Charles Burgess's The Other Woman

The Other Woman is a 1960 crime novel by Charles Burgess. He’s a seriously obscure writer who seems to have written only one other novel. He also wrote some true crime stuff in the late 40s.


The Other Woman was originally published by Beacon so you might be expecting this to be crime with a healthy dash of sleaze. It isn’t really, but there is some moderately steamy sex. This is not a particularly hardboiled story but it does have some noir flavouring.

Early on the set-up seems to be suggesting that we’re in for yet another riff on Double Indemnity but that’s not how it plays out. In Double Indemnity we know the identity of the murderers right from the start. The Other Woman is more of an old-fashioned murder mystery. There is a murder but we don’t know the killer’s identity. The murder method is not as straightforward as it appears to be and alibis are important. There is a puzzle to be unravelled.

It begins in a small town in Florida. John Royal wants real estate agent Neil Cowen to arrange the purchase of a property which will be the site of a major housing development. Royal is an old man and very very rich. Royal’s wife Emmaline is thirty years his junior, blonde and gorgeous. And almost certainly dangerous. The kind of gal who is likely to turn out to be a femme fatale.

Neil has a successful business. He’s a respected member of the community. He’s happily married with a kid. He would be crazy even to think of getting mixed up with Emmaline Royal. But by the next day he and Emmaline are getting it on in the back seat of Neil’s car.

Neil can’t stop himself. He has never met a woman as hot and as gorgeous as Emmaline.

Then something happens that causes Neil to have second thoughts although by now it may be way too late.

Of course there is a murder. There is one odd detail at the murder scene that worries Lieutenant Gainey just a little. It seems somehow wrong but he can’t figure out how it could possibly be significant.

There’s one obvious suspect but Lieutenant Gainey is well aware that there is no real evidence.

A regular guy led astray by an uncontrollable lust for a woman is certainly classic noir stuff. Neil really is a totally decent guy and he never does figure out how he succumbed to temptation. The fact that Emmaline might be the kind of gal who knows exactly how to persuade the most reluctant man to fall for her charms, and that he might just be the latest in a string of men who have danced to her siren song, doesn’t occur to him. He thinks that a smokin’ hot classy rich dame is just waiting for the chance to jump into bed with a second-rate small town real estate agent.

Of course while we know that Emmaline is a temptress that doesn’t mean she’s a murderess. There are other suspects. There are quite a few suspicious characters lurking about. There’s a mystery woman.

As a noir novel it works reasonably well.

As a straightforward murder mystery it’s also reasonably successful.

The Other Woman is routine stuff but it’s enjoyable. A harmless time killer.

Michael Crichton’s The Terminal Man

Michael Crichton’s science fiction techno-thriller The Terminal Man was published in 1972.

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) had broken through as a bestselling author with The Andromeda Strain in 1969. The Terminal Man sees Crichton once again drawing on his medical training (he qualified as a doctor but never practised). The Terminal Man is also the sort of thing Crichton really enjoyed doing - dealing with science and technology that already existed or was very very likely to exist in the near future.

Harry Benson suffers from psychomotor epilepsy. He has seizures but they affect his behaviour rather than having physical manifestations. He has blackouts lasting several hours and during those times he becomes extreme violent. He has already been in trouble with the police and now he has committed a brutal assault that could land him in prison. The University Hospital Neuro-Psychiatric Service (NPS) has offered him experimental brain surgery that will probably prevent these seizures.

The team at NPS believe that it’s the seizures that lead Benson, an otherwise peaceable man, to commit acts of extreme violence.

Benson will be the first human to undergo the procedure. The head surgeon, Dr Ellis, is very confident.

The team’s head psychiatrist, Dr Janet Ross, is not so sure. Benson has other problems. He has delusions. He is a brilliant but unstable computer technician and he believes that the machines are taking over. He is borderline psychotic. Dr Ross fear that as a result the results of the operation will be unpredictable. It might make Benson worse.

The operation involves planting electrodes in the brain, then later monitoring the brain waves to find out which electrodes will prevent seizures. When a seizure is coming on the electrode stimulates the appropriate area of the brain and the seizure is halted in its tracks.

