The Harlequin Horror That Just Won't Die!

Vengeance of the Black Donnellys
Thomas P. Kelley
Toronto: Harlequin, 1962

Winnipeg: Greywood, 1969

Toronto: Modern Canadian Library, 1975

Toronto: Firefly, 1995

Canada's most feared family strikes back from the grave!

Related posts:

A Harlequin Halloween

Another Harlequin Halloween

It's Harlequin Halloween Time!
The Horror! The Harlequin Horror!

A Comic Book Artist's Absurd Murder Mystery

Artists, Models and Murder

Tedd Steele

Toronto: News Stand Library, 1948

141 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Exclamation Marks Abound!

The Soul Eater
Thomas P. Kelley
Uncanny Tales, vol. 2, no. 17 (May 1942)

Thomas P. Kelley bragged that when sitting down to write a novel he had "absolutely no idea what [would] happen, how the plot [would] unfold or how the yarn [would] end." I imagine the same was true when writing shorter pieces. Kelley claimed that he could produce three 4000-word stories a day with no rewrites or revisions.

"The Soul Eater" provides a good example of his galloping style. Anything that might slow the onward charge is brushed aside as "difficult to pen," a thing that "defies description". Elements that perhaps should have been mentioned earlier are treated thusly:

There was that one matter – that one important matter I have hitherto omitted – the wondrous flash and glitter that sparked the sky, and which we had plainly seen the previous evening – a glorious glitter of indescribable beauty, rising to the heavens and awe-inspiring – like the scintillating wonders of a thousand sunsets!

Typical Kelley, the plot is stereotypical pulp fiction. It's premise will be familiar to millions. The narrator, Prof John Carruthers, records his story while holed up in a New England mansion. Exactly ten years earlier, with the aid of a large inheritance and a map left by a Chinese mystic, he set out for the Gobi Desert in search of the Valley of Diamonds, "often discussed by the Ancients of China" and, I add, readers of Marvel comics.

Accompanying Carruthers' are a promising young archeologist, a disgraced sea captain and Ace Morgan, a boozing boxer who coulda been a contender. There is hardship to be endured, but things really go wrong when they near the valley and Carruthers has a wet dream. Or has he been visited by a succubus? Never mind. He awakens to find the sea captain missing!

"Captain Farley!" I ejaculated. "He's – he's gone!"

Convinced that the captain has been abducted by someone or something from the valley, the remaining members of the team race onward to find Farley dead. The archeologist is next to disappear, but he's soon discovered alive in an ancient temple:

   In the centre of that mighty hall was a raised, altar-like dais of stone, across which lay the bound body of young Reid. And standing over him, a wild joy of triumph lighting her features, was a naked, yellow-skinned woman, of such a weird, indescribable, barbaric beauty, as to be almost terrifying!
   A tall, nude yellow-skinned woman whose glorious body, in the glow of two nearby torches, seemed as living gold, that flowed and rippled in symmetrical motion with her every movement. A tumbling mass of wavy, jet black hair, fell almost to her ankles. Her shapely breasts, large and firm, seemed as living, yellow globes, and were adorned only with the two huge diamonds clasped to their high tips. And even as we made our silent entrance, she threw back her head in a wild, barbaric laugh, that revealed her white teeth; to gloat over the helpless man before her, then speak in the tongue of ancient China – a language I understood.
   "And so, now you know, rash intruder. Yes, I am Su-Ella, Queen of The Black Star, who comes from that distant world at irregular periods to seek my victims here, and fears only the sunlight. How I am able to pass through the dark, cold wastes of space is a secret known to me alone!"

Next thing you know, Su-Ella is hovering over the young man in bondage and, "her nude breasts rising and falling, her shapely body quivering with desire," sucks his soul from his mouth. Professor and pugilist both take flight. Of the two, Ace proves the faster runner – perhaps because Carruthers can't help but be distracted by Su-Ella's hot bod – and yet it's Ace who gets it: "With arms whipped tightly around him her naked body crushing his". Still running, Carruthers hears "a gurgling, moist and bubbling sound" and turns to see the former boxer "limp in her arms". Just when it looks like Carruthers himself will go flaccid, dawn breaks, the evening is over, and Su-Ella flies away.

