Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 1941

FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES was primarily a reprint pulp, bringing back science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories originally written and published before such genres truly existed as we know them now. I seem to recall reading that some of the reprinted novels were abridged, but I don't know that for a fact. FFM was also noted for its good covers, many of them by Virgil Finlay including this one. As you can see, the lead stories in this issue are "The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft and "Palos of the Dog Star Pack" by J.U. Giesy, neither of which I've ever read. There's also a short story by L. Patrick Greene, better known as the author of the African adventure series featuring a character called The Major, and a poem, apparently original in this issue, by Robert W. Lowndes. I really ought to read more of this stuff.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Best Western Novels, January 1949

I think the expression on that girl's face may be more dangerous than the six-shooter in the cowboy's hand. This is another great cover from Norman Saunders. There are only three stories in this issue of BEST WESTERN NOVELS, two from top-notch authors Dean Owen and William Heuman and one from Lee Floren, a writer I've come to appreciate more in recent years even though I still wouldn't call him a favorite. I love novella-length Western yarns, so I'm sure I'd enjoy this issue.

Forgotten Books: Gambling Man - Clifton Adams

Clifton Adams had a short but solid career in the Western pulps, lasting about five years in the late Forties and early Fifties. I assume the reason he stopped writing short fiction is that he became a successful paperback novelist and eventually moved on to more success and Spur awards as a regular author for Doubleday’s Double D Western hardcover line. He was also well-regarded as a hardboiled crime novelist, although not nearly as prolific in that genre.

GAMBLING MAN is one of his early novels, published by Gold Medal in 1955 and never reprinted, as far as I know. Despite the title and the cover, this is actually a coming-of-age novel, and a really superb one, at that. Twelve-year-old Jefferson Blaine lives in the small Texas town of Plainsville, which lives up to its name as far as Jeff is concerned. Once a cattle town, it’s now mostly a supply center for farmers and a pretty boring place. Jeff lives with his aunt and uncle because his mother died giving birth to him and his father left right after he was born.

Then one day Nathan Blaine comes back to town to see his son, and Jeff is surprised to discover his father is a gunman, a gambler, and quite possibly an outlaw. His aunt and uncle don’t like Nate and don’t want Jeff to have anything to do with him, but of course that’s not the way things play out. Then the situation takes yet another turn, and a tragic one, when the local bank is robbed and Nathan Blaine goes on the run again.

This takes up the first half of the book, and it’s absolutely compelling reading, rich in characterization and very well written. Halfway through the book there’s a time jump of five years, to the point when Jeff Blaine is nearly grown and getting a bad reputation himself, just like his father. Then more outlaws show up in town, which has gotten wild again since the railroad arrived, and bring unwelcome news of Jeff’s father, news that threatens to make him finally cross the line and become a real owlhoot himself.

The second half of GAMBLING MAN doesn’t quite live up to the first half, but it’s still very, very good and builds to an exciting, emotional climax. Adams’ writing is hardboiled and top-notch all the way. This is a very solid traditional Western and gets a high recommendation from me.

Stillman's Gun - Peter Brandvold

The arrival of a new novel by Peter Brandvold is always cause for celebration among Western fans, and that’s certainly true where STILLMAN’S GUN is concerned. Sheriff Ben Stillman was the first of many series characters created by Brandvold, who has been chronicling the sheriff’s adventures for twenty years now. In this one, Stillman is on a manhunt that nets him not only a bank robber prisoner but also a small fortune in the loot the robber was carrying. Complicating the situation is the fact that the outlaw is an old acquaintance of Stillman’s.

Given these circumstances, a lesser man might be tempted to keep the money and let the robber go, but Stillman is determined to bring both back to civilization, despite the danger of transporting that much money through wild country where plenty of hardcases will want to get their hands on it. Then there’s another twist involving a beautiful woman and the vengeful cattle baron who’s pursuing her. As usual, Stillman has his hands full with trouble from all sides.

Nobody in the business writes better action scenes than Brandvold, and he’s a master of setting and character as well. If you’re a Western fan and haven’t read his work, you really need to. If you’re a long-time reader like me, you’ll want to grab this one up. STILLMAN’S GUN gets a high recommendation from me.

Coming From Stark House: Warped Desires/The Strangest Sin - Kay Addams (Orrie Hitt)

WARPED DESIRE

It has to be this way every weekend, Laura said as we lay side by side. How can it be? My father will be home. After he has gone to sleep I can come to you. What if he should catch us? He won't catch us. We'll be smart. He's a sound sleeper but if that doesn't work out we can always take a ride into the country. I sighed and closed my eyes. This was my father's wife. And my lover....

THE STRANGEST SIN

Sharon Doyle felt dirty when she woke up in Jimmy Slade's bed, but that wasn't unusual. She always felt dirty after a night of passion in Jimmy's cheap room... Sharon owns a bar and too often ends up blotto at the end of the evening, letting Jimmy take her back to his place. Her neighbor Carl Evans is a nicer guy, but he won't make a move. Between them is Bert Robinson, the local racketeer who wants Sharon all to himself, no matter what it takes. But Sharon is tired of them. She finds herself more attracted to her bartender, Lucy, who keeps the local guys satisfied in a room upstairs. It's a lit-fuse situation, and all it takes is a single act of violence to set it off.

