The Red Skull (Doc Savage)

The Red Skull is a Doc Savage novel published in the Street & Smith Publications pulp magazine Doc Savage Magazine in August 1933.

It was written by Lester Dent, writing as Kenneth Robeson. Kenneth Robeson was a house name at this publisher. Lester Dent wrote most of the Doc Savage Magazine stories.

The Red Skull begins with an entertaining shootout on a golf course involving an aeroplane. A cowboy kind of guy from out West is trying to get a message to Doc Savage. His buddies need some help.

Doc and his assistants - Monk, Ham, Renny, Johnny and Long Tom - are always ready to help anyone in need.

In this case it’s something to do with a radium mine in Canada, but Doc has a feeling that the whole story is phoney. Doc believes that somebody really does need his help but that the message may have been tampered with.

So Doc has to try to figure what’s really going on, but he doesn’t where it’s going on or who it is needing help, or what it’s about or who the bad guys might be.

But there are definitely bad guys.

The trail leads Doc and his crew to Arizona. There’s a dam under construction. Somebody seems to be sabotaging the construction, for no obvious reason.

Of course there is a reason. But in the meantime there’s more than sabotage going on. There are attempted murders. Doc’s assistants are among the intended victims, and the beautiful secretary of one of his lieutenants is kidnapped.

Doc is also puzzled by the plane crash involving one of the owners of the dam construction company. It doesn’t seem to add up.

There’ll be plenty of meyhem before this story is concluded and it builds to a satisfying action climax.

Doc Savage doesn’t like to kill bad guys (although in the early stories many of them do come to a sticky end). Doc prefers to capture them and send them to his private clinic where they get the Clockwork Orange treatment - they get brainwashed and turned into respectable law-abiding citizens. In the early 1960s brainwashing became a major pop culture obsession and figured in countless spy and science fiction stories, and was always seen as something sinister. It’s odd to see it treated in such a positive way in 1933.

He makes use of gadgets, most notably various methods of dispersing knockout gas, and occasionally gas of a more lethal nature.

Doc has an ultra-advanced high-speed aircraft of his own design, and a high-tech autogyro. I’m always delighted by any kind of 1930s high technology.

There was never any doubt that Lester Dent knew how to keep a pulp adventure story powering along.

The Red Skull is fine pulp adventure. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed several earlier Doc savage novels - The Man of Bronze, Land of Terror and The Polar Treasure and I recommend all of them.

Mandrake the Magician Vol 1 1934-1936

I had only very dim memories of reading a few of the Mandrake the Magician comic-strips aeons ago. I had forgotten that Mandrake is not a stage magician. He possesses actual magical powers. And he does not rely merely on hypnotism. This is a collection of the earliest strips from the mid-1930s. I believe the character changed somewhat in later strips.

One weakness here is that Mandrake’s magical powers are much too formidable. When a character has such immense powers it can encourage lazy writing - any plot problems are solved simply by utilising one of Mandrake’s countless magical powers. That weakness is partly compensated for in the first adventure by giving the villain equally extensive powers, but it would still have been more fun if Mandrake had to use his wits a bit more instead of just constantly resorting to magic.

The first story is The Cobra. The Cobra is an evil super-magician with ambitions that put most regular super-villains to shame. And he has a castle from which sunlight is banished and it has a mad scientist’s laboratory in the basement. He’s into evil science as well as evil magic.

The Coba has obtained secret documents that could plunge the world into war. Inspector Sheldon of the U.S. Secret Service, his assistant Tommy Lord and Sheldon’s daughter Barbara set sail for the Orient, their destination a small strategically vital sheikhdom. Those papers must be retrieved. Mandrake and his servant Lothar will be helping out as well.

The Cobra is a formidable opponent and his castle is protected by spells that will make Mandrake’s magic useless. It all seems hopeless but Mandrake does not give up easily. At least this story pits Mandrake against a suitably daunting adversary.

The second story, The Hawk, introduces us to the beautiful, mysterious and possibly dangerous Princess Narda. The Hawk is a master criminal. He fears that Mandrake has discovered the plot in which he is currently involved. Mandrake must therefore be eliminated.

Mandrake’s limitless magical powers are a problem in this story. The Hawk is just a regular thug. He doesn’t stand a chance against Mandrake’s powers and the result is never in doubt. Princess Narda is at least an interesting seductive bad girl but it’s otherwise a dull story.

The Monster of Tanov Pass is more interesting. Mandrake is in central Europe and in a remote castle he encounters not a vampire but a mad scientist, and his monster. He’s been up to the usual mad scientist tricks, performing brain transplants. His monster, named Klage, is a gorilla with a human brain.

This time the bad guy gets a lucky break when Mandrake gets knocked unconscious and Lothar has to try to deal with Klage using brute force. A better story with an interesting monster.

Saki, the Clay Camel takes Mandrake to Arabia where he matches wits against a master thief, Saki. Saki, like Mandrake, is a master of disguise. The overuse of disguise is always a weakness in a story but in this case the two adversaries don’t even require skill or imagination - they just assume disguises instantaneously. Since this tale relies entirely on the use of disguise it doesn’t really provide any great interest or excitement.

The Werewolf is more promising. A pretty young woman named Lora lives with her strange old uncle and her surly cousin. The region is being terrorised by a werewolf. Lora is beside herself with fear. Mandrake is sceptical of the werewolf story from the start. This is by far the best story in the collection. Mandrake actually has to think things through. The plot has some clever and amusing twists and there’s at least some suspense.

I believe that Mandrake’s magical powers were curtailed somewhat in the later years of the strip.

Mandrake the Magician in this early form at least has some claims to being the first comic-strip superhero. If you’re a fan of superhero comic-strips then you’ll enjoy this collection a lot more than I did. If, like me, you’re not a fan of comic-book superheroes then, like me, you might be a bit underwhelmed. But this was a hugely influential comic strip and it does have historical importance. It’s just not quite my cup of tea.

