Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, September 1948

This is a pulp I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with an exciting and dramatic cover by Sam Cherry, who always delivered the goods. And I’ll have more to say about this cover later.

This issue leads off with another Tombstone and Speedy novelette by W.C. Tuttle, “The Hunches of Tombstone Jones”. In this one, our intrepid range detective duo aren’t on the trail of rustlers for a change. As a favor to their boss at the Cattlemen’s Association, they set out to investigate a case of high-grading at a gold mine. But when they arrive on the scene, they find the mine owner and his lawyer both dead. Is it murder? What does it have to do with the kidnapping of an inept young drummer from back east who sells ladies’ ready-to-wear goods? Why’s everybody so interested in a beautiful young woman and her son? Tombstone and Speedy will untangle all those threads, of course, with a lot of banter and gunplay along the way. After being a little disappointed in the last yarn I read in this series, “The Hunches of Tombstone Jones” really hits the mark. The dialogue is funny, the action is good, the detective work, mostly by Tombstone, is canny, and the plot hangs together nicely. This is a top-notch Tombstone and Speedy story.

“Catch Rope” is the third and final story in Chuck Martin’s short-lived series about crippled range detective Jim Bowen. It’s a good hardboiled Western yarn in which Bowen goes after a gang of rustlers who have kidnapped a rancher. Martin is nearly always worth reading, and this is an enjoyable story. I hoped it would bring some resolution to Jim Bowen’s continuing storyline, but it doesn’t, which is a shame.

Nels Leroy Jorgensen started out as a hardboiled crime and mystery writer in BLACK MASK before concentrating on Westerns later in his career, and I’ve enjoyed a number of his stories in the past. “Bullet Trail to Bexar”, his novelette in this issue, gets off to a promising start. It’s set in Texas in the spring of 1836, during the Texas revolution, and is about a young Texan on a mission to San Antonio. He gets saddled with a beautiful young woman along the way, and she has an agenda of her own. This should be a good story, but it’s riddled with anachronisms and blatant historical errors, as well as continuity glitches such as the young woman’s stepfather suddenly becoming her half-brother for the rest of the story. I wound up abandoning this one halfway through. It just has too many problems for it to be entertaining to me.

“Killer, Here I Come” is by Robert J. Hogan, best-known for the G-8 series, of course, but he wrote quite a few Westerns as well. This is the second story in this issue where the protagonist has a crippled leg. In this case, he’s not a range detective but rather a saddlemaker and veterinarian. He’s a very likable character, and you can’t help but root for him as he has to deal with an old enemy turned bank robber. I didn’t like this one whole-heartedly—there’s some cruelty to animals in it, and I have a hard time with that—but it’s a pretty good story overall.

Tom Parsons was a Thrilling Group house-name. The story under that by-line in this issue, “Born to Hang”, is the one illustrated by Cherry’s cover. Actually, I strongly suspect this is another case of a story being written to match an existing cover painting, because the scene lines up perfectly with the story. I also think there’s a very good chance the story was written by editor Charles S. Strong, who was also Western writer Chuck Stanley, author of a regular non-fiction column in EXCITING WESTERN. It’s a good yarn about a drifter framed for murder, and its only real drawback is that the ending isn’t as dramatic as it might have been. Still an enjoyable story, though.

Arizona Ranger Navajo Tom Raine has become one of my favorite Western pulp characters. In “Ride the Ghost Down, Ranger!”, he’s sent to find out who’s been attacking and burning out some homesteaders, which leads him to a mystery involving the inheritance of a valuable ranch. It’s a good story, and I’m convinced it’s the work of Lee Bond writing under the house-name Jackson Cole. Bond created the Navajo Tom Raine series and wrote more of the stories than anyone else, although C. William Harrison contributed quite a few, as well. This one ends with a big shootout between Raine and multiple bad guys, one of the trademarks of his stories.

The issue wraps up with “Reba Rides Alone” by D.B. Newton, one of my favorite Western authors. Of course, I can’t see that title without thinking about the country singer, but in this case, Reba is Mike Reba, a veteran outlaw who’s wounded and on the run when he encounters a young man determined to take up the owlhoot trail. This story is kind of predictable, but it’s very well written, and like all of Newton’s work, it’s worth reading.

