Review: Convict Commandos: Frenzy of Fear (Commando #4571) - Alan Hebden

With the exception of Private "Jelly" Jakes -- the unit's resident coward -- the Convict Commandos were among the most fearless fighters in the British Forces. So why were they running in terror from a unit of Germans leaving their quaking comrade behind in their haste? Something was badly awry, something had happened to throw the Convict Commandos into a Frenzy Of Fear.

A few years ago I read a bunch of digital issues of COMMANDO, the long-running British war comic, and some of my favorites were in a series called Convict Commandos, created and written by legendary comics author Alan Hebden with art by Manuel Benet. As you might guess from the series title, these stories chronicle the exploits of three criminals recruited to be commandos -- strongman Titch Mooney, knife expert Smiler Dawson, and burglar and explosives expert Jelly Jakes -- and the officer who leads them on their mission, Lt. Guy Tenby. I've decided to pick up where I left off and read the rest of the series, starting with this one from 2013, which is still available on Amazon. It's a fine yarn with a particularly good plot, as the Convict Commandos set out to destroy a Nazi radar jamming operation in occupied Greece, only to encounter a menace that forces them to act nothing like their usual selves. It's a clever, very entertaining tale, and if you're a fan of war comics, I give it a strong recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Clues Detective Stories, April 1939

That's a pretty daring cover on this issue of CLUES DETECTIVE STORIES, especially for a pulp published by Street & Smith, an outfit that could be a little stodgy from time to time. The art is by Modest Stein, not a favorite artist of mine, but I have to admit, I like this one quite a bit. Inside are stories by Donald Wandrei, Otis Adelbert Kline, J. Allan Dunn, J.J. des Ormeaux, Robert C. Blackmon, and Harry Lee Fellinge, all of them prolific and dependable pulpsters. I don't own this issue or any issues of CLUES, as far as I recall, but it seems like a pulp that would have been worth reading.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Street & Smith's Western Story, August 30, 1941

This issue of the iconic WESTERN STORY sports a fine, very dramatic cover by A. Leslie Ross, one of my favorite pulp and paperback cover artists. The authors inside are no less notable: Harry Sinclair Drago, L.L. Foreman (with a Preacher Devlin novella), Tom W. Blackburn, S. Omar Barker, Frank Richardson Pierce (as Seth Ranger), George Michener, and Eric Howard. Definitely looks like an issue worth reading. I don't own a copy, or I just might. I do have Harry Sinclair Drago's novel BUCKSKIN EMPIRE, one installment of which is serialized in this issue. May have to see if I can find the book.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Wild Lovers - Orrie Hitt

This novel, a 1961 release from Kozy Books, is a typical Orrie Hitt yarn in some respects, but not in others. It’s a backwoods book, as you can probably tell from the cover, and sort of reminds me of some of Harry Whittington’s novels. It’s about the lives and loves of several people who come from a poor area in upstate New York known as Shanty Road. (There is, in fact, a sleaze novel by Whittington called SHANTY ROAD, published by Original Novels in 1954 under the Whit Harrison name. It would have made a good title for this book, too.)

Unlike the usual male protagonist you find in Hitt’s novels, the main character in WILD LOVERS is a young woman, Joy Gordon, who was orphaned at sixteen when a fire burned down the farm house where she lived with her parents, killing her mother and father. Left on her own, Joy moves into a shed that remains standing on the property and supports herself by selling eggs from the flock of chickens that’s almost her only possession of any value.

Almost, but not quite, because the property she inherited from her parents includes the only easy access to a lake which some developers want to turn into a hunting and fishing resort (another interest of Hitt’s). As the novel opens, though, the real estate agent in charge of the negotiations won’t meet Joy’s price. Actually, the agent is just trying to get her to go to bed with him, because in the five years since she was orphaned, she has grown up into a virginal, twenty-one-year-old beauty.

Helping out Joy is her neighbor, mechanic Pug Stark, who does meet the usual description of a big, burly Hitt hero. Pug comes from a real white trash family: his father refuses to work, and his sister is pregnant and has no idea who the father is. (Ah, the unwanted, unwed pregnancy, another favorite theme of Hitt’s.)

Then a stranger shows up, an artist from New York City whose family owns one of the properties along Shanty Road. He’s come up there to work and brought his beautiful mistress with him, and he’s a big, brawny guy, too. When he sees Joy, he immediately wants to paint a portrait of her – nude, of course – and his arrival changes everything, as Joy winds up juggling the three men who are interested in her, a neat reversal of the standard Hitt plot where the hero has to decide between three women.

That’s not the only twist that Hitt throws into the plot, as characters do things that take the reader by surprise and turn out not to be exactly what they appear to be at first. The ending won’t be any huge shock for Hitt fans, but it is pretty satisfying. The writing is good in this one, too, not quite as terse and hardboiled as in some of Hitt’s other books but with quite a few good lines.

WILD LOVERS is a good solid Orrie Hitt novel and very entertaining. If you haven’t read his work before, it would be a decent place to start, and if you have, you’ll want to read this one, too.

(How is it possible that I've been reading Orrie Hitt novels for more than 15 years? It certainly doesn't seem like it. But this post originally appeared on November 28, 2009, and WILD LOVERS wasn't the first novel by Hitt that I read, by any means. If you're interested in checking it out, there's a reprint edition available as an e-book.) 

