Reviews

The Best of Adventure, Vol. 1 Review

The Best of Adventure, Volume 1—A Review by Morgan Holmes

One of my Pulpfest pick ups was The Best of Adventure, Volume 1—1910-1912 from Black Dog Books. This is the first of an ambitious series of "Best of" volumes covering Adventure magazine. Those of us who made their way to Adventure by way of Robert E. Howard are generally familiar with 1920s reprints— Harold Lamb Cossack stories, Talbot Mundy's "Tros" and "Jimgrim" novels, Arthur D. Howden Smith's "Gray Maiden" stories etc. The first decade of Adventure is terra incognita. I have read a few things such as Arthur Nelson's Wings of Danger ("The Adventurers") and I even have a 1960s reprint paperback of John Buchan's Prester John originally from 1911.

This book is an education. Adventure could be subtitled "The Jack London Experience" at this time. It goes to show how revolutionary London was in changing fiction. At this time, you have some writers who straddled the pulp-slick divide such as Donn Byrne, Morgan Robertson, and William Hope Hodgson. Jack London himself appeared in pulps such as Street & Smith's The Popular Magazine and Top-Notch. These stories don't read like what I think of as pulp. It is more like cracking open an anthology of classic adventure stories.

In A Righteous Cause Review

In a Righteous Cause—A review by Evan Lewis

in_a_righteous_cause_thumbnail_website Talbot Mundy, like his contemporary Harold Lamb, is one of those magic names out of pulp history. Most folks have heard of him, and may have a vague notion he once wrote adventure stories, but relatively few today have read his work.

Tom Roberts of Black Dog Books is doing his part to change all that. In a Righteous Cause is the first published volume in the Talbot Mundy Library, a series that will eventually comprise at least eight volumes.

This book brings us seven stories (some of novelette length) and three articles, all of which appeared in Adventure during 1913.

I didn't know what to expect from this collection, but I'd been reading—and enjoying—the Harold Lamb book Wolf of the Steppes containing stories from the same mag and similar time frame, and figured it was time to give Mundy a try.

And damn—I'm glad I did. Talbot Mundy is one kick-ass storyteller. I was enthralled with every piece in this book. And the more I read, the more I found myself slowing down to savor the prose.

It's tempting to call these stories historical adventure, but the truth is that most of them were contemporary fiction at the time they were written, roughly 100 years ago. The one sure exception takes place fifty years earlier, during the British occupation of India.

The rest involve British soldiers in various settings of war and peace. Sometimes they're in camp, sometimes on the battlefield, but every one of them comes alive, jumps off the page and hauls you back into his world.

The long novelette "For the Salt He Had Eaten" recounts the heroism and great determination of an old Rajput warrior during the Sepoy Rebellion. "Private Murdock's G.C.M" (Good Conduct Medal) is a slapstick romance. "An Arabian Night" begins as a comedy, with two seamen determined to sample the forbidden delights of a harem, and becomes a battle with slavers on the Persian Gulf.

In "The Tempering of Harry Blunt" we meet a young officer who must find his steel battling Afghans before he finds the guts to propose the woman he loves. "Three Helios" is a tale of courage and sacrifice in South Africa, during one of the Boer wars. "At Maneuvers" gives us two soldiers who go to outrageous lengths to avoid participating in pointless maneuvers, but show their true metal when the chips are down. And in the title story, the "righteous cause" is a wacky, violent, and ingenious scheme to save a innocent British maiden from engaging in holy matrimony with a greedy and roundly-despised canteen sergeant.

What surprised me, in all these tales, was the depth of Mundy's wit and skill of his storycraft. The two combined to deliver endings that left me smiling and eager to read the next story.

And to my further surprise, I enjoyed the non-fiction pieces too. One of these tells the incredible tale of William Walker, an American filibuster who stole Lower California from Mexico and declared himself president of the independent nation of Sonora, then led a mercenary army to Nicaragua, making himself president of that country as well. He was finally executed in 1860 in a failed attempt to take over Honduras. Seems strange I have to read a hundred year old article by Mundy to learn of this guy's amazing exploits.

Evan Lewis

This review originally appeared on Evan's blog,"Davy Crockett's Alamack."

http://davycrockettsalmanack.blogspot.com/

To purchase a copy of this book visit our In a Righteous Cause listing.

Demons of the Night review

Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales by Seabury Quinn—a review by Craig Clarke

demons_of_the_night_thumbnail_website Author Seabury Quinn is probably best known to modern readers for his series of short stories featuring occult detective Jules de Grandin, as well as for his marked influence on the works of fellow author Robert E. Howard. But Quinn's career spanned sixty years: from 1917, the year "The Law of Movies" (a nonfiction article included as an appendix to this collection) saw print, to 1977, when his novel Alien Flesh was published, with at least 150 other works in the intervening years.

Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales, edited and with an introduction and bibliography by Gene Christie and published by Black Dog Books, collects Quinn's earliest known fiction along with other rarities, including the aforementioned "Law of the Movies." It is a humorous and insightful look at the way legal matters are presented on film that is just as applicable today as it was in 1917, even though its examples consist entirely of obscure silent films (none of which appear to be available on video).

The title story, "Demons of the Night," is just the kind of derivative tale—familiar but with a twist—that many an author has used as his entry to published genre fiction, and it is wholly entertaining if taken in that spirit. (The ending especially is that of an oft-told campfire story.)

"Was She Mad?" is reminiscent of classic Poe with genuine horror contained in it. Though many authors have tackled the "possessed artifact" tale, Quinn's "The Stone Image" manages to be surprisingly effective at chilling the spine, even though its tropes are all too familiar.

"Painted Gold" is one of a few surprises found by editor Gene Christie in his searches. Neither it or "Romance Unawares" have been reprinted since their publication in Young's Magazine in 1919 and 1920, respectively. In the former, Lt. Rathburn Thomas has little appreciation for the feminine form until the continuous company of men in the service puts him on the prowl. Quinn warns us with his trademark erudite humor: "When a perfectly nice young man begins to act in this way, there is danter ahead, particularly for him; for it is from such that the victims of the Strange Woman are recruited."

But despite this protest, "Painted Gold" is an unexpectedly sweet romantic tale of a fellow who meets a beautiful woman but is put off by her rouge and lipstick, since that was only worn by the cheap girls back home. "Romance Unawares" is another truly sweet story of two life-long friends whom the whole town expect to be married and who find out (of course) that they really cannot do without each other. These stories show a different side of Seabury Quinn than the other early tales in Demons of the Night, but it's one I wouldn't mind seeing more of.

"The Cloth of Madness" is most famous for its appearance in Weird Tales, but it was actually first printed in Young's, too. It's a classic tale of the cuckold getting revenge in one of the most original ways I've read. The fiction of Demons of the Night closes with two of Quinn's Major Sturdevant stories, "Ravished Shrines" and "Out of the Land of Egypt"—neither of which impressed me, though Loomis is an engaging narrator—and two from his Professor Forrester series, "In the Fog" and "The Black Widow."

It is in the Professor Forrester tales, especially "In the Fog," that I found the most direct antecedent to the style of Robert E. Howard, both in the constant action and in the varied, poetic vocabulary. "In the Fog" finds Forrester locking himself inadvertently into a "house of mysteries" that is like a trip to the Orient, and that will require all of his myriad (and mildly implausible though wildly entertaining) talents to escape alive.

I especially admired how Quinn uses the house to allow the reader to experience a globe-trotting adventure without his hero's having to leave Washington. "In the Fog" is the first of the series that appeared in Real Detective Tales throughout 1927 and 1928, and explains the origin of the woman who would later be his ward. "The Black Widow" is equally engaging, though more a mystery than an adventure.

Editor and compiler Christie brings Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales to a satisfying conclusion by offering the reader the breadth of Quinn's published work with an extensive bibliography—as full as is currently known, anyway. Given the organic nature of the discovery process, Christie considers the bibliography a work in progress and gives contact information in the introductory paragraph, welcoming any new information the reader can offer.

Craig Clarke

This review originally appeared on the blog, "Somebody Dies."

http://somebodydies.blogspot.com/

To purchase a copy of this book visit our Demons of the Night listing.

Twice Murdered—Another Review

Twice Murdered by Laurence Donovan—A review by Evan Lewis

twice_murdered_web_thumbnail Prior to cracking open this new collection from Black Dog Books, all I knew about Laurence Donovan was that he'd written a handful of Doc Savage novels.

Now I know better. Boy, do I ever. This book makes it clear that Donovan was a pulp-writing powerhouse. In a career stretching from 1928 to 1948, he turned out well over 400 stories and novelettes, plus more than 50 pulp novels featuring guys like The Phantom Detective, The Black Bat, The Whisperer, The Skipper—and yes, Doc Savage. Like many of his contemporaries, he wrote whatever the market wanted, resulting a good mix of air war adventures, westerns and mysteries. (How do I know all this? I know, thanks to Tom Roberts' groundbreaking Introduction and overview of Donovan's career, and the eye-opening 18-page bibliography of his works.)

The amazing thing is that despite this enormous output, there has never been a book published with Donovan's name on it. Until now.

All but one of the twelve stories in Twice Murdered were written during the second half of his long career, and all but one originally appeared in the Trojan line of magazines (Spicy Detective, Hollywood Detective, Super-Detective and Private Detective Stories). And that, I think, is a good thing.

