Nobody could pack more into a pulp cover than Norman Saunders, as this issue of 10-STORY DETECTIVE MAGAZINE illustrates. Another Norman, Norman A. Daniels, has two stories in this issue, one under his own name and one as David A. Norman. Bruno Fischer is on hand under his Russell Gray pseudonym. Harold Q. Masur, later very successful as a mystery novelist, has a story in this issue, as does an author I'm not familiar with, Richard L. Hobart. The other stories all have house-names on them: Guy Fleming, Leon Dupont, Clint Douglas, Ralph Powers, and Harris Clivesey. It wouldn't surprise me if some of those guys were actually Norman A. Daniels, too.
I've never read an issue of STRANGE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES and don't own any, but I should probably try to remedy that because it looks like my kind of pulp! The covers make it look like a cross between a regular detective pulp and a Weird Menace pulp. I don't know who did the art on this one, but it's certainly eye-catching. And the authors inside are equally intriguing: Norvell Page, Henry Kuttner, Russell Gray (who was really Bruno Fischer), Stewart Sterling, and R.S. Lerch. That's a fine group.
SINISTER STORIES was the shortest-lived of Popular Publications' Weird Menace pulps, lasting only three issues in 1940. All three issues recycled covers from TERROR TALES. This one is particularly racy. I don't know the artist. The stories were all new, as far as I can tell. The best-known authors in this issue, at least these days, are Russell Gray (who was really Bruno Fischer) and Robert Leslie Bellem. Some of the others were familiar names to Weird Menace fans, though, such as Donald Dale (Mary Dale Buckner) and Francis James (James A. Goldthwaite), while Raymond Whetstone, William Brailsford, and Richard G. Huzarski are all pretty obscure, at least to me. SINISTER STORIES came along at the tail-end of the Weird Menace era, or it might have lasted longer. It certainly doesn't look like a bad pulp for that genre.
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.
