Rough Edges

The Outlaw and the Lady - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

2012-03-11T07:00:00.002-05:00

THE OUTLAW AND THE LADY by Chap O'Keefe (really our friend Keith Chapman) was published originally by Robert Hale in 1994 as part of Hale's Black Horse Western line. It's newly available as an e-book, though, and I think it's great that some of these older books are being republished. In this case, THE OUTLAW AND THE LADY is certainly deserving of finding a whole new audience of Western readers.

The protagonist of this novel is Tod Larraby, a former Confederate guerrilla who rode with Quantrill until he got sick of the violence and bloodshed. Although he tried to go straight after the war, he was charged unfairly with crimes he didn't commit and has spent nearly twenty years on the dodge, growing wearier all the time. Because of his status as an outlaw, he has to take whatever jobs he can, so when he's blackmailed by a corrupt lawman into helping an English nobleman find his missing son, Larraby is forced to shoulder this dangerous chore. It's made even more hazardous by the fact that the Englishman insists on coming along on the quest and bringing his beautiful young wife with him.

Chapman's work continues to remind me of the hardboiled Westerns published by Gold Medal during the Fifties and Sixties, and this one also has echoes of the early Lassiter novels by "Jack Slade" (really W.T. Ballard, Ben Haas, and Peter Germano, among others). The plot moves along at a suitably brisk pace, and the action scenes have a nice gritty feel to them. Larraby is a good hero, too, world-weary but not so full of angst that it leads to an excess of navel-gazing. As always, Chapman includes some effective twists and complications in the plot.

THE OUTLAW AND THE LADY is lean, fast, and very entertaining, and as usual when I finish a Chap O'Keefe book, I'm eager to read more. If you're a Western fan I think you'll enjoy it, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western, September 1934

2012-03-10T07:00:00.000-06:00

It's hard to beat the combination of DIME WESTERN, a Walter Baumhofer cover, and this line-up of authors: T.T. Flynn, Walt Coburn, Harry F. Olmsted, Ray Nafziger, Robert Mahaffey, and Bart Cassidy. If I'd had a dime in my pocket when I saw this one on the newsstand, it would have been going home with me, you can bet a hat on that.

Pulp Adventure Free on Amazon!

2012-03-10T04:00:00.001-06:00

My World War I air-war/horror adventure yarn "Devil Wings Over France" is free on Amazon for the next three days. This 8700 word novelette first appeared in the anthology RETRO PULP TALES, published by Subterranean Press in 2006. I intended for it to be the first in a series, but so far it's the only appearance of the courageous American pilot Dave "Dead-Stick" Malloy. I had great fun writing it, though, and you never know, one of these days good old Dave might fly again. If you're in the mood for chattering Vickers and strut-straining Immelmanns, have at it.

Hugo

2012-03-09T12:38:00.000-06:00

I know a lot of people liked this movie (obviously, considering its award nominations), but I just never warmed up to it. It looked great, the actors were fine, and the early moviemaking stuff was sort of interesting (I'm perfectly aware of Melies' importance in the history of film, but I've never actually been entertained by what I've seen of his work). However, I thought the whole thing was slow as molasses in December and I never connected to it.

I did like the brief clips from William S. Hart's TUMBLEWEEDS and Buster Keaton's THE GENERAL, though. I love those two films.

Forgotten Books: Texas Shall Be Free! - H. Bedford-Jones

2012-03-09T06:00:00.003-06:00

This five-part serial by H. Bedford-Jones ran in ARGOSY from January 4, 1936 to February 1, 1936. It's the sequel to his novel "Bowie Knife" but with the exception of some historical figures does not use any of the same characters. This one starts a short time after the other novel leaves off with the fall of the Alamo and the slaughter of the old mission's defenders by the Mexican army under the command of General Santa Anna. Tennessean Gordon Durant, who has come to Texas to help in the fight for independence, is on his way from Goliad to San Antonio, carrying a message from his commander Colonel James Fannin intended for Colonel William Barrett Travis, in command at the Alamo. Durant has another reason for being in Texas, though: he is searching for his evil half-brother Vincent, who looks so much like Gordon that he was almost able to successfully seduce Gordon's fiancee in New Orleans. This occurred after Vincent stole a great deal of money from his and Gordon's late father in Tennessee. In the great pulp tradition, Vincent Durant is a thoroughly despicable villain.

Before he reaches San Antonio, Gordon Durant encounters a Mexican officer and is forced to kill him in a brief fight. The officer is carrying dispatches intended for Santa Anna. Gordon takes his uniform and the dispatch case, intending to masquerade as the dead officer. While disposing of the dead man's body, he is stumbled upon by a Mexican outlaw, Jacopo, who takes him for someone else-Vincent, obviously-and prattles on about stolen gold and how Vincent is a member of the same outlaw band. Gordon pretends to be his half-brother in order to get away and ride on into San Antonio.

When he gets there, he discovers that the Alamo has fallen and all of its defenders are dead. He successfully carries out his impersonation of the dead officer and is assigned by Santa Anna to a spying mission. Gordon's only real aim is to get out of San Antonio safely so that he can carry the news of its fall to the rest of the Texas army. But he gets saddled with the beautiful Dona Amadora de la Vega, who also thinks he is really Vincent Durant (half the people in Texas seem to have run into Vincent) and who happens to be the niece of the Mexican officer Gordon Durant killed. Amadora has a small casket full of jewels with her . . . or is it full of gold stolen from Santa Anna instead?

For several installments, Gordon Durant runs around southern Texas, catches up to his half-brother only to lose him before he can settle the score between them, is captured by the gang of outlaws that Vincent has joined, escapes, rejoins the Texas army and is sent out to spy by Sam Houston, discovers that his fiancee Faith and her father are also in Texas, is captured at the Battle of Coleto with the rest of Fannin's men and barely escapes when they are executed in the massacre at Goliad, scouts for the Texas army with Deaf Smith, and finally winds up taking part in the Battle of San Jacinto in which the outnumbered Texans handily defeat the Mexican army and capture Santa Anna. This decisive battle also forms the backdrop for Gordon's final showdown with his brother.

This is all as breathless as it sounds, and to be honest, all the fictional intrigue and adventures surrounding Gordon Durant come off as a bit forced and confusing. It reads wonderfully, of course, thanks to Bedford-Jones' skill as a storyteller. If anything, "Texas Shall Be Free!" has even more momentum than its predecessor, which was an excellent novel.

What sets this story apart and lifts it to the status of one of the best historical novels I've ever read about the Texas Revolution are the descriptions of both the landscape and the battles. I don't know if Bedford-Jones ever visited Texas or relied solely on research, but he nailed the area between San Antonio and the Gulf of Mexico. I've been all over this part of the country, and every bit of description rings true. Then there are the passages concerning the Goliad massacre, the Runaway Scrape (when the Texas army as well as the settlers in the area were fleeing from Santa Anna), and the battles at Coleto and San Jacinto. Bedford-Jones' prose is never wordy and never loses its swiftness, but he paints vivid pictures of these scenes that plunge the reader into the experiences he describes. Not to gush, but this is historical fiction at its best.

If I were a small-press publisher, one of the first projects I'd take on would be a reprinting of "Bowie Knife" and "Texas Shall Be Free!" in one volume. Since I'm not, I'll just highly recommend the issues of ARGOSY in which they appear to any fan of top-notch historical novels.

Fight Card #4: Counterpunch - Jack Tunney (Wayne D. Dundee)

2012-03-08T06:00:00.002-06:00

I've enjoyed all the previous FIGHT CARD books very much, and the just-released fourth volume, COUNTERPUNCH, is by my old friend Wayne Dundee writing under the house-name Jack Tunney. So I expected to enjoy it, too, and as always, Dundee doesn't disappoint.

COUNTERPUNCH is the story of Danny "Duke" Dugronski, an aging fighter in Milwaukee who's at the tail end of his career. After his long-time manager dies suddenly of a heart attack, he discovers that the man may have been involved in a shady deal with a mobster who's trying to move into the fight game. Dugronski doesn't really believe that for a second, but he has to find out the truth and his investigation leads him into trouble and more trouble.

At the same time, Dugronski is moving into a tentative romance with the daughter of his late manager, who's recently divorced from her cop ex-husband. It's open to debate whether the guy is going to be a help to the Duke's efforts or a hindrance, and there's also the worry about whether his new enemies may strike at him through those he cares about.

There's a strong thread of decency and humanity that runs through all of Dundee's work, and it's certainly present here. Danny Dugronski is a fine hero, a strong man who won't let obstacles get in the way of him doing what he thinks is right. There's also plenty of action, as COUNTERPUNCH opens and closes with a pair of epic battles in the ring. If you haven't sampled the FIGHT CARD series yet, this one is an excellent place to start, and if you've read and enjoyed the others, don't hesitate to grab this one, too. I had a great time reading it.

The Big Year

2012-03-07T06:00:00.002-06:00

The plot of THE BIG YEAR is pretty simple: Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black play rival birdwatchers, or birders, as they call themselves, out to win the honor of spotting the most different species of birds in a calender year. The movie follows their quest for that year, touching on their personal lives and exploring the changes they go through in that time.

You wouldn't think a movie like this would be suspenseful, but it actually sort of is. It's also sweet and pretty funny, too, and I really enjoyed it even though I have just about zero knowledge of birding. Jack Black, who narrates the movie, makes a very likable protagonist and Martin and Wilson are good in supporting roles. And the soundtrack (something I rarely mention about movies) is top-notch. I liked this one. Definitely worth watching.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The White Gorilla

2012-03-06T06:00:00.002-06:00

(Since I've been on a jungle kick lately, I thought I'd rerun this post from March 2007.)

This 1945 jungle adventure movie is half of a double feature dollar DVD I picked up a while back. (The other movie on it is BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA.) This one stars Ray "Crash" Corrigan fairly late in his career, in the dual role of jungle guide Steve Collins and the mysterious white gorilla, who is shunned by his fellow gorillas because of his color.

That's only part of the story, though. THE WHITE GORILLA makes extensive use not only of stock African wildlife footage but also entire sequences from a 1927 silent serial called PERILS OF THE JUNGLE. Corrigan's character narrates those scenes, which have shots of him as an observer cut into the old footage, which is recut and rearranged to form a completely new storyline from the original version. That sounds crazy, but it actually sort of works in a bizarre way. According to IMDB, the scenes involving Corrigan and a few other characters were shot in three days, and I believe it. Poor old Crash was never a great actor, but by this time he was a far cry from the athletic action hero of UNDERSEA KINGDOM and the Three Mesquiteers movies. The whole conglomeration is pretty awful but oddly interesting. As I commented to Livia, "At least you've never seen anything else exactly like this movie before."

I guess I'm just a sucker for movies that feature guys in gorilla suits [me and Mark Finn!]. There are some really clumsy battles in this one between the white gorilla and a black gorilla who's evidently his sworn enemy. If I'd seen this for the first time when I was six years old, I probably would have loved it. Or it might have seemed pretty dumb to me even then. Hard to say.

Hallam is Still Free

2012-03-05T08:40:00.000-06:00

Still free for the rest of the day today, four top-notch stories about 1920s Hollywood private eye and old cowboy Lucas Hallam. If you haven't made his acquaintance yet, this is the perfect chance.

Now Available: Viral

2012-03-05T06:00:00.002-06:00

VIRAL is a new ebook thriller series created by my friend Steven Savile that I'll be contributing to later this year. The first four books have just launched as a Barnes & Noble/Nook exclusive, but they'll be available on the other platforms later on. For now, if you have a Nook you can get started on what's going to be an excellent series full of action and international intrigue.

Now Available: Latchkeys #2: The Ugly Little Bloke - Robert Greenberger

2012-03-04T19:06:00.000-06:00

The second Latchkeys adventure is now available from Amazon. Great cover on this one. This is a fine new YA fantasy series. My entry in it will be coming up in a few months. Check it out.

Prologue Books Launches

2012-03-04T07:00:00.002-06:00

Here's what I said about the new e-book publisher Prologue Books on their website:

Prologue Books is, in a word, spectacular. This is a treasure trove of the great authors who influenced several generations of writers and are still influencing them. These books are some of the best examples of sheer storytelling power that you'll ever find.

I meant every word of it, too. I've bought several books already, and there's a good chance I'll buy everything they publish before I'm through. If you haven't checked out their website already, you really need to as soon as you can. Don't get me wrong, I love new books and new authors, too, but the books Prologue is bringing back really are the good old stuff.

Two More Washburn Westerns Now Available

2012-03-03T14:24:00.000-06:00

With everything else going on this weekend, I don't want to forget that two more of Livia's Western novels written under the name L.J. Washburn are now available as e-books from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. EPITAPH was her first Western and introduced the characters of Hank Littleton and Buffalo Newcomb. Buffalo also appears in RIDERS OF THE MONTE, and Hank shows up again in BANDERA PASS, making those three books not really a series but certainly connected. And they're all fine books, too.

Barnes & Noble links:

Epitaph

Guest Post on Petticoats & Pistols, plus Free Books

2012-03-03T09:32:00.001-06:00

Livia and I have a guest post on the Petticoats & Pistols blog this morning, all about the way we collaborate on our books, and everyone who comments will be entered in a drawing for a couple of copies of my new Redemption, Kansas novel HUNTERS. So check it out, leave a comment, and maybe get a free Western novel. (And a pretty good one, if I do say so myself.)

Hallam: Bigger, Better, and Free

2012-03-03T08:30:00.000-06:00

Now with more than 34,000 words of fine hardboiled fiction, Livia's collection of Lucas Hallam stories is free this weekend on Amazon. Two more stories have been added for this promotion, "The Blue Burro" (very BLACK MASK-like and one of my favorite Hallam stories) and "Ladysmith", one of Hallam's adventures when he was still working as a Pinkerton agent. So even if you picked this one up before, you'll want to get it again because it's, did I mention, FREE.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, February 1958

2012-03-03T07:00:00.003-06:00

This is the final issue of TEXAS RANGERS, containing the Jim Hatfield novel "Tornado Trail", by Walker A. Tompkins writing as Jackson Cole. Other than the fact that there's no ad for the next issue's novel, there's no indication that this is the last issue of the magazine. The Hatfield novel is an excellent one, a very suspenseful tale that takes place in a much shorter span of time (about a day and a half) than most of the Hatfield stories. This one concerns Hatfield's attempt to corral an outlaw gang that has gotten away with a half-million dollars in loot from a train holdup. Hatfield has the added problem of an inept Ranger trainee tagging along with him. There are plenty of unexpected twists in the plot and well-written, atmospheric scenes, and the only real complaint I have has nothing to do with the story itself -- early on, one of the illustrations is based on a scene that comes much later in the story, and it gives away an important development. I've seen that happen in other pulps from the Thrilling Group, most notably THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE and G-MEN.

Rounding out the issue are four short stories:

"Two Kinds of Guns", Bart Morgan

"Bandit Breed", T.V. Olsen

"The Fugitive", Philip Morgan

"Trouble Wanted", Lucas Todd

Surprisingly, all of the short stories are pretty good. I expected that from Olsen, but I'd never heard of any of the other authors. "The Fugitive" is a simple but well-written story about a lawman's long pursuit of an outlaw, while "Trouble Wanted" concerns a rancher's efforts to keep his younger brother from being hanged for a murder he didn't commit. In both cases, old plots but handled very well.

All in all, this issue is a case of saving one of the best for last.

Another New Book: Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles are Back!

2012-03-02T20:05:00.000-06:00

I haven't read this one (yet), but you can't go wrong with this series and Nik Morton is a fine writer. Check it out!

The New Rancho Diablo Book is Out, Yuh Whippersnappers!

2012-03-02T18:17:00.000-06:00

The new Rancho Diablo book, GABBY DARBINS AND THE SLIDE-ROCK BOLTER, is now available from Amazon. Bill Crider, writing as Colby Jackson, is the author of this entry, which focuses on Gabby Darbins, the colorful ranch hand. It's full of action and humor, and if you love tall tales, you've got to read this one. Check it out!

Forgotten Books: Bowie Knife - H. Bedford-Jones

2012-03-02T06:00:00.004-06:00

The next couple of weeks I'm going to be taking a look at a couple of historical novels by one of my favorite pulp authors, H. Bedford-Jones, that were serialized in the pulp ARGOSY but never reprinted in book form, as far as I know. This is something that should be remedied.

