Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Mask, September 1933

What would 20 cents buy in 1933? Well, it would buy a lot of things I suppose, but one possible answer is that it would buy an issue of BLACK MASK with stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick Nebel, Raoul Whitfield, W.T. Ballard, Roger Torrey, and Eugene Cunningham. That's just a spectacular group of authors. Cunningham is best remembered as a Western author, but he wrote quite a few hardboiled yarns, too. His story in this issue is the first in a series about hotel detective Cleve Corby. Nebel's story is part of his Kennedy and McBride series, Gardner's features the phantom crook Ed Jenkins, Ballard writes about Hollywood troubleshooter Bill Lennox, Torrey's story is about policeman Dal Prentice, and Whitfield's is the first of two about private eye Dion Davies. Several of the stories from this issue have been reprinted, and I'm sure they're well worth seeking out. By the way, the cover of this issue is by J.W. Schlaikjer, who did quite a few covers for BLACK MASK during this era.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Bodyguard - Roger Torrey

Roger Torrey was one of the leading authors of hardboiled detective fiction for the pulps during the Thirties and Forties, starting out in BLACK MASK and writing for a number of other pulps as well, including SPICY DETECTIVE, PRIVATE DETECTIVE, and Street & Smith’s DETECTIVE STORY. 

Torrey’s work has two major strengths. One is the easygoing, conversational style in which the stories are told. According to Black Dog Books’ editor and publisher, Tom Roberts, reading a story by Roger Torrey is like sitting in a bar somewhere and listening to a guy spin an exciting yarn about something that happened to him. The fact that the guy is usually a private eye, and the story concerns some bizarre case mixed up with murder and beautiful babes, is a real plus.

The colorful characterization of the narrators in most of Torrey’s stories is their other strong point. Despite the fact that they all have different names, those narrators are basically the same person: a private detective, often an ex-cop and a lone operative, smart but not infallible, tough but no superman, basically a decent sort but not above a little chicanery and lechery. He’ll get beaten up when the odds are against him, he’ll be fooled by an attractive woman from time to time, and he’ll muddle his way through cases with dogged determination as much as anything else. But in the end, he comes up with the killer every time, of course.

Torrey’s background included stints as a piano player in nightclubs and an organist in movie theaters, and his stories often have some sort of show business background. He was a heavy drinker, and so are many of his characters. Despite their sometimes oddball plot elements, the stories have an air of authenticity about them, including a fatalism that foreshadows Torrey’s early death. (He wasn’t even 40 yet when he passed away, probably from alcoholism.)

BODYGUARD reprints eleven stories, several of them long novellas. While not all of them are what you’d call rigorously plotted, they’re all very entertaining and enjoyable. The book also includes an informative introduction by long-time author and editor Ron Goulart, as well as the first-ever bibliography of Torrey’s work. I had a great time reading BODYGUARD, and if you’re a fan of hardboiled pulp fiction, I highly recommend it.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on March 17, 2010. BODYGUARD is still available in e-book and trade paperback editions, and my recommendation of it stands. It's well worth reading.) 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Private Detective Stories, May 1939

H.L. Parkhurst provides the eye-catching cover for this issue of PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES. "Intimate Revelations of Private Investigators", indeed! The cover story by Roger Torrey is a novella, and knowing Torrey's work, it's probably good. There's also a novelette by Edwin Truett Long writing as Dale Boyd, a novelette by Howard Wandrei writing as Robert A. Garron, and a couple of stories by forgotten pulpsters George Shute and James H.S. Moynahan. Quite a few issues of PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES can be found on-line, but this doesn't appear to be one of them. Looks like an issue worth reading if you ever come across a copy. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Mask, May 1938

This cover is by an artist I'm not familiar with, Raymond S. Pease. According to the Fictionmags Index, he did only a handful of pulp covers, all for BLACK MASK during the late Thirties. I like the tropical look of this one, plus the little details like the wine spilling from both glasses. There are some fine writers in this issue, as well: Carroll John Daly with a Satan Hall story, Frank Gruber with an Oliver Quade story, and yarns by Roger Torrey, Steve Fisher, William R. Cox, and Donald Wandrei. That's a nice group of hardboiled pulpsters.

