Review: The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Volume Five - Will Murray

Will Murray is back with the fifth volume of stories in his series The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. While I consider myself a Holmes fan and have been for more than 60 years, there is such a vast amount of Holmes pastiche out there that I really haven’t explored the field that much. I never miss these collections by Will Murray, though. They always ring true to the characters and never let me down.

As Murray mentions in his foreword, this volume collects ten of the more traditional Holmes stories he’s written, without any overtly supernatural aspects or crossover appearances from other classic characters. These are straightforward mystery yarns done in grand style. Holmes (with Dr. Watson’s assistance, of course) tackles the intriguing problem of a suit of armor that seems to walk around on its own without any inhabitant, clashes with a new rival who sets himself up as the anti-Holmes and advises criminals on how to get away with their crimes, and deals with a threat from a couple of past cases. He solves several medical mysteries, one of which threatens his own life, and battles with a phantom that haunts the fog-shrouded London streets. Dr. Watson acquits himself well in these cases and proves quite helpful to Holmes more than once.

These are just wonderfully entertaining stories, and I think any Sherlock Holmes fan will enjoy them. This may or may not be the final volume in the Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series. Murray has a few more unreprinted Holmes stories but would have to write more to fill out another volume. I can’t help but hope that he does so. In the meantime, this volume is available on Amazon in e-book and trade paperback editions, and I give it a high recommendation. 

Review: Knight of Darkness: The Legend of The Shadow - Will Murray

Will Murray has written more non-fiction about The Shadow than anyone else, and whatever he wants to write about the character and his adventures, I’ll gladly read because it’s always entertaining and informative. Such is the case with KNIGHT OF DARKNESS: THE LEGEND OF THE SHADOW, the latest volume of Shadow scholarship from Murray.

This book collects a wide assortment of articles about The Shadow written by Murray at various times in his career. There are several behind-the-scenes looks at the creation of the pulp character, including an examination of exactly how the series was plotted by author Walter B. Gibson, editor John Nanovic, and Street & Smith executive Henry Ralston. I’ve read a bunch about The Shadow over the years, much of it by Murray, but I learned some things I didn’t know from these articles.

Murray also writes about Gibson’s very prolific career in comic book scripting and his work with various famous magicians. Other articles take a look at the different movie incarnations of The Shadow, from the Victor Jory serial all the way up to the Alec Baldwin movie in the Nineties. The radio show comes in for extensive discussions, as well, and I’m always interested in reading about that version since it was actually my introduction to the character. Murray covers all the comic book versions, most of which I remember reading. Well, not the ones in the Forties, although I have read some reprints of them. But I sure remember those from the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties.

As always, all these articles are well-written and great fun to read. In addition to that, there are dozens of superb illustrations by Michael Wm Kaluta, the artist most associated with the Shadow comic books, and the great Frank Hamilton, whose fine work graced the pages of pulp fanzines for many years. This is an excellent volume all around and I had a great time reading it. It’s available on Amazon in a handsome trade paperback edition. I think there’s at least one more volume of Shadow non-fiction to come from Murray, and I’m looking forward to it.

Review: Gangland's Doom: The Shadow of the Pulps (50th Anniversary Edition) - Frank Eisgruber Jr.

I’ve been hearing about GANGLAND’S DOOM, the ground-breaking study of The Shadow by Frank Eisgruber Jr., for many years. By the time I got into pulp fandom in the early Eighties, the book’s original edition, published by Robert Weinberg, had been out for several years. It was reprinted later by Starmont House and Altus Press, but I never got around to picking up a copy and reading it.

When the fine folks at The Shadowed Circle decided to do a special 50^th Anniversary Edition, I got on board right away, knowing the quality of the work they do. And they certainly didn’t disappoint. I’ve just read the new edition of GANGLAND’S DOOM, and it’s fantastic.

This was one of the very first books of pulp scholarship. Eisgruber takes a good look at The Shadow’s true identity, the various false identities he employed in his war against crime, the many agents and helpers who also enlisted in that war, the great villains against whom The Shadow and his organization battled, and the multitude of settings used in the almost 400 novels in the pulp series. He covers as well the three main authors of the saga, Walter B. Gibson, Theodore Tinsley, and Bruce Elliott, and this new edition provides several appendixes, correspondence between Eisgruber and fellow Shadow expert Will Murray, and an interview with him.

Will long-time Shadow fans learn much that’s new in this volume? Well, probably not much. Numerous other books have been published that delve deeply into the history of the character, not to mention the many articles from the journal THE SHADOWED CIRCLE and earlier pulp fanzines. But is GANGLAND’S DOOM well-written, informative, and highly entertaining? It absolutely is. I don’t know of any Shadow fan who wouldn’t greatly enjoy this affectionate look at a favorite character.

And I did come across one idea I’d never encountered before, at least as far as I recall. Eisgruber discusses—and rightfully dismisses—Philip José Farmer’s speculation that the flying spy G-8, The Spider, and The Shadow were all the same man. I don’t buy that for a second, but Eisgruber mentions an alternate possibility, that following World War I, G-8 became the detective and master of disguise Secret Agent X, and I can believe that. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it seems feasible to me. (Using the word “true” loosely, of course, since we are talking about pulp characters . . .)

As for the book itself, it’s beautifully produced. You’d expect no less from editor/publisher Steve Donoso and his associates. I was a Kickstarter backer and got my copy that way, but it’s available on Amazon in a hardcover edition with a cover and illustrations by Joseph Booth (the edition I read) and a paperback with a cover by Marcin Nowacki. There’s also a Kindle edition. You can also buy the print editions and plenty of other great Shadow material directly from the publisher, which is always an excellent option. If you’re a fan of The Shadow, I can’t recommend this one highly enough. It’s a great book and one of the best I’ve read so far this year.

Now Available: Pulp Adventures #46 - Audrey Parente, ed.