The doctors overlooked a couple of things. These electrical stimulations can be pleasant. Very pleasant. Like an orgasm. And they overlooked the possibility that Benson could learn to provoke those stimulations. Which would mean he could just go on continually giving himself these stimuli. Which would in turn lead to a kind of brain overload which would provoke a seizure. And those seizures cause Benson to become uncontrollably and brutally violent. The NPS computer experts are confident none of these things can actually happen. Then they look at Benson’s brain waves and realise it is already happening.

And then Benson escapes from the hospital. Another thing that was overlooked was that Benson is a very very smart guy.

Now it’s a race against time. The computer predicts that within six hours Benson will reach that tip-over point and have a major seizure. Somebody could get very seriously hurt. The police will almost certainly become involved. There will be a public outcry about irresponsible scientists playing around with mind control. Dr Ellis’s career will be in ruins. The NPS may be shut down.

And Benson is psychotic. He has paranoid delusions about machines taking over the world. It is impossible to predict where he might go and what he might do. And he’s smart enough to cover his tracks.

This is not a mad scientist tale or even a warning about scientists playing God. Crichton was certainly not anti-science. It’s more a warning that the future can be predicted only up to a point. Society is too complex and human beings are too complex to allow accurate predictions. Any complex system is inherently unpredictable. Crichton isn’t suggesting that scientific and technological progress is bad but he is suggesting that a considerable degree of caution is required.

There’s also some fascinating and remarkably prescient speculation about machine intelligence being a dead end. It might turn out that genuine artificial intelligence will have to be biologically based rather than electronic. That’s one of the themes of the book - enhancing or modifying the brain has more potential than mere machines. That’s what Benson has done - he has learnt to modify his own brain function. Unfortunately he’s done in a chaotic manner that may lead to disaster.

This is classic Crichton - lots of fascinating technical stuff presented in an understandable manner, some ethical quandaries and a tense fast-moving thriller plot. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and Scratch One.

John Flagg's Murder in Monaco

Murder in Monaco is a 1957 John Flagg thriller. American writer John Gearon wrote eight espionage/crime thrillers between 1950 and 1961 mostly using the pseudonym John Flagg. All were published as Fawcett Gold Medal editions.

Murder in Monaco is one of several that feature ex-CIA agent Hart Muldoon. The somewhat cynical and slightly embittered Muldoon now works as a freelancer and private detective, mostly in Europe, mostly in glamorous locales. The locales may be glamorous but his cases tend to be sordid. He has a knack for getting mixed up in with very powerful, very ruthless, very corrupt criminals.

This time Muldoon is offered a lot of money for a job but is given no details. That’s how he meets Nancy Trippe, in Monaco. And becomes aware of The National Alert, published by Charles Pless. The National Alert is a scandal sheet and it’s a glossy high-profile very profitable scandal sheet. Some threats have been made but the nature of the threats is obscure.

Of course there’s a murder. Blackmail might be an obvious motive but revenge is a definite possibility as well The National Alert has ruined reputations and destroyed lives. And there are so many emotional and sexual intrigues among the circle of possible suspects. Love and lust must be considered as motives. And one must never forget greed.

There are four women, they’re all suspects and they all have motives and they’re all dangerous in very different ways. Alva is a very successful middle-aged writer with some scandals in her past and a taste for handsome young men. Nancy Trippe is a nymphomaniac and an obvious femme fatale type. Myra is a timid little mouse. They’re always dangerous - all those repressed passions. And Amy is sweet and innocent. Muldoon has been a private eye for a long time. He knows you never trust sweet and innocent.

There are quite a few men with motives as well. Harold is a gigolo and he hasn’t been loyal to the woman who assumes that she owns him. There’s ex-Governor Thorne, a politician whose sister has a scandalous past. There’s Black. He’s a private eye, he’s ex-FBI, and he’s very shady. Plus the crazy unstable American named Cooladge. And Marius, who has wide-ranging business interests, none of then legal.

