Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, October 1934

Caveman fiction shows up now and then in the pulps, as in this issue of TOP-NOTCH with a cover by Gayle Hoskins illustrating the lead novel, "Man of the Dawn" by Charles Willard Diffin. Now, I can't tell you much about Diffin except that he wrote quite a bit for the early ASTOUNDING and published sporadically in other pulps including TOP-NOTCH during the first half of the Thirties. I can tell you, however, that this issue contains "Sword of Shahrazar", a Kirby O'Donnell yarn by Robert E. Howard, which is its main claim to fame these days. It also includes stories by Carl Jacobi, William Merriam Rouse, Harold F. Cruickshank (known to me from many Western pulps), and a few authors I'm not familiar with. I don't own a copy of this issue, so the Howard story is the only one I've read, but the Diffin yarn sounds interesting and Jacobi was always worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, November 1939

Great cover on this issue of 10 STORY WESTERN (I don't know the artist) and a great bunch of writers inside: Harry F. Olmsted, Norman A. Fox, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), Ed Earl Repp, Leslie Ernenwein, John G. Pearsol, Richard Tooker (better known for his science fiction), George Michener, Jack Bloodhart, and Ted Fox. I'm not familiar with the last two, but the others range from great to dependably good.

UPDATE: The cover art on this issue is by Albin Henning. Thanks to Sheila Ann Vanderbeek for the information!

Forgotten Books: The Yellow Scourge - Curtis Steele (Frederick C. Davis)

You wouldn’t expect a pulp novel from 1934 called THE YELLOW SCOURGE to be very politically correct—and you’d be right. However, this novel, the third to feature Jimmy Christopher, Operator 5 in America’s intelligence service, actually isn’t all that objectionable. Frederick C. Davis, who authored this one under the house-name Curtis Steele, uses “the Yellow Empire” as a stand-in for Japan, but I doubt if that fooled anybody even in 1934. The Japanese characters aren’t caricatures, though, and the main villain, a freelance female spymaster, isn’t even Japanese as far as I can tell.

The plot of this yarn, which appeared in the June 1934 issue of OPERATOR #5, is pretty simple: a faction of the “Yellow Empire” military wants to start a war with the United States and attempts to do so by launching an attack on its own naval fleet with planes made to look like American craft. The fleet is visiting the California coast and Jimmy Christopher happens to be on hand, so of course he figures out right away what’s going on. Then Yellow Empire ships, again disguised as American vessels, attack merchant ships from England, France, and other European countries so they won’t come to America’s aid when the Empire declares war.

There’s some espionage going on—Jimmy Christopher clashes with the female mastermind behind the plan and undertakes a daring mission to obtain proof of the Yellow Empire’s treachery—but for the most part THE YELLOW SCOURGE is a war novel. In an eerie precursor of fears that were actually common seven years later after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Empire’s fleet bombards the American west coast, their army invades Mexico and advances on the United States from the south, and they try to destroy the Panama Canal. The Americans, led by Jimmy Christopher, of course, strike back with a long-range aerial mission like the one to Tokyo led by Jimmy Doolittle. In a bit that smacks of science fiction considering the era, they also battle the enemy with radio-controlled rockets designed by Operator 5. It all makes for a fast-moving and entertaining, if far-fetched, tale.

Almost all the elements of an Operator 5 novel are here: Jimmy Christopher pretends to be society photographer Carleton Victor and banters with his manservant Crowe; he stops in the middle of the action to demonstrate a magic trick for his pugnacious 14-year-old Irish sidekick Tim Donovan; he worries about his father, a former intelligence operative with bullets lodged near his heart so that too much excitement might kill him. Jimmy Christopher’s twin sister Nan is mentioned but doesn’t appear. This is an important novel in the history of the series, though, because it marks the introduction of feisty gal reporter Diane Elliott, who will serve as Jimmy Christopher’s love interest and the bad guys’ kidnapping target for the remainder of the series.

Don’t mistake my somewhat flippant comments for criticism: I love this series. Frederick C. Davis’s plots always hang together, and he can spin out these apocalyptic scenarios that make the reader believe Jimmy Christopher really does have to save the entire country from destruction every month. As far as I’m concerned, the Operator 5 novels are top-notch pulp adventure yarns, and if you’re a fan of that sort of storytelling and haven’t tried them, you should.

