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Girasol Pulp Doubles featuring The Spider #1
The Spider - Prince of the Red Looters & The City That Dared Not Eat - Pulp Doubles # 1
Prince of the Red Looters A spider should be able to catch a fly... but this particular Fly as other plans in mind! Join with Richard Wentworth as he battles a criminal mastermind more lethal, more ruthless than any he has encountered before. So confident is the Fly of his own abilities that he dares challenge the Spider himeself to a duel... to the death! The City That Dared Not Eat New York City staggers under a vicious crime wave aimed at controlling the very food supply! Mass murder, wholesale poisoning... nothing is beyond the maniac leading a gang of ruthless killers in their battle for supremacy. While the Spider matches guns and wits against an army of crime, the city starves!
- GenresPulp
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Grant Stockbridge
412 books9 followersPen Name asociated with the pulp hero The Spider.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 7, 2021
This book packages two Spider novels together, Prince of the Red Looters from the August, 1934 issue of the pulp magazine (which was the eleventh to be published), and The City That Dared Not Eat from October of 1937 (which was the forty-ninth). The first was written by premiere Spider author Norvell W. Page under the Stockbridge house pseudonym, and I was a bit disappointed to realize I'd already read it; it was republished under the title of Prince of Evil in a mass-market paperback edition by the Dimedia company several years ago. It's a good story, and pits Wentworth against a super-villain who's known as The Fly. Wayne Rogers was Grant Stockbridge for the second novel. Rogers was the author of ten or twelve of the 118 Spider stories; he was a long-time pulpster known for his weird-menace stories. Interestingly, it was a case of a pseudonym of a pseudonym, as Rogers was originally named Archibald Bittner, former editor of Argosy. He also wrote some of the Operator 5 novels (as Curtis Steele, of course) and some horror stories that appeared in Weird Tales and other venues. The City That Dared Not Eat is the story of a madman who impersonates The Spider and holds the city hostage by poisoning all of the food coming into the city. It continues some characters from a previous Spider book by Rogers, Slaves of the Black Monarch from August of 1937. He doesn't have quite the suspense or intrigue feel that Page used, but his evil conveyor belt that brings people to be butchered definitely gets the weird-menace horror vibe. I thought he wrote Nita quite well; she's perky and plucky and at one point bursts into police headquarters with gas bombs to rescue Wentworth from detention... usually he had to rescue her, 'cause that's how it was in the pulps. Kirkpatrick is also pretty well written, but Ram Singh, Jenkyns, and Jackson have little to do. Wenworth spends a lot off the time disguised as Blinky McQuade. The ending is a little abrupt and unsatisfying, but the build-up was quite suspenseful... all in all a good volume of pulp heroics.
July 18, 2019
Continuing the Girasol reprints, two novels by Norvell Page!
The Spider is Richard Wentworth, a wealthy criminologist. Backed up by his manservant Ram Singh, his old war pal Jackson, and his fiancé Nita van Slone, Wentworth takes on crime at the street level.
The Spider has no scruples about killing. The criminals who cross the Spider die and their foreheads are marked with a scarlet spider.
The Spider is wanted by the police, and his friend Commissioner Kirkpatrick suspects Wentworth. Hardly surprising, as everyone seems to know the Spider’s secret. Proving it is another thing entirely…
The Spider and the Jewels of Hell is the 87th Spider novel, originally published in December 1940. It is another earth-shaking saga by Norvell Page!
Wanted by both the NYPD lead by Commissioner Littlejohn and the FBI, Wentworth goes on vacation with Nita. On his way to California, the Spider encounters a Russian Agent that tortures a woman to death. The Spider kills the man and marks his forehead with the scarlet emblem of justice! But since NYPD has alerted police everywhere, Wentworth is arrested!
Escaping, the Spider goes to war with a shadowy foe known only as the Killer. His deadly ray heats metal to white-hot levels. Coins in your pocket reach temperatures that melt them into human flesh! It is hard to use any weapon since guns will scald your fingers!
This novel is the usual smashmouth fiction that readers associate with hard-hitting pulp action. The story deals with something that could really happen. Think about it for a time.
Recruit for the Spider Legion is the 114th published novel, originally published in March 1943. It is also by Norvell Page and a topnotch tale!
Commissioner Kirkpatrick is framed both for embezzlement and for murder! The basis for the framing is to first remove Kirkpatrick from his office, then to send him to the electric chair! The Spider tries to shift the blame for the murder to himself, but Kirkpatrick has to go vigilante for a while!
The story was excellent! It’s perhaps a slight change from Page’s usual style. But he handles it like a master!
I give both stories, and the book as a whole, five stars!
Quoth the Raven…
The Spider is Richard Wentworth, a wealthy criminologist. Backed up by his manservant Ram Singh, his old war pal Jackson, and his fiancé Nita van Slone, Wentworth takes on crime at the street level.
The Spider has no scruples about killing. The criminals who cross the Spider die and their foreheads are marked with a scarlet spider.
The Spider is wanted by the police, and his friend Commissioner Kirkpatrick suspects Wentworth. Hardly surprising, as everyone seems to know the Spider’s secret. Proving it is another thing entirely…
The Spider and the Jewels of Hell is the 87th Spider novel, originally published in December 1940. It is another earth-shaking saga by Norvell Page!
Wanted by both the NYPD lead by Commissioner Littlejohn and the FBI, Wentworth goes on vacation with Nita. On his way to California, the Spider encounters a Russian Agent that tortures a woman to death. The Spider kills the man and marks his forehead with the scarlet emblem of justice! But since NYPD has alerted police everywhere, Wentworth is arrested!
