Detective Stories

What if someone were to combine the sinister Fu Manchu school of pulp melodrama with Mickey Spillane’s hard-fisted private eye bravura? Someone did, and his name was Robert E. Howard. In Howard’s detective stories, the darkest alleys of the Big City teem with scheming masterminds and bizarre cults from the Far East. Opium dens and deserted warehouses conceal the strongholds of warlords who would resurrect the bloody empires of Genghis Khan and Kali, Goddess of Death. Only three men, modern-day Conans armed with .45s and blackjacks, stand in their way.

Steve Harrison

In an unnamed port city where the sun never shines, brawny police detective Steve Harrison patrols the unquiet slums and dives of River Street. Murders and Tong wars are everyday occurrences that he takes in his stride. When the city wants to make life really difficult for Harrison, it offers up Erlik Khan, the Lord of the Dead, the last emperor of the Mongols, from whose underground lair stream the commands that will make Erlik the dread master of the world. In between his skirmishes with Erlik, Harrison finds little rest. An assignment to Texas dumps him into an open grave amid the hungry fangs of the Graveyard Rats. On a job in the Southern bayous, he wonders which enemy is more dangerous – the cleaver-wielding murderer whom he has trailed into the swamp or the voodoo cult of the Serpent, in whose grisly intrigues he becomes entangled.

Brent Kirby and Butch Gorman

Private detective Brent Kirby is lithe and quick on the trigger; his partner Butch Gorman is a big, red-haired Texan who carries a Bowie knife. Like Steve Harrison, they have a knack for tangling with macabre cults from the Far East. Hired to protect a beautiful girl’s frightened uncle, they step into a showdown with the stranglers of Kali, the Black Goddess, over possession of the fabled Treasure of Akbar. On another case, a feud born in the downfall of Khartoum ignites a pitched battle fifty years later between the private eyes and the fanatical Sons of Hate.