Roy Norton's The Glyphs

The Glyphs is a lost civilisation novel by Roy Norton which was originally published in The Popular Magazine in 1919.

Roy Norton (1869-1942) was an American newspaperman who wrote a lot of westerns and a handful of science-fiction novels.

A moderately honest American big game hunter, explorer and adventurer named Hallewell encounters an eccentric and definitely not very honest Italian archaeologist. Dr Morgano has made a thrilling discovery - it is a key which will allow him to decipher ancient inscriptions in the Mayan tongue. He wants Hallewell to led an expedition to Guatemala so that Dr Morgana can get cracking on reading those inscriptions. Halelwell is not interested until Dr Morgano mentions the possibility of long-lost treasure.

A huge eccentric English explorer and hunter named Wardrop is persuaded to join the expedition, and pay the bills.

Dr Morgano might have flexible ethics in many respects but he really is a great archaeologist.

Accompanied by a guide who is a descendant of the Mayans they set off into the jungle of Guatemala.

They find an ancient road which will take them to a lost city but the road ends at a chasm. The Mayans destroyed the bridge centuries before. Hallewell does find a cave. Perhaps there is another way to reach the city.

This is a jungle adventure in which the most dangerous foe is the jungle itself. It’s a green hell. There is no action. There are no encounters with hostile tribesmen. There are no battles. 

There is however plenty of danger and excitement. An explorer who takes one wrong step could be entombed in a mountain forever. A mistake with a rope could lead to a deadly plunge into an almost bottomless chasm. There are venomous snakes and other nasty crawly things.

This is an epic of survival and endurance.

It’s also a tale that focuses on the motivations of the explorers. Hallewell, Wardrop and Dr Morgano are far from perfect but there’s a certain core decency in all three men. Morgano is genuinely driven by intellectual curiosity. Wardrop is driven by a taste for adventure but he is to some extent at least infected by Morgano’s enthusiasm for knowledge. Hallewell hopes for treasure but he can’t help being excited by the idea of being associated with what might be the scientific discovery of the decade. The Mayan guide hopes to revive his people’s past glory.

Respect and admiration has grown up between all four men. They don’t always agree but treachery is just not in their makeup.

They do reach a lost city and what they find there is not quite what they expected. Perhaps they have discovered as much about themselves as about the ancient Mayans.

This is a well-written novel that offers entertainment and excitement without relying on action clichés. Highly recommended. Norton is an author worthy of rediscovery.

The Glyphs has been reissued by Armchair Fiction in their marvellous Lost Worlds series.

I’ve also reviewed Roy Norton’s 1909 lost civilisation novel The Land of the Lost, and it’s pretty good also. Also reissued by Armchair Fiction.

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 Tarantula Tower

Tarantula Tower is the fourth collection of Theodore Roscoe’s stories of the adventures of curio hunter Peter Scarlet and his friend the naturalist Bradshaw. It’s been issued by Steeger Books in their Argosy Library series. The stories were originally published in various pulp magazines between 1933 and 1935.

The stories take place in a variety of exotic settings - central Asia, the Red Sea coast of Africa, the Dutch East Indies (as Indonesia then was) and British India. These are tales of adventure with touches of horror and weird fiction, although without any supernatural elements. There are monsters, but they are human monsters.

The stories generally have a nasty but clever sting in the tail and an atmosphere of the weird and the mysterious.

Although referred to as the Scarlet and Bradshaw stories the two men only occasionally appear in the same story.

Tarantula Tower appeared in Argosy in September 1933. Bradshaw explains where his horror of spiders originated. It started in central Asia, with a broken-down Russian officer who claimed to know where the Russian Crown Jewels had been concealed. They were hidden in a tower on a tiny island in the middle of a lake. He will take Bradshaw there. All he wants in return is a modest cash payment. The jewels are of no use to the Russian officer. He is being trailed by Bolshevik spies who would not let him get away with them.

The island is there. So is the tower. So are the jewels. But it’s not that simple as devious plot twists start to kick in. There’s something very strange, in fact quite impossible, about that tower.

Plenty of menace and creepiness in this clever story in which the mystery is never quite resolved.

Octopus appeared in the January-February 1934 issue of Action Stories. Peter Scarlet is in Somaliland. He doesn’t want to be there but he received a letter from an old buddy. Two old buddies were searching for treasure. Peter Scarlet is experienced enough not to get himself involved in such follies but when a friend needs urgent help that’s a different matter.

