Review: Fun 1920s Pulf Fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 10, 2013
There are two stories in the volume.  The twelve chapters of the first book are called stories but they are simply chapters.  In Bulldog Drummond  movies, Bulldog usually deals with mundane matters, a murder here and there, an evil uncle trying to cheat his lovely niece of her inheritance, etc. The stories in this book, set in the 1920s,  deal with a wide spread cadre of Bolsheviks and bomb throwing anarchists whose sole purpose is to destroy English society and the bourgeoisie.  They are led by an evil mastermind whose purpose is to seek profitable gain from the resulting chaos.Hugh Bulldog Drummond is a wealthy but bored decorated soldier  of the Great War.  He places an ad in the newspapers offering his services - "Demobilised officer finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. ... Excitement essential."  Soon he is contacted by a beautiful young women who says she has accidentally stumbled upon a master criminal who has power over her father.  Bulldog decides to look into the matter and soon he is up to his neck in murder, Bolshevik plots and poison dart blowing pygmies.The stories are pure pulp fiction. The hero has no problem using his strength and skills (learned in the Great War) to kill evil doers.  Bulldog may fall into the clutches of the evil doers but they either let him go with a warning or he escapes wondrously.  Bulldog and some of his friends, who he enlists for the excitement, soon set things right.  The master evil ringleader, a man called Peterson,  reappears in the second story for more  of the same.The stories are a fun read with some of the language and vernacular of 1920s England.  Bulldog presents himself as a foppish, inane lay-a-bout to the world of decent society but he is a ruthless killer to the underworld.