Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western, November 1937

Did any stagecoaches in the Western pulps ever get where they were going without being attacked by bad guys? Judging by the covers, the answer is no. Here's more evidence on the cover of the November 1937 issue of REAL WESTERN. The art looks like the work of H.W. Scott to me, but I could be 'way off about that. Inside are stories by Eugene Cunningham, William Patterson White, Jack Bertin, and someone named Frank Cox, who published only a handful of stories in the late Thirties. Jack Bertin has an interesting background. According to the Fictionmags Index, his real name was Giovanni Bertignono. He published several dozen Westerns and a few detective and science fiction stories in the decade between 1928 and 1938. I seem to remember that he was also the uncle of the much more prolific Peter Germano, best remembered under the pseudonym Barry Cord, but I could be wrong about that. There's some connection, though, because Germano is credited with writing two science fiction novels in 1970 that were published under the name Jack Bertin, possibly based on outlines written by Bertignono. I have a copy of at least one of those and ought to read it.

Forgotten Books: Terror, Inc. - Lester Dent

I’ve been a fan of Lester Dent’s work for more than 50 years, ever since I picked up the Bantam Books reprint of his Doc Savage novel METEOR MENACE from the paperback spinner rack in Tompkins’ Drugstore and plunked down my 45 cents for it. Since then I’ve read nearly all of the Doc Savages (I’m still saving a few for the proverbial rainy day) and a lot of Dent’s other work.

This collection, from the always excellent Black Dog Books, features six non-series novellas by Dent that were published in the pulps DETECTIVE-DRAGNET and TEN DETECTIVE ACES (a retitling of the same magazine) in 1932 and ’33, just before and after he started writing the Doc Savage series. Weird Menace stories were just becoming a sub-genre about that time, so these aren’t quite Weird Menace, but they’re in the same neighborhood. One of the main differences, as Will Murray points out in his introduction, is that the protagonists are two-fisted professional detectives, rather than the civilians who take the lead in Weird Menace stories. But the atmosphere in these yarns often borders on the sinister and creepy.

Such as the opening of the title story, “Terror, Inc.”, from the May 1932 issue of DETECTIVE-DRAGNET, in which Kerrigan, a private eye from New York who has been summoned to Los Angeles for a job, opens the door of a car where he’s supposed to meet his mysterious client, and a skeleton topples out, with a lightning bolt mark on the skull that’s the trademark of the killer who calls himself The Spark. Now, if you can read an opening like that and not want to keep going, you’re definitely made of different stuff than me.

The second story, “The Devil’s Cargo” (DETECTIVE-DRAGNET, July 1932), doesn’t have any of the macabre stuff, but it’s still a good detective action yarn, with private eye Steve Harden negotiating his way through a maze of violence involving three rival groups who are after some sort of secret. Each of the groups believes that Harden is working for one of the others, and Harden has no idea what’s going on and just wants to find out the truth and stay alive. This one moves like a rocket until the end, which admittedly isn’t quite as compelling as I hoped it would be.

“The Invisible Horde” (DETECTIVE-DRAGNET, September 1932) seems like a dry run of sorts for THE SPOOK LEGION, a Doc Savage novel Dent wrote a few years later. The plots aren’t really similar, but both involve a gang of crooks who discover the secret of invisibility. The protagonist of this one is a scientist who happens to be a former Secret Service agent. Not the most believable of characters, maybe, but there’s plenty of wild action, as you’d expect, so in this case I don’t really care.

 “The Whistling Death”, from the March 1933 issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES, like so many of Dent’s Doc Savage novels, revolves around a mysterious, grisly murder method that causes its victims to sweat blood. New York private eye Cleve Dane is summoned to Tampa for a case involving a shady financier who disappeared with five million dollars worth of gold certificates. The case turns into a wild chase through a rainy night after an embalmed corpse that keeps getting stolen. Dent really packs both action and plot into this one; it’s like a condensed novel. And maybe it’s the Florida setting and the fact that Dane seems to be two or three steps ahead of everybody else, but this story really reminded me of a Mike Shayne yarn. Which is a good thing indeed.

“The Cavern of Heads” (TEN DETECTIVE ACES, April 1933) has a great title and a headlong plot that kicks off with a box containing what appears to be a human head to the detective agency where Dave Lacy works. It’s not actually a head (not really a spoiler, since that’s established almost right away), but rest assured, heads will roll before this yarn is over. Lacy is described more like Monk Mayfair, almost as wide as he is tall, and at one point he takes off his shoes and climbs a wall using fingers and toes like Doc Savage. Dent was writing these stories at the same time as he was getting Doc’s series off the ground, and it’s fun to spot these cross-pollinations. There’s a beautiful platinum blonde, a beautiful redhead, a mysterious anthropologist who collects, yes, human heads, and a seemingly impossible murder method. The thing that’s behind it all has a Doc Savage connection, but I’ll remain mum on that since it might give too much away. This story is atmospheric and creepy as well as action-packed, and it’s just a whole lot of fun.