Growing up in Texas as I did, I was also steeped in Texas history, including all the lore and legends. I've always been particularly fond of reading about the period during the 1830s in which Texas won its independence from Mexico and especially interested in the siege and battle of the Alamo. I've been to the Alamo many times, have seen the bullet-pocked walls of the famous chapel, walked through the hushed hallway of the long barracks. What's left is surprisingly small, but the feeling one gets from a visit there is still quite powerful.

So when I ran across this serial by H. Bedford-Jones called "Bowie Knife", proclaimed on the cover as "a Texas Centennial novel of Bowie and the Alamo", I knew this was my meat. I wasn't disappointed.

The hero of "Bowie Knife" is Hugh Kenly, a former riverboatman who is in disgrace because the boat he was piloting hit a snag in the Mississippi and sank when its boiler exploded. In New Orleans, Kenly is trying to decide what to do with the rest of his life when he meets Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie, who are gathering up men to go with them to the Mexican state of Texas, which is in turmoil because of the heavy-handed policies of Mexico's dictator, General Santa Anna. Kenly tentatively decides to accompany them, but before that can happen, he gets embroiled with a couple of Mexicans who are also in New Orleans recruiting men for Santa Anna's government, to help put down what seems to be a brewing revolution. These two are Don Rodrigo and the beautiful Senorita Conchita. When Kenly rescues Conchita from some men who are attacking her, he accidentally kills a bystander who rushes up. This bystander is the famous Jim Bowie, and Kenly winds up with Bowie's equally famous knife.

About now the reader is thinking that Bedford-Jones is really taking some liberties with history, but not to worry. It quickly becomes obvious that Kenly only believes Bowie to be dead. He's really still alive, of course. But in fleeing from what he thinks is a murder charge, Kenly winds up going to Texas with Don Rodrigo and Senorita Conchita, who is really a noblewoman named Dona Maria. The year is 1835, and the town of San Antonio de Bexar is full of intrigue, political maneuvering, and double-crosses. Kenly is in the thick of it, important to more than one faction because he has a map that supposedly leads to the lost San Saba silver mines of Jim Bowie. There is a short-lived romantic triangle between Kenly, Dona Maria, and Josefa, the sister of Kenly's friend Pablo. Bedford-Jones sends his characters on an expedition to the San Saba mines, which leads to a battle with the Comanches and their war chief El Lobo Rojo, or Red Wolf. Back in San Antonio, Kenly crosses paths with Santa Anna and his brother-in-law General Cos, the commander of the Mexican military garrison there. Ultimately, in what comes as no surprise to the reader, Kenly winds up on the side of the Texans and warns them to retreat to the Alamo as Santa Anna approaches the city with a large army. Kenly goes with them, and so does Josefa.

Part of the problem with writing historical fiction about well-known events is that the reader is often all too aware of the outcome. We know that the Alamo is going to fall and that its defenders will be killed to the last man. Bedford-Jones, though, so skillfully manipulates the reader's hopes and feelings that we experience the same air of uncertainty that must have gripped the men inside the Alamo. He paints vivid pictures of the historical characters, especially Crockett, who rings true in every scene. Jim Bowie is a bit less sympathetic than we've come to expect from other portrayals over the years but still fully believable. In fact, Bedford-Jones stays pretty close to the facts as we know them, omitting the famous "line in the sand" incident (which may or may not have really happened) and dodging the question of whether Crockett surrendered and was later executed or died fighting (which is the version I believe; I don't care what the historical revisionists say).

As always in Bedford-Jones' work, the style is clean and sparsely worded, though with plenty of action and deftly sketched characterization. I've heard his writing described as "cool intellectualism", and that's pretty close to accurate as far as I'm concerned. People who think of all pulp writing as melodramatic and wildly overblown have never read Bedford-Jones. Maybe it's because the subject matter is close to my heart, but I think this is one of his best novels.

Now Available: For Whom the Funeral Bell Tolls - Livia J. Washburn

2012-02-29T08:15:00.000-06:00

Livia's fourth Delilah Dickinson Literary Tour mystery is now available for the Kindle, the Nook, and as a handsome trade paperback. This one finds Delilah leading a tour group to Key West to visit Ernest Hemingway's home there. Of course it's not long before murder crops up and Delilah has to become a detective again. Being a long-time Hemingway fan, I was really looking forward to editing this one. I wasn't disappointed. It's really fast-paced and funny and solidly in the amateur sleuth tradition. Check it out.

Bonus Overlooked TV and Music: Quiet Village - Martin Denny

2012-02-28T18:27:00.001-06:00

Walker Martin mentioned the music of Martin Denny in a comment on the previous post, so I thought why not post something from the long-ago TV show HAWAII CALLS? My parents both liked Hawaiian music and had several record albums of it that they played on the hi-fi, which was a substantial piece of furniture. Some of you probably don't know what I'm talking about, but I know some of you do. And if you're of a certain age, this should mellow out your evening. Anyway, take it away, Martin Denny.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies and TV: Jungle Jim

2012-02-28T06:00:00.002-06:00

Reading all those Armless O'Neil yarns from JUNGLE STORIES reminded me of none other than Jungle Jim, a character who originated in a comic strip by the great Alex Raymond, was featured in a 1937 movie serial, and then hit the big screen in a series of a dozen or so low-budget B-movies in the late 1940s and early 1950s, where he was played by Johnny Weissmuller. These are the movies I remember watching on one of the local TV stations when I was a kid, where they played almost as often as Weissmuller's Tarzan movies. Then, after the features ended, Weissmuller played the character again in one season of a syndicated TV series, which I also remember watching many afternoons when I got home from school.

In the comic strip, James "Jungle Jim" Bradley was a big game hunter, not in Africa but rather in the jungles of southeast Asia. However, to the best of my memory the movies and TV episodes were set in Africa. I say to the best of my memory because it's been at least forty years since I saw any of them. Even back then I think I probably realized just how cheaply made these were (I learned to recognize stock footage at an early age), but that didn't stop me from really enjoying them. I was a big Tarzan fan, you see, and well, Jungle Jim was the next best thing. Weissmuller was never a great actor, although he has some nice moments in some of the early Tarzan films, but he had a certain charm and screen presence. I liked the way he got to speak normal English in the Jungle Jim movies, and he could still dash through the jungle and fight the bad guys even if he was a little too chunky to wear a loincloth anymore.

These are probably pretty bad movies. But I sure enjoyed them at the time. Some of them are available on DVD, but I'm not sure I have the heart to watch them again. I think it might be better to hold on to my fond memories.

Seekers of the Glittering Fetish: The Complete Adventures of Armless O'Neil, Volume 1 - Dan Cushman

2012-02-27T06:00:00.002-06:00

I've discovered that I really like Dan Cushman's pulp adventure yarns. For years I've heard good things about his series featuring Armless O'Neil, an American adventurer in Africa. O'Neil isn't really armless, but he is missing his left hand and has a deadly dangerous steel hook in its place. These stories appeared in the pulps JUNGLE STORIES and ACTION STORIES in the Forties and Fifties, which can be hard to come by, but they're being reprinted by the fine small press publisher Altus Press, the first volume being SEEKERS OF THE GLITTERING FETISH.

The title story, which originally appeared in the Winter 1945 issue of JUNGLE STORIES and introduced the character, finds O'Neil and his sidekick Tommy Huston on the trail of some magnificent blue diamonds. Tommy is an American musician stranded in Africa who's always after some elusive treasure or a beautiful woman or both, and his friend Armless O'Neil usually gets roped in on these risky deals with him.

"Black Mahogany", from the Spring 1946 issue of JUNGLE STORIES, finds O'Neil and Tommy trying to make a success out of a rundown mahogany plantation, despite the danger from a rival plantation owner who has plans of his own. Cushman springs a nice surprise ending in this one.

In "Jackal Kill" (JUNGLE STORIES, Fall 1946), O'Neil and Tommy join an archeological expedition that's trying to find a fabulous lost city built of pink ivory. O'Neil doesn't really believe in the city's existence, but an old enemy of his is part of the expedition, so he goes along to protect the others. I'm a sucker for lost city stories and have been as far back as I can remember, and this is a good one.

"Five Suns to Angola!", from the Winter 1945 issue of JUNGLE STORIES, has our two heroes and their sidekick Bobolongonga hired to deliver a mysterious sealed, canvas-wrapped bundle to a buyer in Angola. Unfortunately, everybody with an interest in the bundle seems to turn up dead sooner or later, and O'Neil and Tommy seem destined for the same fate. This is another excellent story with a nice mystery at its core.

"Dread Safari" (ACTION STORIES, Winter 1947) opens with a shocking twist: O'Neil is on the trail of whoever murdered his friend Tommy Huston. His vengeance quest takes him to a scientific expedition bound for the hidden jungle tomb of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh.

This volume wraps up with "Blood-Spoor of the Devil-Stones", from the Spring 1948 issue of ACTION STORIES, and once again O'Neil is searching for the fabled blue diamonds. Will his pursuit be any more successful this time? Ah, you'll have to read the story to find out.

Even though these yarns have interesting plots, stylish prose, and plenty of well-written action and local color, their real appeal is the character of Armless O'Neil himself. He's as hardboiled as they come, consumed by anger and dark thoughts but possessing a sardonic humor and a strong sense of loyalty at the same time. Although he claims that his goal is to make his fortune in Africa, then return to his native Chicago and buy a pool hall, the reader gets the sense that he would never be happy there, or anywhere else except the dangerous environs of the Congo. Africa and Armless O'Neil were made for each other.

The second volume, SWAMP FETISH, should be out soon from Altus Press with an introduction by yours truly. This will complete the adventures of Armless O'Neil, and I recommend both volumes highly. If you're a fan of pulp action yarns, you definitely should check them out.

Jur: A Story of Pre-Dawn Earth -- Tom Johnson and James Reasoner

2012-02-26T11:39:00.001-06:00

Those of you who want to check out one of my rare ventures into science-fiction and fantasy should pick up a copy of JUR: A STORY OF PRE-DAWN EARTH, a collaboration between me and my old friend Tom Johnson that's now available as an e-book after being out of print for a while. This novel is very much influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs and was a lot of fun to write. Tom deserves most of the credit for this one, I just helped out a little, and if you enjoy it he's written several sequels that I highly recommend.

Hulk: Gray -- Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

2012-02-26T07:00:00.002-06:00

Like SPIDER-MAN: BLUE and DAREDEVIL: YELLOW, HULK: GRAY is a retelling and expansion of the title character's origin story, a filling in of the gaps, I guess you could say. Jeph Loeb's script and Tim Sale's art tells a story that takes place in the first 24 hours or so after Dr. Bruce Banner was caught in the gamma bomb explosion that transformed him into The Hulk. Or, as Loeb puts it in an afterword to this trade paperback that collects the mini-series, between THE INCREDIBLE HULK #1 and THE INCREDIBLE HULK #2.

Plot-wise, there's not much to this tale. General Thunderbolt Ross tries to capture or kill The Hulk. Rick Jones helps The Hulk. And The Hulk tries to get to Betty Ross, who he senses somehow that he loved when he was still Bruce Banner. Those of us who are long-time comics fans have seen variations on all those things too many times to count.

This is the first Loeb/Sale collaboration I've read that I found to be something of a disappointment. There's nothing really wrong with it, but it just didn't evoke the same sense of nostalgia in me that their other stories revisiting the early days of some iconic characters. I didn't care for Sale's versions of The Hulk or Rick Jones. They both just looked too goofy for my taste. I will say, though, that Sale does a good Thunderbolt Ross, and the first appearance of Iron Man (who plays a small part in the tale) in the original golden "tin can" armor did send one of those nostalgic thrills through me. It's a shame Loeb and Sale didn't do a similar mini-series about Iron Man. (Maybe they did and I'm just not aware of it; I was away from comics for quite a while.)

If you're a big fan of The Hulk, or if you remember those early days at Marvel with fondness, HULK: GRAY is certainly worth reading. It's just not up to the high level that its creators achieved in their other projects.

More From Joel Haas

2012-02-25T14:02:00.000-06:00

[Here's an excerpt from the email Joel mentions in his comment on the previous post, with a few additions from me in italics.]

Poking around in boxes and file cabinets while looking for something else, I came across an ancient photo copy of the instructions Dad wrote for me. I'd like to warn you it is possibly politically incorrect. In addition, it may well come through to some fans of Westerns that my father scorned the genre and the fans.

To explain: at the time Dad was attempting to get one of his major novels for S&S finished, finish several other contracts, and still maintain the Westerns as a way of bringing in steady cash. He was paid about $3000 per Fargo and a similar amount would come in from the sales in Norway and much of the rest of Europe. Demand for Fargo and Sundance was there but there simply was not enough of Dad to go around. I do not recall the name, however, there was an author in upstate NY who started a number of pulp (non Western) series and farmed out the work to nearly 20 ghost writers on contract. Dad was looking to build up something along those lines as well. [Joel and I have since established that he was talking about Lyle Kenyon Engel of Book Creations Inc. -- a company for which I wrote about 50 books.]

By this point Dad had written a lot of Westerns and other pulp to support a wife, three sons, and make a mortgage payment. He was just plain tired of writing Westerns for a while. The irony is, of course, his love of writing started because of his love of Westerns. He faithfully followed the serials at the movie theaters and listened to the radio shows and read the pulp magazines of Westerns. It was with a sale of a Western story he got his start. He took annual trips to the West with my godfather and his best friend, Jim Henderson, an editor at the Norfolk Virginian Pilot. [Ben Haas wrote the comic novel THE BELLE FROM CATSCRATCH with Jim Henderson, both of them using pseudonyms, Richard Meade and Jay Rutledge, respectively. I have a copy of the book and hope to read it soon. The cover art, by the way, is by the great Jack Davis of MAD Magazine fame, and Joel sent me these scans as well.]

Dad craved recognition as a non pulp writer. Living well outside the orbit of NYCity and not able to teach at a university as he had no college degree, he probably never had the social connections for lightening to strike until the last four months of his life when a huge paperback sale of his final novel THE HOUSE OF CHRISTINA occurred. Even then, it was not reviewed widely by the major papers because it was a straight forward story. He remained a "mid list author" all his professional life and by the time he was 49, fat, and bald he was professionally interested in moving past writing paperbacks.

[Another bit of irony is that many of the literary writers from that era are forgotten and unread, while at least some of us are still reading, enjoying, and talking about books by Ben Haas and other authors like him who were great storytellers.]

How to Write a Pulp Western - Ben Haas

2012-02-25T11:39:00.000-06:00

Joel Haas was kind enough to send me scans of his father's instructions on how to write a Western novel. I think this is fascinating reading and contains much good advice. Many thanks to Joel for sending this document along. You can click on each of the scans to enlarge them enough to read. Warning: there are spoilers for several of Ben Haas's novels in these pages.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, October 1953

2012-02-25T07:00:00.002-06:00

We were talking about this issue on the WesternPulps group the other day, so I thought I'd use it for this week's pulp cover. By this time STAR WESTERN had been around for about twenty years and was considered one of the top Western pulps, but I'd be willing to bet that sales had dropped off some by that point. The magazine seems to be going for some of the RANCH ROMANCES market with that above-the-title banner "Big Romances of the West". Regardless of the slant, this looks like a fine issue with stories by good authors such as William Heuman, Frank Castle, Jonathan Craig (better known for his hardboiled mysteries and police procedural novels), and Will Cook. I'm not familiar with Charles Beckman Jr., the author of the lead novel, but it made for good cover fodder. There's also a poem by the ubiquitous S. Omar Barker and a few other stories. My favorite title in the issue: Craig's "Honkatonk Hussy". And the reason we were talking about this on WesternPulps is that it was reprinted in part as the British edition of WESTERN STORY for October 1956, with the addition of a story by Ed La Vanway that doesn't appear in the American STAR WESTERN version.

Livia's New Novel: For Whom the Funeral Bell Tolls (Literary Tour Mystery #4)

2012-02-24T14:02:00.000-06:00

This one should be available sometime next week. In my absolutely unbiased opinion, I think it's a fine book. I always enjoy reading about Delilah.

Forgotten Books: Strictly for the Boys - Harry Whittington

2012-02-24T06:00:00.002-06:00

STRICTLY FOR THE BOYS is the third and final novel in the new Harry Whittington collection from Stark House, and the only one of the three to appear originally under Whittington's name. First published in 1959 by a small paperback house called Stanley Library, STRICTLY FOR THE BOYS is domestic noir, a genre in which Whittington was never very prolific, but he does a fine job of it, as he did with everything else he wrote.

