This issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE sports a creepy, eye-catching cover by Rafael DeSoto. The lineup of authors inside is a strong one: George Harmon Coxe, Johnston McCulley, Norman A. Daniels, George Fielding Eliot, Wayne Rogers, Joe Archibald, and George Allan Moffatt, who was really Edwin V. Burkholder. I don't own this issue, but I think it would be well worth reading if I did.
This is a pretty grim cover by Rafael DeSoto on this early issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE. As is common with a Thrilling Group pulp, several of the authors in this one are house names: Robert Wallace, G. Wayman Jones, John L. Benton, and Kerry McRoberts. (I believe "McRoberts" went into the service during World War II and became Captain Kerry McRoberts.) The only author with a recognizable real name is William H. Stueber, who wrote some of the early Masked Rider novels. The others on hand, none of whom are the least bit familiar to me, are Maxwell Smith, Barry Brandon, and Russell Stanton. I suspect there are some decent stories in here, but I don't own a copy and this issue doesn't appear to be on-line, so I can't be sure.
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.
An abundance of work and some real-life issues have caused me to neglect the blog in recent days, but I hope to get that squared away soon. In the meantime, here's a great cover by Raphael DeSoto. The diving suit, the treasure chest, and the revolver all promise us adventure, and I'm sure this issue of, what else, ADVENTURE delivers on that promise. Inside are stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frank Gruber, William E. Barrett, Anthony Rud, Gordon MacCreagh, and Robert E. Pinkerton, top pulpsters, every one. The Gruber story is an installment of the serial "Peace Marshal", and I remember reading one of the paperback reprints of that novel when I was in junior high. Little did I dream I'd be writing about its pulp incarnation more than fifty years later. There's a certain appealing continuity that good fiction provides in a person's life . . .
BLACK MASK was past its glory days by 1940 but still producing good issues like this one, with an eye-catching Rafael DeSoto cover and some excellent authors inside: George Harmon Coxe with a Flashgun Casey story, Roger Torrey, Stewart Sterling, Wyatt Blassingame, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, and the lesser-known Eaton K. Goldthwaite. If you want to read this issue, it's available on-line.
Rafael De Soto provides not only some action and a good-looking redhead, but also some downright weirdness in this cover for DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE. The Weird Menace boom was just about over by the time this pulp was published, but you can still see its lingering influence in the cover and the story titles. There are some excellent authors in this issue: Bruno Fischer (as Russell Gray), Wyatt Blassingame, Stewart Sterling, Ralph Oppenheim (best remembered for his aviation yarns), and the lesser-known Costa Carousso and W. Wayne Robbins.
This great cover by Rafael de Soto from WESTERN TRAILS was also used on one side of an Ace Double Western (see below). WESTERN TRAILS and later Ace Books were both owned by A.A. Wyn, so I'm sure this isn't the only case where covers from the Ace Western pulps later showed up on Ace Double paperbacks. This particular issue looks like a good one, with stories by L.P. Holmes, Wayne D. Overholser, Tom J. Hopkins, Claude Rister, and Joe Archibald, among others. I've found WESTERN TRAILS and its sister publication, WESTERN ACES, to be consistently good, and of course I love the Ace Double Westerns. I think I've read Leslie Scott's THE BRAZOS FIREBRAND, but it's been so long ago I'm not sure anymore. Maybe I'll dig it out and read it again.
TEN DETECTIVE ACES had some excellent covers, in my opinion. This eye-catching effort is by Rafael DeSoto. Inside, the lead novella is by Tom Roan, better known for his Westerns but also the author of numerous detective and adventure yarns. Other prolific pulpsters on hand include Joe Archibald, Arthur J. Burks, J. Lane Linklater, Orlando Rigoni, and Paul W. Fairman.
Clearly, deep sea diving was considered adventurous during the pulp era, because such scenes show up fairly often on pulp covers, such as this one by Rafael DeSoto from the March 1939 issue of ADVENTURE. The scene depicted may not actually be underwater, but you can tell the guy just came from there because of the chest of doubloons he's holding. I don't know if this cover illustrates one of the stories inside or is just a generic adventure image; the latter, I suspect. But I'm sure the stories in this issue are good, considering that they were written by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frank Gruber, Gordon MacCreagh, William E. Barrett, Anthony Rud, and Robert E. Pinkerton. Looks like a solid issue all the way around.
ALL DETECTIVE MAGAZINE wasn't all that successful for Dell, running less than three years, but it had some good covers, like this one by Rafael DeSoto, and some fine authors, including in this issue Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick C. Painton, Dwight V. Babcock, Edward P. Norris, and Hapsburg Liebe. I love that redheaded babe's expression.
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.
The first issue of a fairly long-running pulp that was inspired by the success of RANCH ROMANCES. The cover is by Rafael De Soto and not surprisingly is a good one, and inside are stories by Robert Dale Denver (who was really Ray Nafziger), Allan K. Echols, Donald Bayne Hobart, Lawrence A. Keating, and Ray Nafziger again, writing under his own name this time. As you can tell by that line-up of authors, the Western romance pulps weren't that much different from the regular Western pulps.