PULP ADVENTURES #46 is out, and it’s another fine issue of this book/magazine from Bold Venture Press. More than half of this issue is devoted to the classic movie KING KONG, with a lengthy, in-depth examination by Bart Pierce of a long-time mystery: who played the woman Kong plucked out of her hotel room in the mistaken belief she was Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and then callously threw her to her death when he realized she wasn’t? The answers—and there are indeed more than one—are surprising, and along the way there’s a lot of fascinating background information about the making of a movie that means a great deal to many of us.

Will Murray, one of my favorite authors in the business today, contributes a fine article detailing the writing of his two novels featuring King Kong that also feature another couple of guys you might have heard of: Tarzan and Doc Savage. Even though we’re from different parts of the country and our careers have developed in much different ways, I’ve always felt a certain kinship with Will Murray during the 40+ years we’ve known each other, so it came as no surprise in this article when he mentions knowing the lyrics to the theme song of the King Kong animated TV series from the Sixties. At one time, so did I, and although I can’t recall the whole thing right now, I can definitely still hear parts of that song playing in my head!

Micah Swanson Harris continues the King Kong theme by examining the possible influence of H. Rider Haggard’s fiction on Kong’s creator Merian C. Cooper. Haggard is one of those authors I really need to get around to reading more of, so I appreciated this article.

Over on the fiction side, this issue reprints H.P. Lovecraft’s “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” (also published as “The White Ape”), which is a Lovecraft story I hadn’t read until now. (That’s not unusual since I really haven’t read that much of Lovecraft’s work.) As often happens with Lovecraft, I love the creepy concept of this one. There are other reprints by John Russell Fearn (a nifty little suspense tale, the first non-SF by Fearn that I’ve read), John Burke, and Shelley Smith, plus brand-new stories by Riley Hogan (a nice Weird Western tale), Dr. Richard A. Olson (one of his stories about private eye Nick Stihl, a series I haven’t tried until now, but based on this one, I need to), and an action-packed yarn by the always entertaining Teel James Glenn about a convenience store robbery that features some surprising sword-swinging. There are some assorted book reviews by me, as well.

All in all, this issue of PULP ADVENTURES is great fun with some fine articles and great artwook. You can find it on Amazon or on the publisher’s website. Highly recommended.

The Shadowed Circle Compendium - Steve Donoso, ed.

I’ve been a big fan of THE SHADOWED CIRCLE, a beautifully produced journal devoted to The Shadow, ever since it began publishing a few years ago. Now we have THE SHADOWED CIRCLE COMPENDIUM, an even prettier volume reprinting some of the best articles from the first seven issues of the regular journal, plus half a dozen new articles that make this book well worthwhile even if you’ve read the others in their original appearances.

The highlight of the new articles, for me, is “The Shadowed Seven”, in which editor/publisher Steve Donoso asked more than twenty fans and/or scholars of The Shadow to select their seven favorite Shadow stories, the ones they would take with them to the proverbial desert island. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I contributed to this article myself.) All the different incarnations of the character were fair game for this exercise: pulps, comics, movies, and the radio show. There’s a good representation of all of those, although the pulp novels dominate the lists. I didn’t make a count or anything like that, but it seemed to me that the very first novel, “The Living Shadow”, was mentioned more than any of the others, which makes sense. After all, it established the character and set the tone for everything that was to come after. Several of the other early pulp novels were very popular, too. Even now, more than 50 years after I read them the first time, I vividly recall the great action scenes, the incredible shoot-outs between The Shadow and the hordes of gangdom, and how enthralled I was by them.

Other new articles include a look at The Shadow’s appearances in various fanzines over the past 40-some-odd years, checklists of the novels and reprints, and “The Essential Shadow Reference Collection”, devoted to the various books that have been written about the character.

If you haven’t been reading THE SHADOWED CIRCLE, the compendium is definitely a best-of-the-best volume and is likely to send you scurrying to pick up back issues of the regular journal. If you’ve been reading it from the start like me, you’ll have a great time revisiting old favorites and taking in the new material. THE SHADOWED CIRCLE COMPENDIUM is available in hardback and paperback editions, and if you’re a Shadow fan, or a fan of the pulps in general, it gets my highest recommendation.

The Spider: The Hangman From Hell - Will Murray

As I’ve mentioned before, I have vivid memories of how I discovered both The Spider and Operator 5: I bought the first two Berkley reprints of The Spider, THE SPIDER STRIKES! and THE WHEEL OF DEATH, both by R.T.M. Scott, when they were packaged together in a buy-one-get-one-free deal, off the paperback spinner rack at a drugstore in Stephenville, Texas, where we always stopped when my parents were going to visit relatives in Blanket, Zephyr, and Brownwood. I picked up the Corinth Regency paperback reprint of the Operator 5 novel LEGIONS OF THE DEATH MASTER (by Frederick C. Davis writing under the house name Curtis Steele) off the spinner rack in Trammell’s Pak-a-Bag Grocery in downtown Azle. (Several times a week, I drive by the building where Trammell’s used to be. It’s now a Mexican restaurant, and whenever I go in there, I can look over in the bar area and see the exact spot that spinner rack used to stand.)

But I digress, as the saying goes. You know you can’t get a straight review from me without a healthy dose of nostalgia accompanying it. So, to get to why we’re all here today . . . THE HANGMAN FROM HELL is the latest novel from Will Murray teaming up the iconic pulp heroes The Spider and Operator 5, and man, is it good! One of Richard Wentworth’s associates who keeps an eye on crime in Europe for him comes to New York with some important information. But when Wentworth meets the ship he’s traveling on, he finds that his informant has been murdered. Then Wentworth’s assistant Ram Singh is attacked and nearly killed by a giant attacker wielding a hangman’s noose attached to a razor-sharp sickle. Wentworth’s investigation reveals that this attacker, a deadly assassin known as The Hangman, works for the burgeoning political terror group known as the Purple Shirts, and he’s come to the United States for the specific purpose of killing Operator 5, America’s top secret intelligence ace.

