Mystery Novels and Short Stories for September 1939 is the first issue of a short-lived pulp. Edited by A. Sundell, it was published by Double-Action Magazines Inc., at 10¢ a copy and sported 116 pages of weird-menace / blood-and-thunder horror within its pages. The cover art is by William F. Soare, and if you are lucky, you might make out his blurry signature down at the bottom right.
Most of the internal illustrations are by Creig Flessel, a noteworthy comic book artist who also created the ashcan cover art for Action Comics # 1, covers for several Detective Comics (during the pre-Batman era), etc. He continued working on comics clear into his 90s! There is little doubt that the Soare cover art and Flessel illustrations greatly command the interest and value to collectors.
Despite being the first issue, the table of contents page states it as Volume 1 Number 4. Online sources seem unclear as to what preceded it, but I think it very likely the first 3 were Undercover Detective, which expired with the April 1939 issue. Having leftover stock, they rebooted the pulp as Mystery Novels and Short Stories.
Spoiler alert !!!
Normally I don’t bother with warnings, but this rare magazine was reprinted by John Gunnison via his Adventure House imprint in 2007 and is very cheaply available as a facsimile on Amazon.com. If you wish to read this magazine, don’t read any further!
The lead novelette is Mistress of the Murder Madmen by Vernon James. It’s illustrated by Creig Flessel.
Lee Patten is assigned by his newspaper editor, Simeon Kane, to investigate why the wealthy elite are boarding up their homes and silently selling out. Lee accepts the assignment, with mixed emotions. It’s a crap job, but, this gal, Gail, lives there and he’s got a crush on her. Driving into the Back Bay community, Patten spots a strange sight, and jumping out of his Chevrolet, comes upon a grisly scene. A man hunched over with a knife has just carved out a young girl’s heart! It’s not long before he learns that several similarly identical incidences have occurred. And yet, those proud rich elitists are keeping the whole thing on the qt to avoid public humiliation, even though their own are being systematically murdered! Patten suspects Cleopatra Fari, an Egyptian beauty of intoxicating beauty and allure. The men of all ages seem drawn to her and even Patten has to fight off her entrancing spells. But when he’s witness to two murder slayings, is captured, and awakens to find himself immobilized and mute, it’s with double horror to watch another ritual slaying occur, with himself the next target. And the person assigned to stab him to death is Gail herself. More death follows including a well-described decapitation. Naturally, our protagonist survives, he gets the girl, and the sinister plot revealed.
Bride of the Ape by Harold Ward is the pulp magazine’s cover story; the internal illustration is not credited. Nor does the front cover accurately depict the content. There is no aged crone. And the ape is never behind bars. The hypo is semi-truthful, though in fact the story deals with a transfusion. ‘Nuff of the contradictory complaints, bub!
Newlyweds are lost and their car breaks down. Left on foot, with the weather worsening and the temperature dangerously dropping, they are pursued by some Thing. Nearing a distant house with a large, towering 20-foot perimeter fence, our male hero trips over an object. It’s the remnants of a mauled woman, gory and ripped to shreds. His wife screams into the night as a bestial figure swoops in and nabs his wife. He beats at it with a club and manages to free his wife but is bludgeoned for his efforts. They escape and knock repeatedly at the door. An older white man opens up and admits them. Inside, they are given shelter from the elements while the man, Bixby, listens in shock to their harrowing tale. He then sends outside Jarbo, an Algerian massive black man that speaks little English, to attend to the gorilla. While feeding his visitors food and spiked wine, the pair slip into a slumber. Waking, our hero finds himself bound to a bed. Hearing his wife’s terrified screams, distantly, he wrenches free and escapes his bounds to find his wife bound. Bixby is planning a blood transfusion. Jarbo desires the luscious white woman, but Bixby tries to dissuade the man. Jarbo kills Bixby to keep the white woman for his own but infuriates the gorilla who has taken a liking in her, too. The two battle it out but the gorilla strangles Jarbo to near death. Our hero grabs up the doctor’s revolver and blows the gorilla’s brains out.
Disciples of Black Desire by Dugal MacDougal is a novelette illustrated by Creig Flessel. That playfully alliterative alias is nauseating to me. Weirdly enough, that name might just be real, as I found a close variation, being Dugald MacDougall in England during the late 1800s. Honestly though, I think it’s a house name, too.
