He tried writing detective fiction but hated reading mystery stories and disliked writing them; he was not successful in this genre. More successfully, in late 1933 Howard took a character conceived in his youth, El Borak, and began using him in mature, professional tales of World War I-era Middle Eastern adventure that landed in "Top Notch", "Complete Stories", and "Thrilling Adventures". The 1920s version was a treasure-hunting adventurer but the 1930s version, first seen in "The Daughter of Erlik Khan" in the December 1934 issue of "Top-Notch", was a grim gun-fighter keeping the peace after having gone native in Afghanistan. The stories have a lot in common with those of Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb and T. E. Lawrence, with Western themes and Howard's hardboiled style of writing. As with his other series, he created another character in the same vein, Kirby O'Donnell, but this character lacked the grim, western elements and was not as successful.