Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Trails, May 1947

I don’t own this pulp, but I was able to read a PDF of it thanks to a friend of mine. Since I don’t have the actual issue, that’s the scan from the Fictionmags Index. The art is by Allen Anderson, whose work I associate much more with the Fiction House pulps, and it doesn’t really have his distinctive look. The Ace Western pulps, WESTERN TRAILS and WESTERN ACES, were sometimes considered salvage markets when a writer couldn’t sell a story elsewhere, but I haven’t really seen much evidence of that. I’ve found them to be pretty solid magazines with plenty of good authors on hand.

And certainly they weren’t considered salvage markets by veteran Western pulpster J. Edward Leithead, who had at least two stories in nearly every issue of those two pulps during the Forties, one under his own name and one under his most common pseudonym, Wilson L. Covert. I’m confident he wrote these specifically for the Ace pulps and never sent them anywhere else.

The story under Leithead’s name was nearly always a novelette. In this issue, it’s “Roundup of the Plundering Shotwells”, about a family of owlhoots, a father and six sons, but the seventh son wants nothing to do with being an outlaw. In fact, he’s in love the local sheriff’s daughter. But a clash with another gang draws our protagonist into gun trouble anyway, and it’s a bloody, fast-moving tale with several good plot twists, plenty of action, and a satisfying showdown at the end. Leithead is one of my favorite Western pulp authors, and this is a really nice example of his work.

The short story “Blizzard Boomerang” is by another of my favorites, Joseph Chadwick. It’s a little unusual for him in that it’s set in the snowy High Sierras during winter instead of somewhere in the hot Southwest, where his stories are usually set. It’s not a typical plot, either, as it’s about the clash between two men who deliver mail and freight to the remote mining camps, one by dogsled and the other on skis. This is a well-written, emotionally involving story, as you’d expect from Chadwick.

Kenneth L. Sinclair was a fairly popular Western pulp author but is forgotten today. His story, “Trail of the Invisible Herd”, is another story set during the winter and involves getting a herd to some grazing land even though the local range hog has blocked it off with a fence. This one is okay, reasonably entertaining, but the resolution of it seems pretty far-fetched to me. Maybe it’s not, Sinclair may know what he’s talking about, but I wasn’t convinced.

Frank Triem published dozens of Western pulp stories during the Twenties, Thirties, and Forties but is probably even more unknown today than Kenneth L. Sinclair. His story in this issue, “Say It With Sixes”, is about a young lawman waiting nervously for the return of an outlaw he knows is going to try to kill him. Hmm, that sounds vaguely familiar. But here’s the interesting thing. This issue of WESTERN TRAILS was published six months earlier than the issue of COLLIER’S that contained John M. Cunningham’s story “The Tin Star”, from which the movie HIGH NOON was made. The similarities are definitely there. Given the timing, I really don’t think Cunningham took any inspiration from Triem’s story. I believe it’s a coincidence, but it’s a striking one.

J. Edward Leithead’s second story in this issue is “Calaboose Cache” under the Wilson L. Covert pseudonym. It’s about a cowboy who returns to his hometown and is forced by circumstances to become the local lawman. He has to deal with a deputy he doesn’t trust, two competing gangs of outlaws, and the missing loot from a bank robbery that has to be recovered to keep the town from being ruined. It’s a complex yarn and pretty entertaining, although I didn’t think it was as good as the novelette under Leithead’s real name.

D.B. Newton is another longtime favorite Western author for me. His stories are always well-plotted, have plenty of action and interesting characters, and his prose is clean and sounds authentic without going in for overdone dialect. His novelette “Cowpoke on a Pistol Payroll” is about a down-on-his-luck cowboy who finally gets a job, only to find that he’s the bait in a scheme to start a range war. This is an excellent story that’s almost all action. Really enjoyable.

I’ve found Giff Cheshire to be an inconsistent Western author, but most of his stories are pretty good and occasionally I run across one that’s excellent. “.45 Merrymaker” in this issue falls into the pretty good category. The protagonist is a young cowboy who plays the guitar and sings, and his friend is a bearded old-timer who plays the fiddle. I have no way of knowing if Cheshire intentionally based them on Roy Rogers and Gabby Hayes, but close enough for me! The plot is reminiscent of a B-Western, too, with a couple of swindlers out to bilk a town by promising to build a phony railroad. However, the way our heroes go about foiling that scheme requires a heapin’ helpin’ of willing suspension of disbelief, almost too much so. In the end, I cut Cheshire enough slack to enjoy the story.

