H. Bedford-Jones (1887-1949) was a prolific pulp author with over 1,000 works, including several series. His longest series with a single character featured John Solomon, a mysterious cockney ship chandler who operated in Port Said, Egypt, before World War I with a network of agents.
Strangely, Solomon is often almost a secondary character in his own series. He works behind the scenes, and is not seen for long periods. There is always a more adventurous young man as the main character of the story, who usually marries the girl and settles down at the end of the story.
I’ve been posting on this character now that Steeger Books is reprinting this series as part of their “H. Bedford-Jones Library.” They started out putting out paperback editions with one novel each so far, but as there will be about 14 volumes for the 24-story series, they have switched to two novels per volume. There is also a three-volume complete hardback collection as well. This latest paperback, volume #8, contains two novels: Pilgrim Solomon and John Solomon, Retired. These two were also reprinted in High Adventure.
While the series started in Argosy, it soon shifted to People’s, which is where these two novels appeared. Pilgrim Solomon was cover featured in the July 1917 issue. John Solomon, Retired, was cover featured in the Dec. 10, 1917, issue, and that cover is used for this collection. The series will remain in People’s until it ended in 1921, after which it was revived in Argosy in 1930.
In an earlier story, Solomon had left Port Said and gone to America, where he had worked for several stories, only to return to the Middle East in the previous story. This is where we find him in Pilgrim Solomon, back in his little shop in Port Said. This time, Europeans are involved with the Turks. An American, Jim MacGruder, is tasked with heading to Mecca to rescue an American woman Clarice Worden, but he runs afoul of an Austrian spy aiming to prevent Arabs from taking control of Mecca from the Turks. Solomon is somehow involved, as this will weaken the Turks if successful. Of course, MacGruder will leave with the girl to return to American at the end, and Solomon decides to shut down his shop and move elsewhere, which makes sense as WWI has ended, along with the threat of the Turks in the Middle East.
This directly leads into John Solomon, Retired. Solomon is now operating in Java, and while respected by many, he doesn’t seem to have the same network of agents as before. But involved he is. He engages an American, Ralph Carter, to assist a woman, Miss Bergen, who has taken over her late brother’s spice plantation. A schemer is after the plantation for unknown reasons, and a Chinese friend of the brother’s, Wing Fu, aims to prevent this schemer from succeeding. Will the American succeed, and will we learn what is behind it all? We also get Chinese secret societies and pirates mixed in, as well.
The next story will be Solomon’s Son, and we have two further stories in People’s. So I’m not sure if we’ll see two or three stories in the next volume, but I think just two.