Scarlet will encounter the Green God of Sheba which is no god but it’s pretty formidable and dangerous just the same. It seems like the little American curio hunter might meet his doom in a sinister pool at the bottom of a ravine, a pool concealing some unknown horror. Plenty of action and excitement in this story.

Blood of the Beast was published in the March-April issue of Action Stories. Peter Scarlet faces a deadly stand-off with a madman bent on revenge. And the madman possesses the ultimate weapon- a bloodthirsty murderous pet orang-utan! A solid tense little story.

The Evil Eye appeared in Action Stories in June 1934. The setting is the Moluccas in the Dutch East Indies. A Prussian officer who is also a racketeer and a killer served a long prison sentence (which he thoroughly deserved) and died soon after his release.

Three years after his death the five men responsible for sending him to prison receive letters from the dead man. They are told that if they go to his castle and look his portrait straight in the eye they will find the key to a vast treasure.

Peter Scarlet tracks down the Dutchman, Schneider, who painted that portrait. By this time Scarlet is the only one of the five left - the others have all mysteriously disappeared. Scarlet and the Dutchman set out to solve the mystery, and a nasty little mystery it it. A fine story.

Port of Missing Heads was published in Argosy in 1935. The setting is Bhutan. It’s the most outrageous story in this collection. Bradshaw was acting as guide to a rich American on a hunting expedition. The American wanders off from the camp and is never seen again - until his head turns up in the river near the local police outpost. It’s the latest in a long series of decapitated heads found in the river. Apart from the obvious mystery surrounding these men’s fates there seems to be no rational way the heads could have ended up in that particular river.

It has something to do with the popular local superstition regarding the Little Dog. The Little Dog is actually a giant dog, with a tongue of diamond. Many have sought to find Little Dog. It has always ended badly for the seekers. Bradshaw has no choice - he must find the golden dog to clear himself of suspicion of murder. A nicely strange and creepy story.

Final Thoughts

Roscoe was one of the greats of pulp fiction, a solid prose stylist with a deliciously twisted imagination. This collection is huge amounts of fun. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed several of the Scarlet and Bradshaw collections - The Tower of Death, The Ruby of Suratan Singh and Blood Ritual - as well as the miscellaneous story collection The Emperor of Doom and his excellent mystery/adventure/horror novel Z Is For Zombie.

Otis Adelbert Kline's The Secret Kingdom

Otis Adelbert Kline and Allen S. Kline’s lost civilisation novel The Secret Kingdom was serialised in Amazing Stories in late 1929.

Chicago-born Otis Adelbert Kline (1891-1946) is often dismissed as an Edgar Rice Burroughs imitator. Which to some extent is true. He was however a pretty good Edgar Rice Burroughs imitator and his stories are quite entertaining.

The lost world/lost civilisation genre was made enormously popular by H. Rider Haggard in the 1880s (his 1886 novel She is still perhaps the finest example of the genre). These tales remained popular until the 1930s. Sadly, in the post-World War 2 period the idea of undiscovered civilisation in remote parts of the globe could no longer be made to seem plausible. The world no longer contained any unexplored corners and much of the romance and mystery of life vanished.

Bell is a young American scientist trekking through an unexplored region in South America. He’s collecting specimens. He has a rival, a German scientist who is out to get him. 

On a remote plateau Bell saves the life of a man, a very oddly dressed man. He has unwittingly encountered a remnant of Inca civilisation. The man he saved is the Inca himself.

This remnant seems to be thriving and they really are quite civilised. The Inca is a very decent guy and he is anxious to reward Bell. There’s just one problem. Bell now knows of the existence of this Inca civilisation, a closely kept secret. He can never be allowed to leave. He is ennobled, given a fine house, treated with immense respect, given servants. He is even given wives. Six of them. All of them young and pretty and very excited to be married to the handsome foreigner.

Bell has met another outsider. Nona, a half-French half-Spanish girl. She also stumbled upon this lost civilisation by accident, and like Bell she will never be permitted to leave.

Bell and Nona fall hopelessly in love but there’s a problem. Nona is supposed to marry the high priest Tupac. The Inca is a good man and a just man but Nona was promised to Tupac and the Inca never breaks his word. He knows Nona does not want to marry Tupac and he has tried to persuade the high priest to release her from her bond but Tupac is unrelenting. Tupac is treacherous, crafty and cruel.

