On Black Friday weekend 2025, Steeger Books put out their next sets of Argosy Library volumes, Series XVIII and XIX, getting closer to 200 volumes.
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 subseries. This selection seems very heavy on crime and detective stories and series.
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 XIX consists of:
- Up Jumped the Devil, by Cleve F. Adams
- The Brothers of the Snake: The Complete Chinatown Cases of Jimmy Wentworth, Vol. 3, by Sidney Herschel Small
- A Clue to the Copper: The Complete Cases of Silver Skull, by Richard Howells Watkins
- Kingdom of the Lost: The Adventures of Peter the Brazen, Vol. 8, by Loring Brent
- Worth Millions, by Richard Barry
- Tiger Dick’s Doubloons, by Don McGrew
- Presidents: Imaginary Moments in the Lives of America’s Great, by Theodore Roscoe
- Cross Over Nine, by Max Brand
- Asoka’s Alibi: The Complete Adventures of Ben Quorn, Vol. 2, by Talbot Mundy
- The Lost Punch: The Complete Cases of Gillian Hazeltine, Vol. 4, by George F. Worts
We get another story of detective Rex McBride in Up Jumped the Devil by Cleve F. Adams. This one appeared in Cosmopolitan. A prior work, Sabotage, was reprinted in the Argosy Library previously. This time, when he gets to San Francisco, he finds a dead man in his hotel room and his bag cut open. Can he get to the bottom of things with crooked cops, mobsters, and socialites involved?
With The Brothers of the Snake, we get the third volume of Jimmy Wentworth, the detective assigned to Chinatown who must deal with the sinister kingpin Kong Gai. Sidney Herschel Small’s series ran 28 stories in Detective Fiction Weekly, so we should be getting two more volumes. This should be another interesting collection of Chinatown crimes.
The Silver Skull was a short-lived series of only three stories that appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly. A Clue to the Copper contains the complete series by Richard Howells Watkins. The Silver Skull is an unusual character, once a decorated military captain and later a condemned killer, who lives on as a haunted avenger with a silver plate in his skull. He works to hunt down and expose a criminal mastermind known only as the Copper.
We get the eighth and final volume of the Peter the Brazen series by Loring Brent (actually George F. Worts) with Kingdom of the Lost. Here, Peter must confront the Octopus and save Susan O’Gilvie in the finale of the series.
In Worth Millions by Richard Barry, a penniless bookkeeper is named by the richest man in Westchester as trustee for his daughter. We get a story that whirls around Imogen, the man who loves her, and the magnate.
Tiger Dick’s Doubloons gives us an interesting sea tale by Don McGrew. Ned Allen takes passage to America and, along the way, meets a larger-than-life seaman in Tiger Dick Buntline. We get a tale of brawls, shipwrecks, and more in a quest for buried treasure.
From the prolific Theodore Roscoe, we get Presidents: Imaginary Moments in the Lives of America’s Great. As noted, these are imaginary tales, such as what if George Washington had accepted a crown, and more. This seven-story series appeared in The Argosy from 1939 to 1941.
Cross Over Nine is another mystery tale by Max Brand (Frederick Faust) that appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly in 1934. John Witherby comes home to claim his granduncle’s fortune, only to find a corpse and a strange message. Hunted by a gang, he must follow a trail of secrets and betrayals to get to the bottom of things.
From Talbot Mundy is the conclusion to the Ben Quorn series, Asoka’s Alibi. Ben Quorn is an American living in British India and is the only one who can tame the elephant Asoka.
Gillian Hazeltine is another creation of George F. Worts, a fighting lawyer whose battleground is the courtroom. The Lost Punch has the next two stories in the series, which ran about 30 stories, mainly in Argosy.
As always, there are several volumes here I plan on getting, others that I might get, and some I do not have an interest in. This is always true of this series. But I hope everyone takes a look at their offerings. There are some series I was hoping we would get another volume of this time. Maybe next time we will.
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