Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, December 25, 1933

That's a nice evocative cover by Frederick Witton, an artist whose work I'm not familiar with, on this issue of SHORT STORIES. It's dated December 25, and Christmas Day was on Monday in 1933 (yes, I looked it up), so the unsold copies of this one were probably pulled off the stands on Tuesday that week. Although who wouldn't want a pulp with stories by H. Bedford-Jones, James B. Hendryx (a Corporal Downey yarn), William Merriam Rouse, George Allan England, Hapsburg Liebe, Clifford Knight, and Berton E. Cook? Well, it was the depths of the depression, after all, so I'm sure there were a lot of people who didn't have a quarter to spare, but enough people kept buying SHORT STORIES to keep it in business for a couple of decades and more after this.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: End of the Line - The Traveling Wilburys

They played some snippets from this song on a recent episode of THE SIMPSONS. Yes, I still watch THE SIMPSONS. I liked it, didn't recognize it at all, and so I had to look it up. I'd heard of The Traveling Wilburys, of course, but I'm not sure I ever heard any of their music. But after listening to this one all the way through, I love it. Some of the lyrics speak to me, as they say. The ones about being old, of course, but how you should keep going to the end of the line. That's my plan.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, November 28, 1936

I came across this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY, one of my favorite Western pulps, on the Internet Archive, and since the lead novella is a Thanksgiving-themed story, I read it immediately so I could post about it on Thanksgiving Day. You can read my thoughts about it here. Now I’ve read the rest of the issue, or most of it, anyway. The cover is by R.G. Harris, who did a lot of excellent covers for WILD WEST WEEKLY. I don’t think this is one of his better ones, but it’s okay.

George C. Henderson is almost completely forgotten today, but I’ve read several of his stories and think he was a good Western pulpster. “Double Cross at the Double Crescent” uses the old plot of the protagonist, in this case a drifting cowboy, being mistaken for someone else, leading to a bunch of action including an attempted lynching. It’s a well-written story and Henderson includes a nice twist in the plot, so I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

Allan R. Bosworth was an even better writer. For WILD WEST WEEKLY, he did a long-running series about muleskinner Shorty Masters and his sidekick, a gunfighter known as the Sonora Kid. In “Mix-Up in Mescalero”, Shorty’s freight outfit gets drafted into an effort to move a gold shipment in secret so that outlaws won’t be able to steal it, but of course, things go wrong and Shorty and the Kid have to burn plenty of powder to set things right. One nice touch about this series is that Shorty is a fan of classical music and has named his mules after famous composers. I’ve read a couple of stories in this series and liked them.

The stories about good-guy outlaw Sonny Tabor, written by Paul S. Powers under the name Ward M. Stevens, were some of the most popular in WILD WEST WEEKLY and numbered among their fans none other than Elmer Kelton. In “Sonny Tabor at Broken Gun Ranch”, Sonny protects a ranching family from rustlers and discovers who’s really behind all the trouble. That’s it as far as the plot goes, but Powers provides plenty of well-written action scenes and Sonny Tabor is a very likable protagonist. I can see why it was a popular series. I’ve read two of the stories and enjoyed both of them.

Claude Rister wrote a lot for the Western pulps under his own name and was also one of several authors to use the pseudonym Buck Billings from time to time. I haven’t read much by him, but I’ve liked what I’ve read. His short story in this issue, “Dynamite and Water”, has two young cattlemen trying to keep the local range hog from running them off. Rister writes well and this is a pretty good yarn, but it suffers from a rather limp ending that could have been a lot more dramatic. Still good enough that I’d be happy to give anything else by Claude Rister a try.

This issue wraps up with the novelette “Texas Triggers Sling Lead” by Walker A. Tompkins. Tompkins was the most prolific contributor of linked novelettes that could then be fixed up into novels. I’m pretty sure he did that with the Texas Triggers stories, but at this point, I don’t know which novel they became. And since this story falls right in the middle of the series, I decided not to read it. I figure that sooner or later I’ll come across the whole thing in novel form. If any of you know the title of the book cobbled together from the Texas Triggers stories, please let me know.

