"Shanghai Jim" -- Frank L. Packard (SHANGHAI JIM, 1928)

Perhaps best known for his novels following the adventures of Jimmie Dale, "The Gray Seal," a gentleman-thief who broke laws to enact a greater good, Frank L. Packard also wrote extensively about railroads, exotic South Seas adventure, and the seedy criminal underbelly of New York City.  Several of his stories have been filmed; most notably, his novel The Miracle Man was filmed to great effect as a silent in 1919 featuring the great Lon Chaney, Sr. as a "cripple" healed by the con artist healer to convince others of his power.  A remake was filmed in 1932 starring Silvia Sidney and Chester Morris.  Today's story eschews railroads and New York City dives in favor of the simmering heat of the South Pacific.  Originally published in magazine form in 1912, the story "Shanghai Jim" was first published in book form in 1928 in the collect of the same name.

Bob Kenyon has found three enormous, flawless pearls, and with them, he's told, trouble.  His partner in the pearling business, a lean, bearded New Zealander named Captain Watts is wary of the pearls, knowing that the nearest port, on the island of Illola, is a cess-pool of criminals and lowlifes who would cut his and Kenyon's throats in a heartbeat if they knew about the pearls.  Unfortunately, Illola is also home to the closest good, square dealer in and appraiser of pearls, a bearded man known as Old Isaacs.  

Once Old Isaacs gives his opinion that the pearls should be taken to New York at once to get their full value, Kenyon goes ashore on a different mission - he's looking for Shanghai Jim, the evil bastard who murdered his brother years earlier.  His hunt on land unsuccessful, Kenyon returns to the boat - and finds Shanghai Jim standing over Captain Watts' corpse, a bloody knife in his hands.  A struggle ensues, and when the authorities arrive, all they find is Bob Kenyon, bloody knife in his hand and the pearls in his pocket.  Now Bob Kenyon has to convince the authorities that he's innocent and that Shanghai Jim murdered Captain Watts -- when the authorities believe Shanghai Jim has been dead for years...

"Shanghai Jim" almost feels like two stories in one; Packard spends a lot of time building up and laying his cards on the table regarding the pearls and Watts' concerns and Old Isaacs' examination of them.  After this we get a short bridge with Kenyon wandering from dive bar to dive bar looking for Shanghai Jim, and then the second story picks up with Watts' murder and follows Kenyon's efforts to escape the frame-job Jim has pulled on him.  We also get something of a how-dunit, because there's some effort to understand how Shanghai Jim found out about the pearls.  Packard feeds us a whole catch of perfectly plausible red herrings to keep us on our toes, and he finally reveal is fantastic, albeit abrupt.  

If I had to find fault in "Shanghai Jim," it's the way the story just kind of throws things at us to see what sticks.  There's a romantic angle where the daughter of the British colonial administrator is Kenyon's ex-girlfriend, whom he lost over a tragic misunderstanding years earlier; they reconcile while sitting in the dark waiting for Shanghai Jim to show up, and this kind of had me rolling my eyes; the story just kind of bogs down in them telling each other what they perceived as having happened that fateful day, and what actually happened, and the tension that should be building as Kenyon waits for Jim, knowing that at any minute the police could burst in after him, just fizzles out entirely and never wholly returns.

"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.