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.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Mask, August 1940

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.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Speed Detective, August 1945

The cover on this issue of SPEED DETECTIVE is by Gordon Samstag, who did only one other pulp cover (an issue of ADVENTURE in 1946) but was well-regarded as a painter and sculptor. I think it's a pretty good cover, even though the girl is dressed more sedately than most on the covers of pulps from Trojan Publications. Inside are stories by some top-notch writers, including a Dan Turner yarn by Robert Leslie Bellem and stories by Roger Torrey and Howard Wandrei (as Robert A. Garron), plus Rex Whitechurch and Elizabeth Starr. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Short Stories, April 1941

Are there people who collect covers with hook hands on them? Seems like there must be. I think this cover might be by J.W. Scott, but I'm not really familiar enough with his style to be sure. I'm sure there's a good bunch of authors in this issue of DETECTIVE SHORT STORIES, though: E. Hoffmann Price, Roger Torrey, W.T. Ballard, Edward S. Aarons (under his pseudonym Edward S. Ronns), J. Lane Linklater, Eric Howard, Dale Clark, Cyril Plunkett, and even legendary BLACK MASK editor Joseph T. Shaw under the pseudonym Mark Harper. Hard to go wrong with writers like that.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Private Detective Stories, September 1942

This Allen Anderson cover is a good example of a picture that tells a story. Since it's 1942, I'll bet those are black market tires, and the blond shutterbug is either a private eye or works for one, and she was trying to get some photos as evidence of the black-marketeering when those two yeggs caught her . . . yeah, I could write that. But in this case, Howard Wandrei, as Robert A. Garron, probably did. Other authors in this issue of PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES are Laurence Donovan (twice, as himself and as Larry Dunn), Roger Torrey, and house-names Paul Hanna and R.T. Maynard, who might be any of those other three guys, or somebody else entirely. With Trojan Publishing Corp., you just never know.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Speed Detective, February 1943

Are there people who collect icepick covers? Bound to be, there are collectors for just about every other kind of cover. This issue of SPEED DETECTIVE features a particularly brutal one. The lineup of authors inside is fairly strong: Robert Leslie Bellem (with a Dan Turner novelette), Roger Torrey (twice, as himself and as John Ryan), E. Hoffmann Price, and house-name Walter Cook (probably Torrey or Price; if it was Bellem, it seems more likely to me that they would have just used one of his many pseudonyms). 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Private Detective Stories, January 1945

That's a nice cover by Richard Lillis, an artist I'm not familiar with, on this issue of PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES. There's so much red and yellow on there I almost feel like I'm looking at a Western pulp cover. This issue is kind of an oddity in that there are no stories by Robert Leslie Bellem. However, the lineup of authors is still a good one: Roger Torrey, Wyatt Blassingame, Howard Wandrei (as Robert A. Garron), Victor Rousseau (as Lew Merrill), and lesser known writers Geoffrey North, Rex Whitechurch, and Donald C. Cameron.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Fiction Weekly, November 20, 1937

That's a really striking cover by Rudolph Belarski on this issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, illustrating a story by a fine writer, John K. Butler. Also in this issue are stories by a couple of top hardboiled writers, Roger Torrey and Steve Fisher, and yarns by long-time pulpsters Edgar Franklin and Fred MacIsaac (writing as Donald Ross this time around). An issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY was the first pulp I ever bought, so I have a definite fondness for the magazine.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Star Detective, March 1937

Nice cover on this issue of STAR DETECTIVE. I don't know who the artist is. But inside are stories by three very dependable authors--Richard Sale, Roger Torrey, and Eugene Cunningham--plus others by authors I'm not familiar with. N.V. Romero, who contributed the featured story "The X-Man", has only that one credit in the Fictionmags Index, which leads me to think it may well have been a pseudonym. John Mallory and Richard Werner are totally unknown to me, and James Hall was a house-name. Still, this looks like a pretty good issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Private Detective Stories, September 1940

Nobody was ever going to accuse the Trojan pulps of being too classy, as this lurid cover demonstrates. But a lot of the stories in their pages were pretty darned good. This issue of PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES features two yarns each by Robert Leslie Bellem (as Harley L. Court and Harcourt Weems) and E. Hoffmann Price (one under his name and one as by Hamlin Daly), plus stories by Roger Torrey, James H.S. Moynahan, and a couple of names that strike me as pseudonyms, John Archer and Robert Saxon.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Romantic Detective, August 1938

I don't know, the scene on that cover doesn't look very romantic to me. But it is eye-catching, and that's what pulp covers were for. The authors inside are mostly the pseudonymous regular suspects: Robert A. Garron (Howard Wandrei), Jerome Severs Perry (Robert Leslie Bellem), John Ryan (Roger Torrey), Wallace Kayton (Edwin Truett Long), and Eddie Sommers, whose only credit is his story in this issue, so that's probably not his real name, either!

