Sunday, May 30, 2021

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1949


Ah, the wonderful cover art of Earle Bergey! I would have grabbed this issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES off the newsstand if I'd been browsing the new pulps in 1949. And the line-up of authors inside certainly doesn't hurt: Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, James Blish, Murray Leinster, Cleve Cartmill, L. Sprague de Camp, Raymond F. Jones, and William Morrison. You can download a PDF of this issue here.

Saturday, May 29, 2021

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, January 1944


We have a tough-looking hombre, courtesy of Sam Cherry, gracing the cover on this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES. The collection of authors inside is pretty good, too: William Heuman, Philip Ketchum, Les Savage Jr., Tom W. Blackburn, Chuck Martin, Rod Patterson, M. Howard Lane, James C. Lynch, James Shaffer, house-names Ray P. Shotwell and Lance Kermit, and lesser known authors Frederick Bales and Joe Payne. They always counted the features in FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES, so actually there are only thirteen stories in this one.

Friday, May 28, 2021

Forgotten Books: The Sex Ladder - Anthony Gordon (Robert Leslie Bellem)



(This post originally appeared on March 6, 2007.)

Lawrence Block isn’t the only author getting his Sixties soft-core porn novels reprinted these days. I just read a brand-new Pulpville Press edition of THE SEX LADDER by Anthony Gordon, originally published by Beacon Books in 1964, just like Block’s LUCKY AT CARDS. And as in the case of Block’s pseudonym “Sheldon Lord”, “Anthony Gordon” turns out to be an author best-known for his mysteries, too – Robert Leslie Bellem, the prolific creator of private eye Dan Turner.

Unfortunately, THE SEX LADDER isn’t up to the same standards as LUCKY AT CARDS. Instead of a noirish crime novel like Block’s book, THE SEX LADDER is pretty much a run-of-the-mill, fairly sordid soap opera about a young engineer and his ambitious girlfriend, who will do just about anything to help advance his career, if you know what I mean and I think you do, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It has none of the goofy charm of the Dan Turner stories or the other mystery and weird menace stories that Bellem turned out by the hundreds for the Spicy pulps during the Thirties and Forties. Bellem was a fine wordsmith and the writing here is certainly smooth enough, reading very fast, but it doesn’t seem to me that his heart was really in this job. There was at least one other Beacon Book by “Anthony Gordon”, DOCTOR OF LESBOS. I assume that Bellem wrote it, as well. There are a few listings for it on ABE, but Pulpville Press also plans to reprint it in the future. Despite my reservations about THE SEX LADDER, I’ll probably read DOCTOR OF LESBOS, too. That’s just the kind of guy I am.

(UPDATE: No, I never got around to reading DOCTOR OF LESBOS, and I probably won't. You can still find used copies of the reprint, but even they're too pricey for me. So more than likely, I'll do without that one.)

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Classic Private Eye Novels: Case of the Vanishing Beauty - Richard S. Prather


The Shell Scott series by Richard S. Prather is one of my all-time favorite private eye series. I read nearly all of them when I was in junior high and high school and thoroughly enjoyed them. Recently, Wolfpack Publishing got the rights to reprint them and is reissuing the series in omnibus volumes. I just reread the first published (but not first written) novel, CASE OF THE VANISHING BEAUTY, for the first time in more than 50 years.


This one involves a beautiful blond client who hires Shell to have dinner with her, hints that something sinister is going on, but won’t give him the whole story; the client’s beautiful younger sister, who turns out to be missing (the “vanishing beauty” of the title); the beautiful target in a knife-throwing nightclub act (are you sensing a theme here?); a religious cult like so many others that show up in California-set private eye novels; and assorted gangsters and con-men, plus Shell’s police detective buddy Phil Samson.


Prather hadn’t quite hit his stride yet in the early novels, and that shows in a rather thin plot with few real surprises in it. But there’s plenty of snappy patter, some nice action scenes, and Shell himself, one of the most likable narrator/protagonists in the entire genre. For years I had a rule about not rereading books, but the older I get, the more I enjoy revisiting old favorites from time to time. I enjoyed CASE OF THE VANISHING BEAUTY. Prather’s prose is just fun to read. I’m sure I’ll be rereading more of the Shell Scott series.

