We’ve covered Dime Detective Magazine’s “Honest” Glen Kelsey and Thrilling Detective’s Dave Rogers, State Trooper…

This brings us to Jonathan Drake, Ace Manhunter, from the pages of Black Book Detective! Drake appeared in three consecutive issues of the Black Book, but the three stories were written by three different authors. Oppenheim wrote the first of the three stories which introduced the character. Drake was a world-renown criminologist frequently called in to work with the police on their toughest, most baffling cases! The details of these cases were recorded in huge black loose-leaf volumes—his Black Book of Crime!

Drake had been educated in both this country and abroad and possessed a working knowledge of many branches of science, medicine and the arts. He had been thoroughly trained in all types of physical combat and possessed an extensive knowledge of firearms—and an expert marksman with every type of lethal weapon,

Drake lived in what had once been a millionaire’s mansion on upper Fifth Avenue—and transformed into a complete miniature investigation bureau! There was an immense library whose walls were lined with bookshelves that extended from floor to ceiling with practically every bit of literature that had been devoted to the study of criminology. A teletype machine connected directly with police headquarters sat on one desk constantly ticking out all of the vital and routing information that was sent out by the teletype operators at Centre Street.

In another room on the lower floor of the house was a complete file of descriptions, fingerprints and photographs of most known criminals. While in a third room was a morgue of newspaper clippings dealing with all of the important crimes that had been committed during the past twenty years. The entire fourth floor of the house had been transformed into a complete laboratory where Jonathan Drake used all of the most modern methods in tracking down various clues!

Drake was the type of man who liked to surrounded himself with a staff of capable assistants. Men both old and young who had been trained to work under his direction, and who were always on call when he felt their services were needed, but it was upon young Tommy Lowell that Drake depended the most. Though just twenty-one, Tommy had been with the detective ever since Drake had started his career. At that time he had been an orphan newsboy of eleven who had become a friend of Drake.

The criminologist had legally adopted the boy, given him a good education, and Tommy Lowell had developed into an excellent assistant. Red-headed, freckled-faced, he was bright and quick-witted and learned swiftly. Now the two of them lived in the big house on upper Fifth Avenue with two servants who took care of the place. Here they devoted their time to a never ceasing war against crime!

The Death Chair Murders

OPPENHEIM jumps right in and gets the plot going with a grisley electrocution before introducing our hero (a page long descriptive that is repeated word for word in the second story by Donald Stuart (aka Gerald Verner)). When a second victim is found by a manhole still hooked to the city’s electrical grid and burning, Drake tries to find a connection between the two. This leads to four other men—all six had worked a number of years ago for the Triconi mob and now a shadowy Executioner seem to be exacting revenge for the mob—at least that’s how things appear. Will Drake be able to discern the motive behind the murders, unmask The Executioner, and save the lives of the other four men? Find out in Ralph Oppenheim’s “The Death Chair Murders” from the pages of the November 1938 Black Book Detective!

Cold Hands of Horror Reach Out for the Innocent Victims of a Specialist in Slaughter—and Jonathan Drake, New York’s Ace Manhunter, Speeds into Action! A Gripping Complete Book-length Novel of a Grim Executioner’s Vengeance Voltage!

• Download “The Death Chair Murders” (November 1938, Black Book Detective)

More from The Black Book of Crime

THE Black Book of Crime records the sensational, successful cases of Jonathan Drake—New York’s ace manhunter—who brings the latest scientific discoveries, plus his physical strength and consummate skill, to bear upon the lurking crimes that fester beneath the surface of the vast metropolis.

When Jonathan Drake arrived at Backwaters he was not looking forward to his visit with any degree of anticipation. He had no prevision of the tragic events that would take place—but he disliked the average week end house party. This, however, did not turn out to be an average week end house party. From the moment he entered the estate of Montague Hammond, theatrical producer, he was gripped with a strange sense of foreboding. There was death in the warm summer air, bitter hate in the glance of the week end guests when they looked at each other. Then—murder!

Venita Shayne, most beautiful of actresses, one of Hammond’s guests, was the first victim. She was found in the study—in a swivel chair by a writing table, one arm hanging limply at her side, the other, bare to the elbow, flung out across a blotting-pad. On the edge of the desk rested the platinum head, twisted half-sideways. When Drake examined the corpse, he was horrified. The eyes were wide and staring and suffused with blood; the fair skin blotched and mottled and of a horrible liver color. One glance was sufficient to tell him the truth—Venita Shayne—beautiful no longer—was dead!

Venita may have been the first to die—but she was by no means the last during that week end of horror! And it took all the wit and daring of Jonathan Drake to combat the diabolical killer that hovered over Hammond’s estate on invisible wings of menace!

