Nictzin Dyalhis’s The Sapphire Goddess

The Sapphire Goddess collects all of Nictzin Dyalhis’s stories that appeared in Weird Tales from 1925 to 1940.

Nictzin Dyalhis 1873-1942 was an American pulp writer who was extremely successful in obscuring the details of his own life. His birth date and place of birth are both uncertain and while Nictzin Dyalhis seems to have been his legal name it may or may not have been his birth name.

Dyalhis was a remarkably unproductive writer, producing just thirteen short stories in a period of eighteen years. Eight of the stories were published in Weird Tales. He should therefore be little more than a footnote in the history of pulp fiction except for one thing - he was exceptionally popular with the readers of Weird Tales.

When the Green Star Waned marked the author’s first appearance in Weird Tales (in April 1925). At first you could be forgiven for thinking it’s going to be a space opera. In fact it does have some science fictional elements but it’s more a fantasy with a dash of horror. It’s probably best to think of it simply as weird fiction. There’s also a preoccupation with good and evil and even perhaps a hint of some religious themes.

The planet Venhez constantly monitors everything that happens on its neighbouring worlds and recently there appears to be nothing at all happening on the planet Aerth. It’s as if the entire population of that world has vanished. An expedition is despatched to Aerth, each of the seven members being the acknowledged leader in his field (fields such as war, diplomacy, science and medicine). What they find is unimaginably horrifying.

Of course once you find out that one of Venhez’s other neighbouring planets is named Marhz you’re going to really that the story takes place in our own solar system, but in the very distant future.

Aerth has been taken over but the nature of the invaders is bizarre indeed. It seems impossible to defeat them , or even to fight them at all, but such evil cannot be allowed to continue to exist.

I’m not sure that this could be described as a good story but it’s interesting in its own way and you do have to remember that it was written in 1925 at which time some of ideas in it were quite original.

The Eternal Conflict, also published in Weird Tales in 1925, is much stranger. It’s a cosmic battle between good and evil. On one side there’s with a kind of goddess of love but she’s really an archangel and on the other side there’s the power of hate represented by Lucifer. They hurl lightning bolts and similar things at each other. And the battles take place in outer space, or at least in the Aether. It’s a mishmash of Christianity and mystic occultism. The hero is a middle-aged businessman who is a student of the occult and serves the power of love.

It has affinities to When the Green Star Waned but without the science fictional elements. It’s fantasy, but with spiritual overtones. I’m afraid it’s not my cup of tea at all.

He Refused to Stay Dead was published in Ghost Stories in 1927. I suppose it could be called a ghost story, but an unconventional one. A soldier, prematurely aged by a great shock, recounts the events that left him a wreck of man. After serving in the First World War he had married a strange girl named Edwina, a girl with a fascination for folklore and the occult.

The soldier happens to own a castle. A very old castle, dating from the ninth century. His new wife discovers that there’s more to the ghost that supposedly haunts the castle than had been supposed. It’s all connected to terrible events that happened more than a thousand years in the past, events set in motion by a Viking raid.

This is a much much better story, involving a past that won’t stay dead and an old old quarrel that must be resolved. If the soldier cannot resolve it he will lose the love of his life. A very good story.

The Dark Lore appeared in Weird Tales in 1927. It’s the story of Lyra Veyle, recounted by herself. She had been a beautiful dark-haired young woman but filled with pride. She had a sister, blonde and virtuous. The sister loved a fine man and that drove Lura to commit a terrible sin. She made use of evil incantations and summoned a demon, a handsome demon who became her lover. But loving a demon is not a very good idea and Lura is cast into a nightmare of sin and debauchery, and then cast aside. She is already in Hell but she discovers that there are even worse Hells. And even greater debaucheries.

Dyalhis’s vision of Hell is outlandishly over-the-top. Lura encounters unimaginable horrors and the worst thing is that even death will provide no escape. In these Hells you can just keep on dying.

Again Dyalhis offers us a struggle between good and evil but the main focus is on Lura’s own inner torment - she knows that she deserves her suffering. Apart from the mystical quasi-science fictional cosmic visions that we’re starting to expect from this author there’s an obsession with sin and also sexual depravity. It’s actually quite a strong story.