“Four Horsemen From Hades” is a great title, and it goes with an entertaining story by Willard Luce, another forgotten pulpster who published 18 stories during the Forties and Fifties. An old-timer who works as the night watchman at a dam construction project in the Pacific Northwest has to solve a payroll theft in order to clear his son’s name. The plot is pretty easy to figure out, but Luce’s writing is smooth enough and his protagonist likable enough to elevate this one.

This is a good issue of WESTERN TRAILS, worth reading if you have a copy of the actual pulp. If you’re a member of the WesternPulps email group, you can find the PDF in the Files section of the group’s website.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Doomed Demons - Eustace L. Adams

There’s a story behind my reading of this one. When I was a kid, the elementary school I attended had no school library. Instead, each teacher had a shelf of books in her room that the students could check out. I was in either third or fourth grade, I don’t remember which, when I found a book called DOOMED DEMONS on the library shelf in my classroom. Now, to my nine- or ten-year-old mind, DOOMED DEMONS was just about the coolest title ever, so of course I had to read it. All I remembered as time passed was that it was about World War I pilots, but that fact and the title stayed with me for more than forty years.

So recently I was poking around ABE and decided to search and see if I’d recalled the title correctly. It took only a moment to discover that I had. Cheap copies of DOOMED DEMONS are plentiful. The author is Eustace L. Adams (which I had totally forgotten) and the publisher is Grosset & Dunlap (likewise). Those two items were enough to tell me that it’s what was referred to in those days as a “boy’s adventure book”, a juvenile novel with lots of action and derring-do and a relatively young hero. Grosset & Dunlap was a well-known publisher of such books, and Eustace L. Adams was the author of the long-running Andy Lane series in that genre, as well as writing numerous adult novelettes and serials for such pulps as ARGOSY.

Well, you know where this is leading. Of course I had to order a copy and read it again, more years than I like to think about after reading it for the first time. I’m happy to report that not only does it hold up well, I probably enjoyed it more now than I did back then. It’s the story of a group of young aviators, most of them college age, in France during World War I. The hero is dashing, redheaded Jimmy Deal, and his main sidekick is the chubby, happy-go-lucky Pooch Malloy. Yeah, they’re cliches and stereotypes, and they probably were even in 1935 when this book was published, but I don’t care. I had a great time reading about their adventures. Jimmy crash-lands behind enemy lines and has to steal a German plane to get back to his aerodrome. He carries out a daring rescue of some downed fliers in the English Channel and conducts a dangerous one-man bombing raid on some German submarine pens. He even winds up owning a French country inn that he converts into an officer’s club, until it winds up being the target of a German bombing run.

Adams spins this episodic yarn in a breezy, fast-paced style for the most part, including some excellent aerial combat scenes. When a lot of authors start describing dogfights, I have a hard time following the action, but not here. The images Adams creates are clear and quite striking. Since this is a boy’s book, there’s no sex or cussin’ but plenty of violence. It is a war novel, after all. Although it’s not dwelt on in detail, characters die right and left, including some sympathetic ones. Then the book’s tone takes a sharp, very effective turn toward bleak realism near the end.

I wouldn’t recommend DOOMED DEMONS to everyone, but if you remember reading books like this as a kid or if you’re a fan of World War I aviation yarns, I think you’d get a real kick out of it. I know I did, and this is one instance where I’m glad I revisited my childhood.

(This post originally appeared on a somewhat different form on December 24, 2007. When I reread DOOMED DEMONS back then, I discovered there are several more books featuring Jimmy Deal and Pooch Malloy. I found and ordered copies of all of them. I also ordered all of Adams' Andy Lane books. And in the nearly two decades since then, I have not read a blasted one of them. What is wrong with me?)

Review: Return of the Maltese Falcon - Max Allan Collins

I’m starting the new year off well with an excellent novel from Max Allan Collins. I’ve been a fan of THE MALTESE FALCON since I read the novel in high school, the first thing by Dashiell Hammett I ever read, I believe. Needless to say, I was hooked. Now the original magazine version of the novel, as serialized in the iconic pulp BLACK MASK, is in public domain, and that’s what Collins has used as the starting point for his new novel RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON, which, as he points out, is a continuation rather than a true sequel.

And if, by some chance, you’ve never read Hammett’s novel, stop right now and read it before you read this review, and absolutely don’t tackle Collins’ novel until you’ve read the original, because they’re both, of necessity, full of spoilers. I mean it!

