Black Book Detective magazine was probably best known for its long-running series of adventure stories featuring the crimefighter known as The Black Bat. But The Black Bat didn't appear until six years into the magazine's run with the July 1939 issue. The magazine first hit the newsstands with the June 1933 issue. For the next six years, it tried different approaches. Issue one began with a featured novel and several backup short stories. The following year it started promoting "three new complete novels" in each magazine, but abandoned that approach after four issues. It then tried shorter novelets, combined with short stories. In 1935 and 1936, it tried the "weird menace" approach, featuring scantily-clad women in peril on the covers, then switched back to hard crime. In 1938 they tried featuring recurring characters in their main novel. Gentleman thief Raffles appeared in two consecutive issues. Jonathan Drake, Ace Manhunter appeared in three issues.
The editors struck gold with The Black Bat, who first appeared in the July 1939 issue. Supposedly blind District Attorney Tony Quinn was secretly the master crime fighter known as The Black Bat. The stories were credited to the house name of G. Wayman Jones, but in actuality were written mainly by Norman A. Daniels. The Black Bat stories ran exclusively in the bi-monthly Black Book Detective magazine until it finally printed its last issue in the Winter of 1953. Black Book Detective returns in these vintage pulp tales, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format.
Table of Contents:
A Complete Black Bat Novel
The Murder Maker
by G. Wayman Jones
When a criminal schemes to weld the underworld into a giant combine for plunder, the Black Bat faces a sinister challenge! Follow Tony Quinn and his aides as they battle an evil hierarchy!
A Complete Novelet
Please Pass the Poison
by Roger Fuller
Hated by everyone, old Maria Truesdale was dead at last — and it fell to Pete Patrick’s lot to find her killer and solve the case!
The Cursed Millions — Short Story
by Carter Critz
Murder hits home when fighting cop Walter O’Neil finds a corpse
No Reprieve for the Killer — Short Story
by Robert Leslie Bellem
Sandra Fenwick tries to get a stay of execution for her brother
A Killer Flies High — Short Story
by Robert Sidney Bowen
Joey Jackson knows what course to take when murder stalks aloft
Who’s Got the Dummy — Short Story
by H.C. Butler
Detective Fay finds a puppet that talks, fights — and fires guns!
“The Key”
by Simpson M. Ritter
A Colonial Robin Hood
Off the Record
by The Editor
A live-wire department where readers and the editor get together
