Stormgate Press, publisher of Captain Hawklin and Pulp Reality, has put out four more in their series of Stormgate Press Quick Read Books. All are written by Charles F. Millhouse, who is the man behind Stormgate.
These are short, digest-size booklets, each about 40 to 50 pages, publishing short stories of their various pulp-inspired characters. The next four volumes are:
- The Purple Mystique: Purple Incognito
- Zane Carrington: The Contract
- Tales From the Other Side of the World: The Barbarian With No Name
- Zane Carrington: Eternity’s Time Clock
All have excellent covers by Jeffrey Ray Hayes, who has been doing other New Pulp covers of late. I did like that all four had a consistent cover style unlike the first three. I hope this continues with the next ones.
The fourth volume has The Purple Mystique, who first appeared in Pulp Reality #3 and was reprinted in the first volume of this series. She is similar to The Green Hornet, wearing an outfit in purple and using a unique gas gun, with only the assistance of her driver, Danny Brocko. She has been going after minor thugs; now she is going after a mobster, Bobby Two-Tone. We don’t yet know her background or origin, or who she is. Is she the nightclub singer, the gangster’s moll, or the DA’s daughter? Hopefully, this will come out in future stories, especially as there is some kind of connection to Bobby Two-Tone. This time, she gets ahold of a ledger of Bobby’s. And one of his men is on the run. Can she find him and use both against Bobby? We’ll see.
The fifth and seventh volumes have Zane Carrington. He first appeared in the Hawklin stories as a tramp steamer captain with a mysterious past. These two volumes have stories set in the 1930s. In volume 5, we get “The Contract,” which ties to the Captain Hawklin novel The Ghost Army, which took the Captain and his friends to the South American jungle. Carrington has a map to a lost city in the Amazon, but where did he get it? In 1936, a criminal in Shanghai forces Carrington to go to the Yucatan to obtain a map from a group of Australian soldiers. He is accompanied by the general’s daughter. But things don’t go as planned for several.
In volume 7, we get “Eternity’s Time Clock,” which is set in Christmas of 1934, and Carrington is grabbed by a group of three American agents. With the promise of clearing his criminal record, they want him to take them to an island. A criminal kingpin named Amos Cretose sold an important artifact from the U.S. they want back. But as usual, things are quite what they seem. Can Carrington save the day again?
The sixth volume, under the overall title of Tales From the Other Side of the World, is a sword-and-sorcery story, “The Barbarian With No Name.” A sorcerer has taken over a kingdom. But can a nameless barbarian turn the tide? There is more to the barbarian than it seems. This should be the first of a series of stories.
I was hoping for a new Night Vision tale, so hopefully, we’ll get one in the next set of volumes. We are told that volume 8 will be another Purple Mystique story. I hope we see several in a few months. These are all great reads, and I recommend people check them out. Also, get the latest, and maybe last, issue of Pulp Reality #5, just out. I’m not sure when we’ll get more Captain Hawklin stories, but with the recent WWII-based stories, I hope we’ll now have some post-war stories.
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