The Oath of Hul Jok (published in Weird Tales in 1928) is a sequel to When the Green Star Waned. The seven leading Vehnezians are all having troubles with their women. The evil creature they captured in the earlier story seems to be behind this. If there’s one thing that Venhezians will not tolerate it is anyone messing with their Love-Girls. The war leader Hul Jok’s Love-Girl has been so troublesome than even a spanking failed to bring her into line.

The Love-Girls are kidnapped by the Lunarian who intends taking them back to Aerth and having all seven of them as his wives. Aerth meanwhile is now controlled by creatures that  are half-human and half-monster. One of whom, a female, wants to be the wife of all seven Venezhians.

This is more space opera than fantasy. It’s also rather disturbing. The Venezhians are supposedly the good guys, the most civilised culture in the solar system, but their vengeance is quite blood-curdling in its calculated cruelty and ferocity. One can only speculate as to the source of the author’s taste for refinements of bloodthirstiness. There’s also, as in some of his other tales, something of an obsession with sexual depravity. The Venezhians are rather terrifyingly possessive of their Love-Girls. One can also speculate on the source of this obsession and I can think of some plausible explanations which I have no intention of going into. There’s a lot of weirdness here but it’s morbidly fascinating.

The Red Witch (published in Weird Tales in 1932) bears some thematic similarities to He Refused to Stay Dead. Once again we have a hero and a heroine trapped in the grip of the distant past. Randall Crone and his beloved, Rhoda Day, were once a young warrior and his wife in the primitive world of the last Ice Age. She was Red Dawn, the Red Witch of one of the tribes. There was a mighty war-axe and an equally mighty warrior who sought to steal Red Dawn. There was love and betrayal and a thirst for vengeance and those things never die. And old quarrels are not forgotten even after thousands of years.

These were themes that clearly obsessed Dyalhis and he handles with skill and energy. A very good story.

The Sapphire Goddess (AKA The Sapphire Siren) appeared in Weird Tales in 1934. There are the usual Dyalhis obsessions with the past and with shifting identities. Reincarnation was a popular notion at that time but while Dyalhis flirts with the idea he avoids being too obvious or simplistic about it. Once again there’s a hero who finds himself in a sort of alternative reality and this time it’s a classic sword & sorcery world, and indeed this is to a large extent a sword & sorcery tale although it owes more to Catherine L. Moore and Clark Ashton Smith than to Robert E. Howard.

There’s plenty of action, there’s magic, there are two evil sorcerers and there’s a giant sapphire shaped in the form of a beautiful nude woman but is it really just a jewel? There’s also a hero in search of both his past and his destiny. And it’s all great fun. A very good story indeed.

The Sea-Witch was published in Weird Tales in 1937. The narrator, obviously no longer a young man, lives in a cottage on a cliff-top on the New England coast. For some unaccountable reason he decides to take a walk along the shore-line in the middle of a raging tempest and he sees something extraordinary washed up on the beach. It is a young woman. She is extremely beautiful and extremely naked. More unsettling is the fact that she seems oblivious to both the cold and to her own nakedness. Naturally he takes her back to his cottage. He finds some clothes for her but she declares that, despite the bitter cold, it is much too warm to wear clothing. Even more disconcertingly she offers to be his slave.

It’s the sort of offer that a retired anthropologist, ethnologist and archaeologist (for that is what the narrator John Craig is) can hardly refuse. He is familiar with the Norse sagas and he knows he’s dealing with a witch, but not a witch in the Christian sense. She is a Norse witch, possessed of great powers, and she can be frightening but she is by no means evil. She is charming (if disturbing) and will be a fascinating object of study for a man well-versed in Norse lore.

She moves into his cottage, presenting herself to the world as his niece. Their relationship is platonic. Well, sort of platonic. She takes her clothes off a great deal and she’s rather an affectionate girl. John Craig is not entirely indifferent to her naked charms even if he is (mostly) able to convince himself that he loves her as a niece. But why did she come to him that day on the beach and was does she want? The answer is a terrible one and it lies in the distant past (which will come as no surprise to anyone who has read of a few of Dyalhis’s stories). There’s a lot of suppressed eroticism in this extremely fine tale.