Naturally Bell encounters many dangers, such as narrowly escaping being served as dinner to an enormous and very hungry boa constrictor. There are various attempts to deprive Bell of his life or his freedom, or both. Tupac hatches sinister conspiracies. Bell’s nemesis, the German scientist von Steinbeig, shows up at an inconvenient moment.

There’s plenty of action.

Bell also has his hands full with his six wives. They’re all madly in love with him. Somehow Bell has to avoid sharing his bed with any of them. Nona is a sweet girl but she is a woman and she has a woman’s natural jealousy. She has no intention of sharing Bell with another woman and she certainly isn’t going to share him with six sex-crazed maidens.

Bell is your basic square-jawed hero but he’s likeable enough. Tupac makes a fine villain. The world-building is not elaborate and certainly doesn’t compare with the kind of world-building you would get in an Edgar Rice Burroughs story.

Kline’s prose style is perfectly serviceable. This is pulp fiction and it’s not trying to be anything more than that.

The Secret Kingdom is not a top-tier lost civilisation novel but if you love this genre it’s quite enjoyable. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed several other Otis Adelbert Kline novels - Jan of the Jungle (a Tarzan imitation combined with lost world stuff), Planet of Peril (a decent sword-and-planet adventure) and Lord of the Lamia (an excellent mix of mystery, action, Egyptology, horror and an offbeat love story).

Fred MacIsaac’s Balata

Fred MacIsaac’s adventure novel Balata originally appeared in serial form in six issues of Argosy magazine in 1930 and 1931.

Fred MacIsaac (1886-1940) was an American who turned to writing fiction after a varied career in journalism and concert management.

Balata is the story of a small group of men searching for a balata forest deep in the Amazon rainforest. The Brazilian rubber industry, once thriving, is now languishing due to competition from British plantations in Malaya. But somewhere in the Amazon basin there is a much greater prize than rubber - balata. What is balata? According to the story it’s a kind of super-rubber, and much more valuable than rubber. It is harvested like rubber and the balata tree grows nowhere else in the world.

American explorer Felix Dexter has found the world’s biggest balata forest. He needs money to exploit his discovery and that’s where millionaire Les Gorman comes in. Gorman has an adventurous spirit and is prepared to back the project but first he wants to see that balata forest for himself. An expedition is organised. Gorman invites his old college buddy Peter Holcomb, now fallen on hard times, to join the expedition. Gorman’s sister Louise invites herself along, despite the protests of the men who feel that it is much too dangerous. Gorman recruits a dozen other ill-assorted Europeans and some native porters. The expedition will begin on a river steamboat.

Other people want that balata. And they will stop at nothing, not even murder, to get it. The most dangerous of these men is Brazilian rubber baron Carlos Aguedarno, a very ruthless man indeed.

To complicate things Peter Holcomb, Felix Dexter and Ageudarno all want to marry Louise Gorman. Louise wants nothing to do with Aguedarno but the rubber baron is prepared to use whatever methods may be necessary in order to persuade her. So there are going to be major romantic dramas.

The expedition seems to be ill-fated from the start. There are cut-throats lying in wait as well as hostile tribes, all stirred up by Aguedarno’s money.

You can anticipate a lot of the obstacles and dangers these adventurers are going to face but MacIsaac throws in a few neat plot twists and turns, and even the more clichéd action scenes are handled with energy and style. And there really is as much action and danger as any reasonable reader could hope for.

And it is a neat plot. On more than one occasion the adventurers seem to be in hopeless predicaments but MacIsaac finds interesting ways to extricate them. The ending is nicely suspenseful and satisfying.

Most of the characters are standard types but there are some colourful villains. Both Pete Holcomb and Felix Dexter are a bit more than standard square-jawed action heroes. Pete has been a failure at everything he has attempted and he’s really just drifting through life. The expedition is his chance to make something of himself. It might be his last chance. And he may find out something about himself. Felix Dexter is on the surface the perfect heroic man of action but as the adventure proceeds some of the expedition members develop nagging doubts about him, and the reader will share those doubts. Perhaps in some ways this is Dexter’s last chance as well.

We remain uncertain until the end just how the characters arcs of these two men will resolve themselves.

The style is pure pulp, which is perfectly fine by me. It’s lively and the story powers along at a pleasingly brisk pace.

Balata is a very fine tale of jungle adventure and it’s highly recommended.

Balata has been reprinted in paperback in Altus Press’s Argosy Library series. It’s also available in those ebook formats of which I disapprove so strongly.

