Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Wings, Winter 1948/49

In the late Forties, WINGS got away from the usual aerial dogfights that most aviation/air war pulps used and started putting good-looking women on their covers, probably in a shameless attempt to boost sales. I have a hunch it would have worked on me, because I like this cover quite a bit. I have no idea who painted it. The authors inside are pretty darned good, too, starting with iconic aviation pulpster Arch Whitehouse, who in this issue brings back his characters the Casket Crew, the stars of a series going back to 1931. A volume of early Casket Crew stories has been published by Age of Aces Books, and of course I have a copy, but equally inevitably, I haven't read it yet. Also on hand in this issue are Walt Sheldon, a prolific pulp writer and a well-respected paperbacker, J.L. Bouma, best remembered for his Westerns, Alfred Coppel Jr., known for his science fiction and mainstream novels, and an assortment of names unfamiliar to me: Cornelius Morgan, Scott Sumner, Frank Harvey, and Joe James. Whitehouse, Sheldon, Coppell, and Bouma would make this issue worthwhile for me.

UPDATE: Eagle-eyed commenter b.t. not only identified this cover as probably being by Norman Saunders, he even provided the information that Saunders based it on an earlier cover from WINGS COMICS #93 by Bob Lubbers, which you can see below. Many thanks!

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Popular Detective, June 1945

The cover of this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE caught my eye and intrigued me enough to read a PDF of the issue downloaded from the Internet Archive. Carnivals were common settings for pulp detective yarns and I’ve always enjoyed carny fiction. I don’t know who did this cover, but there’s a lot going on and I like it.

It's also an extremely accurate representation of a scene in the short story “Clown of Doom” by John L. Benton, a Thrilling Group house-name commonly used by Norman A. Daniels but also by Oscar J. Friend and Donald Bayne Hobart. The narrator/protagonist is named Ed Rice, which instantly rings some bells and raises some questions. Was John L. Benton, in this case, actually Emile C. Tepperman, and is “Clown of Doom” really an entry in Tepperman’s long-running Ed Race series which ran as back-up stories in THE SPIDER? Maybe an editor at Popular Publications rejected the story so Tepperman changed one letter in his hero’s name and sent it over to the Thrilling Group? Ed Race, after all, was a juggler and trickshot artist who had many adventures set in the carnival world.

Well, I can’t prove it, of course, but my answer to both of the questions I posed above is “I don’t think so.” For one thing, Ed Rice, in this story, is a spieler, a ballyhoo guy, not a marksman or juggler. The story is told in slangy, present-tense, first-person narration that doesn’t sound anything like Tepperman’s Ed Race stories. And the fact that the scene on the cover exactly matches the action in the story makes me believe that a lot more likely scenario is that this yarn was written to match an already existing cover painting. The author was probably one of the regular contributors to POPULAR DETECTIVE and the other Thrilling Group detective pulps. Whatever the truth of this situation is, the story is a pretty good one, a fast-paced yarn about a murder at a traveling carnival.

Elsewhere, the issue leads off with the novella “Motto For Murder” by Frank Johnson, also a Thrilling Group house-name used mostly by Norman A. Daniels. My hunch is that he didn’t write this story, but he might have. Private eye Rufus Reed and his two partners, his wife Pat and his younger brother Johnny, are hired to find out who’s been knocking off defendants in high-profile murder trials right after they’ve been found not guilty. It’s a fairly interesting plot and there are some excellent action scenes, but the characters are all kind of bland and I never was as intrigued as I hoped to be. Not a terrible story, but certainly forgettable.

“Pilot to Murderer” is by Walt Sheldon, a prolific pulpster who went on to a career as a well-respected paperback novelist in the Fifties and Sixties. It has a great concept: the crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber on a top-secret mission discovers that there’s a murderer among them. It's up to the pilot, who also narrates the story, to figure out who the killer is. This is a terrific story that lives up to the idea. I really need to read more by Sheldon.