The action starts a week after the end of THE MALTESE FALCON, in December 1928. The dead Miles Archer’s desk has been removed from the office of Spade & Archer, and Effie Perrine, Sam Spade’s secretary, has put up a Christmas tree in its place. (Does that make this a Christmas novel? It sure does!)

A potential client pays a visit to Spade’s office. She’s Rhea Gutman, Casper Gutman’s daughter, and she wants to hire Spade to find the real Falcon. The one in Hammett’s novel was a fake, remember? Rhea is the first of four clients who give Spade a retainer to find the dingus. The others are Chicago gambler Dixie Monahan, Corrine Wonderly, the younger sister of femme fatale Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and Steward Blackwood, an official from the British Museum who claims that institution is the true owner of the Falcon.

Spade plays all these characters against each other. He has run-ins with the cops. A dead body turns up. Spade is hit on the head and knocked out, and he’s captured by a gunman who wants to kill him. This is great stuff in the classic hardboiled private eye mode, the kind of thing that Dashiell Hammett invented, along with Carroll John Daly. Stylistically, Collins’ fast-moving, straight-ahead prose isn’t quite as stripped down as Hammett’s, but it’s certainly in the same ballpark.

Being constrained to use only the elements to be found in the original novel’s pulp serialization turns out to be a good thing. Collins is able to bring on-stage characters who were only mentioned before and invent new ones who fit perfectly in that setting. The resolution of the mystery and the way the book wraps everything up are extremely satisfying.

A number of years ago, I read and loved Joe Gores’ prequel novel SPADE & ARCHER. RETURN OF THE MALTESE FALCON is even better. I’m glad Max Allen Collins wrote it, and I’m grateful to Hard Case Crime for publishing it. It’ll be out officially in e-book and hardcover editions tomorrow. For hardboiled fans, I give it my highest recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Ten Detective Aces, June 1947

We start the year on these Sunday pulp posts with an issue of TEN DETECTIVE ACES that sports a really dynamic cover by Norman Saunders. Of course, I repeat myself. Saunders' covers were always really dramatic. However, that may be the best thing about this issue. Hard to say because I don't recognize the names of most of the authors. The ones I do recognize are C.M. Kornbluth, Robert Turner, Joe Archibald, and Ray Cummings. Still, just because I don't know them doesn't mean their stories aren't any good. I don't own this issue and it doesn't appear to be on-line anywhere, so for me, it'll have to remain a mystery. But I do like that cover.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, September 1947

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the image, but it’s a photograph instead of a scan this time since I find myself without scanning capability at the moment. The cover is by the prolific and always dependable Sam Cherry, and it’s something of a rarity because it actually illustrates one of the stories in this issue. More on that later.

“Alias Adam Jones” is a rather bland title for one of W.C. Tuttle’s rollicking adventures of hapless range detectives Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith. (The editors of EXCITING WESTERN loved the word “rollicking”.) In this novella, one of Tombstone’s long-winded, colorful lies causes Speedy to be kidnapped, and that plunges the boys into a complicated case of rustlers, inheritances, and mistaken identities. This plot is actually a little easier to figure out than some in the series, and a few late developments come from ’way, ’way out in left field, but the whole thing races along in wonderful fashion and Tuttle’s dialogue had me laughing out loud in places. This series is pretty formulaic, but the more I read of it, the more I love it.

“The Marshal of Goldfork” is a stand-alone novelette by Walker A. Tompkins, another of my favorite Western pulpsters. Set in a California mining boomtown during the Gold Rush, it’s about the final showdown between the local lawman and a saloon owner, both of whom were badly injured in a shootout with each other five months earlier, before the town was snowed in for the winter. Now it’s the spring thaw, and the lawman has recovered from his injuries and is back to settle the score and bring law and order to the town. Tompkins was great at keeping a story racing along, and he does so here, creating some interesting characters in the process. This is an excellent yarn.

Joseph Chadwick is yet another favorite of mine. His novelette in this issue, “The Indian Ring”, is about a hardboiled Arizona rancher who takes on the web of corruption involving the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the army, and various crooked business interests. Chadwick was one of the best at tough, gritty action, and this is a fine story that could have been expanded into a top-notch novel if he had chosen to do so.