I wrote the introduction to this double volume from Stark House that will be out later this fall, and I'm proud to have done so. Both novels are top-notch tales from a great storyteller, and I give this collection a very high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Gold Seal Detective, April 1936

That's a pretty brutal cover on this issue of GOLD SEAL DETECTIVE, a short-lived pulp that appears to have featured mostly stories about G-Men. The lead novella is part of the Rough 'Em Up Radigan series by "Clark Aiken", who was really Frederick C. Davis, so you know it's got to be pretty good. With five of these novellas running in GOLD SEAL DETECTIVE, I wonder if the series would be a good candidate for reprinting. I don't know about you, but I'd buy THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF ROUGH 'EM UP RADIGAN. Norman A. Daniels is also on hand in this issue, twice, in fact, once as himself and once as David A. Norman. James Perley Hughes and Darrell Jordan are the best-known names among the other authors, and they're best remembered for their work in the aviation pulps. But I think this issue would be worth reading just for Davis and Daniels.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Sure-Fire Western, March 1937

Here are our old friends the Stalwart Cowboy, the Wounded Old Geezer, and the Angry Redhead (not totin' a gun this time) on an issue of SURE-FIRE WESTERN, a Western pulp from Ace that lasted only a dozen issues in the mid-to-late Thirties. The cover, which I like, is by an artist I'm not familiar with, William Luberoff. Most of the issue is taken up by the novel "Canyon of Golden Skulls" by Harry Sinclair Drago. This novel got an abridged digest reprint in the Western Novel Classic line, under Drago's most common pseudonym, Bliss Lomax. There's also one short story in this issue by little-known author R. Craig Christiansen. Every time I see one of these covers, I think I'm going to write that trio, and that scene, into a book, but so far I haven't gotten around to it.

Forgotten Books: Stool Pigeon - Louis Malley

STOOL PIGEON by Louis Malley is one of those compressed time books that I enjoy. It takes place in a single 24-hour period, from six o’clock in the morning on Christmas Eve to dawn on Christmas Day, although there are a few flashbacks along the way to fill in the history of the protagonist, New York City police detective Vincent Milazzo.

Milazzo catches the case when mobster Tony Statella is murdered, shot in the head while sitting in a car in the same Italian neighborhood where Milazzo grew up. One of Milazzo’s old enemies from childhood may be involved, and Milazzo is determined to pin the killing on him, even if he has to frame him. But new angles rapidly open up in the case and Milazzo realizes that he’s on the trail of something much bigger, a conspiracy that is spreading an evil web all across the country. The problem is that he knows almost everyone mixed up in it—some friends, some enemies, even some relatives—and one of them is the girl he’s loved ever since he was a kid. Complicating things even more is the fact that his boss has given him only 24 hours to crack the case.

This novel, one of only four by Malley, was published by Avon in 1954 and then reprinted by the same publisher in 1960 under the title SHAKEDOWN STRIP. Somehow, I’d never come across either edition and hadn’t heard of the book until it was reprinted recently by Stark House as part of the Black Gat Books line. STOOL PIGEON is a very good hardboiled crime/police procedural novel. Vincent Milazzo isn’t a particularly likable protagonist, but the reader can’t help but root for him, the way the odds are stacked against him. Malley does a great job with the setting and characters, really bringing the neighborhood and its colorful inhabitants to life, and the pace never lets up. I enjoyed STOOL PIGEON a great deal, and I think I may have to try to find some of Malley’s other novels.

Overlooked TV Movies: Goodnight for Justice (2011)

We never watched BEVERLY HILLS 90210 (or the remake, for that matter), but I’ve seen Luke Perry in some other things and enjoyed his work. He seems to have liked making Westerns, and in 2011 and 2012 he did three movies for the Hallmark Channel in which he played John William Goodnight, a federal circuit judge in Wyoming Territory. Evidently Perry himself created the character, although he didn’t have a hand in writing any of the movies.

We recently got a DVD set of all three movies and just watched the first one, GOODNIGHT FOR JUSTICE (directed by Perry’s 90210 buddy Jason Priestley). It does a good job of establishing the character: Goodnight is a successful but somewhat disreputable lawyer in Illinois when he’s appointed by the President to take over the Wyoming circuit. Some flashbacks tell us that he’s actually from that part of the country, the son of settlers who were murdered by outlaws, so he’s grown up with a thirst for justice as well as a desire to track down the boss owlhoot responsible for his parents’ death. Becoming a judge in Wyoming will give him the opportunity to do that.

From that point, the story is a little episodic and the script rather heavy-handed and stereotypical as the main plotline involves Goodnight taking on an evil cattle baron who’s trying to run the peaceful Cheyenne Indians off their land. To get my other complaints out of the way, the movie was made on a pretty small budget and shot in Canada, in the same Canadian movie set where so many other made-for-TV Westerns in this century have been shot. The place just never looks authentic to me. It always comes across as a cheap tourist attraction.

On the plus side, though, the action scenes are fairly well done. Perry looks good in the part and seems to be having fun, and that makes up for a lot. There’s even one nice twist in the plot that I wasn’t expecting. Overall, while far from a great Western, GOODNIGHT FOR JUSTICE is reasonably entertaining, and I won’t hesitate to watch the other two movies in the series.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Strange Stories, June 1940

From very late in the Weird Menace boom, this issue from the Thrilling Group's entry in that genre has an eye-catching cover and some good authors mixed with several I've never heard of. On hand are Henry Kuttner (twice, once as himself and once as Keith Hammond), August Derleth (also twice, once as himself and once as Tally Mason), Robert Bloch, Hamilton Craigie (who I think of as more of a Western writer, even though he turned out stories in just about every genre for the pulps), and Don Alviso (likewise). The ones I'm not familiar with include Jack B. Creamer, Earle Dow, John Clemons, O.M. Cabral, and Maria Moravsky. It looks like a pretty entertaining issue, even if the Weird Menace pulps were running out of steam by then.