Bait for Men: The Complete Cases of The Lady From Hell, Vol. 1, collects the first stories of a series that I’m not familiar with.
The Lady From Hell series ran 25 stories, all in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1935 to 1936. The final story appeared in 1938 in Popular Detective, perhaps part of an attempt to bring back the character. It was written by Eugene Thomas, and I can’t find much info on him. Other than one other story, I can’t find anything else he wrote in the pulps.
Bait for Men comes from Steeger Books, as part of its Argosy Library, and reprints the first 10 stories. The cover art is taken from the cover for the first story, which was billed there as a “true story of a sinister woman.” If it’s not clear, that’s supposed to be her mug shot in the bottom corner. She will only be shown on a total of five other covers, though mentioned on a few more.
Our Lady From Hell is a femme fatale, working as a blackmailer for her own enrichment, who gets into various issues and predicaments, often deadly, sometimes in between the underworld and the authorities. While it’s said that she will head an organization, in these stories it’s pretty much herself and another, with some assistance, thus she is fully involved in the action.
We meet the titular Lady From Hell in the self-titled first story. This serves as her origin story. She is red-headed Vivian Donellan, the only child of Duke Donellan, who runs a gambling hall in Shanghai. She is not yet the head of the blackmailing ring for which she will become known as Vivian Legrand, and not yet 18.
The young Alan Legrand has a fancy for her, and she him. But he is in debt to Duke for several thousand dollars. Alan tries to get Vi to put a knockout drug in Duke’s drink but hopes to trick her into killing him. And wanting to be free from him as well, he tries the same. It doesn’t quite work out. Things go from bad to worse, and in the end, the two leave. Vi will marry and later divorce Alan, and she heads off to live her own life via blackmail.
Surprisingly to me, each of the stories follows the next pretty well, in some cases a character being mentioned in subsequent stories. While each story stands alone, the connections definitely make it better to read them in order.
The next story, “Bait for Men,” finds Vi in Manila, trying to get a passport and passage to San Francisco, as she is wanted in Shanghai. To do so, she gets involved with local crime lord Mandarin Hoang Fi Tu in a matter where they work with a Malay fighting against his brother, a local prince. Payment is ownership of a ruby mine. But there will be backstabbing and betrayal. Along the way she is joined by Adrian “Doc” Wylie, who will be her right-hand man going forward.
We next find her in Rangoon with the Malay prince, where she promises to the local head of the British Secret Service that she will return an important letter that was stolen from them — for a price, of course. After some intense action, she succeeds and then heads out to the Adamant Islands thanks to the information in that letter.
Thus the next story finds Vi and Wylie in Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, working out a scheme to rescue a prisoner before either the British or Russian authorities can. While successful, things take a decidedly deadly turn when 40 convicts, all murderers, take over the ship she is on. Will she be able to turn the tables?
I was surprised that after all the action in the Far East, we now find that The Lady of Hell in the French Riviera, particularly Monte Carlo, in the hopes of getting her hands on that ruby mine. We thus get two adventures there before other matters come up. We then move to Turkey, and Vi actually gets sent to a Turkish prison. But she does escape. Next, she robs the Orient Express, before an adventure in Paris.
The final story here is a callback of sorts to the first story. Vi is now in London, where she gets involved with the rich family connected to her ex-husband. There she gets involved with the old family patrician about to pass away, after which she will “help” the family find his will that leaves all his money to them and not charity. For a slight fee, of course. Wonder where she goes next?
Overall, I enjoyed this series. The character is different, what with her less-than-honorable past. As noted, there are 25 stories, and it looks like some later ones are longer. So I suspect we’ll need two more volumes to collect the rest. And as I noted she did appear on a few covers, a couple of those will likely be used for those future volumes.
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