Dyalhis’s final story, Heart of Atlantan, appeared in Weird Tales in 1940. Two men are obsessed with the idea of discovering the secrets of the lost civilisation of Atlantis. They are able to make contact with Tekala, priestess of Atlantan. A struggle for power between good and evil had taken place in that long-ago civilisation and Tekala believes she was responsible for its final fall. Can Tekala and the two men of the 20th century defy Destiny? Can anyone do such a thing? And what price would have to be paid? Another very fine story to round off this fascinating collection.

I think I can now see why Dyalhis wrote so few stories. He had certain obsessions to which he returned again and again. Had he been a prolific author such obsessions might have become repetitive. By limiting itself to a handful of tales he was able to take the same themes and play fascinating variations on them.

He Refused to Stay Dead, The Red Witch, The Sapphire Goddess and The Sea-Witch are all variations on one theme and they’re all interesting variations. They’re by far the strongest stories he wrote.

I can also see now why Dyalhis was so highly thought of by contemporary readers of Weird Tales. His best stories are stories of love and revenge, erotically charged and with just a dash of the decadence of Clark Ashton Smith. Dyalhis was also a writer who seemed to improve with each story that he wrote. The Sapphire Goddess is an uneven but intriguing collection. The better stories are very very good indeed. Highly recommended.

Sin Hellcat

Before making names for themselves as crime writers Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake kept body and soul together by churning out lurid paperback erotica for published like Midwood Books and Nightstand Books. They wrote countless such books including five in collaboration, the third of which was Sin Hellcat, published by Nightstand Books in 1962. For what it’s worth it was Block’s favourite of the five collaborations.

The sin hellcat of the title is Jodi but much of the book is taken up by the reminiscences of the narrator, Harvey. He’s a successful advertising executive, very unhappily married and not liking his job very much. Not that he had ever had any real ambitions, except to be a success. He didn’t care what he did, as long as he was a success. At the time he first met Jodi, twelve years earlier, he was majoring in English at college. Jodi wasn’t his first girlfriend but she was the who had the most impact on him. Maybe he should have married her but he didn’t love her and she didn’t love him and they thought that that mattered.

Jodi is now a success as well. She makes twelve thousand a year (a vast amount of money in 1962) as a high-class whore. Now their paths have crossed again and he remembers their long ago affair, and he remembers his other affairs. All of which now seem much more attractive to him than his marriage. It’s clear that his marriage is both loveless and sexless.

Now he’s run into Jodi again and (after a night of passion together) she has a proposition for him. It sounds easy, illegal, lucrative and fun and it certainly appeals to him more than going home to his wife. All he and Jodi have to do is take a package to Brazil. That’s all. The package turns out to be something they had not anticipated. No, it’s not drugs or diamonds or guns or military secrets or anything like that. It’s not even exactly immoral, but it is a very awkward package.

Harvey Christopher is an odd character. He’s been motivated by selfishness but somehow it hasn’t worked out. He’s got the things he thought he wanted but they didn’t make him happy and the things that might have made him happy he didn’t manage to hang on to. Like Jodi. He just can’t forget Jodi. It’s not like he’s still in love with her because he never was in love with her, but he was happy with her. Now she’s a whore but at least that’s an honest living compared to advertising.

Harvey isn’t really a bad guy. He just hasn’t quite figured life out. He’s found out what he doesn’t want. He doesn’t want the life he’s got. But he doesn’t know what to do about it. Jodi isn’t quite the Whore with a Heart of Gold but she’s not a bad person either. She’s in much the same position as Harvey. She makes a lot of money as a prostitute and she has a really nice apartment in Manhattan and she’s not unhappy but she isn’t really happy either. Life and love and sex have turned out to be pretty complicated for both of them.

These sorts of books were of course little more than a succession of sexual escapades. By today’s standards they’re incredibly tame. That’s what makes them interesting - the authors had to describe the sexual encounters in such a way as to leave the reader in no doubt as to what was going on but without being able to be too graphic. It was a balancing act. They had to provide enough detail for the reader to know exactly what kinds of sexual acts were being described, but without going into too much detail. Which makes them naughty fun rather than anything even remotely approximating to pornography.