This is a good issue overall of EXCITING WESTERN with a strong Tombstone and Speedy entry, a solid Navajo Tom Raine story, and the other stories are all okay with the exception of Jorgensen’s. If you have a copy, it’s certainly worth taking down from the shelves. If you don’t, the whole issue is also available on the Internet Archive.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Dancing Aztecs - Donald E. Westlake

I’ve read a lot of Donald E. Westlake’s novels over the years, but he was prolific enough that there are still a lot of them I haven’t read. Being in the mood to sample his work again, the one that came easiest to hand was DANCING AZTECS, a stand-alone comic thriller.

The set-up is fairly complicated. A corrupt businessman and a low-level crook are trying to smuggle into the country an ancient Aztec statue in the shape of a dancing priest. The statue is about a foot tall, made of gold, and has emeralds for eyes. It’s hidden among a shipment of copies that are intended as awards to be given out at a luncheon to the members of a club in New York City. Of course, there’s a foul-up, and the statue that’s worth a million dollars is given out in the place of one of the copies. Various people find out about this and start trying to find the valuable statue. Chaos of a humorous nature ensues, along with a considerable amount of action and romance.

What’s left to say about Westlake that hasn’t been said? You already know his style is smooth and very readable (although he does some things in this book with the timeline and POV shifts that most writers wouldn’t attempt – and makes them work). He weaves together a complex plot and a huge number of characters and somehow keeps everything straight so that it all makes sense. Not an easy task. DANCING AZTECS is very funny in places, and you can’t help but root for the characters, even the ones who are crooked. Overall, I prefer Westlake’s serious books to his comedies, but just about everything he wrote is worth reading and DANCING AZTECS is no exception. Reading it is a highly entertaining way to spend some time.

(This post first appeared in a somewhat different form on January 18, 2009, not long after Donald E. Westlake died. It was his passing that prompted me to read something by him. And it's still true there are quite a few of his books I haven't read. I probably ought to do something about that.)

Review: Men's Adventure Quarterly #14: The Bigfoot Issue! - Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, eds.

I’m no expert on Bigfoot and his cryptid cousins, by any means. I remember reading a comic strip when I was a kid where the characters encountered the Abominable Snowman, and it wasn’t played for laughs like the Bumble in RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER. In fact, it scared the crap out of me. But I don’t remember what the comic strip was. If any of you recall a comic strip featuring an Abominable Snowman storyline in the 1960-65 period, let me know!

Then there’s THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, the Seventies docu-drama film about Arkansas’s Fouke Monster. One of my best friends had family in that area and visited often, and he swore the monster was real, although he had never seen it.

So I was ready to be educated about Bigfoot, making me part of the prime audience for the 14th issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY: THE BIGFOOT ISSUE! From the talented editorial due of Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, this volume leans more on non-fiction than some of the previous issues of this great publication. There are lengthy articles from well-known zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson, current cryptid expert Loren Coleman, and John W. Burns, one of the first authors to investigate the mystery that came to be known as Bigfoot. Also to be found in this issue are articles about Bigfoot’s appearances in movies, including the above-mentioned THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, and other media. I had no idea there have been so many movies over the years featuring Bigfoot and his assorted cousins! Other articles detail Bigfoot’s several guest-starring turns on THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN, as well as the series BIGFOOT AND WILDBOY. I remember hearing about those episodes of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and THE BIONIC WOMAN, but I don’t recall watching them back when those episodes were new and have never seen them since, so this was all new and very entertaining for me.

And of course, there’s some wild, men’s adventure magazine fiction about discovering and fighting Bigfoot-like creatures, and as always, I had a great time reading those yarns.

As for my own encounters with Bigfoot, I don’t have any. But about forty years ago, Bill Crider and I collaborated on chapters-and-outline for a men’s adventure novel involving a Yeti. Unfortunately, it never sold. Going back farther to 1969, I lived only a few miles from the nature refuge where the Lake Worth Monster, sometimes called the Goatman, had the whole area worked up for the whole summer. You can read about that here. I tend to be skeptical about such things, but you couldn’t have gotten me to go out to Greer Island that summer. No, sir. Since then, people I know have claimed the whole thing was a hoax and they know who was behind it. Could be. But I just don’t know.

To get back to MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY: THE BIGFOOT ISSUE!, this is another great issue of one of my favorite publications, and I give it a very high recommendation. You can find it on Amazon or buy it directly from the publisher.

