100,000 and a Bit of Pulp

Watch your hand, buddy!

This blog was started on November 22, 2011 and now, sixteen months later, I've had 100,000 views, which I suppose is something of milestone!  So I thought I should mention it.

I think I have some interesting review items lined up for next week, plus a contest to commemorate the 100,000; but today I am merely noting a little artifact I discovered recently.

I had never realized until recently that a work by British mystery writer Cecil John Charles Street, one of the subjects of my Masters of the Humdrum Mystery, appeared in a classic pulp fiction format, but indeed one did.  

Not a Leg to Stand On, published under Street's Miles Burton pseudonym, appeared in the May 1946 issue of Two Complete Detective Books (the other "complete detective book" appearing in the issue is Manning Long's Bury the Hatchet).

interior illustration

Not a Leg to Stand On offers readers the teasing little problem of the disappearance of Edward Coulston, owner of a "ruby-eyed golden idol" and wearer of an artificial leg.  Eventually the leg turns up, but not Mr. Coulston with it. Quite a mystery for the gentleman amateur detective Desmond Merrion and his attendant policeman, Inspector Arnold!

When I read it some years ago I enjoyed Not a Leg to Stand On, but I must admit that Street's books typically lacked that quality of pep that one associates with pulp.

Nevertheless, the presence of a naked female statuette in Leg seems to have lent the novel an element sufficiently exotic and sexy to carry the day.  Though I must admit that eager readers who bought this item because of the cover illustration may have been a bit disappointed!