The demand for detective magazines seemed insatiable. New titles were created and were snapped up by voracious readers. The hard-hitting action, the dead bodies that dropped like flies, the slinky dames with the come-hither eyes... what was not to like? With this in mind, H.C. Blackerby created a new publishing company called Atomic Action Magazines, and released a new crime pulp by the title of Gem Detective, with a cover date of Fall 1946. Unfortunately, it was a shoe-string affair, and the cover artwork reflected that minuscule budget. It was graced by some of the poorest cover art on the newsstands. Once you got past the cover, the stories inside were surprisingly good, but the truly awful wrapper spelled doom for the magazine. Cover art was a major factor in magazine sales, especially when the market already had a surplus of detective pulps. As a result, the first issue sold so poorly that a second issue never made it to press. The publisher released two other magazine titles with equally bad cover art and the same cover date. Chief Detective and Prize Western suffered the same fate as Gem Detective, and both lasted but a single issue. Don't be put off by the cover... the stories inside are all quite good. The only issue of Gem Detective returns in these vintage pulp tales, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format.
Table of Contents:
Three Fine Novelettes
The Letter Death Wrote
By Bruno Fischer
Addressed to: Pretty girl, In Trouble
One Must Die
By Ennen Reaves Hail
A strange legend and a family curse
The Ghost Walks — and Shoots and Talks!
By Glenn Pierce
Some people thought it wasn’t a ghost at all!
Distinctive Short Stories
Brother Cop and Brother Rat
By Donald Bump
A promise kept, but grimly
If a Body Meet a Body
By Henry Norton
“There’s a dead guy on our davenport!”
Till Death Do Us Part
By Ken Norton
One sure way of parting...
The Rag Man
By Robert Merrill Lambert
So you won’t talk! Or will you?
The Broken Orchid
By Edwin Baird
The girl said “No.” Then came the cops.
Stepson, Watch Your Step
By Roy B. Frentz
The old lady has blood in her eye
Good short story collection 