The protagonist of STRICTLY FOR THE BOYS is Amy Reader, still in her teens but already married . . . and on the verge of a divorce. She's left her abusive husband Burt and gone home to her mother, herself a bitter divorcee who wants to see Amy stay married at all costs. Not surprisingly, Burt shows up and starts stalking Amy, intruding into her life even after she manages to divorce him. She gets a job at a manufacturing plant, and there's a guy there who might offer her some hope for the future, but in the meantime Burt is determined to win her back and is getting crazier and crazier . . .

This is a really fast-paced book in which Whittington keeps piling more and more troubles on his heroine, while at the same time providing a vivid portrait of lower middle-class life in the late Fifties, the same sort of insightful exploration that can be found in many of Orrie Hitt's novels. STRICTLY FOR THE BOYS generates a lot of suspense as it races toward its conclusion. I'm really glad to see this one back in print, since I used to have a copy of the original paperback but never got around to reading it. It's a fine companion piece to RAPTURE ALLEY and WINTER GIRL, making this collection one of the most entertaining volumes I've read in a long time. Highly recommended.

Northlanders, Book One: Sven the Returned - Brian Wood

2012-02-22T06:00:00.002-06:00

You know me and swordfights. There are plenty of them in NORTHLANDERS, BOOK ONE: SVEN THE RETURNED, a trade paperback collection of the first eight issues of the comic book series NORTHLANDERS. There's nothing swashbuckling about this swordplay, however. It's grim and bloody, like the lives of the Vikings living in the conquered Orkney Islands in the year 980.

One of them, Sven, has just returned from several years of roaming the known world as a mercenary, pirate, and soldier of fortune. He's come back to his homeland because he's gotten word that his father is dead and his villainous uncle Gorm has seized power. Naturally Gorm doesn't want to relinquish Sven's proper birthright, and he's got the warriors on his side, so Sven has to go into hiding and launch a guerrilla war against his uncle.

Gorm may be the bad guy in this story, but Sven isn't exactly what you'd call heroic, either. He kills quickly and sometimes unnecessarily, he uses people for his own ends, often to their disadvantage, and he can't really be trusted, at least starting out. He does change some in the course of events, but he's still not a very sympathetic protagonist.

The deliberately anachronistic language in Brian Wood's script bothered me at first, but I stuck with it and was glad I did, because I got caught up in the story. (And it helps that the anachronisms diminish considerably as things go along.) I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere along the way somebody pitched this series as "DEADWOOD with Vikings", because that's the sort of feeling it conjures up, and ultimately it's almost as involving as DEADWOOD. The art by Davide Gianfelice is okay, not always to my taste but not bad, and some of the sweeping landscape scenes are really good.

I have the second NORTHLANDERS trade paperback and plan to read it soon. I don't know how many there are after that, but there's a good chance I'll pick them up, too. This is good, gritty historical adventure, and if you have a taste for that, you should give this series a try.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Last Hours Before Morning

2012-02-21T06:00:00.025-06:00

If it wasn't for the fact that there's an IMDB page for this made-for-TV movie, I might think I just imagined that I watched it back in 1975. There are no clips from it on YouTube, no images that a Google search came up with. But I recall liking it a lot and have never forgotten watching it.

First of all, it's a private eye movie, and not only that, it's also set in the Forties. Those two things make me predisposed to like a film. Veteran character Ed Lauter, who has stayed busy in Hollywood for more than four decades now, plays one of his few leading roles as private detective Bud Delaney, who also works as the house dick in a rundown hotel, if my memories of the story are correct. That's really all I recall. IMBD says:

An ex-cop, now a private detective, investigating a gambler's murder finds that there may be a connection between that crime and the jewel robbery at a beautiful movie star's home.

I'll have to take their word for it, but that sounds right. The cast also includes the beautiful Rhonda Fleming and a young Victoria Principal, still several years away from playing Pam Ewing on DALLAS. I recall thinking at the time that the movie was well-made and that I liked the Forties/private eye music.

One thing I had forgotten was the name of the private eye played by Lauter. A couple of years later, I started writing stories about a private eye named Delaney, although I never gave him a first name. I don't recall intentionally naming him after the character in this movie, but I have to wonder if that was still lurking around in my head. At this late date, who knows? I do know that I didn't visualize him as the character for the movie. In my mind he always looked like an obscure character actor named Sandy Kenyon.

So, does anybody else remember watching LAST HOURS BEFORE MORNING?

The Comedy is Finished - Donald E. Westlake

2012-02-20T06:00:00.002-06:00

I tend to think of Donald E. Westlake's books as either caper comedies or ultra-hardboiled crime novels, but THE COMEDY IS FINISHED, soon to be published by Hard Case Crime (you can pre-order it!), is a prime example of just how wrong that is. Sure, it has "Comedy" in the title, and it's definitely a caper, and it's really funny in places. But it's also pretty dark and bleak at times, too.

Koo Davis is one of America's most beloved comedians, star of radio, movies, and TV, but perhaps best known for all the tours he did overseas with USO shows to entertain American troops in various war zones. Yes, Bob Hope is the obvious template for Koo Davis, but Westlake fleshes out the character and gives him a history and personality of his own.

Written and set in the late 1970s, THE COMEDY IS FINISHED is the story of how Koo is kidnapped by the few remaining members of a violent protest group, hangers-on from the Sixties, who want to use him to force the government to release some so-called political prisoners. Westlake cuts back and forth between Koo, the increasingly desperate kidnappers, and the dogged FBI agent who gets the job of finding and rescuing the beloved comedian.

Not surprisingly, Westlake throws in a number of plot twists and complications, and some of the characters turn out to be much different than they seemed at first. The book is expertly paced and very well written, and the last chapters really had me flipping the pages to find out what was going to happen.

For reasons that editor Charles Ardai explains in a short introduction, this novel was never published until now, and that it exists at all is thanks to Max Allan Collins, who hung on to a copy of the manuscript that Westlake sent to him thirty years ago. Westlake fans, and anybody who loves good fiction, can be very grateful for that. THE COMEDY IS FINISHED is a fine, compelling novel, as well as a poignant conclusion to Westlake's career. Highly recommended.

Music: The Passion Killer Whose Prison Romance Set Off a Scandal - Modern Silent Cinema

2012-02-19T12:11:00.000-06:00

Cullen Gallagher, whose blog Pulp Serenade is a regular stop of mine, is also a talented musician. You can check out his latest instrumental EP here. I listened to it several times last night while I was working. Excellent stuff.

Anonymous

2012-02-19T07:00:00.002-06:00

In response to numerous requests – well, two requests, actually . . . but two's a number, innit? – I'm going to start blogging again about some of the movies we watch. ANONYMOUS is probably the first movie I've seen about Shakespeare since, well, SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. Not surprisingly, a lot of the sets from that movie are used in ANONYMOUS, as well, so it has a familiar look to it.

Shakespeare himself is only a supporting character in ANONYMOUS, since the movie is about the question of who really wrote the plays credited to him and it doesn't take long to make the script's position clear. In this story, the true author of the plays is Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, and the reason he wrote some of them is rooted in the political intrigue surrounding the question of who will succeed Queen Elizabeth on the English throne.

It's a complicated plot, and it's not made any easier to follow by the film's "flashback within a flashback within a flashback" structure. (And I'm not even counting the modern-day framing sequence.) For a while I wasn't quite sure what was going on, but I stuck with it and think I finally figured out most of it, anyway. Along with the political intrigue you get a considerable amount of swordplay and soap opera, including murder, blackmail, and incest. It's all carried out in restrained British fashion, of course, but the plot itself is entertainingly over the top.

I enjoyed ANONYMOUS quite a bit, but I think you'd need to know a lot about Shakespeare and English history to get the full effect of it. Reading reviews of the film in various places, I see that it seems to be one of those "love it or hate it" movies, with a recurring theme among the haters being that it's not "historically accurate", their basis for this being their belief that Shakespeare actually wrote the plays. To which my response is: it's a movie. It's fiction. The framing sequence even makes it clear that this is a case of "What if this is what really happened?" I don't know or even really care who wrote the plays. I just enjoyed the story.

This is also a very good movie for writers, with some lines that made Livia and me laugh out loud even though they probably weren't written to be funny. And it was good to see Derek Jacobi, who's the centerpiece of the framing sequence, again. Jacobi played Claudius in the mini-series I, CLAUDIUS, one of our favorites from the early days of our marriage. Overall, ANONYMOUS is an odd movie, but I liked it and think it's well worth watching.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Big Chief Western, October 1940

2012-02-18T07:00:00.003-06:00

This is the first issue of a short-lived series that featured a lead story by Arthur Lawson in each issue about a character known as White Eagle, obviously a white man raised by Indians, an old, old plot that still crops up occasionally, even now. Authors of the back-up stories in this issue are Chuck Martin, Lee Bond, John A. Saxon, and Wayne D. Overholser, solid pulpsters all. I'm not sure I'd have picked this up if I'd been browsing the newsstand in 1940, but it's an interesting oddity, I think.

Forgotten Books: Gangway! - Donald E. Westlake and Brian Garfield

2012-02-17T06:00:00.002-06:00

I don't pretend to be an expert on the work of Donald E. Westlake, but I thought I'd at least heard of most of his books. I've even read and for a number of years owned a copy of the elusive COMFORT STATION by "J. Morgan Cunningham", a copy for which I paid an entire dime. Literally, ten cents.

Anyway, not long ago I came across a mention of a novel called GANGWAY!, which was referred to as Westlake's only Western. Of course, I knew right away that I had to read it. Further investigation uncovered the fact that the book was written in collaboration with Brian Garfield, another good reason to read it. So now I have.

First of all, it's not really a Western. The dust jacket copy describes it as "the world's first comedy romance suspense pirate western adventure novel". That's not a bad description, but actually GANGWAY! is a historical caper novel, the sort of thing you'd expect if Dortmunder somehow wound up in 1874 San Francisco and decided to rob the United States Mint located there.

Instead of Dortmunder, the mastermind of this heist is Gabe Beauchamps, a likable crook from New York who has been banished from that metropolis by his former boss. Even before Gabe reaches San Francisco, he makes the acquaintance of the beautiful pickpocket Evangeline "Vangie" Kemp, and she's the first one he recruits into his scheme. Others who become involved include Francis Calhoun, a former friend of Gabe's from New York who works in the theater in San Francisco (Westlake and Garfield never come right out and say that Francis is gay, but it's pretty obvious); Ittzy Herz, a young man with seemingly supernatural luck that enables him to emerge unscathed from all sorts of disasters; Captain Flagway, an alcoholic ship's captain; and Roscoe Arafoot, a thug who specializes in shanghaiing unwary visitors to San Francisco.

Naturally, Gabe comes up with a workable but incredibly complicated plan to rob the Mint, so when the gang actually attempts the heist there are plenty of things to go wrong and numerous obstacles to overcome, along with a great deal of hilarity and slapstick, of course. The last fourth of the book, which covers the actual robbery, just races by and is highly entertaining. So is the whole novel. It's well-written, as you'd expect from Westlake and Garfield, and the characters are very appealing. I'm not sure why it's not more well known, unless it's because the historical setting is so different from the rest of Westlake's output. If you're a fan of his work, especially the caper novels, you really ought to read it.

And now that I have, I find myself wishing that he'd written a book about a Parker-like character in the Old West to go along with this period variation on Dortmunder. It would have been good, I'll bet.

(This is the author photo from the back of the book. Westlake on the left, Garfield on the right.)

A Couple of Ben Haas Reviews

2012-02-16T14:01:00.001-06:00

(Since I'm on a Ben Haas kick right now [the psychologically inclined among you will have noticed that I can be a bit obsessive], here are a couple of old reviews I excavated from the archives of the WesternPulps Yahoo Group. I wrote these reviews in March 2002, almost ten years ago.)

BIG BEND, Richard Meade (Ben Haas)

Doubleday, 1968

Sam Ramsey owns a horse ranch north of the Big Bend in Texas in 1914, at a time when there is much unrest and revolution across the border in Mexico. Ramsey is a loner and doesn't get along with his neighbors because of lingering resentment directed at his late father, a Union Army officer who commanded black soldiers posted in the area following the Civil War. When Ramsey's horse herd is stolen by outlaws who plan to take them across the border and sell them to Pancho Villa, he goes after the thieves on his own, despite the heavy odds against him.

Those odds are improved a little when he meets the giant black soldier of fortune called Concho and a young widow named Nora, who are on a mission of revenge of their own that takes them into the Big Bend. The trio of adventurers face a great deal of hardship and danger from Anglo outlaws and Mexican revolutionaries as they try to survive the badlands on both sides of the Rio Grande and catch up to the men they are pursuing.

Ben Haas is one of my favorite series writers (Sundance, Fargo, and at least one Lassiter as Jack Slade). He also writes excellent stand-alones, and this book is a prime example of that. Though the basic plot is made up of standard Western elements, Haas throws in enough wrinkles to make the book consistently interesting. The more modern-day setting allows the use of telephones, machine guns, and airplanes, but there's still plenty of traditional Western action. Haas gives his characters depth and writes such smooth, fast-moving prose that his books are always a pleasure to read.

Highly recommended.

CARTRIDGE CREEK, Richard Meade (Ben Haas)

Doubleday, 1973

Will Leatherman is as tough as his name, a former trail driver from Texas turned land developer, who comes to the railroad-owned town of Cartridge Creek, New Mexico, to size it up and see if he and his partner want to buy it from the railroad. Unwittingly, Leatherman has walked into a war about to erupt between two rival saloon owners, Fate Canady and Goldtoothed Bob Rigsby. Leatherman doesn't want to take sides in this trouble, although after a run-in with one of Rigsby's hired guns, both men try to hire him, thinking that Leatherman is a gunfighter himself. Leatherman's growing friendship for Tom Brand, the man who founded the town, and Bettina Grady, the pretty young widow who runs the local boarding house, finally forces him to take a hand in Cartridge Creek's troubles.

CARTRIDGE CREEK is not as good as Haas's BIG BEND, which I also read and reviewed recently, but it deserves a high recommendation anyway.

One More Reason I Love the Internet: Ben and Joel Haas Edition

2012-02-16T06:00:00.004-06:00

Over the past few days I've been trading emails and talking on the phone with Joel Haas, the son of one of my all-time favorite writers, Ben Haas, who wrote dozens of Westerns under the names John Benteen (the Neal Fargo and Sundance series) and Thorne Douglas (the Rancho Bravo series), as well as historical and mainstream novels under his own name. Joel is a fascinating guy with artistic talents of his own. He's a well-known sculptor.

But in the course of our conversations he mentioned that he's a writer as well, and revealed something that as far as I know has never been suspected among fans of Western series fiction: Joel actually wrote the Fargo novels THE BORDER JUMPERS and DEATH VALLEY GOLD and was poised to take over the series from his dad while Ben Haas concentrated on mainstream novels. Unfortunately, legal wrangling with Harry Shorten, the publisher of Belmont-Tower, resulted in the premature end of the Fargo series and the turning over of the Sundance series to other authors. And it wasn't long after that that Ben Haas passed away while on a trip to New York to attend a dinner given by the Literary Guild for authors it had published. Ninety novels in seventeen years is a fine legacy, but it's a shame that there couldn't have been more.

I have a copy of THE BORDER JUMPERS and plan to read it and post about it soon. I think I have a copy of Joel's other Fargo novel DEATH VALLEY GOLD, but it's somewhere in the stacks and I haven't found it yet. He's also written a World War II novel that I look forward to reading. Meanwhile, Joel has an interesting blog that you can check out here. Ben Haas has long been one of my literary idols, one of the best action writers of all time, and it's been great to connect with his son and find out more about both of them.

Favorite Bookstores #7: The Book Swap

2012-02-15T07:00:00.002-06:00

Another good store I ran across in my book-hunting days was The Book Swap, in North Richland Hills on the north side of Fort Worth. It was located in an old, small strip shopping center, next to a sewing machine store, if I recall correctly. And when you went in, the space was crammed full of shelves of paperbacks with narrow aisles between them. My kind of place, in other words.

But it got better. As you worked your way to the back, more and more rooms somehow opened up off the main one. I finally figured out that they ran behind some of the other businesses in the building. Those rooms were packed just as full as the one in front, but they had the better stuff, as far as I was concerned: the mystery, Western, and science fiction sections.