Sue Ellen

A mistake in Kelley's story is that Su-Ella is really quite regular. One minute she's telling the men of her  "irregular periods", the next she's on about how she swings by every ten years. Gentlemen, set your watches. A decade having passed, the procrastinating professor scrambles to get down his story:

I must write faster – faster! The hands on the nearby clock are both well on to four o'clock in the morning, and I must finish my story. Already the first streaks of gray are beginning to creep up in the eastern sky. But that same gray not only heralds the approaching dawn – it – it heralds my death! It heralds my ending in a manner so utterly and unthinkably horrible as to be brain-reeling!

Students who have pulled all-nighters will recognize this panic.

     And as I write I wonder. Could it be that she can find me, even in this distant land? It is possible that even at this late hour her hellish power could bring her to me, or me to her? I wonder if – if –
     What – what's that I hear? It sounds like the flapping of wings! It – it is wings! Yes it is – and they are coming closer – closer to the open window. In the name of sanity – oh! oh, my God – what's coming through the wind—

FIN

There is one matter – one important matter I have hitherto omitted – the valley was indeed filled with diamonds. 

Personal note: Kelley's ending took me back to my student days, time served as a clerk in two Montreal video stores, and this image from Media Home Entertainment's packaging for Sleepaway Camp:

A second note: Following last year's post on The Queers of New York, this marks the second time that I've reviewed a work that is not in my collection. I have Wollamshram of Wollamshram's Blog to thank for sending "The Soul Eater" my way.

Thomas P. Kelley: He Kept Finding Cleopatra

Weird Tales
November 1938

Yarns
July 1941

Uncanny Tales
July 1941

I Found Cleopatra
Thomas P. Kelly [sic]
Toronto: Export, 1946

I Found Cleopatra
Thomas P. Kelley
Linn, OR: Fax Collector's Editions, 1977

The King of the Canadian Pulps Bowdlerized

The Fabulous Kelley
Thomas P. Kelley, Jr.
Richmond Hill, ON: Pocket, 1968

The Fabulous Kelley
Thomas P. Kelley, Jr.
Toronto: General, 1974

Thomas P. Kelley crowned himself "King of the Canadian Pulp Writers", so there should be no surprise that he considered his father a monarch amongst medicine men.

Who knows, maybe he was

From 1886 until his death forty-five years later, Kelley, père – a charismatic farm boy from Newboro, Ontario – operated the traveling Shamrock Concert Company. If Kelley, fis, is to be believed, their shows attracted crowds numbering 12,000 and more, bringing in many millions of dollars.

The Fabulous Kelley is typical of the author's non-fiction writing in that it contains nothing in the way of endnotes, references or bibliography. It's also atypical, standing out as the most polished of his many titles. Credit could go to the editors at Pocket Books, whom one might expect were more strict than those of previous publishers Harlequin, Arrow Publishing and News Stand Library, but I'm sentimental enough to believe that Kelley made an extra special effort here.

This is the story of a beloved father told by his son. Thomas P. Kelley, Sr., was indeed an extraordinary and unusual man. He was also a charlatan. In the 208 pages of the Pocket edition junior remains blind to this fact, all the while providing damning evidence. His greatest and only defence is that Dad never wavered in maintaining that he was superior to all others. Here papa medicine man is confronted by a disgruntled Oklahoma undertaker:

   "We had a medicine man pass through here about three years ago. He came with a horse and wagon and peddled some worthless fluid he advertised as 'Snake Oil'. He called himself Professor Logan."
   "I've heard of him,"was the other's answer. "Logan is a fraud, a cheap pitchman working solo. He's not a medicine man."
   "Oh, then there's a difference?" and there was a tinge of sarcasm in the other's quietly spoken words. "How interesting. Pray tell me, just how much difference is there between a pitch man and a medicine man?"
   Doc Kelley, one hand on the doorknob, turned and shot a glance at those pallid features and asked: "The woman who answered the door is your wife?"
   "She is."
   "Have you seen a photo of the famous beauty , Lily Langtry?"
   "I have."
   "There is that much difference..."

This exchange, my favourite, is not found in General Publishing's 1974 reprint. In fact, the latter publisher cut over 30,000 words, something approaching half of the original text. Here we have an odd instance in which a hardcover edition bowdlerizes a paperback original. What makes this even more unusual is the fact that the 1984 edition of The Fabulous Kelley marks the first and only time in which Thomas P. Kelley, Jr. was published in anything other format than paperback.

I've taken some swipes at Kelley in the past, but won't here. Sure, there's a good amount of exaggeration and embellishment in The Fabulous Kelley, but this is easily stripped away to reveal an all too rare glimpse of the medicine show by a man who grew up in its world. General's edition, which is much more common than any other, does a great disservice in ridding itself of things that are verifiable.

