Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, October 1934

Caveman fiction shows up now and then in the pulps, as in this issue of TOP-NOTCH with a cover by Gayle Hoskins illustrating the lead novel, "Man of the Dawn" by Charles Willard Diffin. Now, I can't tell you much about Diffin except that he wrote quite a bit for the early ASTOUNDING and published sporadically in other pulps including TOP-NOTCH during the first half of the Thirties. I can tell you, however, that this issue contains "Sword of Shahrazar", a Kirby O'Donnell yarn by Robert E. Howard, which is its main claim to fame these days. It also includes stories by Carl Jacobi, William Merriam Rouse, Harold F. Cruickshank (known to me from many Western pulps), and a few authors I'm not familiar with. I don't own a copy of this issue, so the Howard story is the only one I've read, but the Diffin yarn sounds interesting and Jacobi was always worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, November 1939

Great cover on this issue of 10 STORY WESTERN (I don't know the artist) and a great bunch of writers inside: Harry F. Olmsted, Norman A. Fox, Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), Ed Earl Repp, Leslie Ernenwein, John G. Pearsol, Richard Tooker (better known for his science fiction), George Michener, Jack Bloodhart, and Ted Fox. I'm not familiar with the last two, but the others range from great to dependably good.

UPDATE: The cover art on this issue is by Albin Henning. Thanks to Sheila Ann Vanderbeek for the information!

Forgotten Books: The Yellow Scourge - Curtis Steele (Frederick C. Davis)

You wouldn’t expect a pulp novel from 1934 called THE YELLOW SCOURGE to be very politically correct—and you’d be right. However, this novel, the third to feature Jimmy Christopher, Operator 5 in America’s intelligence service, actually isn’t all that objectionable. Frederick C. Davis, who authored this one under the house-name Curtis Steele, uses “the Yellow Empire” as a stand-in for Japan, but I doubt if that fooled anybody even in 1934. The Japanese characters aren’t caricatures, though, and the main villain, a freelance female spymaster, isn’t even Japanese as far as I can tell.

The plot of this yarn, which appeared in the June 1934 issue of OPERATOR #5, is pretty simple: a faction of the “Yellow Empire” military wants to start a war with the United States and attempts to do so by launching an attack on its own naval fleet with planes made to look like American craft. The fleet is visiting the California coast and Jimmy Christopher happens to be on hand, so of course he figures out right away what’s going on. Then Yellow Empire ships, again disguised as American vessels, attack merchant ships from England, France, and other European countries so they won’t come to America’s aid when the Empire declares war.

There’s some espionage going on—Jimmy Christopher clashes with the female mastermind behind the plan and undertakes a daring mission to obtain proof of the Yellow Empire’s treachery—but for the most part THE YELLOW SCOURGE is a war novel. In an eerie precursor of fears that were actually common seven years later after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Empire’s fleet bombards the American west coast, their army invades Mexico and advances on the United States from the south, and they try to destroy the Panama Canal. The Americans, led by Jimmy Christopher, of course, strike back with a long-range aerial mission like the one to Tokyo led by Jimmy Doolittle. In a bit that smacks of science fiction considering the era, they also battle the enemy with radio-controlled rockets designed by Operator 5. It all makes for a fast-moving and entertaining, if far-fetched, tale.

Almost all the elements of an Operator 5 novel are here: Jimmy Christopher pretends to be society photographer Carleton Victor and banters with his manservant Crowe; he stops in the middle of the action to demonstrate a magic trick for his pugnacious 14-year-old Irish sidekick Tim Donovan; he worries about his father, a former intelligence operative with bullets lodged near his heart so that too much excitement might kill him. Jimmy Christopher’s twin sister Nan is mentioned but doesn’t appear. This is an important novel in the history of the series, though, because it marks the introduction of feisty gal reporter Diane Elliott, who will serve as Jimmy Christopher’s love interest and the bad guys’ kidnapping target for the remainder of the series.

