William Reusswig did some nice covers, and I like the one on this issue of WEST, when it was still being published by Doubleday and coming out every week. The authors are a mix of familiar names and ones I don't recognize. The familiar: Stephen Payne, Ralph R. Perry, Oscar J. Friend, Kenneth Gilbert, and Homer King Gordon. The ones I don't know: William West Winter, Edwin Hunt Hoover, and Robert V. Carr. Perry wrote a really fine Western novel called NIGHTRIDER DEPUTY. Friend is best remembered probably as an agent and editor, but I've enjoyed the fiction by him that I've read, too. Payne had a long, productive career as a Western pulpster. I don't recall reading anything by Gilbert or Gordon, but they published steadily, too. This looks like a pretty good issue.
This cover by William Reusswig provides further proof, as if we needed it, that pith helmets just attract trouble. You don't even have to be wearing one. Just having it on your raft is enough. Just as knowing that this is an issue of SHORT STORIES is enough to tell you there are some great authors inside. In this case, H. Bedford-Jones ("Tiger Blood" is a great title!), Jackson Gregory, Bennett Foster, Bob du Soe, and Bertrand W. Sinclair, along with a few lesser-known writers. Any time you see a blood-red sun on the cover of a pulp, you know you're in for excitement.
That's a very striking cover by William Reusswig on this issue of DETECTIVE ACTION STORIES. And you'd be hard put to come up with a better group of writers: Frederick Nebel (with a Sgt. Brinkhaus story; I have the Altus Press collection of these stories and really need to get around to reading them), Carroll John Daly, J. Allan Dunn, J. Lane Linklater, Robert Turner, and Edward Parrish Ware. That's a fine bunch of pulpsters.
We all know that I like lurid pulp covers, and they don't get much more lurid than this one by William Reusswig. This is a pretty heavyweight issue of DIME DETECTIVE with a Cardigan yarn by Frederick Nebel, a Paul Pry story by Erle Stanley Gardner, a stand-alone tale by Frederick C. Davis, and an "Honest" Glen Kelsey (whoever he was) story by Ralph Oppenheim, which based on the title, "Brand of the Beast", appears to be the inspiration for the cover. This was the second and final story in what was a very short-lived series.
I always wanted a pith helmet when I was a kid, probably because of all the jungle adventure movies I'd watched on TV. I never got one, which was almost certainly a good thing, as I'm not sure how well it would have gone over in the small Texas town where I was already something of a weirdo. And there's no way I would have looked as tough and dashing as the guy on the cover of this issue of SHORT STORIES. The art is by William Reusswig. The lead novel by Eustace L. Adams sounds like a good one, and Adams was a reliably entertaining author of adventure fiction. Also on hand were Karl Detzer, Conrad Richter, Bill Adams, Jacland Marmur, Charles Green, Cliff Farrell, and Garnett Radcliffe. Those names don't mean much now, with the possible exception of Conrad Richter, but they were top-notch pulp authors. (You know, you can buy pith helmets on Amazon . . . I'm just sayin' . . . Nah, I probably shouldn't.)