Georgette Heyer’s Regency Buck

Georgette Heyer’s Regency Buck was published in 1935 and is of course a romance novel. What am I doing reading, and reviewing, a romance novel? Men don’t read romance novels. The fact is though that if one is interested in vintage pop fiction one can hardly ignore such a notable and popular genre altogether. And Regency Buck has considerable historical importance to students of genre fiction. It marked the beginning of an entire genre, the Regency Romance. 

It is also interesting in that it actually combines two genres, the romance novel and the mystery novel. Heyer wrote many romance novels and many mystery novels and on occasions combined the two.

I have to say that this novel is not at all what I expected. Which of course probably reflects that not having read any romance fiction I had all kinds of prejudices and preconceived notions about the genre.

Not one bodice gets ripped. There are no heaving bosoms. This is more like Jane Austen, but (interestingly) with a lot less actual romance. This is a tale of a young woman’s adventures and misadventures in London in 1812 (we can date it precisely because the first two cantos of Byron’a Childe Harold had just been published).

Miss Judith Taverner and her brother Sir Peregrine Taverner have just inherited vast fortunes and have decided to leave Yorkshire and set out for the bright lights of the big city. They hope to make a splash in the world of fashionable society in London.

Initially it appears that Judith’s hopes will be dashed. She is hopelessly provincial. She does not understand the niceties and subtleties of the world of fashion. She makes one social faux pas after another. It seems hopeless until Beau Brummell (who was of course in real life the ultimate arbiter of taste in Regency England) takes her in hand. He realises that there is no hope of persuading her to follow the rules. Instead he encourages her to behave even more eccentrically. Maybe she cannot follow fashion but she can instead lead fashion. It works. She is a sensation. Of course it helps that she is a statuesque blonde beauty possessed of a vast fortune. Soon she is inundated with offers of marriage.

There is the problem of Lord Worth, her guardian (and Peregrine’s guardian). Judith thinks he is the most odious disagreeable provoking man she has ever met. He is also domineering and it is obvious that he intends to assert his authority over her. No man has ever done that. At the same she is excited by the challenge and also fascinated by Lord Worth.

Peregrine on the other hand spends his time losing a fortune at the gaming tables. He is a likeable but foolish young man.

Judith has to deal with irritatingly determined suitors. She has an encounter with the Prince Regent and escapes with her virtue intact (which is quite an achievement).

And something else is going on, something that would horrify Judith if she knew about. Since it is intended to come as a surprise to the reader I am going going to offer any hints about it.l

The problem with any kind of historical fiction is that it always reflects the outlook and the preoccupations, and the psychology, of the period in which the book was written rather than the period in which the book is set. It is almost impossible (indeed it may be completely impossible) for the characters not to be to some extent contemporary characters wearing period costume. 

But unlike today’s writers of historical fiction, who deliberately give their characters 21st century social attitudes, Heyer does try very hard to make her characters representative of their period.

What can also be said of Heyer is that she made an extraordinary effort to get the minor details right. She did immense quantities of research on the social customs, the fashions and the way of life of her chosen periods. Of course an actual writer of that era would simply have taken it for granted that her readers know all the minutiae of everyday life and would have omitted many such details. Heyer, realising that her readers would not have an obsessively complete knowledge of such things, makes a point of telling us all those details. What’s impressive is her ability to do this without ever seeming to be offering the reader clumsy infodumps. She seamlessly integrates the background details into the story. She also demonstrates her knowledge of some surprising subjects, such as prize-fighting and cock-fighting.

I think most women will enjoy Regency Buck although if you’re looking for wild steamy passion you might be disappointed. But there is a love story here and it’s a good one. I can’t speak for all male readers but I enjoyed the book. Heyer’s prose is lively and witty and she has the ability to bring the world of Regency England vividly to life. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Heyer’s clever amusing detective novel Death in the Stocks.

Robert E. Howard's The Lost Valley of Iskander

Robert E. Howard created numerous series characters besides Conan. One of the more interesting was a 19th century gunslinger from Texas named Francis Xavier Gordon who becomes a renowned swordsman and adventurer in central Asia. He becomes known as El Borak. Five El Borak stories were published during Howard’s lifetime with several others appearing posthumously. The Ace paperback The Lost Valley of Iskander collects three of the El Borak stories.

These are adventure stories with exotic settings rather than sword-and-sorcery. There are no actual supernatural elements.

The novel The Daughter of Erlik Khan was published in the pulp Top Notch in 1934. El Borak has been hired by two Englishmen, Pembroke and Ormond, to find a friend of theirs who has disappeared. El Borak soon discovers that he has been tricked. He has also been given a reason to seek revenge.

His pursuit of the treacherous Englishmen will take him into the country of fierce Kirghiz tribesmen who tend to kill outsiders on sight. They are devil-worshippers. Along the way El Borak encounters a troop of Turcoman bandits and he soon assumes their leadership. His quest will take him to a mysterious forbidden city where he will, quite unexpectedly, find the beautiful and formidable Jasmeena. They are old friends. She needs his help. She’s in a very awkward situation indeed. Being worshipped as a goddess is not all it’s cracked up to be.

This is a fine adventure story anyway but it’s Jasmeena who makes it really interesting. She’s not a good girl and she’s not a bad girl. She’s ambitious and she’s out for what she can get but she isn’t a scheming spider woman. You wouldn’t want to trust her too far but she’s not malicious or cruel. Perhaps El Borak doesn’t entirely approve of her but he rather Iikes her. She’s feisty and sexy and she’s just what a rollicking tale of adventure needs.

This is an action-packed tale of betrayal and revenge. Fine stuff.

In the short story The Lost Valley of Iskander El Borak has to deliver a package of vital documents that prove that a master criminal named Hunyadi is plotting to embroil the whole of central Asia in a religious war. And El Borak discovers a lost civilisation in a hidden valley - descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great.

The lost civilisation angle is cool and Hunyadi is a suitably menacing villain. A fairly good story.

The novella Hawk of the Hills was published in Top Notch in June 1935. An Englishman named Willoughby, a sort of unofficial agent of the British Government, is trying to negotiate an end to a feud between two bandit armies. One of which is led by none other than El Borak.