Nobody wants the cops involved. They all have sound reasons for wanting his whole affair handled discreetly.

Muldoon doesn’t actually have a client yet but he’s confident that if he sticks around he’ll get one, and it’s likely to be a big payday for him.

This is not noir fiction but there is plenty of corruption and plenty of sleaze and decadence. There are ruthless rich people, and ruthless poor people who to become rich people. Almost all the characters have at some stage jumped into bed with someone they should have kept away from.

There’s not much action but there is decent suspense.

Muldoon is a fine hero. He’s at best moderately honest. He’s ethically flexible. He’s mildly interested in seeing justice done but he’s very interested in getting paid. He’s by no means a bad guy. He’s no anti-hero and he’s definitely no thug. But he does have to pay the rent. A man has to prioritise. He likes women and if they’re available he won’t say no. He certainly isn’t going to say no to the cute little Hungarian blonde. She looks very appealing in her scanty bikini. She looks even more appealing out of it.

Murder in Monaco is fine entertaining stuff. Highly recommended.

I’ve read a whole bunch of John Flagg’s thrillers and I’ve enjoyed all of them. I’ve read a whole bunch of John Flagg’s thrillers and I’ve enjoyed all of them. Some are spy thrillers and some, such as Murder in Monaco, are more in the PI thriller mould but the exotic settings will give them appeal for spy fans.  His two earlier Hart Muldoon books, Woman of Cairo and Dear, Deadly Beloved, are both excellent. I also very much liked his non-Hart Muldoon thrillers The Persian Cat, Death and the Naked Lady and The Lady and the Cheetah.

Golden Age Sheena: The Best Of The Queen Of The Jungle: 1

Golden Age Sheena: The Best Of The Queen Of The Jungle: volume 1 (published by Devil’s Due Publishing) collects eleven of the very early Sheena comic-strip adventures from Jumbo Comics. These adventures date from 1938 to 1946.

Before Vampirella, even before Wonder Woman, there was Sheena: The Queen Of The Jungle. She was the first-ever comic-book action heroine. She made her first appearance in 1938. She was not quite the first fictional action heroine (C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry beat her to the punch) but Sheena established the glamorous sexy action heroine as a viable commercial proposition.

Sheena later appeared in prose stories, there was a 1950s TV series and a much later TV series as well, and there was the excellent and very very underrated 1984 Sheena movie with Tanya Roberts.

Sheena was created by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger.

The comics in this collection don’t include the backstory but Sheena is of course basically a girl Tarzan. After her father’s death in the African jungle his daughter is raised by a tribal witch-doctor (rather than apes). She was just old enough at the time to have learnt fluent English and now she is steeped in the lore of the jungle. She has her own queendom.

She battles an extraordinary array of bad guys, assisted by great white hunter Bob Reynolds. The nature of their relationship is made fairly obvious - at one stage we see then putting the finishing touches to their new jungle tree-house love nest. Sheena always refers to Bob as her mate. There’s no question that they are living together as man and wife although they are not married. The 1950s TV series by contrast had to go to great lengths to convince the audience that there was no hanky-panky going on.

One thing that is a bit startling about the early Sheena comics is Sheena’s ruthlessness. She is a killer. She’s one of the good guys but if necessary she kills bad guys without a second’s hesitation or remorse. And she kills quite regularly.

It’s customary to preface a review such as this by making a grovelling apology for the material’s lack of political acceptability. I’m obviously not going to do that. Sheena would never have apologised for herself and I’m not going to insult her by doing so on her behalf. If you’re the sort of person who worries about ideological acceptability you’re not going to enjoy this book anyway.

In Slashing Fangs a notorious crook is trying to cheat a tribe out of the profits from their tobacco crop. The crook turns the tribe against Sheena and she discovers that at dinner that night she’s going to be the main item on the menu.

In Meat for the Cat-Pack Sheena and Bob discover a lost world ruled over by a rather nasty queen. Sheena will have to battle not just human enemies but both terrestrial and aquatic monsters. Considerable mayhem and bloodshed ensues.

