THIS year for Mosquito Month we’re going to focus on some of Ralph Oppenheim’s Detective fiction. An overwhelming majority of Oppenheim’s pulp output were aviation stories, many featuring our intrepid trio, The Three Mosquitoes. In 1933, when the Mosquitoes were winding down their adventures in Popular Publications aviation magazines, Oppenheim tried his hand at a new genre that was very popular at the time—detective fiction. Over the next fourteen years oppenheim would produce eighteen detective stories for the some of the leading magazines in the field—Dime Detective and Dime Mystery Magazines, Popular Detective, Thrilling Detective, Thrilling Mystery, Black Book Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, Strange Detective Mysteries and Phantom Detective—as well as even ghost writing a Phantom Detective story (”Murder Calls the Phantom” March 1941).

Throughout all his detective stories, he had a number of detectives that returned in subsequent stories. These are the detective stories we’re going to feature this month. To get things going, we’ll start with the first of Oppenheim’s detective stories—”The Death Lady” featured on the cover! and in the pages of the July 15th, 1933 issue of Dime Detective Magazine!

“The Death Lady” introduces us to “Honest” Glen Kelsey, a private dick who’s built his reputation on the strength of his trustworthiness! “‘Honest Glen Kelsey’—the man you can trust—three years with the Department of Justice, etcetera, etcetera.” His assistant, Mr. Peebles, was the direct antithesis to the young, broad-shouldered Kelsey, whose blue eyes, with their humor wrinkles, showed the lust for adventure—rather he was bald, near-sighted, and very clerkish, with spectacles on his thin nose.

George Cranford visits Kelsey’s office and explains the crux of the case:

“We have become what you might call country gentlemen,” George Cranford explained. “And since we’ve settled up there our life has been stainless; our reputation in the town is unimpeachable. But unfortunately,” his voice faltered, “there is something in the past, something which Stephen and I—Lord, I had hoped it was buried. But the past always comes back. Mr. Kelsey—the past always comes back. I was just beginning to forget—and then, only last week, came the first of the threats. Threats, Mr. Kelsey, from somebody my brother and I were both certain had died years ago—somebody,” his voice was a shaky whisper, “who has returned as if from the grave—from the dead—”

Cranford refuses to divulge too much information in Kelsey’s office and requests he come out to their Connecticut home, but entrust him with a valuable box before departing telling him to keep it in a safe place! Upon opening the box, Kelsey finds only small sharp rocks.

After narrowly getting crushed by a tree just outside the Cranford’s home, Kelsey arrives at the Cranford’s to find a a small group of suspects in the house: besides George and his brother Stephen, their niece from a third brother Ellen; “old family friend” Curtis Harvey; and the swarthy, almost olive-skinned Carlos, the new chauffeur.

Shortly after his arrival, George himself turns up dead and brutally mutilated on the porch! The sheriff is called in, questions everyone and locks down the house with Kelsey inside which does afford him a chance to get more information on people and search for information.

In addition to the question of who the murder is, is the question of why and or how the bodies are turning up mutalated. A question which is spoiled by the cover of the magazine which shows a man torturing another within a Iron Lady! That still leaves the questions of who and why—

From the pages of the July15th, 1933 issue of Dime Detective Magazine, It’s Ralph Oppenheim’s “Honest” Glen Kelsey in “The Death Lady!”

There she stood—that enigmatic murder smile welded on her lips—waiting to clasp her victims in a death embrace. What was this horror-creature who cast her torture shadow over the House of Cranford—whose lightest caress meant bloody mutilation for those she wooed?

• Download “The Death Lady” (July 15, 1933, Dime Detective Magazine)

“Honest” Glen Kelsey would return for a second and final time a few months later. Once again featured on the cover and in the pages of the September 15th 1933 Dime Detective Magazine in a story titled “Brand of the Beast”.

Next week: It’s Thrilling Detective’s Dave Rogers, State Trooper!