Willoughby is well-meaning and his theoretical understanding of diplomacy is sound but he just doesn’t understand the psychology of the wild tribesmen of the North-West Frontier. He doesn’t understand the complicated loyalties and he can’t comprehend the intricate webs of treachery, ambition and greed that motivate the bandit chieftains. El Borak thinks Willoughby is a nice guy but a man out of his depth. El Borak knows that the way to end his blood feud with the perfidious Afdal Khan is to kill him. That deeply shocks Willoughby.

There are plenty of battles and sieges and narrow escapes, there’s an impregnable castle and there are running fights in cave systems. This is Robert E. Howard in top form.

The North-West Frontier is an ideal setting for stirring violent tales of adventure. It’s a world apart from the civilised world.

El Borak is a fine hero. He has a code of honour but he’s no Boy Scout. He’s a realist. He is at heart as much of a barbarian as Conan.

The El Borak stories are terrific. Highly recommended.

Fritz Leiber’s Swords and Deviltry

Swords and Deviltry, published in 1970, is a collection of three of Fritz Leiber’s sword-and-sorcery tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Leiber wrote a vast number of these stories beginning in 1939, with the final story being written in 1988. In 1970 the stories were collected in seven paperback volumes arranged in internal chronological order (which was wildly different from the publication order). Swords and Deviltry was the first of the seven volumes.

In these three tales we see two young men discovering their destinies, but this is sword-and-sorcery not high fantasy so while their destinies will involve deeds of heroism they’ll also involve a good deal of thieving. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are not exactly law-abiding citizens. In fact they’re rogues and criminals, but rogues not entirely lacking in honour.

Leiber was determined that if he was going to write sword-and-sorcery he was not going to write mere Conan pastiches. He created his own distinctive style of sword-and-sorcery.

Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were perhaps the single most important influence on the development of Dungeons and Dragons. The world of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is the world of D&D, created by Leiber thirty years before anyone had thought of role-playing games.

The first story in this collection, the novella The Snow Women, was written in 1970 and it introduces us to Fafhrd. He is eighteen years old, a young giant, still dominated by his mother but chafing at this domination. Home for the Snow Clan is the frozen northern wastes. The Snow Women are witches.

Each year a travelling show arrives, much to the delight of the men and the horror of the women who strongly disapprove of fun of any sort.

Fafhrd has rescued a female dancer, Vlana, from the jealous wrath of the Snow Women and that is likely to cause a breach with his mother. Fafhrd is captivated by the free-spirited slightly wicked Vlana but he has been courting a local girl, Mara. He is caught between these two very different women.

This is a tale that give us a very detailed backstory on Fafhrd. I’m not necessarily a fan of detailed backstories but this one does set up some of the important themes of this story cycle. The clash between barbarian and civilised societies is a perennial theme of sword-and-sorcery with, usually, a contrast being drawn between the freedom, bravery and nobility of barbarians and the corruption and wickedness of civilisation. In this story Leiber turns that on its head. The Snow Clan is a society run entirely by women. It is a repressive stifling rules-obsessed pleasure-hating society. The Snow Women ruthlessly crush anyone who defies the rules.

Vlana comes from the world of civilisation, a world of freedom and pleasure and opportunity, a world to which Fafhrd longs to escape. Fafhrd wants to breathe free city air. This is the story of Fafhrd’s first steps on the road to adventure.

The short story The Unholy Grail had originally been published in 1962. This gives us the Gray Mouser’s backstory. He was a young man known as Mouse, an apprentice wizard. An apprentice to a very humble country wizard named Glavas Rho. He is teaching Mouse white magic although he suspects that the young man may well be tempted to dabble in darker forms of magic.

The cruel and ruthless local lord abhors wizards, for reasons connected to his now deceased wife - a woman he feared greatly. The duke both fears and hates his daughter Ivrian. And the daughter has formed a secret tentative romantic attachment to Mouse. This is a situation that is likely to end badly, and it does. 

This is a story of jealousy, betrayal, suspicion and revenge and the meek young man known as Mouse becomes a more morally ambiguous but much more formidable figure, the Gray Mouser.

In the third story, the novella Ill Met in Lankhmar, we find out how these two slightly disreputable adventurers meet. They are, independently, doing some freelance thieving in Lankhmar. A dangerous thing to do - the Thieves’ Guild deals ruthlessly with outsiders. Fafhrd is living with Vlana while the Mouser is shacked up with Ivrian.

Fafhrd had made an unwise vow to Vlana, to aid her in revenging herself on the Thieves’ Guild. And now Fafhrd and his new friend the Gray Mouser, having had rather too much to drink, have foolishly decided on a head-on clash with the Guild.

Leiber handles the sorcery elements extremely well. The Snow Women’s snow magic consists entirely of a mastery of the power of coldness. And you can be in the grip of sorcerous power without being aware of it.

Leiber’s sword-and-sorcery can switch very quickly between lighthearted adventure and real darkness. 

These three stories tell you all you need to know about what makes these two slightly disreputable slightly cynical heroes tick and will leave you thirsting for more of their adventures. Highly recommended.

Peter Cheyney’s Dangerous Curves

Dangerous Curves, published in 1939, was the second of Peter Cheyney’s Slim Callahan private eye thrillers.

Peter Cheyney (1896-1951) was an Englishman who had a very successful career writing pulp thrillers in the American style, starting in 1936. He is best remembered for his terrific crime/spy thrillers involving FBI agent Lemmy Caution. Cheyney also wrote a popular series of novels featuring a home-grown pulp hero, private eye Slim Callaghan, set in the seedier sleazier underside of London.

Obviously with an English PI in an English setting the mayhem had to be toned down. You can’t have guys leaning out of cars blasting people with machine-guns or cops giving suspects the Third Degree. Slim Callaghan is tough enough but his toughness is more psychological than physical. And there’s just enough mayhem to make things exciting without seeming implausible in 1930s London.