Review: Chartered Love - Conrad Dawn

I love it when I find a little gem of a book in an unexpected place. At first glance, CHARTERED LOVE looks like it might fall into that category. Originally published in 1960 by Novel Books, one of the bottom-of-the-barrel paperback publlshers that specialized in what was then considered fiction for adults only, it’s the debut novel of Conrad Dawn, an author I’d never heard of, let alone read. Dawn published only six books, all of them from Novel Books in 1960-62. The cover promises some adventure to go along with the risque elements, and the book was reprinted recently by Black Gat Books, a consistently top-notch imprint, with an introduction by Gary Lovisi, an author whose opinions I respect, so yeah, this book might actually be pretty good.

CHARTERED LOVE starts out in very promising fashion. It’s a South Seas adventure yarn with a two-fisted boat skipper being hired by a beautiful young woman to help her recover a fortune in gold bars that went down with a refugee ship sunk by the Japanese during the early days of World War II. This is a very standard adventure plot going back to the pulp days. H. Bedford-Jones wrote probably dozens of stories that used some variation of this concept. So did plenty of other pulpsters, and the sunken treasure plot was used again and again by paperbackers and also hardcover authors such as Wilbur Smith, Clive Cussler, Jack Higgins, and Alistair Maclean. It’s a plot that I happen to like a lot, and I’ve even used it myself. Whether it succeeds or not is all a matter of execution. In a familiar tale such as this, a writer has to create strong characters, keep up a fast pace, provide vivid settings, and maybe, in the best of them, come up with a few twists in the standard plot.

A good protagonist is a must for this kind of novel. John Darrow, the skipper of the Malacca Maid, is a very good one. Reasonably smart, plenty tough, with morals just questionable enough to be interesting but still with a code of honor that he follows. The beautiful girl, Elizabeth McClain, is also smart and tough, not the least bit whiny, and a fine match for Darrow. The ship’s crusty old first mate is a great sidekick, the villains who are also after the gold bars are properly oily and evil, and all of them do good work as the story races along. There are some excellent action scenes during a typhoon, and the underwater diving scenes are suitably creepy. You’d barely know this book was from a so-called sleaze publisher. Except for a few mild, not-at-all graphic sex scenes, this reads very much like a Higgins or Maclean novel from the same era.

So, having read it, I’m happy to report that CHARTERED LOVE is indeed one of those lost gems. I thoroughly enjoyed it and give it a high recommendation for fans of sea-going adventure yarns. It's available in paperback and e-book editions. I don’t know if Conrad Dawn’s other books are as good, but I’d love to find out. 

Miniseries I Missed Until Now: Buffalo Girls (1995)

There was a time when I was a big fan of Larry McMurtry’s work. This was back when I was in high school and college and he had published only a handful of novels. But those novels, especially THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, were the first ones I’d ever read that took place even partially in places where I’d been. When Sonny and Duane go to Fort Worth in THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, they take the Jacksboro Highway, which meant they went within a couple of hundred yards of my house. I could stand in the street in front of the house and look down the hill to the highway and think, “Sonny and Duane drove right along there.” This immediacy and connection to my own life had a big impact on me, and I read everything by him I could get my hands on.

Then McMurtry went from being a Minor Regional Novelist (he claimed to have a T-shirt with that printed on it) to being a Big Bestseller and a Hollywood Guy, and while I still read one of his books occasionally, it was never the same after that. The kinship I’d felt with him (because I was an aspiring Minor Regional Novelist, too) was gone. Many years later, I sat at a Spur Awards banquet at the Western Writers of America convention in Fort Worth and listened to McMurtry give a long-winded acceptance speech because he won a Best Western Novel Spur for LONESOME DOVE. I maybe could have introduced myself to him later and told him I was once a big fan of his work, but nah, I was hanging around with Joe Lansdale and Scott Cupp and Bob Randisi, and that was a lot more fun.

So, speaking of long-winded, that’s why I never got around to reading McMurtry’s Calamity Jane novel BUFFALO GIRLS. They made a TV miniseries out of it in 1995, and I never watched it, either. But we came across a DVD of it at the library and thought, hey, why not? Anyway, it has Sam Elliott in it playing Wild Bill Hickok, and Sam Elliott is nearly always worth watching.

The story follows Calamity Jane from the time she’s working as a bullwhacker for the army through her time in Deadwood and finally her participation in her old friend Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show that traveled to England. As is common with McMurtry’s work, the plot strays within shouting distance of historical accuracy every now and then but doesn’t come any closer. McMurtry never worried about staying true to the facts, but I’m convinced he tried to capture the feeling of the times about which he was writing, and I’ll give him credit for that. This adaptation of BUFFALO GIRLS does capture the epic scope of the Old West and gets better as it goes along. The first half, which has all the Deadwood stuff in it, is actually a little weak, but the second half, about the Wild West Show going to England, is top-notch and very moving in places.