Every page of THE WEEK END MURDERS is crowded with suspense, action and thrills. It’s one of the most baffling of all the cases chronicled in the Black Book of Crime!

WHEN Jonathan Drake arrived aboard the Griffholm in New York Harbor, he was expecting nothing more than a routine job of investigation into the business of a Winter Olympic Star Sports Group. He had no idea that before he reached the upper deck he would be faced with the fiendish murder of the piquant and attractive Scandinavian skating star, Svana Hanson.

She was found just inside the deck window of her cabin, with a knife buried deep in her heart. Evidence showed that the knife had been thrown from a sports deck on which scores of people were congregated. Some of them still engaged in a last game before docking, others lining the rails for a first glimpse of New York. The trail of bloody death moved along through the streets of New York, stalked the covered runways of Madison Square Garden, and then made a final rendezvous at Lake Placid’s winter sports center!

Every page of THE WINTER KING KILLINGS is crowded with glamorous action and spine-chilling thrills. It’s one of the most baffling of all cases chronicled in Jonathan Drake’s Black Book of Crime. You’ll grip the sides of your chair as you follow a sensational series of events to their breath-taking conclusion in THE WINTER KING KILLINGS!

Hero Wanted—Apply Within

BLACK BOOK MAGAZINE first hit the newsstands with the June 1933 issue. For the next six years, it tried different approaches to success. 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. By April 1935, the magazine went on an extended hiatus to return in January 1936 with a “weird menace” approach with scantily-clad women in peril or skulls and severed heads on the covers before going on a break again.

The magazine returned in March 1938 and returned to form with hard crime. It now had one main novel length story and several support stories. In an effort to get readers to return month after every other month, Black Book decided to feature a continuing character in the main novel. First up—A.J. Raffels, the gentleman thief, a character created by E.W. Hornung. the brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle. The Raffels stories, written by Philip Atkey under the pseudonym Berry Perowne, had been running in Thrilling Detective for the past two years in America and in the pages of The Thriller in England the previous few years before that. Sadly, Raffels only lasted two issues in the pages of Black Book Magazine. (Fear not, he would go on to run occasionally in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine until 1983!)

It’s go big or go home, so next Black Book went with a super sleuth character—Jonathan Drake, Ace Manhunter! Ned Pines had three writers—Ralph Oppenheim, Donald Stuart (aka Gerald Verner), and Charles S. Strong—each write a novel using the character. They’d run them three consecutive issues and judge the results as they always did by reader reaction.

When you have read it, please drop us a line and tell us what you think of it. The readers of this magazine are, you know, its real editors—for your comments, suggestions and opinions, as expressed in your letters, fix our policies. So remember—the more letters, the better the magazine—and let’s have your views on Jonathan Drake and THE DEATH CHAIR MURDERS. Thanks!

I guess readers hadn’t quite embraced the Ace Manhunter as the editors had hoped and in the “Off The Record” column in the March 1939 issue, the editors were already promoting Rick LeRoy, famous globe-trotting detective by Barry Perowne for the next issue. Perowne’s LeRoy had previously appeared in the pages of The Thriller.

He lasted one issue, and it was in the issue after that, July 1939, that fate met destiny and Norman A. Daniels, writing as G. Wayman Jones, introduced readers to The Black Bat who captured the reader’s imaginations and would go on to appear in every subsequent issue until the end in 1953!

Next week: It’s Dime Mystery Magazines’ Daniel Craig, the bystander!

Quinn’s Black Sheep is another of those squadrons populated with other squadron’s troublemakers like Rossoff’s Hell-Cats or Keyhoe’s Jailbird Flight or any number of other examples. It seemed every author had a series with a black sheep squadron.

Captain Jack Quinn, brought in for disciplinary action, manages to convince the General that he could solve a lot of his headaches by hand-picking the problem aces out of other squadrons and forming an essentially independent squadron to take on the Boche. Thus, Quinn’s flight was a crew of hard bitten aces who had been tempered—to a man—in the cauldron of war, having unflinchingly facing Death many times before.

There are rumors of a spy on the Black Sheep ‘drome and when a mysterious woman arrives, Quinn finds himself thrown into the unfamiliar world of intrigue in an effort to find out who the woman is—and who the spy is and finds out there is a sinister plan afoot to wipe out the Allied High Command!

Once again the hell-diving Black Sheep Squadron rears through screaming, shell-torn war skies! Some member of that infamous Black Sheep Squadron was a spy who had sold their honor to hell—so theirs was a double mission of hate as they roared through flaming skies in a mad attempt to save the Allied High Command from raw annihilation!