Monday, May 24, 2021

Kill Gardner! - Ned Oaks


As this novel opens, Garrett Gardner is a bank robber, a veteran of several holdups that have gone off without any violence or real trouble. That’s all about to change in an outburst of violence that leaves both of Gardner’s partners in crime dead, although not before one of them double-crosses him and sets him up for even more trouble in the future.

For a while, though, it looks as if Gardner will be able to put his lawless past behind him. He takes on a new identity, marries, and settles down. But there are bounty hunters and private detectives after him, hired by a man who wants vengeance, and Gardner has to go on the run again. Then, in a very nice twist, this former outlaw winds up as the marshal of a small logging town in Oregon, only to run afoul of the ambitions of a brutal, ruthless timber magnate.

Ned Oaks has written a very good traditional Western in KILL GARDNER!, his latest novel, taking several compelling plotlines and mixing them together in expert fashion. Not everything turns out quite the way you might expect, either, which is always welcome. Garrett Gardner is a flawed but ultimately sympathetic protagonist, and Oaks keeps the story moving along in a brisk, action-packed fashion.

Full disclosure: “Ned Oaks” is the pseudonym of a friend of mine who has written half a dozen Western novels, but KILL GARDNER! is the first one I’ve read. I have all the others, though, and look forward to reading them, because this one is very entertaining. If you’re a fan of traditional Westerns, you should check out KILL GARDNER! and the other books by Ned Oaks.

Sunday, May 23, 2021

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Astounding Stories, November 1933


I don't know about you, but I find that cover by Howard V. Brown intriguing. Scans of this issue are available on-line. I may have to see if I can find time to read it. The line-up of authors is certainly a strong one: Murray Leinster, Jack Williamson, Arthur J. Burks, Harl Vincent, Wallace West, Robert H. Leitfred, Desmond Hall (writing as Ainslee Jenkins), and a couple of lesser-known authors, Stuart Jackson and Holloway Horn. You can find a PDF of this issue here

Saturday, May 22, 2021

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Complete Cowboy Novel Magazine, February 1950


Now that's a close range shootout in this cover by A. Leslie Ross for COMPLETE COWBOY NOVEL MAGAZINE. The complete novel in this issue is by Cliff Campbell, a common house-name in the Western and detective pulps edited by Robert W. Lowndes, and I have no idea who actually wrote "Six-Gun Harvest". Could've been Lowndes himself, I suppose. There are only two other stories in this issue, by James A. Hines and Ward Raymond, and neither of those names are the least bit familiar to me. With all that yellow, red, and blue, though, and its dramatic composition, this is certainly an eye-catching cover.

Friday, May 21, 2021

Forgotten Books: The Whistling Waddy - Donald Bayne Hobart


Donald Bayne Hobart was one of the more prolific contributors to the Western pulps in the Thrilling Group during the Thirties and Forties, but his writing career actually started with a poem sold to SNAPPY STORIES in 1919, followed by other poems sold mostly to LOVE STORY MAGAZINE during the Twenties. He didn’t publish his first Western until 1928, a short story called “The Whistling Waddy Wades In”, published in the January 14, 1928 issue of ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY. He followed this up with “The Whistling Waddy Warbles On”, in the April 7, 1928 issue of the same pulp, and then tackled a full-length Western serial with “Two-Gun Magic”, published in three consecutive issues of ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY in July 1928.


While I don’t have the actual pulps to confirm this, I’m fairly convinced that the novel THE WHISTLING WADDY, published by Chelsea House in 1928, is a fix-up of those three stories. It opens with two fairly short sections in which drifting cowboy Solitaire Stevens (also known as the Whistling Waddy because he whistles a mournful air as he’s about to go into action) battles outlaw gangs led by mysterious masterminds known as the Eagle and the Ace. Those sections come from the two short stories. Then the rest of the novel concerns Solitaire’s clash with an outlaw gang led by a mysterious mastermind known as the Chief. Clearly, Hobart liked that plot and didn’t want to let go of it.

