Forbidden Gold

The short novel FORBIDDEN GOLD originally appeared in the October 1935 issue of FIVE-NOVELS MONTHLY, one of L. Ron Hubbard's regular contributions to that adventure fiction pulp. Hubbard must have liked the name Kurt Reid, because that's what the protagonist of this yarn is called, and it's also the hero's name in SPY KILLER, reviewed elsewhere on this page. I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to be the same guy.

This Kurt Reid is a pilot who stands to inherit a fortune from his late grandfather (a pretty shady character), but only if he can find a vein of gold located somewhere in the wilds of the Yucatan Peninsula within a certain amount of time. In his efforts to do so, Kurt winds up involved with some other shady characters who can't be trusted, as well as a beautiful blond girl pilot and radio operator. Throw in an ancient Mayan pyramid and a bunch of bloodthirsty natives intent on having Kurt as the guest of honor at a human sacrifice, and you've got a rip-roaring, very entertaining story in the classic adventure pulp style.

Arctic Wings

I hadn't read a Northern in a while and was in the mood for one, but this short novel by L. Ron Hubbard (originally published in the June 1938 issue of the pulp FIVE NOVELS MONTHLY) isn't a Gold Rush/fur trapping/frontier story like I expected. Instead it's an adventure yarn contemporary to the time it was published, featuring radium mining, payroll robberies, and Mounties who fly planes and engage in aerial dogfights rather than mushing around with snowshoes and dogsleds.

Bob Dixon is a flying Mountie who's feared by criminals throughout the north country because of his inflexible devotion to the law and his ruthless manner of carrying it out. His nickname is "Lawbook" Dixon. Nobody knows, however, that he's that way because he was psychologically abused as a child by his father, a martinet of a judge who constantly threatened Bob with the idea that he would become a criminal and come to a bad end.

It looks like this is the case when Bob appears to have shot down a payroll plane, murdering the pilot and the manager of the radium mine for which the payroll was intended and stealing the money. It won't come as a surprise, though, that Bob was framed, and he spends the rest of the novel trying to corral the real culprits and clear his name, helped along the way by a beautiful girl who runs a trading post just north of the Arctic Circle.

This may be my favorite of the Hubbard stories I've read so far. The writing is good, the plot is tight, and there's some nice suspense here and there. The action in the dogfights is easier to follow than in some aviation adventure fiction I've read. Overall I enjoyed ARCTIC WINGS quite a bit. It's a good solid pulp action yarn.