The stock was a mixture of vintage paperbacks and newer stuff, and the owner's pricing system was complicated enough that I never quite made sense of it. It wasn't strictly half of the cover price, but it worked out close to that except on the older books, which did have a minimum (50 cents, I seem to recall, but it may have been a dollar). Nor was the condition of most of the older books great, but most of them were in decent shape and certainly readable, which is why I wanted them anyway, to read. I hardly ever left there without a grocery sack full of stuff.

Like some other stores, though, The Book Swap was on the wrong side of town (and don't get me wrong, I mean that in a traffic sense) for us to get there except every so often. And the busier our lives got during the Eighties and Nineties, the less often I went there. But about six years ago, I was on my way back from Dallas with one of my daughters and thought I'd take a quick side trip down to the bookstore.

When we got there, the lot was empty. Obviously, the shopping center had been bulldozed and completely cleared away. If the bookstore had a going-out-of-business sale, I missed it. If it moved somewhere else, I missed that, too. It's not anywhere around here, I know that. I don't know what, if anything, is standing in that location today. I haven't been back.

Of course, that wasn't the only disappointment that day. We also planned to stop at a place that had really good pie, and when we got there, it was out of business, too. Dang. Some days you just can't win.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The Duel at Silver Creek

2012-02-14T06:00:00.002-06:00

I've been a fan of Audie Murphy's Westerns ever since I saw SIX BLACK HORSES at the Eagle Drive-in Theater when I was a little kid, but THE DUEL AT SILVER CREEK is one that I'd never watched until now. Released in 1952, it's a fairly early entry in Murphy's career, and it's notable as well for being one of the first handful of films directed by Don Siegel and for including a small supporting turn by a young Lee Marvin.

THE DUEL AT SILVER CREEK crams a lot of plot into a short 77-minute running time. A group of claim-jumpers led by the always dependably evil Gerald Mohr is causing trouble around Silver City. The local lawman, Marshal "Lightnin'" Tyrone (so called because he's fast with a gun) is determined to hunt them down. At the same time he's battling nerve damage from a bullet wound that makes it impossible for him to pull the trigger of a gun, even though he's as fast on the draw as ever. He's also trying to solve the murder of his elderly mentor, who was shot in the back one rainy night. A beautiful woman and her somewhat shady brother show up in town. The even more beautiful tomboy daughter of the stable owner is in love with Marshal Tyrone, although he doesn't have a clue about that. A sinister gunman known as Johnny Sombrero (great name!) is lurking around. Then another gunfighter, The Silver Kid, shows up in town on a mission of vengeance, and of course all these elements come together. As is common in Western movies from this era, the pace is a little deliberate for most of the way, although Siegel does spice things up with an occasional action scene, before letting things explode into a spectacular battle at the end featuring some good stunt work.

Murphy, who plays The Silver Kid, was never a great actor, but he sure had screen presence. Dressed all in black, he's menacing but affable and dominates most of the scenes he's in just by being there. Stephen McNally, never one of my favorites, plays Marshal Tyrone and is okay in the part, except for the fact that his character is so blasted stupid it's hard to like him very much. That's not really McNally's fault. Faith Domergue is the femme fatale Marshal Tyrone falls for, and it's so obvious she's working with the bad guys that she might as well be wearing a sign, but Tyrone never seems to notice. (That's not a spoiler, by the way; the viewer is in on that plot twist all along, from the moment when Domergue's character viciously murders a wounded witness while nobody is looking.) Susan Cabot is much more appealing as the tomboy named Dusty, and Lee Marvin steals the few scenes he's in as a minor baddie.

The photography is excellent and looks great on the DVD I watched. Not surprisingly, Siegel's staging of the action scenes is very effective. THE DUEL AT SILVER CREEK isn't a great Western. The script is a little too muddled for that, and Marshal Tyrone, who's really the lead despite Murphy's top billing as The Silver Kid, isn't likable enough. But it's a solid piece of entertainment and a very worthwhile way to spend a little more than an hour. I sort of wish Murphy had returned as The Silver Kid in more movies. I'm sure I would have enjoyed them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Speed Western, December 1946

2012-02-11T07:00:00.002-06:00

Here's a pretty good SPEED WESTERN cover by George Rozen that has a nice sense of action and some menace in that reaching hand. Of the authors with stories in this issue, the only ones I've heard of are Laurence Donovan and Victor Rousseau, both of whom were old standbys in the Spicy/Speed line of pulps. Rousseau's career went all the way back to the early part of the Twentieth Century, when he wrote fantasy serials for a much higher class of magazine. (But not necessarily better, mind you; I'm quite fond of the Spicy/Speed pulps.) The other authors are Max Neilson (a known house name), Joe McCoy, Carl Mason, and Tonto Green (which I'd also bet was a house name, or at least a pseudonym).

Forgotten Books: The Murder Brain - Brant House (G.T. Fleming-Roberts)

2012-02-10T06:00:00.003-06:00

"The Murder Brain", from the April 1937 issue of SECRET AGENT X, like many of the novels by G.T. Fleming-Roberts in this series, opens in the middle of the action with the Secret Agent already on the trail of a criminal mastermind known as The Brain. (No mention of Pinky, however. Narf!) The Brain is behind a series of killings that have been branded the White Cross Murders, because the victims are found with a white circle painted around them and a cross inside that circle that falls over their bodies.

Also as usual, Secret Agent X puts his skill at disguise to good use as he attempts to foil The Brain's plans. He's not known as the Man of a Thousand Faces for nothing. In addition to some of his common false identities, he also masquerades as a Federal agent, assorted criminals, a financier, and even The Brain himself.

The plotting in this one seems a little thinner and more haphazard than in some Secret Agent X novels, but with his hardboiled prose Fleming-Roberts never lets the pace slow down for very long. Not only that, but he comes up with an excellent character in Sally Vergane, a crazed gun moll who's determined to avenge the death of her former lover, gangster Wolf Hollis. But is Hollis really dead? That's an intriguing question as well, with an answer that sort of surprised me. The last couple of chapters are a veritable whirlwind of action that culminates in a fine showdown in the sewers underneath New York City.

"The Murder Brain" doesn't fall into the top rank of Secret Agent X stories, but it's still a heck of a lot of fun to read if you're a pulp fan. The upcoming reprint from Beb Books also includes a novelette from the same issue, "Redheaded Decoy" by Don Cameron. If my memory's not playing tricks on me, Cameron wrote a Phantom Detective novel that I enjoyed, "The Television Murders", but other than that I haven't read anything by him that I recall. "Redheaded Decoy" is a clever yarn about a group of G-men attempting to trap some kidnappers, as well as the case's action-packed aftermath. I liked it, too, and probably ought to read more of Don Cameron's work.

UPDATE: According to Will Murray's introduction in PHANTOMS IN BRONZE, a collection of Phantom Detective novels by Laurence Donovan, Donovan wrote "The Television Murders", not Don Cameron. But Cameron's "Redheaded Decoy" is still pretty good.

Favorite Kills - Top Suspense Group

2012-02-09T06:00:00.002-06:00

The writers of the Top Suspense Group return with FAVORITE KILLS, a collection of mystery and suspense stories picked out by the authors as representing some of their best work. I certainly can't argue with that. Here's the line-up:

"Archie's Been Framed", Dave Zeltserman

"Night Nurse", Harry Shannon

"Solomon & Lord Drop Anchor", Paul Levine

"Number 19", Naomi Hirahara

"Sweet Dreams", Vicki Hendricks

"House Rules", Libby Fischer Hellmann

"Angie", Ed Gorman

"Knife Fight", Joel Goldman

"Jack Webb's Star", Lee Goldberg

"Restraint", Stephen Gallagher

"Top of the World", Bill Crider

"A Matter of Principal", Max Allan Collins

I'd read some of these stories before, but I read them again and still loved them, and the ones I hadn't read were equally excellent and entertaining. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be Bill Crider's "Top of the World", which is a much darker and nastier yarn than most of the work for which Bill is known. But all the stories are really, really good, and you can't go wrong with any of them.

And you also can't go wrong with the price, which, as I write this, is zip, nada, nothing. Free, in other words. I highly recommend that you grab this one if you don't have it already. It's an absolutely top-notch anthology.

Music: A Horse With No Name - America

2012-02-08T22:59:00.001-06:00

This turns up a lot on lists of worst songs or most-hated songs, but I gotta tell you . . . when it's the spring of 1972 and you're a freshman in college and you're sitting around the dorm with people who are somewhat under the influence of various illegal substances and your arm is around a girl who's inexplicably called Moose even though she looks nothing like a moose . . . well, take it from me, this is a great song. The radio station we always listened to, KRMA, with studios in Buda, Texas, played it all the time. Catch those call letters? Every DJ who worked there, all of whom sounded just like Tommy Chong, did station IDs by saying, "Hey, this is Radio Karma, man." And then they'd play "A Horse With No Name" for the twentieth time that day.

And this is what happens when you get me reminiscing about college. Best not to do that.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Doctor Zhivago

2012-02-07T06:00:00.004-06:00

Yeah, I know, when it came out DOCTOR ZHIVAGO was hardly overlooked. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won five of them, and it played for 46 straight weeks at the 7^th Street Theater in Fort Worth, which was a local record for first-run movie longevity at the time and may still be, for all I know. Of course you have to remember that in those days new movies didn't open simultaneously in a dozen different multiplexes. No, during its run at the 7^th Street, that was the only theater in Fort Worth showing DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, so with an auditorium that seated, at a guess, 850 people, it took a lot longer for everybody who wanted to see a movie to get a chance to.

So, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO was popular, no doubt about it. But when was the last time you read anything about it on somebody's blog? Been a while, more than likely. And since this series is often just an excuse for nostalgia on my part, we're going to say that it's overlooked, okay?

When the movie came out I was sort of living with my sister. Not officially, but I spent a lot more time at her house, about a quarter of a mile away from my parents' house, than I did at home. And she was a big fan of thick historical novels (she once said that she bought books by the pound, the bigger the better). So she read Boris Pasternak's novel DOCTOR ZHIVAGO before the movie version came out. Since she was reading it, so did I. As much as I've talked about reading comic books and Doc Savage and Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs paperbacks when I was a kid, I read other things, too, and I enjoyed big historical novels like that. (No way I'd read anything that long and dense now; I just don't have the patience for it anymore.) I thought DOCTOR ZHIVAGO was pretty darn good. It even sparked an interest in Russian history and literature in me. (Don't worry, I got over it.) So naturally my sister and I went to see the movie when it came out.

Pasternak's novel, for all its literary qualities, was kind of a soap opera. The movie is even more so, the sort of big, glossy, historical epic soap opera that they just don't make anymore. Great photography, a beautiful musical score ("Lara's Theme" was a radio hit, back in the days when radio hits could still be instrumentals), sweeping vistas, battle scenes with thousands of extras, and enough human stories with the right mixture of pathos and optimism to be very involving. The cast, with Omar Sharif playing Zhivago, Julie Christie, Alec Guinness ("These are not the Bolsheviks you're looking for"), Rod Steiger, Tom Courtenay, and a host of others, was pretty good all the way around, although the acting styles were a little overwrought to match the subject matter. I loved it, the same way I loved RICH MAN, POOR MAN about a decade later (and thanks to Patti Abbott for writing about that one last week; lots of good memories). I think I saw DOCTOR ZHIVAGO at least three times in the theater, and I watched it on videotape back in the Eighties and thought it still held up pretty well. I haven't tried it since then.

Modern viewers might find a movie like this a little too slow and stodgy and overdone. But every so often, I need a great storytelling wallow, and I think DOCTOR ZHIVAGO would fit the bill nicely. One of these days, when I have the time . . .

From the Ashes - Jeremy Burns

2012-02-06T06:00:00.002-06:00

If you're in the mood for a good international conspiracy thriller, Jeremy Burns' debut novel FROM THE ASHES certainly ought to do the trick. His protagonist, graduate student Jonathan Rickner, is the son of a famous archeologist, but the murder of Jon's older brother draws him into the investigation of a not-so-ancient mystery that still goes all the way back to the closing days of World War I, with stops along the way in the Cold War era and World War II.

The trick to a novel like this is to mix the historical speculation with interesting characters and enough action to keep things perking along. Burns does a fine job of that. Jon Rickner is a good hero, smart and brave, able to rise to the occasion when threatened, but still quite human, especially in his relationship with his late brother's fiancée Mara who is drawn into investigating the conspiracy with him. Naturally, the shadowy figures behind all the villainy are willing to go to any lengths to keep from being exposed, and since they've murdered many times before, they don't hesitate to go after Jon and Mara as well.

Burns has come up with a very plausible plot that involves a number of famous historical figures and also includes a desperate hunt for clues reminiscent of the NATIONAL TREASURE movies (which I enjoyed quite a bit). I liked FROM THE ASHES, too, and think it's well worth reading. I suspect – and hope – that there'll be a sequel on the way.

One More Day to Get "The Red Reef" Free

2012-02-05T10:28:00.000-06:00

Just a reminder that the Kindle version of my short story "The Red Reef" is still free on Amazon for the rest of the day. Those of you who are pulp fans will recognize nods to several of my favorite authors in this one.

Free Lucas Hallam Stories! Today Only!

2012-02-04T08:25:00.001-06:00

Livia has made HALLAM, which collects two long stories featuring her private eye character Lucas Hallam, free for today only. This e-book volume includes "Hallam", the 10,000 word story that introduced the character, which originally appeared in the first Private Eye Writers of America anthology, THE EYES HAVE IT, and "Hollywood Flesh", a 7000 word yarn that has Hallam coming up against zombies in Hollywood. (That's right, Hallam was fighting the Zombie Apocalypse before it was cool!) This one originally appeared in the anthology THE BOOK OF ALL FLESH. These are fine stories, and you sure can't beat the price.

And don't forget, my short story "The Red Reef" is still available for free today and tomorrow.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western, November 1948

2012-02-04T07:00:00.002-06:00

This is another pulp that I own and read recently. As usual with a Popular Publications pulp, it has an eye-catching cover with that vivid yellow background and bright red logo, just like Popular's DIME WESTERN. I'm not sure I've seen another case of a bad guy using a spur as a weapon on a pulp cover, but with those sharp rowels, it makes sense.

As usual for this title, the lead "novel" is more like a novelette, and it's by an author who's not one of my favorites, Tom Roan. "I'll Tame Any Town!" (the editors at Popular loved their exclamation points) is the story of a gunfighter known as Hell Morgan, who comes to clean up the wild Wyoming town of Rattlesnake Rock, which is under the thumb of outlaw brothers Gun and Big Pistol DeMoanie. Roan seems to have liked bizarre names like that, especially for his villains. Like Dan Cushman, he's an author whose work often doesn't appeal to me, and that's the case here. This isn't a bad story, but I never could get very interested in it.

Moving on to the stories that are actually billed as novelettes, they're considerably better, which isn't surprising considering who wrote them. Tom W. Blackburn and H.A. DeRosso were consistently good pulp authors.

Blackburn's "Juan Poker's Gallows Goal" is a little unusual in that it's set in California not long after it becomes a U.S. territory, while tensions between the Yankee newcomers and the Californios who lived there when the area was still part of Mexico are high. Adventurer and all-around shady character John Poker, or Juan Poker as he's known to most people, is recruited by the U.S. government to act as a secret agent and get the goods on a criminal mastermind who's out to take over California and make it into his own little empire. In the course of this assignment, Poker is framed for murder and the people who are supposed to be his allies wind up trying to hunt him down. This is an excellent story, full of action, plot twists, and political intrigue to go along with the gunfights. Blackburn wrote at least a dozen or so stories in the Juan Poker series for 10 STORY WESTERN, and I'll definitely be on the lookout for the others.

The other novelette, "The Cold Running Iron", is by one of my favorites, H.A. DeRosso. It's set in one of the fictional mountain ranges DeRosso liked to scatter across the West, the Predicadores, and is narrated by a former rustler known as Cold Iron Smith who wants to put his criminal ways behind him. As always, though, the past makes that difficult, and so does the beautiful wife of the rancher Smith works for. To me, DeRosso's stories often have some of the same feel as a Gold Medal crime novel, and that's true in this yarn. It doesn't quite belong in the top rank of his work because it's a little rushed and probably could have benefited from more wordage, but it's still very good and for my money the best story in the issue.

As for the short stories, one of the best in the issue is by the other well-known writer from Cross Plains, Texas, C.S. Boyles, who wrote under the name Will C. Brown. "Button Savvy" centers around an imaginative boy, the son of a sheriff, whose fantasizing about battling badmen becomes real. The plot is pretty predictable, but the story is well written and effective, and Boyles, not surprisingly, does a fine job of capturing life in a small cowtown.

