Tag Archives: A Detective Story

Contents Vol. 4 No. 3

May 10, 2024Crime Fiction, Crimefighter, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Don Coyote & Saundra Pansy Mystery, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, books, Carriers, Cheese Stands Alone, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Crimefighter, Dime Pulp, Gothic, Hard Boiled Fiction, horror, Just Coincidence, Mark DuCharme, Mike Servente, Phyllis Huldarsdottir, Pierre Anton Taylor, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk, The Man From La Mirada Perdida, thrillerNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Four, Number Three of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Die Like A Man, Thierry LaNoque’s debut serial novel, is a meta noir of a man who gives a friend a ride only to be pulled in deeper and deeper into the events surrounding a brutal murder, the daughter of a prominent businessman, and attempts to cover it up and place the blame on someone else. Drugs and money are involved in this second installment featuring La Noque’s young hunky wannabe private eye, Ray Philips. As well, Mark DuCharme ties up all the loose ends to bring his dark, sometimes humorous, gothic serial, Carriers, to its finale. Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”) continues her mission to fly an unauthorized dirigible to Djibouti in Phyllis Huldarsdottir’s round-the-world steampunk adventure, Cheése Stands Alone. Wayne Bruce survives his ordeal in the Southern Sahara and emerges as a new man with a new mission in Pierre Anton Taylor’s crimefighter drama, Just Coincidence.

Mark DuCharme’s Carriers and it’s gothic air of shadowy creatures who might just be the living dead is a vampire novella with touches of black comedy and satirical bite, told from the perspective of its unreliable narrator and protagonist. Taking place during a “plague” that has been going on for two years in an unnamed city, dead bodies litter the streets, hallways, and homes. A corpse disposal company hires people to transport them to a facility at the edge of town with the very important stipulation that the bodies be delivered there before sundown. No one ever says why. Read the final installment of Carriers, Episodes XIII .

Phyllis Huldarsdottir’s Cheése Stands Alone, the continuing adventures of Airship Commander Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”) in the search for her anti-Clockwork Commonwealth renegade father, Commodore Jack, with the help Doctor Professor Jean-Pierre Serre-Pain, proprietor the Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium, a traveling snake show, and his associates, former circus strongman, Vlady, and Serpina, the snake girl. On the run from IOTA (the Investigative Office of The Admiralty), she has narrowly escapes capture by her nemesis, Chief Inspector Karla Kola, in Oldest Orleans, and now with the help of a young wannabe airship pilot, Pyare, must traverse the Central Massif to rendezvous with Serre-Pain and the dirigible that will take them on a mercy mission to HOAR (the Horn Of Africa Republics), base for the anti-Commonwealth ICERS. Read more of Cheése Stands Alone in Episode XIV.

Pierre Anton Taylor’s dark crimefighting serial, Just Coincidence is about a privileged young man with the unremarkable name of Wayne Bruce who returns to the site where his father once had his business, a battery manufacturing plant, and where he often spent his childhood days hanging around the factory and the neighborhood. His return is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding his father’s death and the vague feeling that his uncle is somehow involved. Appalled by the poverty and crime of the place he remembers fondly, he is moved to resolve the injustice of the socially marginalized and to wreak vengeance on those he believes are responsible for the death of his father. The backstory to his emergence as a crimefighter is revealed in Just Coincidence, Act Three, Scene I, Part 1

Die Like A Man, a brand new serial novel by Thierry La Noque, is a meta noir of a man who gives a friend a ride only to be pulled in deeper and deeper into the events surrounding the brutal murder of the daughter of a prominent businessman and the attempts to cover it up and place the blame on someone else. Ray Philips, a martial arts instructor, sometime event security, and bouncer working toward getting his private investigator’s license in a world where the private eye is quickly becoming an anachronism, is hired to find a missing husband, the famous crime novelist and infamous drunk, Stan Giordino by his petite pierced drug addicted wife, Stella. A stolen cache of drugs and money only complicates and implicates the wannabe detective, and puts him over his head and his life in danger. Not to mention that his girlfriend, Cissy, is dying of cancer. Die Like A Man 3&4

FYI: Available for readers of Dime Pulp who may have missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial, Dime Pulp Yearbook 21, featuring the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues, is joined by Dime Pulp Yearbook 22, featuring the complete pulp Western, On The Road To Las Cruces, continuing episodes of a detective story, Better Than Dead, the opening chapters of new serial novels, Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, the short fiction of Hard Boiled Myth and Polka Dot Dress, as well as Dropping A Dime’s pithy pulp observations. Volume Two’s 10 issues are available for perusal in their entirety simply by clicking on the links in this paragraph or on the menu bar above. Dime Pulp Yearbook 23 is now available featuring a full year’s worth of Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, and the complete Better Than Dead novel, as well as the early chapters of Mark Ducharme’s gothic serial, Carriers.

If you’ve made it this far, click on the links above to read the entertaining serial contents of Volume 4, Number3!

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

Contents Vol. 4 No. 2

March 24, 2024Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Don Coyote & Saundra Pansy Mystery, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, books, Carriers, Cheese Stands Alone, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Crimefighter, Dime Pulp, Gothic, Hard Boiled Fiction, horror, Just Coincidence, Mark DuCharme, Mike Servente, Phyllis Huldarsdottir, Pierre Anton Taylor, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk, The Man From La Mirada Perdida, thrillerNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Four, Number Two of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Dime Pulp debuts a new serial novel, Die Like A Man, by Thierry La Noque, in Volume 4, Number 2. It is a meta noir story of a man who gives a friend a ride only to be pulled in deeper and deeper into the events surrounding a brutal murder of the daughter of a prominent businessman and the attempts to cover it up and place the blame on someone else. Drugs and money are involved in this initial outing of La Noque’s wannabe private eye, Ray Philips. As well, Mark DuCharme’s gothic Carriers is quickly approaching its denouement. Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”) continues her mission to fly an unauthorized dirigible to Djibouti in Phyllis round the world steampunk adventure, Cheése Stands Alone. And in Just Coincidence, Wayne Bruce survives his ordeal in the Southern Sahara and emerges as a new man in Pierre Anton Taylor’s crimefighter drama.

Mark DuCharme’s Carriers and it’s gothic air of shadowy creatures who might just be the living dead is a vampire novella with touches of black comedy and satirical bite, told from the perspective of its unreliable narrator and protagonist. Taking place during a “plague” that has been going on for two years in an unnamed city, dead bodies litter the streets, hallways, and homes. A corpse disposal company hires people to transport them to a facility at the edge of town with the very important stipulation that the bodies be delivered there before sundown. No one ever says why. Read more in the latest installment of Carriers, Episodes X-XII .

Die Like A Man, a brand new serial novel by Thierry La Noque, is a meta noir story of a man who gives a friend a ride only to be pulled in deeper and deeper into the events surrounding the brutal murder of the daughter of a prominent businessman and the attempts to cover it up and place the blame on someone else. Ray Philips, a martial arts instructor, sometime event security, and bouncer working toward getting his private investigator’s license in a world where the private eye is quickly becoming an anachronism, is hired to find a missing husband, the famous crime novelist and infamous drunk, Stan Giordino by his petite pierced drug addicted wife, Stella. A stolen cache of drugs and money only complicates and implicates the wannabe detectives, and puts him over his head and his life in danger. Not to mention that his girlfriend, Cissy, is dying of cancer. The beginning to this meta noir begins here: Die Like A Man 1&2

FYI: Available for readers of Dime Pulp who may have missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial, Dime Pulp Yearbook 21, featuring the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues, is joined by Dime Pulp Yearbook 22, featuring the complete pulp Western, On The Road To Las Cruces, continuing episodes of a detective story, Better Than Dead, the opening chapters of new serial novels, Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, the short fiction of Hard Boiled Myth and Polka Dot Dress, as well as Dropping A Dime’s pithy pulp observations. Volume Two’s 10 issues are available for perusal in their entirety by simply clicking on the links in this paragraph or on the menu bar above. Dime Pulp Yearbook 23 will be available in early February ’24 as part of the annual archival review.

If you’ve made it this far, click on the links above to read the entertaining serial contents of Volume 4, Number 2!

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

Contents Vol. 4 No. 1

January 30, 2024Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Don Coyote & Saundra Pansy Mystery, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, books, Carriers, Cheese Stands Alone, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Crimefighter, Dime Pulp, Gothic, Hard Boiled Fiction, horror, Just Coincidence, Mark DuCharme, Mike Servente, Phyllis Huldarsdottir, Pierre Anton Taylor, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk, The Man From La Mirada Perdida, thrillerNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Four, Number One of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

The new year at Dime Pulp begins with the return of Carriers by Mark DuCharme and it’s gothic air of shadowy creatures who might just be the living dead. Carriers is a vampire novella with touches of black comedy and satirical bite, and is told from the perspective of its unreliable narrator and protagonist, Johnny. It takes place during a “plague” that has been going on for two years in an unnamed city. Dead bodies litter the streets, hallways, and homes. A corpse disposal company hires people like Johnny to transport them to a facility at the edge of town with the very important stipulation that the bodies be delivered there before sundown. No one ever says why. Read more in the latest installment of Carriers, Episodes VIII-IX .

Also returning to the start Volume 4 off on the right foot are Dime Pulp regular authors Pierre Anton Taylor and Phyllis Huldarsdottir with Phyllis’s steampunk adventure, and Perre’s crimefighter fiction, Just Coincidence.