Thomas P. Kelley, Sr.

14 April 1865 - 31 April 1931

This is not to say that there isn't superfluous stuff – the junior Kelley does tend to run on, but here I'm happy to let him go. What follows is Thomas P. Kelley's comment on his father's death from a heart attack on 31 July 1931 in the Ontario town of Uxbridge:

So died Thomas P. Kelley, the King of the Medicine Men. Yes, and the medicine-show period died with him. The entertainment that had brought joy to millions throughout North America for more than a hundred years perished with its King.

So ends the General's bowdlerized edition. The Pocket Books edition continues:

Passed into oblivion, its distant glories forgotten, like the flame of a candle blown out with his final breath, Now it was all over; at long last modern times had triumphed and the medicine show days were no more. But it was a triumph which could only be gained by the death of the man with the golden tongue. A death that marked the end of an era.
   And even today the dwindling few old-time medicine show performers continue to tell: "Nature made only one Doc Kelley then threw away the mold." 

- FIN -

Objects: The Pocket Books first edition is an unexceptional mass market paperback, but looks much more attractive than any of the other editions. Credit should go to Peter Max, though I'm betting he had nothing to do with the design.

The oh-so-bland General Publishing edition features a lazy 400-word Introduction by Gordon Sinclair. Yep, he's had a quick look through the book, and is ready to repeat a few tidbits. Consider them spoilers.

General dropped all fifteen Bob White cartoons found in the Pocket first.

Curiously, General also got rid of nearly all photographs of the Pocket edition, replacing them with others that are neither better nor worse.

Access: Bowdlerized or not, The Fabulous Kelley is next to impossible to find in our public libraries and is a rare thing at our universities. The Pocket Books paperback is both uncommon and cheap – the few copies available online can be had for five dollars or less. The General Publishing hardcover is not only much more easy to find, but much more cheap. Good copies can be had online for as little as a dollar. The last edition, published by Paperjacks in 1975, uses General's shorter text (Gordon Sinclair's snoozy Intro included). It's easy to find and cheap... but really, it's the Pocket mass market you'll want.

Young Tom Kelley, King of the Canadian Pulps

A portrait of the artist as a young man. Here we have Thomas P. Kelley, a very dapper little boy who would grow up to write Bad Men of Canada, No Tears for Goldie , The Gorilla's Daughter and 'The Soul Eater':

A Canadian Bookshelf Conversation

My recent conversation with the charming Julie Wilson. Pulp novels, literary hoaxes, the Edwardian John Glassco, and the neglected and forgotten in our literature – you'll find it all here at Canadian Bookshelf.

Kelley Pulls a Fast One

Bad Men of Canada

Thomas P. Kelley

Toronto: Arrow, 1950

Scott Young, Neil's dad, had a pretty good story about Thomas P. Kelley. It begins with the two men taking a morning stroll on Toronto's Wellington Street. A panicked pulp editor interrupts, offering Kelley good money to deliver a story before noon. Kelley accompanies the man back to the magazine's offices, is given a title – "I Was a Love Slave" – and begins typing. He joins Young for lunch $200 richer.

No blockhead, Kelley wrote for money and he wrote rapidly; there were no second drafts. With fiction, he would sprint with an eye on the word count, coming up with an ending only when approaching the finish line.

Non-fiction didn't offer quite the same freedom. It wasn't that Kelley felt bound by facts, more that he tried to keep them in mind. Bad Men of Canada is a typical of his approach. Short on names and dates, filled with imagined dialogue, the stories are excited and repetitive. Reading Kelley's words is not unlike listening to an old-timer – yes, old-timer – down at the local pub. Here, for example, is the writer's description of American serial killer H.H. Holmes:

Physically, he was a weakling. He had buck teeth, his nose was somewhat flattened, and he had a habit of drooling from the corners of his mouth.

In brief, in appearance, H.H. Holmes was an awful mess! And yet, the gals went for him in a big way! Don't ask me why – your guess is as good as mine!

The inclusion of Holmes, subject of the first of the book's ten chapters, is a cheat. True, the man once visited Toronto – he even stayed long enough to murder two children – but Holmes has about as much to do with this country as Charles Ng. Not all the chapters concern Bad Men of Canada, and the pitch line – "A History of the Ten Most Desperate Men in Canadian Crime" – is just as loose. Just who is the desperate man in chapter four, "Four Bad Men"? And what about chapter two, "The Terrible Donnelly Feud"? Is it one of the Donnellys or a member of the mob that killed them?