John Jo Carpenter is one of several authors here whose work I hadn't read before now. His story "Hangover in Helltown" packs a lot of plot and back-story into a yarn that's mostly a domestic drama about a blacksmith struggling with a drinking problem and a cattle baron's son who wants to marry a divorced woman over his father's objections. The plot is a little unusual for a Western pulp and the writing is pretty good, but the story never really came together for me and the ending left me scratching my head.

"Fog It, Pilgrim – or Kill" is by Reynolds Phillips, an author I'd never even heard of, let alone read. It's a good story, too, the old "tenderfoot turns out to be tougher than he looks" plot, but very nicely done.

Richard Brister's "Railmen Come Up Scrapping" is a decent little actioner about a range hog trying to force a former railroader off his land. Brister is probably best known for his biography of Wild Bill Hickok, but he turned out some good fiction, too.

"Twin Terrors of Texas" is a short-short about a mild-manner Dallas storekeeper who has two large, rambunctious twin sons. Someone like Robert E. Howard probably could have made a colorful, action-packed tall tale out of this plot, but in the hands of author Jimmy Nichols, it reads more like a synopsis than an actual story. I didn't really care for it.

"Blood is Thicker – and Hotter!" by Dennison Rust is an interesting story for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's a well written, fairly suspenseful story about a couple of old trail pards who wind up on opposite sides of the bars in a jail cell. There's also the question of who actually wrote it. The name "Dennison Rust" strikes me as pretty blatant pseudonym, and my first thought was that the author was really Bennie Gardner, whose most famous pseudonym was "Gunnison Steele". Also, the story is fairly short and concerns a lawman and a prisoner, two things that are common in Gardner's work. Seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? The only thing that makes me wonder is a passing reference to an outlaw known as Gentleman Jack D'Arcy. D.L. Champion, the originator and one of the principal author of the Phantom Detective novels, also wrote as Jack D'Arcy. (Champion's initials stand for D'Arcy Lyndon.) So the question becomes, is the name totally coincidental, or was Bennie Gardner acquainted with D.L. Champion and nodding to a friend, or was Dennison Rust really D.L. Champion himself, although I don't find any indication on-line that Champion ever wrote any Western stories? Or, I suppose, was Dennison Rust the real name of the person who wrote this story? Based on reading it, I still vote for Gardner, but it intrigues me.

The final short story in this issue is definitely by an author who created a well-known pulp hero, Paul Chadwick, who wrote the first Secret Agent X novel. "Redmen Blaze the Way" is about an Indian attack on a wagon train and its aftermath. There's not much to it, but it's all right.

So overall, this issue of 10 STORY WESTERN, like most issues of that pulp, is a mixed bag, with two very good stories – the DeRosso and Blackburn novelettes – some other entertaining yarns, and a few I didn't care for. That's not unusual for this title. I've found that 10 STORY WESTERN wasn't as strong most of the time as STAR WESTERN and DIME WESTERN, Popular's flagship titles in the Western field, but there are enough good stories to make it worth reading.

Free Reasoner!

2012-02-03T07:27:00.000-06:00

Several years ago I wrote a pulp-inspired adventure story called "The Red Reef" for the final issue of Dave Zeltserman's HARDLUCK STORIES. Since that version is no longer on-line, I've just published an e-book version of the story on Amazon, and for the next three days it's absolutely free. This is a 4300 word short story, not a novel, but I think it's pretty good stuff. Check it out!

Forgotten Books: Border Roundup - Allan R. Bosworth

2012-02-03T06:00:00.003-06:00

According to TWENTIETH CENTURY WESTERN WRITERS, this novel was originally a pulp serial, but TCWW doesn't say when and where it was first published. Doubleday did a hardback version in 1941 under the title WHEREVER THE GRASS GROWS, and then Bantam reprinted it in paperback in 1947. That's the edition I just read. (And as a side note, while the plastic coating on the paperback covers is starting to show a little wear, the paper is just barely tan and in beautiful shape, better than most two or three year old paperbacks these days. But then, that's common for paperbacks from that era, at least in my experience.)

In 1875, Ruck (short for Rucker, which was Bosworth's middle name) Hanna returns to Texas after spending five years in Wyoming. Ruck had to leave the family ranch because he shot and killed a crooked carpetbagger who was trying to kill him. Knowing he wouldn't get a fair trial from the Reconstruction government, he went on the run instead. But by the beginning of the novel, Reconstruction is over, Ruck's father is dead, and Ruck has to return to save the ranch. All of the Nueces brush country in South Texas is under assault from Mexican raiders and rustlers led by Cheno Sandoval, whose sister Olivia is an old friend (and potential romantic interest) of Ruck's.

There are other problems besides the rustlers. The open range era is ending, and there are clashes among the local ranchers over how to handle this evolution in cattle-raising. The spectre of barbed wire is looming. Ruck has a lot of trouble to handle, including a romantic triangle with Olivia and Hattie Blake, the daughter of a carpetbagger who has remained in Texas to become a business tycoon. Texas Rangers led by Captain Leander McNelly show up to put a stop to the rustling and wind up crossing the Rio Grande to invade Mexico, and Ruck goes along with them.

This is a very well written novel with good characters, a historically accurate background, and a fine sense of time and place. I've been to many of the places Bosworth describes, and he gets it right. The only flaws, in my opinion, are a shortage of action and the lack of a sense of urgency, especially in the first half of the book. The second half is considerably stronger. Overall, I'd highly recommend this one, and I intend to look for more novels by Bosworth.

(Bosworth was one of the regular stable of authors on the various house-name series in WILD WEST WEEKLY. I don't know which particular stories he wrote, but I'll bet they were good.)

McGrave - Lee Goldberg

2012-02-02T14:20:00.000-06:00

If you travel in the same blog circles I do, you've probably read quite a bit about Lee Goldberg's new e-book McGRAVE in the past twenty-four hours. Well, I just finished it, and I'm here to tell you it's the best thing I've read so far this year. LA cop John "Tidal Wave" McGrave is straight out of an Eighties action-adventure movie, and in this yarn about McGrave's international pursuit of a thief and killer, Goldberg pulls off a very neat trick, producing a yarn that's part serious, part satire, and all action. It seemed like I had a grin on my face the whole time I was reading it. McGRAVE comes out tomorrow, and it gets a high recommendation from me. I loved it.

And I'm ready for the next McGrave book right now.

Free Rancho Diablo!

2012-02-02T07:00:00.000-06:00

If you've been meaning to try the Rancho Diablo series, today is the perfect time because the first book in the series, SHOOTER'S CROSS (by Mel Odom writing as Colby Jackson), is absolutely free on Amazon. Today only, though, so grab it while you can.

Free Crider!

2012-02-01T09:34:00.000-06:00

No, Bill's not locked up. But the e-book version of his Truman Smith novel THE PRAIRIE CHICKEN KILL is free for the next three days. This is an excellent book and definitely another Deal You Can't Beat.

Check Out: Filtered Future, The Land of Oz, and Other Dark Tales of Science Fiction and Horror - Brett Weiss

2012-02-01T06:00:00.002-06:00

My friend Brett Weiss has a new short story collection out from Amazon. Take a look:

Written by Brett Weiss, a frequent contributor to such magazines as Fangoria and Filmfax, this eclectic short story collection pulls no punches, taking readers down a rabbit hole of fear, wonder and imagination. From the Orwellian “Filtered Future” and “What Do They Do While We Sleep?” to the deadly dark “Strange Children” and “Wormboy,” Filtered Future, The Land of Oz and Other Dark Tales of Science Fiction and Horror will keep anyone with a taste for the bizarre reading late into the night (and the next night and the next).

Other stories in this collection include: “I Have No TV, and I Must Watch” (a Harlan Ellison homage/parody); “Washed in the Blood” (a seriously warped religious yarn); “The Land of Oz” (about an early ’80s arcade); “The Creation Proclamation” (an amusing evolutionary tale); and “The Lady Loves Dancing” (introducing a morbidly obese woman’s “Little Helpers”).

Bonus features include a poem (“A New Kind of Light”), an interview with legendary horror novelist Bentley Little and introductions to each story. More than 34,000 words in all.

Coming Soon: Latchkeys #2: The Ugly Little Bloke

2012-01-31T17:26:00.000-06:00

Here's the great cover for the second book in the new YA fantasy series I'm contributing to. You can read more about this book here.

Tuesday's Overlooked TV: The Rogues

2012-01-31T06:00:00.003-06:00

THE ROGUES is another short-lived series from the Sixties. It ran for one season, 1964-65, and while I didn't see every episode (it was on opposite CANDID CAMERA and WHAT'S MY LINE, two shows that my father loved), I saw enough of them to know that it was a charming, well-written, very entertaining series.

The premise was pretty simple. Three retired con men who were cousins – Charles Boyer, David Niven, and Gig Young – used their larcenous skills to help people who'd been taken advantage of. The idea was that the three leads would alternate, but Gig Young wound up being the star of most of the episodes. British actor Robert Coote often stole the show as Cousin Timmy. The series had that sophisticated, international charm, although most of that was achieved through the use of stock footage.

THE ROGUES was a funny, lightweight piece of fluff that was never intended to be anything else. At least that's the way I remember it. I don't believe it's ever been released on DVD and there are only a couple of clips on YouTube. There probably aren't all that many people who even remember it. But as usual, I do.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Big-Book Western, April 1940

2012-01-28T07:00:00.003-06:00

This is another Popular Publications pulp, as you might guess by the yellow background and the red banner along the top of the cover. Popular really loved yellow and red. At this stage of BIG-BOOK WESTERN's existence, Ed Earl Repp is in nearly every issue. Of course, there's really no way to know who actually wrote those stories published under Repp's name, since he's known to have used several ghosts. The other stories are by Tom Roan, John G. Pearsol (both Popular Publications regulars), Larry A. Harris (who wrote for nearly all the Western pulp publishers), and a couple of authors I'm not familiar with, I.L. Thompson and Jack Bloodhart, which sounds like a pseudonym to me but quite possibly isn't. I like this cover because it continues the tradition that nearly every woman in the Old West had red hair and was handy with a shootin' iron.

Forgotten Books: The Bamboo Bomb - James Dark (J.E. MacDonnell)

2012-01-27T06:00:00.011-06:00

(This post originally appeared on April 26, 2006, in slightly different form.)

There's a story behind why I read this particular book at this particular time -- so naturally I'm going to tell it.

Like a lot of people who have a lot of old paperbacks, I sometimes have trouble remembering which books I own and which I don't. So when I come across something interesting in a used bookstore, I occasionally have to ask myself, do I already have this one or not? And if I can't remember, I err on the side of caution and buy it anyway, because -- in the words of a very wise man -- you never regret the books you buy, only the ones you didn't buy.

Anyway, I was discussing this with Livia the other day, which led me to remark in passing, "That's why I have five or six copies of THE BAMBOO BOMB by James Dark."

She just looked at me and asked, "Have you ever actually read it?"

I had to admit that I hadn't, so she said, "I want you to read it."

Now I have. And it's not bad.

Mark Hood is your typical Sixties secret agent: rich American playboy, Rhodes scholar at Oxford, internationally renowned cricket player, race car driver, karate master, etc. Just the sort of guy who spent the Sixties fighting the bad guys and keeping the world safe. He works for Intertrust, a top-secret international spy organization. In this book he's sent to Singapore to pull the old "American down on his luck" bit so he can infiltrate a group of villains who are out to destabilize the Far Eastern political arena . . . I think. I'll admit I had a little trouble following the plot because I know almost nothing about politics in the Far East during the Sixties. But that's okay, because Hood fights a bunch of bad guys, romances a couple of beautiful girls, and blows a bunch of stuff up real good.

One of the best things about this book is its length -- 127 pages. And there's more plot in that 127 pages than in a lot of 500 - 600 page thrillers that I've read. True, there's not much characterization or back-story, but sometimes I don't care. You pays your money and you takes your choice. More than anything else it reminded me of the Sam Durell books by Edward S. Aarons, with its hardboiled hero and exotic locations and convoluted plot. "James Dark" didn't write as well as Aarons, but then, few people ever did when it comes to this particular sort of book.

"James Dark" was really J.E. MacDonnell. I know nothing about him other than the fact that he wrote a lot of war and espionage novels in various series under various names. The Mark Hood books were originally published by Horwitz in Australia during the mid-Sixties, and at the same time about half of the books were reprinted in the U.S. by Signet, cashing in on the secret agent boom of the time. I think I have all the U.S. editions -- multiple copies of some of them, in fact.

But just to set the record straight, I checked my shelves and I don't have five or six copies of THE BAMBOO BOMB.

I have three.

(Update: I never got around to reading any more of those James Dark books, and I haven't replaced any of them since the fire. But I have fond enough memories of this one that if I ever run across any of them at a reasonable price, I'll pick them up. I might even read them. And this won't come as any shock, but I once again have multiple copies of some books because I saw them in the store and couldn't remember if I already had them. In fact, just the other day I barely caught myself in time to keep from ordering a book on ABE that I had just ordered another copy of maybe a month earlier.)

The Green Hornet: Year One: The Biggest of All Game - Matt Wagner

2012-01-25T06:00:00.002-06:00

A while back I read and enjoyed the first volume in THE GREEN HORNET: YEAR ONE, and now I've read the second trade paperback collection from the comic book series. Volume Two is called THE BIGGEST OF ALL GAME, and it's an appropriate title as The Green Hornet and Kato step up their war against gang boss Skid Caruso. In fact, they cause so much trouble for Caruso that he calls in the brutal gangland killer known as The Scourge and sets him on the trail of the Hornet.

Interspersed with this storyline are flashbacks detailing how The Hornet came to be equipped with his famous car The Black Beauty, his electrified weapon The Hornet's Sting, and his downtown headquarters with its secret alleyway entrance. Britt Reid's secretary Lenore Case is also introduced in this volume. All of this is classic Green Hornet lore, told in a little grittier fashion for modern readers maybe, but faithful enough to the original that a purist like me really appreciates it. I'm still not crazy about the series being set in Chicago rather than Detroit, but I can live with it.

As usual Matt Wagner's scripts are excellent, fast-paced and hardboiled and occasionally humorous. He's also credited with art direction on the series, which I suppose means he did rough breakdowns for Aaron Campbell's pencils and inks. I like Campbell's art for the most part. His storytelling is fairly easy to follow, and his characters all look right.

I've liked The Green Hornet ever since I first listened to the radio show in the early Sixties. Wagner's doing a fine job with this retelling, and when the next volume comes out, I'm sure I'll read it.

Tuesday's Overlooked TV: Coronet Blue

2012-01-24T06:00:00.002-06:00

Following up on Bob Randisi's suggestion from last week, today I want to look back at a summer replacement series that surprised everybody and still has a cult following, CORONET BLUE.

Some of you probably remember summer replacement series, which were exactly what they sounded like, new programming that took the place of reruns during the summer. Bear in mind that back in those days, most TV series produced between 30 and 40 episodes per year, not the 22 that's considered a full season now. Even so, all the networks would have a handful of summer replacement shows.

When CORONET BLUE made its debut in the summer of 1967, it's likely no one expected much out of it. It had been produced a year or two earlier and had been sitting on the shelf. The premise seems to have been inspired somewhat by ROUTE 66, THE FUGITIVE, and RUN FOR YOUR LIFE: a semi-anthology series with one or two continuing characters. The twist here was that Michael Alden, the protagonist of CORONET BLUE (played by Frank Converse) didn't know who he really was. He didn't know if that was really his name. All he knew was that he had climbed out of the East River in New York, the mysterious phrase "Coronet Blue" had some meaning to him . . . and people were trying to kill him.

That's a classic thriller set-up, and CORONET BLUE made the most of it as Michael Alden spent the summer trying to discover his true identity and find out why those mysterious enemies wanted him dead. The series caught on and became extremely popular, with the ratings rising each week. The on-going mystery had something to do with that, and so, I think, did the great theme song and opening credit sequence. That song has been stuck in my head for more than 40 years now.

Then suddenly it was over, with no resolution at all. Rumors abounded that there was a mysterious final episode and CBS, for some reason, decided not to show it. That seems not to have been the case. After all, when the episodes were produced in the first place the hope was that the series would be successful and would continue. Some executive decided that wasn't going to happen, and everyone involved moved on to other project while the episodes sat gathering dust until CBS trotted them out as a summer replacement series. Even after they saw its popularity, there was nothing they could do about it. Frank Converse was already working on another series, the short-lived cop show NYPD.