Phyllis Huldarsdottir returns with Cheése Stands Alone, the continuing adventures of Airship Commander Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”) in the search for her anti-Clockwork Commonwealth renegade father, Commodore Jack, with the help Doctor Professor Jean-Pierre Serre-Pain, proprietor the Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium, a traveling snake show, and his associates, former circus strongman, Vlady, and Serpina, the snake girl. On the run from IOTA (the Investigative Office of The Admiralty), she has narrowly escapes capture by her nemesis, Chief Inspector Karla Kola, in Oldest Orleans, and now with the help of a young wannabe airship pilot, Pyare, must traverse the Central Massif to rendezvous with Serre-Pain and the dirigible that will take them on a mercy mission to HOAR (the Horn Of Africa Republics), base for the anti-Commonwealth ICERS. Read more of Cheése Stands Alone in Episode XII.

Also returning for the 2024 inaugural issue is Dropping A Dime, the editor’s pithy commentary on pulp fiction, this time asking the vital question What Is It About Poets and Pulp?

FYI: Available for readers of Dime Pulp who may have missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial, Dime Pulp Yearbook 21, featuring the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues, is joined by Dime Pulp Yearbook 22, featuring the complete pulp Western, On The Road To Las Cruces, continuing episodes of a detective story, Better Than Dead, the opening chapters of new serial novels, Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, the short fiction of Hard Boiled Myth and Polka Dot Dress, as well as Dropping A Dime’s pithy pulp observations. Volume Two’s 10 issues are available for perusal in their entirety by simply clicking on the links in this paragraph or on the menu bar above. Dime Pulp Yearbook 23 will be available in early February ’24 as part of the annual archival review.

If you’ve made it this far, click on the links above to read the entertaining serial contents of Volume 4, Number 1!

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

Contents Vol. 3 No. 8

December 29, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Don Coyote & Saundra Pansy Mystery, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, Carriers, Cheese Stands Alone, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Crimefighter, Dime Pulp, Gothic, Hard Boiled Fiction, Just Coincidence, Mark DuCharme, Mike Servente, Phyllis Huldarsdottir, Pierre Anton Taylor, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk, The Man From La Mirada PerdidaNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Eight of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Carriers by Mark DuCharme returns with it’s gothic air of shadowy creatures who might just be the living dead. Carriers is a vampire novella with touches of black comedy and satirical bite, and is told from the perspective of its unreliable narrator and protagonist, Johnny. It takes place during a “plague” that has been going on for two years in an unnamed city. Dead bodies litter the streets, hallways, and homes. A corpse disposal company hires people like Johnny to transport them to a facility at the edge of town with the very important stipulation that the bodies be delivered there before sundown. No one ever says why. Read more in the latest installment of Carriers, Episodes V-VII .

Issue 8 brings to a close Colin Deerwood’s long running serial, Better Than Dead, A Detective Story, featuring the unpredictable peregrinations of private investigator Lackland Ask, aka Stan Gardner, aka Sam Carter, and now Dr. Jerome Paulsen, O.D. leaving on a freighter for Cuba one step ahead of the law, the mob, and the draft board. All the loose ends (and there were many) are tied up or disposed of (are they?), and now the fugitive confidential agent can exit stage left. Find out how the story ends in Better Than Dead, Episode 30. (A note from the author reminds us that the cover of this issue is from an original Black Mask magazine, c. 1940, and as such was the catalyst and inspiration for the more than 150 pages of serial crime fiction that followed. )

This issue also introduces a new private eye, Don Coyote, brain child of Mike Servante, a newbie to the musty (and labyrinthine) halls of serial crime fiction although an aficionado of the genre, in a metatextual story that promises to be a lot of fun, titled The Man From La Mirada Perdida, A Don Coyote & Saundra Pansy Adventure. Read inaugural episodes i & ii in this latest offering of imaginative crime fiction from Dime Pulp.

Dime Pulp regular authors Pierre Anton Taylor and Phyllis Huldarsdottir were unfortunately caught up in the seasonal vortices that often cause time displacement, especially as the days get shorter, and the imprudent certainty that there is still plenty of time to get everything done. Phyllis’s steampunk adventure, Cheése Stands Alone, will return in Vol. 4, Number 1 in early 2024, as will Pierre’s crimefighter fiction, Just Coincidence.

FYI: Available for readers of Dime Pulp who may have missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial, Dime Pulp Yearbook 21, featuring the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues, is joined by Dime Pulp Yearbook 22, featuring the complete pulp Western, On The Road To Las Cruces, continuing episodes of a detective story, Better Than Dead, the opening chapters of new serial novels, Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, the short fiction of Hard Boiled Myth and Polka Dot Dress, as well as Dropping A Dime’s pithy pulp observations. Volume Two’s 10 issues are available for perusal in their entirety by simply clicking on the links in this paragraph or on the menu bar above. Dime Pulp Yearbook 23 will be available in late January ’24 as part of the annual archival review.

If you’ve made it this far, click on the links above to read the entertaining serial contents of Volume Three, Number 8

Special Note: Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine has changed its posting schedule from monthly issues to once every forty-five days (more or less—mostly more). Thus Volume Three will (hopefully) consist of eight issues (much to the relief of the overworked writers and production staff). Thank you for your understanding.

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

Better Than Dead—30

December 29, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction"Brother can you spare a dime?", 1940, A Detective Story, Better Than Dead, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Fedoras and Flatfoots, Pulp Fiction, weird-fictionNuallain House, Publishers

by Colin Deerwood

The cops finally caught up with me. Hogan, specifically. I had stopped at the newsstand around the corner from Hopper’s Diner, the daily blat’s headline blaring Bombers Blast Britain. It was another headline below the fold that caught my eye, Missing Ridley Constable Sought For Questioning. I was curious. Maybe Marie had stirred up a ruckus. I was on my way back to Alice’s old basement studio from the passport bureau with my new identity tucked in the breast pocket of my darker than tan suit coat. Almost two weeks had passed since I’d snuck back into the bad Apple. A lot had changed, and for me, for the better.

The five grand from the sale of the art piece had done wonders for my spirits, only the best mash, and my wardrobe, only the best haberdasher. It had also gone to the Uptown Downtown barber shop over on Seventh where I had had my mug given a going over. When I stepped out of the chair I was sporting a precise VanDyke. It went well with my sporty beige fedora with the fly fish feathers in the band and my new identity as Dr. Jerome Paulsen, O.D. Maybe the freedom of having a pile made me reckless. People were still looking for me. I’d let my guard down. But in my dark glasses and new duds, even the newsboy didn’t recognize me at first, and I’d been buying newspapers, girlies, pulps, and my Lucky Strikes from him for years.

I considered buying the latest issue of the crime fiction magazine, Black Mask. I’m not a big reader, especially of imaginary crime, but my old mug was on the cover of this one. I could see where Larry Jakes had got the color of the bruise under one eye just right.

I was about to take a closer look when I heard a familiar voice behind me. “You think you can fool me, wisenheimer? I’d know you anywhere, even in your dark glasses. You’re what every parent’s bad dreams are made of.”

I couldn’t help but grin. Jake Hogan and I went way back to the old neighborhood where I’d grown up, mostly on the street. He’d been the rookie beat cop back then. We were all wisenheimers to him, Ralphie Silver, Stevie Silverman, and me as well as a handful of other faces on the block. We thought we were the toughest guys on the East Side. He threatened to haul us down to the station just to get our attention, and when that didn’t work, and we got older, he did haul us in, and that meant that our parents had to come and get us, and sometimes that was worse than being taken in. “I guess I should say thanks for keeping an eye of me all these years.”

“Where’d you get the money to suit up like that? Last time I saw you, you looked like you were sharing a wardrobe with a moth.”

“Inheritance?” I coughed.

“Oh yeah, who from? I know it ain’t from your old man. And I don’t think it’s from your mother, either.”

“A rich uncle.”

“He got a name?”

“Ned. Ned Ask.”

“Ned? That the best you can come up with?”

“Honest. His full name is Nedan T. Ask.”

“What’s the T stand for?”

“I dunno, Ted, Tom?” All of a sudden I felt like I was ten years old again, caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to do.

“That’s a nice story, wisenheimer, but I still got to take you downtown.”

“Come on, Hogan, you don’t think I had anything to do with Ralphie’s murder, do ya?”

He shook his head slowly, giving me the patented intense cop stare. “No, I don’t think you did Ralphie, wisenheimer. You ain’t got the guts or the brains.”

“Then whadya want with me?”

“Oh, I got questions about that crew that ended up full of holes at Kovic’s warehouse. But it ain’t only me, the government boys wanna have a word.”

“Listen, Hogan, this is all Ralphie’s fault.”

“There you go, blaming a dead man. I can’t say I’m surprised.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, wait. Let’s talk about this. There’s something you should know.” My chances at a clean getaway were fading fast. If Hogan took me in, I’d be a sitting duck for Kovic’s stoolies and anyone else who would want to get their hands on me. And I wanted to avoid the feds at all costs. “How about I buy you a cup of coffee over at Hopper’s diner?” I was gonna throw in the offer of a donut but I know how sensitive cops can be about that. “You know Ralphie,” I pleaded, “it was always his schemes that got the rest of us in trouble. And this whole chain of events started because Ralphie said he had a job for me. Hear me out. Ok?”