Slim is working on the Riverton case. It’s a big case but it’s tricky and it gets very tricky indeed. Wilfred Riverton is a wealthy young man who will be a very wealthy young man indeed when his father dies, and that’s likely to happen soon. Wilfred is also a very foolish young man. He has fallen in with a bad crowd (in fact they’re out-and-out criminals) and they’re fleecing him. Gambling, dope, women - these are Wilfred’s vices. He is universally referred to as the Mug because that’s what he is.

His stepmother has hired Callahan Investigations to find out who is fleecing Wilfred and to get the young man out of their clutches while there’s still some of the family fortune left.

Wilfred’s stepmother is not much older than he is. She is very beautiful and very glamorous. The type of woman who might be no good but is dangerous anyway.

There are lots of dangerous no-good dames in this story. And lots of crooks some of whom are very tough and some of whom are just sleazy punks. It’s a situation that could end very badly, and it does. It ends with a shooting. The circumstances are slightly ambiguous but what really happened soon becomes clear. Only maybe it didn’t happen that way at all. There’s a fine mystery plot here with an abundance of neat little plot twists.

Slim Callahan likes to keep on the right side of the police but he has his own methods and if Detective Inspector Gringall knew what he was up to he might disapprove. Slim likes Gringall. He doesn’t want Gringall to know things that would just worry him.

Slim is a bit of a rogue but he’s a charming rogue. He’s very clever and there’s always the danger he’ll try to get too clever. He takes a lot of risks. But where’s the fun in life if you don’t take risks?

Slim drinks quite a bit but it seems to have no effect on him. Tough guys can handle their liquor. He likes fast cars and he likes women. And women like him.

The setting is London but it’s the seedy, sleazy, exciting London of night-clubs, gambling clubs, con-men, hoods and girls with flexible morals.

Cheyney does a fine job of capturing the hardboiled style but with an English flavour. And the man knew how to tell a story with energy and flair. This is pulp fiction with (thankfully) no literary aspirations.

Dangerous Curves is hugely enjoyable. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the first Slim Callahan thriller, The Urgent Hangman, and several of the Lemmy Caution books including Poison Ivy, Dames Don’t Care, I’ll Say She Does! and Never a Dull Moment. And I’ve reviewed his excellent 1942 spy thriller Dark Duet.

T. T. Flynn’s The Complete Cases of Val Easton

The Complete Cases of Val Easton is a collection of spy novellas by T. T. Flynn (1902-1978). They were originally published in the Dime Detective pulp magazine between 1932 and 1935.

Flynn wrote pulp crime stories and westerns as well, his best-known being The Man from Laramie (filmed by Anthony Mann in 1955).

There’s a certain amount of continuity in the five novellas in this collection. The hero is facing the same bad guys each time.

Val Easton is an American Secret Service agent. He’s a fairly typical square-jawed pulp hero. Nancy Fraser is a highly capable American lady spy with a talent for disguise.

These are very pulpy stories and the plots do not contain any real surprises although they are enlivened by some lurid crazy details and some colourful settings. And fine larger-than-life villains. There’s a very obvious Sax Rohmer influence.

The best thing in the stories is the beautiful but deadly Tai Shin, the daughter of one of the chief villains. Sax Rohmer’s 1931 Fu Manchu thriller The Daughter of Fu Manchu had introduced Fu Manchu’s wicked daughter, the Lady Fah Lo Sue. She was played by Myrna Loy in the terrific 1932 movie The Mask of Fu Manchu and Loy gave us one of the coolest, sexiest, wickedest and most depraved bad girls in cinema history. Tai Shin is very obviously inspired by Fah Lo Sue but she’s made interesting by being made slightly ambiguous. She’s a bad girl but she seems to have fallen in love with Val Easton so she can be either an enemy or an ally, or sometimes both.

In the first story, The Black Doctor (written in 1932), Val is aboard a passenger liner when he meets a pretty young woman named Nancy Fraser. He soon finds out that she is a fellow agent. There may be a British agent aboard as well. And soon there are a couple of corpses.

They don’t know it yet but Val and Nancy are up against international spy Carl Zaken, the infamous Black Doctor.

In a hotel in New York there are more corpses. Whatever the foreign agents are after is important enough to kill for.

The second story, Torture Tavern, dates from 1933. That earlier case is not quite over after all. There are loose ends remaining, dangerous ones. There’s more shipboard action. There’s a dead cop by the dockside. There’s a link to an extraordinary potential catastrophic discovery made at a Philadelphia chemical plant. The French secret service is involved. And there’s a new and terrifying enemy, Chang Ch’ien, a one-time associate of the Black Doctor.

There are three women in this story. Two will find themselves in deadly danger. The third is Tai Shin - beautiful and seductive but very dangerous indeed.

The Jade Joss, from 1933, has a very Sax Rohmer feel to it. The bad guys have stolen a jade mask belonging to a long-dead Chinese warrior emperor. The idea is that anyone who possesses that mask could set the whole of Asia aflame. It’s a good story.

In The Evil Brand, published in 1934, Val’s nefarious opponents are trying to gain control of a Chinese secret society, which will in turn give them almost unlimited power.

The Dragons of Chang Ch’ien, dating from 1935, concerns a mysterious Chinese named Li Hung. He may be a businessman, a Chinese government agent, a member of a sinister secret society or something else entirely. Whatever he is he is clearly an important man and it seems that someone is out to get him. And there’s a connection with the upcoming marriage of a wealthy American munitions manufacturer.

The Val Easton stories are fun if you like pulp crime with a Sax Rohmer-ish flavour. Recommended.

A. Merritt's The Fox Woman and Other Stories

The Fox Woman and Other Stories collects the shorter fiction of Abraham Merritt (whose work was always published under the byline A. Merritt). The stories were written between 1917 and 1948.

Merritt wrote one of the all-time great fantasy novels, The Ship of Ishtar, as well as some of the greatest of all lost world stories.

The novelette Fox Woman (from 1946) is set in China. The bandits who killed her husband are on the trail of a woman. She sees no hope of escape. She is about to flee up the stairway to a temple when she sees a fox. She doesn’t know why, perhaps she is simply mad with fear, but she asks the fox to help her. She desires only revenge. The fox vanishes. Then she sees a beautiful woman. Unaccountably the bandits turn on each other.


