At the end of 2025, we got the second collection of the Lady From Hell series: The Adventure of the Voodoo Moon: The Complete Cases of the Lady From Hell, Vol. 2. This series ran 25 stories, all in Detective Fiction Weekly from 1935 to 1936.
The final story appeared in 1938 in Popular Detective, perhaps as 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.
This series comes from Steeger Books as part of its Argosy Library, and this volume reprints the next eight stories. The cover art is taken from the cover for the second story, “The Adventure of the Maharaja’s Wife.” Vivian will only be shown on a total of five other covers, though she is mentioned on a few more.
Our Lady From Hell is the redheaded femme fatale Vivian Donellan, now known as Vivian Legrand. She works as a blackmailer for her own enrichment and gets into various predicaments, often deadly, sometimes between the underworld and the authorities. She often takes from other criminals as well. While she does have an organization, in these stories it is pretty much just herself and Adrian Wyle, her companion and “chief of staff.” The rest of her organization rarely appears.
Her adventures take her and Adrian around the world. The first few stories find them in London before they move to the Caribbean and then to a Latin American country. There is some continuity between the stories, more than I expected, even at times mentioning past events.
In the first story, “The Adventure of the King of Diamonds,” we find the pair going after Wolf Bernhardt, the so-called “King of Diamonds.” But it looks like another con artist might have gotten to him before they do. Can they turn the tables on the other con artist and enrich themselves, especially when the con man’s associates make their move? This leads into the next story, “The Adventure of the Maharaja’s Wife,” where they use Bernhardt to get their hands on the Kohinoor Double diamond.
Next, Vivian goes up against the London Queen of Crime in “The Episode of the London Queen of Crime,” which is concluded in “The Adventure of the Dragon Claws.” It seems our Queen of Crime is not happy that Vivian has interfered with her plans a couple of times and has marked her for death. Can Vivian get the best of her, or will she need to leave London? The second story also involves a British police official seen in the first volume.
I guess the two have had enough of London, so we next find them in Havana for “The Adventure of the Headless Statue.” Once they arrive, a con man they have previously worked with summons them. He is sick and cannot handle a deal, and wants Vivian to help. The treasurer of the dictator of Venezuela has fled with the treasury, and he knows where it is. But before he can reveal it, he is killed. Can Vivian overcome the two others after the treasury?
Next, they head to Haiti in “The Adventure of the Voodoo Moon,” where Vivian comes to the attention of a rich sugar plantation owner who has sinister plans for her. Can she overcome him and profit from it as well?
Then we find Vivian and Adrian aboard a hired yacht in the southern Caribbean in “The Adventure of the Cayenne Fugitives,” when they encounter a canoe carrying a group of escaped convicts from a French penal colony. They next meet a rich American aboard his yacht, and things get a bit out of hand. Can Vivian extricate herself and Adrian from the situation?
In the last story, they are in a fictional Latin American dictatorship in “The Adventure of the Dying Dictator.” It appears the dictator is old and dying, and the nation is on the verge of revolution. Can Vivian use this to her advantage? I was actually surprised by the ending. I look forward to the following volume to see what happens next.
We should need just one more volume to reprint the rest of this series, and I hope we get that later this year. This has been an interesting series.
While Vivian is clearly a criminal, she does not kill and usually goes after other criminals rather than the innocent. Even the rich people she steals from are often not very nice. That somewhat mitigates having a series centered on a criminal protagonist.
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