Robert Leslie Bellem's Dan Turner, the undisputed King of Spicy Detectives, has been reprinted by so many different publishers - and in so many different formats - that I've lost track of them. And outfits like Girasol and Adventure House have produced facsimile editions of single issues the original magazine. But far as I know, this is 1989 book from Malibu Graphics is the only attempt at a true anthology of tales.
Predictably, this one leads off with a Dan Turner story, then dishes up a selection of six other stories that appeared in Spicy Detective between 1935 and 1937. No one is going to mistake this stuff for great literature, but the stories are all fun and exuberant and peppered with the sort of nudity and canoodling that must have had many a pulse pounding back in the '30s.
Appropriately, Bellem is represented by at least one other story, under his pen name of Jerome Severs Perry. And there's a tale (not listed on the back of the book) by James A. Lawson, author of the fine 2003 Black Dog Books chapbook Hard Guy.
Malibu Graphics (now defunct) was primarily a comic book publisher (Eternity and Aircel were Malibu imprints, and Image was initially connected as well), and this collection seems to have been intended to introduce comic book readers (18 and over) to Spicy Detective. Malibu co-founder Tom Mason also compiled and edited anthologies called Spicy Mystery Stories, Spicy Western Stories and Spicy Horror Stories (there was no pulp entitled Spicy Horror, of course, so those tales were culled from Uncanny Tales and other shudder pulps). Each of the four volumes featured the original interior illos, reset type and new covers.
In what was no doubt an overdose of optimism, each book was labelled "Volume One." I don't believe any of the titles made it to Volume Two, but they were a worthy experiment, and all are worth seeking out. And because demand is low, you can probably find them for considerably less than the original $7.95 cover price. Books that cost less now than when they were new - what a great concept!
More Forgotten Books at pattinase.