She is taken in by an old priest. And by the foxes. They are of course fox spirits. She gives birth to her child. And perhaps she will have her revenge.

Fox spirits are a major and fascinating feature of Chinese folklore and I love any story in which they are involved. An excellent tale.

In The People of the Pit (dating from 1917) a couple of gold prospectors in the Yukon see a strange light playing on the face of a mountain. Suddenly a man appears, horribly injured, and he tells them a story of terror. There is a vast pit within the mountain, but the inhabitants are far from human.

There have been many tales of mirrors as portals into other worlds but Through the The Dragon Glass, written in 1917, is certainly an early example, and a very good one. It relies mainly on a nicely disturbing atmosphere of decadence and obsession.

The Drone (dating from 1934) concerns shape-changers. Werewolves and fox-women and so forth. A group of explorers who have seen many strange things in many strange lands recount things they have seen. Perhaps physical shape-changing, or perhaps not physical. An interesting story.

The Last Poet and the Robots (written in 1934) is set in the very distant future. Narodny is a great scientist but he cares more about poetry and music than science. He does not hate humanity. He is merely indifferent. He has constructed a vast underground world, a world of beauty and poetry and song. But now he will have to stir himself to confront a deadly threat. Which means he will have to deal with the robots. Good story with strong hints of decadence.

Three Lines of Old French (from 1919) deals with a theme that obviously obsessed Merritt - the blurred boundary between reality and the life of the mind. In the First World War a soldier has a dream, or maybe a vision, or maybe it really happened. Maybe the true reality lies in our subconscious or our dreams.

The Women of the Wood dates from 1934. On the opposite shore of a lake a man sees something odd. There’s a forest. A wood cutter and his sons are chopping down the trees. Then it’s almost as if one of the sons is deliberately struck by an overhanging branch. The woodcutters hate the forest in a way that seems bizarre and irrational.

And then the narrator enters the forest. He gets the impression the trees are not just alive but conscious. It’s as if they’re tree-women. They want his help. He feels compelled to help them, although he is horrified by their request. Of course it might all be his over-active imagination. Or perhaps not. A story with a wonderful sense of magic, or at least of an almost magical quasi-mystical atmosphere. A great story.

The White Road and When Old Gods Wake are fragments of novels that were never written.

A superb and varied collection and a must-read for fans of weird fiction.

I’ve also reviewed Merritt’s The Face in the Abyss.

Doc Savage 5 - Pirate of the Pacific

Pirate of the Pacific, published in 1933, is the fifth of the Doc Savage novels. It was written by Lester Dent.

Doc Savage is a superhero of a kind but he has no superhuman powers. He has simply developed his own physical, psychological and intellectual powers to an extraordinary degree. He is a scientist and inventor and is fabulously wealthy. He uses his wealth and his physical and intellectual capabilities to fight crime and injustice everywhere.

The major flaw of the Doc Savage stories is that Doc is much too perfect. He never makes mistakes. He never fails to foresee danger. He does not even have a few minor weaknesses that might make him seem human.

His five assistants are not quite as perfect, but almost.

The previous book in the series, The Polar Treasure, had taken Doc Savage and his friends to the Arctic in a super-advanced submarine. On their arrival home they are bombed from the air. And they discover that they now have pirates to deal with.

Piracy was rife in the South China Sea at that time but Tom Too is more than just an ordinary pirate. He has much grander ambitions. He wants his own country. He is plotting to take over the Luzon Union (we’re clearly talking about the Philippines here). Tom Too controls a huge pirate fleet ad a vast army of cutthroats. He is very much a megalomaniac and an evil genius and a Super Villain.

Juan Mindoro has asked Doc for help. Mindoro runs a secret society in the Luzon Union but his secret society is not sinister. He’s one of the good guys.

Tom Too’s influence even extends to New York where his henchmen murder one of Mindoro’s old friends and associates.

Tom Too’s organisation is gunning for Doc Savage as well.

Doc and his buddies head for the Luzon Union upon aboard the passenger liner Malay Queen. It’s a voyage marked by non-stop mayhem.

Tom Too’s tentacles are everywhere. Almost anyone could be one of Tom Too’s agents.

Doc’s buddies keep getting captured by the bad guy but Doc is never dismayed.

Doc has a number of non-lethal weapons at his disposal. He prefers to capture bad guys alive. They are sent to an institute that Doc funds where they are reprogrammed to be useful law-abiding citizens. Yes, perhaps a bit Clockwork Orange-y. It is an early example of the interest in brainwashing and mind control that became more and more of a feature of pop culture and reached a fairly spectacular lowering in the 60s. It’s intriguing to see these elements, which would increasingly be the province of fictional bad guys, being used here by the good guy.

It should be assumed that Doc’s methods are entirely non-lethal. He isn’t one of those moralistic superheroes who won’t kill. He doesn’t in the least mind killing bad guys if he has to and he and his crew never go anywhere without a supply of machineguns and grenades.

Interestingly I don’t recall a single female character in this book. Not even a very minor female character.

Pirate of the Pacific is breathtakingly politically incorrect and those who enjoy being offended will have a field day.

One thing you have to say about Lester Dent - he understood that pulp action adventure is all about action. And the pacing doesn’t flag for a moment.

Pirate of the Pacific has zero subtlety and complexity but it’s excellent pulp fun and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed two of the earlier Doc Savage books, The Polar Treasure and Land of Terror.

Peter Cheyney's Poison Ivy

Between 1936 and 1951 Englishman Peter Cheyney enjoyed great success with his pulp thrillers in the American style. He had never been to America but that didn’t worry him. He knew the America that mattered to his readers - the America of the movies and the pulps. Some of Cheyney’s books are set in the United States but some are not. They do however all have an American-style hardboiled pulp flavour.

His best-known series characters were private detective Slim Callaghan and FBI agent Lemmy Caution. Lemmy Caution was immortalised in a wonderful series of French movies in the 1950s and early 60s with the great Eddie Constantine in the title role.