In the next story Sheena and Bob get mixed up with town folk and circus folk, and indirectly in a murder case. The real trouble is caused by the fact that Sheena has a double. This lands her in difficulties with two of the local tribes.

In the following story Sheena encounters yet another double. This time it’s part of a villainous plan to convince the local tribes that Sheena is dead. This will allow the villains to enrich themselves.

Next up is an adventure which sees Sheena up against slavers, led by the deliciously wicked African queen Hawkina.

In Death Kraal of the Mastodons an ageing chief imparts secret to Sheena - the location of an elephant’s graveyard and immense quantities of ivory. Others, motivated by greed, want that secret. And Bob is plunged into madness by a close brush with death. There’s a wicked Bad Girl to deal with as well.

Sheena battles slavers again in The Slave Brand of Hassan Bey and there are riverboat battles as well.

In Derelict of the Slave Kings Sheena encounters a very nasty sadistic female and a young woman terrorised by her aunt and uncle. There’s a huge shipment of diamonds at stake.

Then we move on to The Beasts That Dawn Begot. It appeared in 1946. Five years later it was reprinted in Sheena, in a heavily censored form. Both versions are printed here. Sheena was a major target of those seeking to force comics to become squeaky clean. It’s amusing to see that the artwork was modified to make Sheena’s costume more modest. Those breasts of hers might have inflamed the passions of innocent young lads. It’s a fun story in its uncensored form, with some very cool monsters and a memorable villainess.

This volume also includes a couple of Sheena prose stories. Sheena and the Flaming Pyre of Doom (by Tom Alexander) is fun, with an island under a death spell ruled by a Diamond Goddess. Sheena and the Howling Horror is a rather dull story which begins with an awful howling noise in the jungle.

The Sheena comics really are so much fun. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the 1984 Sheena movie (which I adore) and the 1955 Sheena Queen of the Jungle TV series (which is worth seeing just for the amazing Irish McCalla in the title role).

Charles Williams' River Girl

River Girl, published in 1951, was the third novel by Charles Williams. Earlier that year he had had a major bestseller with Hill Girl.

Jack Marshall is a crooked deputy sheriff in a small town. He’s crooked in a small way. The sheriff, Buford, is crooked in a big way. They’re both under pressure from a crusading preacher.

Marshall is unhappily married and in debt and he’s disillusioned. Maybe a fishing trip will help.

That’s where he meets Doris. Doris and her husband Roger Spevlin live in a small shack at the far end of the lake. There’s something odd about them. They don’t talk the right way, the way people living in a remote shack eking out a living from trapping catfish should talk.

Doris is young and very beautiful but she’s very much on edge. And obviously very lonely. Marshall knows he should stay away from her. He also knows that he won’t.

Buford and Marshall are facing a major problem - a grand jury that could potentially blow the lid off the town’s corruption. That preacher, Soames, is planning to lead a moral crusade.

And there’s another problem. That girl in Abbie Bell’s whorehouse. That’s a scandal that will have to be hushed up.

All of these things - the grand jury, the young whore, Marshall’s obsession with Doris Spevlin - will intersect in interesting unpredictable ways.

The last thing Jack Marshall should do at this point in time is sleep with Doris Spevlin. But of course he does. They fall in love. Doris needs rescuing and Marshall starts to plan crazy ways of rescuing her. It all blows up in his face.

This is very much much noir fiction. Jack Marshall is a classic noir protagonist. He’s neither a good man nor a bad man. He’s a corrupt cop and he’s cynical but on the other hand he’s not violent. He has no desire to hurt anyone. He just wants to take his bribes (mostly to keep his status-obsessed wife happy) and be left alone and to spend as much time as possible fishing. He really does fall deeply for Doris. He really is trying to be a knight in shining armour although of course in payment for his trouble he expects to get the girl.

Jack’s biggest weakness is that he’s smart but not quite smart enough to get away with his complicated schemes.

Doris belongs to what I think of as the “innocent femme fatale” sub-type. She’s not a bad girl but she’s trouble and Jack should run away from her as fast as he can. Although she’s the one who leads Jack to disaster she’s perhaps the closest thing this book has to a reasonably admirable character.

