Best 1934 Adventures (3)

By: Joshua Glenn
June 1, 2019

One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1934 adventure novels.

LeRoy W. Snell’s Stories of the Northwest frontier adventure The Lead Disk.

A classic boy’s adventure book of the period — by which I mean thrilling and stirring, and simultaneously two-dimensional and predictable. I’ve read it half a dozen times, since my father handed it along to me — it was one of his favorites, when he was a boy. Tom Haley is a college man who leaves school in disgrace… he’s taken the fall for misbehavior by his older brother Steve, star quarterback and thoughtless jerk. Heading to Alberta, where his uncle is an officer in the Royal Canadian Northwest Mounted Police, Tom stumbles upon a criminal conspiracy known as the Lead Disk. He’s befriended by Luke, a young cowboy from Montana, who’s also left home in disgrace, and the two tangle with highwaymen en route to the Mounties’ remote post… where Tom is rejected, by his uncle, who urges the young emigré to test his mettle in the wilderness before applying to the Mounties. Tom and Luke set up shop as fur trappers — there’s a pleasing Robinsonade aspect to the story — before discovering gold underneath their cabin, which leads them back into trouble with the Lead Disk. There’s a friendly Indian, a preternaturally intelligent wolf-dog, a hidden criminal hideout, and a beautiful Canadian girl, in the mix.

Fun facts: Additional installments in the Northwest Stories series (published by Cupples & Leon, who also cranked out The Bomba Books, Champion Sports Stories, Sorak Jungle Series,Top Notch Detective Stories, and The Baseball Joe Series) include: Shadow Patrol, The Wolf Cry, The Spirit of the North, and The Challenge of the Yukon.

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Best 1934 Adventures (3)

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