Theodore Roscoe's The Ruby of Suratan Singh

The Ruby of Suratan Singh is a collection of adventure tales by the great pulp writer Theodore Roscoe. These stories were originally published in various pulp magazines such as Argosy, Far East Adventure Stories and Action Stories in 1929 and 1930. This is the second collection of stories featuring either the American curio hunter Peter Scarlet or the naturalist Bradshaw.

These are tales of adventure in the Mysterious East, in jungles and exotic seaports and anywhere that fortunes can be made without too much concern for ethics of any kind.

These stories are fairly outrageous. They’re really the kinds of tales you’d hear told in a bar and they might be true or they might be just tall tales. That’s what makes them so enjoyable. You just can’t be sure whether to believe them or not.

While these stories are described as the Scarlet and Bradshaw stories it should be pointed out that some feature Scarlet, some feature Bradshaw and some feature both men. In this particular collection Scarlet only appears once (although it’s a memorable appearance). It’s still quite reasonable to describe them as the Scarlet-Bradshaw stories. They all take place in the East at the same time period and they all have a similar feel, a feel of mysteries that may or may not have rational explanations.

Some of the stories are amusing, some are quite dark and macabre. They’re an enticing blending of adventure fiction and weird fiction with occasional dashes of science fiction and horror. Roscoe’s plotting was always pretty solid. He had a knack for giving his stories a nice little sting in the tail, and for giving his stories just the right touches of ambiguity.

Scarlet and Bradshaw are not mere pulp fiction tough guys. That’s not to say that they aren’t tough, you don’t survive in the jungle very long without a certain amount of grit, but there’s more to them. They’re genuinely interesting offbeat characters.

Roscoe was also very adept at creating an atmosphere of dread and subtle uneasiness.

Roscoe was one of the grand masters of pulp fiction and these stories are among his greatest achievements.

The Stories

Moon Up is a very strange story indeed, a jungle adventure set in India but with a hefty dash of science fiction. Reven Staffard is staying in the jungle bungalow belonging to the naturalist Bradshaw. Staffard is supposedly hunting tigers but he hasn’t seen any tigers and he’s getting fed up. Then a bizarre old man wanders out of the jungle. His name, he declares, is Dr Gulick Habighorst. He has come to India for the moonlight. Apparently the moonlight in India is particularly suited to his experiments. Dr Habighorst has been conducting research on lunar rays and claims to have made an amazing discovery. He has discovered a means of using rays of moonlight as a kind of death ray. With a special lens he can use moonlight to reduce any object to its component atoms. Dr Habighorst’s lunar rays are the most potent destructive force ever discovered.

Staffard assumes the man is insane. Until Dr Habighorst demonstrates his invention.

Dr Habighorst wants Staffard to finance his further researches.

The crazy old scientist’s demonstration is impressive but there are eyes in the night watching. The eyes belong to men who want that death ray.

A very fine story with a nice twist to it.

The Blue Cat of Buddha is a treasure hunt story. Bradshaw is shipwrecked. An American singer who failed to find success in Tin Pan Alley rescues him. The singer, Johnny Ash, has gone to the East to make his fortune in order to win the love of his girl back home. The singer also saves a frail old Buddhist monk. The monk has a strange tale to tell.

The legend of the blue cat of Buddha, a giant carved cat that guards the entrance to a cavern which is a fabulous treasure trove, had attracted many a fortune-hunter. Maybe some of those fortune-hunters found that cavern. None survived to tell of it. But the old monk claims to know the secret that can unlock that treasure.

Bradshaw thinks that seeking the treasure is a terrible idea. He knows the East. He knows the quest can lead only to madness and death. But Johnny Ash is determined and Bradshaw owes him his life so he has to tag along. There are others seeking the treasure, six dangerous desperate men. A thoroughly enjoyable tale.

The Little Gold Dove of Gojjam finds Bradshaw in Abyssinia, lost in a forbidden valley with a young Englishman named Tupper. Bradshaw saves an Abyssinian from a lion. The Abyssinian, curiously enough, speaks English. He learnt the language in New York. He returned to Africa in search of a legend - the legend of Noah’s Ark. And he tells Bradshaw and his companion a part of the legend they had never heard before - the legend of Noah’s gold. The dying Abyssinian even tells them where to find the Ark. It’s in a hidden lake.

