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What if someone
were to combine the sinister Fu Manchu school of pulp melodrama
with Mickey Spillane’s hard-fisted private eye bravura?
Someone did, and his name was Robert E. Howard. In Howard’s
detective stories, the darkest alleys of the Big City teem with
scheming masterminds and bizarre cults from the Far East. Opium
dens and deserted warehouses conceal the strongholds of warlords
who would resurrect the bloody empires of Genghis Khan and Kali,
Goddess of Death. Only three men, modern-day Conans armed with
.45s and blackjacks, stand in their way.
In an unnamed port city where the sun never shines, brawny police
detective Steve Harrison patrols the unquiet slums and dives of
River Street. Murders and Tong wars are everyday occurrences that
he takes in his stride. When the city wants to make life really
difficult for Harrison, it offers up Erlik Khan, the Lord of the
Dead, the last emperor of the Mongols, from whose underground
lair stream the commands that will make Erlik the dread master
of the world. In between his skirmishes with Erlik, Harrison finds
little rest. An assignment to Texas dumps him into an open grave
amid the hungry fangs of the Graveyard Rats. On a job in the Southern
bayous, he wonders which enemy is more dangerous – the cleaver-wielding
murderer whom he has trailed into the swamp or the voodoo cult
of the Serpent, in whose grisly intrigues he becomes entangled.
Private detective Brent Kirby is lithe and quick on the trigger;
his partner Butch Gorman is a big, red-haired Texan who carries
a Bowie knife. Like Steve Harrison, they have a knack for tangling
with macabre cults from the Far East. Hired to protect a beautiful
girl’s frightened uncle, they step into a showdown with
the stranglers of Kali, the Black Goddess, over possession of
the fabled Treasure of Akbar. On another case, a feud born in
the downfall of Khartoum ignites a pitched battle fifty years
later between the private eyes and the fanatical Sons of Hate.
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