• Download “Flaming Destiny of the Sky Damned!” (July 1938, Sky Devils)

Quinn’s Black Sheep is another of those squadrons populated with other squadron’s troublemakers like Rossoff’s Hell-Cats or Keyhoe’s Jailbird Flight or any number of other examples. It seemed every author had a series with a black sheep squadron. But it’s odd to find a WWI series starting in 1938. By then, many of the air war stories were getting away from being set during The Great War as a possible second Great War loomed on the horizon. Additionally, many of the anthology air war titles no longer carried series characters—Dare-Devil Aces final series characters were Hogan’s Red Falcon and Smoke Wade, both of whom moved to G-8 and his Battle Aces in 1938.

Field wrote four stories with Quinn’s Black Sheep. “The Devil Looks After His Own” is the first of those four stories, appearing in the premiere issue of Sky Devils, March 1938.

Captain Jack Quinn is brought in for disciplinary action and manages to convince the General that he could solve a lot of his headaches by hand-picking the problem aces out of other squadrons and forming an essentially independent squadron to take on the Boche. Thus, Quinn’s flight was a crew of hard bitten aces who had been tempered—to a man—in the cauldron of war, having unflinchingly facing Death many times before.

Quinn assembled his squadron with Lieutenants Sam Steele and Jerry Twist from his own 40th pursuit squadron—Steele was thin, wiry, with eyes as hard as the name he bore while Twist was the opposite with laughing eyes and usual good-humored nature. To them he added: Sergeant Abe Solomon from the 64th—a short, swarthy man who weighed no more than a hundred and twenty pounds. His hands were small, his eyes twin coals in his narrow skull and his lips were bitter. He could fight and didn’t take any lip from other mugs just because they had shoulder bars. Major Nordstrom—heavy, thick set, brutal. Lieutenant Murphy, a mad, wild Irishman with a bull voice that put Quinn’s to shame. Captain Percy Dake—aka “Killer Drakę”—from the 12th, ex-ganster, ex-killer. Lieutenant Krueger, man of mystery who never talked and who walked silently like a cat. De la Roche, Captain in the French Army, an oily dandy who would have slit a throat without batting an eye, yet who had twenty planes to his credit. Von Goetz, German born, who had an undying hatred for the Prussian Military Machine. Lieutenant Janko, heavy, stolid, too lazy to move until he was behind the stick of a fighting plane. And lastly, Lieutenant Stephen Arden, a Britisher and a toff. He was reported to have broken a bottle of Scotch over a General’s head, his only regret being that the liquor had flowed away. Record, eighteen German planes, a half dozen machine gun slugs in his body and hard to handle when drunk.

Each man looked at Quinn with red murder in his heart—but Captain Quinn was the devil’s fair-haired boy.

• Download “The Devil Looks After His Own” (March 1938, Sky Devils)

about the author
(mostly stolen from his wikipedia entry)

Anatole France Feldman (1901-1972) is primarily known as a pulp magazine writer from the late-’20s to the late-’30s. He specialized in gangland fiction, appearing primarily in Harold Hersey’s gang pulps, Gangster Stories, Racketeer Stories, and Gangland Stories. He also appeared in the rival magazines, Gun Molls and The Underworld.

His best-known creation is Chicago gangster Big Nose Serrano. Big Nose began as a pastiche of the 1897 Edmond Rostand play, Cyrano de Bergerac. Serrano’s homely nose made him an unlikely romantic hero who thus composed love poetry for a better-looking associate. The plot and characters of the first Big Nose story, “Serrano of the Stockyards” (Gangster Stories, May 1930), roughly follow the corresponding elements in the play. Serrano’s overwhelming popularity with readers brought him back for further adventures. The stories are unrelentingly violent, and often intentionally amusing, providing a unique fictional take on Chicago’s gangland and the latter years of Prohibition. Feldman ended up publishing twelve of the Serrano adventures from 1930-35 in Gangster Stories, Greater Gangster Stories, and The Gang Magazine. As the series progressed, the Cyrano angle was dropped, and Serrano became an unlikely crusader against the social ills of the Depression, albeit applying the gangster’s methods of violence, kidnapping, and murder to the problems.

He stirred up a lot of controversy with the readers of Gangster Stories, with his novelette “Gangsters vs. Gobs,” a story that improbably pitted the underworld against the Navy. The controversy filled the letters column for several issues.

Feldman also wrote under a number of pennames, including Tony Fields, A.F. Fields, and similar derivations. In 1930-31, he co-edited the short-lived adventure pulp, Far East Adventure Stories. Writing under a Standard Magazines house name, he authored some of the lead novels in The Phantom Detective.