Anjelica Huston plays Calamity Jane. I thought at first that sounded like miscasting, but she does a fine job in the role. Sam Elliott is okay as Wild Bill but really has very litle to do. Peter Coyote plays Buffalo Bill Cody and is pretty good, although maybe not as flamboyant as he should have been. Melanie Griffith, an actress I’m not fond of, is the frontier madame Dora DuFran and came across to me as more annoying than anything else. Reba McEntire, a long-time favorite of mine, does a good job as Annie Oakley. Among fictional characters McMurtry added, the great Jack Palance and the very good character actor Tracey Walter are a couple of old mountain men and have some superb scenes, as does Floyd Red Crow Westerman as a sympathetic old Indian.

I really enjoyed watching BUFFALO GIRLS. It’s not going to make me rush out and read more of McMurtry’s books, but there are a few of them I’d still like to try. I have a copy of his Western TELEGRAPH DAYS, and I’m curious about his take on a gangster yarn, PRETTY BOY FLOYD. One of these days, maybe, if I get around to them. You know how that goes. Seldom. But now and then, it goes.

Review: Queen of the Gangsters, Volume 1: Boardwalk Empire - Margie Harris

A while back I mentioned Margie Harris, the prolific, well-regarded pulpster who contributed many stories to the gang pulps during the Thirties and whose true identity remains a mystery to this day. I wondered if any of her stories had been reprinted. Turns out that not only have several stories been reprinted in various places, there’s even a collection of her work entitled QUEEN OF THE GANGSTERS: BOARDWALK EMPIRE, published by Off Trail Publications in 2011. I’ve been meaning to read more from the gang pulps, so I got my hands on a copy.

The book leads off with a pair of introductions by editors David Bischoff and John Locke. Bischoff, a well-known science fiction writer, seems an odd choice to be editing a pulp collection like this, but his introduction reveals a genuine fondness for the author and her work. Locke, the man behind Off Trail Publications, provides as much biographical information as we have on Harris. As far as I can tell, nothing else about her has turned up in the 13 years since this book was published.

The first story, “Cougar Kitty”, from the June/July 1930 issue of MOBS, was Harris’s second published story, but it reads like the work of a seasoned veteran. It’s a revenge yarn, as the beautiful, redheaded Kate Dever heads for Seattle and gets a job as a hostess in the speakeasy run by brutal gang boss Scar Argylle. Kate has a hidden agenda (not a spoiler, since Harris doesn’t keep this a secret from the reader) and things race along as she puts her plan into action. This is a very entertaining tale, fast-paced and full of colorful characters.

“The Night Before Hell” (GANGLAND STORIES, August/September 1930) is Harris’s fourth story. This one finds a gangster convicted of murder and facing a death sentence breaking out of jail to seek revenge on the rival gang leader who framed him. It’s almost all action as the protagonist battles his way into the heart of his enemy’s stronghold, although there are a few heartstring-tugging moments. Not quite as strong a yarn as “Cougar Kitty” but still well-written and enjoyable.

In addition to having a great title, “Hellcat Buys a Stack” (GANGSTER STORIES, November 1930) is a good yarn with a fine protagonist. Hellcat is a gangster who earns that nickname for being such a fierce fighter despite his mild appearance. Surprisingly, his best friend is a crusading newspaper reporter whose life he saved during a battle in the Great War. It probably helps their friendship that the reporter lives in New York City while Hellcat is based in Chicago. But when Hellcat visits the Big Apple and tries to get together with his buddy, the reporter is murdered right in front of him. This proves to be a mistake since Hellcat sets out to avenge his pal and will stop at nothing to do it. Lots of fast-paced action and intrigue in this one.

“The Raspberry” is a novelette that appeared in GANGLAND STORIES that same month, November 1930. In it, mob boss Shane Stevens decides to get out of the rackets (for the love of a good woman, of course) and take the fortune in loot he’s amassed to Europe. When his lieutenants get wind of this, they don’t like the idea and double-cross him, resulting in Shane having to hole up in his heavily fortified penthouse while his former minions lay siege to it. This battle goes on high above the streets of Manhattan with the teeming populace below having no idea what’s happening. Shane finally conceives a daring escape plan that has almost no chance of succeeding, but he has to try it anyway if he wants to get away with the girl and the loot. This yarn is almost non-stop action, and Harris does a great job of making the reader sympathize with Shane and forget the fact that he’s a criminal and probably got that loot in all sorts of sordid ways. We don’t care, we just want him to defy all the odds and make his getaway. This is a fine story and a beautiful example of breakneck pulp pacing.

“While Choppers Roared” (RACKETEER STORIES, February 1931) is an action-packed tale that finds two daring undercover cops infiltrating a vicious gang and setting them up for a raid, while at the same time, a tough Irish cop on the verge of retirement tries to save the son of an old flame from a life of crime. This one has a few more touches of sentimentality and melodrama than the previous stories, but it certainly doesn’t skimp on the shootouts, either. I lost track of how many guys on both sides got gunned down in this blood-soaked yarn.

Just when you think Harris’s work can’t get any darker, here comes “The Angel From Hell”, which appeared in the April 1931 issue of GANGSTER STORIES. A mob killer whose face is paralyzed from a war injury discovers that his boss is setting him up to take the fall for a murder he didn’t commit. He goes on a vengeance spree in advance that includes torture, shootouts, and grisly deaths carried out with an acid gun. This is the most violent yarn of Harris’s so far, and the reader doesn’t have a shred of sympathy for any of the characters except for maybe one, and that’s not revealed until the last-second twist ending. This is potent stuff.