Overall, this is a good solid issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. Not what I would consider above average, but entertaining and easy to read. The stories are action-packed and full of colorful “yuh mangy polecat” dialogue, and sometimes that’s just what a dagnabbed ol’ pelican like me wants to pass the time.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Rat Patrol: Desert Masquerade - David King (Howard Pehrson)

When I mentioned the novels based on the Rat Patrol TV series a while back, I said that there were five of them. Well, I was wrong. There were actually six Rat Patrol novels, and I’ve now read that elusive sixth one, DESERT MASQUERADE.

Those of you old enough to remember the TV show probably recall the set-up as well. Four commandos (three Americans and a Brit) run around North Africa in a couple of jeeps equipped with .50 caliber machine guns, harassing Rommel’s Afrika Corps in general and one officer, Captain Hans Dietrich, in particular. DESERT MASQUERADE varies quite a bit from that typical scenario and is more of an espionage yarn, with the four members of the Rat Patrol operating in disguise behind enemy lines as they try to obtain some vital information that will allow the Americans to break a stand-off with a German armored column commanded by Captain Dietrich.

For the most part this novel is a comedy of errors as the author cuts back and forth between the Rat Patrol, the rest of the American force, and the Germans under Dietrich. Everybody thinks they know things they really don’t. Most of the mistakes result from false information being sold to both sides by a group of Arab spies. Everything finally works out so that the Rat Patrol emerges triumphant, but hey, you knew that going in.

I don’t know much about the author, David King, except that his real name was Howard Pehrson and that in addition to five Rat Patrol novels, he wrote a few other war novels and some Westerns as King and also contributed a couple of early books to the long-running adult Western series Slocum, as by Jake Logan, including the first book in the series. DESERT MASQUERADE kind of pokes along in places but ultimately is pretty entertaining if you’re a fan of the TV series, as I was -- and am, since I’ve watched a few episodes from the DVD set Livia gave me for our anniversary last month and so far they hold up pretty well. The music cues seem a little too dramatic and overdone now, but that’s Sixties TV for you. The location filming, with Spain standing in for North Africa, is spectacular. I’m enjoying the show so far and expect to continue doing so.

(This post originally appeared on September 14, 2007. I lost those DVDs I mentioned a few months later in the Fire of '08, but I've since picked up the entire series on DVD. Haven't watched a one of them, though. Not sure what's wrong with me.)

Review: The Daughter of Genghis Khan - John York Cabot (David Wright O'Brien)

The narrator/protagonist of David Wright O’Brien’s novella “The Daughter of Genghis Khan” is Dr. Cliff Saunders, an American physician who is part of a humanitarian mission aiding the Nationalist Chinese during their war against the Japanese. Since the January 1942 issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, the pulp in which this yarn originally appeared as the subject of H.W. MacCauley's dramatic cover, was actually on the newsstands during December 1941, that means the story was written well before the attack on Pearl Harbor during the period in which the United States was technically a neutral nation.

But neutrality doesn’t mean much during the chaos of war, so when Japanese forces overrun the field hospital in which Saunders and beautiful redheaded nurse Linda Barret are working, they’re both taken prisoner. At least they’re not executed outright. In fact, the Japanese officer in charges wants to deliver them to a neutral area where they’ll be safe. However, before that can happen, a group of Mongol bandits counterattack, and Saunders and Linda find themselves taken to an isolated village in the mountains that’s ruled by a beautiful young woman who claims to be the daughter of Genghis Khan. Not a descendant, mind you, but the actual daughter of the great Mongol conqueror.

That claim is part of the slight fantasy element in this story. It had to have some sort of off-trail bent to the plot, since this was FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, after all, but for the most part, “The Daughter of Genghis Khan” is a pretty straightforward World War II yarn, as Saunders and Linda are forced to choose a side in the bloody conflict between the Japanese and the Mongol bandits. It’s pretty easy to figure out which side they’ll wind up on, of course, but that doesn’t detract from the breakneck action and the colorful characters and setting. This story reminded me a little of Milton Caniff’s immortal TERRY AND THE PIRATES comic strip, and that’s a good thing.