He was married to fellow pulp-writer Hedwig Langer, who published under the names H.C. Langer and Beech Allen. In the 1940s, they co-wrote plays. Feldman’s first performed play had been The Red Thirst in 1920.

In the 1940s, Feldman edited comic books for Hillman, Rocket Comics and Miracle Comics. Later that year he switched to editing true-crime and true confessions magazines for Hillman.

He was later employed at the Thomas Oil Co. in Saratoga, NY. He died in 1972 in Boonton, NJ. Hedwig had passed in 1969 after having been employed at Skidmore College.

Russian born Serge Drigin became a successful illustrator in the UK in the 1920s with his work regularly appearing in such British magazines as The Detective Magazine, Modern Boy and Chums. He is probably best known for his startling covers for Scoops, Air Stories, War Stories, Fantasy and others in the 30s.

From the 30 July 1938 issue of Flying:

HIGH COURAGE ON THE FRONTIER

The Distinguished Flying Cross has been awarded to Flight-Lieutenant G.E. Jackson, of No.5 (Army Co-operation) Squadron (India), for gallantry in action on April 14th last. A party of about a hundred South Waziristan Scouts were cut off and surrounded by 500 tribesmen. With ammunition down to five rounds per man their desperate plight was noticed by Flight-Lieut. Jackson, who, flying low through a hail of bullets, dropped by parachute four loads of ammunition each of a thousand rounds to the besieged, who, however, would also need Very lights to repulse night attacks. Having no parachutes left, Flight-Lieut. Jackson improvised one from a tablecloth and string, and with this succeeded in getting a Very pistol and 40 cartridges to the Scouts, who were thus enabled to hold out until they were relieved. This spirit does more to win wars than all the ponderous perorations in Parliament.

Russian born Serge Drigin became a successful illustrator in the UK in the 1920s with his work regularly appearing in such British magazines as The Detective Magazine, Modern Boy and Chums. He is probably best known for his startling covers for Scoops, Air Stories, War Stories, Fantasy and others in the 30s.

From the 6 August 1938 issue of Flying:

MAJOR LIONEL REES ENGAGED IN A DOG-FIGHT ON JULY 1st, 1916

MAJOR, as he was then, Lionel Rees won the V.C. on July 1, 1916. He was 32 years of age, older than most officers in the Royal Flying Corps at that time. It was through a mistake that he came to win the V.C., for what he took to be British machines were in reality German. He had been on a reconnaissance flight when he saw what he thought was a squadron of British bombing machines returning home. Being in a single-seat fighter, the D.H.2, he decided to escort them home, but when he approached them he saw that they were about ten enemy aircraft; all of them scouts. One left the formation to engage him, but within a short time was behind its own lines in difficulties. Major Rees was wounded in the thigh, but he continued to fight until his ammunition was exhausted, when he returned home. It seems probable that the award of the V.C. was made not for this one act alone, but that his gallant career was taken into consideration. Happily, he survived the war and retired from the R.A.F. in 1931 with the rank of Group Captain.

Russian born Serge Drigin became a successful illustrator in the UK in the 1920s with his work regularly appearing in such British magazines as The Detective Magazine, Modern Boy and Chums. He is probably best known for his startling covers for Scoops, Air Stories, War Stories, Fantasy and others in the 30s.

From the 30 July 1938 issue of Flying:

CAPT. J.A LIDDEL WINNING THE V.C. IN BELGIUM, JULY 23rd, 1915

On July 23rd, 1915, Captain J.A. Liddel, V.C., was making a long range reconnaissance patrol over the area around Ostend and Bruges. At that time he was in No.7 Squadron and flying an R.E.5. In order to get plenty of information he had to fly very low, with the result that he came under a great deal of anti-aircraft fire. He managed to escape the shrapnel for a little time, but he was eventually wounded in the thigh. He fainted, but the flow of cool air revived him and he took control of his machine once more, and in spite of the agony he was suffering from his wounds he continued his reconnaissance. He could have landed at once and received medical attendance, but he preferred to remain in the air, although shrapnel was now bursting around him more ferociously than before. At last, his work finished, he turned for home. On landing he was hurried to hospital where, unhappily, he died from his wounds one month later. Notification of the award was made in the London Gazette on August 3rd, 1915, with the following words: “The difficulties overcome by this officer in saving his machine and the life of his passenger cannot be readily expressed, but as the control wheel and throttle control were smashed, and also one of the undercarriage struts, it would seem incredible that he could have accomplished what he did.”