Hogan cocked his head to one side, surprised. He’d never heard any of us beg, no matter how deep a mess we were in.

“It all started with Kovic’s daughter.”

“Don’t tell me.” Hogan smirked over his cup of steaming java.

“Naw, nothing like that.” And I went on to tell him about how Ralphie Silver had set it up. I was going to be paid to find the mob boss’s daughter. Ralphie thought he could maybe get some of his gambling debt forgotten if I could bring her back to daddy. She had a history of running away and the old man usually sent one of his goons to retrieve her. But this time, it was way out of State, and South. His dapper boys would have been made out to be city slickers and the local law would be onto them like white on rice. As I could pose as a traveling salesman on my way through town without any problem.

Hogan grunted and shook his head when I told him how Kovic had stiffed me and left me for dead in a ditch on the island. And how I was determined to get what was owed me, with interest. But in the meantime, my pal, Al, the pearl diver at Madame Cho’s chop-suey joint, hooked me up with his sister, Della, who wanted me to find her boyfriend who had stolen something from her. “That’s how I got pulled in on suspicion of murdering him.”

“Yeah, I remember that. I knew that wasn’t you. It was a professional hit. I can’t figure why. He was a no account pimp. And his girlfriend wanted something he stole from her? I wonder what that was.”

I shrugged. “I never got the chance to find out.” I left out the fact that I had filched the postal slip from Della’s mailbox. “Of course that was before I knew that she and her brother were part of a robbery gang who called themselves the Thieves of Bombay.” And before I knew that waiting to be picked up at the post office was the exotic erotic jade, the Empress’s Cucumber.

I thought about the empty bank deposit envelope in the cigar box back at the basement studio where I was lying low, and the postal package notice it had once held. Della with her dying breath had told me she had mailed the jewelry box containing the rare jade to herself. Why was the postal slip missing? I was certain Rebecca had it on her that day. But she was dead. No one survives a fall four stories up.

“So not long after that, I’m in a phone booth where I find an address book somebody forgot. I woulda returned it but I couldn’t read it.” I didn’t want to say I lifted the wallet from a man drowning in the East River.

“I told ya, you shoulda stayed in school.”

“Naw, nothing like that. I can read alright. This wasn’t in regular writing. Something called Serial writing.”

“Serial writing? You mean like in the pulps?”

“I don’t think so. Whatever it was, it was Greek to me.”

“Waitaminute. Do you mean Cyrilic?”

“Yeah, probably. That sounds right. No way I can return it if I can’t read it so I stick it in my pocket. I go to buy a cheap suit from a tailor, see, and as he is taking my measurements, I’m trying on the suit coat, the address book drops out of my old one. He picks it up and gives it back to me and when he does, he sees the writing. He’s kinda shocked, probably because I don’t look the type to be reading that cockamamie scrawl. And he’s right. I do ok with the ABC’s and I don’t see why I gotta know anything else. Anyway, he says he can’t read it well but he knows someone who might, a rabbi, at some uptown address, and that I should see if he can’t help me.”

“Are you going somewhere with this, wisenheimer? If you keep droning on, I’m gonna need another cup of coffee.”

“Well, as it turns out the tailor has a daughter. . . .”

“Ok, I shoulda seen that coming.”

I had to watch my step with the story. Hogan didn’t need to know about the diamonds. It was best that I stuck with the beef I had with Kovic. I had tipped him to the crates of machine guns at the Serbian Social Club where I had gone, foolishly, to enact some kind of revenge because my old man taught me, somebody hits you, hit them back twice as hard. He didn’t say anything about a brick wall and hitting it twice as hard hurts twice as much. And I’d told Hogan about the heist at the Customs Warehouse and the threat to the grand jury investigating Kovic’s control of the waterfront. But how to explain Rebecca.

“Is she the one that jumped off the roof of that social club?”

“She didn’t jump. There was an explosion, remember? She was knocked off the terrace.” I didn’t have to tell him that it was Rebecca’s father who had built the bomb and planted it there on orders from Herr Doktor Soloman and his clandestine diamond syndicate.

“We never found a body so unless she walked, you’re imagining things.”

I had to think on that for a bit. “So Kovic grabs me, he thinks I set the bomb. They scram before the keystones can get there, and take me with them to the warehouse. Which is where you found me in the aftermath of the shootout.”

Hogan shook his head. “I can’t figure that one out. Once we started making identification of the bodies at Kovic’s warehouse, we realized we were on to an international gang that target the wealthy for their jewelry and their art. We’d been after them for a while as the ones who had been taking down high society penthouses and their art collections. I don’t see how Kovic fits in there. And the feds are still looking for him.”

“I don’t either but I heard he wanted me dead. And which is why I took it on the lam and laid low up in the Lakes country waiting for it to blow over. That’s where I learned my uncle had died and he had left me a little something in his will. I’m just in town wrapping up some business. I like it up in the country and I’m thinking of going back there to live. Start a new life, stay out of trouble.”

Hogan snorted. “Not a chance. Besides there’s the little matter of the victim’s statement.”

“Victim?”

“Yeah, a certain Alice Neal. About a month ago she was attacked in her studio by two men who were looking for you and the dame. Only thing that stopped them from murdering her was a crazy Czarist and his rapier. You’re an acquaintance of Miss Neal? You were seen leaving her dwelling recently. ”

“I’ll bet Kovic was behind it.”

Hogan shook his head. “Kovic’s goons don’t wear goggles. That one’s still a mystery. The same crew shot up a diamond dealer a while back. So far all the leads point to Chinatown.”

“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

He laughed and it was a rare occasion when he did that. “I’m gonna thank you for the cup and I’m still gonna extend my hospitality and invite you downtown to sample some of the swill they call java.”

“Wait, what if I told you something that would get you in good with the G-men and get you a load of commendations and maybe even a handshake with the mayor.”

Hogan didn’t get where he was by ignoring situations that would put him in a good light. “I’m listening.”

“I know where Kovic is hiding out. You think that information could buy me a pass?”

“I could take you down to the precinct and beat it out of you.”

“Listen, Hogan, I just want to move to the country and get out of this rat race, make an honest living.”

“You should have quit while you were ahead, wisenheimer. Honest ain’t in your blood, and why would a rat leave the race when that’s the only thing he knows.” He sat back in the booth, a spiteful grin creasing his mug. “But ok, spill.”

“Chinatown.” That’s when it all fell into place. Hogan saying that all the leads pointed to Chinatown was the piece I was missing. The goggle bandits, of course. They resembled owls. And that’s what Max Feathers was called by the Chinese denizens in the neighborhood of his pawn shop, māo tóu yīng, the cat headed eagle. The Owl.

I stood in a doorway across the street from the pawn shop. I’d left Hogan holding up his end of the bargain. “For once you done something right, wisenheimer,” he’d said, “Just don’t leave town.” I had every intention of leaving town. My bags were packed and I’d made arrangements with Annie Bassinger, the tugboat captain. There was a freighter due to sail in the wee hours of the next morning and I was going to be on it. But first I had to take care of some unfinished business.

The front of the shop was dark, but a light shone against the ceiling at the far back where Max sat in his cage. I’d gone back to the basement studio and looked in the cigar box again. The empty deposit envelope, the cloth sachet that had held the uncut rocks, and slipped Rebecca’s peashooter into my pocket. The street was the usual hustle and bustle for the time of day, wagons and trucks and a smattering of foot traffic but mostly further up the block where the street stalls were set up. I waited for an old woman, bent forward on a cane, a scarf close around her face, to wobble past the entrance to the shop before I made my move.

The bell over the door tinkled. I quickly made my way through the racks of clothing and stacks of boxes to the cage. Max, his back to me, seated in his chair didn’t turn around until I was right up to the counter. He blinked at first and then nodded in recognition. “Lackland Ask, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I got a bone to pick with you, Max.”

An evil smile creased his unshaven cheeks and he rolled his chair up to the teller caged counter. “Should I put you on a waiting list?”

“I’m taking cuts, Max. I brought that diamond here for you to appraise. And I told you I was gonna cut you in on the deal when the rabbi’s people paid me off for the address book. But you had to get greedy, you wanted it all.”

This time he laughed, exposing the ruins in his mouth. “Is that not the purpose of this madness? To want it all, to get it all?”

“You offered Rebecca the red brocade dress as an engagement present delivered to the address she gave you. You figured that’s where the diamonds were and you sent your boys to get them.”

“Do nothing in half measures, I learned long ago. Not only were the diamonds an opportunity but you, yourself, as well. With Mr. K’s price on your head, it was one I could not pass up.”

“Keep your hands where I can see them, Max. I know you’ve got a gat squirreled away on the shelf below.” I pulled the pistol from my pocket and pointed it at him.

He grinned and shrugged. “If you must know, I would have the diamonds and the finder’s fee from Mister K. My owls swooped in on their prey only to meet with fierce resistance and find the diamonds gone and you missing. I assumed that you and the diamonds had left together. I had your so-called office watched. The super was very cooperative. The sister act failed to fool him. He alerted my man who followed them to the woman’s studio. My owls swooped in only to find you not there and themselves dead. Unfortunate, but often the fate of soldiers for the cause.”

