least the first two have been, and I'll be getting to the others in due time as well.

By the way, the great cover on that issue of WESTERN ACES is by Rafael DeSoto.