Those first two sections aren’t particularly good. Their length works against them—the plots barely get started before a big shootout wraps everything up—and they’re full of melodramatic hokum, even by 1928 pulp standards.

But either Hobart was getting better with experience or else he needed the longer length of a serial, because the rest of THE WHISTLING WADDY is pretty good. Still melodramatic and hokey—at one point, a character leans on a bookcase and it opens up, revealing a secret chamber—but Hobart keeps things moving along nicely. There are some well-done gun battles, some creepily atmospheric scenes, some good hardboiled dialogue, a few touches of welcome humor, and a traveling salesman supporting character who functions as comedy relief but also has an impact on the plot and is better developed than most such characters. The obligatory rancher’s beautiful daughter is tougher than most and matches up well with Solitaire.

The ending is a bit of a letdown that seems to be missing one final twist, but overall, THE WHISTLING WADDY is an entertaining traditional Western. It’s very old-fashioned, though, so if you’re not already a fan of Westerns from that era, it’s probably not best to start with it. If you can put yourself in the mindset of a reader from those days, though, as I can, you’ll probably have some fun with it. It’s never been reprinted, as far as I know, but used copies are out there. I’ve owned more than one over the years. The copy I read is the one shown in the cover scan.

Chelsea House, by the way, was the book publishing arm of Street & Smith and did hardback reprints of serials and fix-up novels like this one based on stories that ran originally in various pulps. Lots of good adventure reading if you can find them.

Sunday, May 16, 2021

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Super-Detective, June 1943


This is a later issue of SUPER-DETECTIVE where Jim Anthony, star of the lead novel, is a hardboiled detective and no longer a Doc Savage-like character, and the tale was written by W.T. Ballard and Robert Leslie Bellem under the John Grange house-name. I've never read any of this version of Jim Anthony, and I really ought to. I think one or two of them have been reprinted, but I could be wrong about that. Also on hand are Harold de Polo and three more house-names, Paul Hanna, R.T. Maynard, and Walton Grey. No telling who they were. The cover is by H.J. Ward, and I like it.

Saturday, May 15, 2021

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Cowboy Stories, November 1934


Great cover by Tom Lovell on this issue of COWBOY STORIES, and some fine writers inside, too: Philip Ketchum, James P. Olsen, Archie Joscelyn, S. Omar Barker, John Colohan, house-name Ken Martin, and some lesser-known writers, H. Fredric Young, Lee Willenborg, and Rand Rios. This one would sure catch a potential buyer's eye on the newsstand.

Friday, May 14, 2021

Forgotten Books: Executive Boudoir - Ken Barry (Ben Haas)


Before he became known as one of the best action writers of the Twentieth Century with dozens of Westerns, thrillers, and sword-and-sorcery novels under the names John Benteen, Richard Meade, and Thorne Douglas, Ben Haas got his start as a professional writer by turning out soft-core sex novels for Beacon Books and Monarch Books. He used the names Ben Elliott (which later became one of his Western pen-names), Sam Webster, and Ken Barry. I’d never read any of them until recently, when I picked up a copy of EXECUTIVE BOUDOIR, one of his Beacons under the name Ken Barry. Actually, I didn’t mean to read it right then, I was just looking at it, but after the first few pages, I was hooked. That’s because, no matter what the genre, Ben Haas was one of the best pure storytellers I’ve ever encountered.

As you might guess from the title, EXECUTIVE BOUDOIR is a mixture of corporate warfare and sexy, soap operatic romance. Jim Sloane is the hard-charging executive vice-president of Canady Industries. He’s in love with beautiful Lisa Canady, daughter of company president Mart Canady, who commits the company to a bad deal by buying a failing company and then immediately dying. Lisa takes over as president, she and Jim clash, both turn to other lovers for comfort, and Canady Industries teeters on the brink of ruin.