Don’t mistake my somewhat flippant comments for criticism: I love this series. Frederick C. Davis’s plots always hang together, and he can spin out these apocalyptic scenarios that make the reader believe Jimmy Christopher really does have to save the entire country from destruction every month. As far as I’m concerned, the Operator 5 novels are top-notch pulp adventure yarns, and if you’re a fan of that sort of storytelling and haven’t tried them, you should.

Coming From Stark House: Portrait in Smoke/The Longest Second - Bill S. Ballinger

PORTRAIT IN SMOKE
Danny April is obsessed. He buys out a little collection agency in Chicago, and that s how he first meets Krassy. He’d never seen anyone so beautiful. She was Krassy Almauniski then, when he first runs across her picture in his files. She’s gone through several identities since then. As Danny tries to track her down, each new name presents him with a portrait of a woman on the move. Krassy is climbing up the social ladder, one sucker at a time. There’s the photographer who signs off on a charge account for her, later arrested for larceny. And the ad executive... he gets off lightly. He gets to walk away with his pride. Not all the men who Krassy meet are so lucky. But Danny knows he’ll be different. So he keeps looking... until at last he finds her.

THE LONGEST SECOND
When I awakened, I stared straight above me at the ceiling ... I attempted to turn my head. It was then I realized that my throat had been cut. The pain ran down both sides of my neck ... I gasped, choking for air. The next day I regained consciousness again ... Suddenly it struck me that I didn't know my own name!... They check his fingerprints and find out that his name is Victor Pacific. He has no memories of who he is, what he is, or why someone tried to kill him. He remembers the name Horstman. But he has no idea of how to find him. All he can do is to begin a search for the clues to his former life. Then he meets Bianca but will she be able to help him before they strike again?

I haven't read anything by Bill S. Ballinger in a long time. Both of these novels sound great and I'm looking forward to them.

Damon Runyon's Boys - Michael Scott Cain

We all know Stark House as one of the top reprinters of classic noir, hardboiled, and crime novels, but they also publish some excellent original novels in those genres as well, the latest of which is DAMON RUNYON’S BOYS by Michael Scott Cain.

Set in post-World War II New York City, DAMON RUNYON’S BOYS opens with the leader of a Lindy Hop dance troupe being gunned down by a pair of zoot-suited killers at the Savoy Ballroom. Soon investigating the crime is Damon Taylor, the top writer at a national crime tabloid who was once a protégé of the similarly named Damon Runyon. He has a cop friend who cuts him some leeway but not an unlimited amount, and he also gets help from Walter Winchell and a young reporter on a leftist journal named Truman Capote. Taylor’s probing of the case takes him into the middle of a gang war over the garment district whose players include the famous mobster Frank Costello. Not surprisingly, Taylor’s efforts get him beaten up and threatened. More murders ensue. There are a lot of plot twists to untangle before Taylor discovers the truth.

Historical mysteries like this are great fun, but they’re also tricky to write. It’s easy to weigh them down with too much period detail, and sometimes the historical characters act in unbelievable ways. I’m happy to report that Cain doesn’t fall into either of those traps. The setting and the time period ring true without being overdone, and although I’m far from an expert on either one, I believed both Winchell and Capote might have been involved with this case. Damon Taylor is a flawed but likable protagonist, and Cain keeps the action moving along at a very nice pace indeed. DAMON RUNYON’S BOYS is exactly the sort of complex, hardboiled, vividly written novel that I really enjoy, and I had a great time reading it. Highly recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, February 10, 1933

A classic "red sun" SHORT STORIES cover by Frank Spradling, and inside can be found stories by H. Bedford-Jones, Gordon MacCreagh, James B. Hendryx, Cliff Farrell, Jackson Gregory, Bertrand W. Sinclair, Bob du Soe, and more. Classic is nearly always the right word to describe an issue of SHORT STORIES. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Cowboy Stories, February 1934

I like this cover by E.M. Stevenson. This issue of COWBOY STORIES is one of those rare Western pulps that features an airplane on the cover, and Stevenson's done a good job with it. I'm really intrigued about what's going on here. Inside are stories by J. Allan Dunn (a reprint of a Bud Jones story from an issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY that came out a year or so earlier), Forbes Parkhill, Robert Enders Allen (who was really Chandler Whipple), Ray Humphreys, Raymond W. Porter, and some lesser-known authors. Maybe not a top issue, based on that line-up, but I'll bet it was pretty entertaining anyway. And I'd have probably bought it just based on the cover if I had an extra dime in my pocket.