It’s all nonsense of course but something persuades Bradshaw and Tupper to search for the hidden lake. What they find is impossibly strange. Perhaps there is a rational explanation. Perhaps it was all just a legend after all. Perhaps. Another delightfully offbeat tale of adventure.

Claws features American curio hunter Peter Scarlet. He’s in one of the roughest sleaziest bars in the East which is the last place his friends Bradshaw and Schneider expect to find him. And why does he have his gun with him? Why does he want to listen to the crummy piano player? It’s the past that has drawn Scarlet to this bar in Penang. A terrible event in the past has drawn three men to this bar. A good story.

In The Ruby of Suratan Singh Bradshaw tells how he found the ruby in question. During the Indian Mutiny a nabob named Suratan Singh had fled from the vengeance of the British, taking with him the most valuable jewel in his possession. Bradshaw encounters an old woman who claims not only to know where the ruby is, she claims to have been there when Suratan Singh fled.

The quest for the ruby almost costs Bradshaw his life. And at the end we get the kind of nice little twist that Roscoe tends to throw in, the kind of twist that makes Roscoe not just a fun pulp writer but a superior pulp writer.

The Phantom Buddha is a kind of Oriental ghost story. The Malays engaged in building a railroad are being whipped into a frenzy by rumours that the phantom of the Buddha is about to appear to them in a small valley deep in the jungle. The young engineer Carter is well and truly spooked but his older colleague McInerny insists that it’s all hokum. Bradshaw isn’t certain. It may be a hoax but he is inclined to think that rather strange things do happen in the East. It’s an enjoyable little tale on the theme that seeing is believing, sometimes. A neat little story.

Final Thoughts

Pulp fiction doesn’t come much better than this. Roscoe gives us fine prose style, subtle weirdness, exoticism and adventure. Incredibly entertaining and very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed an earlier collection of Roscoe's Scarlet and Bradshaw stories, the excellent Blood Ritual, and another fine Roscoe short story collection, The Emperor of Doom.

Otis Adelbert Kline's Jan of the Jungle

Otis Adelbert Kline (1891–1946) was an American pulp writer in the mould of Edgar Rice Burroughs. In fact he is sometimes dismissed as a mere imitator of Burroughs. Whatever sub-genres Burroughs worked in (or often invented) you could be pretty sure that Kline would soon be working in as well. Like Burroughs he wrote sword-and-planet adventures set on Mars and Venus, he wrote lost world stories and he wrote jungle adventure stories. An imitator he may have been, but at the time he was considered to be possibly Burroughs’ most serious rival in those genres.

Jan of the Jungle, published in 1931, is a jungle adventure tale about a boy raised by chimpanzees, which certainly does sound remarkably close to Burroughs’ most famous creation, Tarzan.

Jan is the son of a millionaire. For complicated reasons he is kidnapped as a baby by the evil mad scientist Dr Bracken and raised by a female chimpanzee. He can understand the primitive language of chimpanzees but he has no knowledge of any human languages. Since the book takes place in South America you may be about to object that there are no chimpanzees in South America but Kline has that objection neatly covered.

He escapes and has various adventures in the jungles of South America, with Dr Bracken pursuing him remorselessly. He also meet Ramona and falls in love with her. We will later discover that her personal history is as strange as Jan’s.

So far it sounds like an exact Tarzan clone but things are about to change. Jan chances upon the entrance to an underground river which takes him to a hidden valley. Jan of the Jungle is about to become a lost world tale.

At this point Kline decides to abandon any pretence at plausibility. The hidden valley contains not only a Mesoamerican lost civilisation but a huge variety of extinct animals, ranging from species extinct for thousands of years (such as sabre-toothed cats) to those that have been extinct for tens of millions of years (such as the stegasaurus). No explanation is offered for the survival of either the lost civilisation or the extinct animals. Not that it matters - if one demanded strict plausibility of lost world takes one would end with no more than a tiny handful to choose from.

There are two main sub-plots, the Jan sub-plot which concerns his parentage and Dr Bracken’s many attempts to recapture him, and the Ramona sub-plot which concerns her parentage and an attempt to kidnap her. Kline also at least pays lip service to the “boy caught between two worlds” theme but with an added twist since Jan is caught between three worlds - the modern world, the world of the jungle and the world of the hidden valley. To Jan it seems like the latter two are more likely to bring him contentment but then there’s the question of Ramona.

Dr Bracken is obviously a serious villain but in the hidden valley Jan will find another equally dangerous and treacherous enemy.

