I really like the cover by Paul Stahr on this issue of ARGOSY. Stahr doesn't get mentioned a lot when people talk about great pulp cover artists, but I think his work was consistently excellent and he really gave ARGOSY a distinctive look. The lineup of authors inside this issue is very strong, too: a Whispering Sands story by Erle Stanley Gardner, short stories by F. Van Wyck Mason and Anthony M. Rud, and serial installments by Roy de S. Horn, J. Allan Dunn, Eustace L. Adams, and J.E. Grinstead. Those serials are frustrating to readers and collectors now, but the readers back in 1930 must have enjoyed them.
The mid-to-late Thirties is the high point of ARGOSY for me, with consistently good covers and great writers. But those serials! I guess it didn't matter much when you could go down to the newsstand and buy the new issue every week, but now they're the bane of a collector's existence. Lots of fantastic reading whenever you manage to put together all the installments of a serial, though. This particular issue has three serials running, all by popular authors: Theodore Roscoe (one of the best pulp writers), Jack Mann, and Charles Rice McDowell. The cover-featured novella is by Roy de S. Horn, an oddly bylined but excellent writer/editor. The cover is by Rudolph Belarski. Looks like another typically fine issue of ARGOSY from this era.
I got an email this morning from the great-niece of pulp author and editor Roy deS. Horn, who found a mention of him in a blog post of mine from last year. She was trying to find out more about his work, so I sent her the list of his stories from the indispensible Fictionmags Index and suggested that she explore the site herself. Now, without the Internet, what are the odds that I would have ever made contact with a relative of Roy deS. Horn, a mostly forgotten writer whose name I've seen on dozens of pulp issues?
