The Best of Spicy Mystery, Volume 3

E. Hoffmann Price, Hugh B. Cave, Hamlin Daly, Ellery Watson Calder, Carl Moore, Justin Case, Alfred Jan, H.J. Ward, Robert Leslie Bellem

Description

The Thrills of Horror! Romantic Tales of the Eerie and Occult! You'll find them in Spicy Mystery--stories of red-blooded men and lovely girls in dangerous situations, in an atmosphere of chills and thrills. Real life is never so tense and dramatic as when a girl is in peril--or as when a siren as deadly as she is beautiful sets her snare for a man....

Are you bored of typical weird menace plots, many of which crept into Spicy Mystery? Then sample these tales which break out of that tired formula where every ending is happy, and the only challenge is guessing which minor character gets exposed as the villain in a rubber monster suit and demon mask! The Best of Spicy Mystery, Volume 3 contains 11 classic stories by the masters of the genre, complete, uncut, and with the original illustrations. It also includes an all-new introduction by editor Alfred Jan, one of the leading experts on the series.

Contains stories by Hamlin Daly, Ellery Watson Calder, Carl Moore, Justin Case, E. Hoffmann Price, and Robert Leslie Bellem

Sujets

• Pulp Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Altus Press
• Date de parution: 16 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788835345794
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Best of Spicy Mystery, Volume 3
by
Hamlin Daly
Ellery Watson Calder
Carl Moore
Justin Case
E. Hoffmann Price
Robert Leslie Bellem

Edited by
Alfred Jan

Altus Press • 2018
Copyright Information

© 2017 Altus Press

Publication History:
“Spicy Mysteries Re-Examined” Copyright © 2017 Alfred Jan.
“Medusa’s Kiss” originally appeared in the January 1936 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories.
“The Strangler” originally appeared in the October 1936 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories.
“The Dark Veil” originally appeared in the June 1937 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories.
“Hands of the Dead” originally appeared in the June 1937 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories.
“Hearts From the Half Dead” originally appeared in the January 1937 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories.
“Hell’s Dark Fragrance” originally appeared in the December 1936 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories.
“Thirst of the Damned” originally appeared in the March 1936 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories.
“Doom Door” originally appeared in the March 1936 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories.
“Dawn of Discord” originally appeared in the October 1940 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories.
“The Old Gods Eat” originally appeared in the February 1941 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories.
“Flowers of Desire” originally appeared in the September 1936 issue of Spicy Mystery Stories.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Special Thanks to Rebecca Burns, Alfred Jan and Chris Slembarski
Spicy Mysteries Re-examined
Alfred Jan

This third anthology is the result of my continuing efforts to find stories not following hackneyed weird menace plots. As mentioned in previous introductions, these predictable events include a man and a female companion finding themselves threatened by seemingly supernatural horrors only to find them to be human-caused after the villain is defeated and unmasked. The couple then emerges relieved and happy into the new dawn.
The assembled tales end with a twist, and not all end happily. For example, Ellery Watson Calder’s carnivorous plants yarn ends unexpectedly as to the villain’s identity. Colby Quinn’s insane surgeon meets an unsatisfactory ironic end. Another Quinn contribution takes off on German Decadent horror master Hanns Heinz Ewers’ classic “The Spider,” a favorite of H.P. Lovecraft.
For fans of Robert Leslie Bellem and Clark Ashton Smith (one of the big three of Weird Tales, the others being H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard), I included some little known gems. One of the most prolific pulpsters, Bellem was not above recycling ideas. His “Flowers of Desire” in this book rehashes “Flowers of Enchantment” from the April 1928 issue of Tales of Magic and Mystery, concerning the fate of an archeologist obsessed with a strange woman he finds in a cave.
The Clark Ashton Smith completist should delight in two stories which he got discouraged with for some reason, and gave them to his friend and fellow pulp writer E. Hoffmann Price in 1939 to do whatever he wanted with them; he re-wrote them for Spicy Mystery. “The Old Gods Eat”(1941), originally titled “The House of the Monoceras,” tells of a cursed family’s castle hiding a gigantic man-eating single-horned monster not explained away by natural means. In “Dawn of Discord” (1940), a scientist invents a machine to go back into human history, hoping to find the source of violence and extinguish it. Obviously he failed, but the story could be viewed as an anti-war statement published on the eve of World War II.
Works selected for these anthologies were mainly from the 1930s. While Spicy Mystery ended in December 1942, the early 1940s issues consisted mainly of reprints from the previous decade, published under various house names. The editors served time for these shenanigans in that they paid themselves instead of the real authors. Somehow, this adds to the disreputable mystique of the “Spicys” but does not detract from what I consider the best of Spicy Mystery.

