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McKay, Ryan and Knowlton #2
Tiger River
A novel by the popular pulp fiction writer.
- GenresScience FictionFantasy
364 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1923
24 people want to read
About the author
Arthur O. Friel
47 books4 followersDuring much of career Arthur Olney Friel was one of the bestselling writers of pulp fiction in the United States.
Born in Detroit, Michigan,Friel, a 1909 Yale University graduate, had been the South American editor for the Associated Press which provided him with real-world experience. In 1922, he took a six-month trip down Venezuela's Orinoco River and its tributary, the Ventuari River. His travel account was published in 1924 as The River of Seven Stars.
After returning from the Venezuela trip, many of Friel's stories were set in that part of the world. He remained a popular writer of adventure stories throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1930s, his short stories began appearing regularly in the various pulp magazines. His stories were almost always set in Venezuela.
The 1920s were his most productive time as a fiction writer, with an average of 5 appearances per year in Adventure during that time. The thirties were less productive, but he still managed to have one or two stories every year published in Adventure, except 1937, when he had none.
He seems to have stopped writing fiction by the time WW2 came around. The decline of the pulps may have been a contributing factor.
Arthur O. Friel died in Concord, New Hampshire in 1959 at the age of 73.
Born in Detroit, Michigan,Friel, a 1909 Yale University graduate, had been the South American editor for the Associated Press which provided him with real-world experience. In 1922, he took a six-month trip down Venezuela's Orinoco River and its tributary, the Ventuari River. His travel account was published in 1924 as The River of Seven Stars.
After returning from the Venezuela trip, many of Friel's stories were set in that part of the world. He remained a popular writer of adventure stories throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1930s, his short stories began appearing regularly in the various pulp magazines. His stories were almost always set in Venezuela.
The 1920s were his most productive time as a fiction writer, with an average of 5 appearances per year in Adventure during that time. The thirties were less productive, but he still managed to have one or two stories every year published in Adventure, except 1937, when he had none.
He seems to have stopped writing fiction by the time WW2 came around. The decline of the pulps may have been a contributing factor.
Arthur O. Friel died in Concord, New Hampshire in 1959 at the age of 73.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 13, 2015
The back cover to my edition of this book says it is a novel that 'fairly reeks with swashbuckling action'. Well, I don't know about reeking, and I always thought that swashbuckling went with pirates or at least Musketeers, but definitely there is action here, and plenty of it!
This is actually the second of four books Friel wrote about a group of four Americans and one Peruvian who get into some hair-raising adventures deep in the jungles of South America. I found my copy of Tiger River at a used book store years ago. So this is probably at least the third time I have read the book, but I enjoyed it just as much as the first time through. (Oh, by the way, the tiger here is a jaguar, which in Spanish is called el tigre: the tiger.)
Even though it is the second in the series, you don't have to read the first book to know what is going on. A bit of the back story is explained quite smoothly in the first chapter when Jose and the four Americans meet by accident along the shore of a river, right after Jose has just shot himself a monkey for dinner. I thought the way Friel has them get together was clever, and the way he wrote the scene, I was certainly not expecting the 'river-creature' to be what it actually turned out to be.
Friel himself had explored the wilds of Venezuela in 1922, so he was very familiar with the jungle setting of the story, and was able to bing it to life, right down to the blood-sucking insects that tormented everyone including me. I could tell by the pages where they were mentioned that I would be a raving maniac in less than five minutes if I were ever to be plopped down in such a jungle.
Anyway, there is a mysterious river to explore, gold to discover, head-hunters to fight, earthquakes, and scary tales about insane men with gold....and no toes. Not to mention 'white Indians and green men'! I never understood how the green men became green, but they were, and it helped them blend into the jungle, which is pretty good planning on their part. And Friel's.
