"Nor Idolatry Blind the Eye" -- Gabriel Hunt (HUNT THROUGH THE CRADLE OF FEAR, 2009)

It's sometimes easy to forget that pulp continues to be written to this day.  Oh sure, there's Indiana Jones, of course, and Clive Cussler's ubiquitous paperbacks can be seen as a successor to the pulp adventure stories of days gone by, but 1930s throwback pulp is apparently the real deal.  There are people writing Shadow and Doc Savage stories to this day, Tarzan pastiches as well, and of course dreaming up new characters from old molds.  One of these is the two-fisted adventurer Gabriel Hunt, created by (surprisingly enough) Charles Ardai, CEO of internet service provider Juno.  The star of a series of novels, dictated by Hunt to various authors, (a nice throwback to how the Shadow stories were told to "Maxwell Grant" by the Shadow) Hunt is an independently wealthy globe-trotter with a woman in ever port and a side-iron that doesn't seem to stay cold for very long.  Today's story originally appeared as a backup feature for the novel Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear in 2009.

Malcolm Stewart used to be a soldier of fortune and an adventurer.  But a few years ago his wife died and he crawled deep into the bottle, drowning his sorrows in whatever cheap booze he could lay his hands on.  When a job offer comes, he sees it as just another source of income for his binges.  But his latest employer, a Mr. Burke, wants him to work dry.

This comes as no surprise, as Mr. Burke's job is one of delicacy and care; Burke was an archaeologist who found what he believes to be the Biblical Golden Calf, despite the Bible's claims that the Calf was ground to dust.  For laying a hand on the calf, the cult guarding it cut off Burke's hand, and for looking at it they sliced off his eyelids and dumped him in the desert to go blind, mad, and die.  Through sheer luck, Burke survived, though in no condition to continue the quest for the Calf.  To that end, he wants to hire Stewart.

Not sure if he believes in the Golden Calf, Stewart does believe in the money Burke has advanced him, and has promised as payment in return for the Calf, but doesn't forget that one of the qualifications that got him the job was "nothing left to lose."

Once in the desert, Stewart discovers the temple and cult guarding the Calf is quite real...and lording over them, invisible but sonorous, is an entity that introduces itself as "brothergod to the Lord you worship, and have been since men first spoke of gods.  I am many-named: men call me Melech, and Molekh, and Moloch; I have been called Legion, and Horror, and Beast, in fifty tongues, and fifty times fifty, but men also call me Father, and Master, and Beloved." Moloch offers Stewart a deal; Stewart's wife will be restored to him, if he will but bow down, and worship Moloch as a "god of might."

And after all, Stewart has nothing left to lose.

This was wonderful.  It read like a more horror-oriented take on INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, with its desert locale, hidden, trap-filled temple and sinister guardian cult -- and even in that an older man who has spent years looking for the icon of religious significance at tremendous cost emotionally and physically is forced to ask a younger, more virile man to take up the quest on his behalf, as Burke does to Stewart, calls to mind Henry Jones Sr.'s lifelong obsession with the Grail and Indiana's desperate race to get the grail to save his life.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a Lovecraftian take on THE LAST CRUSADE, because I don't believe for a second that Lovecraft could have written a word of this; though it does remind me of some of Robert E. Howard's Mythos fiction, in which square-jawed, stalwart toughs are brought face to face with cosmic horror and escape through a mixture of luck and chutzpah.

While Moloch is presented in the story strictly in terms of a Judeo-Christian framework (and its introduction, quoted above, might be the best of its sort I've seen since the Rolling Stones released "Sympathy for the Devil"!), I can't help but suspect that this is a ploy; Moloch, as written, strikes me as something far older than Christianity, or Judaism, or possibly humanity as a whole, something that has learned how to adapt and adopt different personas with different eras to better ensnare the unwary.  Moloch is something like a cosmic anglerfish, a monster that uses its victims' own psychology and worldview against them.  And I love this.  I love the idea of a monstrous "god" that understands psychology and uses that knowledge to lure and corrupt.  Too many times I've seen Cthulhu presented as a slavering tentacled Godzilla, hungry for brains/souls, and I feel this does a disservice to Lovecraft's original concept of the Great Old One.  Moloch, in the tantalizing glimpses we're given in the story, is a Yog-Sothoth or Nyarlathotep figure done right, as far as I'm concerned.

I can't speak for the Gabriel Hunt novels themselves, but I really enjoyed "Nor Idolatry Blind the Eye" and call it worth checking out.

"Off the Mangrove Coast" -- Louis L'Amour (OFF THE MANGROVE COAST, 2000)

Best known as a prolific author of western fiction (having produced eighty-nine novels and fourteen short story collections at the time of his death, with several further collections to be released posthumously, in one of which today's story was first published), Louis L'Amour wrote prolifically across a number of genres, right up to the end of his life - his final novel before his death, The Haunted Mesa, being science-fiction.  Today's story is not one of L'Amour's "frontier stories," nor something as far out as The Haunted Mesa; rather, a story of greed and betrayal, the lack of honor among thieves, set against the crystalline waters of the South China Sea.  One of his later stories, "Off the Mangrove Coast" was found several years after L'Amour's passing in a carbon paper box L'Amour had taken from an aluminum factory in Germany at the end of WWII.  It was initially published in 2000, having not sold to the magazines during his lifetime, in an anthology collection under the same title.