From the July 1938 issue of Sky Devils, it’s Kenneth L. Sinclair’s “Spandau Salute!”

Those twelve confirmations chalked up beside Terry Ralton’s name on the blackboard back at Wing didn’t mean he could take whole killer-flock of black-crossed buzzards!

• Download “Spandau Salute” (July 1938, Sky Devils)

Russian born Serge Drigin became a successful illustrator in the UK in the 1920s with his work regularly appearing in such British magazines as The Detective Magazine, Modern Boy and Chums. He is probably best known for his startling covers for Scoops, Air Stories, War Stories, Fantasy and others in the 30s.

From the 23 July 1938 issue of Flying:

CAPTAIN ALBERT BALL, Y.C., IN COMBAT WITH GERMAN FIGHTERS

CAPTAIN ALBERT BALL was awarded the V.C. for a series of conspicuously brave actions, unlike many others who received this high award for one gallant deed alone. Born in Nottingham, he was not nineteen years old when he arrived in France to join No. 13 Squadron. That was in February, 1915, and for a few months he was flying B.E.2C.’s. His courage and his habit of engaging all enemy machines on sight soon won him a transfer to a Fighter Squadron: No. 11, which was equipped with Nieuport Scouts. Towards the end of June he scored his first victory, a balloon. It was tne first and last he shot down, for he thought balloon straffing “a rotten job.” For a short time he went back to a two-seater squadron, but he soon returned to fly Nieuports. His score of enemy machines rose rapidly until, in 1917, it had passed forty. By this time he was serving in the renowned 56 Squadron, where S.E.5’s were used, and it was in an S.E.5 that Ball met his death. All that is really known of his death is that it occurred on May 7, 1917, over Anoellin. How he died is not known, for, although there were many witnesses, their accounts differ very widely. Thus passed Albert Ball, like the great Guynemer, his death shrouded in mystery.

Russian born Serge Drigin became a successful illustrator in the UK in the 1920s with his work regularly appearing in such British magazines as The Detective Magazine, Modern Boy and Chums. He is probably best known for his startling covers for Scoops, Air Stories, War Stories, Fantasy and others in the 30s.

From the 16 July 1938 issue of Flying:

CAPT. A. BEAUCHAMP-PROCTOR. V.C., DESTROYING A GERMAN KITE BALLOON, 1918

CAPTAIN ANDREW BEAUCHAMP-PROCTOR, who was a South African, served in France with the renowned 84 Squadron, where he won many decorations. He flew an S.E.5A. Like Albert Ball, he was awarded the V.C. for continuous bravery over a long period, not for one particular action. Very little is known about this valorous air fighter, so let us quote from the London Gazette of November 30, 1918. “Between August 8, 1918 and October 8, 1918, this officer proved himself victor in twenty-six decisive combats, destroying twelve kite balloons, ten enemy aircraft, and driving down four other enemy aircraft completely out of control. . . . Captain Beauchamp-Proctor’s work in attacking enemy troops on the ground and in reconnaissance has been almost unsurpassed in its brilliancy, and as such has made an impression on those serving in his squadron and those around him that will not be easily forgotten.” Unhappily this gallant officer lost his life in a crash after the war. On June 21 he was practising for the R.A.F. display, when his machine went into a spin and crashed before he had time to get it under control. In this way ended the career of one who had cheated death so many times in aerial combat.

Russian born Serge Drigin became a successful illustrator in the UK in the 1920s with his work regularly appearing in such British magazines as The Detective Magazine, Modern Boy and Chums. He is probably best known for his startling covers for Scoops, Air Stories, War Stories, Fantasy and others in the 30s.

From the 9 July 1938 issue of Flying:

CAPT. F.M. WEST WINNING THE V.C. OVER THE GERMAN LINES, AUGUST 10, 1918

ON THE morning of August 10, 1918, Captain Ferdinand Maurice West took off with his observer to strafe the German back areas. For this purpose he went far over the enemy lines and he was flying low, attacking infantry, when seven German scouts came upon him. In his Armstrong Whitworth the odds against him were enormous. Quite early in the fight an explosive bullet shattered his leg, which fouled the rudder-bar and caused the machine to fall out of control. No sooner had he lifted his leg clear than he was wounded in the other. In spite of his predicament, he managed to manoeuvre his machine so as to enable his gunner to get in sufficient bursts of fire to drive off the hostile scouts. Then, with great courage and determination, he set off for the British lines, where he landed safely. Weak from loss of blood, he fainted, but when he regained consciousness he insisted on writing his report before going to the hospital. Happily this gallant officer recovered sufficiently to remain in the service, where he is now a Wing Commander.