Poison Ivy, published in 1937, was the second Lemmy Caution novel.

Lemmy is investigating a plot involving gold. The FBI have very little hard information but it appears that there may be an attempt to steal a shipment of gold bullion. What’s worrying is that three FBI agents assigned to the case have already been murdered. And while Lemmy is waiting to make a contact in a night-club a fourth G-Man is slain. Lemmy is going to be up against some very dangerous opponents.

At the night club he sees Carlotta for the first time. She’s the singer. She’s a whole lot of woman. Lemmy has encountered some swell-looking dames in his time but Carlotta is in a league of her own. And swell-looking dames just happen to be one of Lemmy’s hobbies. He later finds out that her nickname is Poison Ivy.

Of more immediate concern is the presence of two corpses in the night club. One is a G-Man. The other is Willie the Goop. Carlotta was Willie’s girl, or at least that’s what Willie thought. Rudy Saltieri had other ideas. Rudy is a mobster and a particularly dangerous and ruthless example of the breed.

Lemmy has some ideas about the identity of Willie’s slayer. His favoured suspect has an alibi but Lemmy figures the alibi is not going to stand up. He has an instinct for such things.

Lemmy has a rough time on this case. He gets beaten up several times and he gets kidnapped. In fairness to Lemmy he hands out quite a bit of punishment to the bad guys along the way. There’s always plenty of action in a Lemmy Caution story. Lemmy is handy with a gun but he’s even handier with his fists. And Lemmy figures that while it’s a good thing to persuade a suspect to co-operate it’s a lot easier to do so if you knock seven daylights out of the guy first.

This is of course a heist story and it’s a pretty clever heist. The rather neat plot involves yachts, trains and a séance. And plenty of twists and double-crosses.

And dames. Two very seductive dames. They’re probably not nice girls but bad girls tend to make a case a lot more interesting.

Lemmy finds plenty of opportunities to trade wisecracks with the villains and to engage in some erotically-tinged verbal sparring with both the dames. Lemmy is as quick with a wisecrack as he is with his Luger automatic.

Lemmy is a bit of a rogue and he’s more than a little rough around the edges but he’s a likeable hero.

I have serious doubts as to whether Cheyney got all the American slang right but I am sure that he didn’t care. If your book has plenty of action and the right overall flavour there’s no need to stress about minor points of accuracy.

Poison Ivy is energetic fast-paced fun and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the excellent French film adaptation, Poison Ivy (1953). I’ve reviewed several of Cheyney’s other Lemmy Caution thrillers - Dames Don’t Care, I’ll Say She Does! and Never a Dull Moment.

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).

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.

Theodore Roscoe's Murder on the Way!

Murder on the Way! is a 1935 novel by Theodore Roscoe. It was originally published in the pulp magazine Argosy under the title A Grave Must Be Deep. I can’t tell you which genre it belongs to because I have no idea. And I don’t care. All I know is that it’s insane amounts of fun.

Theodore Roscoe (1906-1992) was one of the grandmasters of pulp fiction and writer some of the finest stories ever written about adventure in exotic settings. He spent some time in Haiti in the early 1930s which gives this novel an air of authenticity.

Patricia Dale (known to her friends as Pete) is more or less engaged to a more or less penniless artist in New York. An artist by the name of Cartershall. Pete always refers to him as Cart. Then a strange little Haitian lawyer shows up. He announces that he is Maître Pierre Valentin Bonjean Tousellines, Comte de Limonade. Pete is in line for an inheritance from her Uncle Eli. He has left a huge fortune and a vast estate in Haiti. All Pete has to do is go to Haiti. So she and Cart fly to Haiti.

It’s all a bit of a culture shock but the reading of the will is a bigger shock. The will is eccentric to say the least (and the method of burial prescribed for Uncle Eli is very bizarre). The seven heirs have been assembled and they’re the most disreputable bunch of cut-throats one could imagine. Several of them are murderers. The entire estate goes to one of them but he must remain at the estate for 24 hours after the reading of the will. If he fails to do that the inheritance passes to the next in line, with the same condition attached. Pete is the last in line. Given that the other six are villainous scoundrels there’s obviously the potential here for murder. Multiple murder.

It’s the kind of setup you might find in an English country house murder mystery and such books were hugely popular in 1935. The seven heirs plus Uncle Eli’s doctor and Tousellines are completely cut off at the estate. The weather has made the roads impassable. Someone has cut the telephone wires. This is the kind of setup you’d find in an Old Dark House movie, and these popular at the time as well.

For most of the book it seems like it’s going to be a story along such lines, albeit in a very exotic setting. And written in a flamboyant outrageous pulpy style and with rollercoaster pacing.

The locals follow the Voodoo religion. Roscoe isn’t making any of this stuff up. Voodoo was arguably the dominant religion in Haiti at the time.

There are a couple of extra complications. Uncle Eli may have been murdered. His doctor thinks he may have been murdered by a zombie. And there is a bandit uprising which could spread to the whole country and the rebels claim to be led by the King of the Zombies. The King of the Zombies being - Uncle Eli!

The expected mayhem occurs. There are lots of murders. All the murders take place in bizarre circumstances.

The local police chief, Lieutenant Narcisse, is perplexed. He suspects everybody. Which is not entirely unreasonable.

Cart and Pete will meet the King of the Zombies. This is one of those tales in which you cannot be quite sure if there’s something supernatural going on or not. Whether that really is the case is obviously something I’m not going to tell you.

This is a murder mystery and a suspense thriller and a horror story and an occult thriller. There’s lots of craziness. There are secret passageways and all the fun things you get in Old Dark House stories.

Murder on the Way! is just wildly entertaining. Highly recommended. And it's in print!

Roscoe revisited some of these themes a couple of years later in the equally superb Z Is For Zombie, also set in Haiti. And if you enjoy jungle adventure tales check out Blood Ritual.

Gerald Kersh’s Night and the City

Gerald Kersh’s Night and the City was published in 1938. The 1950 film adaptation, regarded as a classic of film noir, is now much better remembered than the novel. The movie has little in common with the novel. The 1992 film adaptation has an even more tenuous connection with the novel.