Forgotten Books: Lands of the Earthquake - Henry Kuttner

I’ve read quite a bit of Henry Kuttner’s work and always enjoyed it. He’s one of my favorite science fiction and fantasy authors from the pulp era and can always be counted on for well-written, fast-moving yarns. That’s certainly true of LANDS OF THE EARTHQUAKE, a short novel originally published in the May 1947 issue of STARTLING STORIES (under the editorship of my old mentor Sam Merwin Jr., I might add).

LANDS OF THE EARTHQUAKE finds an apparently normal New Yorker, William Boyce, having a black-out that loses a whole year for him. He doesn’t have amnesia, he knows who he is, but that missing year is just gone except for the occasional memory, the most haunting of which is of a beautiful young woman. He also remembers a man’s face, and when he spots the guy on the street, Boyce follows him to an old brownstone and winds up going through some sort of mystical gateway to another dimension where time stands still but space moves in rippling waves that cause entire cities to shift around like ships on an ocean. Two such places seem to be anchored to each other, though: a massive castle called Kerak that’s inhabited by a group of Crusading knights who wandered in there from our world six hundred years ago, and the City, which is ruled by a king who’s made an unholy alliance with a group of evil, otherworldly sorcerers.

Got all that? Because that’s mostly back-story. Kuttner knew how to pack a plot with a lot of good stuff.

Boyce falls in with the Crusaders and helps them in their war with the City. He meets a wizard and sees a living marble statue of a beautiful young woman called the Oracle. He clashes with the mysterious Huntsman, who manipulates events in this strange land according to his own enigmatic agenda. He becomes acquainted with one of his own ancestors, the arrogant Crusader Guillaime du Bois. Eventually he assumes Guillaime’s identity and penetrates the City as a spy, where he finally encounters the young woman he remembers from his black-out and discovers the truth of everything that’s going on. Epic stuff ensues.

There’s a little semi-science here and there, but mostly this novel falls on the sword-and-sorcery side of things, and a mighty good one it is, too. Kuttner frequently collaborated with his wife C.L. Moore, and although the details are lost to the mists of pulp history, it seems very likely to me that she contributed some to LANDS OF THE EARTHQUAKE, mostly in the vivid descriptions that crop up from time to time. The straight-ahead action/adventure elements strike me more as Kuttner’s work, though, and those scenes race along very nicely. The theme of the duality of human nature, some good and some bad in everybody, is also worked into the story subtly and effectively, giving the tale some added depth.

Overall, I think this is one of my favorite Kuttner novels so far. It’s available in an e-book version and also as half of a double novel print volume with UNDER A DIM BLUE SUN by Howie K. Bentley. I enjoyed it and give it a high recommendation.

Mr. Calamity - Kenneth Robeson (Will Murray)

This latest entry in The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage is a sequel to one of the original pulp novels by Lester Dent. I won't say which one because that would be a spoiler of sorts, but anyone who's read it will recognize it right away. I recall reading that particular novel at my aunt's house in Blanket, Texas more than 50 years ago, and I'm sure the thought that I'd be reading a sequel to it half a century later never occurred to me.

That said, I'm really glad I did, because I thoroughly enjoyed MR. CALAMITY. It's one of the rare Doc Savage novels that's also a Western of sorts, being set in Wyoming and featuring cowboys and rustlers galloping around on horseback and firing six-shooters. Of course, there's plenty of the usual Doc Savage superscience, too, in this tale of something that makes gravity go wild so that objects--including human beings--go flying in the air, sometimes all the way to the stratosphere.