(Apologies for rambling around a little more than usual. Seems to be the way my brain works these days.)

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Eddie the Eagle (2016)

Regular readers of this blog know that we enjoy inspirational, based-on-a-true-story sports movies around here, and 2016’s EDDIE THE EAGLE certainly fits the category, as well as being a Movie I’ve Missed Until Now. It’s the story of Eddie Edwards (played by Taron Egerton), the British ski jumper whose dream was to compete in the Olympics ever since he was a sickly little boy. A lot of things get in his way besides his own lack of talent, mostly the bureaucrats in charge of the British Olympic team and later the International Olympic Committee. Helping Eddie overcome these obstacles is his reluctant coach, a washed-up American ski jumper (Hugh Jackman) whose career never recovered from a falling out with his coach, played by Christopher Walken.

As you can see, this movie has a pretty good cast, and it’s well-made and moves right along. Evidently it’s only loosely based on what really happened, but that’s not a problem as far as I’m concerned. It’s an entertaining little film, not one of the classics of the genre, maybe, but I enjoyed it and think it’s worth watching.

Review: Pendergast: The Beginning - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I know a number of people who are fans of the long-running series by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child about eccentric FBI agent A.X.L. Pendergast, but I’d never read any of the books and with more than twenty entries in the series, it was another one it looked like I might never get around to trying.

But then while I was at the library I came across a large print edition of the latest novel, PENDERGAST: THE BEGINNING, which is obviously a prequel to the rest of the books. So I thought, as I often do, sure, why not?

This novel is set in the Eighties and Nineties and centers around Pendergast’s early days working in the FBI’s local field office in New Orleans, which happens to be Pendergast’s home town. He’s teamed with veteran agent Dwight Chambers, who serves as Pendergast’s mentor. He tries to, anyway. Pendergast, with his mysterious, somewhat sinister background and seeming mastery of just about everything, is not one to take a back seat to anybody.

They investigate a cold case that winds up leading them to a number of murders carried out by a serial killer who has the odd tendency of amputating his victims’ right arms. By the middle of the book, they’ve tracked down the killer and are barreling toward a showdown with him, when suddenly the whole thrust of the book shifts dramatically and what seems at first like a bizarre but relatively simple case takes on a whole new layer.

First of all, Pendergast is a great character. Not having read the rest of the series, I don’t know how much of the stuff that’s hinted at in this book is fully revealed later on, but I’m intrigued by him, that’s for sure. Preston and Child do a good job with all the characters, in fact, and their dialogue is pretty good. My only complaint about their writing is that it’s so slick and smooth it becomes a little bland at times, which is the same thing I’ve found in a lot of current thriller writers. Too many of the books sound like they could’ve been written by anybody, with nothing distinctive about the author’s voice. I don’t think Preston and Child fall victim to this sameness as much as some, but it’s there.

That wasn’t enough to keep me from enjoying this book quite a bit. I really raced through the second half to find out what was going to happen. And it’s a nice touch that the epilogue is taken from the novel RELIC, the first published book in the Pendergast series, firmly establishing the series’ continuity.

I liked this one enough I think I’m going to have to read more. Whether I’ll ever make my way through the entire series is pretty debatable, especially at my age, but you never know. If you’re already a fan, I’m sure you’ll want to read PENDERGAST. If you’re just starting the series, well, if I’m any indication, it works just fine as an introduction. It's available in e-book, hardcover, and audio editions. Recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Gold Seal Detective, January 1936

I don't know if the cover painting by Rafael DeSoto on this issue of GOLD SEAL DETECTIVE was meant to illustrate the story "Rough-'Em-Up Radigan", but if it wasn't, it should have been! This is actually the first of five novelettes starring Rough-'Em-Up Radigan by Clark Aiken, who was really the great pulpster Frederick C. Davis. I've suggested before that we need a reprint volume called THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF ROUGH-'EM-UP RADIGAN, and I stand by that. Also in this issue are stories by Norman A. Daniels (once as himself and once as by David M. Norman), Paul Chadwick, Frederick C. Painton, Tom Roan, and Darrell Jordan. If you want to check out this issue, it's available on the Internet Archive. I've downloaded it myself, and I hope I get around to reading it in the relatively near future.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, August 1934

