Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, June 1947

We start the year on these Sunday pulp posts with an issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES that sports a really dynamic cover by Norman Saunders. Of course, I repeat myself. Saunders' covers were always really dramatic. However, that may be the best thing about this issue. Hard to say because I don't recognize the names of most of the authors. The ones I do recognize are C.M. Kornbluth, Robert Turner, Joe Archibald, and Ray Cummings. Still, just because I don't know them doesn't mean their stories aren't any good. I don't own this issue and it doesn't appear to be on-line anywhere, so for me, it'll have to remain a mystery. But I do like that cover.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Crack Detective Stories, March 1944

I'm always a sucker for a good-looking redhead, especially one with a gat like the dame on this issue of CRACK DETECTIVE STORIES. I don't know who did the art. There are some mighty good authors inside this issue, too, including Bruno Fischer (as Russell Gray), T.W. Ford, Robert Turner, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Robert C. Blackmon, Tom Thursday, and Henry Morton. I don't own this issue and haven't read it, but it's probably another example of editor Robert W. Lowndes providing a quality product on a low budget.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, June 1947

This looks like a Robert Stanley cover to me, although, as always, I could be wrong. But I think I'm correct about there being some very good Western pulp authors inside this issue of 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE: D.B. Newton, Philip Ketchum, William R. Cox, John Reese (with two stories, one under his usual John Jo Carpenter pseudonym, one under a name I haven't encountered before, Camford Cheavly), and Robert Turner, along with the lesser known Harold R. Stoakes, Ben T. Young, Jim Chapman, Ray Hayton, and Jimmy Nichols (who was really Jhan Robbins, fairly prolific under both names but little remembered). Like all the Popular Publications Western pulps, 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE was consistently good.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Mystery Magazine, January 1945

This issue of DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE came long after its heyday as a Weird Menace pulp, but judging by the line-up of authors inside, it was still a pretty darned good detective pulp: Fredric Brown, Day Keene, William R. Cox, Robert Turner, Cyril Plunkett, Larry Sternig, and a couple I'm not familiar with, Steve Herrick and Ken Lewis. That's a pretty good cover by Gloria Stoll, too. Cox's story features his series character Tom Kincaid. He expanded some of these stories into full-length novels, but I don't know if this was one of them.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, December 1943

Well, that's probably the best-looking gas jockey I've ever seen. Jerome Rozen did the cover for this issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES. Any pulp that leads off with a W.T. Ballard yarn is probably going to be worth reading. Also on hand in this issue are solid pros Robert Turner, C. William Harrison, Joe Archibald, and Ralph Berard (Victor H. White), among others. The heyday of TEN DETECTIVE ACES was in the Thirties, but it was still a pretty good detective pulp in the Forties.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Action Stories, March 1932

That's a very striking cover by William Reusswig on this issue of DETECTIVE ACTION STORIES. And you'd be hard put to come up with a better group of writers: Frederick Nebel (with a Sgt. Brinkhaus story; I have the Altus Press collection of these stories and really need to get around to reading them), Carroll John Daly, J. Allan Dunn, J. Lane Linklater, Robert Turner, and Edward Parrish Ware. That's a fine bunch of pulpsters. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Smashing Detective Stories, December 1952

That's a striking cover on this late detective pulp from Columbia. As usual, editor Robert Lowndes has assembled a good-looking pulp with some very good authors inside, even on a low budget. In this case, that group includes Richard Deming, Robert Turner, Seven Anderton, Thomas Thursday, and Richard Brister. Those guys are nearly always worth reading.

UPDATE: Lowell Wilson points out this cover is a swipe from Ray Johnson's cover for CHARLIE CHAN CARRIES ON. I assume that Johnson did this SMASHING DETECTIVE cover, as well. I've seen several mentions of Johnson's work lately. He was an excellent cover artist.

 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Mystery Magazine, March 1947

DIME MYSTERY was long past its Weird Menace phase by the time this issue came out in 1947, but that cover almost looks like it could have been from that earlier era, especially if it had been a little more lurid. And "Death Dance of the Broken Dolls" certainly sounds like a Weird Menace title. It's even by Arthur Leo Zagat, one of the masters of the genre. I believe I have a copy of that story somewhere. I'll have to read it. The rest of this issue's contents appear to be typical late Forties semi-hardboiled detective pulp, although by authors who were good at that: Talmage Powell, Robert Turner, Dale Clark, Cyril Plunkett, and Wilbur S. Peacock.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, October 1947

Okay, that's got to be one of the weirdest pulp covers I've ever seen, but man, it's hard to take your eyes off it, isn't it? The authors inside are great, as well: Day Keene, Robert Turner, William R. Cox, Talmage Powell, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, and W.T. Ballard writing as Parker Bonner. I would have grabbed this one off the newsstand in a second.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Smashing Detective Stories, December 1951

What a great cover on this issue of SMASHING DETECTIVE STORIES. A mummy-bandaged guy with a Luger and a sexy nurse . . . I'd be buying that as fast as I could slap down a quarter on the newsstand counter, assuming I had a quarter, of course. Inside are stories by a couple of guys better known for their Westerns, Roe Richmond and T.W. Ford, plus Robert Turner, E. Hoffmann Price, and Thomas Thursday.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Mystery Magazine, January 1943

This issue was published after DIME MYSTERY's Weird Menace phase, but the magazine still featured some pretty creepy covers, including this one. The main appeal for me, however, is that gorgeous redhead. And of course, stories by Day Keene, Fredric Brown, Frederick C. Davis, and Robert Turner. None of whom, I imagine, are as good-looking as that redhead . . . but I digress.

Forgotten Books: Pulp Fiction - Robert Turner

I know Robert Turner's name as the author of scores of stories (mostly mysteries) for the pulps and digests from the Forties through the Seventies. He also wrote a couple of early Ace Double mystery novels, THE TOBACCO AUCTION MURDERS and THE GIRL IN THE COP'S POCKET, copies of which I used to have but never read. He was also an editor and literary agent at various times in his career.

So when I came across a Kindle edition of this little book of Turner's from 1948, I grabbed it. I'm always interested in reading about the pulps specifically and writing in general, and given Turner's career (which was really just getting started good at this point), he knew what he was talking about.

His main point is that rules don't matter as much in writing as making your stories entertaining, and you entertain your readers by making them feel an emotional response. After establishing that, Turner discusses how to make plot, characterization, setting, and dialogue all serve that end. PULP FICTION is not a dry how-to book, though. Turner gets his arguments across in a fast, breezy, often funny way, just like his fiction. This is a very entertaining book, as well as educational.

There's also a section about how the editorial process of pulp magazines worked. Not really anything there I didn't already know, but again, Turner tells it in a light-hearted fashion that easily kept me reading.

Some of the advice in PULP FICTION would be considered old-fashioned and not the way you'd want to do things today. I grew up reading the pulps and what are now considered vintage paperbacks (they were just paperbacks then), many of which were either reprints from the pulps or written by pulp authors who moved into paperbacks when their original market dried up. So I'm pretty much in agreement with most of what Turner has to say. I've always aimed to be more of an entertaining storyteller than anything else. I like to think that I've never stopped learning, so I read this book with great interest and believe I picked up some useful things. I also had a great time reading it. Which is kind of the point, isn't it?