THE PULP CALENDAR: October 1

The so-called "shudder pulps" were still new in 1933, but while this Dime Detective cover looks like part of the trend, and the Oscar Schisgall story "They Die in Flame" may also be, the real headline story, to judge from type size, is a real throwback. Craig Kennedy, Arthur B. Reeve's "scientific detective," had been solving crimes since 1910. Reeve, an early serial screenwriter, was near the end of the line here, and there's some speculation that he didn't actually write the Kennedy stories from this period. This was Kennedy's only appearance in Dime Detective. As the magazine favored long stories, there are only two more stories in this issue besides the Reeve and the Schisgall: John Lawrence's "The Corpse Was Cold" and Leslie T. White's "Stairway of Shadows." The cover by William Reusswig is reason enough to inaugurate the month of October with this magazine.

THE PULP CALENDAR: August 1

Here's an unusually colorful cover from Popular Publications' Dime Detective circa 1934, when the magazine was coming out twice a month. With this issue Dime Detective expanded from 128 to 144 pages, making it equal in size to Detective Fiction Weekly, but it shrunk back to 128 at the end of the year. Most of the stories in this issue feature series characters, two of them making their debuts. The headliner, T. T. Flynn's Izzy O'Shea, apparently didn't go over; he put in only one more appearance, according to the Fiction Mags Index. Hugh B. Cave had a little more luck with Peter Kane, who'd solve five more cases over the next year and then disappear for six years, resurfacing for three more stories in the early 1940s. "Calling All Cars!" was the third outing for John Lawrence's Cass Blue, who'd get three more from now through June 1935. This issue was the end of the line, however, for Maxwell Hawkins' Jones brothers, who made their debut almost one year earlier (on August 15 1933) and made six appearances overall. Donald Barr Chidsey, Allan Vaughan Elston and the ephemeral D. E. Winstead contributed one-off stories. There's also an editorial piece on "New Blood in Crime Writing." I wonder who got mentioned?

THE PULP CALENDAR: May 1

John Howitt's cover for this 1934 Dime Detective is almost tasteful by shudder pulp standards. Nearly everything draws your eyes away from the lashes on the male victim's back. This grim scene presumably illustrates Erle Stanley Gardner's novelette "The Smoking Corpse." For me, as established the last time we looked at Dime Detective, the highlight here would be Frederick Nebel's Cardigan story "Read 'Em and Weep." I read a Cardigan every few weeks or so and am still only in volume one of Altus Press's four-volume complete collection. I've liked them all so far.  Some short-lived series heroes get fresh outings here: This week's "Hot Money" was the second of five outings for Roger Torrey's Johnny Carr, while Maxwell Hawkins' "Duchess of Death" (maybe that's the cover story!) is the fourth of six appearances by the Jones brothers. Gardner's is a standalone story as is "Zero Hour" by Anson Hatch -- a short-lived pseudonym for Phillip Clark, who also wrote as Harrison Keith for Nick Carter before switching to his real name in 1935. Nebel and Gardner alone probably made this issue worth your dime in 1934 or however much more you'd pay for it now.

THE PULP CALENDAR: April 15

Launched as a monthly in November 1931, Popular Publications' Dime Detective graduated to twice-a-month in March 1933 and kept that schedule until the summer of 1935. It's regarded as the number-two detective pulp, critically speaking, after the legendary Black Mask. By this point in 1935 Dime Detective was aping Popular's trendy shudder pulps with cover scenes of torturous peril like this image by ace artist Walter Baumhofer. This Yellow Peril cover -- and leaving the ethnicity out of it, I suppose many taxpayers today feel like that poor woman under the cauldron -- illustrates a story by T. T. Flynn, a detective pulp stalwart before he turned into a western specialist in the 1940s. The real highlight of the issue for a pulp fan probably is (or ought to be) the Cardigan story by Frederick Nebel noted modestly in the lower left-hand corner. Nebel is probably the best pulp detective writer yet to be canonized by the wider culture. Whether his heroes are cops or private eyes (Cardigan being the latter), Nebel infuses them with a fury unmatched by any of his peers. He may be the most hard-boiled of hard-boiled writers because no one takes crap from anyone in his world. Cardigan, apparently modeled on the actor George Bancroft, rages equally at crooks and cops when they get in his way or treat others unfairly, but his sensitive side comes through in his dealings with his versatile and nearly equally hard-boiled assistant Pat Seaward. "Hell Couldn't Stop Him" strikes me as a plausible title for a Cardigan story. Altus Press has reprinted all the Cardigan stories in four volumes of print or e-books; they are definitely worth your while, and a Cardigan story alone probably makes a Dime Detective worth your time -- though I must warn you that you'll pay much, much more than a dime for one of these today.