There was a brief discussion last weekend about whether the TOP-NOTCH cover I posted Sunday was painted by William F. Soare. Well, here's a STAR WESTERN cover we know was by Soare, and I like it quite a bit. Inside this issue are some fine writers, including Walt Coburn, Ray Nafziger, Cliff Farrell, and Robert E. Mahaffey. The lead story is a novella called "The Rider From Hell" by Robert Ormond Case. I love that title. Case is one of those writers whose name I've seen hundreds of times, if not more, but I don't recall ever reading anything by him. Come to find out, there's an e-book edition of "The Rider From Hell" available, and not only that, I already own the blasted thing! Maybe I'd better get around to reading it, huh? We'll see. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Arizona Guns - William MacLeod Raine

With some authors, you can be aware of their work for years, even decades, without ever reading any of it. That’s the way it’s been for me with William MacLeod Raine. If you’re like me and practically grew up in used bookstores during the Sixties and Seventies, you saw plenty of paperback Westerns by Raine. While he was never as popular as Zane Grey, Max Brand, or Louis L’Amour, Raine was prolific and a strong presence in the Western field for many years. Now, of course, he’s barely remembered, and based on ARIZONA GUNS, the first of his novels I’ve read, he deserves to be not only remembered but read.

Born in England in 1871, Raine moved to the American West ten years later and lived through much of the time period about which he wrote. Like Walt Coburn and another English immigrant, Fred East (who wrote as Tom West), Raine was an authentic Westerner with experience as a cowboy before he became a writer. ARIZONA GUNS was originally published in 1919 by Houghton Mifflin under the title A MAN FOUR-SQUARE. There were at least two paperback reprints under the title ARIZONA GUNS, which despite having a classic B-Western sound to it, isn’t appropriate at all. Not one bit of the novel takes place in Arizona, and the only connection is that one of the characters mentions having gone there.

Instead, nearly all the book is set in New Mexico Territory, in the fictional Washington County. If you’re sharp enough to realize that there’s a real county in New Mexico named after a famous president, you’ll have a pretty good idea where this story is going. Yep, this is another fictionalized version of the Billy the Kid saga, with the “Washington County War” taking the place of the real-life Lincoln County War. In Raine’s version, the young hero is named Jim Clanton. After growing up somewhere in the Appalachians and being involved in a feud there, Clanton goes west in search of his enemies who have fled the mountains. He winds up joining a cattle drive up the Pecos, fights outlaws and Indians, becomes friends with a cowboy named Billie Prince, meets up with his old enemies, makes new enemies, romances a couple of beautiful young women, and eventually winds up on the wrong side of the law. By this time, Clanton’s friend Billie Prince has become a lawman, making him the Pat Garrett stand-in for this story, and when Clanton is accused of murdering one of the local cattlemen, Prince has to form a posse and go after him.

Raine veers off from history in various places, so the story winds up being only loosely based on the Lincoln County War. Because of this, he’s able to throw some nice twists into the plot, especially where various romantic triangles are concerned. Romance plays a big part in this book, as was common in Westerns of the time period, especially the bestsellers authored by Zane Grey. ARIZONA GUNS reminds me quite a bit of Grey’s work, in fact, although it’s not nearly as flowery and melodramatic. Raine slips in a dark undertone to an otherwise happy ending, too, which sets it apart from Grey’s novels and the other popular Westerns of the period. The writing is a little old-fashioned in places (what else would you expect from a book written ninety years ago?), but it holds up well, the style tough and spare for the most part.

I’ve always liked Zane Grey’s plots, and when he finally got around to writing action scenes, he produced some corkers, but I also find it hard to wade through the long-winded prose in his books. If you’re the same way, I think you’d enjoy William MacLeod Raine’s novels, at least based on this one. I definitely intend to read more of them.

(This time, for a change, when I said I was going to read more by an author, I actually did. Since this post first appeared on December 12, 2008, I've read four or five more novels by William MacLeod Raine and enjoyed all of them. You can find several different e-book editions of ARIZONA GUNS/A MAN FOUR-SQUARE on Amazon for very affordable prices if you'd care to check it out.)