While there aren’t any plot twists in this book you won’t see coming, Haas spins the yarn with such great skill it doesn’t matter. He worked in the steel industry, and it shows, as the book has a real air of authenticity about it. There’s a good balance between the sexy romantic element and the corporate in-fighting element. Haas also has a sure hand with his characters and pacing. I stayed up later than I normally do to finish this one, that’s how much I was enjoying it. I recommend it, and I plan to read more of the books from this part of Haas’s career in the near future.

Sunday, May 09, 2021

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: New Detective Magazine, January 1942


This issue of NEW DETECTIVE MAGAZINE sports a striking cover (I don't know the artist) and features some fine authors: Frederick C. Davis, William R. Cox, Robert Sidney Bowen, Donald G. Carmack, and a few who are unfamiliar to me: Richard L. Hobart, Don Joseph, and John Hawkins. Davis, Cox, and Bowen are enough to make an issue worth reading, though.

Saturday, May 08, 2021

Saturday Morning Western Pulps: Western Trails, November 1939


This great cover by Rafael de Soto from WESTERN TRAILS was also used on one side of an Ace Double Western (see below). WESTERN TRAILS and later Ace Books were both owned by A.A. Wyn, so I'm sure this isn't the only case where covers from the Ace Western pulps later showed up on Ace Double paperbacks. This particular issue looks like a good one, with stories by L.P. Holmes, Wayne D. Overholser, Tom J. Hopkins, Claude Rister, and Joe Archibald, among others. I've found WESTERN TRAILS and its sister publication, WESTERN ACES, to be consistently good, and of course I love the Ace Double Westerns. I think I've read Leslie Scott's THE BRAZOS FIREBRAND, but it's been so long ago I'm not sure anymore. Maybe I'll dig it out and read it again.



Friday, May 07, 2021

Forgotten Books: Lost in the Rentharpian Hills: Spanning the Decades With Carl Jacobi - R. Dixon Smith


As I mentioned that I might, prompted by reading Hugh B. Cave’s memoir MAGAZINES I REMEMBER, I dug out my copy of LOST IN THE RENTHARPIAN HILLS: SPANNING THE DECADIES WITH CARL JACOBI and read it. This volume by R. Dixon Smith is part biography and part bibliography, and now that I’ve read it, I think it’s safe to say that between it and the Cave book, I’ve read more about Carl Jacobi and his work than I’ve read of Jacobi’s actual fiction.

The biography section, while not exhaustive, provides a good background on Jacobi’s personal life but focuses primarily on his career as a writer, which isn’t surprising that Jacobi’s life really centered on that aspect. He was a reasonably successful author of pulp stories in several different genres—horror, science fiction, mystery, and adventure—but was never very prolific because of the time he spent researching and revising his stories. As a result, he never made his living as a full-time writer except for brief stretches, but his stories are well-regarded and I have several collections of them on hand to read. He was persistent, too, staying with the writing game, off and on, from the Twenties up into the Eighties, when he sold a few stories to Chuck Fritch at MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE during the same era when I was writing for MSMM. I probably read those yarns, although I have no memory of them, and if I did, it’s unlikely I would have connected that Carl Jacobi with the same one who wrote for the pulps.

Smith rounds out this volume with an excellent bibliography of Jacobi’s work and a section of letters to Jacobi from various writers and editors, including Cave, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, and Farnsworth Wright. Overall, LOST IN THE RENTHARPIAN HILLS is an excellent book, probably more so if you’re already a fan of Jacobi’s work, but I found it very entertaining, as well.

Of course, “entertaining” is a relative term. This book left me with the same feeling about Jacobi that Cave’s memoir did, a mixture of admiration and sympathy. He doesn’t really seem to have been cut out to be a pulp writer, and yet that was where he found his most success, and then only for a relatively short amount of time. Never married, spending a big chunk of his adult years taking care of his parents, unable to adjust to changing markets, beset by physical ills and a variety of mishaps, but still trying to write even though he had limited success at it in his later years . . . I have to give him credit for his determination. I wish he’d had more luck.