In “Understudy From Hell”, a novella from the July 1931 issue of GANGSTER STORIES, a mob boss is rubbed out by a rival gang, leading his beautiful blond moll to swear vengeance. She gets it, too, in another yarn in which Harris spills seas of blood. The big twist in this one is obvious very early on, but it probably came as a real shock to readers in 1931. Knowing what’s coming doesn’t keep this from being a suspenseful, action-packed yarn that has some truly poignant moments as well. Is it a little melodramatic? Sure, but it’s still a superb story that had me engrossed from start to finish.

The final story in this volume is “Twisted Vengeance” from the January 1934 issue of GREATER GANGSTER STORIES. It’s the shortest story in the book, but that doesn’t mean it packs any less punch than the longer yarns. The protagonist is a crippled former gangster known as Gimpy the Bum, who has a bad leg from bullet wounds suffered when he was just starting out in the mobs. When a female settlement worker who helped him recover from his injuries is murdered, Gimpy sets out to avenge her death, and of course that involves plenty of brutal violence. Gimpy’s bad leg doesn’t slow him down much as he tackles the underworld. This is another fine story that really had me flipping the pages.

Overall, QUEEN OF THE GANGSTERS is one of the best pulp collections I’ve read in a while. These stories are really powerful, and while Harris may not have been the most polished writer you’ll ever read, she could sure tell a riveting tale, and without shying away from any of the ugliness of the subject matter, either. I’ve read a few gang pulp stories here and there over the years, but this is my real introduction to the genre and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m sorry it appears to be the first and only collection of Margie Harris’s stories. It’s still available on Amazon and I give it a high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Detective, May 1934

This issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE sports a creepy, eye-catching cover by Rafael DeSoto. The lineup of authors inside is a strong one: George Harmon Coxe, Johnston McCulley, Norman A. Daniels, George Fielding Eliot, Wayne Rogers, Joe Archibald, and George Allan Moffatt, who was really Edwin V. Burkholder. I don't own this issue, but I think it would be well worth reading if I did.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, May 1952

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. The cover art is by Sam Cherry. The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue has some historical significance in the series as it’s the first one attributed to Peter B. Germano (best remembered for his novels under the pseudonym Barry Cord). Germano would go on to be one of the primary authors of the series during the Fifties, contributing 16 Hatfield novels, behind only Walker A. Tompkins (24 Hatfields during the Fifties, 28 overall) and Roe Richmond (22 Hatfields).

In “Secret of Dry Valley”, the plot finds Hatfield traveling to the Texas Panhandle in answer to a summons for help from an old friend of his boss, Captain Bill McDowell. When he gets there, he finds that the old friend (and former Ranger) has disappeared, and there’s a war brewing between the local cattle baron and a saloon owner who carry old grudges against each other. Working undercover, Hatfield survives a couple of bushwhackings, a pair of fistfights, and showdowns against fast on the draw gunslicks. Along the way to figuring out what’s really going on, he rescues a beautiful young woman (yes, she’s the cattle baron’s daughter) from quicksand. (In the immortal words of Bill Crider, quicksand makes any story better.) Hatfield triumphs in the end, of course, after some nice action scenes.

“Secret of Dry Valley” reads in some ways like an author’s first novel in an established series. It seems to me to be influenced by the work of the series’ two primary authors before this point, Leslie Scott and Tom Curry, and it’s likely that Germano read at least a few of their entries before tackling a Hatfield novel of his own. There’s a proxy hero whose job is to help Hatfield and wind up with the girl, a character type who shows up in nearly all of Curry’s Hatfield novels. The main plot point revolves around geography and an engineering problem, as in many of Scott’s Hatfield novels. There’s no mention of Hatfield’s engineering training in college before he became a Ranger, but he demonstrates such knowledge in solving the mystery.

At the same time, indications that this yarn is by a new author show up here and there. Hatfield is often referred to the narrative as “Jim”, something the other authors hardly ever do. He’s dressed in a suit, white shirt, and string tie throughout the novel, very different from the range clothes he usually wears. I can see doing that if there’s a good reason for it in the plot, but there’s not. He’s supposed to be working undercover, and yet he gives his real name to everybody he encounters. Eventually, some of the other characters remember there’s a famous Texas Ranger known as the Lone Wolf whose name is Jim Hatfield, but it takes a long time.

Despite those quibbles, “Secret of Dry Valley” is a pretty entertaining story. It has a little of the terse yet poetic, hardboiled prose that will become more common in Germano’s later entries in the series. The action is good, the settings are rendered fairly vividly, and there are a few small but effective plot twists. Germano’s Hatfield novels got better as he went along, but “Secret of Dry Valley” is a good solid start and well worth reading.

“El Soldado” is a short story by the always reliable Gordon D. Shirreffs. It's a Civil War tale set in New Mexico, in which a lone Union soldier tries to prevent a gang of Confederate irregulars from making off with a bunch of vital supplies. Shirreffs wrote several novels about the Civil War in the West, and while the plot in this story is a little thin because of its length, the writing is excellent.

