The March 9, 1918 Argosy begins a promising wartime tale of political intrigue, XTX, by Perley Poore Sheehan (most known today for co-writing the 1923 Lon Chaney film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame). The issue also ends one of the more entertaining 1918 serials I've been enjoying, A Kashmir Abduction, by Lenivers Carew.
In between the usual serials are two novelettes and seven short stories, the latter, to a one, all excellent reading. Thank you, editors. The first novelette, The House of Vanished Dreams, is a tale of WWI-era courage brought to fruition; A Priest of Darkness, also dealing with war-era espionage, plunges into creepy Voodoo territory, in a Louisiana swamp.
As always, the letters page, The Log-Book, is delightful and a reminder of how geographically isolated many of the publication's readers were (and how the Argosy, sent through the mail, brought them together); one writer had been reading the magazine since its first issue, in 1882!
