The Spicy Mystery MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales from the "Spicy" Pulps

by Hugh B. Cave, Victor Rousseau Emanuel, Atwater Culpepper

This volume of Wildside Press's best-selling MEGAPACK® series focuses on tales first published in the "Spice" line of pulp magazines. Here are 25 mystery tales considered quite titillating in their day, but mild by modern standards. 

Genres: Anthologies, Pulp

397 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 27, 2015

About the author

Hugh Barnett Cave was a prolific writer of pulp fiction who also excelled in other genres.

Sources differ as to when Cave sold his first story: some say it was while he still attended Brookline High School, others cite "Island Ordeal", written at age 19 in 1929 while still working for the vanity press.

In his early career he contributed to such pulp magazines as Astounding, Black Mask, and Weird Tales. By his own estimate, in the 1930s alone, he published roughly 800 short stories in nearly 100 periodicals under a number of pseudonyms. Of particular interest during this time was his series featuring an independent gentleman of courageous action and questionable morals called simply The Eel. These adventures appeared in the late 1930s and early 40s under the pen name Justin Case. Cave was also one of the most successful contributors to the weird menace or "shudder pulps" of the 1930s.

In 1943, drawing on his experience as a war reporter, he authored one of his most highly regarded novels, Long Were the Nights, telling of the first PT boats at Guadalcanal. He also wrote a number of other books on the war in the Pacific during this period.

During his post-war sojourn in Haiti, he became so familiar with the religion of Voodoo that he published Haiti: High Road to Adventure, a nonfiction work critically acclaimed as the "best report on voodoo in English." His Caribbean experiences led to his best-selling Voodoo-themed novel, The Cross On The Drum (1959), an interracial story in which a white Christian missionary falls in love with a black Voodoo priest's sister.

During this midpoint in his career Cave advanced his writing to the "slick" magazines, including Collier's, Family Circle, Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook, and the Saturday Evening Post. It was in this latter publication, in 1959, that "The Mission," his most popular short story, appeared—subsequently issued in hardcover by Doubleday, reprinted in textbooks, and translated into a number of languages.

But his career took a dip in the early 1970s. According to The Guardian, with the golden era of pulp fiction now in the past, Cave's "only regular market was writing romance for women's magazines." He was rediscovered, however, by Karl Edward Wagner, who published Murgunstrumm and Others, a horror story collection that won Cave the 1978 World Fantasy Award. Other collections followed and Cave also published new horror fiction.

His later career included the publication in the late 1970s and early 1980s of four successful fantasy novels: Legion of the Dead (1979), The Nebulon Horror (1980), The Evil (1981), and Shades of Evil (1982). Two other notable late works are Lucifer's Eye (1991) and The Mountains of Madness (2004). Moreover, Cave took naturally to the Internet, championing the e-book to such an extent that electronic versions of his stories can readily be purchased online.

Over his entire career he wrote more than 1,000 short stories in nearly all genres (though he is best remembered for his horror and crime pieces), approximately forty novels, and a notable body of nonfiction. He received the Phoenix Award as well as lifetime achievement awards from the International Horror Guild, the Horror Writers Association, and the World Fantasy Convention. (From Wikipedia.)

Used the pseudonyms John Starr and Justin Case

Reviews

[Carlton Phelps · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great collection

You should enjoy reading these short stories about cops, robbers, and sexy dames.
These writers made their living submitting short mystery stories for tame men's magazines.
Nice little mysteries and colorful language from a bygone period.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining mystery listening 🎶🔰

Another twenty-five will written pulp fiction mysteries short stories by various authors. Each story line is different with interesting characters lots of action and violence leading to the unexpected conclusions. I would recommend this Megapack to readers looking for something different in mystery novels 👍🔰. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or listening 🎶 to Alexa read books 📚.. 2023 😮👒😡😕

A classic pulp fiction mystery Megapack. Happy reading in 2023🌙

[Hal Brodsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting as a time capsule from the Good Ol' Days of pulp. A few of the stories in the beginning were clever mysteries, but most are poorly written and reek with tired cliches.
If you own this, read the first 3 or 4 stories and the last.

[Mr N]

Good

Most of the stories here are well written, with a decent, crime-related storyline, interesting characters, and the inevitable twist in the tale. A few are disappointing, hence four rather than five stars.
The tales are all very mysogynistic, with every young and beautiful woman (always scantily clad) falling for the leading man and surrendering herself to him even though she has only just met him!
However, given the era (mid 1930s) and the target audience (red-blooded males!) this is an interesting collection and worth reading.

[Michael P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This megapack offers a fun array of short crime stories from the 1930s and early 1940s. Most of the stories come from the pages of Spicy Detective Magazine, a pulp magazine which published crime stories that, while tame by our standards, were considered highly explicit by the standards of the time. The stories themselves are, for the most part, not that great, with many being very predictable. However, they still make for interesting quick reads.

[Kris Chandrasekhar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

I liked most of the stories, some more than others. Stories written 90 years ago have a different feel from what I typically read and see today.I will take a much closer look at these MegaPack collections, which offer great value for their price

[Graham Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most anthologies this one had a few stories that had to be included just so they filled out the page count! Most of this anthology story may have been "Spicy" back in the 30's and 40's but compared to stories from today they are super tame!

[Κεσκίνης Χρήστος · Rating 3 out of 5]

Καταλαβαίνω γιατί θεωρείται τόσο cult, αλλά μην τρελαινόμαστε, τα περισσότερα από αυτά ήταν όντως pulp fiction. Σε κάποιους αρέσει ακόμη, σε κάποιους όχι. Δεν είναι αριστουργήματα, αλλά έχουν κάτι να δώσουν. Αν είσαι ένας από αυτούς, απόλαυσέ το.