The novelette “The Unholy Grail” is a Prodigal Son story by Roe Richmond. After his older brother is gunned down, Mike Grail, a fast gun and hellraising drifter dubbed by his father The Unholy Grail, returns home to help his family survive a feud with some old enemies. This is also a Romeo and Juliet story since Mike is in love with the daughter of his father’s arch-nemesis, and one of the sons from the rival family is in love with Mike’s sister. Richmond’s work is usually hit-or-miss with me, but this one lands squarely in the middle. The characters are interesting and there are some good action scenes, but the writing often seems rushed. I think this story might have been better as a novella or even a novel. It needed more room to develop.

“William and the Contract Buck” by Jim Kjelgaard is a bit of an oddity, a short story about some city slickers trying to put one over on a dumb hillbilly—but is he? This is well-written, as Kjelgaard’s stories always are, but there’s really not much to it and it’s out of place in a Western pulp. I think it must have been aimed at the slicks, or possibly at ADVENTURE, and sold to the Thrilling Group when it was rejected elsewhere. But that’s just a guess on my part.

Jim O’Mara was the pseudonym of Vernon Fluharty, who also wrote Westerns under the name Michael Carder. His story in this issue, “When the Sun Goes Down”, is about a looming showdown between a brutal town-taming lawman and a young former outlaw who’s trying to go straight. There’s some very nice action in this story, but it doesn’t come until after Fluharty has explored the complex personalities of several well-rounded characters. This is a superb story, extremely well-written, and it comes to a very satisfying conclusion. Fluharty is another writer who’s pretty inconsistent, in my opinion, but he really nailed this one. I loved it.

The issue wraps up with “Riddle of the Wastelands” by A. Leslie, who was really our old friend Alexander Leslie Scott, of course. This tale is about a young cowboy trying to figure out how the cattle stolen by rustlers are mysteriously disappearing. He does so, of course, and sets a trap for the wideloopers that results in a big gun battle. It’s the sort of thing Scott did countless times, but he does it very well in this one and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Overall, I’d say this is an average issue of TEXAS RANGERS, but you have to remember, “average” for this pulp is pretty darned good. The Hatfield novel is enjoyable, although Germano did better work later on in the series culminating in “Rendezvous at Quito” in the next-to-the-last issue, January 1958, which is one of my all-time favorite Hatfield yarns. The stories by Shirreffs and Scott are dependably good, the ones by Richmond and Kjelgaard somewhat disappointing. But I had a good time reading this one and look forward to reading another issue of TEXAS RANGERS in the near future.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Death Committee - Noah Gordon

I’ve always been a sucker for soap opera. Not necessarily the daytime TV kind, although at various times of my life I’ve been a regular viewer of shows such as RYAN’S HOPE and THE EDGE OF NIGHT. I’m talking more about novels that were bestsellers in the Fifties and Sixties by authors like Harold Robbins, Arthur Hailey, Henry Denker, Herbert Kastle, and Wirt Williams. (Other than Robbins and Hailey, there are some forgotten names for you. Maybe Robbins and Hailey, too, more than I’d like to think.) These novels were often about Hollywood, or fancy hotels, or the publishing business (usually bearing little resemblance to the real publishing business), or some other glamorous, high-pressure setting like, say, a big-city hospital.

Which brings us to THE DEATH COMMITTEE. I remembered reading this novel when it came out in 1969 and enjoying it, so I thought I’d give a try again. It’s pure soap opera, centered around the life and loves of three doctors in a Boston hospital, following them from one summer to the next. Along the way there are flashbacks to fill in the histories of the main characters, as well as a framing sequence involving the Death Committee of the title, which meets whenever a patient dies unexpectedly to find out what went wrong and who is to blame.

This book is really dated in one respect. Nearly all the doctors are men, with female characters relegated to playing wife/girlfriend/nurse/patient roles. You can’t blame a book for being a product of its time, but in this case it does seem to limit the dramatic possibilities quite a bit. But the writing is very clear and direct, with hardly a literary flourish to be seen. Everything goes to the service of story and character, which is not a bad thing as far as I’m concerned. Gordon keeps the pace perking along with plenty of complications, and I can see why I enjoyed it forty years ago. It’s just a good, involving story, well-told.

If you’re a fan of ER or GRAY’S ANATOMY, you’ll probably find a lot that’s familiar in THE DEATH COMMITTEE, though the novel is, of course, a lot more old-fashioned than those shows and lacking in the bizarre quirks that show up so often on GRAY’S. Some modern readers might find it a little too slow, but if you’re looking for a nice hefty chunk of former bestsellerdom, give THE DEATH COMMITTEE a try. 

(This post originally appeared on November 13, 2009. When I looked it up, I was a little surprised to see that THE DEATH COMMITTEE is available in an e-book edition on Kindle Unlimited. If you have KU and want to give it a try, I found it a pretty enjoyable book. Some of Noah Gordon's other novels are on KU, as well. Might be time to give one of them a try.)

Review: The Gunslinger - Lorraine Heath

There was some discussion recently on the WesternPulps email group about Western romances, particularly Western romance novels published in recent decades rather than the Western romance pulps. I read a number of Western romance novels from the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties back when Livia was writing in that genre and enjoyed many of them. The conversation on WesternPulps put me in the mood to read one again.