But his stories remain, and I hope to get to some of them soon.

Wednesday, May 05, 2021

Classic British Thrillers: Sexton Blake and the Great War - Mark Hodder, editor


I’ve been aware of the character Sexton Blake for many, many years, having first seen the name on paperbacks during the Sixties, none of which I ever owned or read. Over time I learned more about him: inspired by the success of Sherlock Holmes, Blake is another British Great Detective (he even lives in Baker Street) who solved cases in hundreds of stories and novels by dozens of authors, published in story papers and magazines from the 1890s through the 1960s. He has a young assistant, Tinker, and a faithful bloodhound, Pedro, and they had all sorts of adventures ranging from traditional mysteries to high adventure to espionage thrillers.

In recent years, a lot of Sexton Blake stories have been reprinted, and I’ve picked up quite a few of them but haven’t read any until now. I started with SEXTON BLAKE AND THE GREAT WAR, a collection of three novellas set before and during World War I.

This volume begins with “The Case of the Naval Manoeuvres”, written by Norman Goddard and published originally in the story paper UNION JACK #253 in 1908. The British navy is engaged in some top-secret practice in the North Sea, but the Prime Minister thinks that some foreign power may be spying on them, so he enlists Sexton Blake’s help and sends the Great Detective to the Shetland Islands to find out what’s what. Pedro the bloodhound doesn’t appear in this story, although he’s mentioned, but Tinker is on hand and so is Inspector Spearing of Scotland Yard, who also helps out Blake from time to time. It doesn’t take Blake long to discover that not only is Germany behind the spying, but Wilhelm II, Kaiser Bill his own self, is on hand to boss the operation, which involves a zeppelin and a secret air base in the Shetlands.

That’s probably enough for a novella by itself, but Goddard actually disposes of the threat fairly quickly and instead sets up a chase through England as Blake and his allies try to capture the Kaiser and deliver him to London so that a diplomatic solution to the mess can be worked out without the necessity of having to go to war. Not only are German agents trying to rescue their leader, but other groups with their own agendas try to get their hands on the Kaiser.

The plot in this yarn is driven almost entirely by coincidence, and for a Great Detective, Blake sure does some dumb stuff now and then when the writer needs him to in order to keep things moving. But move they do, as Goddard delivers a surprisingly fast-paced and exciting tale in prose that doesn’t often read as if it were written more than 110 years ago. Blake is pretty likable, and there are a couple of great action scenes, so overall, despite its stodgy title, I enjoyed “The Case of the Naval Manoeuvres” quite a bit.

England was actually at war with Germany by the time the next novella in this collection was published. “On War Service; or, Sexton Blake’s Secret Mission” is from UNION JACK #645, published in 1916. The author is Cecil Hayter, who, according to editor Mark Hodder, is best remembered for chronicling some of Blake’s adventures that take place in Africa. The setting in this one is far from the Dark Continent, however. It’s very much a wartime espionage yarn, as Sexton Blake and Tinker are sent to Holland, where they’re supposed to slip into German-occupied Belgium and deliver an important document to someone there who’s working for the British. They have some harrowing adventures just reaching their contact, and when they get there, he’s on the verge of death, having just been attacked by German agents who’ve discovered his identity. He lives long enough to tell Blake and Tinker where the message is supposed to go, and they’re off again, knowing that even if they manage to get the document into the right hands, they’ll still face an incredible amount of danger getting back out of Belgium.

As before, there’s quite a bit of coincidence and deus ex machina in this plot, but Hayter keeps things moving along at a very nice pace. His version of Blake is a little more hardboiled than Goddard’s, and the story is grittier, not as much high adventure. I didn’t like it quite as much as the first one, but it’s still very enjoyable.

