“The Cobra: The King of Detectives” collects several “snake” inspired works by early pulp author Richard Sale, including his short-lived pulp hero: The Cobra. It’s published by Altus Press.
We get a great little intro by Will Murray, and learn that Richard Sale was like most pulp authors (and what most wanted to be): he started off in the pulps, and used that to move up to the “slicks,” then became a screenwriter and director in movies and TV, thus his time as a pulp author is just a footnote in his long career.
Having an early interest in snakes and herpetology, he wrote several snake-inspired works, not all of which met with approve by pulp audiences (not sure why). We often times get the advice of using what we know and love in our work. Well, I guess in this case it didn’t work out.
The first three stories are of his short-lived pulp here: The Cobra, who appeared in Ace’s Ten Detective Aces as a replacement for Lester Dent‘s Blond Adder (a Dent gadget-hero also reprinted by Altus Press). The Cobra was really Deen Bradley, an American working for British Intelligence in India. He used a blow-gun with small darts using snake venom.
It’s unclear why the character didn’t last longer, maybe the readers complained and he was dropped. Overall, the stories are interesting, and you can see a lot of potential, but you can see issues as well. The first story is set in India, the next in London, and the third in New York. As you go along, later stories refer to previous ones, and in the third one there is reference to another event that wasn’t reported. You can see some issues with how Sale handled the character.
I should point out that Tom Johnson did write a new Cobra story in Exciting Pulp Tales, also from Altus Press, which I have reviewed here.
Rounding out the volume are three snake-themed stories: two from the back of Secret Agent X, and the third from Thrilling Detective. All are enjoyable, though being more standard detective fiction.
Then there are two works from Writer Digest. The first is a nice article on the need for research, using as examples many snake-infested fiction works (big surprise). And the other, a sort of story of a pulp publisher putting out a new hero pulp called “Cobra: King of Detectives.” One wonders if and to how much the characters in that work are based on real pulpsters.
Overall, this is yet another nice little collection from Altus.