The bell over the door tinkled as someone entered the pawn shop. “Closed!” Max called out not taking his eyes off me or the gun. And then “Guānbì” in case it was one of the locals. The bell above the door sounded again. “The diamonds have entered the market so I hear. Whomever had them has made a tidy profit, and judging by your accouterments, you have come into some money. Only one thing puzzles me. According to my sources, the person who sold the uncut gems was a woman. Do I have to ask? Someone you know?”

That confused me, someone, a woman, had sold the uncut diamonds, and it must have shown. I hesitated as he brought the automatic to bear on me. “But I have you, Ask, and Mr. K’s offer is still standing. His current troubles with the authorities will be short lived and has not slackened his thirst for revenge.”

I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. I pulled it again with the same results.

Max was enjoying my panic. “You will kill me with your comedy, Lackland Ask. You in your fancy clothes, ridiculous beard, dark glasses, and toy pistol. I will die laughing. But before that happens, you will suffer a horrible death at the hands of Yan Kovic.”

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement followed by the shadow of a shape. Max didn’t realize until too late that we were not alone. It was the old woman in the head scarf I’d seen creeping along the sidewalk before I entered the pawn shop. Only it wasn’t an old woman after all. It was Rebecca. And she had a gun in her hand, a big gun. “Try this on for laughs, Max.” Her revolver barked. Max held his chest with a look on his face like something he ate didn’t agree with him, a lead pill, as he slowly spilled out of his chair and onto the floor behind the counter.

“Becky! I thought. . .the explosion. . .you fell. . . .”

“I didn’t fall, Lack. I jumped.” She pointed the gun at me. “I jumped from the ledge to the fire escape just as the bomb went off. I was certain that you were dead. In the commotion I was able to get out of the building unseen.”

“You’re alive!” I wanted to hold her in my arms but the gun wouldn’t let me.

“I don’t want to see you again, Lack. Don’t come looking for me, otherwise I will be forced to kill you. Forget me, you don’t even know my real name.”

How could I have been so blind? I kicked myself with the thought of how I had been fooled all the way back to the studio where I grabbed my satchel and left without leaving a note. I needed to make my exit before more bodies started piling up, one of which, to believe Rebecca, could very well be mine. All the same my mind was feverishly trying to make sense of how Rebecca was alive when I’d been certain she was dead, shocked and relieved because I’d been blaming myself all this time. What didn’t square was how she had the diamonds all along and had no intention of giving me my cut. How could I have missed that? I’m nothing if not skeptical, I can spot a con a long way coming. But not this, dazzled by a pretty face and womanly wiles.

She brushed off the double cross, saying that she needed the money to finance her goal of fighting fascism and the oppression of the working class wherever it arose. And the way she saw it, there was a lot of that in the States.

This was not the naïve kid I thought I was protecting from the mean cruel world. The tables were turned and I was the dupe being led around by a sharp cookie.

She didn’t want to go into detail about what she’d been up to since the night of the explosion, the night we’d made love in the shabby hotel, but I assumed fencing the diamonds had been some of it. She had some unfinished business she said, and it had to do with the jade, the Empress’s Cucumber, which explained the empty bank deposit envelope. But why be so careless to leave those things behind in the cigar box?

With a shrug of cruel indifference, she explained that she had redeemed the package with the postal call slip, and it contained the Empress’s Cucumber that Della had mailed to herself. The only problem was that the jade was a fake, a soapstone replica. Someone had switched the authentic jade with an imitation jade cucumber.

I had to think about that for a bit. The only time that the swap could have been made was when it was in the possession of Della’s pimp boyfriend, the one who was murdered. The Thieves had got it in a heist of a collector’s penthouse. Then someone stole it from them and left the fake behind. It was a wily move and I knew exactly just who could have pulled it off. He was gargling blood and thrashing on the floor behind the counter, The Owl.

Rebecca had come to the same conclusion when she discovered that it was a replica. She had stumbled upon the authentic jade after Max had offered her an engagement present. It had been a ruse to get her address where he would have the red brocade dress delivered, assuming, correctly, that the diamonds would be found where she lived. Max was hiding the Empress’s Cucumber in plain sight. She’d never received the red dress either, it was still hanging on the rack, so she was taking it and the jade as well.

That’s the way I’ll always remember her, revolver pointed at me, dress over one arm, imperial green brocade box in the other, backing out the door to the hubbub of the street outside. Rebecca was not who I thought she was. That accent, the innocent act, had me fooled good. I figured I wasn’t the first and I wouldn’t be the last. She wanted the power to change the world because she was a formidable woman, the money from the sale of the rocks and the authority of the Empress’s Cucumber would make her what the Chinese call qing guo qing cheng, a terrifyingly powerful woman. A flash of red and she was gone. I had to wonder, is she working for Uncle Joe or just a rebel with a just cause, the Joan of Arc in all women? That’s why when I think of her I think of her as the Red Empress.

I stood atop the accommodation ladder looking out over the smear of lighted early morning skyline behind the scrim of a thick fog. In the churning waters below, the stern of the tug Narcissus was pulling away from the freighter’s towering hull. I’d said my goodbyes to Annie, telling her that she was one of the reasons I wished I could stay. “Then stay,” she pleaded, “Get your seaman papers. Ship out to the West Coast, Hawaii, I hear it’s pretty safe out there.” But, nah, my old man was one, and that wasn’t me. Robal, one of Annie’s crew, had given me the name of someone to look up when I got to Havana who would connect me with someone else to get me the rest of the way. Valparaiso, no one would ever think of looking for you there, an old mobster told me once. I was travelling light, a change of clothes and my new name as a visually impaired optometrist, like it said on my passport. Some people might appreciate the irony and refer to me as “the blind man”, a really private eye. Maybe I could get into the art collection con south of the Equator. Open an art gallery, call it The Blind Man.

The first mate interrupted my reverie and indicated the direction with an outstretched arm. “This way to your cabin, Dr. Paulsen. The Captain looks forward to meeting you at breakfast.” I stepped through the hatch and into the passageway where fastened to the bulkhead was a life ring displaying the ship’s name, the S.S. Van Dyne.

END

Is there a sequel in the making? Featuring The Red Empress, The Blindman, The Owl, and Mr. K? Stay tuned to Dime Pulp, The Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine!

Contents Vol. 3 No. 7

November 8, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, Carriers, Cheese Stands Alone, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Crimefighter, Dime Pulp, Gothic, Hard Boiled Fiction, Just Coincidence, Mark DuCharme, Phyllis Huldarsdottir, Pierre Anton Taylor, Pulp Fiction, SteampunkNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Seven of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Phyllis Huldarsdottir returns with the continuing adventures of Airship Commander Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”) searching for her anti-Commonwealth renegade father, Commodore Jack, with the help Doctor Professor Jean-Pierre Serre-Pain, proprietor the Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium, a traveling snake show, and his associates, former circus strongman, Vlady, and Serpina, the snake girl. On the run from IOTA (the Investigative Office of The Admiralty), she has narrowly escapes capture by her nemesis, Chief Inspector Karla Kola, in Oldest Orleans, and now with the help of a young wannabe airship pilot, Pyare, must traverse the Central Massif to rendezvous with Serre-Pain and the dirigible that will take them on a mercy mission to HOAR (the Horn Of Africa Republics), base for the anti-Commonwealth ICERS. Read more in Episode XI of Cheése Stands Alone!

Pierre Anton Taylor’s dark crimefighting serial, Just Coincidence is about a privileged young man with the unremarkable name of Wayne Bruce who returns to the site where his father once had his business, a battery manufacturing plant, and where he often spent his childhood days hanging around the factory and the neighborhood. His return is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding his father’s death and the vague feeling that his uncle is somehow involved. Appalled by the poverty and crime of the place he remembers fondly, he is moved to resolve the injustice of the socially marginalized and to wreak vengeance on those he believes are responsible for the death of his father. In this new episode, the young crimefighter continues to investigate the unexplained death of his father, and the robbery murder of old Rick, the candy store owner, as well as the strange new street drug, Wacky Waxx. Read more in Act 2, Scene 2, Part 3

Last but certainly not least, Colin Deerwood’s long running serial, Better Than Dead, A Detective Story, continues its unpredictable peregrinations featuring private detective Lackland Ask, aka Stan Gardner, aka Sam Carter, on the run again when he learns that his bucolic hideaway in the Three Lakes area is also where his nemesis, mob boss Yan Kovic, aka Mr. K, is ducking the feds. Now it is even more imperative that he make himself scarce, especially after a crooked local constable in league with Mr. K’s hoods try to finish him off. In the meantime, thanks to the moonshiner’s daughter and a lusty cousin, he learns a surprising revelation about his paternity. On his return to the big city from the country, still on the lam, Lackland Ask has to scare up some cash and make plans to flee the country under an assumed name with one minor hitch: he has to be blind. Read more in Better Than Dead, Episode 29.

FYI: Available for readers of Dime Pulp who may have missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial, Dime Pulp Yearbook 21, featuring the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues, is joined by Dime Pulp Yearbook 22, featuring the complete pulp Western, On The Road To Las Cruces, continuing episodes of a detective story, Better Than Dead, the opening chapters of new serial novels, Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, the short fiction of Hard Boiled Myth and Polka Dot Dress, as well as Dropping A Dime’s pithy pulp observations. Volume Two’s 10 issues are available for perusal in their entirety by simply clicking on the links in this paragraph or on the menu bar above.