"Off the Mangrove Coast" finds our nameless narrator -- known simply as "Scholar," as he'd brought a few books with him on his journey -- on a stolen yacht in the South China Sea with three unsavory characters from across the globe; Limey Johnson from Liverpool, Smoke Bassett from Port-au-Prince, and Long Jack from Sydney.  They're sailing in search of a sunken freighter Limey Johnson claims knowledge of, drowned with $50,000 in the captain's safe.  Each man dreams of what he's going to do with his share, $12,500...or will it be larger? For as Scholar reflects, "who can say what can or cannot happen in the wash of a weedy sea off the mangrove coast?"

The sunken freighter located, it falls to the Scholar and Limey to dive down for it, they being the only two with experience in a diving suit.  Braving hungry sharks and the inherent dangers in diving in ten fathoms of water, Scholar finds the worst perils are awaiting him back on the ship as he learns who's looking to kill for his share of the treasure...and who will put their life on the line to protect him.

With incredibly taut pacing and a lean, pared-down style, L'Amour has hit this one out of the park.  Add in an exotic locale described evocatively without losing that lean style, a bloodthirsty shark, double-crosses and a ghoulish method of sending a man to his death involving aforementioned shark...this story was a real winner, one of my favorites of the book so far.

The biggest highlight of the story, for me at least, was the climactic fight between Scholar and one of the men (won't tell you who) looking to kill him for his share of the treasure.  Scholar has managed to arm himself with a harpoon, but is hampered by the fact he's still wearing a bulky rubberized diving suit with weighted boots, and his opponent is unhindered and armed with a boat-hook -- which has a much longer reach then the harpoon.  L'Amour gives us a detailed break-down of Scholar analyzing the situation and figuring out how to fight effectively in these conditions, without losing high-octane pace the fight requires to maintain the reader's sense of tension.  It's really a great piece of work.

"Hell Cay" -- Lester Dent (written 1939; previously unpublished)

Well now, here's something a little different.  Lester Dent (1904-1959) is best known as the creator of the superhuman scientist and adventurer Doc Savage, having written 159 Doc Savage novels over the course of 16 years.  Dent also wrote an assortment of other pulp tales, starting with "Pirate Cay" in 1929, and in 1930, he wrote the first draft of what would become today's story, "Hell Cay" (no relation to "Pirate Cay").  Apparently Dent then put the story in a drawer for most of a decade, revising it for publication in 1939.  It never saw publication at the time, however, nor during Dent's lifetime (elements from it did, however, apparently see print in "The Frozen Buddha," a story he sold in 1930).  The story's appearance in The Big Book of Adventure Stories marks "Hell Cay"'s first appearance in print.  It also marks the beginning of the next section in the book, appropriately titled "Island Paradise."

Pete Carse is a man down on his luck.  A former circus strongman turned proprietor of an inter-island airline

Lester Dent, looking the part.

in the Caribbean, the airline's gone bust and he's offering his planes for sale.  "For sale," however, does not mean anyone can just take them, and one night Carse wakes up with a gun pressed against his back and a couple of goons under the command of a giant bastard named Largo trying to commandeer his sea-plane -- the better to smuggle off a scrawny, weather-beaten man they've got captive. Carse manages to wrestle a gun and drive Largo and his men away, leaving the scrawny man behind as they escape in one of Carse's planes.

The guy can do no more than identify himself as "Agile Sharp" and force himself to vomit up a scrap of paper, folded tight and wrapped in rubber, before dying of a gunshot wound taken during the scrap.  Taking the piece of paper, Carse finds a tiny map to a tiny island.

Finding the island proves surprisingly easy for Carse, eager to retrieve his stolen plane.  Once there, he finds Sharp's daughter Theresa, sunburned and eager to avenge her father's death; her companion Jool, a tough-talking giant of a black man; Largo and his gang; and a secluded lagoon filled with a couple hundred years' worth of derelict vessels, the rotting skeletons of their crews still sprawled across their decks.  Jool calls it the work of a devil, and Carse knows he's stumbled into something far greater than a stolen sea-plane...

As much as Dent maintained no illusions about the quality of his work, once famously describing his output as "reams of sellable crap," "Hell Cay" is pretty good stuff.  The plot's a bit threadbare, for sure, and I don't feel like the one-sentence explanation of why Largo was after Sharp in the first place really serves its expository purpose, but such is life, and such is pulp.

What I really liked in the story is the "Devil" at work in the lagoon.  I won't spoil it for you, readers, because it's something to be read and experienced for one's own self, but I will say it's simultaneously wholly believable and the sort of thing Pulp is for.  It's killed hundreds on this tiny, nameless island and it nearly claims our heroes as well.