Dinah is more of a classic femme fatale. She’s Buford’s mistress. She’s beautiful, glamorous, sexy and clever. She takes one look at Jack Marshall and decides he’s a big, dumb, hulking thug. That’s OK. Big, dumb, hulking thugs excite her quite a bit. Then she realises that he’s clever and devious. Now she’s really excited. With Dinah what you see is what you get. She looks like a very high-priced whore which is in practice what she is. But then she doesn’t pretend to be a Sunday school teacher.

Buford is not quite a straight-out villain. He’s as crooked as they come but his corruption is relatively harmless. As far as he’s concerned if a man wants to have a drink after hours or place a few bets or have a bit of fun with the girls at Miss Abbie’s cat house there’s no harm in any of that. By taking bribes to let those things happen he’s just allowing people to enjoy themselves. He would never take a bribe from a murder or an armed robber.

There aren’t any out-and-out villains in this story. All the characters are morally ambiguous without being evil.

Since this is noir fiction there is of course a sense of impending doom. Jack and Doris are like fish who’ve taken the bait.They can struggle but there’s no escape. It’s hard to see any way out for them. The odds are just stacked against them. All they have is their love but that may not be enough.

River Girl is top-notch noir fiction. Highly recommended.

Stark House have paired this one with another Williams classic, Nothing in Her Way.

The Trigan Empire

The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire was a 1960s British comic-strip written by Mike Butterworth and drawn by Don Lawrence. I’ve just finished reading the first volume of the recent reprint which includes the first thirteen stories in the series.

Don Lawrence (1928-2003) was an English comic book artist and author.

The Trigan Empire was originally published in the weekly papers Ranger and Look and Learn from 1965 to 1982. Lawrence did the artwork from 1965 to 1976. Lawrence later went on to the Storm series about a time-travelling astronaut. He also did the naughty lighthearted Carrie strip for the men’s magazine Mayfair. Carrie is a nice girl but she just can’t keep her clothes on.

The Trigan Empire is a science fiction epic set on a distant Earth-like planet, Elekton. There are quite a few different cultures, some much more technologically advanced than others. Trigo and his brothers rule a very technologically backward warrior society. Trigo can see the writing on the wall. They will inevitably be conquered by their more advanced neighbours.

Trigo is determined to transform his primitive kingdom into a modern major power. The first step is to build a city. A great city. It will be the nucleus of a great empire.

Trigo pursues his objectives through numerous wars. He makes allies. He suffers betrayals. He has narrows escapes from disaster. But his belief in the future never wavers.

All of this provides an excuse for non-stop action.

This was clearly aimed at a younger readership. There’s no hint of sex or nudity. You can be confident that the bad guys will be vanquished. But it still manages to deal with some grown-up themes (ambition, divided loyalties, betrayal). It’s more than just a kids’ comic strip. I suppose that today it would be seen as being aimed at a Young Adult market.

Trigo is an interesting hero. He’s brave of course and he’s a fine charismatic energetic leader, but his judgment in personal matters is often very poor.

One of Trigo’s brothers is smart but treacherous while the other is loyal and brave but not outstandingly bright.

Although it concerns a galactic empire it takes a long long time before the action movies to outer space. In fact it takes a long time before the Trigan Empire even gets as far as the Moon.

I think the slow build-up works. Mighty empires start small. Trigo’s petty kingdom is initially totally insignificant. It’s not going to become a global power, or on an interstellar power, overnight. In this case it happens because Trigo (despite occasional errors of judgment) has vision, determination and charisma.

He also has a very realistic understanding of power. He would have been quite happy for his little principality to be left alone but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. You either dominate or you get dominated. You either conquer your neighbours or they will conquer you.

This first volume ends with the Trigan Empire on the verge of making the major move beyond its home planet.

Don Lawrence’s artwork is lively and pretty cool.

This is entertaining stuff and I’m certainly tempted to get hold of the later volumes in the series. Recommended for space opera aficionados.