Wentworth and Jimmy Christopher, Operator 5’s real name, have crossed paths before and an uneasy truce exists between them. They usually have the same goal but much different methods in achieving it. Operator 5, as a government agent, has to stay within the law (mostly) while Wentworth, as the vigilante known as The Spider, takes the law into his own hands and metes out what he considers justice without hesitation. It's an explosive relationship as both of them try to track down the Hangman and find out the details of the terrible scheme the Purple Shirts are planning to coincide with a big rally in Central Park.

There’s not quite as much breakneck action in this novel as there’s been in previous Spider novels by Murray, but the investigation by our two heroes plays out with compelling urgency, and when violence does erupt, it's packed with the apocalyptic excitement that’s a trademark of the Spider yarns going back to Norvell Page, the principal author of the series back in its pulp days. Page came up with some great murder methods for his villains to use, but Murray goes him one better in this novel: the attack on New York by the Purple Shirts is one of the most ghastly I’ve encountered in pulp adventure fiction. It’s truly creepy stuff, but it’s also very effective in raising the stakes and making the reader root for Wentworth and Jimmy Christopher even more.

I also like the way Murray ties this novel in with several of the original novels from both series. It fits perfectly and naturally and there’s never a sense of it being forced into canon. This is the way to write new novels based on classic pulp series, which, of course, is exactly what you’d expect from Will Murray.

I had a great time reading THE HANGMAN FROM HELL, as you’d expect since I’m a big fan of both The Spider and Operator 5. It’s one of the best books I’ve read so far this year and I give it a very high recommendation. And it’s put me in the mood to read some of the original pulp novels again. Whether I’ll get around to it, we’ll have to wait and see. But if I do, you’ll read the reviews here, as usual.

The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Volume Four - Will Murray

The fourth volume in Will Murray’s continuing series THE WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES returns, for the most part, to more traditional yarns featuring the esteemed detective and his friend and colleague Dr. Watson. The previous volume presented stories with a supernatural and/or science fictional angle, but there are only two such in this collection.

Murray, of course, has nailed the style of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original tales, or at least it seems so to me although I’m no real expert on the subject. I really enjoyed every story in this volume, but here are a few favorites:

In “The Improbable Misadventure of the Blackish Bottle”, Holmes discovers an unexpected murder weapon hidden in his own quarters at 221B Baker Street. This ties in with Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Holmes story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual.”

“The Conundrum of the Absent Cranium” has Holmes seeking to solve the mystery of a murder victim found without, you guessed it, his head.

“The Second Adventure of the Five Orange Pips” is a sequel to “The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips”, of course, and is a worthy successor to that classic tale.

Also in the original Five Orange Pips story, Doyle makes mention of an unrecorded Holmes case involving something called the Paradol Chamber. In “The Difficult Ordeal of the Paradol Chamber”, Will Murray records that adventure, and a truly creepy and harrowing one it is. Holmes himself narrates most of it since the action took place without Dr. Watson’s presence. This is a great story, my favorite in this volume, and the basis for the fine cover art by Gary Carbon.

The supernatural does figure in the final two stories, “The Impossiblity of the Premature Postmortem Message” and “The Disquieting Adventure of the Murmuring Dell”. Algernon Blackwood’s occult detective character Dr. John Silence is mentioned in the first of these and appears in the second one. “The Impossibility of the Premature Postmortem Message” involves spiritualism, a subject of much interest to Doyle that formed the basis for his third Professor Challenger novel THE LAND OF MIST. I remember reading that book many years ago, and after the hard-headed scientific adventures of Challenger in the first two books, the mysticism of THE LAND OF MIST really took me by surprise. I recall enjoying it a great deal, though, as I did all of Professor Challenger’s appearances. Murray having Sherlock Holmes tackle the subject is intriguing and very effective. “The Disquieting Adventure of the Murmuring Dell” is another very creepy tale. Disquieting, indeed.

If you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan, this is a fine addition to a very good series. I give this fourth volume of THE WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES a strong recommendation. It's available in trade paperback and e-book editions on Amazon.

Spicy Zeppelin Stories - Will Murray

SPICY ZEPPELIN STORIES is a pulp reprint of a pulp that never existed. As author Will Murray explains in his introduction, the concept began as a joke in the early days of Odyssey Publications, one of the first of the pulp reprinters back in the Eighties. Under a variety of pseudonyms, some of them anagrams of his real name, Murray set out to write stories in various pulp genres, basing his style in them on actual pulp authors, but adding in the spicy elements common to the genre (most often, beautiful young women losing some or all of their clothes by accident). The stories remained in his files for years but were finally gathered together and published by Tattered Pages Press. Now, in a real full circle move, Odyssey Publications has just brought out a new edition, using the never-before-seen original cover by Mike Symes and art from the Tattered Pages Press edition by Bobb Cotter.

That background is fun for pulp fans, but here’s where it gets really interesting: this book may have had its origins in a joke, but that doesn’t mean Murray failed to take writing the stories seriously. It may have been early in his career when he produced these yarns, but his storytelling ability was already there, along with a keen grasp of pulp history and what makes such stories work.

The collection leads off with “Gondola Girl”, a novella featuring tycoon King “Steel” Chane, whose efforts to establish an airship line are being sabotaged. The battle between Chane and his rival leads to a South Seas island where an important secret is waiting to be discovered. Murray’s inspiration in this story is Lester Dent, and as he continued to do for decades afterward, he does a great job of capturing the breakneck pace of Dent’s work.