The rumors about the intending ending of CORONET BLUE persisted, and eventually creator Larry Cohen revealed in an interview what his plans had been. You can find the information easily enough on-line if you really want to know. But I'll say here and now that I don't buy it, not for a second. I hate to second-guess the guy who came up with the whole series, but I would have been severely disappointed if I had seen that ending. Maybe this is one of those rare cases where something was better because the outcome was left up to the imagination of the viewer.

"The Galvanized Yankees of Company D" - Troy D. Smith

2012-01-23T18:43:00.000-06:00

The Galvanized Yankees were Confederate prisoners who volunteered to serve with the U.S. Army on the frontier during the Civil War. I researched and used this setting in some of the novels in my Civil War Battles series and have been interested in the period ever since. Troy Smith mixes battlefield action, interesting characters, and dialogue that rings true to produce a compelling story with a poignant ending. "The Galvanized Yankees of Company D" is top-notch historical fiction.

CBS Radio Mystery Theater

2012-01-23T13:20:00.000-06:00

I remember listening to and enjoying the CBS Radio Mystery Theater back in the Seventies. Now all 1,399 episodes are available on-line for free. I'm an OTR fan from 'way back, although I can never seem to find the time to listen as much as I want to, but I'm definitely going to check these out, probably starting tonight. Lots of great stuff here!

The Masacado Scrolls #1: The Fall of Awa - Charles T. Whipple

2012-01-23T06:00:00.002-06:00

Charles T. Whipple is best known as a well-respected Western author under the pseudonym Chuck Tyrell. But he also writes stories set in Japan, where he's lived and worked for a number of years. His novella THE FALL OF AWA is the first in a series of fantasy yarns based on ancient Japanese mythology, and it's a good one.

The heroine, a girl named Ryo, is the daughter of a servant in the household of a local ruler. When the kingdom comes under attack by the forces of a rival warlord aided by dark sorcery, the fortress of Awa falls and Ryo and her mother are doomed to life as slaves of the conquerors. Other mystical forces are at work, though, and Ryo is destined to play a pivotal part in the battle between good and evil.

With its young heroine, you might think this is a YA novella, but not really. The battle scenes early on are bloody and almost Howardian in their sweep and pace. That hardboiled, gritty realism continues during the story of the time Ryo and her mother spend as slaves, culminating in a sorcerous conflict that sets the stage for more stories to come.

I'm not a big fan of stories set in the Orient, but Whipple does a great job with this one and has me looking forward to the rest of the series. It's a nice blend of historical and heroic fantasy, and if you're a fan of those genres, you should check it out. I enjoyed it a lot.

Check Out Latchkeys: Unlatched - Steven Savile

2012-01-22T10:45:00.003-06:00

The first book in the Latchkeys series is now available on Amazon and will be available soon for the Nook as well. I played a small part in creating this young adult fantasy series with a number of other authors and will be writing one of the books coming later on. It's been a great experience so far, and as with the Dead Man books, one of the best parts is getting to read all the books done by the other writers. So if you're a fantasy fan, you definitely need to check this one out.

Bob's Birthday

2012-01-22T08:00:00.003-06:00

Today marks the 106th anniversary of Robert E. Howard's birth in Peaster, Texas, about twenty miles as the crow flies from where I'm sitting. If you'd like to celebrate, the accepted procedure is to read one of your favorite REH stories and raise a glass of your favorite drink to the Greatest Pulp Writer in the Whole Wide World. That's what I plan to be doing this evening.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: The Lone Ranger, May 1937

2012-01-21T07:00:00.005-06:00

Earlier this week in my comments on the great new collection UNMASKED from Black Dog Books, I mentioned the pulp magazine devoted to the Lone Ranger. Here's the cover from the second issue of that pulp, which features the story reprinted in UNMASKED. The art is by H.J. Ward. The Lone Ranger novel takes up most of the wordage inside, but there are also short stories by Claude Rister, Lawrence A. Keating, and Frank Kavanaugh, an installment of a serialized biography of John Wesley Hardin by Chuck Martin, and an assortment of articles, features, and columns, including the "Lone Ranger Stamp Page", whatever that was. As popular as the radio show was, and as much other merchandising featured the Lone Ranger, I'm surprised the pulp magazine was unsuccessful. Maybe the fact that THE MASKED RIDER, a pulp series featuring a character clearly inspired by the Lone Ranger, was already being published had something to do with it. In fact, one of those Masked Rider stories, "Outlaw of the Red Hills", was written by Lawrence A. Keating, who has a story in this issue, making one more connection between the characters.

Forgotten Books: The Time Traders - Andre Norton

2012-01-20T06:00:00.002-06:00

When I was a kid, Andre Norton books were everywhere. Every school library and every public library had what seemed like dozens of them. Plus the paperback editions of her books were plentiful and easy to find. During that era, her name was as synonymous with science fiction as those of Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke.

I read a bunch of those books, too, although I was never as big a fan of Norton's work as I was of those other authors I just mentioned. And as time went by I stopped reading her books entirely. At least forty years went by without me picking up an Andre Norton book.

Recently I got the urge to give her work a try again and see how it holds up, so I read THE TIME TRADERS, the first in one of her many series and a book that I never read back in the old days, at least that I recall. It has an interesting set-up: young Ross Murdock, who's in trouble with the law, is given the choice of taking part in some top-secret government project or being subjected to an ominous-sounding "Rehabilitation". Naturally Ross goes with the top-secret project and soon finds himself part of an American time travel experiment in which agents are sent back into the past to vie with Soviet Russian agents for alien technology that shouldn't exist in Earth's past.

I've always liked time travel books, and this is a good one, packed with adventure as Ross and his fellow agents deal with the hardships of life in ancient Britain as well as carrying out an espionage struggle against the Russians. Then, to complicate things even more, the aliens show up . . . and they aren't happy.

I thought the writing in this book was a little bland – I always thought Norton's work, though it was written for a primarily young adult audience, could have used a little more grit – but the ideas are intriguing, the pace rocks right along with a considerable amount of action, and Ross Murdock makes a likable hero. The whole thing is pretty dated but still enjoyable. I probably won't drop everything to read more Andre Norton books right away, but I don't think it'll be another forty years before I read one, either. (For one thing, I'd be nearly 100 years old!)

Check Out Dodge Dalton on the High Road to Oblivion

2012-01-19T13:18:00.000-06:00

(I've read the first two books in this series by Sean Ellis and thoroughly enjoyed them. I'll be reading this one, too, but in the meantime, it's now available. If you're a fan of adventure fiction, don't miss it.)

The Golden Age of Adventure has a new champion!

Twice before, Dodge Dalton proved himself a worthy heir to the heroic Captain Falcon, but saving the world has been more costly than he could have imagined. The scars of that sacrifice have only just begun to heal when disaster strikes again. Dodge's friend Doc Newcombe has been kidnapped by a gang of terrorists who plan to use his scientific expertise to build a weapon capable of destroying entire cities.

To save his friend, Dodge will have to unravel a web of intrigue where no one can be trusted, face off against enemy spies trained in the ancient arts of stealth and assassination, and travel to the very gates of Hell.

Dodge Dalton has emerged from the Shadow of Falcon's Wings...

He survived the Outpost of Fate...

But is he ready for the dangers that await on the High Road to Oblivion?

Hope Road - John Barlow

2012-01-18T06:00:00.002-06:00

I hadn't read a British mystery in a while, and John Barlow's HOPE ROAD was a good choice to change that. It's a thriller with a little bit of police procedural thrown in, as protagonist John Ray, the son of a notorious British gangster, attempts to go straight with his business of selling second-hand luxury cars. John even has a girlfriend on the police force, Detective Constable Denise Danson. So he has plenty of motivation for getting to the bottom of things when one of the cars from his showroom goes missing and then turns up with the corpse of a young woman in its trunk. Not only that, but John's friend and top salesman, also missing, is considered by the police as the leading suspect in the woman's murder.

Barlow throws in plenty of twists before everything is untangled, since of course nothing in the case is exactly what it seems to be, and he spins the yarn in fast-paced, very readable prose. I'm not a big fan of books written in the present tense, but Barlow makes that technique work here. He also does a good job with the setting, the English city of Leeds, and made me feel like I'd been there. (Which I haven't, of course. I don't even go as far as Dallas unless I have to.)

HOPE ROAD is a fine novel, the first in a series, and I look forward to reading the others.

Tuesday's Overlooked TV: Blue Light

2012-01-17T06:00:00.002-06:00

Like GARRISON'S GORILLAS, which I wrote about last week, BLUE LIGHT was a short-lived TV series set during World War II. It was on a year earlier in 1966, and lasted even less time, only half a season. I recall it being pretty good, though.

The emphasis was on espionage rather than combat in this one. Robert Goulet played David March, an American journalist who turns traitor and goes over to the German side early in the war, before the U.S. is involved officially. But of course, March is really an American secret agent working against the Nazis. His code name was "Blue Light", hence the name of the series.

I remember very little about this one except that I liked it. The episodes were a half-hour, which meant the plots had to be pretty tight, and it had a nice hardboiled feel to it. There are a few clips from one episode available on YouTube, but that's it.

Unmasked - Tom Roberts, ed.

2012-01-16T06:00:00.002-06:00

As we've come to expect from publisher Tom Roberts and Black Dog Books, UNMASKED is another fine collection of vintage fiction, in this case the earliest appearances of some characters who are much better known for their movie and TV versions: Hopalong Cassidy, The Cisco Kid, Zorro, and The Lone Ranger. Two of my all-time favorites there (Hoppy and the Ranger), and a couple of other characters that I've enjoyed greatly over the years.

This volume starts off with a lengthy, informative, and entertaining introduction by Francis M. Nevins that covers the evolution of the characters from prose to screen, or in the case of the Lone Ranger, from the airwaves to prose. Nevins knows as much or more about this stuff than anyone alive, and he provides plenty of good background info.

Having read many a Hopalong Cassidy book when I was a kid, I had no idea that the original stories had been revised and rearranged for book publication. UNMASKED gives us the first six Hoppy stories as they originally appeared in THE OUTING MAGAZINE in 1905 and 1906, the first time those original versions have been reprinted in more than a hundred years. Clarence E. Mulford's style, especially the use of thick dialect, takes a little getting used to, but once I got into these stories I found them incredibly entertaining. Owen Wister gets credit (deservedly so) for coming up with many of the conventions of Western fiction, but Mulford came along only a few years later and added a lot of things that we've come to expect from Westerns, giving these stories some historical as well as entertainment value.

From the same era is O. Henry's "The Caballero's Way", the only appearance in print of the original Cisco Kid, who, like Hopalong Cassidy, was considerably different from the movie version that came along later. This one is well-written and pretty hardboiled for the time.

Next up is an excerpt from "The Curse of Capistrano", the ARGOSY serial by Johnston McCully that introduced the character of Zorro to the world, and again Roberts goes with the original magazine version rather than the rewritten later versions. I've come a little late to McCully's work but I'm quickly becoming a big fan. His stories are very well-paced, with an almost uncanny sense of what makes a story exciting and keeps the reader flipping the pages. This example is no different.

Finally, UNMASKED gives us a complete novel featuring the Lone Ranger, "The Masked Rider's Justice", from the second issue of the Ranger's fairly short-lived pulp magazine. This is my favorite story in this volume, probably because I'm such a huge Lone Ranger fan. As I began reading it, something about the opening – the Ranger rescuing an unjustly imprisoned young man from a lynch mob – struck me as familiar, so I checked my collection of Lone Ranger novels. Sure enough, this story was rewritten and expanded into THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO, the fifth volume in the hardback series published by Grosset & Dunlap. As Roberts explains in his introduction to the story in UNMASKED, the Lone Ranger pulp novels were published without a by-line, but it seems likely to me that they're the work of Fran Striker, who wrote the G&D series (with the exception of the first one, which is by Gaylord Dubois). But we can't be sure about that.

No matter who wrote it, "The Masked Rider's Justice" is great fun. The pulp version is shorter, punchier, and somewhat grittier since it wasn't intended for a juvenile audience the way the hardbacks were. And it tells you something about the quality that I remembered that opening from reading THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO at least 45 years ago.

UNMASKED is one of the best collections so far from Black Dog Books, and those of you familiar with their publications know that's saying a lot. If you have any interest at all in early Western fiction or Western film and TV, or if you're just looking for some very entertaining stories, you shouldn't miss this one. Highly recommended.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Aces, August 1943

2012-01-14T07:00:00.002-06:00

This issue has an action-packed cover by Allen Anderson, and I'd be willing to bet that the stories inside were pretty action-packed, too. The featured story is by my old favorite J. Edward Leithead, who also has a story in this issue under his Wilson Covert pseudonym. There's also a novelette by the always dependable Dean Owen and short stories by Gunnison Steele and old cowboy Chuck Martin, among others. The Ace Western pulps, WESTERN ACES and WESTERN TRAILS, were considered lower-tier markets, and maybe they were, but I've enjoyed all of them that I've read.

Forgotten Books: Rapture Alley - Whit Harrison (Harry Whittington)

2012-01-13T06:00:00.006-06:00

RAPTURE ALLEY, another novel in the latest Harry Whittington triple volume from Stark House, ventures into Orrie Hitt territory, since its plot includes both nude modeling (sort of) and the plight of unwed motherhood. For the most part, though, this is Whittington's dope novel, and in that respect it reminded me of Robert Silverberg's first Don Elliott novel, LUST ADDICT.

Originally published in 1953 by Carnival Books under the pseudonym Whit Harrison, RAPTURE ALLEY is the story of Lora Cassel, a beautiful young woman who moves to New York in an attempt to become successful as a singer and actress. She lives with her sister, a sweet-natured invalid who's confined to a wheelchair, and her brother-in-law, a virile, successful salesman. Doesn't take a genius to figure out what's going to happen from that set-up, and as Whittington quickly reveals to the reader, an affair is already going on between Lora and her brother-in-law Ken.

The stress and guilt of this affair, plus her continuing trouble finding any success in her career, lead Lora to make a bad decision and start going to marijuana parties with a TV industry flunkey she meets on a job. From here the plot begins to take on a slight feeling of REEFER MADNESS as Lora's life spirals more and more out of control. Whittington does a great job with it, though, keeping the story moving along at a brisk pace and making the reader feel Lora's desperation as she makes bad decision after bad decision.

Eventually things work out, as they usually do in books from this era, but not until there's a minor but interesting plot twist late in the game. RAPTURE ALLEY is a very solid, very entertaining entry from Whittington, and one more reason, as if you needed it, to pick up this collection from Stark House.

Just a Couple of Guys on Top of a Mountain

2012-01-12T15:49:00.000-06:00

You may have noticed on Bill Crider's blog today that he ran a picture of us at the Western Writers of America convention in Jackson, Wyoming in 1992. Here's another picture from that same convention (which he was kind enough to send to me, along with some others) of the two of us standing on top of Snow King Mountain. I have no idea why I'm looking so suspiciously at Bill, as if he'd just tried to push me off the mountain or something. But if you ignore the two writers, there's a pretty nice view in the background.

Favorite Bookstores #6: The TV Repair Shop

2012-01-12T06:00:00.001-06:00

Like The Old Man's Place, I'm sure this business had a real name, but I either never knew it or have forgotten it. We called it The TV Repair Shop or sometimes The Other Old Man's Place, because the owner was an elderly gentleman who repaired television sets in the front part of the building, but probably 80% of the space was taken up by shelves and shelves of old used books. This was on the near north side of Fort Worth, on Sylvania Avenue, I think. I have a hunch the building is long gone, and I doubt if I could even find where it was. Livia and I didn't go there very often; it wasn't on our regular circuit of used bookstores. But when we did, I always found some good stuff.

Most of the books were what would now be considered vintage paperbacks. Lots of Midwood and Beacon soft-core erotica novels. If I'd only known then what I know now, I'd have probably bought more of those. As it was, I picked up all the ones I found by Mike Avallone (who I was corresponding with at the time) and a few others, but I'm sure I passed up Orrie Hitt, Loren Beauchamp, Sheldon Lord, Edwin West, and others like that. But the store had quite a few Gold Medals from the Fifties, especially Westerns, and I pretty much cleaned it out of those. Early Avons by authors such as Harry Whittington (I remember I bought 69 BABYLON PARK there). It was just a good assortment of Fifties-era paperbacks, with some newer stuff, mostly men's adventure, mixed in, too.

