Hugh B. Cave (1910-2004) was a prolific pulp author who wrote in a wide range of genres: mystery, adventure, horror, and even spicy! He seemed to have focused for a while on weird menace, and was able to move out of pulps, writing both for the slicks and works for the Navy (which keep him from being drafted in WWII). He continued writing for most of his life, even coming back and writing more novels in the 1980s and ’90s.
Audrey Parente wrote an excellent biography, Pulp Man’s Odyssey: The Hugh B. Cave Story. And many of his works have been collected in book form over the years. But I don’t know if a complete bibliography has been created; and there are apparently much that has not be collected in book form.
Here we look at a couple of collections from Doug Ellis‘s Tattered Pages Press, both from 1997. Doug also put out a collection of Cave’s reminiscences from the pulps, which I’ve previously posted on.
The Dagger of Tsiang and Other Tales of Adventure, Pulp Vault Pulp Reprint #2, is a collection of 11 “Tsiang House” stories, though not a complete collection. There are two left out, along with a serialized novel.
The stories contained include:
- “The Sins of the Fool,” Short Stories Feb. 10, 1930
- “Cry Wolf!” Short Stories March 10, 1930
- “A White Man Dies,” Short Stories May 25, 1930
- “The Green Eyes of Confucius,” Short Stories Aug. 10, 1930
- “Red,” The Canadian Magazine, April 1934
- “Hypocrite House,” Short Stories Feb. 25, 1931
- “The Dagger of Tsiang,” Wide World Adventures May 1930
- “The Golden God,” American Boy, July 1934
- “The Red Road Up,” The Canadian Magazine, August 1934
- “The Thin Flame of Courage,” Street & Smith’s Top-Notch Magazine Oct. 1, 1931
- “The Sandakan Stiff,” Thrilling Adventures April 1936
Left out is the first story, “The Shadow of Tsiang” (Short Stories, Oct. 25, 1929), and “Suicide Trail” (Short Stories, May 10, 1933), which was reprinted in Pulp Vault #12/13. No idea if the serialized novel, The Midnight Horde, has ever been published in book form. If not, it is yet another candidate for a new Cave book.
Now, while Cave created the series for Short Stories, a few were published elsewhere. He believes they were rejected by Short Stories, and he just renamed the characters and sold them elsewhere. This per his intro to the volume.
These stories are all set in Tsiang House, an isolated British Foreign Service outpost in Borneo. The only regular characters are Major Corony and Bruce Deragon. Others come and go (or come and die), as this outpost is menaced by various native groups or other threats. Interestingly, Cave didn’t know much about Borneo at first, but was fortunate that a fan provided him with information for these stories. All are interesting and can be read in any order. And the “British Foreign Service” doesn’t exist. It’s meant to be a kind of British version of the French Foreign Legion.
The Escapades of the Eel, Pulp Vault Pulp Reprint #3, collects 15 of Cave’s 19 Eel stories from the various “spicy” pulps published by Culture Publications. These were all published under his pen name of Justin Case.
- “Eel Trap,” Spicy Adventure Stories, June 1936, cover feature
- “The Evil Flame,” Spicy Mystery Stories, August 1936, cover feature
- “Dark Temple of Torment,” Spicy Adventure Stories, January 1937
- “River of Blood,” Spicy Adventure Stories, April 1937
- “Cavern of the Damned,” Spicy Mystery Stories, May 1937
- “Eel Poison,” Spicy Detective Stories, August 1937
- “Death Wears No Robe,” Spicy Detective Stories, October 1937
- “The Eel Slips Through,” Spicy Detective Stories, December 1937
- “Eel Bait,” Spicy Adventure Stories, February 1938
- “Prisoner of Tituan,” Spicy Adventure Stories, April 1938, cover feature
- “The Widow Wears Scarlet,” Spicy Detective Stories, October 1940
- “Annie Any More,” Spicy Detective Stories, March 1941
- “The Second Slug,” Spicy Detective Stories, July 1941, cover feature
- “A Pile of Publicity,” Spicy Detective Stories, January 1942
- “Eel’s Eve,” Spicy Detective Stories, April 1942
Left out is “Death to Cops” (Spicy Detective Stories, January 1937, cover feature), “Eel’s Errand” (Spicy Detective Stories, August 1940), “The Lady’s Last Laugh” (Spicy Detective Stories, December 1940), and “Death Has Green Eyes” (Spicy Detective Stories, June 1941). The collection does reprint a few covers from the spicy pulps, along with the interior art with each story. The cover is a nice H.J. Ward cover, but it’s not an Eel cover. The Eel was featured on five covers. The first is on the back cover. One other is inside, along with two non-Eel Spicy covers.
Now, who is “The Eel”? We never find out, other than he is a gentleman thief of “courageous action and questionable morals.” All the stories are told in first person by The Eel. It’s a name others use to refer to him and that he is comfortable using himself. He’s always get into some trouble, though is able to slip out of it. Hence his nickname.
Cave explains in the intro on how he came to write for the spicys. They approached his agent to get him to write for them, at a better rate than other pulp publishers. And they were willing to let him write under a pseudonym, so he came up with “Justin Case.” He was leery to use his own name, in case it would hurt his chance of cracking the “slick” market. The Eel was soon created, and appeared in three different spicy magazines. The stories in Spicy Adventures were set in Borneo (same as his Tsiang House stories). The stories in the other two could be set in Borneo, or some big city.
The first story, “The Eel Trap,” is a good example of his stories. The Eel is asked to smuggle silks in Borneo, and also to help smuggle a girl to the same port. But it’s all a setup that the Eel sees through. And he gets the girl in the end, too!
Now, I did want to read and review another collection of Cave works, but I couldn’t afford to get a copy. Murgunstrumm and Others was published by Carcosa Press in the 1970s, and was the first collection of Cave’s pulp works, over two dozen horror tales from magazines like Weird Tales, Strange Tales, and others. Wildside Press reprinted this work in paperback, but let it go out of print, and its reprint is now almost as expensive as the original! Maybe another candidate for a new reprint?
But these are two unique collections of his stories that haven’t been reprinted since, though seem to be available for reasonable prices. Most of his pulp works now being reprinted seem more in the weird menace genre. Check out the collections from Altus Press, Pulpville Press, Wildside, Ramble House, and keep an eye out for a future “best of” collection from Centipede Press.
Oh, and for completists, Pulp Vault Pulp Reprint #1 was a reprint of Many Waters, the fifth and last Thunder Jim Wade novel, since reprinted by Altus Press.
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