The important thing is that there’s enough here to satisfy the tastes of both jungle adventure and lost world fans and if you’re a straightforward fan of action and adventure you’ll find both those commodities in generous quantities.

Now if this had been an Edgar Rice Burroughs story there would have been a lot more attention paid to making the lost world more complex and more interesting and to explaining how it actually works. It would have been a much more fully developed lost world. Kline however has no such ambitions. He’s content to write an exciting pulp adventure yarn.

In other words there’s a reason Edgar Rice Burroughs is still a household name and Otis Adalbert Kline isn’t.

That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with Jan of the Jungle. As long as you accept its pulp limitations it’s enjoyable. If you’re a Tarzan fan and you’ve read all the Tarzan stories or if you’re a lost world buff like me you’ll want to check this one out. Not great but still fun.

Theodore Roscoe's Blood Ritual

Blood Ritual is a collection of adventure tales by celebrated pulp writer Theodore Roscoe. These stories were originally published in various pulp magazines such as Action Stories and The Danger Trail between 1927 and 1929.

These tales feature either American curio hunter Peter Scarlet or the naturalist Bradshaw. These are stories of adventure in the Mysterious East, in jungles and exotic seaports and the deserts of Arabia and anywhere that fortunes can be made without too much concern for business ethics, or any other kind of ethics.

The stories are quite short and mostly they’re quite simple. They’re like campfire yarns but they always have one twist at the end and it’s usually a good one.

Theodore Roscoe (1906-1992) was an American naval historian and a prolific pulp writer.

In Jungle Joker Peter Scarlet finds his jungle bungalow taken over by a madman. He is subjected to a reign of terror. There seems to be no escape. Not only is this madman armed, he is accompanied by his pet Joker. Joker is a savage orang-utan. Any attempt to free himself of his tormentor would expose Scarlet to certain death at the hands of the enraged ape.

Framed is a bit more interesting. A murder takes place in a bar. Whether there were any actual eye-witnesses is uncertain, although there is certainly a witness who claims to have seen everything. His evidence is enough to send a young man to prison. Peter Scarlet was there, but doesn’t seem to have seen anything. There’s a twist of course, and it’s a moral twist.

Wolves of the Yellow Sea is great fun. It’s a tale of piracy and pigs. A junk with a crew of Malay cut-throats encounters even more bloodthirsty Arab pirates. The pirates are prepared for a desperate fight but they are not prepared for what is in store for them on this junk. A clever, amusing, exciting and witty little tale.

The Phantom Castle of Genghiz Khan concerns a legend of a castle that sank below the waters of a lake, but periodically (so the legend goes) the castle rises for a short while from the lake. To add some spice the legend also tells of a fortune in jewels concealed in the castle. Of course it’s only a legend. Or is it? This is one of those tales that seems like it must involve the supernatural but Roscoe comes up with a remarkably cunning non-supernatural explanation. It’s a tale that offers danger and riches to a man with both courage and greed and it has a nice twist to it. And it’s a wonderfully atmospheric story.

Blood Ritual is a tale of madness, of a man who has spent too much time alone and away from civilisation. And then there is the endless heat, and fever that can be avoided only by large doses of quinine and sometimes the doses are a little too large. If there happens to be a vicious two-handed battle-axe lying about the whole situation can get quite dangerous. Peter Scarlet had been in tight spots before but this time he fears his end has come. A nifty little story.

In Claws of the Night Peter Scarlet has made an extraordinary find in a cave on the shores of the Dead Sea. He has to make certain arrangements with the authorities and will be gone for a couple of days but that’s no problem as the trove will be guarded by a young English engineer named Cameron. He is a man who can be trusted absolutely since he has no vices, except music and that’s hardly a vice that can be exploited. The treasure will be safe. Nothing can go wrong. But of course it does. A pretty decent story.

Sun-Touched concerns two young American engineers with a great fondness for music. They have an unfortunate encounter with three very disreputable fakirs and one of the young Americans suffers an unusual curse. A good and original little story.

In The Idol Breaker both Peter Scarlet and a brutal French sea captain are after a fabulous golden Buddha. The statue resides in a cave and it has a legend attached to it. The meaning of the legend is clear but the details are obscure. Those details are about to become all too clear. It is unwise to offend a Buddha. Another fine story.