Michael Crichton's Scratch One

Michael Crichton is best remembered for his novels in the science fiction/techno-thriller genres but early in his career he wrote quite a few straightforward thrillers using the pseudonym John Lange. Scratch One, published in 1967, was his second novel.

The basic concept, a poor innocent schmuck who gets drawn into a web of espionage and has no idea what is going on, has been used often but here it’s done with real style and energy. In this case it begins with a case of mistaken identity.

Roger Carr is an American lawyer who is in Nice to buy a villa for a client. He really is just a lawyer. And he really is in France to be a villa. Unfortunately he looks just enough like Morgan to be mistaken for him by someone making an identification solely from a photograph. And he’s arrived on the plane on which Morgan was expected to be travelling. Who is Morgan? Morgan is an assassin employed by the US Government. By the CIA in fact.

Morgan had been assigned by the CIA to kill every member of an Arab organisation known as the Associates. The five members of the Associates have found out about an arms deal involving Israel. It’s an arms deal that the Americans wanted kept secret. There were various options for dealing with the Associates but in order to avoid embarrassing publicity the CIA felt the best method was simply to kill them all.

The Associates know about Morgan. They want him dealt with and they have mistaken Roger Carr for the assassin. The local CIA people are also under the impression that Roger Carr is Morgan.

Roger Carr isn’t a great lawyer but he’s rather a success with the ladies. And then Anne comes along. Anne is an Australian model. He really likes her and he starts to fall for her, hard.

Anne gets captured. Poor old Roger gets captured and tortured by the Associates. He gets arrested by the French cops as well. And interrogated by the CIA. Nobody believes anything he says. This is the world of espionage. There are endless layers of deception. He could be a simple lawyer pretending to be an assassin pretending o be a regular lawyer. Everyone assumes that everyone else is lying. The most confusing thing you can do is tell the truth. If you genuinely seem to be telling the truth then you must be lying.

Roger is a bumbling amateur. But the truth is that the Associates are bumbling amateurs as well. They make a mess of even the simplest assassinations. And the CIA guys are bunglers as well. The guys who take all this espionage stuff most seriously and think of themselves as professionals are the worst bunglers of all. Roger really is a compete amateur but he’s not as foolish and incompetent as the professionals.

The French cops actually do know what they’re doing but they’re hamstrung by their reluctance to get embroiled in a major CIA fiasco.

The Associates are the bad guys but the whole CIA operation is sleazy and immoral. There aren’t really any straightforward bad guys. The arms deal is essentially a MacGuffin. Crichton isn’t interested in the politics. He’s interested in the amount of mayhem that can be caused by spy agencies and spy rings who are nowhere near as smart as they think they are, and he’s interested in the duplicity of the entire word of espionage. He handles this subject with style and wit.

And he gives some fine action and suspense and thrills as well.

This may seem odd but this book reminds me a bit of John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War, a great novel (probably le Carré’s finest) about a hopelessly bungled British intelligence operation. Both le Carré’s novel and Scratch One have more than a touch of absurdism. The le Carré book is darker but both have touches of black comedy.

I enjoyed Scratch One so much that I’m now anxious to read all of Crichton’s early thrillers. Highly recommended.

Ki-Gor, The Complete Series Volume 1

The Ki-Gor stories by John Peter Drummond were published in the pulp magazine Jungle Stories, beginning in 1938. The Complete Series Volume 1 edition contains six early stories.

These are jungle adventure tales very very obviously influenced by the Tarzan stories. In fact the basic premise is pretty much lifted directly from the original 1914 Edgar Rice Burroughs novel Tarzan of the Apes.

A formula soon emerges in these stories. These are not tales of a jungle man battling poachers or diamond smugglers or anything along that line. Ki-Gor is pitted against more outrageous dangers - crazed would-be emperors, armies of man-like apes and lost civilisations.

He acquires several allies including his faithful elephant Marmo. But the most important is American society girl and heiress, and daring aviatrix, Helene Vaughn. Ki-Gor has never seen a cute redhead before and he’s impressed. To Helene Ki-Gor seems to be a tall muscular wild half-savage untamed wild man. That’s how she likes her men.