Broke and starving, Phyllis obtains a job via an unscrupulous agency operated by an ugly, evil woman. She’s sent by train to a remote home to be “company” for an invalid woman. Arriving at night, she enters the home, the door opened by a strangely scary man named Manuel. He refers to the man-of-the-house as Master. Phyllis is terrified to death, and finds the Master seems to have hypnotic capabilities. The door suddenly opens and two weirdos enter dragging a third man, a bum who claims he was looking in the barn for a place to sleep. The Master instead offers him a room for the night. Then the knocker sounds, and the Master calls for another person, Emilia, an aged woman, to open the door. In walks a young man, normal man, name of Dean. Claims to desire a place to rest. He clearly makes no sense so must have ulterior motives. The Master knows his name without being asked, surprising Dean. The three are escorted to their rooms. During the night, Phyllis wakes from a nightmare to find her door slowly inching open to reveal Emilia, hunched over like a feline. The woman leaps forward, snatches up a mouse and drops it down her maw and crunch and munches it gorily before Phyllis’ eyes. Mortified, she screams. Dean and the bum come a-running and Emilia pulls a vanishing act. She explains what she saw, and the trio decide to go downstairs to talk to the Master, after discovering escape via the windows impossible. Wolves are outside circling the property! Going down, they encounter another bizarre scene. Manuel and Emilia hunched on all fours like animals, one a cat, one a rat!
The story is fast-paced insanity and pure horror as Phyllis and her new acquaintances are assaulted at night by humans changed into animals. Dean attempts to shoot advancing pair but a wolf-man hurls into their midst, knocks out the light, and pure madness in the dark ensues. Phyllis manages to get the light on to find the bum (Jerry) on his back, with Dean over him, chewing through is neck! Dean has changed into a wolf-man creature! Mortified, Phyllis tries to escape but faints.
When she comes to, it’s to find Jerry rushing into her room. She points out that he was dead, the fang marks on his neck, knowing he’s been converted to the animalistic side of deviltry. In runs Dean, and Jerry whips out Dean’s own gun and shoots him dead. Pouncing upon Dean’s corpse, Jerry gloats only to discover Dean far from dead, and the pair fight until Dean literally this time murders Jerry. Dean turns to Phyllis but is lured out of the room by Emilia. A brief moment of lucidity, and Dean leaves to kill the old woman. Manuel enters via a secret passage, momentarily sane, and convinces Phyllis to join him and escape. The passage seals. Dean returns and in nonplussed she has vanished.
But Manuel has actually drawn Phyllis into the Master’s secret laboratory chambers, where he has caged animals. The man dons a red cloak and cowl, cracks an unnaturally razor-sharp whip, practices the dark arts, sold his soul to the devil, and utilizes the Black Mass to exact precision, transferring the blood of animals into humans and creating his own slaves. Now, capturing the girl again, he intends to draw out her lifeblood and transfer her being into the invalid-imbecile woman and make her whole again, his daughter!
The Pain Worshiper by Mat Rand is another novelette, likewise illustrated by Creig Flessel. Mat Rand was a house name, and the author of this particular story has not as yet attributed to one author.
The central plot takes place in the desert where a Hollywood company is working on filming a script that is written daily to avoid plot leaks. Various persons attached to the film are killed or maimed until the plot unravels to reveal that the scriptwriter had brought across the ocean a man that enjoyed inflicting pain and torture upon himself, making him visually into a very disturbing, emaciated, nearly bloodless being. His cohort is obviously someone else attached to the film, since the man responsible for his being obtained is the second person murdered. Who among their crew can be trusted when everyone present has egos and something to gain, or something to lose?
Ship of the Golden Ghoul by Lazar Levi is a novelette illustrated by someone signing simply as H. L., and dated 1938, indicating the story and illustration had been held over by the publisher for quite a while. Like Rand, Lazar Levi appears to be another house name, and quite alliterative. Too, there is a very strong chance that the person who authored this story also wrote the Vernon James tale, as they shared similar word choices, descriptions, etc.
