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
Inheritance of Murder
by G. Wayman Jones
The Black Bat takes the trail of young Richard Norton, a scion of wealth whose strange record of crime has no logical explanation! Tony Quinn and his aides face desperate perils as they try to find the answer to a psychological mystery!
A Complete Novelet
Don’t Bury Me Yet
by W.T. Ballard
Wacky detective Hank Ross can’t clean up on his own slot machine, but hits the jackpot in a haywire game of kidnapping and homicide!
The Frightened Comedian — Short Story
by Jack Kofoed
A death threat was no laughing matter for funny Johnny September
The Brass Ring — Short Story
by Donald Bayne Hobart
Private Detective Mugs Kelly finds himself on the murder-go-round
Call For a Murderer — Short Story
by John L. Benton
Brownlee knew that they couldn’t pin the killing on him, but —
The Lying Corpse — Short Story
by Wayland Rice
Detective Sergeant Dyne tackles the toughest case in his career
Off the Record
by The Editor
A live-wire department where readers and the editor get together