It was no surprise to see the Donnellys in this book; Kelley mined their sordid story throughout his career. In fact, he'd included the Donnellys in Famous Canadian Crimes, a collection of his New Liberty Magazine pieces, just one year earlier. There's a good deal more overlap between Famous Canadian Crimes and Bad Men of Canada – overlap that goes far beyond subject. Whole paragraphs are carried over unchanged from one book to the other, while others undergo minor rewrites. "It was a spring morning in 1879 when four desperadoes galloped into the small village of Ashcroft, B.C., with gun blazing," in Famous Canadian Crimes, becomes: "On a bright summer morning in 1879, four desperadoes galloped into the small village of Ashcroft, B.C., with guns blazing."

Spring, summer... who remembers? Anyway, it was a morning.

All this recycling seems a bit disingenuous given Kelley's introduction:

To be sure there are other cases that could have been included in this volume. But a volume allows just so many pages – and just so many cases. If the reader, after perusing this volume would like to read the stories of more Bad Men of Canada, a letter to the publisher might encourage a sequel.

That Kelley, already looking to pull another job.

Favourite sentence: "'Here he comes,' he whispered. 'It's Ryan!'"

Object: A fragile massmarket paperback, typical of its time.

Access: Another Arrow obscurity. No copies are currently listed for sale online. It seems that the only library copy in the world is held at the University of Michigan's William L. Clements Library. "The Clements Library contains a wealth of primary sources for the study of early American history," says the university's website.

The 75-Year-Old Virgin and Others I Acquired

Published in 1935 by les Éditions du Quotidien, a first edition by one of the most important Canadian writers of the twentieth century. I bought Sébastien Pierre this year for ten dollars. A full 75 years after publication, its pages remained uncut. Three of the 23 illustrations featured are revealed here for the first time.

Such a sad commentary on the country's literature, and yet... and yet this same sorry situation enables souls like myself to amass a fairly nice collection of interesting and unusual Canadiana.

Case in point: Thomas P. Kelley's pseudonymous No Tears for Goldie (1950), which was purchased in February for a mere five dollars. No hits on Worldcat, absent from Abe, nothing at all at AddAll.

Rare, bizarre, but not really worth a read.

Of the obscurities reviewed here these past twelve months, the three I most recommend:

The Long November by James Benson Nablo

The Door Between by Neil H. Perrin

Gambling with Fire by David Montrose

These are not great works of literature, but they are engaging and very interesting. Each depicts a dark, disturbing and gritty Canada found in very few novels of their time.

Financially speaking, my best buy was a very nice first edition (my second) of Tender is the Night (sans dust jacket), which I found just last month for $9.50 in a Montreal bookstore. The year's favourite purchase, however, is of negligible commercial value: a 1926 edition of Anatole France's Under the Rose. I came across this at a library sale, flipped through a few pages, and happened to spot the name Peregrine Acland, a subject of ongoing research, stamped ever so discretely in the front free endpaper.

What luck!

Still no luck, I'm afraid, in tracking down Sexpo '69, that elusive novel of lesbian erotica set at Expo 67. Will I never find a copy?

Of course, I will.

A Happy New Year to all!

Pulp and Its Origins

Thomas P. Kelley, King of Canadian Pulps, as imagined by Henry van der Linde

The Globe & Mail, 9 January 1982.

A holiday from the working month of McIntyre today so that I can go on about No Tears for Goldie.

Apologies.

The most interesting thing about the novel is the story of Ginger Daniels, the young widow who turns up ready to work at the brothel. Hers stands out for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that she never actually becomes a prostitute. So, why include this character at all? She arrives, consumes close to a fifth of the novel with her story, then departs, never to be heard from or mentioned again.

What gives?

I think the answer has to do with the author's habit of recycling material. Plainly put, I believe Kelley was reusing material he'd penned for a romance magazine.

In No Tears for Goldie, the working girls encourage Ginger to tell her story. "You needn't tell much of the first part of your life," says Aunt Maggie, "just begin where you met that husband of yours..." And so she does, sweeping the omniscient narrator aside to speak of her love for a young lawyer named Rod, encounters with his shrew of a mother and the attempt to sabotage their wedding. The account, much more detailed than any other part of the novel, runs one full chapter, ending: "I now know that I would never have to worry about his mother again now that Rod was mine forever - and I was happy."

Happy? Happily ever after, it seems... but the narrator returns in the following chapter, and we discover that Rod died in a car accident ten days into the marriage.

Tragic.