This one starts when Pat Savage, Doc's gorgeous, trouble-hunting cousin, is prospecting in the badlands near a ranch that Doc's associate Long Tom Roberts (the electronics genius) inherited from an uncle. Pat spies a man swimming in mid-air, hundreds of feet high. When the effect wears off, he plunges to his death. He won't be the last such victim of this mystery.

Doc, Renny, and Johnny show up eventually. (You know who Renny and Johnny are, right? Colonel John Renwick and William Harper Littlejohn?) Much action ensues. People die, including some you wouldn't expect. Murray does a fine job with the Western setting and elements. I've been to some of the places he writes about in this novel, and he captures them perfectly. There's a big twist that every Doc Savage fan will see coming a mile away, and as far as I'm concerned, that's part of the charm of the series and the way it ought to be. Man, did I have fun reading this book. If you're a Doc fan, you will, too. I guarantee it. Highly recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Clues Detective Stories, July 1935

The cover on this issue of CLUES DETECTIVE STORIES makes it look more like an adventure pulp than a mystery magazine, at least to me. And the presence of E. Hoffmann Price with the lead novel makes it just seem even more like that. But that's okay with me, since I always like Price's work. Also in this issue are stories by Cleve F. Adams, Paul Ernst, William Merriam Rouse, Arden X. Pangborn, and others.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Aces, January 1948

Another fine Norman Saunders cover (is there any other kind?) on this issue of WESTERN ACES, and a pretty solid line-up of authors inside, as well. There are the usual two stories by J. Edward Leithead, one under his name and one as by Wilson L. Covert, plus stories by two more of my favorites, Walker A. Tompkins and Gunnison Steele, real name Bennie Gardner. The cover-featured story is by Glenn Low, who published quite a few stories in the Western pulps during the Forties, then went on to write soft-core novels for Beacon Books and Novel Books, the only one of which I've read, THE BARN, was pretty good.

Forgotten Stories: Dead Man's Rancho - T.W. Ford

T.W. Ford was a very prolific pulp writer, authoring several hundred Western, detective, and sports yarns over a long career. He also worked as a pulp editor but is almost completely forgotten today. The fact that he wrote only a few novels probably has something to do with that, as well as the wildly inconsistent quality of his fiction. His work was popular, though, and was often featured on the covers of the pulps in which it appeared. His most successful series starred a drifting, heroic gunfighter named Solo Strant (an odd name for a pulp hero), who was also known by the more conventional nickname The Silver Kid because of the silver buttons on his black shirt, the silver conchos on his chaps and the band of his black hat, his silver-butted Colts, and the small silver skull that adorns his hat’s neck strap. Ford wrote more than sixty Silver Kid stories between 1935 and 1950. At first they appeared regularly in WILD WEST WEEKLY and then eventually migrated over to the Columbia pulps REAL WESTERN, DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN, WESTERN ACTION, and COMPLETE COWBOY. Most of them were either novelette or novella length, sometimes billed as full-length novels even though they actually weren’t.

Several years ago I started one of the later Silver Kid stories and didn’t care for it, didn’t even finish it. But recently I read one of the earlier ones from WILD WEST WEEKLY, “Dead Man’s Rancho” (from the September 3, 1938 issue), and thought it was much better. In this one, the Kid helps a posse capture an escaped convict, only to discover that the man is actually innocent and in such poor health that he’ll die in prison. The proof that will clear the man’s name and save him from an unjust fate is in the hands of an outlaw who’s headed for a place called Dead Man’s Rancho, a notorious outlaw hideout in the desert where only the lowest, most desperate owlhoots go because the place is supposed to be cursed. The man who built it went insane and disappeared into the desert, but there are rumors that he’s still alive, somewhere out there . . .

Well, of course Solo doesn’t let any of this stop him from going after the proof he needs to save the unjustly imprisoned man, and along the way Ford adds some extra complications in the form of a murderous gambler and a fortune in missing bank loot. There’s plenty of action, and a few genuinely creepy scenes work very well.