If you’ve made it this far, click on the links above to read the entertaining serial contents of Volume Three, Number 6

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

Better Than Dead—29

November 8, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk FictionA Detective Story, Better Than Dead, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Hard Boiled FictionNuallain House, Publishers

by Colin Deerwood

I was hotter than a two dollar pistol when I stepped off the bus at the main terminal, and for a couple of reasons. The obvious one was I had gone from the fire back into the frying pan. The city was Kovic’s territory. I figured that there was still a price on my head. And the law was looking to question me about Ralphie Silver’s murder.. The Bombay mob and probably the diamond syndicate were still after their revenge and the missing rocks. The other reason was Marie Wilson, the moonshiner’s daughter.

She had flagged the bus down, endured the scolding from the driver, and lugged her suitcase back to where I was seated.

I explained to her again that she couldn’t come with me.

She said that she was going with herself and that we were just going in the same direction.

I told her that I couldn’t be responsible for her in the big city, and that I barely knew where I was staying myself which was kind of an exaggeration as I had a pretty good idea.

She replied that she had been planning this trip to the city since her last year in high school and that she would be staying with her friend, Irma, who lived in a woman’s residence while she trained to be a court stenographer, and which she deemed perfect as she herself hoped to eventually find work as a newspaper reporter like Rosalind Russell in that movie with Cary Grant. And the first thing she was going to do as a reporter was investigate Constable Thorndyke and prove that he was responsible for the disappearance and drowning deaths of those girls. She had it all planned out. She would haunt the newspaper morgues and find all the articles and notices of girls missing up in the Lakes country and then stitch together an airtight case proving that Thorny was behind it all. And anyone else who might have turned a blind eye. She was going to get revenge for his victims.

I had to tell her that revenge didn’t have a rudder or a steering wheel and there was no way of knowing where it would take you. I knew that from experience.

She was quiet after again insisting on her resolve to expose Thorny for the monster he was.

I was thankful for that and settled into looking at the countryside passing by from a corner curve of the window. I had my jar and expensive cigarettes. The bus stopped every so often along the route, picking up passengers heading into the city. An old gal in white gloves and shoes like leather bricks gave me a nasty look and asked me to put out my cigarette. Cracking the bus window open was as much as I was going to do. She wasn’t pleased with my non-reply and found a seat up toward the front after complaining to the bus driver who reminded her that it was a free country.

The motion of the ride had made Marie drowsy and she leaned her head on my shoulder, giggling and speaking random words as she drifted off. I didn’t think too much about it as I had other things on my mind like getting a new identity and finding a way to get out of the country before they reinstituted the draft. If Alice could find a buyer for Ted’s art piece, it would be easy. If not, it would be hard and I had to be prepared for that.

The rumble of the bus crossing the bridge into the city shook Marie from her snooze. She’d smiled at me, drowsily and then hugged my arm to tell me that she was going to change her name if being a reporter didn’t work out and she went to Los Angeles to become an actress. She would take my last name and call herself Eve Gardner as that Stan Gardner was the name I used when I’d introduced myself to her.

I gave her some free advice. Stay away from Los Angeles. And if she couldn’t do that, she should dye her hair brunette and call herself Ava. There were too many blondes named Eve in the movies. She showed her appreciation by stroking the inside of my thigh and nibbling on my ear.

The bus made a quick wide turn that threw us up against each other and then face to face, almost lip to lip, and I could feel her heavy hot breath on my cheek. Or was that mine. I was breaking a mild sweat and I could tell it was destined to be another hot summer day, hotter than I’d expected. But destiny often has its own wicked sense of humor.

With a hiss of airbrakes, the bus had come to a full stop at its destination. Passengers were standing and stretching, some of them glancing our way.

Marie stood up, a little flustered and, grinning in embarrassment, straightened her blouse, grabbed her suitcase, planted a kiss on my cheek, and said “Bye, Stan, it’s been nice knowing you. Don’t be a stranger.”

I banged on the door to Alice’s studio keeping to the shadows. The wrought iron fence at street level blocked the view into the alcove under the stoop. A man had died on the sidewalk on the other side of that fence, a man wearing motoring goggles, sliced to the quick by Linkov’s sword.

No one was answering the door and that had me worried. Alice was home most of the time working on her art. The last time I’d been on the other side of that door there had been a dead body, also wearing goggles, stretched out across the floor, also victim of Linkov’s rapier. Both of the dead thugs had been looking for me and Rebecca, presumably after the diamonds because, not solely by coincidence, a crew of similarly goggled robbers had descended on Herr Doktor Soloman’s apartment with guns blazing. I was pretty certain they weren’t the Thieves of Bombay, it didn’t fit with the way they operated. And it definitely wasn’t Yan Kovic’s style. Who they were was still a mystery.

I felt a presence loom over my shoulder. It was Linkov, Alice’s neighbor, the crazy Russian painter. He didn’t have his sword, but his scowl was threatening enough.

It was the beard. “Linkov, it’s me, Lackland Ask. I’m looking for Alice. You know where she is?”

He squinted closely at my mug. “Yes it is beard.” He shrugged and walked away, a finger of his hand pointing up. “Top floor skylight studio.” Linkov was never big on small talk.

Alice was happy to see me in her typically understated fashion. She had a cigarette in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. “You’ve grown a beard.”

“Nice to see you, too, Al. Looks like you’re moving up in the world.”

That provoked a smile from behind a wreath of smoke. “You might say that. My friend Lee, the artist who used to work here moved to the island when her boyfriend came back from Wyoming and let it to me.” She used the paintbrush to indicate the small space with a bed and a sink and not much else. “You and Becky stayed here one night. Remember? It wasn’t that long ago.”

I glanced around the studio. It did look familiar.

“There were more canvases stacked against the wall. My watercolors don’t take up as much room.”

I remembered the skylight. And I remembered Rebecca. It was a painful memory.

“And you guys left some things behind.”

She handed me a little cigar box. Inside was Rebecca’s pistol, a Remington 51, often referred to as a purse gun, the bank deposit envelope I had placed the post office package notice I had lifted from Della’s mailbox for what I later learned was the jade, the Empress’s Cucumber, now empty, and to my surprise, the little cloth sachet that had once held the diamonds and which Becky had claimed she lost in the coalbin, also empty. Suddenly my head was spinning. Something wasn’t adding up and I had to sit down to figure out how come.

“Lack, are you ok?” Alice guided me to a chair by a table, the cigar box in my hand weighing a ton.

I had questions. For myself. Did the empty sachet mean that Rebecca had had the diamonds all along? Were they in her coat pocket when she took the plunge from the fourth floor of the Serbian Social Club? Even so, why was the bank envelope in the box and empty, the package slip gone. I knew she had it on her when we took the room at the Lattimer Hotel. So if she fell to her death how did it end up in the cigar box? She’s told me that she’s left the pea shooter behind so no surprise in finding it here. And it was loaded.

I stuck the pistol in my jacket pocket. I couldn’t decide what to do with the bank deposit envelope or the empty sachet. They were telling me something, something I didn’t want to believe.

Alice took me to see the doctor. His name was Patterson. He was a retired pediatrician and he collected art and wrote poetry. We met uptown at a gallery in a part of the city I hardly had the occasion to visit in my line of work. It was Swellsville, gilded windows and polished brass, Even the air smelled sweeter.

She’d already laid out the details of what had gone on the last couple of weeks I was hiding out in Little Lake. After the horrific attack on her by the goggle men, and the dead body bleeding out in her studio and the other one on the sidewalk out-front, and the police investigation and all the confusion of their questions, she was set upon by reporters with more questions. One of them got a look at her watercolors and liked them and he told his friend who was the art critic at the newspaper. The critic dropped by since he was visiting the loft of a big name artist who worked in the neighborhood. He loved what she was doing and introduced her to the uptown gallery owner who right away bought a sampling of her sketches and now was interested in some of her larger landscapes because he was certain he could find buyers for all her watercolors. He wanted to include her in an upcoming group show with well-known painters, and even talked about mounting a solo exhibition of her “work” as she called it.

It was as if the dark cloud of the dead bodies of the men who had attacked her had a silver lining. Suddenly she had money, or more than she’d had before. I liked her new outfit and it fit right in with the gilt and shiny black lacquer of the gallery. With the exception of the beard, I looked pretty much the same, rough around the edges in my second hand tweeds, battered shoes, fedora, and dark glasses. Bright daylight still made my eyes water and ache. I looked like a blind man beggar Alice had abducted from a street corner. Under my arm was a box containing Ted’s art piece she said this Dr. Patterson might be interested in buying.

The doctor was all smiles when he saw Alice, and held out his hand. “Alice, so nice to see you! Roland has been showing me your sketches.”

Alice returned the smile, a little embarrassed. Her popularity was still new to her. She nudged me with an elbow.

“This is Jerry. . . .”

I saw her mind go blank. She’d forgotten the alias I was going to be using for this deal. I shifted the box to my other arm and held out my hand. “Jerome Paulsen, doc, nice to meet you.”

The doctor was a clean looking older man with wire frame specs, a white collar natty tweed suit, and a perfectly tied bowtie. He didn’t hide that I wasn’t what he’d expected. “You are an art collector?”

I shook my head. “Ixnay, doc. Only this piece Ted gave me. I thought I might get into the collection business but it turned out to be more than I can afford.” I smiled to myself at the little joke that I‘d been in the collection business, but that one required a strong arm.

