Comic Gallery: CRIMES BY WOMEN (1949-50)

See the first nine issues HERE.

Pulp Gallery: THE SPIDER 19, 20 & 21 (1935)

See the first eighteen Spider covers HERE.

Overlooked Films: MAD's Spy vs. Spy season 1

Comic Gallery: Four Color ZORRO (1952-54)

A FREE Preview from EQMM

I've already told you that "Skyler Hobbs and the Smarter Brother" appears in this latest issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. What I didn't know was that there's also a lengthy preview of the story on the EQMM website. A peek at the first page appears below, but there's much, much more. To view the whole preview click HERE. 

Tim-Mee Pioneers

Forgotten Stories: "A Slug for Cleopatra" - a complete DAFFY DILL mystery by Richard Sale

Here's the third in our all-too-infrequent visits with Richard Sale's witty but hardboiled reporter, Daffy Dill. This one, from the March 30, 1935 Detective Fiction Weekly, is early in Daffy's career. The first story I'm aware of, "The Fifty Grand Brain," appeared Nov. 3, 1934, and there were at least 56 more over the next nine years. I posted "A Dirge for Pagliaccio" HERE and "Death on High Iron" HERE. Check 'em out. They're great!

PHANTOM LAGOON: A Brand New DOC SAVAGE Adventure by Will Murray and Lester Dent

1939: Lester Dent begins a proposed Doc Savage newspaper strip continuity introducing gorgeous but prickly adventuress Hornetta Hale and puts her on track to bedevil Doc and his men. The strip is never published. 

2013: Will Murray, the 21st Century Kenneth Robeson, picks up the tale and builds it into the crackerjack new Doc Savage novel, Phantom Lagoon. 

Yes, folks, Mr. Murray has done it again - dishing out yet another corker in the WILD Adventures of Doc Savage from Altus Press. 

Our man Doc has encountered a good number of difficult females over the course of his long career, but none so obstinate, so demanding or so downright troublesome as Hornetta Hale. This lady is hardboiled right down to her toenails, and doesn't care who knows it. The chip on her shoulder is roughly the size of the Empire State Building.

When the crew of cruise ship finds her marooned on a Caribbean isle, she shuns all questions and makes a beeline for Doc's headquarters, where she demands use of his submarine. Naturally, Doc wants answers, and when she won't come across, he sends her off in a huff. 

Next thing Doc knows, he's up to neck in extremely well-armed bad guys who lay waste to his offices, destroy his warehouse full of planes, boats and automobiles, and leave him and his aides with little more than the shirts on their backs. And that's only the beginning, as all concerned go chasing off to the Caribbean to solve the mystery of the Men Under the Sea.

As if Doc isn't bedeviled enough, his trouble-loving cousin Pat Savage horns in, eager to pot somebody with her Old West model Colt .45. And among many nice touches, our heroes travel south on the cabin cruiser Stormalong, named for old Stormalong Savage, the grandfather we met in Skull Island (review HERE.) 

 As we've come to expect from the team of Murray and Dent, there's plenty of action, mystery, humor and derring-do. In short, it's a great read from start to finish. And if I were the suspicious sort, I just might suspect that Doc and the gang are fated to meet the prickly Miss Hornetta Hale again.

The paperback edition of Phantom Lagoon is available right now, right HERE.