“Death By Proxy” by M.D. Orr is part of a series featuring British Intelligence agent Archie McCann, who battles Japanese espionage plots in New Guinea while pretending to be an anthropologist. This is the first one I’ve read. In this story, a would-be assassin turns up dead, so Archie has to solve the murder of a man who tried to kill him. The setting and the concept are great, and Archie is a likable, interesting protagonist, but the writing never worked up much urgency or suspense for me. Still, there’s enough to like that I’d be interested in reading more in the series.

Mel Watt’s novelette “The Chair Is Not Cheated” features as its sleuth an actor who plays the villainous Dr. Coffin on a radio crime drama. He has to turn detective in real life when a friend of his is accused in what seems to be an open-and-shut case of murder. What really happened is pretty predictable, but the story moves along at a decent pace. Watt could have done more with the radio background, too. Although it reads like the start of a series, this is the only “Dr. Coffin” story of which I’m aware.

Joe Archibald wrote a long (approximately 70 stories) series about private detective Willie Klump, all of which appeared in POPULAR DETECTIVE except the final two, which were published in THE SAINT DETECTIVE MAGAZINE and MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE. These are comedy detective yarns, a sub-genre which, like comedy Westerns, I don’t usually care for. I had never read a Willie Klump story before, and I’m not a big fan of Archibald’s work in general, so “The Witness Share” in this issue kind of had two strikes against it to start with. But there are always exceptions, so I was willing to give it a chance, and I’m glad I did. Willie is a hapless, wise-cracking narrator who, like W.C. Tuttle’s Tombstone and Speedy, isn’t as dumb as he seems at first. In fact, he’s fairly sharp as he solves a case of jewel robbery and murder.  I enjoyed this story quite a bit more than I expected to, and I’d be happy to read more about Willie Klump.

Overall, this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE is a really mixed bag. None of the stories are terrible and I had no trouble finishing all of them. Only one, “Pilot to Murderer”, is outstanding, but “Clown of Doom” and “The Witness Share” aren’t bad. The others all have something going for them, even if they didn’t have me flipping the digital pages with a great deal of enthusiasm. I don’t mean to damn with faint praise here. This issue is okay and I’m glad I read it, and I found enough to like that I might read another issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE in the reasonably near future. Just not right away.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Fiction Weekly, June 22, 1940

The Emmett Watson cover on this issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY depicts a guy in a straitjacket surrounded by accusing fingers pointing at him. Of course it illustrates a story by Cornell Woolrich! What author would be more fitting for such a cover? Other authors on hand in this issue are Richard Sale, Lawrence Treat, Walt Sheldon, William Gray Beyer, and C.V. Tench. That's a pretty solid line-up. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Pioneer Western, December 1950

This is the first and apparently only issue of this Western pulp published by Avon and edited by Donald A. Wollheim. There was an earlier PIONEER WESTERN, a few issues of which were published by Popular Publications in the Thirties, but the two magazines aren't connected other than by title. I don't know why this version of PIONEER WESTERN lasted only one issue, but it couldn't have been because of the authors: William Hopson, Dean Owen, Will C. Brown (C.S. Boyles, the other author from Cross Plains, Texas), Roe Richmond, C. William Harrison, Walt Sheldon, and Robert Moore Williams. That's a really solid line-up of pulpsters. I like the cover, too. I thought at first the art might be by Norman Saunders, but this issue isn't listed on his website. Whoever painted it, I like it. There's also a comic strip story inside with art by the great Joe Maneely.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Ranch Stories, Summer 1950

THRILLING RANCH STORIES was the Thrilling Group's second-string Western romance pulp, but you can't really tell that from the covers and authors, which seem to me just as good as those in RANCH ROMANCES. Take the Summer 1950 issue, for example, which sports an excellent Kirk Wilson cover and includes stories by Leslie Scott (as A. Leslie), Johnston McCulley, Chuck Martin, Frank P. Castle, Walt Sheldon, Ben Frank, and Eugene A. Clancy. Those are all solid, prolific Western pulpsters, and one of them (Scott) is a favorite of mine. Sounds like a good issue to me.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, Second April Number, 1949