On an unrelated matter, I was curious as to whether Kelley used "Jack C. Fleming" for any other works. True, he claimed to have employed thirty pseudonyms, but in a career that lasted nearly five decades, one might expect considerable repetition. Curiously, the only other works I've found attributed to Jack C. Fleming are mid-20th-century editions of another Canadian book, Musson's Improved Ready Reckoner, Form and Log Book, which was once used in calculating measurements for lumber and other products.

Coincidence?

I think not.

Related post: Heart of Goldie

Heart of Goldie

No Tears for Goldie

Jack C. Fleming [pseud. Thomas P. Kelley]

Toronto: Arrow, 1950

Cover copy paints No Tears for Goldie as "the story of poor, little Goldie Clarke who knew all about sex from first hand experience at an age when most girls were thinking about 'coming out' parties or their first prom." It's an odd piece of writing in that it reveals more about her past than is found in the novel. Odder still, Kelley spends much of No Tears for Goldie recounting the histories of the other girls at Goldie's place of employment, "Aunt Maggies [sic]", an early 20th-century San Francisco brothel. There's Tess, who had been "quick to pick up a knowledge of sex from the lowest sources"; Alma, who was seduced by a hobo at age thirteen; and Vera, who lost her looks and became a scrub woman.

The longest of these stories – twenty-one pages in a 123 page novel – belongs to Ginger, a young widow whom Aunt Maggie turns away. "You're a clean kid if ever I saw one," she says, "there's nothing of the whore in you." The working girls all chip in to help give Ginger a new start, but not Goldie. To quote Aunt Maggie a second time, her best girl has "a heart as hard as steel".

As if to prove the madam wrong, Goldie soon falls for Harvey Perry, a wealthy alderman who lives alone in a palatial mansion by the ocean. Within days they make plans to get marry and leave San Francisco. But then Perry dies. And Aunt Maggie dies. And Goldie finds she is pregnant. She gives birth to a boy, leaves him on the doorstep of a wealthy childless couple named Carson, and spends two years wandering the globe before ending up in a Denver brothel.

In the 8 July 1967 Star Weekly Magazine Kelley described his method, writing that when beginning a novel he had absolutely no idea what would happen, how the plot would unfold or how it would all end. I don't doubt there's truth in this – it explains much – but this ending would have been planned.

On the morning of 18 April 1906, Goldie returns to San Francisco with dreams of getting a job as the Carson's maid and so be close to the son she had given up. Before she can set her plan in motion Goldie happens upon Mrs Carson and the boy on the street:

The time was exactly 9.12 a.m. And then a terrific rumble sounded. THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE HAD BEGUN!!

In horror, she witnesses a disaster of biblical proportions:

The street before her was split wide open, in a long and angry gap. She saw humanity plunged into it, to disappear forever. The sky around her was suddenly aglow, with the glare of countless fires!

The din was indescribable!

Mrs Carson is crushed by a boulder. Goldie shelters her son, before both are buried under "a hundred tons of bricks and mortar". In time their bodies are found by a rescue party, who note that Goldie died with a smile on her face:

"...You'd think she almost welcomed death, with her baby in her arms", one remarks. I wonder who she was?"

The death car made its way up the street. The men returned to their work. And Goldie Clarke's tormented soul had found a certain peace!!

THE END

A "profound novel with a message and a purpose", the cover copy concludes. The message? The purpose? Damned if I know.

Trivia: The 1906 earthquake struck at 5:12 a.m., about one hour before Goldie's return to San Francisco... but, hey, No Tears for Goldie is fiction.

Object: A cheaply produced mass market paperback.

The copyright page informs the reader: "This book has been selected for reprint because of its popular appeal and its successful record of sale when originally printed." In fact, this is the first and only edition of the novel; Arrow Publishing placed this notice in all their books. I'm grateful to bowdler of Fly-by-night for confirming my hunch.

Access: No trace on Worldcat, nothing on AddAll, No Tears for Goldie holds the distinction of being the most elusive book yet featured in this blog. I was fortunate to find a copy two months ago for just five dollars.

Related post:

Pulp and its Origins

News Stand Library Cover Cavalcade

As patrons flock to SoHo's Openhouse Gallery to take in cutting edge art commissioned by Harlequin Enterprises, thoughts turn to News Stand Library. The publisher's early rival, New Stand was much more willing to use sex and scandal to sell its wares. In nearly every way, their books were cheaper, nastier and inferior. It makes perfect sense that Harlequin published Brian Moore's first book, while Hugh Garner's second, the pseudonymous Waste No Tears, came from News Stand. And yet, the two competitors did share a few writers, including prolific pulpist Thomas P. Kelley.