The doc gave me a thin lipped smile in return. “May I see the item?”

On the way to the gallery, Alice and I had gone over the way the deal could go down. I remembered what the art collector everyone hated had originally wanted to give me for it. Alice reminded me that his name was Huddington. He’d offered a grand, but Alice said that with so few pieces by Ted after the bonfire, I could probably ask more. Start at five but don’t go lower than three, she’d advised. Five grand was a lot of money but she said that for some people, it was peanuts. I wasn’t going to argue. I’d only been expecting a grand and even then I couldn’t understand why someone would pay those kind of peanuts for what was in the box.

Art, she’d said.

I was obviously in the wrong business.

The doc didn’t blink. I blinked. I think Alice blinked. He reached into his suit coat pocket and took out a thin leather rectangle.

“To whom shall I make out the check?”

I looked at Alice. Alice looked at me.

Patterson smiled and nodded like he understood. He called Roland, the gallery owner, over and they left together speaking in low voices.

I could see that Alice was going to get teary. “This was one of his favorites,” she had said when we boxed it up. I tried not to feel bad. The sale of Ted’s art piece would pay for my ticket out. I figured he’d understand.

When Roland returned with Patterson, he had a manila portfolio in his hand which he opened to display five bundles of cash, each with a picture of Ben in the oval. He gave the envelope to Patterson who handed it to me.

In return the good doctor got the box of something someone had made from bits and scraps scattered around the furniture repair shop and placed in a handmade wooden box behind a pane of glass. I still didn’t get why, but I did understand that a gallery could be a kind of bank. You could make a deposit with art and you could make a withdrawal in legal tender. This kind of collection business didn’t sound half as dangerous.

I gave Alice one of the bundles when we got back to her place. “Finder’s fee,” I said.

I didn’t expect the hug. She got tears on my lapel and wiped her eyes.

“Maybe Ted gave you this piece for just such an occasion,” she sniffed. “He knew you were a trouble magnet and you were going to need to use it someday.”

She had a point. Ted himself had even said,” Trouble finds you like gum finds a shoe.”

Alice came with me when I picked up the passport forms at the Federal building. I had to copy the information from Jerome Paulsen’s birth certificate into the appropriate boxes.

Alice peered over my shoulder. “What are you going to put down as your occupation? Peeper?” she teased.

I thought for a minute. “Optimist!”

Her laugh echoed in the small stuffy office. Heads turned. A clerk looked up with a scowl.

“Yeah, like an eye doctor, a private eye doctor.” I smiled at my joke.

“You mean an optometrist. Like Doctor Patterson urged you to see. Optimist means someone who is an idealist,”

I shrugged, “Yeah, that could be me, the optimistic optometrist”

While we had been making nice with Patterson after taking his five grand, he asked me if I’d been in a fight recently. Maybe my mug suggested the possibility although the evidence that I led with my chin was covered by a beard. He asked me to take off my dark glasses. He looked in my eyes. He wanted to know how bright light affected them. I told him it was painful and that they watered. He wanted to know if I’d been hit in the head. When hadn’t I? In my job you take a lot of lumps and it’s never a fair fight. He said I probably had a concussion. If the eye problem continued I should see an optometrist to get fit with special glasses.

“Lack, didn’t you see this?” She pointed at the bottom of the birth certificate. “Here, where it says Medical Condition.”

The doctor had recorded Jerome Paulsen as “Blind.” “So now I’m am a blind optimistic optometrist,” I joked, “Maybe I should put doctor in front of my name.”

Alice laughed but not as loudly this time. “Why not, you’ve got the beard for it. And put an O.D. after it.”

“O.D.?”

“Doctor of Optometry.”

“Doctor Jerome T. Paulsen, O.D. I think I like the way that sounds.”

What does the T stand for?”

“Trouble.”

She smirked, “Are you done filling it out?”

“Yeah.”

She looked it over. “Pretty good for a blind man.”

“You’ll have to guide me to the window.”

“Just as long as I don’t have to bark.”

Next Time: The Owl Unmasked

Contents Vol. 3 No. 6

September 26, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, Carriers, Cheese Stands Alone, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Crimefighter, Dime Pulp, Gothic, Hard Boiled Fiction, Just Coincidence, Mark DuCharme, Phyllis Huldarsdottir, Pierre Anton Taylor, Pulp Fiction, SteampunkNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Six of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Dime Pulp is please to introduce a new seral fiction titled Carriers by Mark DuCharme (yes, that’s his real name). Born in Detroit, Michigan, Mark earned a BA from the University of Michigan and moved to Colorado in 1990 to attend the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, where he earned an MFA. A widely published author, Mark lives in Boulder where he works as an English instructor. Carriers is a vampire novella with touches of black comedy and satirical bite, and is told from the perspective of its unreliable narrator and protagonist, Johnny. It takes place during a “plague” that has been going on for two years in an unnamed city. Dead bodies litter the streets, hallways, and homes. A corpse disposal company hires people like Johnny to transport them to a facility at the edge of town with the very important stipulation that the bodies be delivered there before sundown. No one ever says why. Read Carriers, Episodes I & II to learn why.

Phylis Huldarsdottir returns after a one issue hiatus with the continuing adventures of Airship Commander Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”) searching for her anti-Commonwealth renegade father, Commodore Jack, with the help Doctor Professor Jean-Pierre Serre-Pain, proprietor the Madame Ophelia’s Ophidiarium, a traveling snake show, and his associates, former circus strongman, Vlady, and Serpina, the snake girl. On the run from IOTA (the Investigative Office of The Admiralty), she has narrowly escapes capture by her nemesis, Chief Inspector Karla Kola, in Oldest Orleans, and now with the help of a young wannabe airship pilot, Pyare, must traverse the Central Massif to rendezvous with Serre-Pain and the dirigible that will take them on a mercy mission to HOAR (the Horn Of Africa Republics), base for the anti-Commonwealth ICERS. Read more in Episode X of Cheése Stands Alone!

Also returning after a one issue absence is Pierre Anton Taylor’s dark crimefighting serial, Just Coincidence. A privileged young man with the unremarkable name of Wayne Bruce returns to the site where his father once had his business, a battery manufacturing plant, and where he often spent his childhood days hanging around the factory and the neighborhood. His return is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding his father’s death and the vague feeling that his uncle is somehow involved. Appalled by the poverty and crime of the place he remembers fondly, he is moved to resolve the injustice of the socially marginalized and to wreak vengeance on those he believes are responsible for the death of his father. In this new episode, the young crimefighter continues to investigate the unexplained death of his father, and the robbery murder of old Rick, the candy store owner, as well as the strange new street drug, Wacky Waxx. Read more in Act 2, Scene 2, Part 2

Last but certainly not least, Colin Deerwood’s long running serial, Better Than Dead, A Detective Story, continues its unpredictable peregrinations featuring private detective Lackland Ask, aka Stan Gardner, aka Sam Carter, on the run again when he learns that his bucolic hideaway in the Three Lakes area is also where his nemesis, mob boss Yan Kovic, aka Mr. K, is ducking the feds. Now it is even more imperative that he make himself scarce, especially after a crooked local constable in league with Mr. K’s hoods try to finish him off. In the meantime, thanks to the moonshiner’s daughter and a lusty cousin, he learns a surprising revelation about his paternity. After a fatal gun battle with Kovic’s hoods, he and the moonshiner’s daughter must now dispose of the bodies. This episode features a very rare occurrence of Ursus Ex Machina and the obligatory pulp sex scene. Read more in Better Than Dead, Episode 28 , Dime Pulp’s longest running serial fiction!

FYI: Available for readers of Dime Pulp who may have missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial, Dime Pulp Yearbook 21, featuring the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues, is joined by Dime Pulp Yearbook 22, featuring the complete pulp Western, On The Road To Las Cruces, continuing episodes of a detective story, Better Than Dead, the opening chapters of new serial novels, Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, the short fiction of Hard Boiled Myth and Polka Dot Dress, as well as Dropping A Dime’s pithy pulp observations. Volume Two’s 10 issues are available for perusal in their entirety by simply clicking on the links in this paragraph or on the menu bar above.

If you’ve made it this far, click on the links above to read the entertaining serial contents of Volume Three, Number 6

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

Better Than Dead—28

September 26, 2023Crime Fiction, Gothic, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, Better Than Dead, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Pulp FictionNuallain House, Publishers

by Colin Deerwood

Thorny was a problem. He wasn’t where I left him after I’d clobbered him with the can of beans. I froze in front of the cabin’s porch. The Scout was still there. But the shadows were deeper and longer as the sun settled behind the trees at the other end of Little Lake. My ears piqued, I listened for any sound that he was nearby. I crouched lower, head cocked. I examined the dark shadowed undergrowth among the trees, ahead and behind me. If I was lucky, Thorny ran off when the shooting started. A snap of shrub or stick turned my attention to the path leading over into the berry bramble. If he still had his shooter, I was fish in a barrel. I ducked around the fireplace where the cook’s earlier fire smoldered and sent up puffs of smoke. I was looking for something to defend myself with. I picked up the skillet. It was heavy but too small and I didn’t think I’d have much luck batting bullets away with it. There was an assortment of forks but no knives. I knew where the knives were. In the kitchen. But I’d have to get into the cabin through the front door. A wide open target. I grabbed a length of firewood from the kindling pile. It was too short. Now I was sure something was coming from the direction of the brambles by the rustling and commotion. The loud grunts. Maybe I’d broke his skull when I walloped him with the gunny sack weighted with a can of beans and a jar of white lightning. And he was writhing in a death agony in the berry bushes. I grabbed a stout faggot from the smoldering coals in the fireplace and poked my head around the corner of the cabin. Even in the encroaching dark it was obvious something was shaking the bushes. It had to be Thorny.

