Really great $1 Pulpls!

OK, I know what your thinking, man, Love pulps, but 'cha know pretty good reads and I was attracted to one of my favorite writers for Dime Mystery Francis K.Allan. He had one novel in Love Novels April 1954, called All My Tomorrows.  Which to me sounds like a soap opera.  But the story which I had to read was very good, about a singers agent finding his best singer on the porch of his building.  But, she has a secret of course.  Allan's stories in Dime Mystery would have had a weird twist, but this one turns out  well.  And, oddly enough, I find that looking at the Fiction Mags site that he has another name he writes under, Joe Kent, and he has another story in the same issue, The Girl He Wouldn't Believe.  The illustrations on the Tomorrows story is excellent as you can see, and to me, it looks like Gerald McCann, he did a lot of fine drawings for early 50's Ranch Romances and for some reason Vince Colleta comes to mind here too. He did a lot of romance comics with ghost pencil guys.  I dunno, looked at Who's Who and doesn't say much about pulp art, but he did work at Better Pubs, probably on the comics end doing Popular Romance and Thrilling Romances in the 50's. 

I do like the cover art very much here also, not only wonderful art, beautiful women, and all unsigned, which must have been Popular Pubs way of doing business.  They more likely didn't want other publishers to steal away thier talent.  Its amazing to me that these are all Popular mags, they must have had great distribution in this area, I run across their western pulps all the time too.  On the other had, I don't run into Popular's detective, mystery or adventure pulps in the real world much.  I suppose I wouldn't get them for a buck each anyway. 

Francis K Allan had another good story in this last batch of pulps, Dangerous Lady from Brooklyn, about an ex-sports star turned editor who helps a girl with unusual ideas of traffic control. Nice read and good art and title lettering. 

I notice that Agnes Best Nafzinger has a story, The spell of Turquoise in the March 1954 issue of Love Book, its a novel cover featured.  Seems as if she is a relative of Ray Nafzinger, as she writes with him on several stories  in Colliers and Saturday Evening post.  She writes in Love Book on her own, and most of her stories for Ranch Romances. Another reason, I think that can link the two of them together is that Ray lived in New Mexico and the Turquoise story made me put 2 and 2 together, OK, it may not have anything to do with that, but interesting.  Always good mystery stuff going on in the pulps! 

Charles Beckman Jr. stories from my collection, all good reads.  The first one I read was the Manhunt  Dec. 1953 a attractive cover by Uppwall featuring  the David Goodis story Black Pudding a story of revenge, a dish served cold.  A very good story about a guy who does time for another gangster and the gangster steals his wife and waits for him to get out and lead him to the loot.  The story by Beckman is Killing on Seventh St. a story of a man, who just lived his life until he's praised for killing a would be robber.  He finds himself turned on by what the hood does to his wife and you know where that leads... Seems a bit like the Spicy pulps when you read Manhunt.  There is another story here called Wife Beater by Roy Carrol, with a strange twist, not unforeseen, but, another sexual tale of the Spicy variety, heck makes Spicy Detective reading seem tame at times. 

The next story from Detective Tales April 1952 with the distinctive Norm Saunders Cover, has the Beckman story A Dead Mans Chest a short story about another guy who gets out a jail and  looks for his hidden treasure, but is beaten to it in a strange way by his partner.  I like his hard boiled writing, and his locations, like Corpus Cristi, TX. of which Charles knows something about, being a native.  Nice details like his study of sea shells, adds to the story.  Beckman works a lot into  9 pages.  He was well respected by the editor at Popular Pubs as he did get cover credit.  The interior art is excellent, none signed, but I think a lot of it is by Gerald McCann who you can look up at David Saunders fine site Field Guide to pulp artists.  McCann is a fine artist, who did work in the comics, like Classics Illustrated, and I have a lot of his work in Ranch Romances, which also features some nice art by Ray Kinstler, another blog sometime. Another good tale in this issue by Richard Sale Blind Ad for Murder, is very good, a great murder frame up.  Its a reprint from Detective Tales 1938, still a very good, hard to put down novelette. 

The final story in the last issue of Dime Mystery December 1949 with the Beckman story Run, Cat, Run.   A Johnny Nickle Jazz tale, is an excellent short about a Jazz trumpeter, who records the greatest tune, the best of the best, and then it begins to haunt him...cool story.  There is a reissue of Honky Tonk Gal by Charles Beckman that has been put out by Wildside Press, that would be a good read also with Johnny Nickle.  In addition the Boeckman's his real name( and Patti his wife), have a book out featuring most of the above collecting all of his crime stories.