The most valuable of all New Stand titles, Kelley's The Gorilla's Daughter – ' OFFSPRING of MAID and MONSTER' – cannot be had in any condition for under C$400. Its cover is more polished than most; a typical example of the publisher's look would be that found on the author's Jesse James: His Life and Death.

The type is ugly and in places difficult to read. Note that the author's name is misspelt, an error found time and again on News Stand covers. Here we have Bentz Plagemann , author of Each Night a Black Desire, identified as Bentz Plageman.

By my count, a dozen covers suffer similar mistakes. Niel H. Perrin is Neil H. Perrin, Murry Leinster is Murray Leinster and Ursula Parrot is good time gal Ursula Parrott. The cover of Alan Marston's Strange Desire reads 'Strange Desires by Alan Malston'.

Other blunders are more curious, and may reveal the true names behind pseudonyms. Just who wrote Private Performance – the Glen Watkins on the cover or the Eliot Brewster credited on the title page? Perhaps the most amusing error is found on the cover of Terry Lindsay's Queen of Tarts, which has the title as 'Quean of Tarts'.

In keeping with the previous post, here are my three all-time favourite News Stand covers. A couple appear to use work produced in a high school art class, but what I find most appealing are the pitch lines above each title. 'Never Will HELL Admit a Gayer Sinner than Laura Warren' reads the first – printed on the cover of a book written by... Laura Warren. An unforgiving editor, perhaps?

Related posts:

About Those Ugly NCL Covers

About Those Awful PaperJacks Covers

Dope, Danger and Dolls

The lure of the lurid. I was hooked when, as a teenager, I came across Lush Lady and The Lady is a Lush next to each other in a used bookstore. Pulps, they were the first titles in a collection that would one day help pay for a move from Montreal to Vancouver.

I was reminded of these titles, lucrative for the collector, by Dope Menace: The Sensational World of Drug Paperbacks 1900-1975, a new book by my pal Stephen J. Gertz. What a pleasure to see these tawdry covers again, with their enticing captions ('A WILD WEEKEND OF JAZZ AND JUNK IN A HOTBED OF SEX'). It's hard to resist these images; they promise so very much. However, as Steve reminds us, these books tease, but seldom deliver. Case in point, Vice Rackets of Soho, which provides the cover image for Dope Menace:

The illustration by Reginald Heade for Vice Rackets of Soho by Ronald Vane (Ernest L. McKeag) with its glorious scene of drug eroticism - a half-naked woman lying supine on a bed in a sheer gown that appears to have been spray-painted on, her head thrown back in ecstasy as she's shot up with junk by a leering miscreant - is a prime example. Though the image suggests artist Heade as a sort of twisted Bernini - the Ecstasy of St. Theresa of Avila as sultry babe meets criminal Christ who plunges His flaming scepter of drug-love deep within her - there is virtually no mention of drugs within the text, nor much sex, for that matter.

Little in the way of sex and drugs... I'm betting the same is true of Frances Shelley Wees' Lost House.

I very much doubt that Mrs Wees, author of the Scholastic paperback Mystery of the Secret Tunnel, wife to the president of omnipresent textbook publisher Gage, wrote much, if anything, about heroin and loose women.

Lost House is one of only two Canadian titles found in Dope Menace, begging the question: Where are our drug paperbacks? This is no oversight on Steve's part. Canada's early mass market publishers all but ignored the money to be had in the lucrative drug paperback trade. Lost House is very nearly unique, and has the further distinction of being Harlequin's second book. The only other Canadian drug pulp - Ronald Cocking's poetic Die With Me Lady - was also brought out by the romance publisher.

Of course, Harlequin wasn't always all hearts, flowers, bosoms and bodices; their history is much more rich and varied. They were the first Canadian paperback publishers of Agatha Christie, W. Somerset Maugham and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Their titles included thrillers, mysteries, westerns, works of science fiction and weird things like Vengeance of the Black Donnellys ('Canada's Most Feared Family Strikes Back from Beyond the Grave') by Thomas P. Kelley. And, as with the pulp houses to the south, the early Harlequin wasn't above using the same deceptive bait - Thomas H. Raddall's historical adventure Roger Sudden was pitched as a 'lusty tale'.

The publisher is currently making a big deal about its 60th anniversary, but you won't find any recognition of the early years. Something to do with branding, I suppose - and yet, Harlequin is so very protective of the very same material they choose to disown.