David Wright O’Brien’s writing career was a short one. His first story was published early in 1940, and he was killed while serving in the Army Air Force in 1944 when the bomber he was in was shot down over Berlin. But he published dozens of stories during that handful of years, most of them in the Ziff-Davis pulps AMAZING STORIES and FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. I think it’s safe to say he was a rising star in the science fiction and fantasy fields. “The Daughter of Genghis Khan” was published under his pseudonym John York Cabot because there were two more stories by him in that issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, one under his real name and one under his other pseudonym Duncan Farnsworth. (O’Brien was the nephew of Farnsworth Wright, the legendary editor of WEIRD TALES.) I’ve read several of his stories and really enjoyed all of them so far. His prose is clean and fast-moving with a very nice touch for action.

You can find the issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES containing this story here, and it’s available in other places on the Internet, as well. I need to read more by O’Brien, and I hope I manage to do so soon.

Review: One For My Dame - Jack Webb

ONE FOR MY DAME was published originally in hardcover by Holt, Rinehart & Winston in 1961 and reprinted in paperback by Avon (with a truly terrible cover) in 1964. It’s is the second novel in the recent double volume of Jack Webb’s stand-alone mystery and suspense yarns published by Stark House. I really enjoyed the first half of this book, THE DEADLY COMBO, so I had high hopes for ONE FOR MY DAME, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Rick Jackson is the owner of a pet shop in Los Angeles and leads a peaceful life with his pets, a goofy Great Dane, a hyperactive spider monkey, and a foul-mouthed mynah bird. However, Rick’s life takes a decidedly non-peaceful turn when he stops in a local watering hole one evening for a drink and finds himself sitting next to a very beautiful but very drunk redhead. He takes her back to his apartment over the pet store, but Rick is a fundamentally decent guy and doesn’t take advantage of her condition. He lets her sleep it off instead, and the next morning he puts her in a cab. He figures that’s the last he’ll see of her.

But it may be the last anybody sees of her, because she goes missing, and as it turns out, she’s the daughter of a prominent politician who’s been investigating the Mob. And Rick, as one of the last people to see her, suddenly has cops and gangsters both on his tail, as everybody wants to get their hands on something important the girl had in her possession. Rick’s problem is that he doesn’t know what it is or where it might be, but that’s not going to stop people from trying to kill him.

Hey, I can think of at least two series about hardboiled, two-fisted accountants, so why not a hardboiled, two-fisted pet store owner? Especially considering the fact that Rick has some pretty dark stuff in his background, as we find out while events unfold in this novel. ONE FOR MY DAME is one of those books that goes along in a pretty breezy, light-hearted fashion—until suddenly it doesn’t. And it’s a testament to Webb’s ability as a writer that both elements work extremely well. This is a fast-moving, very entertaining novel that I really enjoyed. THE DEADLY COMBO/ONE FOR MY DAME is available in e-book and paperback editions, and if you like smart, well-written crime fiction, I give it a high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Mask, September 1933

What would 20 cents buy in 1933? Well, it would buy a lot of things I suppose, but one possible answer is that it would buy an issue of BLACK MASK with stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick Nebel, Raoul Whitfield, W.T. Ballard, Roger Torrey, and Eugene Cunningham. That's just a spectacular group of authors. Cunningham is best remembered as a Western author, but he wrote quite a few hardboiled yarns, too. His story in this issue is the first in a series about hotel detective Cleve Corby. Nebel's story is part of his Kennedy and McBride series, Gardner's features the phantom crook Ed Jenkins, Ballard writes about Hollywood troubleshooter Bill Lennox, Torrey's story is about policeman Dal Prentice, and Whitfield's is the first of two about private eye Dion Davies. Several of the stories from this issue have been reprinted, and I'm sure they're well worth seeking out. By the way, the cover of this issue is by J.W. Schlaikjer, who did quite a few covers for BLACK MASK during this era.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, January 1948

It’s been too long since I’ve read an issue of EXCITING WESTERN. This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy. I think the cover is by A. Leslie Ross, but it also looks to me like it might be by H.W. Scott. So I’m hesitant to identify it as the work of either artist. I’m hoping some of you may be able to provide a definitive answer. Whoever painted it, it’s a pretty good cover.