The one I picked was THE GUNSLINGER by Lorraine Heath, a novella that’s available as an e-book on Amazon. This is a revised version of a story originally published under the title “Long Stretch of Lonesome” in an anthology. That’s a much better title, to be honest. I believe I met Lorraine Heath at least once at a mass book signing, but we’re not really acquainted and I don’t recall ever reading any of her books until now.

THE GUNSLINGER’s plot is pretty straightforward: a gunman with a reputation as a ruthless, cold-blooded killer is hired by a cattle baron to get rid of a smaller rancher who owns some land the cattle baron wants. But when he arrives to take the job, he discovers that the person his employer wants run off and/or killed is a beautiful young woman who is trying to run the ranch with the help of her little brother. Naturally, our protagonist is conflicted, and gradually it’s revealed that almost nothing about this situation is what it appears to be at first. I always like it when an author peels back the layers of a plot like that, little by little. Of course, things eventually lead up to a showdown, but it’s maybe not the one you might have expected.

This plot would have worked just fine in a 1950s issue of RANCH ROMANCES, although there would have been some definite differences. There would have been more gunfights and probably a brutal fistfight in a pulp version, and the story would have ended with the hero and heroine having done no more than embracing and kissing. The action is played down in THE GUNSLINGER. There are several gunfights, but they’re over with quickly. The romance angle occupies more of the story and there’s one sex scene, although it’s not particularly graphic. And of course, the characters brood more and think about their feelings a lot.

Don’t get me wrong, though. The hero and the heroine, as well as the heroine’s brother, are all very likable characters and I got caught up in the story and wanted to know what was going to happen to them. I honestly didn’t mind a more emotional approach for a change. The book’s biggest flaw, in my opinion, is that the villain just isn’t despicable enough, leading to an ending that’s considerably less dramatic than it could have been. This has been a problem with a lot of the romance novels I’ve read. The authors set up some great conflicts but draw back at the last moment. The heroes are usually the fastest gun/deadliest swordsman/biggest badass in the county, but when it comes time to burn powder or hack and slash or kick some varmint’s butt, the author shoehorns in a way for the guy to sit and talk with his enemies instead and resolve things peacefully. There’s a little of that in THE GUNSLINGER.

But hey, am I the target audience for these books? No. No, I am not. But all the romance writers I’ve met and talked with over the years have been smart, skillful writers who know what they’re doing. The books work for their readers. A guy like me, dipping his toe into those waters, can’t expect a book written to his taste. But he can find books that are well-written and entertaining, like THE GUNSLINGER, if he knows where to look.

Review: No Harp for My Angel - Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates)

NO HARP FOR MY ANGEL is the fourth novel in the long-running Al Wheeler mystery series by Carter Brown (Alan G. Yates). It’s one that was never published in the United States after its original appearance in Australia in 1956 until a few years ago when Stark House included it in the second volume of its Al Wheeler series. As a long-time Carter Brown fan, it’s great that Stark House is making it possible for us to read, or in some cases reread, these very entertaining novels.

Al Wheeler is a homicide detective in Pine City, California, but in this novel, he’s on the other side of the country, taking a well-deserved vacation in Ocean Beach, Florida. Naturally, things can’t go smoothly while he’s there, and before you know it, he’s doing a favor for a local cop and going undercover to investigate the disappearances of several beautiful female tourists. In order to do this, he has to pretend to be a gangster from Chicago, and of course, things go from bad to worse when some real gangsters show up.

Al’s first-person, wisecracking narration is fast and funny, as usual. There’s a murder in this one, but it’s not a typical whodunit as the tone of this novel is much more that of a thriller. Between getting hit on the head and taken for a ride and bantering with luscious babes, Al doesn’t have much time for actual detection. It’s all a lot of breathless fun, and NO HARP FOR MY ANGEL is also historically important because this is the book where Al acquires his Austin-Healy sports car that he’ll drive for the rest of the series. I’m a little surprised that Signet didn’t reprint this one during the Fifties and Sixties when the Carter Brown books were so popular. Maybe they didn’t because it’s not as much of a traditional mystery as some of the others.

It's certainly worth reading, though. If you’re a Carter Brown/Al Wheeler fan, you’ll enjoy it, I don’t doubt that at all. The Stark House reprint, which includes two more Al Wheeler novels, by the way, is available on Amazon in print and e-book editions. Recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, April 10, 1929

SHORT STORIES must have been the most instantly recognizable pulp with its Red Sun covers, and this issue sports a particularly good one by Edgar F. Wittmack. And a Pith Helmet Alert, to boot! The best-known authors inside are W.C. Tuttle and Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. Henry Herbert Knibbs was pretty well-known in those days, I believe, but mostly forgotten now. Also in this issue are stories by Weed Dickinson (great name!), Homer King Gordon, Willard K. Smith, E.S. Pladwell, Russell Hays, Melvin Lostutter, and Larry Barreto, and if you're familiar with any of those guys and their work, you're ahead of me. But dang, that's a nice cover, and I'll bet most of the stories are pretty good, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Fiction Monthly, March 1936

I like the J.W. Scott cover on this issue of a little-remembered Western pulp that ran for about five years in the mid-to-late Thirties with a few name changes along the way, starting as WESTERN FICTION MAGAZINE, becoming WESTERN FICTION MONTHLY, then going back to WESTERN FICTION MAGAZINE and finally ending up as WESTERN FICTION. I don't own any of them and don't think I've ever laid eyes on an issue. But they had decent covers and plenty of good writers appeared in their pages. In this particular issue are stories by William MacLeod Raine, Alan LeMay, Harold Channing Wire, Hugh Pendexter, and the lesser-known Forrest R. Brown. I'm sure the readers who picked it up back then enjoyed it. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: King of the World's Edge - H. Warner Munn

Originally serialized in the September through December 1939 issues of WEIRD TALES, H. Warner Munn’s KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE was a prime candidate for reprinting in the Sixties paperback fantasy boom sparked by Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and J.R.R. Tolkien. It features swordplay, magic, and lost civilizations. What else do you need?