Review: Doomsday Mesa - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

DOOMSDAY MESA was published originally by Robert Hale in 1995, making it one of the earliest Chap O’Keefe novels I’ve read. It’s available now in new e-book and paperback editions from Amazon. That’s a great title, and being a long-time fan of the work of Keith Chapman, the veteran writer/editor behind the O’Keefe pseudonym, I was looking forward to this one. It’s safe to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

Chapman spends a little time giving us the back-story of his protagonist Yale Cannon, who, as a young man of somewhat shady character with a reputation as a gunman, joins a wagon train heading west in the days before the Civil War. There’s a budding romance between Cannon and a young woman whose family is traveling with the wagon train, but unfortunate circumstances arise to split them up.

The story then moves ahead a couple of decades to a time when Yale Cannon, a decorated war hero and veteran Deputy U.S. Marshal, arrives in the town of Antelope, Colorado, to pick up a captured outlaw from the jail and take him back to Arizona to face charges there. Of course, things don’t work out that easily. There’s a war brewing between the local ranchers and a religious cult that’s been established on a nearby mesa where there used to be a gold mine. The ranchers believe the followers of the charismatic cult leader are rustling their stock, and they’re prepared to go to any lengths to put a stop to it, including breaking out the owlhoot Cannon’s supposed to pick up and hiring him to run off the settlers on the mesa.

That’s enough for a book right there, but Chapman packs several more plot twists into his book, including a connection to Yale Cannon’s tragic past. He weaves all these strands together until they finally result in an explosive climax and one final, very effective twist.

DOOMSDAY MESA is an excellent traditional Western novel with plenty of action and the interesting, slightly offbeat characters you’ll always find in a Chap O’Keefe novel. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and give it a solid recommendation for Western fans.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: El Cid (1962)

When I was a kid, my parents had a coffee table book about this movie that included a synopsis of the story, features on many of the actors, and stuff about the production of the movie, illustrated by lots and lots of still photos. How they wound up with this book, I don’t know. I think such volumes were sold as souvenirs in theater lobbies during so-called roadshow engagements, but my parents didn’t go see EL CID in the theater. I don’t think they ever went to an indoor movie theater in my lifetime, only the drive-in up the road a little ways from our house. But I read through that EL CID book many times, since I was already interested in movies and historical fiction. But I’d never actually seen the movie until now.

EL CID is about an actual historical figure, Rodrigo Diaz, who fought to unify Spain and protect it from Moorish invasion in the 11th Century. However, most of what we know about Diaz is a mixture of history, legend, and myth, with much of it based on an epic poem written only fifty years after his death. The movie’s script leans heavily on the legend and myth part, as you’d expect with Charlton Heston playing the character. Also as you’d expect from Hollywood in the early Sixties, almost every role in this movie about Spaniards and Moors is played by an American, an Englishman, or an Italian.

Anyway, as the movie opens, Rodrigo is about to be married to a beautiful young noblewoman played by Sophia Loren, but before the wedding takes place he gets mixed up in some political intrigue. Tragedy and exile ensue. Rodrigo befriends some Spanish Moors who are loyal to the king and gets the name El Cid from them. He works his way back into the king’s favor, and then more political intrigue upsets everything again. Sophia Loren’s character hates him for a while, then loves him again. In between all this scheming, lots of battles against various enemies take place, until finally an army of Moors from North Africa led by Herbert Lom invades Spain, setting up a final epic showdown.

Actually, it’s more like the soap opera stuff takes place in the intervals between battles. Anthony Mann is credited as the director of this movie, but I’d be willing to bet more than half of it was actually helmed by the second unit director, the legendary Yakima Canutt. I’m a long-time fan of Yak’s work as an actor, stuntman, and second unit director, and EL CID looks great. We get scene after scene featuring enormous sets and thousands of extras (most of them Spanish soldiers provided by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who was not yet dead), and the movie looks great. I love big, elaborate spectacles like this, and there’s something very impressive about knowing what you’re seeing is really there and doesn’t exist just in some computer somewhere. I mean, special effects are great, but they’re not like a thousand guys fighting each other at once.

EL CID is a long movie, a little more than three hours. But I was never bored. There’s enough story to go along with the battles, and the cast does a good job. I’ve always liked Charlton Heston in everything I’ve seen him in. Sophia Loren doesn’t have much to do other than look beautiful, but she’s great at that. Herbert Lom, as usual, is a suitably despicable villain. I had a very good time watching EL CID. If you miss this kind of sweeping epic, as I do, and haven’t seen it, I give it a strong recommendation.