THE PULP CALENDAR: January 30

Today's cover story, from a 1937 Argosy, is a kind of crossover between the venerable weekly and its Munsey stablemate Detective Fiction Weekly. Nick Fisher and Eddie Savoy -- one a detective, the other a reformed thief -- were regulars in Argosy itself, while the police duo of Morton and McGarvey usually showed up in DFW. Pulp authors sometimes suggested that their various creations lived in a "shared universe." Pulps could even cross over with slicks if an author felt like it. I remember a story in the Wallaby Jim series Albert Richard Wetjen wrote for Collier's in which several other tough sea captains Wetjen had created for the pulps put in cameo appearances. I don't think I've read any Morton and McGarvey but I have read several Fisher-Savoys and they're pretty good.  While Ace of Emeralds is part one of two, this issue also offers a Dave McNally novelet by Richard Wormser, another obvious plus, and short stories by such dependables as Gordon MacCreagh, Frederick Painton and Frank Richardson Pierce. Edgar Rice Burroughs and western writer Bennett Foster continue serials as well. This looks like a good issue to have from what may have been Argosy's last great year, though the Burroughs means you may pay more for it than you really want.