As the magazine title promised, each issue of this pulp contained two complete and unedited detective novels. Fiction House publishers, through their Real Adventures Publishing imprint, bought up the reprint rights to detective books that had already seen publication in hardback book form, a practice which allowed them to obtain the previously-printed books much cheaper. Radio's famous "Mr. and Mrs. North" detective series began as a series of print books, six of which appeared in the Two Complete Detective Books magazine. The first of Two Complete Detective Books was released in the Winter 1939 issue. Two complete books for a quarter was quite a bargain, and the magazine was popular with customers. It lasted for 76 issue, and printed the final magazine in its run with the Spring 1954 issue. Two Complete Detective Books returns in vintage pulp tales, reissued for today’s readers in electronic format.
Table of Contents:
Two Faced Murder
by Jean Leslie
What was wrong? They were all lovely people in this college town, and Professor Peter Ponsonby and his luscious fiancee, Mara Mallory, were glad to be visiting them; even Candy Too, Peter’s four-year-old niece, was having a good time. But the grim cancer of a secret worry was eating at their hosts, Ken and Allie Grayson. And pleasant Georgianna Fawcett. And debonair James York, the poet. And Peggy Ann Larsen, she of the war-smashed husband. And Mark Cready, the Restoration man. And Amos Schroeder, the despised police chief. For Clive Titus’ wife, Jane, had disappeared and until she was found each had private reason for terror. They all turned anxious eyes on Peter Ponsonby, writer of detective stories and therefore skilled at solving human puzzles. Peter sighed and went out with Mara to find Jane. It wasn’t hard. Poor Jane was forever done with running and hiding. Then Peter started grimly along an old and terrible trail, and the murderer it was who had to run and hide. Until Peter finally treed his vicious quarry. Then the killer whirled and struck — again — and again!
The Witches’ Pool
by Susan Wells
The Paquita was really a dreamboat. Tony and Echo Ware’s hearts had broken when the war forced them to sell the little trim, white yawl. Then the fighting stopped and lovely, wistful Echo came back first — to a bullet-hole in the bulkhead, a beautiful intruder writing strange messages in the dead of night, an elderly female corpse floating in the water and the carefully-laid-out skeleton of a cat. Threading all these things together was the mystery of who had written “The Witches’ Pool,” a psychological thriller — and obviously true! But the worst of all was the inexorable tightening of the coils of guilt about Echo herself. Had she not been heard threatening the drowned woman? Echo fled — fled from the diabolical cleverness of a twisted mind — fled to a place by a quiet pool. Yet poison and evil lay thick in the very air above its polluted waters... for she had come to the Witches’ Pool itself. And brutal death lay waiting for her there, treading softly over the lush, wild flowers...