In The Brass Goddess Peter Scarlet runs afoul of murderous cut-throats determined to steal a fabulous gem from him. Scarlet is equally determined not to give up the gem. The cut-throats have devised what they consider to be a fool-proof method of torture in order to persuade him. Unfortunately for them they don’t know as much about the local goddesses as Scarlet does. This one has a nice little additional twist at the end. A very good story.

Scarlet wants very much to find a gem known as the Floating Opal and he would also like to know what became of the young English trader John Bourncamp who had this jewel in his possession a few years earlier. In Doom Dungeons the Rajah Ranjit Ji lures Scarlet to his remote mountain castle by suggesting that he can give the American curio-hunter the information he seeks. It is the beginning of an ordeal of terror. Peter Scarlet will also learn that it pays to be nice to snow leopards. This is a sinister tale, and a good one.

The Thirteenth Knife is a story of a quiet Argentinian artist in the Orient, of a bar fight, and of revenge. It is revenge achieved with exquisite style and in an entirely appropriate manner. A very fine story.

Scum of the East is superb. A young American woman is searching for her boyfriend, an engineer who had been employed to open up a tin mine deep in the jungle. He hasn’t been heard from since. She fears that he’s gone native. To find him she’ll need a guide and the only guide with sufficient knowledge of the area is a white man known only as Scum, who has well and truly given in to dissipation. Drink, drugs, women, he’s done it all and now he’s a shambling wreck of what was once a man. Bradshaw and his pal, the Dutch trader Schneider, can’t possibly let the girl go off into the jungle with only Scum as a companion so they decide to tag along.

The jungle is infested with venomous reptiles and tigers but these turn out to be the least  of the hazards the little expedition has to deal with. This is a story that makes you think it’s going to be predictable but Roscoe has some nifty tricks up his sleeve.

This collection is superior grade pulp fiction. Blood Ritual is very highly recommended indeed.

I reviewed another collection of Theodore Roscoe’s pulp stories, The Emperor of Doom, a few years back.

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes

Tarzan remains Edgar Rice Burroughs' most famous creation. Apart from the huge sales of the many Tarzan novels the character appeared in numerous movies and television series. Like Sherlock Holmes Tarzan is an indelible part of our popular culture. People who’ve never read a Tarzan book know who Tarzan is.

Tarzan of the Apes, first published in book form in 1914, was the first of the series and is therefore crucial in not only introducing the character but in giving us the story of his birth and his childhood among the apes.

Lord Greystoke and his wife are marooned on the West African coast after a mutiny on the ship in which they were travelling. They do not survive for more than a year, but their newborn son (and heir to the title of Lord Greystoke) does survive after being adopted by an ape who has lost her own offspring. The young Lord Greystoke is named Tarzan by the apes.

The apes among whom Tarzan is raised are not gorillas. They are an imaginary species of ape, slightly higher on the evolutionary ladder than gorillas. They are a sort of missing link between mankind’s ape ancestors and modern humans, still basically animals but possibly possessing rudimentary language skills. Tarzan claims also to understand the language of elephants and other animals so the question as to whether the apes really possess a language as such is perhaps debatable.

Tarzan might not be as strong as an ape but he grows stronger than an ordinary man and this allied with his superior intelligence allows him to survive, and eventually to become the chief of the band of apes. He is now Tarzan, King of the Apes, a fearsome hunter and killer. Tarzan exults in his hunting prowess but he has vestiges of a human conscience and kills only to survive.

When the apes encounter hostile African tribesmen Tarzan proves to be equally successful as a hunter of men.

The hut in which his human parents lives until their deaths becomes a sort of shrine to Tarzan. Although he he is unaware of his human parentage he comes to suspect that he is not an ape but a man. From books in the hut he learns to read but not to speak English.

Then comes the day he encounters his own people again. The eccentric Professor Porter, accompanied by his daughter Jane and his colleague Philander, has also been shipwrecked after what seemed to be a crazy treasure hunt proved to be surprisingly successful. This encounter will eventually lead Tarzan to Paris and to the United States.

Tarzan will also discover love, with Jane Porter, but he has two rivals, one of whom provides an unexpected link to his past.

Burroughs was always fascinated by the ideas of lost worlds and of evolution going in unexpected directions and while these ideas are dealt with in a different way here compared to say the Peklucidar or Barsoom books, they’re still present. The ape society in which Tarzan spends his childhood and youth is typically Burroughsian.

This Tarzan is both more savage and, paradoxically, more civilised than the Tarzan of the movies. He’s truly a man caught between two cultures, and between the two sides of his own nature. Highly recommended.