“Gasbag Buckaroo” (great title) finds a stalwart young cowboy trying to solve the mystery of who’s rustling cattle from the ranch belong to the young woman he loves. “Hydrogen Horror” is a World War I spy yarn with a lot of flying action. In “Zeps of the Void”, two-fisted adventurer Solar Smith fights space pirates. G-Man Jeff Holt tries to discover who murdered all the passengers on a train speeding through the Kentucky hills in “Rail Lair”. No pulp collection would be complete without a Weird Menace story, and “Catwalk Creeper” fills the bill in this volume with a tale of passengers on a trans-Atlantic zeppelin flight turned to stone by a mysterious killer. The book wraps up with “Chane”, another appearance by King “Steel” Chane, the hero of “Gondola Girl”. This enigmatic tale brings up more questions than it answers.

While Murray’s writing may not be as polished in these stories than it is later on, the sense of fun and enthusiasm in them is highly infectious. I had a great time reading them. His command of the various genres is top-notch and all the stories race along, taking the reader with them on a thrilling ride. I really enjoyed SPICY ZEPPELIN STORIES. It’s available in paperback and hardcover editions, and I give it a high recommendation for all pulp fans.

The Shadowed Circle #6 - Steve Donoso, ed.

The sixth issue of THE SHADOWED CIRCLE arrived at just the right time. I was in need of some sure-fire entertainment, and this themed issue devoted to the character Myra Reldon and The Shadow’s adventures in various Chinatowns really hit the spot. A great front cover by Joe Booth and a great back cover by Ron Wilber and Steve Novak bookend fine articles by Will Murray, Anthony Tollin, Tim King, Malcolm Deeley, Arthur Penteado, Darby Kern, Robert Kroll, and TSC founder and editor Steve Donoso. I’ve already paid my subscription for the next three issues, and you can, too, as well as buy back issues, at the journal’s website here. The new issue is available on Amazon as well. THE SHADOWED CIRCLE is informative, beautifully done, and great fun to read for a long-time Shadow fan like me. Highest recommendation!

The Shadowed Circle Compendium Kickstarter is Live

The Kickstarter campaign for THE SHADOWED CIRCLE COMPENDIUM is now live. As the campaign page describes it:

Our passion project Kickstarter Campaign is for The Shadowed Circle Compendium: a Large-Format, B&W, 8.5" x 11" volume, of at least 120 pages (more if we hit our 1st Stretch Goal), available in both hardcover, paperback, and high-res digital format. The book will feature some of the finest pulp, comic book, and radio episode articles, as well as art, from the first two years of The Shadowed Circle journal: the preeminent non-fiction publication about Walter B. Gibson's master sleuth, The Shadow. 

The Compendium will also include 25 to 30 pages of Newly Written Articles Appearing Exclusively in this volume. The Introduction to the book will be written by Batman Film Producer, and Shadow Comic Author, Michael Uslan and the Foreword will be written by Shadow Historian and Pulp Author, Will Murray.

I've really enjoyed reading THE SHADOWED CIRCLE and look forward to this collection of some of the best material from it, plus all-new articles that I'm sure will be excellent, as well. I've already backed it, and if you're a fan of The Shadow, I don't hesitate to give it a high recommendation.

The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Volume Three - Will Murray

I really enjoyed the first two collections of Will Murray’s Sherlock Holmes stories. He pulls out all the stops in THE WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, VOLUME THREE, which reprints (with one exception) stories that were published originally in various Holmes anthologies.

That exception is the centerpiece of the book, a never-before-published novella that finds Holmes, his brother Mycroft, and Dr. Watson battling H.G. Wells’ Martian invaders in a second war of the worlds. This is a great yarn that also features a cameo appearance, of sorts, of a Jules Verne character.

But that’s not all you get in the way of crossovers. Holmes also encounters Frank L. Packard’s Jimmie Dale, the Gray Seal, one of the first masked crimefighters with a secret identity who was an influence on Batman, The Shadow, The Spider, The Green Hornet, and numerous other characters. There’s a fateful meeting between Holmes and H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West, Reanimator. Colonel Richard Savage, the inspiration for Doc Savage, makes a return appearance in the series as well.

In addition to those stories, Murray creates his own recurring villain for Holmes to cross swords with, metaphorically speaking. While Giles Greengold may not equal Professor Moriarty as Holmes’ mortal enemy, he’s pretty darned villainous and proves to be a worthy opponent in several stories.

THE WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, VOLUME THREE is the best of these collections so far, and that’s saying quite a bit. If you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan, I give it a very high recommendation. It's available in e-book and paperback editions. I had a great time reading it.

Six-Gun Legends - Jim Beard and John C. Bruening, eds.

I’ve known about this Western anthology and have been looking forward to it for a while. SIX-GUN LEGENDS certainly doesn’t disappoint. Editors Jim Beard and John C. Bruening have assembled a collection of brand-new Western novellas featuring characters who have achieved legendary status on the frontier, the sort of characters who might have starred in pulps, paperbacks, or movies and TV shows. These are all new characters, not the classic ones you might be thinking of from the past, and their exploits are highly entertaining.

This anthology is anchored by three of the best writers in the business today: Jeffrey J. Mariotte, Will Murray, and Terrence McCauley. Here’s the line-up:

Introduction: Return With Us Now to Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear – Jim Beard

The Widowmaker in “Dead Man Walking” by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

The Outlaw Moore in “Blazing Guns, Rolling Death” by Christopher Ryan

El Halcon in “An Affair of Honor” by Duane Spurlock

Mr. and Mrs. Smith & Wesson in “Boot Hill Bondage” by Jim Beard

Porlock in “Porlock’s Gold” by Trevor Holliday

Judge Colt in “The Law of Judge Colt” by Will Murray

The Six-Gun Spectre in “Last Stand at Cedarwood” by John C. Bruening

Deacon Beck in “Five Brothers” by Fred Adams Jr.