The old fellow who ran it was friendly, if not as colorful as George Snapka, the proprietor of The Old Man's Place. The store was located in an old house, and I'm sure it had termite damage because the floors sagged in places and you had to be careful where you walked. That just added to the place's personality as far as I was concerned. I always enjoyed my visits there and wish I had gone more often. As it is, it's another good memory of the days when bookstores like that were common (or a lot more common than they are now, anyway).

Guest Blog: Brian Drake on The Rogue Gentleman

2012-01-11T06:00:00.002-06:00

Thank you, James, for allowing me to promote my new ebook on your site. Much appreciated, as always. I'm doing something different this time, though one might say I'm duplicating what Lee Goldberg and Paul Bishop have done with their own recurring series. THE ROGUE GENTLEMAN will be a monthly serial, with stories anywhere between 80 and 100 pages; basically long books broken into pieces. This is the nice thing about the ebook world. A project like this would be unheard of otherwise.

Here's the story:

Steve Dane, The Rogue Gentleman, an international adventurer who rights wrongs wherever he finds them, fails to prevent a young woman’s abduction. But that doesn’t stop him from finding her.

Officially hired by the girl’s father, Dane battles gunman and evades police as he discovers the decades-old vendetta behind the kidnapping; he soon learns that the grudge is just the beginning and peels back the layers of a more fiendish plan that goes beyond a desire for vengeance.

Assisted by his lover, the luscious Nina Talikova, Steve Dane dives in head first, the only way he know how, into a conspiracy of terror the likes of which the world has never seen, orchestrated by a powerful and mysterious woman known only as “The Duchess”.

When Dane finds The Duchess, he will sacrifice anything, including his life, to destroy her.

Once again Ian Fleming is partially responsible for the creation of Steve Dane. Author Ben Macintyre published a book, appropriately titled For Your Eyes Only, that was part of the Fleming Centennial celebration which listed some of the ingredients Fleming mixed into the Bond character—the exploits of real-life British agents such as Eddie Chapman and Biffy Dunderdale, who lived lavish lifestyles while fighting for queen and country. Chapman is unique since he was a full-time crook rescued from prison in return for serving his country. He was ordered to be an international playboy while tripping up the Germans and he went all out. I wanted to do a character like that, but, of course, make him an American; since I didn't want to do a World War Two story (maybe someday!) I needed a reason to have him operating in contemporary times. Having already done a spy story, I didn’t want this to be about a secret agent, per se, but somebody who could get involved with international intrigue and mix it up with the usual spy novel suspects.

Instead of a government agent, Steve Dane is a former spy and mercenary now living lavishly and chasing trouble and intrigue on his own terms. How he supports himself is part of the on-going subplot. Did he acquire his wealth honestly or by nefarious means? The good guys think he's a bad guy; the bad guys think he's one of them; he's able to play both sides against each other and, like Boston Blackie and The Saint before him, come to the aid of those who have nowhere else to turn as long as he can stay one step ahead of the cops and the crooks.

There's a bit of Nick & Nora Charles mixed in with Steve Dane and his lady friend, Nina Talikova; the stories mix adventure with light humor and so far readers think the combination works. They’re perfect if you’re one of those who ride a commuter train every day and want something quick to read.

Anyway the first installment, PRIVATE VENDETTA, is out; MOVING TARGET and THE ZETA CONNECTION will follow in February and March and, of course, three more after that. After the first six, I’ll write a totally different book but that’s something we’ll talk about later. I hope you have as much fun reading the stories as I have had writing them.

Tuesday's Overlooked TV: Garrison's Gorillas

2012-01-10T06:00:00.002-06:00

I've probably mentioned before that I was a big fan of the TV series COMBAT! That, along with numerous issues of comic books such as OUR ARMY AT WAR (with Sgt. Rock) and OUR FIGHTING FORCES (with Gunner and Sarge) made me a fan of World War II fiction. So it's not surprising that I was a faithful viewer of GARRISON'S GORILLAS, a 1967–'68 World War II TV series that was a spin-off from COMBAT!, as well as being heavily influenced by the success of the novel and film versions of THE DIRTY DOZEN.

It uses the same basic set-up of a group of convicts being recruited for highly dangerous commando missions behind the lines, although there's only four of them instead of a dozen. And they're led by the usual stalwart American officer, in this case Lt. Craig Garrison, played by Ron Harper. The four convicts, who are known by their nicknames, are Actor (Cesare Danova, who usually played gangsters), Goniff (Christopher Cary), Casino (Rudy Solari), and Chief (Brendon Boone). I remember Danova and vaguely remember Ron Harper, but the others not at all.

I liked the show well enough that I bought and read the tie-in novel, which was written by Jack Pearl. I don't remember anything about it except that I read it while I was a freshman in high school. In addition, there was a juvenile tie-in novel, GARRISON'S GORILLAS AND THE FEAR FORMULA, published by Whitman and also written by Jack Pearl. I never read the Whitman book and don't recall ever seeing it, or I probably would have. It shows you how much things have changed in the tie-in market when a fairly unsuccessful series that lasted only a year could spawn two novels back in those days.

I was surprised to see that quite a few episodes of GARRISON'S GORILLAS are available to watch on YouTube. I don't think it's ever been released on DVD. It must have been at least somewhat enjoyable to me, because I think I watched the entire season when it was new, but I didn't like it as much as COMBAT! I haven't tried watching any of the episodes again to see how they hold up. I ought to do that.

Criminal, Vol. 6: The Last of the Innocent - Ed Brubaker

2012-01-09T06:00:00.002-06:00

As much as I enjoy Ed Brubaker's writing in CAPTAIN AMERICA and other superhero comics, I think his best work is to be found in his on-going series of noir graphic novels, CRIMINAL. The most recent on, THE LAST OF THE INNOCENT, with art by Sean Phillips as usual, pushes the standard for this series even higher.

The narrator, Riley Richards, grows up in a small town in the Fifties and Sixties, hangs around with his pals, and has to decide between two girls, sweet girl-next-door Lizzie and beautiful, sophisticated, rich Felix. Yes, it's all very much like Archie Andrews, and Phillips even draws some of the sequences in that style, very effectively, I might add.

But those sequences are flashbacks, because the main story is set in the Eighties, when Riley finds himself trapped in a loveless marriage, swamped by gambling debts, and driven by desperation to murder and acts even more despicable.

THE LAST OF THE INNOCENT is about as bleak as it can be as Brubaker tightens the screws on Riley, and he saves his last kicker for the final page. It's subtle enough that if you haven't been paying attention all the way through, you might miss it, but when you figure out what's going to happen, it's very effective.

Those of you who enjoy crime comics really should check out CRIMINAL. Each story is a stand-alone and is collected in its own trade paperback, although there are some connections between them that reward reading all of them. THE LAST OF THE INNOCENT is the sixth volume in the series. Highly recommended.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, September 1954

2012-01-07T07:00:00.002-06:00

This is another one I've read, and here are the contents:

"Barbed Wire and Bullets", Jackson Cole (Jim Hatfield novel)

"Gun Job", Will Cook (novelette)

"No Second Chance", Giles A. Lutz (novelette)

"The Measuring", Ben Smith (short story)

"Scalp Lock", Talmage Powell (short story)

"Charlie Yawl's Hat", Ben Frank (short story)

plus The Frontier Post by Captain Starr and a few fillers, but no letters column

This is the first issue of Texas Rangers I've read in a while and a surprisingly good one. I say surprisingly because the Jim Hatfield novel is by Roe Richmond, probably my least favorite of the Hatfield authors. Richmond's stories have always bothered me because he has a habit of saddling Hatfield with so many sidekicks that the Lone Wolf is anything but. In this story, however, only one of Richmond's usual supporting characters, outlaw-turned-Ranger Fox Edley, appears, which means that "Barbed Wire and Bullets" isn't that much different from most of Tom Curry's Hatfield novels, many of which also feature a proxy hero to give Hatfield a hand. This story concerns the introduction of barbed wire into the Texas Panhandle and the resulting trouble, and it reads a lot like a Rio Kid novel because of the appearance of historical characters Joseph Glidden (the inventor of barbed wire), cattleman Shanghai Pierce, and range detective Charlie Siringo. Plenty of action here.

The back-up stories are also good. The hero of "Gun Job" is an ex-convict who was sent to prison for shooting his mistress's husband in the back, a crime which he actually committed, but naturally there's more to the story than that. "No Second Chance" is one of the bleakest, most noir Western stories I've read, which I didn't expect from Lutz at all. I've read some of his novels but don't remember them being this dark. "Scalp Lock" is probably the best story in the issue, a character study in which a rancher and the narrator, a young cowboy, pursue the Indians who killed the rancher's wife and son. "The Measuring" is another character study, this one of a man on the run from a hidden past who has to come to terms with it. The only story I didn't finish was "Charlie Yawl's Hat". Just don't care for Ben Frank's writing.

Back to the matter of Richmond's use of sidekicks. In the Forties, Tom Curry gave Hatfield a kid sidekick in some of his stories, and the readers hated it, complaining frequently in the letters column. By the time of this issue, there is no letters column. I have to wonder how the readers felt about Richmond including so many supporting characters in most of his stories. But we'll never know.

All in all, an excellent issue.

Forgotten Books: Wild Bill #1: Dead Man's Hand - Judd Cole

2012-01-06T06:00:00.010-06:00

This is the first in a series of totally fictional adventures starring Wild

Bill Hickok, published a few years ago by Leisure. The author, Judd Cole, is probably really a New Orleans writer named John Edward Ames, who also wrote the Cheyenne series under that name.

The gimmick, at least in this book, is the old chestnut about a young

reporter from back East tagging along with Wild Bill in order to write a

series of articles about his adventures. It works pretty well in this case

because the reporter, Joshua Robinson, is such a likable character. In

fact, everybody in the book except the villains is pretty likable. Wild

Bill is a little crusty, but he takes Josh under his wing and a real

friendship develops between the two.

As for the plot, Wild Bill is hired by Allan Pinkerton to guard an eccentric scientist who has invented a machine that makes ice. Business rivals want to kill the scientist and steal the secret of his invention during a cross-country train trip intended to show off the newfangled contraption. Wild Bill not only has to deal with that but also with a lovesick Calamity Jane, who has been chasing him around the country determined to marry him.

All this is every bit as silly as it sounds. The book is also crammed full of historical inaccuracies and anachronisms. It's enough to drive anyone who takes Westerns seriously a little nuts. And yet, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The author writes with such enthusiasm and is clearly having so much fun with what he's doing that I was willing to forget about accuracy and accept the setting as some sort of bizarre alternate universe West. I intend to find and read the rest of the books in the series, and I can recommend this one to anybody who is willing to put tongue firmly in cheek and not expect anything too realistic.

Cash Laramie: Manhunter's Mountain - Wayne D. Dundee

2012-01-05T08:34:00.000-06:00

David Cranmer continues to allow other authors to contribute to the on-going saga of U.S. Marshals Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles, and he couldn't have made a better choice for MANHUNTER'S MOUNTAIN than Wayne D. Dundee, who has rapidly vaulted into the top ranks of current Western writers.

The manhunter of the title is Arapaho-raised, hardnosed lawman Cash Laramie, who arrives in the dying mining town of Silver Gulch on the trail of a fugitive. He finds and arrests his quarry in pretty short order, but as it turns out, that's not his main challenge. There are other manhunters, too, and Cash's big job will be getting out of the mountains in the middle of a winter storm with some murderous miners and a ruthless bounty hunter on his trail. The two soiled doves he's trying to get back to civilization at the same time will only complicate matters.

Dundee keeps the action moving along at a rapid pace, and as always, Cash Laramie is a compelling character, a testament to Cranmer's creation of him in the first place. The supporting characters are interesting as well, and the fact that not everything turns out exactly as you might expect is an added bonus. So are the excellent descriptions of the landscape and the way the mountains and the weather almost become characters in their own right.

MANHUNTER'S MOUNTAIN is a fast, very entertaining novel, and I'm sure fans of Cash Laramie and of Westerns in general will thoroughly enjoy it. I certainly did.

Music: Knife Fight - Calhoun

2012-01-04T18:36:00.000-06:00

Here's another group and song I came across the other day that I like. Like Burning Hotels, Calhoun is from the North Texas area. I'm not a big music guy, but I've been poking around YouTube quite a bit lately, usually in the middle of the night when I can't sleep.

The Only Things Better Than Free Books . . .

2012-01-04T09:52:00.000-06:00

. . . are free books as good as these. Really, don't pass up this opportunity to get started on an excellent series.

Rusty Burke Interviews Glenn Lord, 2007

2012-01-03T18:39:00.000-06:00

You can listen to Rusty Burke interviewing Glenn Lord at the 2007 Pulpcon here. Thanks to William Lampkin for providing this audio.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Freebie and the Bean

2012-01-03T06:00:00.002-06:00

You may or may not remember this action comedy about a couple of mismatched San Francisco cops -- James Caan as Freebie and Alan Arkin as the Bean, so called in those pre-PC days because his character was Hispanic -- trying to take down a mobster played by Jack Kruschen. I only saw it once and remember it as being fairly entertaining despite some trying circumstances . . . but I'll get to that later.

For now let's say that the movie was directed by Richard Rush, who went on to direct the far superior THE STUNTMAN, and had a good cast that also included the fine character actor Mike Kellin, Loretta Swit, Valerie Harper, and Alex Rocco. As I recall it had lots of well-done action scenes, including all the chase scenes that BULLITT made obligatory in those days for movies set in San Francisco. I suspect it would come across as pretty dated now, but I might watch it again one of these days.

Now, as for those trying circumstances. FREEBIE AND THE BEAN came out on Christmas Day 1974 and was actually pretty popular. I know that because I saw it during the first week of 1975 and the theater was so full we wound up sitting on the front row, not the best place to sit for a loud, frantic action comedy. I say "we" because this was the movie Livia and I saw on our first date, 37 years ago this week. I'm a lucky son of a gun, because she agreed to go out with me again even though I took her to a movie where she had to get a crick in her neck in order to watch it.

And that's why this week's Overlooked Movie is the immortal FREEBIE AND THE BEAN.

Music: Beard - Burning Hotels

2012-01-03T00:24:00.000-06:00

So, you're up in the middle of the night like me and can't sleep and want to listen to some good music by a band you've probably never heard of (I hadn't). Well, here ya go:

About That Favorites List . . .

2012-01-01T06:00:00.002-06:00

In looking over yesterday's post after it went up, I realized that none of the twenty books I listed as my favorites from 2011 were by women. Before somebody calls me on that, I figured I'd better bring it up myself. But it gets worse. I checked my list of all books read, and only seven of the 168 were authored or co-authored by women. I assure you, this was not intentional. In past years Christa Faust and Megan Abbott have appeared on my favorites list, and I'm sure they will again when I get around to reading something else by them. I also have a number of books by female authors on my Kindle, ranging from Patti Abbott's MONKEY JUSTICE and Anonymous-9's HARD BITE to classic SF and mysteries by Andre Norton and Leigh Brackett. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm making a vow to read more by female authors, but I think that's likely to happen in the natural course of things. You have to remember, though, when it comes to reading I'm like a puppy: easily distracted.

A couple of other interesting notes about my reading list, interesting to me, anyway: out of the 168 books, 44 were e-books. Actually, I thought that number would be higher, since it seemed like sometimes everything I read in a long stretch was on the Kindle. The 44 included books I bought on Amazon, books that were sent to me to review or provide a blurb, and manuscripts that were sent to me as Word documents or PDFs that I converted to Kindle. Speaking of review copies, in all the different formats I read a total of 46. I tried to get to everything that was sent to me, but inevitably I failed. If you sent me a book and I didn't blog about it, either I didn't like it (very, very rare) or I just didn't get to it (much more likely, and some of those will still crop up).

If you've read this far, what the hell. You already know I obviously don't have enough to do. So here's how the reading breaks down by genre:

59 Graphic Novels

44 Mystery/Suspense

23 Westerns

14 Horror

11 Science Fiction

11 General Fiction (a catch-all category that include pulp adventure and Sixties erotica that doesn't fall into the crime and suspense category)

4 Non-fiction

2 War Novels

If I did the math right, that jibes with my total of 168. If it doesn't, it would probably be better if you didn't tell me. I'd obsess with digging out the discrepancy.

I could do some other breakdowns, like how many pulp reprints there were, or how many books I checked out from the library, but you get the idea. Like I said, easily distracted, and I don't like to read too many of the same genre in a row. This comes, I think, from growing up in the Sixties before fiction became as balkanized as it is today and people who were big readers read a little bit of everything and never found it the least bit unusual. That's still the way I am, and I don't expect I'll change any time soon.

