Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead

August 8, 2011
The three stories reprinted in this volume are solid examples of what passed for thrilling adventures (not coincidentally the name of the pulp fiction magazine in which two of them appeared) in the pre–Indiana Jones days. In the title tale, an expedition to the Pakistan desert to locate the lost loot of Alexander the Great erupts in murder and mayhem when greed gets the better of its members. “Price of a Hat,” set in revolutionary Russia, concerns a Cossack hat that carries a secret so significant a dozen people die trying to acquire it. “Starch and Stripes” tells of a Marine officer at a Caribbean outpost whose scheme to apprehend a wily bandit is nearly undone by corps bureaucracy. Though minimally plotted and matter-of-factly narrated, all three stories have the action, violence, and derring-do that made pulp fiction the escapist entertainment of its day.

October 1, 2011
The title story in this trio of Hubbard's pulp fiction (all of them published in 1936) has a very strong Indiana Jones feel to it, even though it predates Indy by nearly five decades. Captain Gordon, a pilot, is working for a team of American anthropologists in the country of Baluchistan. When Gordon stumbles onto the buried treasure of Alexander the Great, he unfortunately also falls into a situation that could kill him. Derring-do and near-fatal confrontations ensue: an exciting story told at a brisk clip, with characters and dialogue that keep readers glued to the page: Hubbard at his best.The Price of a Hat is less successful, a rather dry story (albeit with a nifty surprise ending) about a Russian hat that several people appear willing to risk their lives to possess. Starch and Stripes, about a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant's pursuit of a glorified highwayman, is (uncharacteristically for Hubbard in the 1930s) very poorly written, with only a vague sense of its setting or characters. But the title story alone is worth the price of admission.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)