Coming From Stark House: Portrait in Smoke/The Longest Second - Bill S. Ballinger

PORTRAIT IN SMOKE
Danny April is obsessed. He buys out a little collection agency in Chicago, and that s how he first meets Krassy. He’d never seen anyone so beautiful. She was Krassy Almauniski then, when he first runs across her picture in his files. She’s gone through several identities since then. As Danny tries to track her down, each new name presents him with a portrait of a woman on the move. Krassy is climbing up the social ladder, one sucker at a time. There’s the photographer who signs off on a charge account for her, later arrested for larceny. And the ad executive... he gets off lightly. He gets to walk away with his pride. Not all the men who Krassy meet are so lucky. But Danny knows he’ll be different. So he keeps looking... until at last he finds her.

THE LONGEST SECOND
When I awakened, I stared straight above me at the ceiling ... I attempted to turn my head. It was then I realized that my throat had been cut. The pain ran down both sides of my neck ... I gasped, choking for air. The next day I regained consciousness again ... Suddenly it struck me that I didn't know my own name!... They check his fingerprints and find out that his name is Victor Pacific. He has no memories of who he is, what he is, or why someone tried to kill him. He remembers the name Horstman. But he has no idea of how to find him. All he can do is to begin a search for the clues to his former life. Then he meets Bianca but will she be able to help him before they strike again?

I haven't read anything by Bill S. Ballinger in a long time. Both of these novels sound great and I'm looking forward to them.

Damon Runyon's Boys - Michael Scott Cain

We all know Stark House as one of the top reprinters of classic noir, hardboiled, and crime novels, but they also publish some excellent original novels in those genres as well, the latest of which is DAMON RUNYON’S BOYS by Michael Scott Cain.

Set in post-World War II New York City, DAMON RUNYON’S BOYS opens with the leader of a Lindy Hop dance troupe being gunned down by a pair of zoot-suited killers at the Savoy Ballroom. Soon investigating the crime is Damon Taylor, the top writer at a national crime tabloid who was once a protégé of the similarly named Damon Runyon. He has a cop friend who cuts him some leeway but not an unlimited amount, and he also gets help from Walter Winchell and a young reporter on a leftist journal named Truman Capote. Taylor’s probing of the case takes him into the middle of a gang war over the garment district whose players include the famous mobster Frank Costello. Not surprisingly, Taylor’s efforts get him beaten up and threatened. More murders ensue. There are a lot of plot twists to untangle before Taylor discovers the truth.

Historical mysteries like this are great fun, but they’re also tricky to write. It’s easy to weigh them down with too much period detail, and sometimes the historical characters act in unbelievable ways. I’m happy to report that Cain doesn’t fall into either of those traps. The setting and the time period ring true without being overdone, and although I’m far from an expert on either one, I believed both Winchell and Capote might have been involved with this case. Damon Taylor is a flawed but likable protagonist, and Cain keeps the action moving along at a very nice pace indeed. DAMON RUNYON’S BOYS is exactly the sort of complex, hardboiled, vividly written novel that I really enjoy, and I had a great time reading it. Highly recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, February 10, 1933

A classic "red sun" SHORT STORIES cover by Frank Spradling, and inside can be found stories by H. Bedford-Jones, Gordon MacCreagh, James B. Hendryx, Cliff Farrell, Jackson Gregory, Bertrand W. Sinclair, Bob du Soe, and more. Classic is nearly always the right word to describe an issue of SHORT STORIES. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Cowboy Stories, February 1934

I like this cover by E.M. Stevenson. This issue of COWBOY STORIES is one of those rare Western pulps that features an airplane on the cover, and Stevenson's done a good job with it. I'm really intrigued about what's going on here. Inside are stories by J. Allan Dunn (a reprint of a Bud Jones story from an issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY that came out a year or so earlier), Forbes Parkhill, Robert Enders Allen (who was really Chandler Whipple), Ray Humphreys, Raymond W. Porter, and some lesser-known authors. Maybe not a top issue, based on that line-up, but I'll bet it was pretty entertaining anyway. And I'd have probably bought it just based on the cover if I had an extra dime in my pocket.

Forgotten Books: Lands of the Earthquake - Henry Kuttner

I’ve read quite a bit of Henry Kuttner’s work and always enjoyed it. He’s one of my favorite science fiction and fantasy authors from the pulp era and can always be counted on for well-written, fast-moving yarns. That’s certainly true of LANDS OF THE EARTHQUAKE, a short novel originally published in the May 1947 issue of STARTLING STORIES (under the editorship of my old mentor Sam Merwin Jr., I might add).