Buckskin Alice in “The Trail to Lumley’s Roose” by Terry Alexander

Lt. Aaron Mackey in “Some Choose Honor” by Terrence McCauley

All the stories are good, but I have my favorites, of course. “Dead Man Walking” by Jeffrey J. Mariotte is a clever yarn about a hired killer called the Widowmaker who accomplishes his murderous assignments in an unusual fashion. Mr. and Mrs. Smith & Wesson (that’s them on the excellent cover by Ted Hammond) are a pair of married gunfighters and adventurers in co-editor Jim Beard’s action-packed story, and they’re very likable protagonists. Will Murray gives us Judge Colt, an eerie figure of vengeance whose outfit is reminiscent of The Shadow. The Six-Gun Spectre, in co-editor John C. Bruening’s story, is also very Shadow-like, and the ending of this one is very satisfying. Terrence McCauley’s story is a prequel to his popular series of novels starring lawman Aaron Mackey and finds Mackey as a young lieutenant in the cavalry, posted to Arizona and fighting Apaches.

SIX-GUN LEGENDS is a really strong anthology with an intriguing concept and a good bunch of authors and stories. If you’re a Western fan, I give it a high recommendation. It’s available in trade paperback and e-book editions.

Tarzan: Back to Mars - Will Murray

Mars Attacks! Invaders From Mars! The War of the Worlds! All of those would be appropriate titles for the latest novel from Will Murray and the latest installment of The Wild Adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The actual title is BACK TO MARS, and it’s a wonderful book, a front porch yarn if ever there was one.

To elaborate . . . This novel opens shortly after World War II when Tarzan returns from his military service and flies over the African landscape in a P-40B Tomahawk fighter plane. This is a wonderful scene that really captures Tarzan’s personality. However, his happy reunion with Jane and the Waziri doesn’t last long. Invaders from Mars have arrived in Africa and intend to set up a colony there. Tarzan puts the kibosh on that idea, of course, but after learning that this was only first foray in a much larger invasion, he realizes that to put a stop to it, he’ll have to travel back to Mars, or Barsoom as its inhabitants call it, and team up with John Carter, Warlord of Mars, to end the threat once and for all. Using the method of astral projection he learned in the previous novel, TARZAN, CONQUEROR OF MARS, he heads off to Barsoom and adventure after adventure.

If you’re an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, as seems likely if you’re reading this, you probably have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen. Strange creatures, bizarre situations, captures and escapes, swashbuckling swordfights, and a pace that barely slows down to take a breath now and then. Will Murray captures Burroughs’ style in fine fashion and spins a yarn packed with dramatic scenes. The sections of the book that are told in John Carter’s first-person point of view are also very well done and bring back vivid memories of racing through those Barsoom novels as fast as I could lay my hands on them when I was a kid. Murray includes plenty of characters from those books and references to their plots, as well as tying everything in with Burroughs’ other major series, Pellucidar.

BACK TO MARS is just pure fun to read, and boy, did I need that right now. I give it a very high recommendation. It’s only available in a trade paperback edition at the moment, but I believe hardback and e-book editions may be in the works. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Murray plants some seeds in this book that may well pay off in future novels. I hope so, because I’m already looking forward to reading them.

The Bronze Gazette #93/#94 - Chuck Welch, ed.

I think I was a subscriber to the Doc Savage fanzine THE BRONZE GAZETTE many years ago. It would have been before the Fire of ’08, so I’m not sure. But I realized recently it was still being published, and since I’ve been enjoying THE SHADOWED CIRCLE so much, I figured I ought to check out this fanzine devoted to the other great pulp hero from Street & Smith. So I subscribed and just received issues #93 and #94, the current offerings. I’m really glad I did because I raced through them and had a great time.

While I love that so much wonderful material is available on the Internet, there’s something about the feel of a printed fanzine in your hands. Sure, there’s some nostalgia involved, but THE BRONZE GAZETTE is just a top-notch publication all the way around. #93 leads off with a great cover by Mark Wheatley, who also has an article inside about the painting and how he envisioned it as the way Doc might have looked if the novels about him had appeared originally in one of the slick magazines, like COLLIER’S, instead of in a pulp. I really like this cover. The back cover by Tim Faurote is another alternate vision and finds Doc and the Fabulous Five featured on a RESERVOIR DOGS-like movie poster for THE MAN OF BRONZE.

Inside this issue is an excellent assortment of articles: a look at a very obscure Doc Savage fanzine from the Seventies; a piece about using AI to create art; an exploration of a possible romance between Renny and Pat, and along the same lines, some speculation about Doc’s avoidance of intimacy; an interview with Doug Wildey about an unrealized Doc animated series; tributes to writer Mark Justice and fan/dealer Weatherly Hardy; and an examination of the Doc Talos series, another alternate take on the Doc Savage character. Writers include Will Murray, Craig McDonald, Howard Wright, Malcolm Deeley, Bill Lane, and Alexander LeVasseur. A fine job all around.

#94 has a fine front cover by Bob Larkin with an article inside about it. The back cover by Tim Faurote finds Doc and his pals cast in another movie, this one a Magnificent Seven-like take on THE MAN OF BRONZE. Chuck Welch leads off the interior contents with an editorial that generated considerable discussion on-line. He suggests that the current generation of Doc Savage fans may be the last generation of Doc fans, and I can’t disagree with the theory. We’re an aging group, there’s no getting around that, and younger fans aren’t really replacing the older ones who head off to that newsstand full of pulps in the sky. But I also agree when he says that as Doc Savage fans, we should rage against the dying of the light and maintain our passion for the character and the stories in any way we can. Reading THE BRONZE GAZETTE seems like a good start on that. I also intend to read the Doc novels by Will Murray that I’ve never gotten around to (there are still a few) and reread some of the original pulp stories that occupy a fond place in my memories. I don’t have time to reread the entire series, but I definitely intend to revisit some highlights.