Glenn Lord, 1931 - 2011

2011-12-31T23:08:00.000-06:00

The way I'll always remember him, with a friendly smile on his face and an eagerness to talk about Robert E. Howard, pulp magazines, or anything else under the sun. He was one of the most truly decent men I've ever known. Rest in peace, Glenn.

(This photo is from Damon Sasser's REH: Two-Gun Raconteur blog.)

The Wrap-Up

2011-12-31T17:58:00.003-06:00

This is my usual end-of-the-year post where I talk about the books I've read and the writing I've done. No movie section this year, because, while I'm still watching quite a few movies, I've pretty much stopped blogging about them except for the Tuesday's Overlooked Movies series. But to touch on a few generalities . . . I watched and liked all the superhero movies. I watched and liked most of the crude comedies. I watched and liked most of the popular animated movies. (Was RANGO this year? I love RANGO, maybe as much as anything I saw all year.) As you've no doubt noted, I'm easy to please when it comes to movies. Ooh, pretty colors! People running and jumping! Boobs! Explosions! Swordfights! Needless to say, a connoisseur of the cinema, I ain't. So let's move on to something else.

READING

I always wait until almost the last minute to come up with my list of favorite books I read during the year. Who knows, the last book you read in a year might be one of the very best. So here are my ten favorites from 2011 in the order in which I read them:

RUN, Blake Crouch

THE BASTARD HAND, Heath Lowrance

EVERY SHALLOW CUT, Tom Piccirilli

THE HOLLYWOOD OP, Terence Faherty

SPIDER-MAN: BLUE, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

HANK AND MUDDY, Stephen Mertz

THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC, Lawrence Block

KIRBY: KING OF COMICS, Mark Evanier

FIGHT CARD: FELONY FISTS, Paul Bishop

GOSHEN HOLE, Wayne D. Dundee

Oh, hell, I read too many good books. Here's my second ten, and on any given day, some of them would be in the other list:

A HOST OF SHADOWS, Harry Shannon

GANG GIRL, Robert Silverberg

CAST IN DARK WATERS, Ed Gorman and Tom Piccirilli

THE HERETIC, Joseph Nasisse

JULIUS KATZ AND ARCHIE, Dave Zeltserman

IN THE BEGINNING, Robert Silverberg

A DROP OF THE HARD STUFF, Lawrence Block

FIGHT CARD: THE CUTMAN, Mel Odom

HARD TRAIL TO SOCORRO, Wayne D. Dundee

HELL ON CHURCH STREET, Jake Hinkson

I could list a lot more books that I thought were excellent. I had a lot to choose from, too, because I read 168 books in 2011, my best total in a number of years. But pick up any of the ones mentioned above and I guarantee that you'll have a good time. (Not a money-back guarantee, mind you. I'm not dumb, regardless of what you may have heard.)

I think it's worth noting that most of these books are either small press volumes or self-published e-books. That's an indication of just how much this business has changed in the past 12 to 18 months. I think it's a change for the better, too. There are some brilliant books out there that would have had a difficult time, at best, finding a home with a traditional publisher, and they're not only finding readers when they might not have otherwise, in some cases they're even making a living for their authors. This is an exciting time for both readers and writers.

WRITING

Moving on to my own writing, it seems like every time I do one of these wrap-up posts, I find myself saying, "Well, I wrote more this year than I ever did before. I'll probably never write that much again." Then, the next year, I say, "Well, uh . . . I wrote more this year than I ever did before." And this year is no different in that respect. I blew past my previous best from last year about 300 pages ago and topped a million words for the seventh straight year. My output, which I think translates to somewhere between 1.3 and 1.4 million words (I don't keep exact word counts; old guys like me tend to think in terms of pages) encompasses 17 novels and seven short stories and novelettes. Yeah, that's crazy. You're not telling me anything I don't already know. But at least I've learned my lesson about trying to predict how much I'll write next year. I have no idea. At this point I know of ten novels I'm supposed to write in 2012. Beyond that we'll have to just wait and see.

What I do know is that sometime during the morning of New Year's Day, I'll climb the stairs to my office, open the blinds, turn the computer on, read the first cartoon on my GET FUZZY daily calendar for 2012, and then get to work. What else am I gonna do?

Have a great New Year, folks.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ace-High, June 3, 1928

2011-12-31T07:00:00.002-06:00

To finish off the year, here's another Western pulp I've read, from the original incarnation of ACE-HIGH when it was published by Clayton. Later, after a gap in being publishing, the title was sold to Popular Publications, where the title was changed to ACE-HIGH WESTERN and it continued under that name for a number of years.

The lead novel is "The Free Grass Frontier" by J. Edward Leithead. It's a typical yarn about big cattle barons in Montana trying to force out the smaller ranchers. Leithead produced smooth, consistently readable prose without an overabundance of Western dialect, and that's what makes this story a pleasure to read.

"The Badman's Brand", by H. Bedford-Jones, is a novelette about an old-timer in New Mexico helping a girl from the East look for her missing brother while at the same time dealing with a gang of Mexican killers who are after a noble, mysterious bandit. (And yes, the plot twist really is that obvious.) Just as with the Leithead story, Bedford-Jones' style and pacing saves this story, which has a very effective ending and one final twist that I didn't see coming.

The other stories:

"The Abalone Ring" by Hapsburg Liebe, a short actioner about a trick-shooter in a Wild West show who goes home to solve a murder.

"McGrew Comes Through" by J.R. Johnston, the adventures of a canny old lawman and his not so bright but fast on the draw deputy.

"The Wolf Bites" by Glenn A. Connor, in which a young outlaw on the run for a crime he didn't commit throws in with the law to round up a gang of killers.

"Ladies' Day Dugan" by James W. Egan, a baseball story in the middle of all those Westerns (the magazine's masthead does say "Western Adventure and Sport Stories"). Pretty enjoyable, though the comedy ending falls a little flat. I like baseball stories, though, every once in a while.

"Held up in Halfmoon" by A. Clifford Farrell. I assume this is the same author who later goes by Cliff Farrell. If so, I've read and enjoyed some of his novels. This story is about a deputy tracking down a masked outlaw whose identity is supposed to be a surprise.

"Jammin' the Jamboree" by Clee Woods. The only story I started and didn't finish. I usually don't like comedy Westerns, and this one was no exception. It's about a bulldogging competition.

"Rustling Hay" by Bertrand L. Shurtleff, which has a nice plot about rustlers who steal hay instead of cattle. The protagonists are a pair of wandering cowpokes named Big and Little (that almost made me quit reading).The interesting plot kept me going and the characters turned out to be okay.

There's also part of a serial, "Gun Country" by William Colt MacDonald, that I didn't read. I think I have the complete novel under some other title. The main character's name, Blaze Routledge, sounds familiar.

Plus "The Sluice Box", a mining column, and "The Country Store", a department that includes a swap shop, a missing persons section, and letters from readers. Overall this is a pretty good issue, not as strong as the issues of WESTERN STORY and ADVENTURE from the Twenties I've read, but certainly well worth reading.

Now Available from Black Dog Books: Wings of War!

2011-12-30T17:52:00.000-06:00

Our latest title, Wings of War, collecting the first two novel-length adventures of John Masters, The Lone Eagle, is now available for purchase.

Visit our Wings of War listings page to learn more or order your copy today.

Pilot extraordinaire John Masters was an ace operative of the U.S. Secret Service when war broke out. So it was only natural that when the first squadron of Yank flyers went to France to strafe the Boche, Masters went too, only operating undercover.

Masters became the Lone Eagle of the Skies, displaying an indomitable courage and dynamic driving power to push any secret mission to a successful conclusion; a fighting ace whose dark and inscrutable movements became the scourge of all enemy powers.

Suspected by many, some men feared him, some men hated him. The alluring but deadly female German spy R-47 may have loved him. Masters became that mysterious Nemesis of the Western Front known only as—The Lone Eagle!

http://www.blackdogbooks.net/index.php?Itemid=13&option=com_zoo&view=item&category_id=7&item_id=114

"John Masters blasts his way across the skies in the kind of aerial action that will thrill modern readers as much as it did the pulp readers of the '30s. The Lone Eagle is a hero for the ages!"—Bill Crider, contributing author to the Nick Carter and Stone: M.I.A. Hunter series

"In the 1930s, the Lone Eagle set the bar for realistic action adventure with a tough guy loner able to survive against all comers. John Masters blazed a bullet-strewn path that series heroes of the 1970s and 1980s were hard pressed to follow."—Mel Odom, contributing author to the SuperBolan, Stonyman and Executioner series

"Combat ace John Masters was one of the most realistic air heroes of the pulp era. It's about damn time these bullet-torn tales were reprinted!"—Will Murray, contributing author to the Destroyer series

"Great fun!"—Stephen Mertz, contributing author to the Executioner, Tunnel Rats and Cody's Army series

(I've read both of these novels and really enjoyed them. These aren't the wild, science-fictional adventures of G-8 and his Battle Aces. The Lone Eagle novels are grim and gritty, with an emphasis on espionage and excellent aerial combat sequences. If you've never tried this series, I highly recommend it.)

Forgotten Books: Winter Girl - Harry Whittington

2011-12-30T06:00:00.003-06:00

Harry Whittington's backwoods novels are some of my favorites of his work. WINTER GIRL sort of falls into that category. It's set in Mississippi (probably) and takes place in a mixture of rural and small town settings. It's a coming-of-age novel, too, as the narrator, Calder Fenton, is eighteen when the novel begins. And it's a dog story, as well, since some of it revolves around Calder's Irish Setter Fanny, a hunting dog coveted by a rich Northerner who spends his winters in the area. That Northerner, who's a pretty despicable villain, has a beautiful teenage daughter named Lu Ann, and Calder covets her as much as Lu Ann's father wants Calder's dog.

Well, as you can guess, those elements are ripe for a considerable amount of domestic drama, which Whittington exploits for all they're worth like the top-notch professional he was. As David Laurence Wilson points out in his fine introduction to the upcoming Stark House triple volume that reprints WINTER GIRL (along with Whittington's novels RAPTURE ALLEY and STRICTLY FOR THE BOYS), this isn't one of the crime novels for which Whittington is so well known, but that doesn't mean it's lacking in suspense and violence.

If you haven't heard of WINTER GIRL, that's probably because it was never published under that title during Whittington's lifetime. Instead, it's one of the formerly missing soft-core novels that Whittington wrote for William Hamling's various imprints during the early to mid-Sixties. It was published in 1966 under the title THE TASTE OF DESIRE, as by Curt Colman. Wilson and Stark House have restored the original title, and Wilson also edited the book back as close as he could to Whittington's original manuscript, a trunk novel he dusted off, rewrote, and sold to Hamling. In this form, it reads very much like it could have been published by Gold Medal, Avon, or Ace, and I'm not sure why it didn't sell when Whittington first wrote it.

Possibly because after an absolutely fine first two-thirds that ranks right up there with the best of Whittington's work, the final third seems a little rushed to me, especially the ending. However, that doesn't distract from the book's overall impact. WINTER GIRL is an excellent novel that serves as a prime example of Whittington's skill and versatility as a writer. The Stark House volume comes out in February, but you can pre-order it now. I think that's a good idea . . . and I haven't even read RAPTURE ALLEY or STRICTLY FOR THE BOYS yet! (Soon, though.)

Hell on Church Street - Jake Hinkson

2011-12-28T06:00:00.002-06:00

I'd read some short stories by Jake Hinkson and enjoyed them, so I expected to like his first novel, too. But HELL ON CHURCH STREET turned out to be even better than I thought it would be. It's a very strong debut.

Except for a framing sequence that concerns an armed robbery gone wrong, this novel is narrated in flashback by one Geoffrey Webb, a young man from a bad family background who becomes the youth minister at a small Baptist church in Arkansas. Maybe Geoffrey isn't exactly a sociopath, but it's pretty obvious that, as folks from the country might say, that boy ain't right. For one thing, he gets involved with the underage daughter of the church's pastor, and then when a corrupt local lawman horns his way in on Geoffrey's plans, things get really bad. Then, as they always do in noir novels . . . they get worse.

I don't know anything about Hinkson's background, but I grew up in a Baptist church much like the one in this book, and he really nails the setting and the characters. The prose is very readable, and the pace races along just the way I like. Geoffrey Webb isn't really an unreliable narrator; he's pretty honest about himself and what he's doing. Nor is he the least bit sympathetic. But he is very compelling. I don't think most readers will root for him – I certainly didn't – but I did want to find out what was going to happen to him.

This is the second extremely good debut novel from New Pulp Press that I've read this year, the other one being Heath Lowrance's THE BASTARD HAND. And in both of them, oddly enough, organized religion plays an important part in the plot. Is this the beginning of a new sub-genre? Church noir? Eh, probably not, although that would make a good theme for an anthology, wouldn't it? Let's just say that HELL ON CHURCH STREET is a fine novel, and it's available now in both print and e-book editions. You should check it out.

(By the way, I have my own church noir novel I'm going to write one of these days . . . when I get around to all the novels I'm going to write one of these days.)

The Traditional December 27th Post

2011-12-27T09:32:00.002-06:00

If you go back and look at previous entries on this blog each December 27^th, you'll find some nostalgic ramblings about what happened on that day in 1976. The condensed version is that on December 27^th, 1976, I made my first fiction sale, a confession yarn (some of you may not know what that is) to a long-since-defunct magazine called INTIMATE STORY. The check that arrived 35 years ago today was my first indication that the story had sold. There was no letter of acceptance beforehand or anything like that, or even a contract, just a check from Ideal Publishing for $167.50.

So, after 35 years in this business, what have I learned? Not a hell of a lot, I think most of the time. Recently I've noticed that I'm doing a lot more rewriting during the editing stage on my manuscripts, seeing ways to improve them that I never noticed before. That's got me wondering if maybe I'm lucky enough to keep writing for another 35 years, I might finally begin to figure out what I'm doing. I wouldn't count on it, though.

Mostly I've learned that writing is more fun than anything else I could do for a living and that by and large writers are one of the best groups of people you could ever find. The Internet, which I couldn't have even dreamed of back in '76, has just increased that sense of community. When I sold my first story I didn't know anyone who had ever sold any fiction. The only person I'd ever met who had even had fiction published was my cousin Richard Finley, who had the only story he ever wrote accepted by his college literary magazine. And several more years went by before I even started corresponding with other writers (other than my editor at MSMM, Sam Merwin Jr.), let alone met any of them in person. Of course, I was living with a writer at the time, I just didn't know it yet.

To sum up, I'm old and I've been doing this for a long time. But I hope I can stay at it for a while longer.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Blackthorn

2011-12-27T06:00:00.002-06:00

This is a movie that was barely released to theaters, and it recently came out on DVD with little or no fanfare, so it might easily be overlooked. Which would be a shame since it's well worth watching.

First of all, you have to accept the premise that Butch Cassidy wasn't killed in Bolivia in 1908 but rather survived the battle with the Bolivian army (although the Sundance Kid ultimately didn't) and became a horse rancher in an isolated part of the country instead. Now it's twenty years later, and Butch, now calling himself James Blackthorn, has decided the time has come to go home. Before he can do that, however, he gets involved with a Spanish mining engineer who has stolen $50,000 from a rich mine owner. That starts Butch/Blackthorn off on one last great, dangerous adventure.

There's definitely a "last ride", elegiac feeling to this whole film, helped along considerably by Sam Shepard's powerful performance as the aging Butch Cassidy. He's certainly believable in the part. The flashbacks to earlier years with Butch, Sundance, and Etta Place are quite effective, too. BLACKTHORN is a well written, well acted, and very well photographed film set in some spectacularly beautiful locations. It's maybe a little too low-key in a few places for my taste, but overall I enjoyed it a lot. If you're a Western fan, you should check it out.

After Christmas Sale

2011-12-26T06:30:00.003-06:00

TRACTOR GIRL, my Texas-set 1950s crime novel, is now on sale for .99 for a limited time, for both the Kindle and the Nook. 36,000 words of action and suspense, if I say so myself.

Also, a number of other books by Livia and me are still on sale for .99 if you need to fill up that new e-reader you got for Christmas.

Music: The Comancheros - Elmer Bernstein

2011-12-26T06:00:00.001-06:00

Wake up! Get moving! Christmas is over. Things to do! We're burnin' daylight, pilgrim.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T07:00:00.002-06:00