I mentioned the inconsistency of Ford’s work. He’s one of the few authors I’ve encountered whose prose can be really good and really bad not just in the same story but sometimes on the same page. There are a few clunkers in this yarn. But there are also some great lines of dialogue and paragraphs that just sing. I really enjoyed “Dead Man’s Rancho” and think I’m going to have to hunt up more Silver Kid stories. This one is available in an e-book collection called THE PULP WESTERN ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 1, and if you’re a Western pulp fan, I think it’s well worth reading.

The League of Dead Patriots - Andrew Salmon

I've read quite a few of the original Dan Fowler novels from the pulp G-MEN and always enjoyed them. THE LEAGUE OF DEAD PATRIOTS is a new Fowler novella written by Andrew Salmon, one of the stalwarts of the New Pulp movement. I haven't read much New Pulp, but I really enjoyed this one.

FBI agents Dan Fowler, Larry Kendal, and Sally Vane are in California trying to break up a black marketeering ring when they come across a connection to a Japanese internment camp in the area. The case is also complicated by the involvement of the beautiful crimefighter known as the Domino Lady, another pulp character who's actually had more stories about her written and published in this era than during her original run. Another, much more well-known pulp hero makes a cameo appearance as well.

Salmon keeps the pace perking along nicely and has a good grasp of the characters. I found the Domino Lady to be pretty interesting and actually bought an e-book collection of the original pulp stories about her. Once I've read that I might give some of the other New Pulp volumes a try.

Coming From Stark House: Wayward Girl/The Widow - Orrie Hitt

WAYWARD GIRL

Sandy Greening loses her virginity at fourteen to a drunken neighbor. Her mother doesn't care. She's drunk herself all the time on cheap wine. So Sandy starts running with a gang, The Blue Devils, and that's where she first turns on to marijuana, and not long after, heroin. That's when she starts to sell herself to anyone with the bucks to pay for her highs. But the night Tommy asks her to hold his knife before they rumble with The Black Cats is the night that changes Sandy's life forever. A kid gets killed, and the cops put the finger on Sandy for information. And when she won't give it up the easy way, they set her up and go after it the hard way, all the way to reform school. And that's where Sandy starts to learn the real lessons of life.

THE WIDOW

When Jerry Rebner starts working for Mrs. Sprague as her cook at the Dells, he figures he knows what he wants Linda. Lush and ripe, Linda has everything Jerry likes in a woman, and more. Linda is married to Frank, Mrs. Sprague's shiftless hot rodding son, who widows her when he plows into a tree one drunken evening. Then Jerry meets Norma, sweet, virginal Norma, who used to pose as a nude model! Torn between the two women, and by the memory of his first wife, Jerry begins to drink. Then Linda comes to him with a plan. Mrs. Sprague's property is worth $50,000 to a development company, but she won't sell. Linda is all she has left, her sole heir. And those steps leading down to the cellar are awfully steep......

Orrie Hitt has become one of my favorite authors in recent years, and I take a little pride in helping to rekindle interest in his work through guest posts on my blog by Frank Loose and Brian Ritt examining his career. This upcoming double volume from Stark House looks great! I haven't read either of these novels yet, but Hitt's work for Beacon Books was some of his best. The Stark House volume is available for pre-order.

Now Available for Pre-Order: Say It Was Murder - Stephen Mertz

McShan is tough and smart, one of the top operatives for the detective agency Honeycutt Personal Services. But he has his hands full when he’s sent to the picturesque desert landscape of southeastern Arizona to check on the well-being of a former Olympic gymnast who’s become involved with a New Age cult. It doesn’t take long for murder to rear its ugly head, and McShan finds himself neck-deep in a case involving vicious bikers, an unassuming barber who may be a criminal mastermind, a wealthy entreprenuer hiding dangerous secrets, and too many beautiful blondes with deadly secrets of their own.

