About a year ago, Altus Press started a new line called the “Argosy Library,” which is composed of several series of 10 books each highlighting some of the great fiction that appeared in the early pulps.
All are taken from the pulps started by Frank A. Munsey, who started to convert his fiction magazines to pulp paper and reduced their price, making them more profitable. He published the well-known Argosy magazine, which got its start in the late 1800s, and several other popular magazines such as All-Story and Flynn’s Detective Fiction Weekly. Series I came out last year, and now we get Series II.
Series II consists of:
- Champion of Lost Causes, by Max Brand
- The Scarlet Blade: The Rakehelly Adventures of Cleve and D’Entreville, Vol. 1 by Murray R. Montgomery
- Doan and Carstairs: Their Complete Cases, by Norbert Davis
- The King Who Came Back, by Fred MacIsaac
- Blood Ritual: The Adventures of Scarlet and Bradshaw, Vol. 1 by Theodore Roscoe
- The City of Stolen Lives: The Adventures of Peter the Brazen, Vol. 1 by Loring Brent
- The Radio Gun-Runners, by Ralph Milne Farley
- Sabotage, by Cleve F. Adams
- The Complete Cabalistic Cases of Semi Dual, The Occult Detector, Vol. 2: 1912–13 by J.U. Giesy and Junius B. Smith
- South of Fifty-Three, by Jack Bechdolt
As with Series I, we get a variety of stories from several early Munsey pulps, tho many skew toward detective works this time.
Max Brand, really Frederick Faust, is usually known for his westerns and for creating Dr. Kildare. But Champion of Lost Causes is a mystery tale from Flynn’s Magazine, about a detective trying to save a girl unjustly accused of murder. This was turned into one of the first movies based on his works, but I have no idea of the title of the movie.
The Scarlet Blade reprints the first set of stories in this Musketeer-like series from Argosy. It stars Her Majesty’s Guard Richard Cleve and French cavalier Monsieur le Comte Guy d’Entrevill, who are partners in the Cardinal’s Guard. Sounds like an interesting series.
Doan and Carstairs is a different kind of hard-boiled detective series, starting Doan and his canine partner, the great dane Carstairs. It’s from Norbert Davis, who also wrote the Max Latin series which Altus Press reprinted. This collects the whole series: three novels and two short stories from Black Mask.
Fred MacIsaac wrote the Rambler Murphy series, but I have no info on that series. The King Who Came Back is a stand-along novel about a monarch of a small European nation who gives up his throne, but is pulled into political intrigue.
Theodore Roscoe is probably well known for his French Foreign Legion stories about Thibaut Corday being reprinted by Altus Press. Blood Ritual reprints another series of his involving curio hunter Peter Scarlet and naturalist Bradshaw. They appeared in solo stories as well as teaming up for adventures hunting treasure in the Orient.
Loring Brent’s Peter the Brazen adventures are well known, but no one has yet started a complete reprint of them. So maybe this is the start with the first storyline. Peter Moore is a ship’s radio operator who gets into various adventures in the Orient, going up against some big foes, here the Gray Dragon. I hope we will soon see the rest in this series.
Ralph Milne Farley is well known for his Burroughsesque “Radio Man” adventure series set on Venus. The Radio Gun-Runners is a sequel to another novel that is set in the hollow earth (think Burroughs‘ Pellucidar). I do hope they will reprint The Radio Flyers, which came first. In these novels, a pair of flyers enter the hollow earth, have adventures, find their wives, etc.
Sabotage by Cleve F. Adams is a hard-boiled detective story staring Rex McBride. Here, he is sent in undercover to stop the sabotaging of a new dam being built in a story serialized in Detective Fiction Weekly. I have no idea if this character appears in further stories.
I’ve previously posted about occult detective Semi Dual when the first volume of his stories came out. Now the second volume comes out as part of the Argosy Library. This one reprints the next three novels from 1912–13. I look forward to this one, though have mixed feelings with it being part of this series, as now they will have different covers/spines.
Finally we get South of Fifty-Three by Jack Bechdolt. Bechdolt is probably best known for his post-apocalypse novel, The Torch, but this one is an adventure tale set in Alaska.
As in the first series, a mix of different styles of stories: adventure, detective, fantasy, and science-fiction. Some, like the Semi-Dual one, I want to get. A couple of others I may get. Others I’m not interested in. But certainly there should be works that will appeal to different pulp readers and fans. Check out this new series. I look forward to what will come next in these series.
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