Pretty soon they are obviously shacked up together in various jungle lairs. He always refers to her as his woman. In the sixth story, completely out of the blue, it is suggested that they actually married during their brief time together in England. Perhaps the author decided it might be wise to throw that in to counter possible accusations of immorality since it’s very plain in the first five stories that Ki-Gor and Helene are sharing a bed.

The first story, Ki-Gor: King of the Jungle, begins with bold but foolhardy young American aviatrix Helene Vaughn crashing her red monoplane in the African jungle. She is rescued from several imminent dangers by a blond-haired blue-eyed jungle man. He speaks English, after a fashion. She soon figures out that he is English, the son of a missionary who perished in this jungle twenty years earlier. His name is actually Robert Kilgour. He calls himself Ki-Gor. He has lived alone in the jungle from the age of six.

Ki-Gor is pretty much a Tarzan clone, although perhaps a bit more bloodthirsty. He is of course totally uneducated but he’s intelligent and quick-witted. Helene makes an ideal mate for him - she’s resourceful and she loves adventure and she soon discovers that she prefers the jungle to civilisation.

Helene wants him to take her to the nearest village but Ki-Gor warns her that the local tribe is extremely hostile. She soon discovers that he’s not kidding about that.

Ki-Gor is very friendly. He ties her up and takes her back to his cave. Then he unties her, they have a meal and survive a ferocious attack by those hostile tribesmen. The shared danger creates a bond between them, but naturally he ties her up again before he goes to sleep. She might run away. You know what girls are like. She does run away but he recaptures her and they have more escapes from danger. This is a pretty entertaining start to the series.

As these stories progress other regular characters star to make their appearance. Like George, chief of a tribe of brave warriors. George is black but he’s an American. He becomes Ki-Gor’s ally when Helene is in danger. George is not going to let an American girl come to harm.

The second story is Ki-Gor and the Stolen Empire. Helene is naturally anxious to make contact with civilisation. Ki-Gor arranges for her to meet a fellow European. He does so in his inimitable fashion. He kidnaps the guy. The guy is Julio and he’s an insane megalomaniac. He will become a recurring villain, constantly cooking up fiendish new plots.

Ki-Gor and Helene are getting along well by now. He doesn’t tie her up any more. Ki-Gor is looking for a place for them to live. He assumes they will set up housekeeping together. He likes her. She is ignorant of the ways of the jungle but he knows a pretty girl when he sees one. Helene was not planning on spending her life in a jungle treehouse. She wants to go back to England (or at least she thinks she does). But she wants Ki-Gor to go with her. She’s grown fond of him and she can certainly appreciate his manly physique.

This is a kind of lost civilisation tale, with a mysterious city hidden in the jungle guarded by an army of chimpanzees. And there are rumours of treasure.

Ki-Gor and the Giant Gorilla-Men pits Ki-Gor against a Hindu with a hidden kingdom of his own. And an army of specially bred super-gorillas. It ends with a full-scale battle.

In Ki-Gor and the Secret Legions of Simba the shadow of war falls over Africa. Not just the Second World War but the prospect of a holy war in Africa. The story begins however with Ki-Gor and Helene in London. Ki-Gor quickly decides that he does not want to live in England among his own people. His home is the African jungle. Returning to Africa means parting from Helene but he knows they will not be parted forever. She is his woman.

Ki-Gor and the Forbidden Mountain involves another lost tribe. Their mountain home is protected by a ring of death - anyone who crosses the surrounding wasteland dies instantly and inexplicably. The tribe is ruled by a mysterious pale-skinned queen and they make their living from slavery. Ki-Gor will have to penetrate that ring of death - the tribe has kidnapped Helene.

This is another story in which the war plays a role in the background. The agent of a foreign power wants something from this hidden kingdom but hat exactly is it that he’s after?

Ki-Gor and the Cannibal Kingdom sees Ki-Gor’s friend George in trouble. Ki-Gor has to deal with cannibals and talking bulls.

These are fine pulp stories and if you love outrageous jungle adventures you won’t be disappointed. Highly recommended.