The final novella in this collection backtracks a year to 1915. William Murray Graydon’s “Private Tinker—A.S.C.” was published originally in UNION JACK #589. Through a series of odd circumstances, Tinker winds up enlisting in the army under another young man’s name and is sent to the front to fight the Germans. Sexton Blake, upset over Tinker’s disappearance, gets drawn into an assignment that takes him to the front. Naturally, they’re both going to have adventures and then run into each other, which is exactly what happens. Yet again, we get a plot that’s driven by coincidence, but along the way, we also get some decent action and a spectacular scene where Tinker and another young soldier take over a German supply train. Graydon does a great job in this section.

Overall, I enjoyed SEXTON BLAKE AND THE GREAT WAR quite a bit. Blake is a good character, and I want to see him in action again. As editor Mark Hodder points out in his introduction and story notes, after World War I, the villains in the series become more colorful and bizarre and the stakes become higher. I look forward to reading some of those yarns.


Monday, May 03, 2021

Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek (Caleb York #6) -- Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins


The Caleb York series, written by Max Allan Collins and based on a character created by Mickey Spillane, started out strong and has gotten better as it goes along, coming to an end (for now) with a terrific range war novel that stands with the best of the classic Western writers.

Following closely on the events of the previous book, former gunfighter and Wells Fargo detective Caleb York, currently a lawman in Trinidad, New Mexico, finds himself caught up in the clash between two strong women: Willa Cullen, the beautiful young ranch owner York wants to marry, and Victoria Hammond, newly arrived in the territory and determined to start a cattle empire built on rustling, intimidation, and outright murder if that's what it takes. The fight over water rights between Willa and Victoria expands to include a number of hired gunmen on both sides and plenty of blood being spilled.

Collins never lets up on the pace in this book. It races along with plenty of action and characterization and occasional bits of humor. In Victoria Hammond, it also has one of the most despicable villains I've encountered lately, willing to sacrifice her own flesh and blood to gain what she wants and a more than worthy adversary for York. The regular supporting characters show up, too, including York's scruffy sidekick/deputy Jonathan P. Tulley (in my head, he's always played by the great Al "Fuzzy" St. John) and saloon owner Rita Filley, part of an uneasy romantic triangle with York and Willa. (If you ask me, and nobody did, York should pick Rita.)

In his acknowledgments, Collins also has a nice mention of the Western Fictioneers for the research help the group provided. It's always good to see WF get a little publicity.

I hope Collins finds time in his schedule to continue this series. I've really enjoyed it. I think I've compared them before to the Amos Flagg series by Clifton Adams writing as Clay Randall. If you're a fan of traditional Western action novels, I give the Caleb York books a very high recommendation.

Sunday, May 02, 2021

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Marvel Science Stories, August 1939


There's a lot going on in this cover by J.W. Scott. I like it. This issue of MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES features stories by authors I've heard of but read very little or nothing by: Frederick Arnold Kummer Jr., R.R. Winterbotham, R. DeWitt Miller, Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, and Harl Vincent.

Saturday, May 01, 2021

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, June 1955


This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover is by the dependable Sam Cherry. As always, this issue of TEXAS RANGERS leads off with a novel featuring Jim Hatfield, also known as the Lone Wolf. “Beyond the Tenido Barrier” was written by Peter B. Germano under the house-name Jackson Cole.

This novel begins with a fairly simple premise: Texas Ranger Jim Hatfield is on the trail of a train robber and killer known as the Sonora Kid. That trail leads him to the Tenido Barrier, an escarpment in far West Texas, beyond which is a fertile (for the region) valley that was once part of a Spanish land grant. The family of hacendados that has controlled this area for more than a hundred years still owns the ranch that takes up most of the valley, but the spread is being plagued by rustlers. Before you know it, Hatfield has rescued the rancher’s beautiful daughter from a wild bull, befriended the man’s son who has just returned from school in Mexico City, clashed with the local sheriff and deputy, who seem to have an agenda other than keeping the peace, and uncovered a link between the man he’s pursuing and a band of revolutionaries headquartered just across the border in Mexico, where they’re awaiting a shipment of smuggled rifles before starting a bloody rebellion.

