10-Story Detective Magazine Cover

About this issue

A man in a blue shirt grips a large red umbrella while a woman in a pink slip clings to his arm, both positioned against a desert landscape under stormy skies. The cover announces three stories, including "The Corpse at the Carnival" and "Homicide Demon," in bold white lettering that promises "10 stories—all different" for a dime. During the 1930s, pulp magazines like 10-Story Detective dominated newsstands by selling serialized crime, horror, and adventure fiction on cheap wood-pulp paper. Their painted covers—often featuring peril, romance, and violence in equal measure—became the visual language that comic books would inherit. These magazines invented or popularized the hardboiled detective, the femme fatale, and the grotesque villain, establishing genre conventions that persisted for decades.

In this issue

• “THE CORPSE AT THE CARNIVAL” by Dwight V. Babcock · serial · p.7
• “LONG-DISTANCE DOOM” by Grant Mason · p.33
• “HOMICIDE DEMON” by Harold F. Sorensen · p.43
• “FATAL EFFIGY” by Benton Greer · p.51
• “JAILBIRD JUSTICE” by Dom Cameron · p.55
• “MAUSOLEUM MISSION” by Paul Adams · p.65
• “SLAUGHTER EPIDEMIC” by Leon Dupont · p.76
• “PLUNDER PACT” by Joseph Dennis · p.85
• “KILLER OF THE CRAGLAND” by Eric Lennox · p.88
• “RAP FOR A RAT” by Chester Brant · p.99
• “ME—CORPSE!” by Russell Bender
• “THE LEAGUE OF PERJURERS” by R. B. S. Davis
• “HELL'S HANDICAP” by Arthur Watts Brown