Forgotten Books: THE COMPLEAT ADVENTURES OF SATAN HALL by Carroll John Daly (2011)

This book has two titles, so you can take your pick. The dust jacket calls it The Compleat Adventures of Satan Hall, while the title page, copyright page and embossed spine bear the title The Satan Hall Omnibus. No matter. Both titles are good, and the book is great.

As I've said before, police detective Satan Hall is my favorite Carroll John Daly character (yep, I like him even better than Race Williams) and one of my all-time favorite fictional heroes. This guy is just cold-blooded and cool. I won't sing Satan's praises here because I've done that before. You'll find all that HERE.

Prior to this volume, Satan's only foray into the world of pulp reprints was the 1988 Mysterious Press collection The Adventures of Satan Hall. That book contained four of his early novelettes from Detective Fiction Weekly. This volume goes way beyond that, featuring all twenty-three of his novelette-length adventures (from Street & Smith's Detective Story, Black Mask, Detective Tales, Flynn's, New Detective, Black Book Detective and Famous Detective), plus the eight-part serial "Satan's Vengeance," which was the third Satan Hall novel. Satan's pulp career spanned twenty-three years, from 1931 to 1954, and it's all here.

The first two novels, The Mystery of the Smoking Gun (1936), reviewed HERE, and Ready to Burn (1951), HERE, were each comprised of earlier pulp novelettes. So, in effect, this book truly contains the complete (or Compleat) adventures of Satan Hall. And if that weren't enough, each story also features all the original pulp illustrations.

This massive volume, 8 1/2 inches wide, 11 1/2 inches tall and 531 pages thick, was released in 2011 in a limited edition of 1000 copies, and is available direct from the publisher, George Vanderburgh of The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box. It will run you about a hundred bucks, but it's damn well worth it. For ordering info, drop George a line at gav@cablerocket.com.

More Forgotten books at pattinase.