Elsewhere in this issue is some great art by Rick Forgus; a review of THE DEVIL GENGHIS by Daryl Morrissy; a look at the final Doc novel by Lester Dent, UP FROM EARTH’S CENTER, by Steve Donoso of THE SHADOWED CIRCLE fame (I enjoyed this novel much more than I expected to); speculation by Glen Held on whether Monk was based on famous New York gangster Edward “Monk” Eastman (Held makes a good case); an essay on the possible connection between Doc Savage and Charles Atlas by Mark Lambert; and a final note by Howard Wright on the fanzine THE MAN OF BRONZE discussed in the previous issue. All in all, another fine issue.

I really enjoyed reading both of these volumes. They took me back to an earlier and in many ways better time, an era that I find myself revisiting more and more as I get older. A number of back issues of THE BRONZE GAZETTE are still available. I have a hunch I know what I’m going to be doing for a while. If you’re a long-time Doc fan like me, don’t overlook THE BRONZE GAZETTE like I did. I give it my highest recommendation.

The Shadowed Circle #5 - Steve Donoso, ed.

The fifth issue of THE SHADOWED CIRCLE is here, and as usual, this journal devoted to the iconic character The Shadow continues to be outstanding. First of all, I love the front cover by Joe Booth. It’s as good a Shadow painting as I’ve seen in a long time and perfectly captures the feeling of the pulp, right down to the wear and tear along the edges. Booth also provides a couple of pieces of interior art that are excellent, as well.

Editor/publisher Steve Donoso has put together a fine group of articles about The Shadow. Some highlights for me:

“Shadow—and Substance, Part 2” by Dick Myers continues his examination of The Shadow’s organization, how it’s put together, functions, and is paid for. This is fascinating stuff to a long-time fan. Myers’ article was written a number of years ago but is being published for the first time in THE SHADOWED CIRCLE.

“Walter Gibson’s Mysterious Shadow Sabbatical” by Will Murray takes a look at an unexplained gap in Walter B. Gibson’s prodigious output of Shadow novels. Murray knows as much or more about The Shadow and Walter Gibson as anyone alive today and always produces great articles.

Speaking of Murray, Steve Donoso’s review of his latest book, DARK AVENGER: THE STRANGE SAGA OF THE SHADOW, is top-notch and highlights the differences between this volume and the fondly remembered THE DUENDE HISTORY OF THE SHADOW MAGAZINE that inspired it.

“Street & Smith’s World’s Finest” by M.J. Moran takes a look at the early novels featuring The Shadow and Doc Savage, focusing on their similarities and also their very distinct differences. Moran makes some interesting points that may run counter to the general impressions of long-time fans such as myself who have read extensively from all eras of the two series. But when you stop and think about it, he’s right.

In “The Shadow—Strange Creature in Black—The Comic Book Years: Part 2”, Todd D. Severin takes a look at some of The Shadow’s appearances in comic books that I actually remember this time around: the 1953 parody in MAD Magazine (I actually read this in a MAD paperback sometime in the early Sixties), the Archie Comics version (I bought some of these new and remember being unimpressed by them, even though I knew little or nothing of the character at that time), and the fantastic DC comics run in the Seventies by Denny O’Neil, Michael William Kaluta, and various other hands (I bought these new off the spinner rack as well and loved them, although like the change in artists from Kaluta to Frank Robbins was a real shock, an impression seemingly shared by most of the readers).

All the articles are good, but those are the ones that stood out most for me. As always, I sat down and read this new issue from cover to cover. I can’t imagine any fan of The Shadow not loving THE SHADOWED CIRCLE. I give it my highest recommendation. You can subscribe to it or buy back issues on the publisher’s website or pick up individual issues from Amazon. Next time around will be the first themed issue, devoted to The Shadow’s part-time agent Myra Reldon. I don’t know much about this character, so I’m very much looking forward to it.

The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Volume Two - Will Murray

Will Murray is back with THE WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, VOLUME TWO, and as entertaining as the stories in the first volume were, I think this new collection is even better. Here are the stories in this one. All of them were published originally in various Holmesian anthologies.

The Singular Problem of the Extinguished Wicks
The Mystery of the Spectral Shelter
The Problem of the Surrey Samson
The Uncanny Adventure of the Hammersmith Wonder
The Repulsive Matter of the Bloodless Banker
The Adventure of the Abominable Adder
The Adventure of the Sorrowing Mudlark
The Adventure of the Emerald Urchin
The Adventure of the Expelled Master
The Conundrum of the Questionable Coins

All these stories feature some seemingly supernatural or paranormal element. Will Holmes be able to figure out these mysteries and provide logical, scientifically grounded explanations for all the strange events and grisly murders? You may think you know the answer to that, but as Murray points out in his introduction, you may have some surprises in store, too.

As an added bonus, three of the stories (The Adventure of the Abominable Adder, The Adventure of the Sorrowing Mudlark, and The Adventure of the Emerald Urchin) are actually crossover tales that feature Algernon Blackwood’s occult detective Dr. John Silence. Now, I’ve never read any of the John Silence stories, or anything else by Algernon Blackwood, for that matter, but I really enjoyed these and think it’s likely that I’ll sample some of Blackwood’s work in the reasonably near future. In addition, Holmes narrates one of the stories himself, rather than relying on Dr. John Watson to tell the tale, and that’s a nice change. Overall, Murray does a great job of capturing Watson’s voice and Arthur Conan Doyle’s style.

I’m no expert on Holmes pastiches, but I know what I like, as the saying goes, and I really enjoyed this collection, which is available in both print and e-book editions. I give it a high recommendation and look forward to the future collections of Murray’s Sherlock Holmes stories that are in the works.

