The Argosy Library, Series VIII

On Black Friday 2020 weekend, Steeger Books put out the next set of its “Argosy Library” volumes, making up Series VIII. As always, we get 10 books of great, and sometimes overlooked, fiction that appeared in the early pulps. We get some stand-alone works, as well as volumes of various sub-series.

As always, most are taken from the pulps started by Frank A. Munsey, who converted 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 The All-Story and Flynn’s Detective Fiction Weekly.

Series VIII consists of:

• Satan’s Vengeance by Carroll John Daly
• The Viper: The Complete Cases of Madame Storey, Volume 2 by Hulbert Footner
• The Sapphire Smile: The Adventures of Peter the Brazen, Volume 4 by Loring Brent (George F. Worts)
• The Curse of Capistrano and Other Adventures: The Johnston McCulley Omnibus, Volume 2
• The Man Who Mastered Time and Other Adventures: The Ray Cummings Omnibus
• The Guns of the American: The Adventures of Norcross, Volume 2 by W. Wirt
• Trailin’ by Max Brand (Frederick Faust)
• War Declared! by Theodore Roscoe
• The Return of the Night Wind by Varick Vanardy
• The Fetish Fighters and Other Adventures: The F.V.W. Mason Foreign Legion Stories Omnibus

So what do we get?

Carroll John Daly is known as the creator of the hard-boiled detective in Black Mask, and of Race Williams and several other detective characters, which Steeger Books has been reprinting. Satan Hall was a long-running detective who appeared mainly in Detective Fiction Weekly in two dozen stories. He has a pronounced widow’s peak and slightly pointed ears and eyebrows, and is willing to give as good as he gets from criminals, a clear forerunner to characters like Dirty Harry.

This volume is the first of what hopefully will be a complete reprint of this character. This one has Satan’s Vengeance, a eight-part serial from 1936, as is billed as the fourth volume in the complete reprinting. I think there will be a total of six volumes.

Madame Rozika Story was a popular female detective in Argosy from the 1920s and ’30s, with about 30 stories by Hulbert Footner. This second volume gives us the next three stories of this character.

George F. Worts most popular character is Peter the Brazen, who appeared under his “Loring Brent” pseudonym. The character’s previous appearance was in Argosy in 1919. In 1930, he was brought back, I believe, as an attempt to help sales of the magazine that saw several serial characters returning. This volume has the next four stories. Peter is a ship-board radio operator working in the Orient and getting into all kinds of action. So should be another great volume.

Johnston McCulley, while having creating a wide number of serial characters in the pulps, is best known for Zorro. And this Omnibus gives us the first two Zorro stories. I do have to question why this was done, as Bold Venture Press has already put out the authorized complete Zorro reprints in six volumes, and these stories have been reprinted.

I have posted on overlooked pulp master Ray Cummings, and noted his “Matters, Space, and Time” series of works, not all of which have been reprinted. This one reprints two of those: The Fire People, which is part of “Space,” and The Man Who Mastered Time, which is part of “Time.” Will we get more Omnibus volumes reprinting the whole sequence?

W. Wirt maybe best known for his long Jimmie Cordie series, which I was hoping for a new volume. Wirt also did the short Captain Norcross series. This series is about a retired U.S. Army captain who takes his unit of black soldiers to the Orient. This volume reprints the final two Norcross stories.

Western author Max Brand (real name Frederick Faust) is back with another standalone work, Trailin’. This one is from All-Story Weekly.

It always surprises me the number of stories written in the run up to WWII that forecasted war. But maybe many just felt it was coming. One of those is War Declared! by Theodore Roscoe, which tells of an impeding war between a disguised Germany and France.

The Night Wind is an interesting early pulp character, who could have been a forerunner of Superman. He appeared in four novels in the pulps, and The Return of the Night Wind by Varick Vanardy, is the second of them. However, Wildside Press already reprinted this series, along with a new original novel with the character.

F. Van Wyck Mason wrote a lot of fiction works in the pulps, most of a historic nature. This volume reprints his first pulp work along with others all dealing with the Foreign Legion.

As with other Argosy Library offerings, there are several of these that I will be getting shortly, while a few I may obtain at some point. Others I’m not intereted in. Expect to see more detailed review on several of these works, especially those in series I have interests in.