I’ve enjoyed W.C. Tuttle’s Tombstone and Speedy series ever since I started reading it. The novella in this issue, “Strangers in El Segundo”, finds our eccentric range detective duo in the cowtown of the title, and once again, they’ve been fired by their exasperated boss at the Cattleman’s Association. That unfortunate circumstance doesn’t last long, however, as it just so happens the owner of the local bank has written to the Association asking for help, and Tombstone and Speedy are rehired. But wouldn’t you know it, the banker is murdered before they can talk to him and find out why he needed a pair of detectives. That sets off an apparently unrelated chain of events including a stagecoach holdup, an explosion, a kidnapping, and more murders. Tuttle was great at packing these yarns with plot despite their relatively short length. Tombstone and Speedy unravel everything and bring the villains to justice, of course, after some excellent action scenes and plenty of amusing dialogue. This is one of the few comedy Western series I like, because it’s not all comedy. The stories always feature action and mystery and colorful characters, and “Strangers in El Segundo” is no exception.

Hal White is a forgotten author these days, although he turned out dozens of stories for the Western, detective, and air war pulps. I’d read one story by him before and didn’t like it, but his novelette in this issue, “Powder on the Pecos” is very good. It starts out with a stagecoach robbery and moves on to be a story about a young rancher being framed as a rustler by the local cattle baron. The plot is very traditional, but White supplies a mildly entertaining plot twist and has a nice touch with the plentiful action scenes. I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Johnston McCulley is always a dependable author, of course. This January 1948 issue was on the newsstands during December 1947, so McCulley’s story “Undercover Santa Claus” is very appropriate. It’s a heartwarming tale in which an outlaw risks his life to help out the children of an old friend. Most readers will have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen in this one, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

I’ve always enjoyed T.W. Ford’s stories (he wrote hundreds of ’em for the Western, sports, and detective pulps), and his novelette in this issue, “Man-Bait for a Gun Trap” is no exception. In this yarn, a former deputy goes undercover to infiltrate an outlaw town and rescue the brother of the girl he loves. This story is almost all hardboiled, well-written action, but Ford also manages to make the characters interesting, especially the protagonist, who gave up packing a badge and has to learn how to handle a gun left-handed since his right arm got shot up and crippled. The boss of the outlaw town, who seems to have been modeled on Lionel Barrymore, is pretty good, too. This is just an excellent story all the way around, and I really enjoyed it.

Chuck Martin’s short story “Tanglefoot” is almost as good. This is the first in a short, three-story series about Jim “Tanglefoot” Bowen, another former deputy who has to learn how to cope with a handicap, in his case a leg that never healed right after bullets broke a couple of bones in it. Bowen has retired from being a lawman and makes his living as a cobbler and range detective, but he also helps out the local sheriff from time to time, a situation complicated by the fact that the sheriff is in love with the same girl as Bowen. The two of them team up to solve a mystery and round up some outlaws, including some of the men responsible for crippling Bowen, and Martin spins the yarn in his usual straightforward, fast-paced prose. He even throws in some frontier forensics! Bowen would have made a great character for novels, and I’m sorry there are only three stories about him. I think I have the other two, so I’m looking forward to reading them.

Tex Mumford was a house-name, so there’s no telling who wrote the short story “Powerful Hombre” in this issue, but it’s another good one. It’s a lighthearted tale but not an outright comedy about a cowboy who’s too big and strong for his own good. He doesn’t know his own strength, as the old saying goes, and that gets into trouble, as when he encounters a bank robber in this yarn. This is a minor story, but it’s well-written, moves right along, and I found reading it to be a pleasant experience.

I don’t know anything about Leo Charles except that he published four stories in the late Forties, three of them in Columbia Western pulps. “Remember the Knife” in this issue is his own credit in a Thrilling Group pulp. It’s the third story in this issue with a protagonist who’s handicapped. I doubt if this was an intentional theme, but who knows. In this case, the fellow has a bad leg because a horse fell on him when, as a young outlaw, he was trying to make a getaway. He’s gone straight, and nobody in the town where he runs a stable knows about his past. He has an adopted son who also has a crippled leg and needs an operation, so he tries to get the money for it by using his uncanny skill with a knife. Unfortunately, some of his old outlaw compadres show up, and so does a U.S. Marshal. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this one at first. The writing isn’t as good as in the other stories in this issue. But the author won me over with his characters and the genuine suspense the story generates. This is another good one.