“He was dripping blood from his jaw!”

I looked at the stick in my hand. It was smoking. The tip was a red hot coal. If I got close enough, I could poke him in the eye. I dashed across the yard to the shadows of a large lilac bush that Granny had planted there many years ago. I realize that the glowing end of the stick was a dead giveaway and was about to toss it when I heard a sound I was sure Thorny could never make. And I was right.

A large bear stepped into the clearing and poked its nose in the air. I knew enough to bury my leavings when I was done eating for the day. But I figure that Ruthie had left in a huff and didn’t bother to clean up. The bear stretched its neck toward the outdoor kitchen and then stopped because it heard it too. Someone was coming up the trail from next door, and I knew it was Marie. And she wouldn’t see the bear until she was right up on top of it. I had to do something quick, no matter how foolish.

I jumped out of the shadows and brandished my brand while giving as loud and terrible shouts as I could manage. The bear was not impressed. Standing on its hind legs reminded me why it is not wise to confront a bear with a stub of smoldering wood. Even in the dim light I was pretty certain that the red drool dripping from its muzzle was not berry juice.

I waved the stick in front of me anyway. In the process, like a magic wand, the tip of the stick flared up with an angry flame, all that smoldering energy suddenly released. I was surprised, but the bear even more so. It settled back on its haunches and then turned and trotted off like it had never been there. No one would believe it if I’d have told them. Nobody but Marie who had seen the whole thing.

“You sure scared off old Abe,” she said, “He don’t like fire.”

“You know the bear?”

“Oh, sure. He’s been rooting around here for years. He won’t bother you if you don’t bother him.”

“He was dripping blood from his jaw!”

“You sure?” I could see that worried her. She shifted the rifle in her hand and stared in the direction the bear had fled. “What about Thorny?”

“Right over there by the Indian is where he came up on me. He had brought Kovic’s hoods along. Those are the two dead mugs over by your pa’s still. I figure Thorny came to and hearing the gunshots coming from your place made a run for it. Maybe I didn’t hit him as hard as I thought I had.”

“Well, it’s getting dark and we need to take care of other business.”

“The only business I can think of is me leaving here, and in a hurry.”

“No. I got to run my pa over to Doc Gallup to see after his wound. And there are two bodies that need taking care of.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You brought the mess. You have to help clean it up.”

“What, you want me to bury them?”

“No. We’ll take ‘em over to Middle Lake and dump them there.”

“Middle Lake?”

“Nobody’ll ever find them.”

It was like she’d done it before. She had it all worked out. I would cart the bodies down to their dock and load them in her pa’s skiff while she took him to see the local sawbones.

“That could take all night. What if Thorny comes back with reinforcements?”

She handed me the rifle. “You know how to use this, don’t you?”

I could have just as well taken off. Why should I care about the bodies? I planned to be long gone. I should have never listened to Ralphie Silver and agreed to take the job of looking for Kovic’s hophead daughter. I had to get my revenge after what he did to me. But that led me to Rebecca and the diamonds. And Al’s sister, the Empress’s Cucumber, the Thieves Of Bombay. My life was beginning to sound like one of Max’s crazy adventures. But Max, why hadn’t I thought of Max? All of a sudden it was all beginning to make sense.

Kovic’s mugs were dead weight. There was no way I was going to carry the bodies over my shoulders. I rummaged around the moonshiner’s shed by the light of a kerosene lamp, on the lookout for any booby traps, until I found a canvas tarp covering an old flatbed heap. I rolled the first body into the folds and dragged it down to the boat dock. The lake was calm and quiet and the sound of the body bouncing against the gunnels echoed across the expanse. I had a bit of a struggle getting the bear trap off the other one’s leg, but he was a smaller guy and he dragged real easy.

Once I got both the corpses settled, I took time for a cigarette from the pack I liberated from one of the thugs. “I Smoked A Dead Man’s Smokes” I thought sounded like a good story that might appear in one of those men’s magazine, depending on what you thought “smoke” stood for. He wouldn’t have any use for them anymore. For a couple of gunsels on Kovic’s payroll, they were surprisingly light in the money clip. Maybe they were hoping to replenish the dosh by icing me. Whatever the reason, it was mine now. If they weren’t going to be found, what difference did it make.

I’d finished two cigarettes and I might have closed my eyes a bit because Marie startled me when she called my name. “Stan?” I had been thinking about Thorny. He was a loose end, and still a danger if he got his wits about him. But first things first.

Besides I was the spitting image of Uncle Ned who I had just learned was probably my father and with whom she had been madly in love.

Marie fired up the outboard motor and steered out across the calm night lake waters, the bodies slumped at our feet. It had been a while since I thought of the size of Little Lake, a long narrow stretch of water that ended three quarters of a mile at the far end at a dam and spillway into Middle Lake. The last few rains had brought the lake levels up and the spillway roared even over the puttering of the outboard.

The moonshiner’s daughter angled the boat out of the strong current and touched the deserted finger of beach above the dam. The swarm of mosquitos weren’t as bad as during the late summer evenings she claimed, but it didn’t mean they were absent. I could hear them divebombing, looking for any patch of exposed flesh which on Marie was plentiful. It didn’t seem to faze her. And when I slapped the back of my neck where it felt like a squadron of them had landed, she laughed. “Penny Royal, that’s what keeps ‘em away.” And she slapped at a bare arm, “Most of ‘em, anyway.” She help me drag the bodies to the overlook and drop them down the chute. They were swallowed by the dark and the churning froth at the bottom. We didn’t say much to each other as we looked out over the dark distance of the swamp that was Middle Lake. It wasn’t until we were half way across the lake that she thought to say something. “When I said pa never did shoot nobody, I lied a little. But the ones he did was before my time, mostly city bootleggers. His first wife. Her boyfriend. All swamp meat for the skeeters.”

I was exhausted so I didn’t resist when Marie invited me into her bed. I’d once teased her about the boys at her school. “They’re only after one thing.” But she did admit to kissing one or two. “Just a peck, never a bushel” she says mischievously. Then on second thought, “Well, almost never.” I was her first man, the others were just boys. Besides I was the spitting image of Uncle Ned who I had just learned was probably my father and with whom she had been madly in love. I was road tested and put through my paces. After all that, I had no problem dropping off to sleep. And she woke me at first light to say she was going to retrieve her pa who’d spent the night in Doc Gallup’s surgery.

I figure I’d be making tracks as well, and she walked with me to where I’d left Ned’s motorcycle in front of Granny’s cabin. I knew what she was thinking and I was going to have to say no. A wisp of mist rose over the lake’s waters and the cool air was little respite from what promised to be another scorcher. Morning light seeped through the branches of the trees and illuminated the wooded glade the cabin occupied. The Indian was still standing and the gunny sack I had walloped Thorny with, both the can of beans and the jar of shine, no worse for the wear. I didn’t detect any brains on it. The clout had just knocked him out. From the corner of my eye I caught the gleam of metal at the edge of the path to the berry patch. It was Thorny’s pistol.

“Did you lose a shoe?”

I could see what Marie was pointing to, a man’s scruffy half boot, and just up from it I made out a shape that didn’t belong to the bramble. Two and two were coming together to make sense. This was exactly the spot where the bear was fussing about when I’d come back looking for Thorny. I thought he’d run off when his pals hadn’t come back after all that gunfire. I was wrong.

I hunched down next to the body to get a closer look, Thorny was obviously better than dead, he was, in fact, the deadest of all.

A thin gold chain with a charm depicting a candleholder, what Granny used to call a chamberstick, was wrapped up with the hundred dollar bill.

Marie crouched beside me. She had come to a similar conclusion. “I can’t believe old Abe did this. He must be getting senile.”

“That’s what it looks like.” His jugular had been severed and he’d bled out. I stepped away from the body and back into the clearing near where Thorny and I had had our last encounter. Splotches of blood were visible in the dirt and weeds leading up to the bramble where the body lay.

I pointed to where the trail of blood began. “He must have run into the bear here. The question is, how long was the bear in the brambles? Was it before Thorny highjacked me? Not that much time passed between when I knocked him out and Kovic’s thugs started shooting and chased me and then ran into you and your pa. If I had to guess, I’d have to say that the bear was there at the time of the first shots fired. It probably scared him and he attacked the first thing he came upon. Thorny.”

Marie gave a little squeal. “Oh, this is just like in one of those William Powell movies!”

“But here’s the problem. The amount of blood at the beginning of the trail is just a few smears and globs.” I didn’t want to get too technical with her. “So I’d say his throat was slashed after he started bleeding. Because where he fell the ground is soaked with blood.”

“What does that mean?”

I crouched down next to the body again. “We’re assuming that the bear did this. One swipe with his big claws slices the artery in his neck. But if you look closer at the wound, it’s not as big as you’d expect, not bear claw big anyway. And besides he’s been shot.”

