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.

 

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