The book wraps up with “Murder Street”, from the May/June 1933 issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES, and Dent’s love of both gadgets and bizarre murder methods shows up strong in this one. Detective Wes Kaine needs the gadgets to do his job and survive, because he’s undersized (although he can handle himself in a fight). He reminded me a little of Donald Lam as he investigates a case of bodies buried under recently repaired streets. Of course, there’s a connection between the murder victims which leads Kaine into a case where he finds himself in deadly danger more than once.

All six of these stories are great fun, with “The Cavern of Heads” being my favorite of the bunch. Nobody did headlong action better than Dent. This would be a decent introduction to his work if you haven’t read it before, although there are probably other things that would be better for that. But if you’re already a Dent fan, I guarantee you’ll have a good time with TERROR, INC.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, August 3, 1920

An unusual but effective cover by Dwight Franklin graces this issue of ADVENTURE. It's a good-looking issue all the way around with stories by W.C. Tuttle (the second Hashknife Hartley yarn, "A Whizzer on Willer Creek"), Harold Lamb (a Khlit the Cossack story), Hugh Pendexter, and Charles Beadle, among other writers lesser known these days. It's easy to see why ADVENTURE was regarded as one of the best pulps.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, May 1950

Bears don't always chase beautiful Canadian girls. Sometimes they chase beautiful American ranch girls, too. This isn't a particularly realistic-looking bear, in my opinion, and I'm not that fond of the cover art overall, but there's a great bunch of authors inside this issue of EXCITING WESTERN: W.C. Tuttle with a Tombstone and Speedy yarn; a Navajo Tom Raine, Arizona Ranger story by somebody writing under the house-name Jackson Cole; and stories by L.P. Holmes, Gladwell Richardson, and Barry Scobee (the only pulp writer to have a mountain named after him, as far as I know). Below average cover or not, I'd read this issue.

Forgotten Books: "Whip" Ryder's Way - Grant Taylor (Ray Nafziger)

I recently learned that Grant Taylor was a pseudonym used by the prolific author Ray Nafziger, who wrote scores of stories for the Western pulps under his own name and as Robert Dale Denver. It was thought that Nafziger wrote only two novels, both published under the name Robert Denver, but there are a handful of Grant Taylor novels, and one of them, “WHIP” RYDER’S WAY, is available as part of an inexpensive e-book collection. So I picked up a copy right away and read it recently. The only other Nafziger novel I’ve read, HELL-ROARIN’ TEXAS TRAIL, was pretty good, and as it turns out, so is this one.

Jim “Whip” Ryder is a young, hell-raising, fast gun cowboy in the Arizona border country—or maybe New Mexico, Nafziger is never clear about that, but it’s not Texas and it’s not far from the Mexican border. The time period is a little ambiguous, too, but since there are primitive telephone and electrical power systems, it’s probably the first decade of the 20^th Century. People still use horses and wagons for transportation, though; there’s no mention of automobiles.

But to get back to the story, Whip’s older brother Dan (who looks almost identical to Whip, even though they’re not twins) is a lawyer in the settlement of Reyes. Then the bank is robbed and Whip is framed for the crime. He has to flee into Mexico, where he teams up with a couple of other young firebrands, Yancy Yates and Jemez McCarthy, and goes to work fighting bandits on behalf of the American mining interests in the area. Along the way, Whip develops a talent for disguise.

And all this is back-story, mind you.

As the novel opens, after four years as a fugitive in Mexico, Whip has figured out a way to clear his name and returns to Reyes, with Yancy and Jemez accompanying him, of course. In the meantime, Dan Ryder has become the district attorney and is prosecuting one of the trio of villains who have taken over the area on a charge of murder. The defendant supposedly knows the truth about the bank robbery Whip was blamed for and Whip wants to get his hands on him and make him talk. But the rest of the bad guys plan to murder his district attorney brother before that can happen.

Whip’s old sweetheart, who owns a worthless ranch, is still around, too, and so is a Mexican revolutionary/bandit modeled after Pancho Villa who has fled across the border into the U.S. after the Federales crushed his rebellion. He’s rumored to have brought several hundred thousand dollars worth of looted gold with him. Got all that? There’s plenty in the pot for Nafziger to stir around, and I’ve probably even forgotten a few things.

But man, does this book move! There are disguises and hidden identities galore, shoot-outs, desperate chases, a Mexican carnival, hair’s-breadth escapes, and a whole bunch of last-minute plot twists and revelations that probably won’t take many modern readers by surprise but are still fun. More than anything else, the whole thing reminds me of a late Republic Western serial, with Clayton Moore, maybe, playing both Whip and his brother Dan. And lots of action directed by William Witney, of course.

I’ve already rustled up another of Nafziger’s Grant Taylor novels. If they continue to be this enjoyable, I have a hunch I may wind up reading all of them.

More Rocket's Red Glare News

Last month I posted about the three stories from ROCKET'S RED GLARE that are going to be reprinted in THE YEAR'S BEST MILITARY AND ADVENTURE SF, VOLUME 4, published later this year by Baen Books. You can now read editor David Afsharirad's introduction to this anthology here. There are more stories from ROCKET'S RED GLARE in this book than from any other source, and I'm very proud of that fact. I'm also proud of all the other great stories in ROCKET'S RED GLARE, and it's still available in ebook and print editions from Rough Edges Press, of course.