That's a pretty, um, sultry cover for a late Forties issue of RANCH ROMANCES. But not surprisingly, I like it. I don't know who the artist was. Inside this issue are stories by some excellent authors, including L.P. Holmes, Wayne D. Overholser, Ray Townsend, Wilbur S. Peacock, and Walt Sheldon. Clearly RANCH ROMANCES was starting to take on some of the hardboiled tone that was common in it during the Fifties.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Ranch Stories, November 1949

Sam Cherry certainly painted some pretty girls on his pulp covers, and this issue of THRILLING RANCH STORIES is a good example. This blonde looks plenty tough, too. There are some good tough writers with stories in this issue, including Nels Leroy Jorgensen, who was a regular in BLACK MASK early in his career, and Walt Sheldon, who turned out a number of hardboiled paperbacks during the Fifties and Sixties. Also on hand are Harold Preece, Cliff Walters, house-name Sam Brant, and an author who contributed only a few stories to the Western pulps but made the cover on this one, Melvin Gable.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, July 1953

The cover on this issue of WESTERN SHORT STORIES combines two of my favorite elements for Western pulp covers, a gunfight and a train. And a pretty girl, so I guess it's actually three of my favorite Western pulp cover elements. And it's by Norman Saunders, so, well, there you go. No wonder I like it. Inside are some top-notch authors, such as Noel Loomis, Will C. Brown, Giles Lutz, Lauran Paine, Arthur J. Burks, and Walt Sheldon, along with a few little-known authors such as Dev Klapp and Orville G. Hextell.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Strange Detective Mysteries, September 1942

Well, now, that's an odd cover . . . but I like it. It certainly makes me want to know exactly what's going on there. Day Keene, Walt Sheldon, and Edith and Eljer Jacobson are the best-known authors in this issue of STRANGE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES. The other authors are Francis K. Allan, John Bender, and Edward S. Williams, all of whom seem not to be pseudonyms or house-names.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: 10-Story Detective Magazine, January 1943

This issue of 10-STORY DETECTIVE MAGAZINE features another great Norman Saunders cover, with stories inside by some top-notch authors: Norman A. Daniels (with a second story under his pseudonym David M. Norman), Harold Q. Masur, Walt Sheldon, J. Lane Linklater, and even Walker A. Tompkins, best known for his Westerns, of course. Plus some I haven't heard of, such as Tagre Detbar, Byron Dalrymple, and Thomas Lamar.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1950

All that futuristic-looking machinery in the background, and the girl's using a plain old revolver. But hey, it's Earle Bergey's work, so I'm not going to complain. I wouldn't complain about the contents of this issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES, either, since it features stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Henry Kuttner, Jack Vance, L. Ron Hubbard, Walt Sheldon, and Wallace West. That's a pretty good lineup.

Forgotten Books: The Man I Killed - Shel Walker (Walt Sheldon)

The second novel in the upcoming Stark House volume of reprints from Lion Books is THE MAN I KILLED by Shel Walker, who was really Walt Sheldon. This fast-paced crime novel is the only time Sheldon used that pseudonym. The narrator has a pseudonym, too. He calls himself Lew Ross but makes it clear that’s not his real name. The alias is because ten years earlier he killed a man in a bar fight and went on the run.

The law has never caught up to him in his adventurous life since then, but as this novel opens he’s come back to the unnamed city in the American Southwest where his crime took place. The scene of that crime is now a much fancier nightclub and gambling joint run by mobster Marty Evans. Lew meets a girl there and falls for her, but he has a tendency of getting in trouble and before you know it he’s up to his neck in a murder frame, complete with beatings from the cops and the gangsters alike.

Anybody who’s read many hardboiled crime novels from the Fifties will have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen in this book, but the real pleasure in reading THE MAN I KILLED is Sheldon’s crisp, literate prose. The story moves along very fast, Lew and both of the beautiful girls he encounters are likable characters, and the antagonists on both sides of the law are suitably detestable, although a couple of them (a police detective and a former college football star who now works as muscle for the mob) have more depth to them than you might expect. This is actually the first novel by Sheldon that I’ve read, although I’ve seen his books around for many years and have a few of them on my shelves. I enjoyed it very much and will be checking out more of his work.