Our five heroes have a great relationship. The Americans had been soldiers in France during WWI so were used to working together as a well-disciplined team, but they also had a realistic way of teasing each other. All of their conversations felt real, and the friendship between all five men was obvious and strong. I liked each one, and I am very excited to have discovered the first book, The Pathless Trail , at Gutenberg. I plan to start it right now, so I can see how our friends got together in the first place, how they became who they are in this book. I hope that Someday the other two titles in the series will turn up as well. I would love to know what happens after Tiger River!
This is actually the second of four books Friel wrote about a group of four Americans and one Peruvian who get into some hair-raising adventures deep in the jungles of South America. I found my copy of Tiger River at a used book store years ago. So this is probably at least the third time I have read the book, but I enjoyed it just as much as the first time through. (Oh, by the way, the tiger here is a jaguar, which in Spanish is called el tigre: the tiger.)
Even though it is the second in the series, you don't have to read the first book to know what is going on. A bit of the back story is explained quite smoothly in the first chapter when Jose and the four Americans meet by accident along the shore of a river, right after Jose has just shot himself a monkey for dinner. I thought the way Friel has them get together was clever, and the way he wrote the scene, I was certainly not expecting the 'river-creature' to be what it actually turned out to be.
Friel himself had explored the wilds of Venezuela in 1922, so he was very familiar with the jungle setting of the story, and was able to bing it to life, right down to the blood-sucking insects that tormented everyone including me. I could tell by the pages where they were mentioned that I would be a raving maniac in less than five minutes if I were ever to be plopped down in such a jungle.
Anyway, there is a mysterious river to explore, gold to discover, head-hunters to fight, earthquakes, and scary tales about insane men with gold....and no toes. Not to mention 'white Indians and green men'! I never understood how the green men became green, but they were, and it helped them blend into the jungle, which is pretty good planning on their part. And Friel's.
Our five heroes have a great relationship. The Americans had been soldiers in France during WWI so were used to working together as a well-disciplined team, but they also had a realistic way of teasing each other. All of their conversations felt real, and the friendship between all five men was obvious and strong. I liked each one, and I am very excited to have discovered the first book, The Pathless Trail , at Gutenberg. I plan to start it right now, so I can see how our friends got together in the first place, how they became who they are in this book. I hope that Someday the other two titles in the series will turn up as well. I would love to know what happens after Tiger River!
January 21, 2019
What makes Tiger River interesting is not so much its standing as a work of literature but as a sort of social document of its times. That's not to say it's poorly written. Friel is a competent writer and he plots out an intriguing storyline. And there are fewer instances of purple prose in this entire book than in the average chapter alone of a Zane Grey novel. But it's what he tells about American popular culture and concomitant national character one hundred years ago that is striking.
Popular culture can explain a great deal about a society. Look at the films, television, and popular novels of today and you see high-tech adventures on one end and grimy, debased urban noir on the other. Plots dependent on smartphones have replaced those of yesteryear that featured a six-shooter. Hordes of Navy SEALS with their body armor, satellite connected headsets, and drone guided missiles take the place of men on horseback, explorers climbing mountains, crossing rivers, and discovering the hidden recesses of remote lands. High-tech reliant protagonists directed by wheezy, overweight old women and men back in DC war rooms dominated by big screen monitors supersede independent, self-reliant range hands and explorers.
Friel's Tiger River exemplifies the earlier America. Like the aforementioned Zane Grey, his heroes are marking out new territories, discovering new people, lusting after adventure. (And, by the way, the valley of gold in Tiger River should remind readers of the lost valley in Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage.) It's not hard to imagine a generation of young men (it would mainly be young men) who were just a few years too young to have experienced World War I directly looking up from their desks in 1923 and hoping for romance and something better than the workday in the city or small town. For them, McKay, Ryan, and Knowlton, the World War I veterans and heroes of Tiger River, may have seemed like big brothers or even father figures. People who provided dreams of exploration that were just imaginably true enough.