Bruce and Julia, an unmarried but dating couple, are vacationing on a schooner and intent on checking out a remote island when they are attacked by a dark sailing vessel piloted by a dead man, a literal corpse handling the wheel. Bruce tries his best to avoid the veering boat, but it smashes into their schooner and rapidly sinks them. The ghost ship sails away, apparently unscathed, and Bruce sees a golden-haired siren aboard laughing eerily. Bruce and Julia are tossed into the vicious sea and fight for their lives to make it to shore. Bruce is concussed upon the rocks after being battered against a reef. Coming to, he searches and finds Julia, safe ashore. They are best upon by two dark-skinned savages, but Bruce manages to fight them off. They melt away into the jungle wilderness.
Bizarrely, the pair find a home in the jungle manned by two rich men and two other men present as guards or guides. But when a series murders take place, Bruce places his trust in Jerry, a man who claims to be an undercover Federal agent, disclosing the other men are a jewel robber and a fence for stolen goods. But those men and their help soon are slain and ripped gorishly apart by the dark-skinned men wielding each a Malay. Julia goes missing and Bruce suddenly recalls the ghost ship that sank them. He’s certain the mystery lies aboard that vessel. Stripping down to his shorts, Bruce dives into the waters, rips past the reef and pummeling waves, and tiringly finally makes the anchored vessel. Climbing the chains, he finds one man aboard hung to death and is rapidly concussed again for his endeavors. Revived, he’s found bound to a chair a white, blonde seductress in charge of the two Malay-wielding villains. Julia is brought in to be sliced and diced but left alive to torture Bruce as he turns down the blonde’s affections, Jerry suddenly bursts into the scene with his gun, having overheard the conversation she had with Bruce, offering to be his lover and spilt the stolen jewels. But he prefers Julia and hence her desire to mar the competition. Jerry turns out to be a confederate and NOT a Fed at all. She orders the two men to kill Jerry, and a battle takes place that ends with a bullet in the girl’s chest. Her last efforts yield in giving Bruce the key to release his shackles so that she may be avenged.
It’s a wild and wooly adventure story with some crazy blood-and-thunder action and gore with the stereotypical guy-gets-the-girl conclusion but made for a good bubblegum read.
Daughters for Death’s Revelry by Arthur J. Burks is a short story illustrated by Creig Flessel.
Treat Prentiss is heading to essentially a campsite resort to receive word from the gorgeous young lady he’s been courting for a couple years her answer to marriage. Treat’s chauffeur gets drunk and remains behind, refusing to drive his boss, because of rumors of creepy happenings in that area. So, Treat, unaccustomed to driving, takes the wheels but the car breaks down. He hoofs the remaining distance and arrives at night. He’s not a coward but is scared of the dark and woods. Strangely, he hears no human noises. He finally locates his girl’s cabin and walks in only to fall upon the corpse of a dead man. He witnesses a strange girl go by the cabin and pursues only to watch her walk into a raging river and die. Returning to the cabin, the corpse is missing. He finds the body in another cabin in bed with a slain woman. Strange music and noises deeper in the woods call him but first he gathers up a weapon, a mere kitchen knife, to ward off evil.
He finds a dozen women shackled together and their mouths taped shut. Around the area are masked men. Of his girl, he sees her not. Treat helps one girl to escape by flinging the knife into a man’s face, who whips her about the face; she extracts the knife and finishes him off, then runs accidentally towards Treat. Thinking he is one of her attackers, she cuts him, in passing. He turns to escape but instead jumps up a tree and remains silent, realizing the creepy party would deduce where the knife was hurled from. One of the men approaches with his gun and realizes Treat must be in the tree. Thankfully, the girl returns and rescues him, realizing Treat must have saved her life. She slits the man’s neck, and the pair briefly escape to collect their thoughts and shockingly, start making out. Treat breaks free and apologizes and the girl, Carla, realizes he must be Treat Prentiss, the man who the prank was to be played upon. Prank?!?!?!? Yes, it was intended to prank Prentiss and see if he would man up and rescue his girl, at which time she’d marry him, but the whole plan went awry when all these husky men showed up, masked, and took control of the situation, killing their opposition, etc. Returning to the collective, the pair watch and see his girl with none other than his own supposedly drunk chauffeur! Angered, he approaches, only to be bonked on the head. Reviving, he’s informed she never loved him, preferring the chauffeur. Carla rescues him and the pair mete out death and destruction to the other men who can’t seem to decide whether to fight him or themselves for the honor of her seductive body.
An absolutely bonkers and ludicrous way to conclude the story.
THE SPECTRE LIBRARY PRESENTS: The Pulp and Paperback Fiction Reader 
