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The lost Spider novel, one left over when the pulp magazine was canceled with the December, 1943 issue. Pulp historian Will Murray gives a brief history of the manuscript in his
introduction. It languished in the files until someone smuggled a photocopy out and it was published by a small outfit called Python Books in 1979 as LEGEND IN BLUE STEEL. All traces of the Spider were removed, names, everything. He became Blue Steel with a cover left over from the canceled Operator 5 paperback reprints and even a few black-and-white drawings from the Shadow magazine in the back.
People are being murdered all over the city. None seem to be connected, none have any criminal history, and the cops are baffled. Richard Wentworth starts to look into it when a young fellow, an old family friend, is accused of murdering his uncle, the evidence seems strong, and his sister comes to him with a plea for help.
He soon learns of the sinister organization murdering people for hire and setting up an innocent victim sometimes. A shadowy, hooded figure that zealously guards his identity, even going sofar as to murdering customers, his own hired killers, anyone that falls under suspicion.
The Spider cleverly infiltrates the group after several leads are brutally killed right in frint of him, avoids several traps, and comes into a final confrontation with the “boss” in his own lair, the penthouse apartment of Richard Wentworth.
Much better than the changed Blue Steel book. It can be ordered at Moonstone Books. Amazon has it listed, but “temporarily out of stock.” Which means they haven’t gotten copies from Moonstone yet. It’s far uicker if you’re interested to go through Moonstone.
That Blue Steel book is credited to “Spider Page,” so I always assumed it was written by Norvell. Who’s this Donald Cormack guy?
Murray speaks briefly about him in the introduction. He contributed stories to such magazines DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE and STRANGE DETECTIVE MYSTERIES. But it was his tales for TERROR TALES and HORROR TALES under the byline Donald Graham, exactly the kind of weird menace Page produced in the early days.
He was a stopgap measure even as the pulp allotments were cut during WWII, the death knell for that type of magazine. It was scheduled for an issue, byt Page kept churning them out until the end.