Next up is “Too Smart for His Own Good” by Andrew Bronson, who published 15 stories in various Thrilling Group Western pulps during the Forties and Fifties. This story about a cowboy trying to recover a ranch payroll that was stolen from him is the one illustrated by Sam Cherry’s cover. In fact, it matches that cover painting so exactly that I have a hunch it was written to match. And the fact that all of “Bronson’s” stories appeared in Thrilling Group pulps leads me to suspect he might have been editor Charles S. Strong, who, as Chuck Stanley, did a feature in EXCITING WESTERN called “The Cowboy Had a Word For It”. Strong wrote a number of Western novels under the Chuck Stanley name, too, and was perfectly capable of knocking out a short story overnight to fit a cover painting. Pure speculation on my part, of course. The story itself, in this case, is entertaining but not particularly memorable.

I haven’t read a great deal by Richard Brister, but so far he’s proven to be a pretty dependable Western author. His story “Bandy Legs” is an offbeat yarn about a rivalry between two storekeepers that turns deadly. This is a well-written and suspenseful story that I enjoyed.

Cliff Walters is another very prolific Western pulpster who is forgotten these days. “Broad Shoulders” is about a big, powerful hombre who could accomplish a lot if he tried, but nothing seems to move him to either working or fighting. That changes during the course of the story in a fairly predictable way. This is a minor tale but entertaining.

“Crisis on the Curly Q” is by Don Alviso, who wrote several dozen stories for the pulps, nearly all of them Westerns. It’s a humorous story about a ranch cook who goes on a drunken bender and loses the wagonload of supplies he’s supposed to be taking back to the Curly Q spread. I wasn’t sure I was going to finish this one, but I stuck with it and it turned out to be mildly amusing. Absolutely unmemorable, though.

The issue wraps up with “Men of Their Word” by William O’Sullivan. It’s about two Irish prospectors who are partners but still scrap with each other all the time. They have to put aside their differences to keep from being swindled by a couple of slickers. This is another story that’s pretty lightweight but reasonably enjoyable.

Overall, this is a good issue of EXCITING WESTERN, although any issue without Navajo Tom Raine and Alamo Paige seems a little lacking to me. However, two very good stand-alone stories by Walker A. Tompkins and Joseph Chadwick makes up for that, and I always enjoy Tombstone and Speedy. So if you have this issue on your shelves, it’s worth reading. You can also find the whole issue on-line if you want to check it out that way.

The Wrap Up

2025, like all the years before it, was a mixture of good and bad around here. Health issues became a little more challenging this year and took up more time, but I feel like I’m still in pretty good shape for an old-timer. My writing production isn’t what it once was, but I managed to turn out more than half a million words, which amounted to almost six novels. No short stories this year. Most importantly, I feel like the work is still pretty good quality. My schedule is fairly full again for 2026, but changes are looming. But when aren’t they?

Of course, reading is still very important to me, as it has been ever since I first visited the bookmobile when I was six years old. I read 149 books this year, a nice number but down some from last year. Here are my ten favorite books (not best, necessarily, but favorite) that I read this year, alphabetical by author:

SHARPE’S TIGER, Bernard Cornwell

GANGLAND’S DOOM: THE SHADOW OF THE PULPS, Frank Eisgruber Jr.

RANCHO BRAVO #1: CALHOON, Thorne Douglas (Ben Haas)

THE CHRONICLES OF HANUVAR, VOLUME 2: THE CITY OF MARBLE AND BLOOD, Howard Andrew Jones

LONGHORN STAMPEDE, Philip Ketchum 

SARA AND THE MAD DOG, Stephen Mertz

ROBERT E. HOWARD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A TEXAS WRITER, Willard M. Oliver

SOMETIME LOFTY TOWERS, David C. Smith

STORYTELLER: HELPFUL HINTS AND TALL TALES FROM THE WRITING LIFE, Carlton Stowers

’NADA, Daniel Boyd (Dan Stumpf)

At least a dozen more books could have made this list and some of them probably would have on a different day. I read a lot of good books. I believe all of those listed above are still in print and easily available except for the Western novel by Philip Ketchum.

So what does 2026 hold in store? Who knows? I plan to keep writing and reading for the foreseeable future, and I figure most of the other stuff will take care of itself. My thanks to all of you reading this, some of whom have been here for more than twenty years. We’ll see how long we can keep it going.