And this is a fine issue of EXCITING WESTERN overall, with a solid Tombstone and Speedy yarn and great yarns from Ford and Martin. I was a little disappointed when I realized this issue didn’t have a Navajo Tom Raine story in it, since I really like that series, too, but I wound up thinking it’s one of the best issues of this pulp that I’ve read. If you have a copy, it’s well worth your reading time.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Sons and Gunslicks - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

It was a wandering daughter job.

That's a classic set-up for hardboiled private eye fiction, and Chap O'Keefe's series character Joshua Dillard is nothing if not a hardboiled private eye in the Old West. In this novel, originally published in hardcover by Robert Hale in 2007 and recently released in an e-book version, freelance troubleshooter and range detective Dillard is hired by elderly former lawman and town tamer Jack Greatheart to find Greatheart's daughter Emily, who disappeared during a trip to Arizona. Emily was engaged to the son of a widow who owns a large ranch, and after her fiancée was killed in a gunfight before they could even get married, Emily journeyed to Arizona to meet and offer her condolences to the woman who would have been her mother-in-law. She never came back, and a bloodstained coat is the only clue to her disappearance. It's up to Joshua Dillard to find Emily if she's still alive or find out what happened to her if she's not.

Naturally, once Dillard arrives on the scene, things turn out to be even more complicated and mysterious than they appear on the surface. There's a range war brewing, and Dillard has to survive gunfights, fistfights, and bushwhackings before he's able to untangle the various strands of the plot and uncover the truth of Emily Greatheart's disappearance.

As usual, Chap O'Keefe (who's really veteran author and editor Keith Chapman, as most of you already know) spins this tale in terse, no-nonsense prose and skillfully throws in enough plot twists to keep things racing along to a powerful climax. Joshua Dillard is a fine character, a dogged investigator who's plenty tough when he needs to be, and his own tragic background adds a touch of poignancy to his adventures. I've probably said this before, but fifty years ago these books would have made good Gold Medal paperbacks or Double D hardbacks.

As an added bonus in this one, O'Keefe includes "Crime on the Trail" an informative essay about the links between detective fiction and his Westerns. If you're a fan of those genres, SONS AND GUNSLICKS is well worth reading.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on September 25, 2013. SONS AND GUNSLICKS is available in new e-book and paperback editions, and I second my own recommendation from twelve years ago that it's well worth reading.)

Review: Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin' - Cleve Endicott (Norman W. Hay) (Wild West Weekly, November 28, 1936)

I came across this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY on the Internet Archive, and since it features a novelette with the great title “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”, I decided to go ahead and read that yarn so I could post about it today. It’s the November 28, 1936 issue, and the cover is by R.G. Harris. I’ll read the rest of it and feature it as a Saturday Morning Western Pulp in a week or two.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Billy West/Circle J series in WILD WEST WEEKLY, it was the most prolific Western pulp series with more than 400 entries between 1927 and 1943, written by at least 15 different authors under the house-name Cleve Endicott. The protagonist is Billy West, the young owner of the Circle J cattle ranch in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains, along with his sidekicks, the colorful, grizzled old-timer Buck Foster and feisty, redheaded Joe Scott.

In “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”, it’s the day before the holiday and the Circle J’s Chinese cook Sing Lo is on his way back to the ranch with a buckboard full of supplies for the Thanksgiving feast when he interrupts a stagecoach robbery and is taken prisoner by the outlaws. Meanwhile, in town, Buck Foster competes in a turkey shoot to win a prize gobbler and runs afoul of some other hardcases. Unknown to any of our heroes, these two circumstances are connected and will soon lead them into a whirlwind of action.

In fact, this story is almost all action, but it’s well-written and Billy, Buck, Joe, and Sing Lo are very likable protagonists. Despite the thin plot, I found it to be a very enjoyable yarn. The actual author is Norman W. Hay, who wrote more of the Circle J stories than anyone else. If you’re a Western pulp fan and need something to do after your nap this afternoon (I assume everyone takes a nap on Thanksgiving, like I do), I can recommend reading “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”.