Critically acclaimed thriller author Stephen Mertz returns with a private eye novel in the classic mold, crackling with suspense and plot twists, populated with compelling characters, and told with a sharp, contemporary edge that will leave the reader breathless.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Short Stories, October 1947

This issue of DETECTIVE SHORT STORIES features a number of authors better known for other types of fiction instead of mystery and detective yarns. Lee E. Wells and Rod Patterson wrote mostly Westerns in their careers. Bryce Walton was a triple threat but more highly regarded for his science fiction tales, along with being a prolific contributor to the Western pulps. Eric Howard and Ralph Berard (who was really Victor H. White) wrote a lot of Westerns. Ken Jason was a house-name used on all sorts of stories. The only authors in this issue I think of first and foremost as mystery writers are William Campbell Gault and Herbert Brean, and to be fair, Gault wrote a lot of other stuff, too. However, this sort of versatility is one of the things I admire the most about the pulpsters, so I'm sure this is a pretty good issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, June 1952

This is a pulp I own and read recently. The scan is of my copy, complete with newsstand stamp on the cover. I pulled this issue of TEXAS RANGERS off the shelf because there was a story by Clark Gray in the issue I read a few weeks ago that I enjoyed, and the Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, “Warpath”, is also by Gray, one of only two Hatfield yarns he wrote for the magazine. The other was “Lobo Colonel”, from the January 1952 issue, which I read in a paperback reprint many years ago. I don’t remember anything about that one except that I didn’t like it and didn’t think Gray had a good handle on the Hatfield character. I wanted to give him another chance, though.

Well, as it turns out, while I didn’t completely dislike “Warpath”, I didn’t much like it, either. It’s the old plot about somebody selling whiskey to the Indians (in this case, the Comanches) and stirring them up. Hatfield’s out to find the culprit and put a stop to the plan. He winds up with a sidekick of sorts, a young white man who was raised by the Comanches and now finds himself unwelcome in both worlds, red and white. There’s a beautiful blonde who plays guitar and sings in a medicine show, as well, along with an older Ranger and a Comanche chief who wants peace. Those are enough ingredients for an entertaining, if stereotypical, story.

And Gray’s writing is okay for the most part, although some of his action scenes are pretty awkward and hard to follow. The thing that bothered me is that this just didn’t really seem like a Jim Hatfield story, like Gray’s other entry in the series. The character was off in ways that are hard to explain. He could have been almost any Texas Ranger protagonist, and he brooded ’way too much. I did like the crazed Comanche warrior Bitterfoot, though. He made a good villain. But overall I wouldn’t recommend “Warpath” to anyone who hasn’t read a Hatfield novel before. It’s not a good representation of the character and the series.

That only takes up about half the issue, though. The first short story is “That Packsaddle Affair” by Jim Mayo, none other than Louis L’Amour his own self, of course. L’Amour was just starting to get established as a Western novelist in 1952 and was still selling regularly to the Western pulps in the Thrilling Group. I’ve long felt that he was a better short story writer than he was a novelist, and this tale is a good one about a Texas outlaw who stops at a New Mexico stage station and finds himself in the middle of a deadly attempt by plotters to steal a rich gold claim from a young woman. The writing is smooth as it can be and the action scenes and dialogue are top-notch, although I thought there was one really good plot twist waiting to be employed that L’Amour never sprang on the reader.

The next story, “Good Country for Prairie Dogs”, is also set at a stage station and is by an author I’m not familiar with, Robert Aldrich. (I assume this isn’t the same person as the movie director Robert Aldrich.) In this one, the station manager and his pregnant wife are waiting for the local doctor to show up on a regular visit, when a seemingly friendly stranger with a dangerous agenda of his own stops at the station. This is nothing ground-breaking but still a nice, tense story.