Gerald Kersh was British-born but later became an American citizen. He enjoyed some success during his lifetime but is now entirely forgotten. Interestingly enough, given that the novel deals with professional wrestling, Kersh was at one time a professional wrestler.

The novel can at a stretch be considered noir fiction but it is not a crime thriller in the conventional sense. It is a novel of the criminal underworld in London but this is not the underworld of gangsters and bank robbers. This is the world of sleazy businessmen who have never been involved in a single really honest business deal in their lives. They run clip joints. They’re involved in crooked sports promotion. They’re mixed up in anything that can turn a profit.

The protagonist is Harry Fabian. He’s a Cockney who pretends to be an American. He is a small-time pimp (or ponce as they were called then in Britain) but likes to give the impression that he is a professional song-writer who has hobnobbed with Hollywood movie stars. In fact he’s never set foot outside of England. He has never knowingly told the truth in his life. He lives on the earnings of his prostitute girlfriend Zoë.

Now he’s planning something big. He’s going to be a big-time wrestling promoter. Harry is a fake but he does understand one thing - wrestling is showbiz. His idea is to make it even more phoney than it already is but to make it entertaining. He has found a partner. Figler is no more honest than Harry. The idea is one that might work, but Harry has neither the brains nor the drive nor the self-discipline to make it work. He blows the capital for the venture on making a big splash at the Silver Fox night club.

At this point his story intersects with the stories of two girls, Vi and Helen. They’re hostesses at the Silver Fox. Vi is a part-time whore but won’t admit it. She makes most of her money by taking drunken customers home, sleeping with them and then robbing them. Helen has more ambition but also a streak of ruthlessness.

And then there’s Adam. He works at the Silver Fox but he also hangs out at Harry Fabian’s training gym. Adam wants to be a sculptor. It’s mostly a fantasy, just like Harry’s fantasies, Adam is madly in love with Helen. Helen sleeps with Adam and lets him think she loves him but her ambitions to make money matter more to her than love.

If you want to take a deep dive into squalor, degradation and misery this is the novel for you. Every single character is either crooked or deluded or vicious. They are all losers. Kersh doesn’t just want us to see the squalor, he wants us to smell it. It’s clear that he regards humanity with contempt. He seems to be particularly repelled by women. Life is worthless, meaningless, cheap and sordid. Everybody lies. They lie to others and they lie to themselves. In Kersh’s world everybody betrays somebody. He clearly sees women as being especially treacherous.

These people are losers for various reasons but mostly they all live in a world of fantasies and illusions. When they have something worthwhile they throw it away.

The only character possessing even a shred of decency is Zoë. She’s a prostitute, but an honest one. She offers Harry her love, but he thinks he can do better.

I very much doubt that Kersh thought of himself as a crime writer, or a genre writer. He had obvious literary aspirations. I suspect that he saw Night and the City as a serious novel about the seamy underside of English society.

Night and the City is actually rather similar in feel to Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, coincidentally also published in 1938. If you count Brighton Rock as noir fiction then I think you could count Night and the City as noir fiction as well.

Night and the City is unrelentingly bleak and pessimistic but it does have a certain power. Harry Fabian is one fiction’s most memorable losers. Recommended.

Chester Gould's Dick Tracy

Clover Press’s The Complete Dick Tracy Volume 1 1931-1933 collects the very earliest of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy comic strips. The strip made its first appearance in October 1931.

Dick Tracy would become a major American pop culture icon. By the end of the 1930s there had been several movie serials. Feature films followed in the 40s and as late as 1990 the character’s iconic status remained intact, with Warren Beatty’s  excellent 1990 Dick Tracy movie being a box office success.

The early newspaper strips have a somewhat gritty realistic style. By the 40s they had become much more flamboyant with a gallery of bizarre and colourful villains. Later the strip would become known for featuring gadgetry such as the famous wristwatch radio and some science fiction elements eventually made their appearance.

But in 1931 Dick Tracy was just a police detective battling ordinary mobsters and assorted everyday criminals.

It’s worth remembering that Prohibition was still in force when the comic strip first appeared. Eliot Ness and his Untouchables were pursuing Al Capone. The hard-edged gangster movies of Hollywood’s pre-code era were hugely popular. Dick Tracy as a character owes something to Eliot Ness and the strip’s first major villain, Big Boy, was to some extent modelled on Capone.

The chief villains in these very early strips were racketeer Big Boy, smooth hoodlum Stooge Viller, lady gangster Larceny Lu and the sinister tramp Steve. There’s a glamorous gangster’s moll named Texie. The crimes were fairly straightforward. Larceny Lu runs a car stealing racket. Steve gets mixed up in kidnapping. There’s an attempt to frame Tracy (and attempts were made to bribe Eliot Ness). These were the sorts of crimes that real-life criminals committed.

Junior, the orphan kid taken in by Tracy, makes his appearance. I’m sure Junior was very popular with younger readers at the time although I find him to be rather irritating.

At this stage Tracy’s girl is Tess Trueheart. She’s a likeable character although their romance has its ups and downs.

Dick Tracy is a typical square-jawed action hero for the most part but he’s not infallible. On occasions he’s a bit naïve and even inclined to lose confidence when things go against him. He has an amazing ability to get himselt framed by his hoodlum enemies. However he always picks himself up again.

There’s some hardboiled flavouring but it’s Hardboiled Lite is such a thing is possible. Given that it was aimed at a young readership and that it was published in newspapers, always sensitive to accusations of immorality or condoning lawlessness, the tone had to be kept lighthearted and optimistic. The violence is very very muted. The villains are villainous enough but not evil enough to upset the kiddies. In fact of course the kiddies would probably have loved more violence and evilness - it was the parents who would have demanded that the strip be as innocuous as possible.

This collection includes the daily strips which form extended story arcs but it also includes the Sunday strips which at that stage were standalone stories. And the Sunday strips are in colour.

The visual style is definitely iconic.

Dick Tracy is a key figure in American pop culture. The comic strip evolved over the years but it’s worth getting this volume to go right back to where it all began. The birth of a legend. Highly recommended.