They’re even more fun when, as is the case with this novel, the authors could actually write. Westlake and Block have the knack of generating some sexual heat but without enough actual fire that might get the publishers shut down or arrested. It’s the art of titillation and these two writers do it well. It’s like old-school burlesque where you always think the girls are going to show you a great deal and they never show you quite as much as you expect, but you enjoy the show anyway. It’s just graphic enough to have been considered very racy indeed by the standards of 1962.

They also manage to provide a certain amount of wit and amusement.

It’s all done in a way that is a lot less crass than most of what you’ll encounter in modern mainstream Hollywood movies or mainstream literature. It’s both naughty and innocent and it’s cheerfully and playfully trashy. And trashy and sleazy it most certainly is, but the trash of 60 years ago is a lot more enticing than the trash of today. If you like vintage trash sleaze fiction you could do a lot worse. Sin Hellcat is recommended, if this is your sort of thing

James O. Causey's Killer Take All!

California-born James O. Causey (1924-2003) had a brief but interesting literary career. He wrote for Weird Tales in the 40s, then wrote quite a bit of science fiction. Then in the late 50s he turned out three successful noir crime novels. And then he just pretty much stopped and wrote virtually nothing for the remaining 40-odd years of his life. The first of his noir novels was Killer Take All! which came out in 1957.

Tony Pearson thought he was going to be a champion golfer but after a few months on the tournament circuit he had to face the fact that he just wasn’t good enough. Now he’s assistant pro at a golf club. He has a short temper and plenty of self-pity. Then he runs into Fern Davis on the fairway. A year ago he and Ferm were hopelessly in love and planning to get married but then she married somebody else, a guy called Steve Locke.

Locke works for Max Baird, an ex-gangster trying desperately to be respectable. Max bought himself a country club and a beautiful wife, paying cash for both. The country club is real nice. The wife is a tramp. Now, through a series of accidents, Tony finds himself working for Max. And Tony plays a game of chess and loses, which should have given him the clue but it didn’t.

So what are the things you want in a noir pulp novel and does this one have them? First you want a clever vicious bad guy. This one has that ingredient. You want tough guys. They’re here too. You want beautiful no-good dames. Well it has more than one of those. And you want a nasty twisted plot. Killer Take All! has that too.

You also want a proper noir hero who has managed to get himself into really really deep trouble but he has no idea how it happened. This book scores on that count also. Tony Pearson is playing a deadly game and he’s losing but he doesn’t know he’s losing and he doesn’t know what kind of game he’s playing. He doesn’t know the rules and he doesn’t know who the other players are. But he’d better learn fast or it will be mate in three moves.

Tony Pearson isn’t dumb but he isn’t the smartest guy in the world either. He puts the pieces of the puzzle together but he puts them together wrongly. Then he has another go at making sense of what is happening. He’s wrong again but he has to keep trying. Which he does. And while he’s plucky he’s not much good at fist fights. Or gun fights. What he does have is desperation. If he can’t find the right answer there’s a gas chamber at San Quentin waiting for him. That’s a pretty big incentive to keep trying and not give up.

Then there’s the girl, Fern. He’s pretty sure he can’t trust her but then he thinks that maybe he can, but then again maybe he can’t. She might be in love with him, or with Steve, or with neither, or both. Val is definitely untrustworthy, or maybe she isn’t.

There’s also the matter of a certain painting by Rembrandt, plus there are multiple gangsters.

There’s a fair amount of sleaze. There are the no-good dames who could turn up in anyone’s bed. Then there are the goings-on at the Lee Shore Hotel. No matter what your sexual tastes might be you can indulge them there. The corruption of the police is taken for granted. Tony certainly isn’t dumb enough to trust the cops.

Killer Take All! ticks all the right noir boxes, the pacing is frenetic and the noir atmosphere is laid on with a trowel. It’s tightly constructed, it’s dark and paranoid and it’s very entertaining pulpy fun. Highly recommended.

The Smile of Cheng Su

E.P. Thorne’s thriller The Smile of Cheng Su dates from 1946.

E.P. Thorne (1896-1988) is one of those writers who enjoy fairly successful careers during their lifetimes and then disappear completely into oblivion. Thorne wrote at least seventeen mystery/spy thrillers in addition to a considerable number of other books and published them over a span of at least thirty years, which certainly suggests that he was successful enough to encourage him to keep writing. He is now so obscure that all I know about him is that he was English.