“Trail Without End” is a novelette by Wayne D. Overholser writing as Joseph Wayne. The protagonist is the sheriff of a dying former boomtown who wants to move on to the gold fields of Colorado, but he’s held there by his love for the daughter of the local storekeeper, whose other daughter is married to a ne’er-do-well young gambler whose father is a horse thief and whose brother is a hired gunman. Got all that? Overholser provides plenty of domestic drama in this one, but there’s some action, too, along with some minor plot twists. I enjoyed it quite a bit because it’s very well written and Overholser does a good job with the characters.

Ralph Perry wrote one of the best Western novels I’ve read in recent years, NIGHTRIDER DEPUTY, and he has a story in this issue, “One Killing Deserves Another”. I like that title, and the story is a fine one about a shooting in a tiny crossroads settlement and the violent aftermath that follows it. Perry has a slightly off-kilter style, but it’s very effective and I thought this was an excellent story, my favorite in the issue.

This one wraps up with “Inside Straight” by Jim O’Mara, whose real name was Vernon Fluharty. It’s the old plot of the outlaw who has gone straight but whose lawless past comes back to haunt him. That familiarity hurts it a little, but O’Mara was a pretty good hardboiled Western writer and does a fine job with it.

This is an odd issue of TEXAS RANGERS. It’s the only one I ever recall reading where the Jim Hatfield novel is actually the weakest story in the bunch. All the others are very good to excellent. So it’s well worth reading, but I’d recommend the lead novel only to Hatfield completists.

Forgotten Books: Sleep With the Devil - Day Keene

Les Ferron is one of those noir novel protagonists who has a double life. In one of them he’s a pure heel, a strongarm enforcer for a loan shark in New York City who accidentally kills one of the poor losers he’s supposed to be leaning on. That gives Ferron’s boss something he can hold over his head from then on, and Ferron doesn’t like that. So he creates a new identity and launches a plan to get rich and start a new life.

Actually, he reclaims his old life, using his real name Paul Parrish and some of his background as a schoolteacher and the son of an itinerant preacher to set himself up part-time as a traveling Bible salesman in the Catskills. He even meets a beautiful, innocent young farmer’s daughter and falls for her, although not so hard that he won’t swindle her father out of his farm and take off with the loot he can get from the deal. In order to do that, he’ll have to marry the girl and then abandon her when the time is right. The only potential hitch is that he has a girlfriend as Les Ferron in New York, and she’s the hard-nosed jealous type who won’t take kindly to being left behind.

But when Ferron is satisfied his plan will work, he puts it in motion—and that means killing his loan shark boss and making sure “Les Ferron” disappears forever.

Too bad for Ferron, because not only is this a noir novel, it’s a noir novel written by one of the best plotters in the business, Day Keene. SLEEP WITH THE DEVIL takes its time setting everything up, but once the first big plot twist steps through a hotel room doorway, it’s just one damned thing after another for Ferron, right up until the gut punch ending.

This novel was published originally by Lion Books in 1954 and later reprinted by Berkley, Macfadden-Bartell, and ultimately Stark House as part of a triple volume with two other Day Keene novels, WAKE UP TO MURDER and JOY HOUSE. I’ve really enjoyed everything I’ve read by Day Keene, and SLEEP WITH THE DEVIL is no exception. Harry Whittington was probably the only one of the iconic Fifties hardboiled/noir writers who could out-plot Keene, and if his prose never rises to the level of John D. MacDonald and Charles Williams, it’s still pretty darned good. Day Keene has become one of my favorite writers, and this book is a fine example of his work. Highly recommended. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1941

And the people who ride the subway in New York think they've got it bad! At least they don't have an alien coming through a wormhole and shooting a ray gun at them. Or maybe they do, I don't know, I've been on a New York City subway car. I do know, however, that there's a mighty good line-up of authors in this issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES: Henry Kuttner, Clifford D. Simak, Eando Binder (probably just Otto Binder on this one), Robert Arthur, Robert Moore Williams, and Maurice Renard, translated by a much more familiar name to me, Georges Surdez. I really like the SF pulps from this era. That's an Earle Bergey cover, by the way, although it doesn't really resemble the "space babes" covers he's more famous for.