I’m a big fan of the pulp era novels. My favorite character from that time is The Shadow, followed by Doc Savage.
But another one of my favorite crime-fighters of that era is The Spider. He was Richard Wentworth, a wealthy New Yorker who fought crime as a masked vigilante. Unlike other crime-fighters of that era, The Spider had no qualms about killing criminals outright. When he did, he’d take his lighter, which had an emblem of a spider engraved on it, dip it in the criminals blood and stamp the criminal’s forehead, leaving the mark of The Spider.
Like Lamont Cranston, aka The Shadow, Richard Wentworth had a girlfriend, Nita Van Sloan, who got involved with his adventures, often falling into the hands of the villains and needing rescuing. Unlike the other pulp heroes of the time, The Spider often got battered around and spent time being injured. When this happened, Nita would go out as The Spider to fight crime, something Margo Lane (the Shadow’s girlfriend) wouldn’t have done.
Anyway, we were at the local used bookstore recently. I had several boxes of books to sell to them. As I was putting my boxes on the counter I happened to look at the stack of books the clerk was valuing for another customer. In the middle of the stack were two books of the Spider’s adventures, each containing two complete novels.
I asked if they had been priced yet and the clerk told me they’d be priced soon. I told him when they were priced I’d be interested in them. He told me that they had four more Spider books on the shelves a few days earlier.
I went to the section of the store and found the other four Spider novels. Sweet!
Half an hour later I heard my name go over the store P.A. system, saying my offer for my three boxes of books was ready. I went to the buy counter and got my offer. I asked about the two Spider novels and the guy plucked them off the cart of books to be shelved. Six Spider books – twelve novels in all – score!
A good book day indeed.
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