Escaping, the Spider goes to war with a shadowy foe known only as the Killer. His deadly ray heats metal to white-hot levels. Coins in your pocket reach temperatures that melt them into human flesh! It is hard to use any weapon since guns will scald your fingers!
This novel is the usual smashmouth fiction that readers associate with hard-hitting pulp action. The story deals with something that could really happen. Think about it for a time.
Recruit for the Spider Legion is the 114th published novel, originally published in March 1943. It is also by Norvell Page and a topnotch tale!
Commissioner Kirkpatrick is framed both for embezzlement and for murder! The basis for the framing is to first remove Kirkpatrick from his office, then to send him to the electric chair! The Spider tries to shift the blame for the murder to himself, but Kirkpatrick has to go vigilante for a while!
The story was excellent! It’s perhaps a slight change from Page’s usual style. But he handles it like a master!
I give both stories, and the book as a whole, five stars!
Quoth the Raven…
June 3, 2016
A vintage Norvell Page tale and a satisfying Wayne Rogers story mark this Girasol Collectables Spider double reprint (rounded up to four stars overall).
Girasol knew what it was doing when it debuted its 25-volume two-fer series with "Prince of the Red Looters," an excellent (four stars) Page novel from 1934, and the 11th of the 118 Spider adventures to be published. It's a great tale, not the absolute best in the series but up very high, and as a Spider tale with a reasonably logical plot, it would be a great introduction to the character for new readers.
Here The Spider's foe, logically enough, is The Fly, one of those odd supervillains with a fair-minded streak; the tale opens with The Fly challenging The Spider to a sabre duel to settle their differences. It seems the two had been locking horns in the days leading up to the meeting. Fuck it, let's rumble and settle this!
We'll call the opening battle a draw. From there, The Fly engages in some truly destructive villainy that keeps him one step ahead of our bloodthirsty hero most of the way. The Fly is one of those mystery-identity villains. The Spider sees The Fly's face, but the villain is disguised and actually is a prominent citizen. There's a particularly nifty scene in which The Fly stages four simultaneous bank robberies using deadly gas; the getaway vehicles dirigibles!
An excellent pulp tale all the way.
The second novel is by pinch-hitting Spider writer Rogers. "The City That Dared Not Eat" does not chronicle a community-wide dieting effort, by the way, though that certainly would have led to far less death. Instead, a baddie engages in wholesale poisoning of the food supply in New York, giving particular attention to restaurants as he seeks to extort folks into paying high prices. He's also tainting the milk supply. Our poor children!
The terror campaign seems a bit forced, the likelihood of actually affecting enough foodstuffs to make New Yorkers leave the city en masse rather remote. But, yeah, it's The Spider. It's still pretty good fun, qualifying as an adequate (three stars) Spider tale. One thing must be said about the auxiliary Spider authors: no, they certainly weren't as good as Page, but they were much better than a couple of the Doc Savage authors who pitched in double-figure tales apiece to that series (yeah, I'm talking about you, Laurence Donovan and Harold Davis).
And if readers imagine the cover for this double from "The City That Dared Not Eat" — people hanging from meat hooks cycling toward waiting masked men with cleavers — is just a fanciful artist's concoction, guess again. It's actually pretty accurate! If the villain had his way, there are definitely some things you'd dare not eat.
Girasol knew what it was doing when it debuted its 25-volume two-fer series with "Prince of the Red Looters," an excellent (four stars) Page novel from 1934, and the 11th of the 118 Spider adventures to be published. It's a great tale, not the absolute best in the series but up very high, and as a Spider tale with a reasonably logical plot, it would be a great introduction to the character for new readers.
Here The Spider's foe, logically enough, is The Fly, one of those odd supervillains with a fair-minded streak; the tale opens with The Fly challenging The Spider to a sabre duel to settle their differences. It seems the two had been locking horns in the days leading up to the meeting. Fuck it, let's rumble and settle this!
We'll call the opening battle a draw. From there, The Fly engages in some truly destructive villainy that keeps him one step ahead of our bloodthirsty hero most of the way. The Fly is one of those mystery-identity villains. The Spider sees The Fly's face, but the villain is disguised and actually is a prominent citizen. There's a particularly nifty scene in which The Fly stages four simultaneous bank robberies using deadly gas; the getaway vehicles dirigibles!
An excellent pulp tale all the way.
The second novel is by pinch-hitting Spider writer Rogers. "The City That Dared Not Eat" does not chronicle a community-wide dieting effort, by the way, though that certainly would have led to far less death. Instead, a baddie engages in wholesale poisoning of the food supply in New York, giving particular attention to restaurants as he seeks to extort folks into paying high prices. He's also tainting the milk supply. Our poor children!
The terror campaign seems a bit forced, the likelihood of actually affecting enough foodstuffs to make New Yorkers leave the city en masse rather remote. But, yeah, it's The Spider. It's still pretty good fun, qualifying as an adequate (three stars) Spider tale. One thing must be said about the auxiliary Spider authors: no, they certainly weren't as good as Page, but they were much better than a couple of the Doc Savage authors who pitched in double-figure tales apiece to that series (yeah, I'm talking about you, Laurence Donovan and Harold Davis).
And if readers imagine the cover for this double from "The City That Dared Not Eat" — people hanging from meat hooks cycling toward waiting masked men with cleavers — is just a fanciful artist's concoction, guess again. It's actually pretty accurate! If the villain had his way, there are definitely some things you'd dare not eat.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews