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 originally 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 usually 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 recent paperback, volume 9, contains two novels: Solomon’s Son and John Solomon.
While the series started in Argosy, it soon shifted to People’s, which is where these two novels appeared. Solomon’s Son was cover featured in the June 25, 1918, issue, and that cover is used for this collection. John Solomon was in the July 1921 issue. The series will remain in People’s until it ended in 1921, after which it was revived in Argosy in 1930.
In the last volume, Solomon had returned to the Middle East, only to retire to Java. Now in Solomon’s Son, we find John in San Francisco for some reason, but we are first introduced to our hero: Hiram King. We learn he was found over 20 years ago as a 6-month-old baby in a ship’s boat with a dead woman, probably his mom, and two others. But there was no identification other than a ring. Adopted by the captain who found him, he is now a ship’s captain himself. But he runs into Solomon on the street and gets into a tussle. Interestingly, we are told that both men have wide-set blue eyes.
Learning that King is about to meet a certain man, Solomon quickly leaves. He heads to the British consul, where we learn he is 58 years old and I think the first time clearly stated that he was a British agent. We slowly learn that there are two men that Solomon thought were dead but apparently are not. They are responsible for his wife and infant son disappearing, most likely dead. And it’s these two men, now Sir James Mowbray and Douglas Sanderson, whom King is involved with. There is also a girl, Norma Douglas, a niece of Sanderson. King hopes she will marry the son of Mowbray, cementing their business arrangements.
King had sold his business and plans on investing with Mowbray and Sanderson, and is captain now of Mowbray’s yacht as the group heads to the Dutch East Indies. But he is no fool and suspects them of being less than honest. And he has his own organization of loyal men. Just like John Solomon! Thus we have a situation of King and his org with Solomon and his org. This basically turned on its head the normal way these stories go! King (along with Norma) finds out why Solomon is after the two men. What will the outcome of all this be? Will Solomon triumph? Will King and Solomon realize that King is the son of Solomon? And what of the girl?
This is followed by John Solomon, and he is back in San Francisco. We actually meet or learn of many of the players in the first couple of chapters. We meet our hero, Nathan Rannals, a now former U.S. revenue agent who has been framed. Thankfully it seems that others know he’s been framed, even if they can’t prove it. He runs into a “Shuffles” Beeson, a dope head and stoolie. There is the young Janet Anderson, who is being led around by someone named “Bull” Logan, a disreputable man who was responsible for framing Rannals. Thankfully Rannals is able to get her away from Logan. And there is Lui Toy, a Harvard grad and successful merchant, whom someone has marked for death and Rannals is off to warn him.
Watching all this is John Solomon. It appears that Janet is looking for her missing brother Randolph, who came to San Francisco three years ago but disappeared. John will help because Janet and Randolph’s late father was a good friend of John in Egypt 20 years ago, both also being members of a secret society (the Freemasons?). But John is there to deal with a dangerous group of criminals known as the Trigrams, the group who has marked Lui Toy and others for death and framed Rannals.
But this is a John Solomon tale. We will learn the identity of the true head of the group: a Manchu named Ch’ien-hsi. And Randolph Anderson will be found and we learn what happened to him and his connection with it all. The bad guys will be defeated, and in the end, Rannals and Janet will move on with their lives. I was surprised by how many people, all bad, died in this one.
The next one, volume 10, has Solomon, Incognito, the last story in People’s (where it was cover featured), and “The Wisdom of John Solomon,” an odd-ball appearance in The Boston Globe. After that, he would be revived in The Argosy in 1930 in 10 shorter stories.