Dark Avenger: The Strange Saga of The Shadow - Will Murray

One of the first books I ever bought about pulps was THE DUENDE HISTORY OF THE SHADOW MAGAZINE by Will Murray, an author/editor/pulp fan who I probably met through our mutual friend Tom Johnson. This was more than 40 years ago, so some of the details have slipped my memory. But I was a big fan of The Shadow, having listened to the radio shows, read all the original novels published by Belmont (having no idea at the time that they were written by Dennis Lynds, another guy who would become a friend years later) and all the reprinted pulp novels from Bantam, Pyramid, Jove, Tempo, Dover, etc. So I dived into THE DUENDE HISTORY OF THE SHADOW MAGAZINE with great enthusiasm and was well-rewarded. I loved it. It’s one of the all-time best books about pulps, in my opinion. Plus it’s a beautiful oversized paperback with a great cover by Frank Hamilton.

Of course, my copy was lost in the Fire of ’08 and I never got around to replacing it.

But now we come to today, and Will Murray’s latest book DARK AVENGER: THE STRANGE SAGA OF THE SHADOW. This is a greatly revised and expanded version of THE DUENDE HISTORY OF THE SHADOW MAGAZINE and includes all the information Murray gleaned from the past forty-some-odd years of research. I opened it with the same enthusiasm I felt four decades ago and wasn’t the least bit disappointed. This is the best, most exhaustive volume about a single pulp magazine ever written.

Anything you want to know about THE SHADOW MAGAZINE is in here. The authors are covered extensively (mostly Walter B. Gibson, of course, but there’s plenty about Theodore Tinsley, Bruce Elliott, and Lester Dent, as well), as well as the editors and illustrators and the Street & Smith executives who were involved in the magazine’s production. The entire run of 325 novels is broken down into distinct categories, and Murray explores how they were written, how the series evolved, and the various influences that caused that evolution. He touches on the various versions of The Shadow after the pulp ended, but this is mostly about the 18-year run between 1931 and 1949. Rightly so, as far as I’m concerned since the pulp Shadow is my favorite.

The cover of this new edition is by Joe DeVito, who has done great covers for many of Murray’s books in recent years. I really like this one because it captures The Shadow’s personality quite well and also includes Myra Reldon, one of The Shadow’s agents from the novels who usually isn’t featured in artwork about the character and the pulp. An excellent job all around by DeVito. The book also includes a lot of the interior illustrations by Frank Hamilton from the earlier edition. I always loved Hamilton’s work and am very pleased to see these illustrations again. They really bring back a bygone era of pulp fandom filled with printed fanzines and books like THE DUENDE HISTORY OF THE SHADOW MAGAZINE.

Even if you’re a fan of The Shadow and read the original version, you’re going to want to read the new edition, too. I raced through it, unable to put it down, having the time of my life reliving memories of the Shadow novels I’ve read and being reminded of all the great ones still waiting for me to read. Between the great journal THE SHADOWED CIRCLE and the books devoted to the character by Will Murray, this is the new Golden Age of Shadow Fandom. DARK AVENGER gets my highest recommendation. It’s available in both e-book and trade paperback editions.

The Wrap Up

There’s no point in denying that 2022 was a rotten year in many ways, but there’s also no point in dwelling on that. So let’s turn our attention to more pleasant endeavors, such as writing, reading, editing, and publishing.

To take those things in reverse order, for most of this year I was the editor of Rough Edges Press, the mystery/thriller/men’s adventure imprint of Wolfpack Publishing. It was a wonderful job, as I got to work with Mike Bray, Jake Bray, Patience Bramlett, and all the other great people at Wolfpack, in addition to all the authors involved. While there, I was privileged to edit some really excellent books, and I’m proud of what the line accomplished. However, I stepped down at the end of October because I discovered that I couldn’t both edit and write at the level I wanted to, and although I didn’t mind slowing down some on my page production (more about that in the next paragraph) I just wasn’t ready to stop writing full-time. There are still too many books in my head clamoring to get out.

As I mentioned a few posts back, 2022 was the first year since 2004 that I didn’t write at least a million words of fiction. So the streak ends at 17 years, and while I might have preferred an even number (yes, I am a little OCD), I’m absolutely fine with that. I wrote approximately 900,000 words this year. That’s plenty. I think 750,000 would be a good total for 2023. I wrote at that level for many years before I started hitting a million, and I think I can continue producing at that level for a while yet. My plan for next year is to keep up with my regular ghost-writing job (I’m committed to approximately half a million words there) and devote the rest of the wordage to a few books of my own. We’ll see.

On the reading front, it was a good year, not at all rotten. I read 138 books. Here are my top ten favorites, in the order in which I read them:

A GUIDE TO THE GOOD LIFE: THE ANCIENT ART OF STOIC JOY, William B. Irvine

GUNS OF THE DAMNED, Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount)

IN THE PULP FICTION TRENCHES, Len Levinson

STAND UP AND DIE!: THE LOST THRILLERS OF MICKEY SPILLANE, Mickey Spillane

THE SPIDER: SCOURGE OF THE SCORPION, Will Murray

GHOST OF THE HARDY BOYS, Leslie McFarlane

FROM THE FILES OF . . . MIKE HAMMER, Mickey Spillane

THE RANCH CAT (apa STRAIGHT FROM BOOT HILL), Willliam Hopson

JANE FURY, James Robert Daniels

CALICO, Lee Goldberg

I’m aware that’s a pretty odd mix. Two of them I edited (the Levinson memoir and the Spillane prose collection; the other Spillane book is a collection of the Mike Hammer comic strip I had nothing to do with). Two of them aren’t out yet because I read them in manuscript, JANE FURY and CALICO, but they’ll be out next year and you should remember those titles because they’re great. The pulp influence is there in GUNS OF THE DAMNED, the first novel in the Silver Trent series originally published in THE WESTERN RAIDER and STAR WESTERN, and in the Hopson novel because he got his start in the Western pulps, and in the new Spider novel by Will Murray since the Spider is one of the iconic pulp hero characters. My study of Stoic philosophy kind of petered out as the year went on, but the lessons I learned from it came in handy more than once and I still plan to get back to it.