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective, May 1, 1934

This DIME DETECTIVE cover has a real Weird Menace look to it. The contents appear to be pure hardboiled detective, though, with stories by Frederick Nebel (a Cardigan yarn), Erle Stanley Gardner, and Roger Torrey, along with a couple of lesser known authors, Maxwell Hawkins and Anson Hatch.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Short Stories, July 1938

There's always plenty going on in a Norman Saunders pulp cover. He could pack more action into a cover without making it seem crowded than any other artist I've come across. There's a fine line-up of writers in this issue of DETECTIVE SHORT STORIES, too: Philip Ketchum, Roger Torrey, Wyatt Blassingame, Frederick C. Painton, and more.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Double Detective, November 1937

I'm often amazed at the table of contents in some of these pulps. Like this one: stories by Leslie Charteris (a Saint yarn), Max Brand, Cornell Woolrich, Richard Sale, Cleve F. Adams, Roger Torrey, Dale Clark, and Walter Ripperger. That's all. Just a normal issue in those days.

Now Available From Black Dog Books

Black Dog Books has six new titles now available for order, and it's a pulp bonanza!

The Garden of TNT by William J. Makin—The compete adventures of the Red Wolf of Arabia. With an introduction by Mike Ashley.

Dying Comes Hard by James P. Olsen—Two-fisted investigator "Hard Guy" Dallas Duane knocks the crime out of these oil field mysteries. With an introduction by James Reasoner.

The Voice of the Night by Hugh Pendexter—Jeff Faschon, Inquirer, is called in to solve a string of baffling mysteries. With an introduction by Evan Lewis.

Tarrano the Conqueror by Ray Cummings—A war between worlds as Tarrano the Conqueror attempts to take over the Earth. With an introduction by Tom Roberts.

Death Has An Escort by Roger Torrey—Crime comes in many forms, great and small—but no crime compares to murder! With an introduction by Richard A. Moore.

and

Windy City Pulp Stories No. 15—celebrating H.P Lovecraft and the Street & Smith comics.

As noted above, I wrote the intro for DYING COMES HARD, and it's a really good book, as purely entertaining as anything I've read recently. I'm sure the others are all great as well and I look forward to reading them. I've read some of the Red Wolf of Arabia stories in BLUE BOOK and really enjoyed them. Roger Torrey is another long-time favorite of mine. Tom Roberts does a beautiful job with these books, and if you're a pulp fan you can't go wrong with anything he publishes.

Bodyguard - Roger Torrey

Roger Torrey was one of the leading authors of hardboiled detective fiction for the pulps during the Thirties and Forties, starting out in BLACK MASK and writing for a number of other pulps as well, including SPICY DETECTIVE, PRIVATE DETECTIVE, and Street & Smith’s DETECTIVE STORY. This new volume from Black Dog Books, BODYGUARD, is the first major collection of his work.

Torrey’s work has two major strengths. One is the easy-going, conversational style in which the stories are told. According to Black Dog Books’ editor and publisher, Tom Roberts, reading a story by Roger Torrey is like sitting in a bar somewhere and listening to a guy spin an exciting yarn about something that happened to him. The fact that the guy is usually a private eye, and the story concerns some bizarre case mixed up with murder and beautiful babes, is a real plus.

The colorful characterization of the narrators in most of Torrey’s stories is their other strong point. Despite the fact that they all have different names, those narrators are basically the same person: a private detective, often an ex-cop and a lone operative, smart but not infallible, tough but no superman, basically a decent sort but not above a little chicanery and lechery. He’ll get beaten up when the odds are against him, he’ll be fooled by an attractive woman from time to time, and he’ll muddle his way through cases with dogged determination as much as anything else. But in the end, he comes up with the killer every time, of course.

Torrey’s background included stints as a piano player in nightclubs and an organist in movie theaters, and his stories often have some sort of show business background. He was a heavy drinker, and so are many of his characters. Despite their sometimes oddball plot elements, the stories have an air of authenticity about them, including a fatalism that foreshadows Torrey’s early death. (He wasn’t even 40 yet when he passed away, probably from alcoholism.)

BODYGUARD reprints eleven stories, several of them long novellas. While not all of them are what you’d call rigorously plotted, they’re all very entertaining and enjoyable. The book also includes an informative introduction by long-time author and editor Ron Goulart, as well as the first-ever bibliography of Torrey’s work. Torrey hasn’t actually been forgotten – reprints of his stories have popped up in anthologies over the years – but he’s certainly been neglected. BODYGUARD is the first step in remedying that situation. I had a great time reading it, and if you’re a fan of hardboiled pulp fiction, I highly recommend it.