H. Bedford-Jones's Buccaneer Blood

Buccaneer Blood from Altus Press collects five rollicking pirate adventure tales by H. Bedford-Jones, all published in the pulp magazine Argosy in the early 1930s.

Canadian-born H. Bedford-Jones (1887-1949) was an incredibly prolific pulp writer, mostly of adventure stories (often in historical settings) although he also wrote science fiction and westerns.

These five loosely linked short stories recount the adventures of Irish soldier of fortune and pirate Denis Burke.

Escape! appeared in Argosy in November 1931. In 1703 Burke is in the French service, until he is rash enough to make a very unflattering remark about Louis XIV. Now he will need to leave France in a hurry, keeping one step ahead of the king’s wrath.

Burke can be hot-headed but he is clever and determined and his boldness counts in his favour. He is a master of the art of bluff. If he can find a ship he has a chance. He will have to steal the ship but that prospect does not daunt him.

Luck of the Sea Burkes was published in Argosy in January 1932. Having assumed the name Captain Mayo Denis Burke has his first success as a pirate, capturing a fine Spanish frigate. He learns of great riches that are his for the taking, if he and his crew are prepared to fight hard enough. His crew will certainly fight for money.

There is a woman involved as well. There usually is where Denis Burke is concerned.

Spanish Gold appeared in Argosy in March 1932. A Spaniard tells Burke of a sunken galleon, lying in shallow water with a fortune aboard. This sets off a series of double-crosses and deceptions. Everyone wants that fortune but it’s not as straightforward as it sounds.

Burke encounters a woman from his past. Maybe she’ll be an ally.

There’s also plenty of action and suspense.

Buccaneer Blood is from a September 1932 issue of Argosy. Denis Burke is never really at his best when he isn’t at sea but he has a plan for the future which cannot be executed at sea.

He is trying to pass himself off as a French nobleman. He has good reasons for not wanting to be recognised as either Denis Burke or Captain Mayo.

His problem is that a French officer has indeed recognised him as the notorious wanted outlaw Denis Burke.

He may also have found love. He is not sure, but maybe he’s ready for marriage, something he had never considered before.

Spanish Blood is Proud Blood appeared in Argosy in March 1933.

Burke has fresh plans. Or rather a variation on earlier plans. If he succeeds he will no longer be a hunted man. His new plan is of course crazy and daring.

The trouble with being a pirate is that you find yourself associating with the wrong sort of people. Treachery is an ever-present danger. You have to be careful whom you trust.

Bedford-Jones did this sort of thing extremely well. He knew how to strike the right balance between action and romance and he knew how to keep a story powering along. He throws in lots of plot twists as well.

If you love pulp fiction and pirate adventures, and I assume that includes everybody, then Buccaneer Blood is highly recommended.

John O’Hara’s BUtterfield 8

BUtterfield 8 was John O’Hara’s second novel, appearing in 1935. It was an immediate bestseller.

John O’Hara (1905-1970) is now almost entirely forgotten but he was quite a big deal on the American literary scene at one time. Even during his heyday he had his detractors as well as his admirers.

BUtterfield 8 was based on the notorious real-life case of a flapper named Starr Faithfull.

This is a Depression novel in the sense that the Great Depression is mentioned constantly but while the characters complain about how hard the Depression has hit them these are people for whom extreme poverty means having to cope with fewer servants. These are very rich people having to deal with the trauma of suddenly finding themselves only moderately rich.

The novel concerns an affair between a young woman named Gloria and a married man named Weston Liggett.

After spending the night having sex with Liggett in his apartment (in the marital bed) Gloria leaves, taking with her Liggett’s wife’s mink coat. That mink coat becomes an obsession with Liggett. Or rather, he becomes obsessed by the difficulty of explaining its absence to his wife.

Gloria is eighteen but she has had a lot of men. She feels plenty of guilt and existential despair. Liggett is torn between guilt, his cowardice about coming clean to his wife and his feelings for Gloria. Eventually the illicit relationship between Gloria and Liggett reaches a crisis.

There are also numerous sub-plots involving other couples but they go nowhere and serve no apparent purpose. Perhaps O’Hara saw this novel as a kind of social document on American middle-class life in the 1930s but the result is a novel that feels badly unfocussed. Or perhaps social documents are just not to my taste.

The book’s success at the time is understandable. It was based on a widely publicised real-life scandal and the plot revolves entirely around sex. In 1935 this novel would have been considered racy.

What’s curious is the total lack of any sense of erotic or emotional heat. When characters in this novel have sex they do so with as much enthusiasm, passion, desperation and madness as they would experience when deciding whether or not to have a second cup of coffee at breakfast. When one of the male characters tells one of the female characters that he has to have her, or when one of the female characters tells one of the male characters that she loves him, we just don’t buy it. We’re just not convinced that these people feel anything.

The characters are totally lifeless and uninteresting. It’s easy to get the various characters confused because they don’t have any real individuality.

The climax comes as more of an anti-climax.

Maybe O’Hara was trying to say something profound about the emptiness of modern life. Or maybe he just couldn’t write interesting prose or create living characters. Maybe he thought he was writing an honest hard-hitting realist novel but the fact that the characters are not believable is still a problem.

The novel gives us exhaustive backstories on even minor characters. It gives us a detailed explanation of how Gloria came to be such a wicked girl. This aspect of the story was handled much more economically, much more effectively and much more convincingly in the 1960 movie.

This is one of the cases of a movie adaptation being vastly superior to the source novel. The screenwriters of the 1960 movie, Charles Schnee and John Michael Hayes, wisely dumped most of O’Hara’s story and replaced it with a much more interesting story. They also retooled the story as melodrama, but very superior and very entertaining melodrama. The movie also has the advantage that Elizabeth Taylor brings Gloria to life on the screen in a way that O’Hara totally failed to do on the printed page.

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say that BUtterfield 8 is a bad book but it’s most definitely not to my taste and I can’t recommend it.

I can however very strongly recommend the movie which I reviewed here - BUtterfield 8 (1960).