“Shot. How can you tell?”

I pointed to his chest. “That is a bullet wound. And for all I know, so is the one in his neck, the one that made sure he was dead.” I reached into the breast pocket of his shirt and fished around. “Those fools were firing blind in the dark. They missed me and got him. That, or it was the bear.” I pulled out a folded bill. It was a C note. The C note Kovic owed me. It took the long way around and it finally got to me.

“What’s that?”

A thin gold chain with a charm depicting a candleholder, what Granny used to call a chamberstick, was wrapped up with the hundred dollar bill.

“A necklace. You want it?”

She jerked away, repulsed, and then just as quickly brought it closer for a better look.

“That’s her charm necklace, the candleholder!”

“Whose?”

“Judge Chandler’s daughter, my friend, Sissy!”

Finding Sissy’s necklace opened a can of worms. First, Marie was dumbstruck and began tearing up.

“How could I have been so stupid!”

I tried to console. “It’s not your fault.”

“It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

It had been a while since anyone thought my nose was plain. It has been bumped, tweaked, bent, target of not a few fists, and, as a result, broken. It probably stopped being plain around the time I turned thirteen.

“All those girls. The ones that went missing. Year after year. Some were thought drowned, some just were missing, runaways to the big city. I knew a lot of them. Or knew of them because they had, well, you know, a reputation. And I’ll bet they’d all gone on a ride with Thorny!”

I could have said that the evidence was circumstantial, but she didn’t want to hear that. I let her rage. She jumped to her feet, using words that I didn’t think she knew, spit at the corpse, and then kicked it before running off sobbing. Her parting words were, “I’ve got to go get pa.”

Who am I to step on a man’s dream?

I was left with another body to dispose of. I didn’t think it would be wise to ferry it over to the Middle Lake dam in broad daylight. And I was itching to be gone. I hiked up to the road and down to where Thorny’s heap was parked. I figured the gray coupe behind it belonged to Kovic’s men. I started up the constable’s green ragtop and drove it on the overgrown track to Granny’s and eased it down the hill till I was even with the berry bushes. Thorny was dead weight but I was inspired to get what I had in mind done. I tied him to the steering wheel with an old rope I found in the backseat and released the handbrake. The wheels rolled about half a turn before stopping. I put my shoulder to the rear bumper. That did the trick. The green Ford started slowly down the hill toward the lake. Then it picked up speed, hurtling toward the dilapidated dock. It was going to be a tight squeeze between the dock and the big boulder at the bottom and I worried it might get trapped before the jalopy hit the water. Gravity took its course and sent the motor carriage up the side of the boulder, somersaulting into the lake with an impressive splash. I didn’t waste any time watching Thorny begin his descent to the bottom of Little Lake, a little lake but a deep one.

I buzzed into Ridley in no time and met no one on the road with the exception of a few farmers and their horse carts. I recognized one as Three Fingers McGee headed over to open his farm stand who craned his head slowly in disbelief as I sped past. I was in a hurry to get away from the lakes. If the city was hell, this place was worse.

The grease monkey at the Livery Stables wasn’t too sure what I meant when I said I was leaving the Indian Scout with him, and he should talk to Ruthie about buying it. I didn’t mention that by rights I was the rightful heir to old Ned’s property. And I told him he didn’t have to worry about getting any grief from Thorny. Ever. I bided my time by the soda machine and listened to him tell me the story of his life and what it was like growing up hereabouts, telling me how he’d always had a crush on Ruthie even though she was older and married with kids. I didn’t say anything. Who am I to step on a man’s dream?

Finally the bus from Big Lake made a stop and I got on. I might have looked a little rough but the bus was near empty and I dragged my satchel to the rear and stretched out across two seats. The can of beans weren’t going to do me any good, but the jar of clearlight would ease my traveler’s bones. I had a half pack of expensive foreign cigarettes and an unexpected hundred dollar bill. I thought of Marie. I thought of Rebecca. I thought of Grace. I didn’t have much luck with women. Maybe I wasn’t trying enough. But I didn’t have time for any entanglements. I had to concentrate on my plan to flee the country and leave the cops, the feds, the mob, the diamond syndicate, the Thieves of Bombay far behind. Getting a passport and a new identity was next on the list.

The driver honked his horn a couple of times and then slowed down and pulled to a stop at the edge of the highway. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if he hadn’t shouted, “You’re going to get yourself killed standing in the middle of the road like that, young lady!”

I knew the sound of the voice that was going to answer.

Next Time: Back Into The Frying Pan

Contents Vol. 3 No. 5

July 25, 2023Crime Fiction, Pulp Fiction, Steampunk Fiction, Western FictionA Detective Story, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Better Than Dead, Colin Deerwood, Crime Fiction, Dime Pulp, Hard Boiled Fiction, Pulp FictionNuallain House, Publishers

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Five of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

This issue of Dime Pulp, the Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine is exclusively devoted to Better Than Dead, A Detective Story, featuring private detective Lackland Ask, aka Stan Gardner, aka Sam Carter, on the run again when he learns that his bucolic hideaway in the Three Lakes area is also where his nemesis, mob boss Yan Kovic, aka Mr. K, is ducking the feds. Now it is even more imperative that he make himself scarce, especially after a crooked local constable in league with Mr. K’s hoods try to finish him off. In the meantime, thanks to the moonshiner’s daughter and a lusty cousin, he learns a surprising revelation about his paternity. And what about those dead girls that keep washing up on the shores of Big Lake? Read more in the extended bonus episodes of Better Than Dead, Dime Pulp’s longest running serial fiction.

Phyllis Huldarsdottir’s steampunk Cheése Stands Alone, and Pierre Anton Taylor’s crime fighting Just Coincidence, will return in the next issue of Dime Pulp.

FYI: Available for readers of Dime Pulp who may have missed a few issues or lost the thread of a serial, Dime Pulp Yearbook 21, featuring the novels (The Last Resort and Better Than Dead) and the short fiction (Hard Boiled Myth and Gone Missing) of Volume One’s 12 issues, is joined by Dime Pulp Yearbook 22, featuring the complete pulp Western, On The Road To Las Cruces, continuing episodes of a detective story, Better Than Dead, the opening chapters of new serial novels, Just Coincidence and Cheése Stands Alone, the short fiction of Hard Boiled Myth and Polka Dot Dress, as well as Dropping A Dime’s pithy pulp observations. Volume Two’s 10 issues are available for perusal in their entirety by simply clicking on the links in this paragraph or on the menu bar above.

If you’ve made it this far, go ahead and follow the link below to reading entertainment with the serial contents of Volume Three, Number 5

Special Note: Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine has changed its posting schedule from monthly issues to once every forty-five days. Thus Volume Three will consist of eight issues (much to the relief of the overworked writers and production staff). Thank you for your understanding.

—Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

“Lackland Ask is the name. ‘Lack’ to my friends, ‘Don’t’ to those who think they’re funny. You might have seen my portrait on the cover of Black Mask, the crime fiction magazine. This is my story. It starts with a blonde. This kind of story always starts with a blonde.” Thus begins the seemingly non-stop, endless narrative of Better Than Dead in which women are not the only trouble although most of it, told with the wit and street savvy of Runyon and Parker.

Better Than Dead—27

In March of 1892, a Scotsman by the name of Arthur C. “Artie” Doyle was hanged by the neck until dead after being found guilty of a string of grisly murders of prostitutes in Whitechapel. At that moment, history veered off its presumed course and headed in a direction all its own in which the Great War never happened because the Kaiser was afraid of offending his grandmother, Queen Victoria, whose life has been prolonged by the wonders of biology. Her reign, known as the Pax Victoriana has lasted 180 years maintaining as many Victorian airs as possible while making accommodations to rapid advances in bio technology. Cheése Stands Alone poses a steampunk question, can Captain Lydia Cheése (pronounced “Chase”) find her father, the antigovernment turncoat and radical, Commodore Jack “Wild Goose” Cheése. And furthermore, will her quest take her around the globe and through alternate world histories in the requisite 80 days or is it the beginning of a lifelong journey?

Cheése Stands Alone IX

In Just Coincidence, a privileged young man with the unremarkable name of Wayne Bruce returns to the site where his father once had his business, a battery manufacturing plant, and where he often spent his childhood days hanging around the factory and the neighborhood. His return is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding his father’s death and the vague feeling that his uncle is somehow involved. Appalled by the poverty and crime of the place he remembers fondly, he is moved to resolve the injustice of the socially marginalized and to wreak vengeance on those he believes are responsible for the death of his father. A personal coincidence brings together dark prince and dark knight joined in a fateful and tragic quest for justice.

Welcome to Volume Four, Number Three of Dime Pulp,A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Four, Number Two of Dime Pulp,A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Four, Number One of Dime Pulp,A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Eight of Dime Pulp,A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Is there a sequel in the making? Featuring The Red Empress, The Blindman, The Owl, and Mr. K? Stay tuned to Dime Pulp, The Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine!

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Seven of Dime Pulp,A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Next Time: The Owl Unmasked

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Six of Dime Pulp,A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Next Time: Back Into The Frying Pan

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Five of Dime Pulp, A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Four, Number Three of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Four, Number Two of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Four, Number One of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Eight of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Seven of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Six of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.

Welcome to Volume Three, Number Five of Dime Pulp,
A Serial Pulp Fiction Magazine.