I have posted about Victor Rousseau Emanuel (1879-1960), a prolific pulp author in the early years who is largely overlooked today. Some of his works have been reprinted, but there still remain several works worth reprinting. He mainly wrote as Victor Rousseau, but also used some other pseudonyms, one being H.M. Egbert, especially for his works reprinted in books in the U.K. He is originally from Britain, but soon moved to the U.S. and passed away here.
He did a trio of serials that appeared in the newspapers in the early 1900s. These are the Dr. Ivan Brodsky, Dr. Phileas Immanuel, and John Haynes series. These were all reprinted by Morgan Wallace under his Spectre Library from 2006 to 2009 in limited-edition hardcovers of 200 numbered copies each. I’m not sure how easy it is to find them, but I was able to get them all recently for reasonable prices. Two of the volumes have excellent intros by Mike Ashley, and give a great overview of Rousseau’s career, while the other has an intro by Wallace.
The first two series are basically early occult-detective stories, though each hero is different in their approach. In the first, Dr. Brodsky uses his abilities to help individuals or to allay spirits. So there’s no confronting supernatural evil or the like. The second series is about reincarnation, which had become prominent at the time, and addresses the problems caused by the person’s past lives impacting them today. The third is a serialized science-fiction novel, and I am surprised that it wasn’t then reprinted in book form once it was completed.
So first up is the Dr. Ivan Brodsky series, also called The Surgeon of Souls. Confusingly to me, there is another pulp character referred to the surgeon of souls: Dr. Zarkov who appeared in seven stories in Spicy Mystery in 1936-38 by Robert Leslie Bellem. As Rousseau also wrote for the spicys, did the two authors ever meet in some way? If you want to read Bellem’s series, there is a collection from Black Dog Books.
The Brodsky series ran 13 stories, first serialized in 1910. Later, 11 of them were reprinted in Weird Tales in 1926. Spectre’s edition came out in 2006 and has 12 stories. A 13th was later discovered and included in the Bio-Bibliography that Spectre did in 2011. These appeared originally under Rousseau’s H.M Egbert pseudonym, though when reprinted in Weird Tales they were under his name.
In this series, people are menaced or possessed by souls/spirits. For instance, in the first story, a little girl is possessed by the soul of a recently executed murderer.
Next, we have Dr. Immanuel, collected as The Tracer of Egos in 2007. These were syndicated in 1913-14, under Rousseau’s name. They were never reprinted in the pulps. As noted, this series deals heavily with reincarnation. In the first story, the good doctor helps a nanny accused of kleptomania, who has a strange connection to the amulet owned by her employer. If he can clear her past life’s obsession with it, he can help her keep her job. The rest of the stories are similar.
Finally, we have the John Haynes series, collected as The Devil Chair in 2006. This is a science-fiction tale as well as a vengeance or revenge tale.
We learn that our hero, John Haynes is an Englishman with a wife and daughter. He came to the American West (not clear exactly where, but I suspect Colorado) to claim an inheritance worth millions. When he wouldn’t sell out cheap, he was crippled with a bullet in his back and put into prison on false pretenses by the men who wanted to take his valuable land. He also lost his wife and child, both of whom thought the others dead.
In prison, he struggled as a cripple to improve himself as best he could and built a miraculous gyroscope that can propel him at over a hundred miles an hour. With this, he breaks out of prison to exact his revenge and to find his wife and child. He soon finds his daughter, who helps him a few times. He enacts poetic justice against the many who wronged him. He gets the doctor who left the bullet in him to remove it, enabling him to walk again. He does finally find his wife, now a missionary in China. But the authorities think he is a dangerous madman, and they work to stop him. The conclusion of the story may not be what you expect.
Having read many vengeance hero series by Johnston McCulley, this one was different in tone and outcome.
As noted, you may also want to get His Second Self: The Bio-Bibliography of Victor Rousseau Emanuel, which came out from Spectre in 2011. It has a further Dr. Brodsky tale, as well as reprints the first two stories of the other two collections.
So check out Victor Rousseau. Hopefully, we will see more of his works reprinted. I have a few more reviews of his works planned.