Fourteen of his spy thrillers (written between 1946 and 1966) feature Brains Cunningham, an agent for Special Department of the British intelligence services. He investigates a wide variety of crimes and plots. Brains is clearly upper-class and sports a monocle.

The Smile of Cheng Su is the second in the Brains Cunningham series. Although it was published in 1946 the events of the novel take place in September 1939, on the very eve of war.

In the very minor British colony of Saiwei, somewhere in the East, a fisherman is murdered. That’s not so startling but when a senior British police officer is murdered as well the case takes on a distinctly sinister aspect. Brains is despatched to Saiwei to find out what the devil is going on.

On the ship headed for Saiwei Brains gets some hints of at least some of the factors at work in the case. He finds out that there’s a rich businessman named Dimitrios whose activities may well be less than entirely legal. There’s an unsavoury character named Verrier who seems to have an extraordinary passion for oranges. And there’s a ravishing young lady named Daphne. Dimitrios and Verrier will be worth further investigation as they’re obviously up to no good. Daphne will be worth further investigation as well, simply because as far as Brains is concerned ravishing young ladies are always worth investigating.

When he gets to Saiwei he finds some interesting puzzles. Such as the swamp devil. This is of course just a native superstition. Or is it? Brains isn’t convinced. There are all kinds of romantic entanglements which would provide plenty of motives for murder, but those motives unfortunately don’t seem to apply to the actual victims chosen. There’s an English painter who has shocked the local Europeans by shacking up with a native girl and succumbing to the temptations of opium. There’s a luckless young army officer who’s made a fool of himself over both women and gambling. There’s Simone, the glamorous man-eating wife of Dimitrios, who has led a series of men to their ruin.

There’s also an opium-smuggling racket, and possibly other rackets. On the surface Saiwei is a proud little outpost of the British Empire but under the surface there’s a seething ocean of sin and crime. And then there’s Cheng Su, who runs the Mandarin Restaurant, the colony’s m

None of these things would really justify the sending of a secret agent of Brains Cunningham’s calibre to the island but that swamp devil is another matter.

This book seems at first to be merely a mystery novel in an exotic setting. The spy thriller part of the plot doesn’t kick in until late in the book but it is there.

While it was published in 1946 this book has very much the feel of the thrillers of the interwar years. This is an entirely different world from that of the James Bond spy thrillers, the first of which was published just seven years later. Not just different thematically but in style and tone. Cunningham is a gentleman. One could imagine Brains Cunningham lunching with Lord Peter Wimsey at his London club. One could not imagine James Bond doing that.

The background is light years away as well. The Bond novels represented a desperate clinging to the belief that Britain was still a Great Power although both Bond and Ian Fleming knew in their hearts that this was an illusion. The world of The Smile of Cheng Su is a world in which the greatness of the British Empire and the superiority of the British to all other nations is still taken for granted. It is a world of sublime confidence. The British at Saiwei know that Saiwei will remain part of the Empire forever and that the sun will never set on that Empire.

It is also a world in which the deference of the lower classes to their social betters is taken for granted, and the deference of the natives to the sahibs is similarly taken for granted.

This is a world that by 1946 had already passed away.

Personally I like the thrillers of the interwar years and I find their jingoism amusing. In fact I like them because they take place in a vanished world.

The Smile of Cheng Su is a great deal of fun. Recommended.

Charles Forsyte's Murder with Minarets

Charles Forsyte was the pseudonym used by British diplomat Gordon Philo and his wife Vicky for a handful of mystery thrillers beginning with Diplomatic Death in 1961. Not surprisingly several of their books have a diplomatic background, including Murder with Minarets (published in 1968).

Gordon Philo had at one time been posted to Istanbul so it’s no great surprise that they chose Turkey as a setting for Murder with Minarets. Istanbul has been used as a setting for countless spy thrillers and spy movies. It’s just one of those cities that seems ideally suited for the thriller genre. What is unusual is that the authors chose not to set this novel in Istanbul but in the capital, Ankara. Offhand I can’t think of any thrillers that have used Ankara as a setting. But they clearly wanted the events of the novel to take place against the background of the British Embassy in Turkey so Ankara had to be the choice. It doesn’t have the romance of Istanbul but it ended up suiting their purposes. It’s the Embassy staff that is the focus, not the city.