Overlooked Movies: Trouble in Texas (1937)

When I was a kid, I was a fan of Tex Ritter’s movies and watched many of them on TV. Unlike Roy, Gene, and Hoppy, though, ol’ Tex is one of the B-Western stars whose work I haven’t revisited much as an adult. Based on my recent viewing of his 1937 feature TROUBLE IN TEXAS, I think I probably ought to remedy that.

This picture finds Tex playing Tex Masters, a drifting cowpoke and rodeo competitor who’s actually on the trail of the gang responsible for his brother’s death several years earlier. This gang travels around taking part in various rodeos, and one of them, Squint Palmer (Yakima Canutt), always takes the top prize money because the gang murders anybody who could beat him. This is what happened to Tex Masters’ brother.

Unknown to Tex, who’s accompanied by his boastful sidekick Lucky (Horace Murphy), the law is also after the rodeo gang and has an undercover agent working the case: a beautiful young woman named Carmen (Rita Cansino, who, after this movie, would be billed under another name—Rita Hayworth). Tex falls for her, of course, but he believes that she’s really a member of the gang, which causes some complications. After a lot of rodeo action, Tex gets the proof he needs to expose the gang as his brother’s killers, which leads to an epic chase scene as several members of the gang flee on a wagon.

TROUBLE IN TEXAS is an unofficial remake of a 1934 John Wayne movie, THE MAN FROM UTAH, and uses a lot of the same rodeo stock footage as the earlier picture. Too much stock footage, in my opinion, because those scenes go on and on. I would have tightened those up and maybe cut one or two of Tex’s songs, even though I do like his singing. Other than those quibbles, though, this is a pretty darned entertaining B-Western. Yakima Canutt really works overtime in this one, with stunt after stunt including some great stuff in that final chase. The other main villains are played by Earl Dwire and the always fun to watch Charles King. Glenn Strange, who usually played a bad guy, is the local sheriff in this one and looks great, although he doesn’t have much to do. And Rita Hayworth is, well, Rita Hayworth. Yowza, in other words.

This movie was directed by Robert N. Bradbury, whose low-budget Westerns were usually better than they had any right to be, always well-paced and with decent scripts. Bradbury (who was Bob Steele’s father) also directed the earlier John Wayne film THE MAN FROM UTAH, so he was certainly familiar with the material. Other than the over-abundance of stock footage, TROUBLE IN TEXAS is a pleasure to watch.

I realize I haven’t said much about Tex himself. Round-faced and a little on the beefy side, he’s not the prototypical B-Western cowboy star, but gosh darn it, he’s a likable galoot, with screen presence, a good singing voice, and enough athletic ability to look convincing in the fight scenes and on horseback. I need to look through my collections of B-Westerns and see if I have any more starring him, because I think I might like to watch another one before too much longer.

Coming From Stark House: The Second Carter Brown Collection

NO HARP FOR MY ANGEL

While in Florida on vacation, Lt. Al Wheeler tangles with a redhead with green eyes who is "Nobody's girl but my own!"... Her club-owning gangster boyfriend, who is involved in some very shady business... and his gorilla henchman, who is seven feet of muscle and bone, just waiting for the chance to crush him to a pulp when Al becomes the decoy sent in to bring their racket down.

BOOTY FOR A BABE

When Lt. Al Wheeler tries to solve a murder at a science fiction convention he discovers a professor who wants to stop time by tricking the elusive Delfs... meets an intellectual gangster who wants to get his hands on the professor's latest invention... is frustrated by the generously proportioned convention organizer, who somehow manages to keep one step ahead of Al's wolfish designs.

EVE, IT'S EXTORTION

Which finds Lt. Al Wheeler trying to solve a hit-and-run murder involving the victim's wife, who is all too glad to have lost her lush of a husband... the beautiful skip-tracer who tracked down the victim right before he met his untimely end... and her dubious boyfriend who may not be as innocent as he professes, but is certainly up to no good.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Lone Wolf Detective Magazine, June 1940

Another great cover by Norman Saunders on this issue of LONE WOLF DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, and his is probably the only real name associated with this issue. I say this because the stories inside are by Ralph Powers, Cliff Howe, Ronald Flagg, Paul Adams, Grant Mason (all house-names, and the stories are probably all retitled reprints), and Francis J. McTeague, whose story in this issue is his only credit in the Fictionmags Index, leading me to think that may be a house-name, too. Anyway, Francis J. McTeague just sounds like a pseudonym to me. Francis, if you or any of your relatives are out there reading this, my apologies for doubting you, and please let me know.

Saturday Morning Bonus Pulp: Western Trails, January 1941

This issue of WESTERN TRAILS features novelettes by two of the most dependable Western pulpsters, L.P. Holmes and Lee Bond, along with stories by Orlando Rigoni, an author whose books I've seen around forever without reading any of them (something I plan to change in the relatively near future), Clint Douglas (a house-name), and several other authors I haven't heard of before. I'd read this issue just for Holmes and Bond, though, and any other good stories would be a bonus.