UPDATE: In response to a request in the comments, here are the other books I considered for my top ten list, in the order in which I read them: THE RULE OF THREES, Jeffrey Deaver; THE ART OF RON LESSER, VOLUME 2, Robert Deis, Bill Cunningham, eds.; ONCE A FIGHTER, Les Savage Jr.; SWITCHEROO, Emmett McDowell; GUN LAW AT VERMILION, Matt Stuart (L.P. Holmes); HAMILTON'S HAREM, William Kane (Ben Haas); THE JOY WHEEL, Paul W. Fairman; KNIGHT OF DARKNESS: THE LEGEND OF THE SHADOW, Will Murray; THE WILD ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, VOLUME 5, Will Murray; OVERBOARD, George F. Worts; THE BULLET GARDEN, Stephen Hunter; THE RED TASSEL, David Dodge; DREAM TOWN, David Baldacci; MARIHUANA, William Irish (Cornell Woolrich); and EYE WITNESS, George Harmon Coxe. Any of these books are well worth your time.

Review: Ghost Town Belles - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

Down-on-his-luck cowboy Drift Garrity lives up to his name, wandering through Arizona on an unspecified quest and taking what jobs he can on various ranches. His aimless ways take him to a ranch that’s plagued by rustlers and also involve him with an eccentric old prospector who lives with his two beautiful daughters in a ghost town. Could those things be connected? Well, sure they could, along with a notorious Mexican bandit and some long-buried secrets.

I’ve read and enjoyed several of author Chap O’Keefe’s novels featuring range detective Joshua Dillard in recent months, but GHOST TOWN BELLES is an equally entertaining stand-alone yarn. It was published originally in hardback by Robert Hale in 2006 as part of the Black Horse Western line, reprinted in large print in 2008, and is now available in new e-book and paperback editions.

Chap O’Keefe, of course, is veteran author and editor Keith Chapman, who is one of the best in the business at producing gritty, offbeat Westerns. GHOST TOWN BELLES has some fairly lurid aspects to it, along with a plot twist or two that I found genuinely surprising. The action barrels along in satisfying fashion, and Drift Garrity (a great name) is a really likable protagonist. I really enjoyed this novel, and if you like traditional Westerns that aren’t completely traditional, I give GHOST TOWN BELLES a high recommendation. I love that title, as well.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective Magazine, July 1936

Walter Baumhofer did some great covers for DIME DETECTIVE during this era, and here's another of 'em. The lineup of authors in this issue is top-notch, as well: Carroll John Daly with a Vee Brown story, T.T. Flynn, Frederick C. Davis, William E. Barrett, and Robert Sidney Bowen. Excellent writers, every one of them. DIME DETECTIVE was a consistently superb pulp during the mid-Thirties. 

The Annual December 27th Post

49 years ago today, I opened the mailbox at my parents’ house and took out a check in the amount of $167.50 from the Ideal Publishing Company, my first sale as a professional fictioneer. I’ve written about this many times before, starting with the very first year of this blog, a post that you can read here. And if you do, you may note that one of the comments is from my long-time, much-missed friend Bill Crider, and there are others by Juri Nummelin and Todd Mason, who are stlll good friends of mine all these years later.

I’m a lot closer to the end of my writing career now, but I’m still at it and plan to be for a while yet. Many thanks to all who have gotten me this far, including all the editors who have accepted my work and all the readers who have plunked down hard-earned cash to read it. My daughters Shayna and Joanna have helped me every step of the way, and of course, none of it would be possible without Livia, who has always believed in me. 49 years is a long time in this business. I’m not sure the youngster I was back in 1976 could have even comprehended such a thing, but I’m mighty pleased and proud to be here.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story Magazine, December 1936

For the last Saturday Morning Western Pulp of the year, here's an issue of LARIAT STORY MAGAZINE with a nice cover by John Drew. Walt Coburn and Eugene Cunningham are the big-name authors in this one. Homer King Gordon and Edgar L. Cooper were prolific and popular at the time but forgotten today. Bart Cassidy is remembered because that pseudonym was used often, but not always, by Harry F. Olmsted. But Cooper is known to have used it, as well, and since he has a story in this issue under his own name, I think it's at least possible that he was Bart Cassidy in this case, not Olmsted. John Starr was a widely-used house name, so there's no telling who wrote the story under that byline in this issue, and Dan Dermody has only two credits in the Fictionmags Index, this one and a story in the July 1927 issue of NORTH-WEST STORIES. Despite what the cover says, T.W. Ford is nowhere to be found in this one, but he had a story in the previous issue that might have been scheduled for this one originally but got bumped up a month for some reason. I hope to be back next week with some comments on a pulp I own and have read.