Given that Gordon Philo had an intelligence as well as a diplomatic background what is more surprising is that this is more of a mystery rather than a thriller. In fact it’s a mystery in the golden age mould. Very much so. This is a very old-fashioned book. It could have been written in the 1930s rather than the 1960s. That’s what gives it its charm. The only thing that really marks it as a post-war book is a certain atmosphere of austerity. The characters are low- and mid-level diplomats and they’re by no means rich. They have to live on a tight budget.

Many of the key characters live in the same block of flats in Ankara. The building is used to house Embassy staff but it’s not actually an Embassy building. This is an important point. Had the murders occurred in an Embassy building they would have technically taken place on British soil and while the Turkish police would have been notified as a matter of courtesy they would have had no jurisdiction. But the murders take place on Turkish soil so the Turkish police are very much involved which adds uncomfortable complications. Inspector Zühtü is a very decent fellow, well-disposed towards the British and an honest and competent officer but he is a cop and being a cop he intends to conduct a proper and thorough investigation. Jan Duquesne decides that it would be better if they solved the murders themselves. In fact she decides it would be better if she solved them. So this is a classic golden age tale featuring an amateur detective. Jan however is not just another elderly spinster amateur detective. She is young, attractive and happily married.

As for the plot, it starts with Magda Tranter dying of a heart attack in the bathtub. This brings to an end her stormy marriage with Paul Tranter, a First Secretary at the Embassy. The Tranters live on the same floor as Tom and Barbara Hadley and the Hadleys will be in the thick of things. As will Charles and Laura O’Halloran on the floor below and Peter Milner-Browne, a young acid-tongued Second Secretary living on the floor above. Also in the picture are Stephen and Jan Duquesne, who live elsewhere. These are all members of the Embassy staff and their wives. Rounding off the cast of characters are a number of non-diplomats - second-rate violinist (but first-rate womaniser) Francis Allardyce and his painter wife Doune, Peter Milner-Browne’s archaeologist elder brother Christopher and Jan Duquesne’s kid sister Gina (staying with Jan while recovering from a broken heart).

The second death seems like an obvious case of accidental death (electrocution due to faulty wiring). But two sudden deaths within two weeks among the small close-knit British diplomatic community is just a bit too much of a coincidence for anyone to swallow.

And there are indications that may point towards motives for murder. There’s the likelihood of blackmail and there’s adultery. Almost any of the cast of characters mentioned above could conceivably be mixed up in such things.

There are ingenious murder methods and some pretty neat plot twists, and plenty of red herrings. The setting is mostly useful in that it provides a perfect setup for a classic golden age murder mystery with a dozen or so characters one of whom must be the murderer (there are circumstances that make it quite clear than no outsider could have been involved). There is one nice exotic touch, a key scene that takes place in a ruined castle on the coast.

It’s all fairly genteel. There’s no bad language, not much violence and not much sex (although there are implied sexual shenanigans). As I said earlier the feel is very much of the golden age rather than the 1960s. But it’s thoroughly enjoyable with a good mystery plot, a few touches of suspense and just the tiniest hint of International intrigue. Highly recommended.

G-8 and his Battle Aces #1 The Bat Staffel

Robert J. Hogan (1897–1963) was an American pulp writer, best known for his aviation adventure stories. He wrote the Red Falcon and Smoke Wade stories for Popular Publications and from 1933 wrote 110 issues of the G-8 and his Battle Aces pulp magazine, each issue including a short novel. Hogan had trailed as a pilot during the First World War so wartime aviation stories were obvious subject matter for him. He also wrote seven Mysterious Wu Fang Yellow Peril pulp novels and later turned to westerns.

The Bat Staffel was the first of the G-8 and his Battle Aces novels. The hero is an American aviator and spy code-named G-8. There’s plenty of air combat (with G-8 almost single-handedly winning the air war) but there are some mild science fiction elements and hints of the occult and the supernatural although Hogan’s novel is not as outrageous (or as imaginative) as Donald Keyhoe’s roughly contemporary stories about Captain Philip Strange, the Brain-Devil.