In other words, Germano, who always wrote in a terse, hardboiled style, packs plenty of plot and characters into this short novel (35,000 words or so, I’m guessing). There’s so much going on that it’s a little hard to keep up with, and Hatfield has his hands full untangling everything and surviving numerous fistfights and shootouts. Germano really keeps things moving. I think “Beyond the Tenido Barrier” would have been a little better if it was longer, and that’s something I hardly ever say. The plot could have used a bit more room to develop and wouldn’t have seemed so rushed. That said, I still enjoyed this yarn a great deal. I’ve never read a Hatfield novel by Germano that wasn’t exciting and entertaining.

Next up is the short story “The Wrong Guess” by Lauran Paine. In addition to being a fairly prolific pulpster, Paine wrote close to a thousand Western novels under dozens of different pseudonyms, most of them published only in England even though Paine was an American and lived in the Pacific Northwest. He found his niche and wrote the heck out of it. Late in his career, he wrote a number of hardback Western novels for Walker & Company and paperback originals for Ballantine under his own name and the pseudonym Richard Clarke, one of which was made into the movie OPEN RANGE. I’ve never read much by him, and what I have read didn’t impress me much, but in this case, “The Wrong Guess” is a terrific short story. It’s a vengeance yarn featuring an old rancher, but to say anything else about the plot would be giving away too much. This is easily the best thing I’ve read by Paine, though.

I don’t know anything about Phillip Morgan other than the fact that he published approximately 50 stories in the pulps during the 1950s, mostly Westerns but with a few detective yarns mixed in. If he ever published a novel under his name, I couldn’t find any mention of it. He’s the author of the short story “Prairie Town” in this issue, and it’s a good one. This is a town tamer yarn, of the sort that finds an aging lawman questioning the life he leads. It’s a low-key, character-driven tale without much action, but Morgan writes so well that it’s a compelling story anyway. I’ll be on the lookout for his name in other pulps.

Steuart M. Emery had a career as a pulp writer that lasted almost 40 years, beginning in 1919. For the first three decades of that career, he produced mostly war and aviation stories, but during the Fifties he turned to Westerns and specialized in cavalry stories, appearing often in TEXAS RANGERS, usually with novelettes, such as the one in this issue, “Paddlewheel Fort”. This is a great story about a stalwart cavalry lieutenant battling not only Apaches in Arizona but also a by-the-book colonel and a spit-and-polish rival for the colonel’s beautiful daughter. As you might guess from the title, there’s a riverboat involved, too. You might think that’s really out of place in Arizona, but steamboats were used quite a bit on the Colorado River. There are some fantastic battle scenes in this one, and it would have made a fine 1950s movie with, say, Rod Cameron in the lead.

Philip Ketchum was a prolific, widely respected pulpster, known for Westerns, historicals, and detective yarns written under his own name and the pseudonym Carl McK. Saunders. And after the pulp era, he went on to a long career as an author of paperback Westerns, all the way up into the Seventies. His story in this issue, “Skin Deep”, is something of an oddity for him. There’s no action at all. Instead, it’s a quiet, sweet tale of a cowboy courting a rancher’s daughter who, for a change, isn’t beautiful . . . or is she? It’s the sort of story I don’t usually enjoy, but Ketchum’s fine writing saves it, and I wound up liking it quite a bit.

Herbert D. Kastle isn’t really a name I expected to run into in a Western pulp, but his story “The Slow Draw” rounds out this issue. As it turns out, a check of the Fictionmags Index reveals that Kastle wrote several stories for various Western pulps in the mid-Fifties, along with science fiction and detective stories for the digests, before going on to a long career as a paperback author of glitzy bestsellers and dark suspense novels. “The Slow Draw” is a little predictable with its story of a man who seeks out gunfights despite not being fast on the draw, but it’s enjoyable anyway.

Overall, this is a very good issue of TEXAS RANGERS, with a solid Hatfield novel and not a bad story in the bunch among the backups. Steuart Emery’s novelette is the best story by him that I’ve read so far, and that’s saying something since I really like his work. If you have a copy of this one in your collection, it’s well worth pulling out and reading.