JOHN LOCKE, Editor – City of Numbered Men: The Best of Prison Stories.

Off-Trail Publications, trade paperback; 1st printing, January 2010.

   Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s it was actually possible to find and build up extensive collections of many rare pulp titles. Most readers and collectors were aware of only the SF pulps (and pulps which printed early SF like Argosy and All Story), and the hero pulps like The Shadow, Doc Savage, G-8, The Spider, etc.

   There wasn’t a lot of competition for other pulps back then, and I managed to find many of the Harold Hersey magazines not many other collectors were looking for — magazines such as Ace-High, Cowboy Stories, Danger Trail, and of course one of the most fascinating titles, Prison Stories.

   Now of course it is very hard indeed to find such rare pulps as Danger Trail and Prison Stories. But we are fortunately living in the age of print on demand reprint collections. Now within a matter of weeks, it is possible to publish a collection of pulp stories with all sorts of interesting editorial comments in the form of original research articles.

   Another example of this trend is a new book which I have just received in the mail from John Locke, publisher of Off-Trail Publications, a pulp reprint line of books. The title is City of Numbered Man: The Best of Prison Stories. It is a very handsome large paperbound volume of 274 pages, priced at $20.00.

   You may order it from amazon.com, Adventure House, or Mike Chomko Books. It also is available from John Locke directly using Paypal by contacting directly at offtrail@redshift. com.

   The book consists of 12 stories reprinted from Prison Stories, all dating from 1930 to 1931, including a long novelet “Big House Boomerang.” These stories alone would make the collection a must buy, but there also is a 15 page article about the history of the magazine entitled “Imprisoned Pulp,” by John Locke.

   John has also included a 34 page biography, “Harold Hersey: Tales of an Ink-Stained Wretch,” and in addition, we have 7 pages of notes on the authors, an index, and 20 pages of letters from ex-cons and lovers of prison fiction, reprinted from the crumbling pages of the magazine itself.

   I repeat, if you are a lover of pulp fiction, then this is a must have volume. John Locke has done around 20 of these reprint books and we need to show our support so that he will continue this worthy cause. This book gets my highest recommendation.