LANDS OF THE EARTHQUAKE finds an apparently normal New Yorker, William Boyce, having a black-out that loses a whole year for him. He doesn’t have amnesia, he knows who he is, but that missing year is just gone except for the occasional memory, the most haunting of which is of a beautiful young woman. He also remembers a man’s face, and when he spots the guy on the street, Boyce follows him to an old brownstone and winds up going through some sort of mystical gateway to another dimension where time stands still but space moves in rippling waves that cause entire cities to shift around like ships on an ocean. Two such places seem to be anchored to each other, though: a massive castle called Kerak that’s inhabited by a group of Crusading knights who wandered in there from our world six hundred years ago, and the City, which is ruled by a king who’s made an unholy alliance with a group of evil, otherworldly sorcerers.

Got all that? Because that’s mostly back-story. Kuttner knew how to pack a plot with a lot of good stuff.

Boyce falls in with the Crusaders and helps them in their war with the City. He meets a wizard and sees a living marble statue of a beautiful young woman called the Oracle. He clashes with the mysterious Huntsman, who manipulates events in this strange land according to his own enigmatic agenda. He becomes acquainted with one of his own ancestors, the arrogant Crusader Guillaime du Bois. Eventually he assumes Guillaime’s identity and penetrates the City as a spy, where he finally encounters the young woman he remembers from his black-out and discovers the truth of everything that’s going on. Epic stuff ensues.

There’s a little semi-science here and there, but mostly this novel falls on the sword-and-sorcery side of things, and a mighty good one it is, too. Kuttner frequently collaborated with his wife C.L. Moore, and although the details are lost to the mists of pulp history, it seems very likely to me that she contributed some to LANDS OF THE EARTHQUAKE, mostly in the vivid descriptions that crop up from time to time. The straight-ahead action/adventure elements strike me more as Kuttner’s work, though, and those scenes race along very nicely. The theme of the duality of human nature, some good and some bad in everybody, is also worked into the story subtly and effectively, giving the tale some added depth.

Overall, I think this is one of my favorite Kuttner novels so far. It’s available in an e-book version and also as half of a double novel print volume with UNDER A DIM BLUE SUN by Howie K. Bentley. I enjoyed it and give it a high recommendation.

Mr. Calamity - Kenneth Robeson (Will Murray)

This latest entry in The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage is a sequel to one of the original pulp novels by Lester Dent. I won't say which one because that would be a spoiler of sorts, but anyone who's read it will recognize it right away. I recall reading that particular novel at my aunt's house in Blanket, Texas more than 50 years ago, and I'm sure the thought that I'd be reading a sequel to it half a century later never occurred to me.

That said, I'm really glad I did, because I thoroughly enjoyed MR. CALAMITY. It's one of the rare Doc Savage novels that's also a Western of sorts, being set in Wyoming and featuring cowboys and rustlers galloping around on horseback and firing six-shooters. Of course, there's plenty of the usual Doc Savage superscience, too, in this tale of something that makes gravity go wild so that objects--including human beings--go flying in the air, sometimes all the way to the stratosphere.

This one starts when Pat Savage, Doc's gorgeous, trouble-hunting cousin, is prospecting in the badlands near a ranch that Doc's associate Long Tom Roberts (the electronics genius) inherited from an uncle. Pat spies a man swimming in mid-air, hundreds of feet high. When the effect wears off, he plunges to his death. He won't be the last such victim of this mystery.

Doc, Renny, and Johnny show up eventually. (You know who Renny and Johnny are, right? Colonel John Renwick and William Harper Littlejohn?) Much action ensues. People die, including some you wouldn't expect. Murray does a fine job with the Western setting and elements. I've been to some of the places he writes about in this novel, and he captures them perfectly. There's a big twist that every Doc Savage fan will see coming a mile away, and as far as I'm concerned, that's part of the charm of the series and the way it ought to be. Man, did I have fun reading this book. If you're a Doc fan, you will, too. I guarantee it. Highly recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Clues Detective Stories, July 1935

The cover on this issue of CLUES DETECTIVE STORIES makes it look more like an adventure pulp than a mystery magazine, at least to me. And the presence of E. Hoffmann Price with the lead novel makes it just seem even more like that. But that's okay with me, since I always like Price's work. Also in this issue are stories by Cleve F. Adams, Paul Ernst, William Merriam Rouse, Arden X. Pangborn, and others.