Great Tales of Action and Adventure

by George Bennett (Editor, Introduction), Saki (Contributor), Arthur Conan Doyle (Contributor)

CONTENTS

The Bamboo Trap by Robert s. Lemmon
Leiningen Versus The Ants by Carl Stephenson
The Blue Cross by G.K. Chesterton
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
The Fourth Man by John Russell
The Interlopers by Saki
The Adventure of the Dancing Men by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
Rescue Party by Arthur C. Clarke
August Heat by W.F. Harvey
To Build A Fire by Jack London
Action by C.E. Montague

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Science Fiction

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1958

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.

Reviews

[Leothefox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being an anthology, we know going in that “great” will probably not hold true throughout, but there are some ringers in here and some surprises.

George Bennett's collection is for boys, specifically boys in 1959. If we believe his preface, some boys in 1959 helped him pick these. Makes sense? “Action” and “Adventure” are represented, but little to nothing in the way of violence, which I guess is in keeping with a product designed the get kids to read.

Okay, down to it: Poe's “The Pit and the Pendulum” and Jack London's “To Build a Fire” are in here, and they are both oft-reprinted, but that's because they're great stories. The same holds true for Richard Connell's “The Most Dangerous Game”, which may be the most adapted short story in the language.

Chesterton's “The Blue Cross” is the first Father Brown story I've ever read and I thought it was wonderful. That's the kind of sleuth I'm looking for, dude who does the Columbo thing, mild mannered, outwardly simple, and more cunning than you suspected.

Arthur Conan Doyle's “The Adventure of the Dancing Men” is a Sherlock Holmes thing, and it's alright. There's reason's that character endures, even if Doyle's writing can't always do the same. It's a good thing for a 50s boys' collection since the genius in that one is basic cryptography.

William Fryer Harvey's “August Heat” is a short one where two men may be set up to kill and die by fate and weird clairvoyance. I think it was the only supernatural element in here and it was welcome.

I may have read Saki's “The Interlopers” before, and it's got a nice stinger. Don't do feuds, guys!

“Leiningen versus the Ants”is the basis for the Charlton Heston movie “The Naked Jungle” and also for that MacGyver episode that re-used footage from it. You can see why the story had an impact, since it's a man vs nature thing with lots of try/fail stuff, a clever farmer staving off a miles-long swarm of ants. It's a touch problematic today, he's in South America, has the natives working his farm, and the narrator, or maybe the main character, doesn't think much of them. Leiningen's got the brains, see?

“The Bamboo Trap” is also a steamy jungle thing in the America's with a pit full of big spiders this guy is coming to collect, but they almost collect him. It's okay to kill a ton of something when they're not people, I guess. As a pulp fan I kept waiting for human menace to appear in this one, but no such luck.

John Russell's “The Fourth Man” is, again, in the jungles, with three men who just escaped a prison colony, riding on the raft of a native to meet a ship and leave for freedom... only they seem to be stranded at sea. This one did have a cute twist, not sure if that saved it.

For some reason, the most space is given to Arthur C. Clarke and “Rescue Party”, where some non-humanoid aliens check Earth for survivors before the sun goes supernova and destroys it all. Sure, they're racing against time, at one point some of them get trapped in a subway. Clarke is not one of my favorites, and some of his concepts I could do without. I can think of other guys I would include as the only sci-fi entry.

We finish on C.E. Montegue's “Action”, which is about an older guy who's dying by degrees, getting numb all over. He doesn't want to do outright suicide, so he goes to the Alps and tries to man himself to death, mountain climbing. Naturally, it doesn't quite go as planned. I could have seen this one becoming a very funny sort of story, but it's static British masculinity with little fun.

I got some enjoyment out of this, at least four really good ones, a decent one, some okay ones, and some padding. Not a bad score, really.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

First published some 50 years ago, this collection of stories shows a bit of aging in what short stories are selected. I found it interesting that, for me, the best works were from writings that were already rather old for the time of publication (a Father Brown tale from G.K. Chesterton, a Sherlock Holmes tale from Arthur Conan Doyle, and superbly ageless word craft from Jack London). On the other hand, the forward-looking science fiction tale from Arthur C. Clarke seemed especially dated. All in all, it was a reasonably good meal for readers, even if every morsel wasn't ambrosia.

[James Varney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surely one of the world’s great collections of short stories. "The Most Dangerous Game" and "Leiningen versus the Ants" are two of the best and my favorites. At least a couple others are well known, such as Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" and the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of the Dancing Men." Those familiar with science fiction will probably know Arthur C. Clarke's "Rescue Party."

The book was put together in the 1950s by an English teacher at Exeter, and there's no question it appeals to boys and teenagers. Yet as the teacher, George Bennett, says in his very short introduction, "The older reader may experience the strangeness of reading again what he read a world ago, or he may find stories that he has missed....But though they were chosen by the young, they were not written just for the young. The stories in this collection are famous ones, and many are by writers whose work you will go on reading through the years."

Indeed, the first time I heard some of these stories - Leiningen, Most Dangerous Game, "The Bamboo Trap" - they were read to us at a great day camp for boys called Camp Arrowhead. It was another age then, and we'd sit, spellbound and munching our "frozen blood" (popsicles), while Mr. Borzoi read these amazing tales.

There is a kind of old-fashioned, Kiplingesque imperialist tone to the collection, however, which may not appeal to all readers. In particular, the story "The Fourth Man" concerns a bunch of racists and a South Pacific islander. But that story neither reflects nor ends well for the racists.

[Bruja Ha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Several stories in here remain enjoyable masterpieces even decades after they were written, esp. those by Saki and Jack London. But overall in 2024, I had a rough time not feeling appalled by the mores in this book, which could be alternatively entitled "Tales of Toxic Colonial Masculinity." John Russell's story "The Fourth Man" at least serves as a cautionary tale about the flaws in racist thinking, with a trenchant line on p. 96 we in the USA should heed again today: "But they were whites, members of the superior race --members of a highly superior race according to those philosophers who rate criminal aberration as a form of genius."

[Ronald Wise · Rating 5 out of 5]

My enjoyment of this anthology far surpassed expectations – especially after reading an introduction that promised a selection aimed at the young reader, but which could be enjoyed by adults as well.

I don’t know how successful this collection was with its target audience in 1958, but in the year 2021 this sexagenarian reader, after a half-century of bombardment with multimedia “action” and “adventure”, savored nearly every paragraph of the almost hypnotic mastery of the English language displayed by most of the authors in this book.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Vienna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories were better than others

[Scotty · Rating 3 out of 5]

way more adventure than action

[Chris Gager · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a pretty popular book in the 50's-60's but the cover I remember was different unless it was a different book. I think this is the one though. "To Build a Fire" probably the most well-known but others are classics too, several being made into movies. Date read is a guess.

[Matthew Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun compilation for vacation reading. Never a dull moment.

[Larry Yoshida · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had this as a kid and found it again 40 years later in a used bookstore. This makes a great introduction to reading for kids.