There’s an evil German mad scientist, Herr Doctor Kreuger, who has come across mediæval legends of giant bats spreading death and destruction across the countryside with their poisonous bat breath. He decides that those giant bats will fly again, devastating France and allowing Germany to win the war. G-8’s job is to discover whether these giant bats are actual bats or ingenious machines, and to find a way to stop them.

G-8 gets some help from two heroic American flyers, Nippy Weston and Bull Martin. This gives G-8 the opportunity to explain crucial plot points to his side-kicks. In the process they shoot down most of the Imperial German Air Force. What chance do fifty Fokkers have against three Americans in their trusty Spads?

Hogan resorts to quite a few standard pulp plot devices. The chief villain, instead of doing the sensible thing and just shooting G-8 out of hand as a spy, carefully explains all the details of his master plan to him first and then of course G-8 escapes. Pulp villains just never learn not to do that. And the Germans just don’t seem to be able to tie up prisoners in such a way that they cannot escape. Of course it goes without saying that the Germans are all lousy shots, whether in the air or on the ground while G-8 and his buddies rarely miss. The Germans are all either evil or they’re fools. But of course this is what the pulp readership expected and wanted. Hogan understand his market.

The bats and their poison bat breath are a nicely sinister touch. The bats are almost impossible to destroy which makes them a suitably terrifying menace.

Hogan certainly knew how to pace a pulp story. This one hits the ground running and the action don’t let up. There are no romantic sub-plots to distract from the action (the readership of such tales was not going to want any soppy romance stuff). There’s no characterisation to speak of. G-8 is a square-jawed all-American action hero. The villain  is pure evil and degeneracy personified.

There are some plot holes but it’s pulp fiction and it’s fast-moving and the readers were unlikely to notice such details.

It might seem like I’m damning The Bat Staffel with faint praise but it’s actually pretty good fun. This is pulp fiction that is very very pulpy. As First World War aviation adventures go it’s not as good as Donald Keyhoe’s Strange War or The Vanished Legion but it’s still quite enjoyable and if you like air combat stories with a few hints of science fiction and weird fiction then I’d recommend it.

Adventure House have republished The Bat Staffel as well as quite a few of the other G-8 and his Battle Aces novels. Their edition also includes a short story by R. Sidney Bowen, The Floating Runt (which has been included in the original pulp magazine as well). It’s a rather contrived story about the rivalry between a pilot and a balloon observer. It's not great but since it's essentially a free added extra it would be churlish to complain too much.

Reno Tramp

Reno Tramp is one of those salacious sensational American sex and sin pulp novels that were so popular in the 1950s (this one was published in 1950). At the time they were considered to be very racy indeed although today they obviously seem very tame and it’s hard to imagine just how disreputable they were considered to be at the time. One of the leading writers of such fiction was Florence Stonebreaker (1896-1977). She wrote a lot of them (she wrote eleven novels in 1952 alone) and wrote slightly more respectable romance novels as well.

Brenda is in trouble. She’s in Reno and she’s been living with a guy called Charley. Which has been nice since he’s spent lots of money on her. Now Charley has lost all his dough on the roulette tables so naturally she’s told him that she’s through with him. And Charley is not being sensible about it. Surely he must understand that if he now has no money  then it’s all over. What use is he to her with no money? He’s even been unreasonable enough to have sex with her before telling her he’s lost all his money, which means she’s just had sex with him for no reason. And now he’s waving a gun about and talking about shooting himself, which is incredibly inconsiderate of him. When she packs her bag and closes the door behind her she hears the shot and now she’s in an awkward spot. What if the police think she shot him?

The only one she can think of to turn to for help is gambling racketeer Carter Kemp, owner of the Blue Jug Club. That means she’ll have to become one of Carter’s girls. That means being a whore and Brenda might be a tramp and a tart but she’s not actually a whore. Well maybe once or twice but that doesn’t count. Those were emergencies and when a girl needs money urgently what is she to do?