There were at least two dozen other books right on the verge of making this list, including quite a few I edited, starting with Jamie Mason’s Father Barrett series and Ryan Fowler’s Father Tag Nolan series. Both of those feature priests/detectives and both are absolutely excellent, but beyond that, they couldn’t be more different. You should check them out if you haven’t already. Chuck Dixon’s Levon Cade series continued this year with several great entries. Brent Towns added another top-notch action/adventure series to his tireless output with TALON and also gave us some fine hardboiled private eye novels set in Australia. Nik Morton’s Leon Cazador books are fast-paced international thrillers with a great protagonist. Stephen Mertz’s latest Cody’s War novel demonstrates that he hasn’t lost a step and is still a legend in the action/adventure field. And these are just Rough Edges Press books. I also read some great pulp reprints from Altus Press/Steeger Books and several superb hardboiled/noir novels from Stark House/Black Gat Books/Staccato Crime. I swear, if you can’t find plenty of great books to read these days, you’re just not looking hard enough!

Finally, this blog suffered a bit in 2022 because I just didn’t have enough time to devote to it. As a result, there were fewer posts than any year since I started it in 2004—and since I started it in July, that was only half a year. I hope to post more in 2023, including more book reviews, the return of movie reviews, and maybe an occasional post about what else is going on in my life, although generally, that stuff is pretty boring. My thanks to all of you reading this, whether you’ve been a regular reader since 2004 or just found the blog. Like the WesternPulps email group (which will celebrate its 24^th anniversary this spring), I intend to keep this going for a good long while yet.

The Shadowed Circle #4 - Steve Donoso, ed.

THE SHADOWED CIRCLE #4 is out and is available from the publisher and Amazon. This publication continues to be a very welcome return to the classic days of pulp fanzines. The issue starts out strongly with a great Rozen-like cover with art by Kevin Duncan and color and design by Steve Novak. This is my favorite cover so far and perfectly captures the feel of The Shadow.

Editor Steve Donoso has put together an exceptional array of articles, leading off with the first installment of a three-part article by long-time pulp fan Dick Myers, who passed away in 2005. This never-before-published article, written probably in the early Seventies, was found among his papers and deals with just how The Shadow went about financing his vast organization of agents and assistants. It’s clear that Myers put a lot of thought into this and the article makes for fascinating reading.

Will Murray muses about mysteries concerning The Shadow to which Walter B. Gibson never revealed the answers. Tim King tackles one of those mysteries with some very interesting speculation and makes a strong case for his conclusion, as far as I’m concerned. Todd D. Severin begins a series covering The Shadow’s appearances in comic books and concentrates on the Forties in this part. Since that’s an area of The Shadow's history which I’ve seldom read about in detail, I learned a lot and really enjoyed this article, as I did the following article by Daryl Morrisey that covers the comic book meetings between The Shadow and Doc Savage. John Olsen, the only person I can think of who’s read every single Shadow pulp novel, writes about the radio show this time around, in particular the final broadcast, and his article is both informative and poignant.

This issue also features the second part of a lengthy interview with writer and producer Michael Uslan, who has written several comic book stories and graphic novels featuring The Shadow. Uslan discusses several mini-series I’d never even heard of, so of course I had to go to Amazon and pick up copies of them. I’m looking forward to reading them.

The back cover features the two novels written by Will Murray that feature meetings between Doc Savage and The Shadow, THE SINISTER SHADOW and EMPIRE OF DOOM, with beautiful artwork by Joe DeVito. It’s a fitting wrap-up for what is, in my opinion, the finest issue of THE SHADOWED CIRCLE so far. If you’re a fan of the character, I give it my highest recommendation . . . and I suspect the next issue will continue that trajectory.

The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu - Will Murray

I’m sure I encountered mentions of H.P. Lovecraft in reading about Robert E. Howard in the introductions to the Lancer editions of the Conan stories during the Sixties. But I don’t think I ever read any fiction related to what we now call the Cthulhu Mythos until some of Lovecraft’s creations popped up in issues of Marvel’s DOCTOR STRANGE during the Seventies. I didn’t read any of Lovecraft’s original stories until much later.

While I’m only a lukewarm Lovecraft fan, I do find the Mythos pretty interesting, and I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve ever read by Will Murray, so I was happy to discover that Murray has published THE WILD ADVENTURES OF CTHULHU, a collection of ten Lovecraftian stories he wrote for various anthologies. Thankfully, he doesn’t try to recreate Lovecraft’s style in these stories, although after reading his novels written in the styles of Lester Dent, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Norvell Page, I don’t doubt for a second that he could have written Lovecraft-like prose if he’d wanted to.

No, these are more straight-ahead tales, some with a good deal of action, and most of them involve agents of the Cryptic Events Evaluation Section, which is part of the National Reconnaissance Office (both fictional creations by Murray). As a result, what we get isn’t exactly U.N.C.L.E. vs. Cthulhu, but there’s a hint of that, as Murray acknowledges in his introduction.

The stories have an epic scope, ranging from the Arctic to the Antarctic to the depths of the Pacific Ocean, and they usually end badly for humanity. Despite that, some of them manage to achieve a considerable amount of dry humor, as well as being appropriately creepy and downright terrifying at times.

The overall outlook in THE WILD ADVENTURES OF CTHULHU may be pretty bleak, but I enjoyed it. The stories are well-written and move right along, and Murray obviously knows his stuff when it comes to Lovecraft’s work. If you’re a Lovecraft fan or a Will Murray fan, or both, I give it a high recommendation. It's available in both e-book and paperback editions.