A practicing optometrist, Alfred Jan has edited short fiction collections by D.L. Champion (with Bill Blackbeard), Robert Leslie Bellem, and Joel Townsley Rogers, and contributed articles on Norbert Davis, Cornell Woolrich, and other pulp-related topics to Blood ’N’  Thunder magazine. Alfred holds an M.A. in Philosophy, specializing in Aesthetics, and published freelance art criticism from 1982 to 1995. Work in progress includes a sample of works on ethics and aesthetics by the bohemian Gelett Burgess.
Medusa’s Kiss
Hamlin Daly

One man succumbed to her beauty and died—was it from fear? Another who loved her was found “as though torn to pieces by a million barnacles!”

MILTON FROST, former shoe importer, had a strong heart; so instead of taking a nose dive from a penthouse parapet, like most ex-vice-presidents, he found himself a job as a clerk in a Saint Augustine shoe shoppe.
As he swept out the shoppe, his dark, saturnine features looked somewhat more grim than the ruins of Fort Matanzas. He was wondering if he’d ever meet Quentin Harper, who had cleaned the corporation out of everything but two cuspidors and a rosewood desk.
“I’ll bite his liver out and spit it in his face, and then—”
But just then a customer entered. One glance, and Frost’s smile—not professional—made a fool of the Saint Augustine sunshine. He forgot about Quentin Harper.
What the girl in the sunflower yellow ensemble planted on the upholstery was something to dream about, and the silken curves that flowed upward from her trim ankles as she put her tiny hoofs on the foot rest would make anyone covet Frost’s job.
Of course, taking her measure for tailor-made lingerie would be even better, but then a fellow has to start at the bottom and work his way up.
Her dark eyes were somewhat somber, but her face was as sweet as the white roundnesses that would make her a million if she ever tried posing for brassiere ads.
“Something for you, madam?”
“Don’t call me madam, or I’ll smack you!” she smiled. “Never mind fondling the ankles. The shoes I want are for Mrs. Lambert, and I spend so much of my time saying ‘yes, madam’ to her it’s a full-fledged gripe to hear the words between times—”
“If you really have any between times,” suggested Frost, “I won’t call you madam, not even in my sleep.”
She eyed him a moment and seemed to like the lean, tanned, and somewhat angular features of a self-made man.
“That’s almost a deal! But here’s what I want—speaking of shoes again.”
SHE handed him a list: a dozen pairs, everything from sports to evening models, in an odd size of an imported line the shoppe did not stock.
“Holy smoke, mad—er, darling!” he exclaimed.
“Diane,” she corrected, “and hurry up with the shoes. Mrs. Lambert—”
The name was familiar.
“Irene Lambert?” he wondered. “Sorry, but I’ll have to get them from Jacksonville.”
“Irene is right, and she has a lovely grudge against anything connected with shoes, and she’ll raise the roof. But how did you know her name?”
The absent customer must be one of the stockholders who had been crucified when his corporation was looted. He’d never met the lady. Which was lucky.
“Oh, nothing,” evaded Frost. “But I’ll get her the shoes.”
“Right away?” She was eager.
“At thirty-five bucks a pair and business as it is, I’ll say I can!”
And then he noticed that Mrs. Lambert’s maid was wearing costly imported footgear: hand-me-downs, obviously, from her mistress. That was not odd, even though they were too new to be discarded in favor of the maid; but his expert eye saw that they were half a size smaller than the lot Diane had just ordered for Mrs. Lambert. And that was odd!
Why had Mrs. Lambert suddenly decided to get a complete change of footgear half a size larger?
THE manager enthusiastically approved of Frost’s initiative, and sent him to Jacksonville.
Two hours later, Frost was on his way back, nosing his Ford down a dirt road that bypassed Saint Augustine. He presently saw that he had miscalculated: the narrow ribbon winding through luxuriant tropical vegetation might eventually lead to the Tocoi highway, but as a short cut it was the wrong number.
He throttled down to keep from capsizing. And forced to deliberation, his morning’s fancies turned to selecting parking places in that tropical desolation where Diane wouldn’t have to worry about passing traffic….
“An O.D. blanket underneath the bough,” he quoted, but before he completed his modernization of Omar, he saw that someone had beaten him to it—and with results that sent a blasting shiver through his veins.
Frost jammed the brakes.
A man lay huddled near the edge of a folded blanket spread on a hummock in the clearing not far from the road. There was something frozen about his stillness, something hideous about the clutching gesture of his right hand. Flies were swarming, but thus far no scavenging birds had arrived to complete the horror.
But as Frost approached he wished that the vultures had at least obliterated that man’s face.
Frightened to death is a careless byword, but here it was a horribly apparent fact. He had jerked up to his knees, made a warding gesture, then toppled over—finished.
Despite the horror that branded that leaden mask, Frost saw that the victim had been one of those prosperous men whom the doctor advises to abstain from cigars, liquor, and highly seasoned meats—and who boldly insist they can take it. That is, until a shock proves the contrary.
No wounds, no signs of violence; not a trace of struggle.