Carter claims his girls are not technically prostitutes. If one of the patrons at the club wants a girl for an evening, or even just for an hour or two, Carter introduces him to one of his girls. He’ll even arrange a private room for them, so they can get to know each other better. But once they enter the private room if money then changes hands how is Carter supposed to know that is going on? If he knew such things were going on that would mean that he was running a house of prostitution. Perish the thought. In fact Carter makes his money from the suckers at the gambling tables, not from his girls. The girls are just free entertainment for the suckers.

Carter can indeed help her out of her jam and offer her a job as one of his girls, but she will need to do a couple of favours for him. The first favour is obvious - Carter always likes to sample the merchandise he provides for his customers. The second favour is more complicated and is likely to lead Brenda into all sorts of even further complications.

Sex is a deadly weapon but for Brenda it’s as dangerous to herself as it is to the men whose paths she crosses. Love is a deadly weapon too but she doesn’t need to worry about that. Love is for suckers. It’s so tiresome when guys fall in love with her. She always knows when it’s happening.  Like with Johnny. When he slaps her real hard she knows he’s in love with her. She doesn’t actually want to hurt him but if he gets hurt that’s his problem. Still, the sex with Johnny is kinda nice. But guys with no money have no right to fall for her.

The story is told entirely from Brenda’s point of view and what makes her interesting as a character is her extraordinary lack of awareness of the situations she’s getting into and even of her own nature. She is ambitious. She knows what she wants. She wants money. Lots of it. Unfortunately she has no coherent plan for achieving this. She has a breathtaking body and she should be able to use it to make big money, either by marrying a rich sucker or as a high-class prostitute. Instead she’s wasted her efforts on snaring small-timers and she’s allowed lust to cloud her judgment - she’s gone for good-looking guys who have some money but not enough to give her the big buck she craves.

When Carter Kemp tells her to take her clothes off so he can inspect the merchandise she  is shocked and horrified. He’s not even good-looking. At the same time, as Carter runs his eyes approvingly across her naked body she finds herself really enjoying the experience. Especially when he gives her the sort of look that a master gives to his slave. That really excites her. She uses sex to get things out of men but she has no understanding of her own sexual feelings. She thinks she only has sex to get money and for the life of her she can’t figure out why sometimes she just wants to give herself to some men. She is 23 but she hasn’t grown up at all since she gave away her virginity (to a boy who didn’t even have money - she was so dumb in those days).

There’s an immense amount of sex in this novel, and not a single instance of it between people who are married to each other. This was 1950 so of course none of it is in any way graphic but it still manages to be plenty sleazy. It’s the feelings evoked rather than the actual acts that provides the sleaze content - things like naked girls being inspected like slabs of meat and beatings as foreplay (which Brenda finds very arousing). It’s very open about things like prostitution, and even about the male prostitutes who service rich women who get bored and lonely waiting for their divorces in Reno (and they’re out-and-out prostitutes rather than mere gigolos).

This is of course an incredibly trashy novel, a representative of an incredibly trashy genre. But it’s surprisingly well-crafted entertaining trash. And Brenda is in her own way more interesting than you might expect - she’s too scheming and selfish to be a heroine and too ruthless to be a victim but at the same time she’s too vulnerable to be a femme fatale. She doesn’t even know if she is really a whore, or if she really wants to be a whore. She hasn’t thought any of it through. It’s not just that she doesn’t understand love. She doesn’t even understand sex. She’s selfish in the way a child is selfish but she’s not evil - you have to know that what you’re doing is wrong to be evil.

Will this bad girl get what she deserves? You’ll have to read it to find out.

Reno Tramp is obviously most interesting as an example of the disreputable side of 50s pop culture. Like exploitation movies these books practised a balancing act, offering as many sleazy sexy thrills as they could without going far enough to get the publishers closed down. It’s often forgotten that there was more to 50s pop culture than Leave It To Beaver or Doris Day movies. Under the resectable surface of that decade there was plenty of interest in sex, including illicit sex (or maybe especially illicit sex).

It’s interesting to compare Reno Tramp to Ward Miller’s Kitten With a Whip, from a few years later and from a different but closely related genre. Both deal with young women whose sexual power is more dangerous than nitro-glycerine and just as unpredictable. And both dealing with young women who are deadly because they themselves don’t really understand what sex can do to them, or to men.

And Reno Tramp is definitely sleazy fun. Recommended.