Well, an Arthurian angle doesn’t hurt. There’s also a nice framing sequence in which a mysterious bronze cylinder is discovered in Key West following a hurricane, and inside the cylinder there’s an ancient document purportedly written by one Ventidius Varro, a Roman legionnaire posted in Britain at the time of Arthur’s rise to power. Like Jack Whyte’s Camulod novels and the movies THE LAST LEGION and KING ARTHUR, KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE is set during the last days of Roman occupation in Britain, when most of the Roman soldiers are actually second- or third-generation Britons. Ventidius Varro is one of them. Cut off from Rome, these hold-out legionnaires align themselves with Arthur and the enigmatic mage Myrdhinn in order to oppose the invading Saxons and unite the various British tribes. After Arthur’s efforts are crushed and he himself is mortally wounded in battle, Myrdhinn places him in what amounts to suspended animation, hides his body, and then sets sail with a band of legionnaires commanded by Varro in search of a place where they can regroup and figure out a way to retake Britain.

Things don’t work out that way, however. Instead, Myrdhinn and the rest of these British adventurers wind up in a new world far to the west, across the ocean, where they are captured by, escape from, and wind up doing battle with various groups of native tribes. Along the way Varro becomes the staunch ally of a native leader named Hayonwatha, founds his own empire in the new world, and battles to overthrow the evil Mia, who have extended their grasp over the entire continent.

Part of the fun of a book like this is seeing the way Munn comes up with new explanations for all the history and legends of early North America, from Florida up to the Great Lakes, across the continent to the Rocky Mountains and down to Texas. Varro, Myrdhinn, and their friends wander all over and have numerous adventures. The pace is a little slow at times and the writing style is old-fashioned, but after all, the story is being told by Ventidius Varro in a letter intended to be carried back to whatever emperor is currently in power in Rome.

Though it lacks the storytelling power of a yarn by Howard or Burroughs, KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE is an entertaining, inventive novel with quite a bit of action. Getting the book back in print from Ace was enough to prompt the never prolific Munn to write a sequel, THE SHIP FROM ATLANTIS, almost thirty years after the original. I have that one, too, and hope to read it soon. (I believe both novels were also issued in a combined volume called MERLIN’S GODSON, from Del Rey in the Eighties, but I have the Ace editions.)

Update: Don Herron informs me that there's a third book in the series, MERLIN'S RING, and refers to it as Munn's masterpiece. He also recommends Munn's historical novel THE LOST LEGION. There's two more books for me to look for!

(I'm sure it will come as no surprise to any of you that despite what it says above, I haven't read another word by H. Warner Munn since this post first appeared almost exactly fifteen years ago on November 6, 2009. Will I read more by him in the future? No way of knowing for sure, but at this late date, I wouldn't bet a hat on it.) 

Review: Up the China Sea - H. Bedford-Jones

When I reviewed Edmond Hamilton’s “The World With a Thousand Moons”, I mentioned that it reminded me of some of the nautical adventure yarns written by H. Bedford-Jones. That put me in the mood to actually read one of those stories by HB-J, and the one I picked was “Up the China Sea”, a novella originally published in the July 10, 1923 issue of the iconic pulp ADVENTURE and available as a stand-alone e-book on Amazon, the edition I read. (Ignore the old-fashioned pirate on the e-book cover; this is a modern-day yarn.)

The protagonist of this story is a stalwart sailor named Bracken, who’s the first officer of a steamer called the Fengshui. (I have to admit, the ship’s name is a bit of a distraction at first, but I soon forgot about it.) The steamer leaves Singapore and heads up the coast to salvage the cargo off a ship that wrecked. Bracken doesn’t fully trust the captain and suspects there’s more going on than he knows about, and of course, he’s right. The wreck holds secrets that involve the attractive widow of its late captain, and Bracken and his crewmates aren’t the only ones after them.

Bedford-Jones doesn’t keep the plot twists secret for very long since the bulk of the story is devoted to scenes of chasing and fighting and cold-blooded murder, of capture and escape and daring rescues. All the stuff of classic pulp adventure yarns, in other words. Bedford-Jones keeps things racing along to an exciting, bullet-flying climax.

I always enjoy stories like this, and “Up the China Sea” is no exception. I really like the way Bedford-Jones writes, and that clean, propulsive style makes a story like this—which is just a tad bit by the numbers, to be honest—very entertaining to read. If you’re a fan of his work, it’s very much worth reading. If you’ve never sampled one of his yarns before, it wouldn’t be a bad place to start since it’s an example of the type of story that Bedford-Jones did better than just about anybody else.

