The adventures of Peter the Brazen

A classic pulp adventurer that I had heard of but never had the chance to read the stories of is Peter the Brazen.

What I had heard sounded really interesting: a two-fisted adventurer wandering the exotic Orient between the world wars, going up against several menacing villains like the Gray Shadow, Ung the Unspeakable, K’ang of the Green Circle Tong, and the most dangerous Mr. Lu, better known as the Blue Scorpion.

But surprisingly most of his tales have never been reprinted!

Now Altus Press is addressing this in a new series aimed at reprinting the entire run, doing so within their Argosy Library series. The first volume, The City of Stolen Lives: The Adventures of Peter the Brazen, reprints the first three stories that appeared in 1918, as well as a great introductory essay by Will Murray.

Created by George Worts writing under his Loring Brent alias, Peter the Brazen ran over several short stories and serials over several years. As far as I know, the series consists of:

• Princess of Static (1918)
• The City of Stolen Lives (1918)
• The Bitter Fountain (1918)
• The Dead Spark (1918)
• The Golden Paw (1918)
• The Gray Dragon (1918)
• The Golden Cat (1919), six-part serial
• The Sapphire Smile (1930)
• The Man in the Jade Mask (1930)
• That Cargo of Opium (1930), two-part serial
• The Hand of Ung (1930), two-part serial
• Vampire (1931), two-part serial
• Chinese for Racket (1931), two-part serial
• Cave of the Blue Scorpion (1931) (reprint: Famous Pulp Classics #1)
• Sting of the Blue Scorpion (1932), six-part serial
• The Master Magician (1933)
• The Sapphire Death (1933), six-part serial (reprint: Pulp Vault #1 & 2)
• Kingdom of the Lost (1934), five-part serial
• The Octopus of Hongkong (1934)
• Over the Dragon Wall (1935)

(I should point out that the first six stories were re-edited into a novel, and this has been reprinted by Black Dog Books)

All appeared in The Argosy, and apart from the first 6 stories and the final one, all were cover featured. For the serials, the first part would be cover featured.

I have no idea why there was a 10-year gap after the seventh story. Why Worts stopped writing more Peter the Brazen stories after the last one is more understandable: He was able to move out of the pulp fiction market into better-paying markets. He was even able to move to Hawaii like he dreamed about.

We meet Peter Moore in the first story (he would not be referred to in the stories as “Peter the Brazen” until the end of the third one). He’s a shipboard radio operator who has exceptional hearing, making him very valuable for his skills. Over the last five years, he has been traveling throughout the Pacific. And he is no scrawny weakling. In the first story, he gets embroidered in a bizarre series of events. In a Chinatown, he gets pulled into a plot to kidnap someone, who is secreted onto the same ship he is assigned to. It turns out this is due to the mysterious ruler of an inland city in China — Len Yang.

He frees the girl, Aileen Lorimer, who is sent back to the U.S. at the end of the first story. But Peter is now threatened by that mysterious ruler, whom we learn is the Gray Shadow. He will get into further adventures, hoping to end the threat of the Gray Shadow and to be re-united with Aileen. In each story, there is another girl to tempt him from Aileen. I suspect this will be wrapped up in the sixth story, in the next volume.

What is interesting to learn is that Worts was writing the series from some experience. He was a shipboard radio operator himself, and had traveled to the Far East as a correspondent for Collier’s.

Now, I’m not sure how many volumes will be needed to reprint the whole series. Certainly, the longer series will take up a volume by themselves. So I would expect the next three short stories will be in the next volume, which as I note should wrap up the Gray Shadow storyline, then the 1919 serial by itself, and so on. I look forward to these upcoming volumes as Peter goes up against these various menaces. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait long, as I’d like to read the conclusion of the storyline.

There are other works from Worts out there. I had reviewed his Masked Mastermind, which also appeared in Argosy, and Black Dog Books has reprinted many of his Singapore Sammy stories in two volumes.

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