On Black Friday weekend 2023, Steeger Books put out their next sets of Argosy Library volumes, Series XIV and XV.
As always, with each series, 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. This selection seems very heavy on adventure tales mainly from The Argosy, but also several mysteries.
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 XIV consists of:
- The Brand of Vindex: The Complete Adventures of Captain Vindex by Tracy French
- Crimes of the Year 2000 by Ray Cummings
- Steel Cut Steel by Frederick Faust, writing as Max Brand
- The Assassin: The Complete Adventures of Cordie, Soldier of Fortune, Vol. 6, by W. Wirt
- Sand in the Snow by Norbert Davis
- The Plumed Serpent by Richard Barry
- Promise of the Night Wind by Varick Vanardy
- The Son of the Red God and Other Tales of the Ta-an, Vol. 1, by Paul L. Anderson
- The Screen of Ice: The Complete Cases of Gillian Hazeltine, Vol. 2, by George F. Worts
- Remember Tomorrow by Theodore Roscoe
From the pages of Detective Fiction Weekly in the mid-1930s, we get the three adventures of Captain Vindex by Tracy French. Here, Vindex and his group of five assistants go up against The Parson, a super-criminal. This one sounds like something along the lines of Doc Savage or The Shadow, and it’s strange that there is nothing else by this author. I look forward to getting this one.
From SF author Ray Cummings, we have another series of science-fiction/detective stories in Crimes of the Year 2000. Here we have two detectives, Georg Trant and Jac Lombard, of the Shadow Squad in New York’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations. From there they will use cutting-edge tools to thwart crimes before they occur. This series of three stories from Detective Fiction Weekly has never been reprinted in book form.
From Frederick Faust, here writing as Max Brand, we get another tale of suspense in Steel Cut Steel. A wanderer gets pulled into a plot organized by a cripple to help him in his quest for vengeance. But will he figure out what is truly going on before things go too far?
With The Assassin: The Complete Adventures of Cordie, Soldier of Fortune, Vol. 6, we get the final volume of W. Wirt’s Jimmie Cordie series of stories. These are tales of a group of American soldiers of fortune from Argosy, though toward the end the series moved to other magazines for their last three adventures. Since I’ve been getting this series, I look forward to reading this one.
Sand in the Snow is a suspense series by the prolific Norbert Davis. Here we get the first serial with Jim Daniels. A lawyer, he is relaxing at an estate only to be pulled into a matter of murder. Not sure how many stories of this character there are. I’m aware of another serial with this character.
A different adventure is found in Richard Barry’s The Plumed Serpent. Set in the 12th-century Mayan empire, it focuses on the adventures of a Norseman, seen by some as their legendary deity. How will he navigate the political intrigue around him? This sounds like an interesting story from Argosy.
We get the third of the proto-superhero The Night Wind in Promise of the Night Wind by Varick Vanardy. Vanadry is really Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey, who wrote thousands of Nick Carter stories. Bingham Harvard, The Night Wind, has to navigate between crooks and the law, with only his inhumane strength to help him.
Another different series is The Son of the Red God and Other Tales of the Ta-an, Vol. 1, which is about a tribe of Cro-Magnons, the People of the Mountain Caves This series by Paul L. Anderson was apparently an influence on Robert E. Howard and we get an intro by REH scholar Rusty Burke. This has the first three stories, but I don’t know how long the series ran.
George F. Worts is best known as the author of Peter the Brazen and Singapore Sammy, but he also did a long series with criminal attorney Gillian Hazeltine. In The Screen of Ice: The Complete Cases of Gillian Hazeltine, Vol. 2, we get the next two stories. This character can be seen as a possible prototype for Perry Mason.
From the prolific Theodore Roscoe we get a story set in WWI France, Remember Tomorrow. Set in a chateau near the Somme, a strange group gathers there during the storm. But there is murder, suspense, and supernatural occurrences. What is going on?
As always we get a mixed bag of volumes. There are several I am getting now, others I may get at some point, and some I don’t care about. But whatever there is, there should be something of interest. If you’re not looking into this series of volumes, do so.