By 1938, Donovan had long since mastered his craft, and writing for the Trojan mags allowed him to focus on his own characters and tell stories the way he wanted them told. And he had fun doing it. That sense of enjoyment comes through strong in every tale, and makes them equally fun to read.

Donovan's style might be described as a cross between Lester Dent and Robert Leslie Bellem. He mixes Dent's wry humor and rat-a-tat-tat action with Bellem's mastery of slang. The result is consistently entertaining, and every tale races to a satisfying conclusion.

More than half of the stories are in the Spicy mold. Donovan handles the required titillation as well as anybody, but because he was older and more experienced (both in writing and living) than the other Spicy regulars, his tales deliver more variety and substance.

"Death Dances on Dimes" takes us into the world of dime-a-dance halls and sleazy strip joints. "The Snoop" thrusts a house dick into a wild shoot-out with bank robbers in a hotel room. In "Twice Murdered" a gambling house kingpin tries to scam his insurance company and ends up dead—twice. "Never Hire a Killer" features a private dick hired to protect a society dude's girlfriend, unaware both dude and dame have other agendas. In "She Loves to Murder" a self-professed "love detective" becomes the fourth side of love triangle, with deadly results.

"Footprint of Destiny" from Hollywood Detective, opens at Grauman's Chinese Theater, where a starlet is murdered just as she places her dainty foot into the wet cement. "The Greyhound Murders" involves the dog-racing crowd and a four-legged murder weapon. The violence in "A Dame Murders Cold" appears to revolve around a dazzling Ming Dragon emerald, but actually stems from a much deeper game. And in "Two Can Play at Murder", a disgraced ex-cop is lured into a double-murder frame, and neatly turns the tables on the mobsters.

One of the longer stories in the book, a novelette called "Come In, Killer," is almost Shakespearean as it plays out with mistaken identities, hidden motives and unexpected deaths. "The Man Who Came to Die" —the longest story of all—is also the strangest. As publisher Tom Roberts tells us in the Introduction, Donovan never sold to the weird mystery pulps, but this one would certainly have qualified. A detective starves himself to skin and bone to impersonate a rich guy thought to be the next victim of a clever and sophisticated insurance fraud scheme. No one in this tale is quite what they seem, and before it's over half the cast winds up dead.

While I enjoyed every story, my favorite of the bunch was "Reagan Follows Up," in which a newspaper editor defies his boss to go to war with the mob and expose the killer of a crusading cop. Donovan clearly identified with this guy, as Donovan's pre-fictioneer days were spent as a newspaperman.

So. While Twice Murdered is Laurence Donovan's first book, I predict it won't be his last. Black Dog Books has finally brought Donovan out of Lester Dent's shadow, and he won't be going back.

Evan Lewis

This review originally appeared on Evan's blog,"Davy Crockett's Alamack."

http://davycrockettsalmanack.blogspot.com/

To purchase a copy of this book visit our Twice Murdered listing.

Twice Murdered Review

Twice Murdered by Laurence Donovan—A review by James Reasoner

Twice Murdered is another in the outstanding series of pulp reprint collections coming out from Black Dog Books. Laurence Donovan is probably best known for the house-name novels he wrote starring Doc Savage, The Phantom Detective, The Skipper, and The Whisperer, but he also had a long and prolific career producing detective and Western yarns for a variety of pulps. This volume collects a dozen stories published in the Thirties and Forties in the pulps Private Detective, Spicy Detective, Hollywood Detective, Black Book Detective, and Super Detective, under Donovan's name and his pseudonym Larry Dunn.

Donovan had three main strengths as a writer: he was able to come up with complex plots, he used interesting settings, and he wrote fast-moving, effective action scenes. Most of the protagonists in these stories are private eyes, and like Roger Torrey's private eye characters, they share a lot of similarities despite having different names. I think Donovan's shamuses come across a little more as individuals, though.

All of the stories included here are good solid pulp tales, consistently entertaining. Some of them are stand-outs, though. "Death Dances on Dimes" is set in a dime-a-dance joint, and it's unusual in that it has a female narrator. There's something else about her that's unusual for the pulps, too, but you'll have to read the story to find out what it is. "The Man Who Came to Die" is about an insurance racket and manages to be pretty creepy while at the same time packing enough plot and action for a full-length novel into a novelette. "The Greyhound Murders" is another complicated murder mystery with an interesting setting (a dog racing track) and a high body count. "Footprint of Destiny" is about the movie business and features the sort of plot that Dan Turner is usually untangling. I guess Dan was out of town that week.

In addition to the stories, editor/publisher Tom Roberts provides a fine introduction that includes more biographical information about Donovan than I've seen anywhere else, as well as an extensive bibliography of Donovan's work. Twice Murdered is an excellent addition to the Black Dog Books line, and if you're a pulp fan, I highly recommend it.

James Reasoner

This review originally appeared on James' blog, "Rough Edges."

http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com