Review: The World With a Thousand Moons - Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton continues to be one of my favorite authors of the sort of action-packed adventure science fiction I really enjoy. This novella originally appeared in the December 1942 issue of AMAZING STORIES. There’s a free e-book edition available on Amazon, which is where I read it.

This yarn is set in our solar system, no deep space or space opera in this one. Instead, it has a gritty, hardboiled tone as meteor miner Lance Kenniston (a pulp hero name if I ever saw one) and his hulking Jovian partner trick a group of rich, thrill-seeking space tourists from Earth into helping them try to recover a fortune in loot from a crashed spaceship that belonged to a notorious space pirate. The wrecked ship is on Vesta, the second-largest body in the Asteroid Belt, and since it’s surrounded by smaller asteroids, that makes it the World With a Thousand Moons, according to the title.

Just navigating through those orbiting obstacles and getting there is enough of a challenge, but Vesta is also inhabited by mysterious, deadly creatures that are feared throughout the solar system. Throw in the complication that not everything is as it appears to be at first, and you’ve got the makings of a fast-paced, exciting tale.

It occurred to me as I was reading this novella that it’s the science fiction equivalent of the sort of adventure stories H. Bedford-Jones was so good at. You’ve got a two-fisted sailor (spaceman) protagonist, a beautiful girl, a treasure to be salvaged, treachery all around, and despicable bad guys. I always enjoy this plot when Bedford-Jones uses it, and in Hamilton’s hands, it’s almost as good.

I had a fine time reading THE WORLD WITH A THOUSAND MOONS. If you’re a fan of classic-style science fiction, there’s a good chance you would, too. Recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, April 21, 1934

I haven't featured an issue of ARGOSY in a while, and this one sports a nice dramatic cover by Paul Stahr, whose covers I nearly always enjoy. As usual, there are some fine writers inside this issue: Erle Stanley Gardner, Max Brand, Fred MacIsaac, J.D. Newsom, Karl Detzer, and the lesser-known Anson Hatch and Howard Ellis Davis. The Brand, MacIsaac, and Detzer stories are all serial installments, but if I had a copy of this one (I don't) I'd be happy to read the novelettes by Gardner and Newsom.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Double Action Western, September 1950

Since posting my review of Harry Sinclair Drago's novel APACHE CROSSING earlier this week, I've discovered that the novel also appeared in the September 1950 issue of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN, also under the Will Ermine name. I don't have that issue so I can't compare the texts, but the book is fairly short in the Popular Library paperback edition, 160 pages, and the pulp version runs 68 double-columned pages of, I assume, fairly small type, so it may or may not have been expanded for book publication. Also in this issue are a short story by Lee Floren and a short-short by W.G. Wyatt, who has only two credits in the Fictionmags Index, the other one being a novella in the May 1950 issue of BLUE RIBBON WESTERN. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the W.G. Wyatt name was a pseudonym, maybe for editor Robert W. Lowndes. That's pure speculation on my part, though. I think the pulp cover is by A. Leslie Ross, but it's hard to be sure because the hombre doesn't have a hat on. Ross's hats are unmistakable.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Secret Agent X: Faceless Fury - Brant House (G.T. Fleming-Roberts)

I’ve been in a pulpish mood lately, and one of the things I’ve read is the Secret Agent X novel FACELESS FURY, from the April 1936 issue of the Secret Agent X pulp.

This series ran for 41 issues, and I’ve probably read more than half the novels. One of the consistent problems with Secret Agent X is that, as you might guess from his name, he’s pretty much of a cipher. We never learn his real name or much about his background. We don’t even know what he really looks like because he’s always in disguise. He could be anybody. And yet the novels are usually entertaining because of the bizarre plots and fast pacing.

In FACELESS FURY, which was written by G.T. Fleming-Roberts under the house-name Brant House, the bizarre elements are certainly in place. You’ve got a criminal mastermind with his head completely covered in bandages except for the eyes, which, oh by the way, shoot out an acid so powerful that it’ll completely eat away a man’s face in seconds; you’ve got a similarly bandaged amnesia victim in a sanitarium who may or may not be the mastermind; and you’ve got multiple murder victims found clutching children’s toy blocks in their hands. Not to mention forgers, gentleman jewel thieves, dope fiends, and beautiful actresses with sinister secrets. For a while this seems like a kitchen sink novel, with Fleming-Roberts throwing in every wild thing he can think of whether it makes any sense or not, but by the end of the novel he succeeds it tying it all together fairly neatly. It’s very easy to figure out who the killer really is, but you don’t read this kind of story for the mystery angle, anyway. At least I don’t.

Although Fleming-Roberts didn’t create the Secret Agent X character, he wrote more of the novels than anyone else and is considered by some pulp fans to be the series’ best author. I sort of prefer the stories by Paul Chadwick, the creator of the character, but I like Fleming-Roberts’ work, too, and FACELESS FURY is one of his best entries, well worth checking out if you’re a fan of the hero pulps. Not a bad place to start if you’re a pulp fan and have never read a Secret Agent X novel, either.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on December 18, 2007. Altus Press has reprinted the entire Secret Agent X series in a series of beautiful trade paperback volumes. "Faceless Fury" is available on Amazon in Volume 6 of that series.)