{"id":4366,"date":"2015-09-09T10:00:01","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T14:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=4366"},"modified":"2025-10-10T14:40:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T18:40:26","slug":"ravenwood-the-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2015\/09\/09\/ravenwood-the-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Ravenwood: The novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ravenwood:Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery<\/strong> is a short-lived occult detective pulp hero series that ran in the back of Secret Agent X<\/em> for five issues. As an occult detective, what sets him apart is that he actually has occult powers. In the pulps, most “occult powers” are either fake or in use only by the villains (ex: Dr. Satan<\/strong>, Dr. Death<\/strong>, etc).<\/p>\n

Airship 27<\/a> has given us two collections of new Ravenwood stories, and now we have a novel. If you want to read the originals, Altus Press<\/a> has a collection, now with a nice new cover that ties in with planned collections of other series by Frederick C. Davis<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Ravenwood was orphaned in Tibet when his rich, missionary doctor parents were killed. Rescued by the Nameless One<\/strong>, a Tibetan mystic, he was instructed in the ways of the occult. Returning to New York as a rich playboy (shades of several comic-book and pulp heroes), he works as an occult detective, dealing with cases that seems to have a bizarre explanation. Ravenwood’s edge is his occult powers, which is to basically seeing information that is hidden or knowing that something will happen before it does.<\/p>\n

Recurring characters were few in the the original stories. There is Ravenwood (no first name), his valet Sterling<\/strong> (again, no first name), the Nameless One who lives with Ravenwood in his apartment and (usually) never leaves, and Stagg<\/strong>, a police inspector who usually thinks Ravenwood is involved in the case due to his advanced knowledge. All appear here.<\/p>\n

“Return of the Dugpa” is by Micah Harris<\/strong>, and continues the trend of other stories of pitting Ravenwood against real occult threats, which makes better use of the character, but I am concern with the dialing up of the occult abilities of Ravenwood and the Nameless One from the original stories.<\/p>\n

The story is also based on a real unsolved Hollywood murder case, of director William Desmond Taylor<\/strong>. A new studio head wishes to produce a lost opera by Richard Wagner<\/strong>, and asked for Ravenwood to look into the curse that seems to overshadow this.<\/p>\n

He and the Nameless One are soon pulled into a case that involved ancient resurrected evil from Hyperborea. He is assisted in the background by a mysterious figure named the Dark Eminence<\/strong>, who seems to be a more occult-flavored Shadow<\/strong>. As I noted, other than the dialing up of the occult stuff on the part of Ravenwood and The Nameless One, the story was pretty good and made a lot of use of real and made-up occult ideas.<\/p>\n

Overall, this is another great work from Airship 27. I look forward to further Ravenwood works from them, either novels or short stories. I wonder if Harris will give us further stories with the Dark Eminence?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery is a short-lived occult detective pulp hero series that ran in the back of Secret Agent X for five issues. As an occult detective, what sets him apart is that he actually has occult powers. In the pulps, most “occult powers” are either fake or in use only by the villains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Pulp Super-Fan looks at Ravenwood: The Novel. #newpulp #pulpmags http:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-18q","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[84,3,19],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-4366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-pulp","category-review","tag-airship-27","tag-hero-pulps","tag-occult-detectives"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2015\/07\/ravenwood-novel.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-18q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4366"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21478,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4366\/revisions\/21478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4366"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=4366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}