Pulp Adventures #27

Bold Venture Press closed out 2017 with Pulp Adventures #27 last fall. And we get another Norman Saunders cover. As always, there’s a mix of old and new pulp in a wide range of genres: mystery, science fiction, romance, adventure, pulp hero and more. Some stories are a 100 years old! From classic pulp we get the following: “Jack Grey, Second Mate” by William Hope Hodgson comes from Adventure in 1917, reprinted from The Red Magazine in 1913, which I assume is a U.K. magazine. I’ve posted on Hodgson before, and due to his early life on sea he wrote several sea-based stories. This one is about a second mate who must deal with troublesome passengers and quell a mutiny. Another reprint from Adventure in 1917 is “A Case at Law” by William Dudley Pelley. It’s a somewhat different case of drinking and fighting in the West. Pelley wrote many courtroom dramas. Max Brand is best known for his western stories. But that is just one pseudonym of Frederick Faust, best known for creating Dr. Kildare. “Hole-in-the-Wall Barrett” is an unusual short story with a villain, a hero, and a damsel. This comes from Munsey’s Magazine in 1919 (this was left out of the issue). “Sneak Thief” by Richard Brister appeared in an issue of The Phantom Detective in 1946. When a thief becomes a killer, a young man joins the search for him for his own reasons. A detective from a small agency is looking for a man in Manhattan. Will he find him in “Thirty Days on the Island” by Raymond J. Brown. This first appeared in Argosy in 1920. From the prolific H. Bedford-Jones comes “Irregular Brethern,” a sermon of a different sort. This appeared in Blue Book from 1919. If you’re interested in Bedford-Jones, Altus Press has been putting out a lot of his stuff. An unusual love story is “A Repeating Romeo” by May Belleville Brown from a 1915 issue of All-Story Magazine. A young couple meets for the first time and realize they have been in love through many past lives. Tied to this story is an interview with “Gary Bullock, Journeyman Actor” by Audrey Parente. The main focus is his recent sf fantasy novel of loss (and found love), but it also gets into his long acting career. In the new pulp arena, we get: “Angels and Animals” by Adam McFarlane is a strange little story about pirates, genies, and ships in bottles. Dana Edward Johnson, a retired PA, gives us “The Green Mask.” A new pulp hero, this masked crimefighter’s on his first case. It’s not your standard masked pulp hero either, and not your standard case. I would be interested to see more of this character. “Not What I Ordered” by Howard Hammerman is a different romance story. “My Sister’s Husband” by Michael Bracken is a strange little romance tale.