Tiger River has a torpid beginning but soon casts off into an engaging tale. Its story is a conventional one: explorers taking on the wilderness, an encounter with unknown Indian peoples, and the journey to find a secret treasure of gold, hidden away in remote mountains. It could be an American Western. But Friel has relocated the action to South America and the rivers and mountains of Peru and Ecuador. This displacement of the American frontier to South America would go on to become something of a staple in adventure novels and especially films up until the middle 1950s.
All in all, the novel is a nice read. It makes you want to pick up another volume in the series. Apparently, Friel himself was a newsman turned adventurer in South America. And it seems he used his own experiences (while borrowing imagery and plot devices from The Odyssey and Zane Grey) in his work.
Popular culture can explain a great deal about a society. Look at the films, television, and popular novels of today and you see high-tech adventures on one end and grimy, debased urban noir on the other. Plots dependent on smartphones have replaced those of yesteryear that featured a six-shooter. Hordes of Navy SEALS with their body armor, satellite connected headsets, and drone guided missiles take the place of men on horseback, explorers climbing mountains, crossing rivers, and discovering the hidden recesses of remote lands. High-tech reliant protagonists directed by wheezy, overweight old women and men back in DC war rooms dominated by big screen monitors supersede independent, self-reliant range hands and explorers.
Friel's Tiger River exemplifies the earlier America. Like the aforementioned Zane Grey, his heroes are marking out new territories, discovering new people, lusting after adventure. (And, by the way, the valley of gold in Tiger River should remind readers of the lost valley in Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage.) It's not hard to imagine a generation of young men (it would mainly be young men) who were just a few years too young to have experienced World War I directly looking up from their desks in 1923 and hoping for romance and something better than the workday in the city or small town. For them, McKay, Ryan, and Knowlton, the World War I veterans and heroes of Tiger River, may have seemed like big brothers or even father figures. People who provided dreams of exploration that were just imaginably true enough.
Tiger River has a torpid beginning but soon casts off into an engaging tale. Its story is a conventional one: explorers taking on the wilderness, an encounter with unknown Indian peoples, and the journey to find a secret treasure of gold, hidden away in remote mountains. It could be an American Western. But Friel has relocated the action to South America and the rivers and mountains of Peru and Ecuador. This displacement of the American frontier to South America would go on to become something of a staple in adventure novels and especially films up until the middle 1950s.
All in all, the novel is a nice read. It makes you want to pick up another volume in the series. Apparently, Friel himself was a newsman turned adventurer in South America. And it seems he used his own experiences (while borrowing imagery and plot devices from The Odyssey and Zane Grey) in his work.
September 13, 2017
An absolute blast of a book. Modern audiences might not like it...but then again, they might be craving this level of fun.
August 31, 2008
This book followed "The Pathless Trail" but I didn't think it was as good. It's not a bad read, but fairly slow for modern audiences.
June 28, 2021
The pity is that my Centaur press edition is in flawless condition, and my Centaur press edition of The Gray Maiden is dangerously battered. This is a situation I would happily have the reverse of.
It grovels around in story territory that I disliked most about the Tarzan series: unfocused jungle adventure, meeting native peoples and animals in iron-thewed battle. In this case it was unleavened by Burrough's urge to throw in a lost city or weird monsters when the proceedings stretch on. Somehow, the breathless cover text of "White Indians And Green Men!" simply doesn't have the same reader appeal.
Especially when the characters latch on to the first of these as some purely amazing thing they can't get over. I never got to the point where they do the same about the green men. Assuming of course that "green men" doesn't mean "men covered in green paint".
It grovels around in story territory that I disliked most about the Tarzan series: unfocused jungle adventure, meeting native peoples and animals in iron-thewed battle. In this case it was unleavened by Burrough's urge to throw in a lost city or weird monsters when the proceedings stretch on. Somehow, the breathless cover text of "White Indians And Green Men!" simply doesn't have the same reader appeal.
Especially when the characters latch on to the first of these as some purely amazing thing they can't get over. I never got to the point where they do the same about the green men. Assuming of course that "green men" doesn't mean "men covered in green paint".
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews