Review: Overboard - George F. Worts

I have a bit of a history with this book. I first saw it in the Nineties, in the dealers’ room at ClueFest, the fondly remembered mystery convention in Dallas. My attention was drawn to that great cover by Rudolph Belarski, and although I’d never heard of the novel, I knew that the author, George F. Worts, was a well-regarded writer for the pulps. Since that copy wasn’t too expensive, I bought it.

And then it sat on my shelves, unread, until it went up in smoke in the Fire of ’08.

Time went by and I didn’t replace that copy of OVERBOARD, but then one day somebody posted the cover on Facebook in one of the paperback groups, and that prompted me to look around and see if I could find an affordable copy on-line (an option I didn’t have back in the Nineties when I bought it for the first time). I had checked a few times before that and found that generally, copies cost more than I wanted to pay. But this time, I found one that wasn’t cheap, but it was within my price range. So I snapped it up, and when it arrived I took it out of the plastic bag, figuring I would read it at last.

The first 60 pages were missing. Which hadn’t been mentioned at all in the listing for it.

Well, I got my money back, but I still couldn’t read the book. If it had been just the first page or two, maybe I would have plowed ahead. But not with that big a chunk of the novel gone. I wasn’t even going to attempt it. Maybe, I thought, maybe I just wasn’t meant to read OVERBOARD. So more time passed.

And then somebody posted that cover again, and I went and checked and found a decently priced copy and took the plunge again. The cover was printed slightly off register (you can see it in the scan, which is my copy), but I didn’t care all that much as long as the book was intact and readable. By now I was determined to read OVERBOARD.

And so I have, probably thirty years after I bought it the first time. Other than that printing glitch, the copy I got is in very nice shape. But is the book actually any good, you might ask?

It absolutely is.

The protagonist is a young woman with the odd name Zorie Corey. (The reason for the name does get an explanation of sorts in the novel.) She lives in a university town in the Midwest and makes a living typing theses, dissertations, and research papers for students and professors at the school. She’s engaged to a somewhat dull and controlling professor of psychology. She lives a meek little life (Worts actually goes a little overboard, no pun intended, on her meekness, but ultimately there’s a reason for that, too) and would like to experience some actual romance and adventure before she settles down to married life.

Well, you know where this is going, don’t you? Her fiancé’s grandfather, a retired admiral, blows into town and wants Zorie’s help writing a book about his life. Her fiancé’s rakehell older brother, who’s been kicked out of the Navy because he’s a Nazi sympathizer, shows up, too, as well as a couple of sinister strangers.

Before you know it, Zorie is whisked off onto a ship bound for Hawaii, where the admiral owns a beautiful estate. Her fiancé and the fiancé’s brother are on board, too, as are the sinister strangers and a beautiful young woman who seems to think that Zorie is actually someone else. Despite the brother being a Nazi sympathizer, Zorie is falling for him, anyway. Then, while taking a stroll on deck on a dark night, someone grabs her and throws her overboard. Through a stroke of luck, she survives that murder attempt, but then, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor . . . 

That’s the first half of the book, and up to then, it’s been a lighthearted but very well written romantic suspense yarn. Things turn a lot more serious after the ship reaches Hawaii and the scene shifts to the admiral’s plantation. Intrigue and danger continue to swirl around Zorie, but the stakes are higher now. There’s still some romance, but suspense dominates the second half of the book, and it’s pretty doggoned nerve-wracking in places.

The big twist that shows up late probably won’t come as much of a surprise, but Worts’ prose is so smooth and entertaining that it doesn’t really matter. OVERBOARD is colorful, humorous, exciting, and just plain fun to read. I stayed up after midnight to finish it, and that hardly ever happens these days and hasn’t for years.

Worts is best remembered for three series he wrote for the pulps: adventure yarns featuring wireless operator Peter Moore, a.k.a. Peter the Brazen; two-fisted Singapore Sammy Shay; and mysteries featuring lawyer Gillian Hazeltine. I’ve read the Singapore Sammy stories and loved them. I have all the Peter the Brazen stories and need to get to them soon, and I have some of the Gillian Hazeltine stories, too.

But this stand-alone mystery novel, which was published in hardcover by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in 1943 and reprinted in that iconic paperback by Popular Library in 1950, is superb and well worth reading, too. I’m very glad I finally got around to it. I have a hunch that OVERBOARD will be on my Top Ten list at the end of the year.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Blue Book, May 1938

Herbert Morton Stoops painted all different sorts of covers for BLUE BOOK, including action-packed scenes like this one. While some are better than others, of course, he was a great cover artist and I've never seen one I didn't like. The fiction in BLUE BOOK was just as consistent as the covers. Of course, it helps when you have three stories by H. Bedford-Jones in an issue. In this case, there's one under his own name, one with his fictional collaborator Captain L.B. Williams, and one as Gordon Keyne. Also on hand are adventure pulp stalwarts Fulton Grant, Leland Jamieson, Warren Hastings Miller, William J. Makin (with a Red Wolf of Arabia story), William L. Chester (with an installment of a Kioga serial), and lesser-known writers Carl Cole and C.M. Chapin. This is the only story by Carl Cole listed in the Fictionmags Index. Who knows, maybe he was H. Bedford-Jones, too. You can't rule it out.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, First August Number, 1955

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat tattered copy in the scan. The cover art is by Clarence Doore. His signature is visible in the lower left corner. It’s not one of Doore’s best covers, in my opinion, but it’s certainly not bad.

Giff Cheshire is a hit-or-miss author for me. Most of what I’ve read by him has been entertaining but a little bit too much on the bland side for my taste. Some of his stories are more hardboiled and are pretty good. His novella that leads off this issue, “Torment Trail”, is very hardboiled and is an excellent yarn. The protagonist, Cleve Gantry (great name for a Western hero) is partners in a hardscrabble ranch with young wastrel Nat Cole (maybe not as good a name, since Nat “King” Cole, one of my father’s favorite singers, was already very popular by the mid-Fifties). Cole pulls a robbery and frames Gantry for it. Gantry breaks out of jail and sets out to track down Cole, partially to clear his name but mostly because he wants to kill the no-good hombre. Gantry’s vengeance quest is complicated, though, by Cole’s beautiful sister and some other hardcases who are after the loot from the robbery. Set mostly in the desert—and Cheshire makes good use of that setting—this is a fast-moving, suspenseful story with some good action scenes, a fine protagonist, and a very gritty tone. I really enjoyed “Torment Trail”, which is easily the best thing I’ve ever read by Cheshire.

D.S. Halacy Jr. wrote several dozen Western and detective stories for the pulps. I’d read one story by him in the past and thought it was okay but nothing more than that. His story in this issue, “The Five Hundred Dollar Shot” is about a down-on-his-luck rancher who is willing to go to any lengths to provide for his family, even if it means going after a wanted outlaw for the reward. This is a pretty bleak story with a mostly unlikable protagonist, but it doesn’t turn out exactly like you might expect and that’s usually a good thing. So it’s nothing special, but it is a readable yarn.

“Bachelor Trouble” is by Lewis Chadwick, who wrote only half a dozen Western stories, all published in 1955 and 1956. An old rancher decides that one of the cowboys who works for him is going to marry his daughter, but the cowboy doesn’t go along with that idea. That’s all there is to the story, but it’s decently written and everything is resolved in a pleasant enough manner.

James Clyde Harper was reasonably prolific, turning out approximately 50 stories in a career that lasted from the early Thirties to the mid-Fifties. But I didn’t care for his story “The Phantom Rifle” in this issue. It’s a mystery in which a group of settlers with a wagon train try to start a town, only to have several of their number murdered by a mysterious rifleman. The writing struck me as clumsy, and the motivation for the plot just wasn’t believable considering the place and time. This one is a clear miss as far as I’m concerned.

W.W. Hartwig published only three stories, all in RANCH ROMANCES. “The Bride’s Father” in this issue is the last of them. It’s a pure romance yarn about a young cowboy courting the daughter of a railroad tycoon. This is a well-written story with good characters, and although I thought the author could have done a little more with it, I liked it quite a bit.

Alice Axtell was the author of about thirty stories, all of them in RANCH ROMANCES in the Forties and Fifties. Her story “Big Man” is about the feud between a big rancher and the owner of a smaller spread. Their clash takes some nasty turns, and there’s more riding on it for the little rancher than just his business. The girl he wants to marry is watching to see how he handles this problem. This is another story that’s pure romance, but it’s well-written and I enjoyed it.

There are also installments of two serials, “Longhorn Stampede” by Philip Ketchum and “The Vengeance Riders” by Jack Barton, who was really Joseph Chadwick. Ketchum and Chadwick were both fine writers and I’m sure these are good stories, but as I’ve mentioned before, I have the novel version of THE VENGEANCE RIDERS and will get around to reading it one of these days, and I may have a copy of LONGHORN STAMPEDE, too. If I don't, there's a good chance I will have in the reasonably near future.

Rounding out the issue are the usual features—Western movie news, pen pals, astrology—and a somewhat Western-themed crossword puzzle completely filled out in pencil by one of the previous owners of this copy. Only a couple of erasures, too, so a pretty good job. Somehow, things like this make me feel a closer kinship to the person who owned this one originally. I can just imagine her—or him, RANCH ROMANCES is bound to have had some male readers, too—sitting at a kitchen table in 1955, working the crossword puzzle after a long day. That could be all wrong, of course, I have no way of knowing, but it’s an image I find appealing.

Overall, this is a fairly solid issue of RANCH ROMANCES. There’s only one outstanding story, but the Cheshire novella is really good and all the other stories except the one I didn’t like are well-written and entertaining, if not particularly memorable. If you have a copy, it’s worth reading. You might even want to do the crossword puzzle if somebody hasn’t beaten you to it. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Suitable for Framing - James Atlee Phillips

Like last week’s THE FAST BUCK, James Atlee Phillips’s novel SUITABLE FOR FRAMING concerns treasures looted during World War II. That’s where the similarities end, though. In SUITABLE FOR FRAMING, the things everybody is after are fabulously valuable paintings, rather than jewels. And SUITABLE FOR FRAMING is much better written than THE FAST BUCK.

The narrator in this novel is Jesse Barker, a journalist who gets finagled into joining a scheme to smuggle some paintings out of France following World War II and sell them to a Mexican general Barker happens to know. Most of the book takes place in the Mexican mountain town of Hidalgo, and Phillips paints a very vivid picture of this setting. As anybody who has read very much in this field will expect, the plot falls apart and becomes a maze of double-crosses, and of course there’s a beautiful woman involved, and Barker gets hit on the head and knocked out several times. Plus you get a colorfully eccentric (and really evil) villain, Mexican wrestlers, spooky scenes set in graveyards, and a considerable amount of action.

I’ve always liked Phillips’ novels about espionage agent Joe Gall, which he wrote under the name Philip Atlee, although the plots in them sometimes get so complicated that I can’t keep up with them. I also really like his early novel PAGODA, which introduces Joe Gall when Gall was still a pilot, rather than a spy. SUITABLE FOR FRAMING is a little lighter weight than those books but shares many of their virtues: crisp prose, good descriptions, and hardboiled action. One thing that annoyed me was Phillips’ habit of paraphrasing what his characters are saying, rather than just quoting the dialogue, but I sort of got used to that technique after a while. As a rule, though, I don’t like that. I liked the book overall, though, and I think if you’ve read and enjoyed Phillips’ other novels, you’ll enjoy this one, too.

(This post first appeared on October 3, 2008.)

Review: Hell Range in Texas - J.E. Grinstead

Recently I read some pulp stories by J.E. Grinstead that I enjoyed, so I decided to pick up a novel by him and give it a try. HELL RANGE IN TEXAS is a 1958 paperback from Avon that was published originally under the title LAW OF THE TRAIL as a 1940 hardback by Dodge Publishing, one of the lending library publishers. This is probably an expansion of Grinstead’s novella “The Law of the Trail Herd”, which appeared in the September 1926 issue of the pulp THE FRONTIER. The Avon paperback I read (that’s my copy in the scan) says that it’s revised, but I don’t know what that revision consisted of. It’s possible Grinstead just went back to the pulp version after adding material to make it longer for the hardback edition. That’s pure speculation on my part, however, just the sort of thing that makes sense to me.

This story takes place in Texas (of course) in the days following the Civil War when the cattle industry is just getting started in the state and herds have started being driven up the trails through Indian Territory to the railhead in Kansas. The setting is a little unusual, though, in that the action takes place along the Little River in central Texas, rather than in West or South Texas like most Westerns. I’ve driven across the bridge over the Little River just south of Cameron, Texas, many times, and I’ve always thought it was a scenic stream and would make a good setting for a Western. That’s what Grinstead has done.

Most trail bosses in Western fiction are the protagonists, or at least sympathetic characters, but not Shag Sanders in this novel. He’s the bad guy in the first half of the book, stealing cattle from local ranchers as he heads north and buying rustled stock cheaply from outlaws. Old cattleman Montgomery Jackson (who, just as you suspect, has a beautiful daughter) is determined to put a stop to this, leading to a gun battle with Sanders and his crew shooting it out with the cowboys from Jackson’s spread.

However, one of Sanders’ men, young and gun-handy Frank Carleton, goes over to the other side and throws in with Jackson and his bunch, becoming a staunch ally in Jackson’s clash with a rival rancher who works with the crooked trail drivers. Matters are complicated by the fact that Jackson’s beautiful daughter is supposed to marry the rival rancher’s son.

You might also suspect that all this is going to lead up to a big showdown, and you’d be right. Along the way, Grinstead gives us plenty of colorful characters and Old West dialogue without getting too heavy-handed about it.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that Grinstead was an actual cowboy at one time in his life, but my memory was playing tricks on me and I was absolutely wrong about that. However, he was a newspaperman in Texas in the early 20th Century, owning and publishing the newspaper in Kerrville, Texas, a hundred miles or so southwest of where this novel is set, and he was also involved in politics. No doubt he knew quite a few old cattlemen who had been around during the era about which he wrote in his fiction. Because of that, there’s an undeniable air of authenticity about Grinstead’s work that I enjoy.

However, based on this novel, he may be one of those writers who’s better at shorter lengths. HELL RANGE IN TEXAS is pretty slowly paced, and there’s not as much action as there might have been. The action that’s there is sometimes not very well-written, either. Late in the book, there’s a long chase scene/gun battle that really drags and is hard to follow. Or maybe it’s just me. That’s always a possibility.

I give this novel thumbs-up on the setting, characters, and dialogue but found it disappointing because it didn’t capture my interest and drag me along in the story the way I like for fiction to do. I’ll certainly continue to read Grinstead’s stories when I come across one in a Western pulp, and I’ll probably enjoy them. I’ll even check my paperback shelves sometime and see if I have any more of his novels. But I don’t think I’ll be doing that any time soon.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Cariboo Trail (1950)

You remember in BLAZING SADDLES when Bart says to the townspeople of Rock Ridge, “You’d do it for Randolph Scott,” and the townspeople take off their hats, put their hands over their hearts, and respond in hushed reverence, “Randolph Scott!” Well, I’m just like those settlers. I love Randolph Scott movies.

Which is why I was surprised when I came across one that I don’t recall ever hearing of, let alone watching. THE CARIBOO TRAIL was released in 1950 and finds Scott playing Montana rancher Jim Redfern, who drives a trail herd into Canada with his partner Mike Evans (played by Bill Williams, who, a few years later, would star in the TV show THE ADVENTURES OF KIT CARSON, one of my early favorites). Redfern wants to establish a ranch and open up Canada to the beef industry, but Evans is more interested in hunting for gold. They run into an old prospector known as Grizzly (the immortal George “Gabby” Hayes) but also encounter some hardcases (Jim Davis and Douglas Kennedy among them) working for a villainous town boss played by Victor Jory. The only one in town who doesn’t seem to be under Jory’s thumb is a beautiful saloon owner played by Karin Booth.

You’ve all see enough Westerns to know how this set-up is going to play out. There’s nothing in the workmanlike script by Frank Gruber (another old favorite of mine) that’s going to surprise you, but it’s well-constructed and provides plenty of opportunities for action as well as a little romance and pathos, the latter provided by a fine performance from Bill Williams, whose character loses an arm due to injuries suffered in a stampede and become embittered. Scott is as stalwart and likable as ever, and I’ll watch and enjoy Gabby Hayes in anything. He’s my all-time favorite Western sidekick, and this was his final movie. Victor Jory is suitably smarmy and evil, and a very young Dale Robertson shows up as a cowboy.

Many of the reviews of this movie on IMDB complain about the cheap Cinecolor process and the photography, and the quality is pretty inconsistent. However, the movie doesn’t look bad, and parts of it actually look pretty good. There’s some spectacular scenery. Its biggest flaw, as far as I’m concerned, is a terribly staged fight scene between Scott and Kennedy in which none of the so-called punches are even remotely convincing. I’m actually surprised they let the scene go through like that. But that’s an aberration and the rest of the action is fine.

Overall, THE CARIBOO TRAIL is a pretty minor film, I suppose, but it has its moments that worked really well for me and reminded me of why I love Westerns so much. If you’re a Randolph Scott and/or Gabby Hayes fan, it’s certainly worth watching.

Review: Crown Vic 2: If I Were a Rich Man - Lee Goldberg

CROWN VIC 2: IF I WERE A RICH MAN is the second volume in Lee Goldberg’s new series featuring ex-con and former professional car thief Ray Boyd. Ray wanders the country driving an old Crown Victoria interceptor that’s been decommissioned as a police car, making money when and how he can—often, but not always, illegally—and looking for just enough adventure and excitement to keep life interesting.

In this novella, Ray is on the hunt for a fortune in diamonds stolen in a robbery years earlier. He was in prison with one of the men who pulled off the heist. Legend has it that the guy hid the gems somewhere, and they’ve never been found. The problem is that the thief is an older man, he’s been released from prison, and he’s now in an assisted living center, suffering from dementia, so he may not even remember where he cached the diamonds. But if he does, Ray is going to find them and get his hands on them himself.

However, Ray’s plans are complicated by a beautiful young woman and a little matter of blackmail that ultimately may endanger his life.

Goldberg really keeps things racing along in this yarn. There are a couple of twists I should have seen coming but didn’t, and that’s a tribute to Goldberg’s skill in maintaining a breakneck pace. And Ray Boyd continues to be a fascinating character. He’s not a nice guy, at all. He reminds me a little of Donald E. Westlake’s Parker, except that Parker has some sort of moral compass that Ray seems to lack completely. In fact, this guy is so terrible you have to ask yourself how anybody could make him the protagonist of a series. But despite that, in the end you find yourself rooting for Ray to succeed, or at least I do. And that’s a tribute to Goldberg’s talent, too.

I don’t know if there are more Ray Boyd stories in the works, but I hope so. For now, CROWN VIC 2: IF I WERE A RICH MAN is available in e-book and paperback editions. I really enjoyed it, and if you like hardboiled crime yarns, I give it a high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Popular Detective, November 1937

I don't know who did the cover on this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE, but it's intriguing. And they definitely want you to that there's a Charlie Chan story in this issue, since it's mentioned twice. However (and that's a big however), it's not a lost tale by Chan creator Earl Derr Biggers, who died four years earlier in 1933. No, this story featuring Charlie Chan was written by journeyman pulpster Edward Churchill. Now, I usually enjoy Churchill's work and this may well be a good story, but I have to wonder if publisher Ned Pines cut a deal with Biggers' estate to publish a new Chan story, or if he just did it anyway. We'll probably never know. At any rate, it's the only non-Biggers entry in the series until the 1970s, when several different authors wrote Chan stories for CHARLIE CHAN MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Which, come to think of it, was owned and published by Leo Margulies, who worked as editorial director for Ned Pines. Hmmm. Anyway, elsewhere in this issue are stories by T.T. Flynn, one of my favorite Western writers who also did mysteries and detective yarns, Robert Sidney Bowen, and Ray Cummings. That's a talented bunch.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Aces, December 1934

WESTERN ACES usually had good covers, like this one by Rafael DeSoto that appeared on the magazine's second issue. The authors inside are a mixture of the well-known and the obscure. L.L. Foreman, Philip Ketchum (writing as Carl McK. Saunders), Orlando Rigoni, Larry A. Harris, and Clyde A. Warden (writing as Les Rivers) were all prolific, solid Western pulpsters. Eugene R. Dutcher, Leon V. Almirall, and Francis P. Verzani are less well-remembered, but that doesn't mean their stories aren't good. I don't own this issue, but that cover sure would have caught my eye if I'd been browsing the newsstand back in 1934. If I'd had a spare dime, there's a good chance I would have bought it.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Fast Buck - Ross Laurence

THE FAST BUCK is one of those books that drops you right down in the middle of the action and lets you catch up as you go along. Joe Chicagano, also known as Joe Chicago, is a down-on-his-luck prizefighter who gets involved with the Mob following World War II. He’s not much more successful as a hood than he was as a boxer, and as this novel opens, he’s regaining consciousness on the floorboard of a car being driven by a beautiful woman he calls Legs, because that’s all he can see of her as he comes to. He’s been beaten up and as the mysterious woman shoves him out of the car into the gutter, all he knows for sure is that somebody stole ten thousand dollars from him, and he’s going to get it back no matter what it takes.

Then he discovers that the police think he died in a fiery car crash the night before. When he starts trying to figure out what happened to him and find out who took his money, people he talks to have a habit of being murdered in circumstances that make the cops think he’s the killer. Joe’s not the smartest guy in the world and he knows it, but he’s extremely stubborn – and he wants his money back.

From here the author really piles on the complications, packing several competing groups of mobsters, stolen gems that were looted during World War II, numerous murders, boxers, and actors into not much more than 40,000 words, if that. The headlong pace of this book is its real strength, along with the occasional good line and some vividly sordid descriptions of various lowlifes and their environment.

Don’t mistake this for some sort of lost classic, though. It’s not. The writing, for the most part, is too unpolished and awkward for that. As far as I’ve been able to determine, Ross Laurence wrote only this one book. I wondered at first if the name was a pseudonym for an author better known under some other byline, but I don’t think so. THE FAST BUCK really reads like a first novel, with flashes of real talent struggling to get out through the amateurish writing. If anyone knows more about the author, I’d be really interested to hear it. I wouldn’t rush out to find a copy of this book, but if you run across it, it’s worth reading for the unrealized potential you can see in the author, if for no other reason.

(Reaching all the way back to September 26, 2008, when this post first appeared in a somewhat different form. It doesn't seem like it's been nearly 17 years since I read that book.)

49 Years Ago Today

Review: The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Volume Five - Will Murray

Will Murray is back with the fifth volume of stories in his series The Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. While I consider myself a Holmes fan and have been for more than 60 years, there is such a vast amount of Holmes pastiche out there that I really haven’t explored the field that much. I never miss these collections by Will Murray, though. They always ring true to the characters and never let me down.

As Murray mentions in his foreword, this volume collects ten of the more traditional Holmes stories he’s written, without any overtly supernatural aspects or crossover appearances from other classic characters. These are straightforward mystery yarns done in grand style. Holmes (with Dr. Watson’s assistance, of course) tackles the intriguing problem of a suit of armor that seems to walk around on its own without any inhabitant, clashes with a new rival who sets himself up as the anti-Holmes and advises criminals on how to get away with their crimes, and deals with a threat from a couple of past cases. He solves several medical mysteries, one of which threatens his own life, and battles with a phantom that haunts the fog-shrouded London streets. Dr. Watson acquits himself well in these cases and proves quite helpful to Holmes more than once.

These are just wonderfully entertaining stories, and I think any Sherlock Holmes fan will enjoy them. This may or may not be the final volume in the Wild Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series. Murray has a few more unreprinted Holmes stories but would have to write more to fill out another volume. I can’t help but hope that he does so. In the meantime, this volume is available on Amazon in e-book and trade paperback editions, and I give it a high recommendation. 

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Man From Nevada (1929)

THE MAN FROM NEVADA is another silent Western starring Tom Tyler that was released in 1929, right after THE LAW OF THE PLAINS, which I wrote about last week. Both of those movies are included on a new DVD and Blu-ray release from Undercrank Productions.

Several members of the cast are the same in this one, as are the director (J.P. McGowan), the screenwriter (Sally Winters), and the cinematographer (Hap Depew). I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they shot THE LAW OF THE PLAINS one week and THE MAN FROM NEVADA the next week. Tom Tyler plays rancher Jack Carter, whose neighbor is a rather shiftless sodbuster with a beautiful daughter (Natalie Joyce) and three sons, two of whom are scrappy adolescents and the other is a toddler. An evil cattle baron played by Al Ferguson has his eye on the sodbuster’s ranch and plans to get his hands on it in a swindle assisted by his crooked land recorder brother. Stalwart Tom Tyler is having none of that, of course, so the villain and his henchmen (one of them played by legendary stuntman and stunt coordinator Cliff Lyons) frame him for rustling and try to get the sheriff to arrest him. Chases, fistfights, and shootings ensue.

McGowan, who also had an acting role in the previous film, stays behind the camera this time and keeps things charging along in very fine fashion. There’s an excellent stunt early on where Tyler’s character stops a runaway wagon carrying the helpless toddler, and while I couldn’t be absolutely certain, I think he performed it himself. The script stretches credibility every now and then but has some fine dramatic moments and a very satisfying showdown at the end. Tyler has a natural screen presence that allows him to dominate every scene he’s in, and an actor I’m not familiar with, Bill Nolte, does a fine job as the comedy relief sidekick, as he does in the previous film.

This is another fine restoration job from Undercrank Productions with a top-notch new score from Ben Model. Depew’s photography looks great. At one point, I believe THE MAN FROM NEVADA was considered a lost film. I’m glad they found and restored it, because I really enjoyed it. The same outfit has done a set of two silent Tom Mix Westerns. I’ve ordered it from Amazon and look forward to watching them.

Review: Misfit Lil Hides Out - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

Misfit Lil returns in MISFIT LIL HIDES OUT, the fourth book in the excellent series by Chap O’Keefe (Keith Chapman). This one was published originally in hardback by Robert Hale in 2008, reprinted in large print by Ulverscroft in 2009, and now available in e-book and trade paperback editions. I always enjoy a visit with Misfit Lil, and this novel certainly lives up to expectations.

It begins on a rather grim note as a war party of renegade Apaches who have jumped the reservation massacre some settlers. Misfit Lil witnesses this atrocity and is able to help one of the potential victims, the wife of a soldier at the nearby fort, escape with her life.

This trouble brings a couple of obnoxious cavalry officers from back east to the fort. They’re there to take charge of the effort to round up the renegades, but instead, they quickly make enemies of some of the locals, including Lil. When one of them winds up dead, she’s blamed for the murder and has to take off for the badlands with both a sheriff’s posse and the cavalry in pursuit. Lil has to deal not only with those threats but also the Apaches, who are still on the loose and looking for more victims.

Chapman weaves these plot strands together with expert skill, leading to a final showdown that verges on the apocalyptic in its intense action. This is a great scene that also reveals a few surprising twists.

As a bonus, Chapman includes an article about female protagonists in Western fiction. Altogether, it makes for a very entertaining package and another outstanding adventure for the Princess of Pistoleers. If you’re a fan of traditional Westerns with a slightly gritty edge, you need to make the acquaintance of Miss Lilian Goodnight.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, December 10, 1943

This issue of SHORT STORIES is a bit of an oddity in that the cover by A.R. Tilburne doesn't feature a red sun, although there is a blob of red just above the muzzle of that nice-looking 1911. I like the cover quite a bit, even without a red sun. The line-up of authors inside this issue is really strong: H. Bedford-Jones, E. Hoffmann Price, Frank Richardson Pierce, James B. Hendryx, H.S.M. Kemp, and lesser-known Berton F. Cook and Harry Bridge. Hard to go wrong with any issue that includes HB-J, Price, Pierce, and Hendryx.

UPDATE: Yes, I suppose that could be the sun on the left, partially obscured by the foliage, but I didn't take that darker area to be a leaf. I think maybe Tilburne should have made that a little clearer. On the other hand, maybe if I was holding the actual pulp in my hands, it would be obvious. I don't mind admitting when I've missed something. I figured adding this mea culpa might be better than rewriting the whole post.
 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: All Western Magazine, November 1933

This is a pulp that I own. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover painting is by R. Farrington Elwell, and the Table of Contents lists its name as “Last Stand”. Elwell did a number of covers for ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE, and they’re pretty good. I read some of the stories in this one, but not all of them.

This issue leads off with the first installment of a serial by Walt Coburn, “Feud Valley”. Coburn is one of my favorite Western authors, but I happen to own a copy of the novel FEUD VALLEY and I intend to read it one of these days, so I skipped this part.

Next up is a story by J.E. Grinstead, another authentic cowboy author who is becoming one of my favorites, too. This one has the odd title “Pudd’n’ Foots”. It’s about a drifting cowpoke with big feet and seemingly no talent for ranch work at all. When he signs on with a new spread, he’s the object of ridicule by most of the crew, although two of the men do take a liking to him. That doesn’t stop them from poking fun at him, too, though. I wasn’t sure about this one—you know I’m not generally a fan of comedy Westerns and that sure seemed to be where this yarn was heading. But then part of the way through it takes a sharp turn into dark territory and follows that up with some dramatic, very well-done action. Funny name or not, I wound up really enjoying “Pudd’n’ Foots” and need to read more by Grinstead.

I tend to dislike animal stories even more than comedy Westerns, so “The Big Bull of Five Rivers” by George Cory Franklin, which has its protagonist an elk, wasn’t really to my taste. I wound up skimming this one.

I feel kind of bad about it, but “Shanty Loses a Battle” by Norrell Gregory suffered the same fate. This lighthearted story is about a couple of cowboys trying to raise money so that an old ranch woman can build a new house. I had so much trouble working up much interest in it that I wound up losing track of the plot. This is another one that’s just not for me.

I’m just not having much luck with Western pulps these days, am I? But next up in this one is “Muzzle Flame”, a novelette by the usually dependable J. Allan Dunn. No comedy here, as it starts out (consider yourself warned) with some brutal action, including the range hog villain callously killing a dog. With my soft spot for dogs, I almost said, “Nope, that’s it”, but I kept reading. The fight is over water rights in this one, and Dunn manipulates the plot in really expert fashion, heaping up trouble on his protagonist until you wonder how the poor guy is ever going to get out of it, but at the same time having things proceed in a logical, believable way. And the action scenes are top-notch. I wish the bad guy had missed the dog and sent it scurrying off howling, but other than that, this is a really, really good story.

Finally, we have “Picketwire Drills a Well”, one in a series of tall tales narrated by a cowboy known as Picketwire Pete. Pete has developed a breed of giant cattle, you see, big enough to knock a railroad car off the tracks by rubbing against it, and finding water for his herd of giant cattle is a problem because they can drink a river dry in a matter of minutes . . . If you’re thinking this sounds like a Pecos Bill yarn, you’re right. I don’t know if those folk tales had any influence on author J.W. Triplett, but it certainly seems like they might have. This is another one where I didn’t make it to the end.

Even though I’ve complained about some of the stories, this issue is still a vast improvement over that issue of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN I read last week. I’m confident that the Coburn serial is good, and the stories by Grinstead and Dunn are both very good. Even the stories I didn’t like and didn’t finish seem to be competently written and other readers might enjoy them a lot more than I did. They’re just not the sort of yarns that resonate with me. If you happen to have this issue of ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE, don’t hesitate to give it a try. I’m glad I read what I did out of it.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Tavern - Orrie Hitt

THE TAVERN was published in 1966, very late in Orrie Hitt's career. It also has some personal meaning to me, because I had a copy of this one before the fire but never got around to reading it. It may have been the only Orrie Hitt novel I owned at that time. I might have had one more, but I can’t remember for sure. For some reason, copies of his books just never showed up in the used bookstores around here.

This one revisits many of Hitt’s usual themes but also has some interesting differences. The protagonist is Hal Mason, a young man just out of high school who goes to work as a bartender at Mike’s Place, a rundown tavern just over the county line from the county where Hal and his friends live. You see, the drinking age in the county where Hal lives is 21, while in the next county, where Mike’s is located, it’s 18. So naturally, all the kids go across the line to Mike’s to get drunk. As usual in a Hitt novel, that’s not the only line they cross.

Hal’s youth and relative inexperience set him apart from most of Hitt’s protagonists, but he’s still worldly enough to be juggling the standard three women: Wanda, the good girl (one of many Wandas in Hitt novels); Gert, the slut with a good heart; and Tina, the stripper who’s married to Mike, the owner of the tavern. Of the three, Hal falls hardest for Tina, who is, of course, exactly the one he shouldn’t get involved with. Eventually, blackmail and murder rear their ugly heads.

Hitt has done all this many times before in his books, but the character of Hal makes THE TAVERN an interesting novel. He considers himself a heel-in-training, so to speak, but despite a few slips, he’s such a decent kid at heart that this book might almost be titled ANDY HARDY GETS LAID. Which brings up another point: other than the blonde’s outfit on the cover and the fact that Hal drives a Renault, there’s no sense that this book is set in the Swinging Sixties. It might as well take place in the Forties or Fifties, which gives it a certain nostalgic charm.

Other than an ending that seems a little rushed, as if Hitt realized he’d made his word count, THE TAVERN is a pretty good book, very readable and fast-paced. At this point, Hitt didn’t have many books left in him – his final novel was published in 1967 – and he seems to have mellowed slightly, but this novel still has plenty of drive to it. If you run across a copy, I recommend that you grab it. THE TAVERN is well worth reading, and I’m glad I replaced the copy I lost and finally read it.

(It doesn't seem like I've been reading Orrie Hitt novels for more than 15 years, but there's indisputable proof of that since this post first appeared in a somewhat different form on August 12, 2010. It's pretty clear that I'd been a Hitt fan for a while when it appeared, too. The photo below appeared the next day, August 13, 2010, with a link to a newspaper article about Hitt that doesn't seem to be available anymore. I love the picture, though. I look at it, and I just can't help liking the guy. It's time to read something else by him. THE TAVERN isn't currently in print, but plenty of his other novels are.)

Review: Crown Vic - Lee Goldberg

I’m not sure how this book slipped past me when Lee Goldberg published it a couple of years ago, but I’ve seen several mentions of it and its sequel recently and figured it was time for me to read it. CROWN VIC is a collection of two novellas featuring Ray Boyd, an ex-con and former professional car thief who drifts around in a black-and-white Crown Victoria that was once a police car, not looking for trouble, mind you, but usually finding it anyway.

The first novella is called “Ray Boyd Isn’t Stupid”, and he proves that when he takes a job as a handyman at a lakeside resort and winds up involved with the beautiful but amoral wife of the place’s middle-aged owner. It seems he treats her badly and has a lot of money stashed, and things would be so much better if Ray would just get rid of the guy for her . . .

This is, of course, the plot of countless 1950s noir novels published by Gold Medal, Dell, Avon, etc. But unlike the protagonists of those books, Ray isn’t stupid and turns the whole thing on its head—or at least he tries to. But Goldberg is pretty tricky with the plot of this one, springing twist after twist. It’s very well-written and very, very entertaining.

The second novella, “Occasional Risk”, finds Ray stopping for a few days at a rundown motel in Arizona. Every reader of noir novels knows that nothing good ever happens at rundown motels, especially when a beautiful blonde with trouble dogging her heels checks in. Goldberg draws some pretty specific comparisons between Ray and Jack Reacher in this one, and the comments are not only accurate but also pretty funny. The plot doesn’t have quite as many twists but still carries the reader along in fine fashion.

I read both of these novellas in one sitting each, which is pretty unusual for me these days. That’s how good they are. Ray may not be the most admirable character around, but he does make for compelling reading. This one, which is available on Amazon in e-book, audiobook, and paperback editions, gets a high recommendation. There’s a sequel out already and I’m looking forward to reading it.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Law of the Plains (1929)

I’m familiar with Tom Tyler mostly as the hero of the CAPTAIN MARVEL and THE PHANTOM movie serials, plus a few Three Mesquiteers entries playing Stony Brooke, and assorted parts as villains and supporting characters. I wasn’t aware that he starred in dozens of silent Westerns during the Twenties. Undercrank Productions has just released a couple of them on a DVD and Blu-ray collection, THE LAW OF THE PLAINS (1929) and THE MAN FROM NEVADA (also 1929). I recently watched THE LAW OF THE PLAINS.

As this one opens, Tyler plays Dan O’Brien, formerly an American Marine who has settled down and owns a ranch in an unnamed South American country, where he lives with his young son Dan Jr. A couple of renegade Americans take advantage of the chaos caused by a revolution to steal the ranch and kill O’Brien, who dies in his son’s arms.

Years later, Dan Jr. (also played by Tom Tyler) has grown into a stalwart cowboy who continues to work on ranches in South America. A trail drive brings him back to the ranch where he grew up, which is still being operated by the two villains who stole it. Dan arrives in time to save the beautiful niece of one of the villainous partners, who’s about to be married off to the other bad guy. Recognizing Dan as the son of the man they murdered in order to get their hands on the ranch, the varmints set out to get rid of him. All this plays out just like a traditional Western. There’s only an occasional indication that it takes place in South America.

I think silent Westerns are great fun and I always enjoy watching them. THE LAW OF THE PLAINS is definitely a cut above average. The restoration done by Undercrank Productions from a copy held by the Library of Congress is just superb. The film looks great, very close to what it must have looked like when it was brand-new. There’s a reel missing in the middle, but a couple of title cards fill in what happened, so the story carries on without any trouble following it. The accompanying musical score is a new one, not the original, composed and performed by Ben Model, and it’s excellent as well and really fits what’s happening on the screen.

Tom Tyler does a good job as the hero, doesn’t overact, and looks great as a cowboy. Natalie Joyce is the girl and I wasn’t as fond of her, but to be fair, she really doesn’t have much to do other than be menaced by the bad guys. And speaking of the bad guys, one of them is played by J.P. McGowan, who also produced and directed the film, and he does a great job as a character described in a title card as “depraved in mind and body”. Sure, he’s a little over the top, but it seems like he’s having a fine time being evil, and that’s contagious. Al Ferguson is the other main villain, and the great stuntman Cliff Lyons plays a henchman and coordinates all the stunt work.

Many of the same people worked on the other film in this set, THE MAN FROM NEVADA, so I’m looking forward to watching it. If it’s as much fun as THE LAW OF THE PLAINS, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.

Review: Man Chase - Joseph Chadwick

Dave Macklin is a man with plenty of trouble on his hands. He’s the president of a small electronics company that needs to expand but can’t get a bank loan in order to do so. The company is also the target of a hostile takeover by a larger rival outfit eager to gobble it up and take advantage of some vital research done by Dave’s scientist partner. On a personal level, Dave’s wife is an alcoholic who has just gotten back from rehab, swearing that she’s cured, but is she really? Then there’s the beautiful redheaded receptionist at the plant who has her eye on Dave, not to mention the equally gorgeous owner of the rival company who inherited it from her late husband. Yeah, between business problems and beautiful babes, Dave’s got quite a juggling act going on.

That’s the set-up of MAN CHASE, a 1961 novel by Joseph Chadwick, who happens to be one of my favorite hardboiled Western authors. Published originally in paperback by Beacon Books, this novel has been reprinted in e-book and paperback editions by Cutting Edge Books. I guess you could call it a hardboiled corporate soap opera. Although there’s a private detective and some blackmail, it’s not really a crime novel. But it’s very fast-paced and well plotted as Chadwick manipulates the business and personal elements to pile a whole heap of trouble on Dave Macklin’s head.

This would have made a good early Sixties movie with, say, Jeff Chandler as Dave, Dorothy Malone as the rival business owner, and Ann-Margret as the sultry receptionist. For a novel published by Beacon, there’s not much sex, only a couple of scenes and they’re pretty restrained. It would have been easy enough to fade out before things got too risque.

I really enjoyed MAN CHASE. Dave is a good protagonist. He can be kind of a jerk at times but isn’t really a heel, just a decent guy at heart with a lot to deal with. The plot takes a slightly unexpected turn here and there, always a good thing, and works its way to a satisfactory conclusion. Chadwick was better as a Western writer, but he was a solid pro who could turn out a book like this, too, and do an excellent job of it. He wrote at least one other book for Beacon under his own name and several under the pseudonym Jim Layne. I may have to see if I can get my hands on some of them.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Spicy Detective Stories, November 1936

I don’t own this pulp, but I recently read a PDF of it downloaded from the Internet Archive. The cover is by Delos Palmer.

Evidently Alan Anderson was a real guy. There’s no indication in the Fictionmags Index that it’s a house-name. He’s the author of the first story in this issue, “The Woman in Yellow”, which is about an American spy trying to retrieve an envelope full of vital military plans from a beautiful brunette while they travel on the Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul. Our protagonist has a partner in this assignment, a beautiful blonde who’s a nightclub dancer in addition to being a spy. Naturally, seeing as this is a Spicy Pulp, both gals manage to lose some of their clothes during the course of the story. The plot is pretty interesting, with a semi-clever twist at the end, but the writing isn’t very good. It’s choppy and hard to follow in places. Not a bad effort, but not a particularly good one, either.

“Killer’s Price” is the first of three stories in this issue by my old buddy Edwin Truett Long. I refer to him as my buddy because I’m starting to feel a real kinship with the guy despite the fact that he died eight years before I was born. But he lived in the North Texas area for a good part of his life, including some time in Fort Worth. He wrote fast, in a variety of genres, and I can see myself having the same sort of career if I’d been born earlier. “Killer’s Price” is bylined Mort Lansing, one of Long’s regular pseudonyms, and it’s part of his series about private detective Mike Cockrell. As the story opens, Mike is on vacation in a coastal city pretty clearly modeled after Corpus Christi when he gets involved in the kidnapping of a millionaire’s daughter. There are a couple of other beautiful blondes mixed up in the deal, along with a villainous bartender and a gang boss. Mike is kept hopping as he tries to straighten out this mess. The story is plotted pretty loosely, but the action races along at breakneck speed and the banter is good. This one is a considerable step up from Anderson’s story.

Next up is a story by that stalwart of the Spicy Pulps, Robert Leslie Bellem, and it features his iconic private detective character Dan Turner. In “Murder for Metrovox”, a beautiful movie star takes a high dive from a high rise and winds up not so beautiful. Was her death suicide—or murder? At the same time, Dan is already mixed up in the case of a missing starlet, and there’s a beautiful stag movie actress involved as well. Naturally, Dan sorts everything out, but not before coming up with good excuses for the still-living babes to take their clothes off, and he manages to guzzle down a bottle of Vat 69 while he’s at it, too. Dan was one of the original multi-taskers. As usual with Bellem’s work, this is a well-plotted, if slightly predictable, yarn. The wackiness seems toned down a little, but it’s great fun to read anyway. I’ve never read a bad Dan Turner story.

“Traitor’s Gold” is by Hamlin Daly, which was a pseudonym for E. Hoffmann Price. Price wrote a lot for the Spicy Pulps under his own name, but Hamlin Daly shows up quite a bit, too. “Traitor’s Gold” is a nighttime romp through a spooky old mansion in the Hudson Valley that’s supposed to be haunted by the ghost of the murdered millionaire who owned it. He had a beautiful daughter, too, and our detective protagonist is in love with her and determined to trap the ghost who’s causing trouble. This isn’t top of the line work from Price, but it moves right along and has a decent plot. I liked it without being overly impressed by it.

The next story in this issue is another of Edwin Truett Long’s contributions, this time writing under the name Cary Moran. “Murder in Music” features sheriff’s department investigator Jarnegan, who only investigates murders. I read this one several years ago in a Black Dog Books chapbook that reprinted several of the Jarnegan stories, and here’s what I said about it then: “Murder in Music” finds Jarnegan investigating the death of a drummer from a jazz band visiting the city. It appears that the man was frightened to death by voodoo. But all is not as it appears, of course, and another band member soon turns up dead, giving Jarnegan two murders to solve.

Harley Tate and Diana Ware are partners in a private detective agency, and in “The Taveta Necklace”, they’re hired to keep a fabulously valuable necklace from being stolen during a high society party. Naturally, trouble ensues, including several murders, in this fast-paced, entertaining yarn that’s credited to George Sanders. In fact, it’s the only piece of fiction credited to Sanders in the Fictionmags Index, and there was one other Harley Tate/Diana Ware yarn published under the name Alan Anderson, so I think it’s pretty safe to say that this George Sanders was a pseudonym. Did Alan Anderson write this one, too? Now that I don’t know. I liked it considerably better and thought it was better written than Anderson’s “The Woman in Yellow”, elsewhere in this issue. This will probably have to go down as another unsolved mystery of the Spicy Pulps, though.

“Death on the Half Shell” is the third Edwin Truett Long story in this issue. It’s part of the Johnny Harding series, which, haphazardly enough, was published under three different pseudonyms during its run: Cary Moran, Mort Lansing, and Carl Moore, the byline on this particular story. Johnny Harding is a feisty little gossip columnist who frequently stumbles over dead bodies. He’s the protagonist of Long’s novel KILLER’S CARESS, which was published under the Cary Moran name. In this story, he's digging for information about a lottery that appears to be a swindle, when a beautiful informant winds up dead after consuming a poisoned lobster. More murders take place as the story gallops through a night of action. I enjoyed KILLER’S CARESS, and I like this story a lot, too. They could have made a good B-movie series about Johnny Harding starring, say, Jimmy Cagney, although Cagney was too big a star by then. But he’d fit the character perfectly.

Robert A. Garron was really Howard Wandrei, so it’s not surprising that his story “The 15th Pocket” is one of the best-written stories in this issue. A police detective investigates the murder of a wealthy lingerie manufacturer whose body is found in the back seat of an empty cab stalled in traffic. The Spicy Pulps are probably the only place you’d find a character who’s a lingerie tycoon! This isn’t a particularly complicated yarn, but the plot holds together all right and it moves right along with smooth prose. Wandrei’s stories are always good.

With stories by Bellem, Price, Long, and Wandrei, you’d expect this issue of SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES to be a good one, and so it is. I really enjoyed it. Sure, the stories are a little formulaic, but so is most fiction, not just pulp. Space them out a little and they read just fine. If you’ve never read a Spicy Pulp, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Double Action Western, September 1945

This is a pulp that I own and read recently (sort of—more on that below). That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by A. Leslie Ross. I would have known that even if Ross hadn’t been credited on the Table of Contents. That’s a Ross hat! I always like his covers on pulps and paperbacks, and this one is no exception. I think it’s fine.

The lead novella, “Lone-Wolf Foreman”, is bylined Mat Rand, and it really is almost long enough to be considered an actual novel. Mat Rand was a house-name used frequently in Columbia Publications pulps, and the author of this one hasn’t been identified. It has some decent plot elements: a big ranch owned by a beautiful young woman, a villainous foreman who can’t be trusted, a stalwart mining engineer, a fabulously valuable mine that’s actually a swindle (or is it?), and a colorful old codger. Unfortunately, the writing is just terrible. We get page after page of repetitive dialogue that serves no real purpose except to fill up pages, a few clunky action scenes, and narrative that has to be reread to try to figure out what’s going on. I stuck with this one for the first half of the story hoping it would get better, but it never did and I skimmed the rest, reading the last four or five pages to get some sense of closure. But all that got me was one of the limpest, least dramatic endings I’ve ever read. I worry sometimes that I’m too easy on the pulps I read and like them just because they’re old, but then I run across a yarn like this and realize that bad is bad, no matter when it was published, and I can still recognize that. This is maybe the worst Western pulp story I’ve ever read.

“Lone-Wolf Foreman” is long enough that there are only two short stories backing it up, and they had nowhere to go but up. “Satan’s Bullet Trio” by Charles D. Richardson Jr. is about three outlaws who pretend to be lawmen in order to rob a money shipment from a bank. Not surprisingly, the scheme doesn’t work out exactly how they expect it to. This is a pretty well-written story, but a couple of plot twists stretch credibility a little too far.

“Candidate for Boothill” by T.W. Ford wraps up the issue, and it’s by far the best of the three. In this story, an easy-going young cowboy gets on the bad side of an arrogant rancher and winds up being framed for a stagecoach holdup and shooting a marshal. The action takes place in one frantic, breakneck night as the protagonist tries to escape the posse that’s after him and clear his name. Ford was a pretty consistent writer and a good storyteller, and while this yarn is really nothing special, I found it pretty entertaining.

So, is this the worst Western pulp I’ve ever read? Given the length of the Mat Rand story and how bad it is, I’d have to say that’s right. If you happen to have a copy, I’d advise admiring the A. Leslie Ross cover, reading the T.W. Ford story, and then putting it back on the shelf. They can’t all be winners.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Ringmaster of Doom - Brant House (G.T. Fleming-Roberts) (Secret Agent X, November 1935)

When you saw the title RINGMASTER OF DOOM and the by-line Brant House, you probably thought, “Hey, a Secret Agent X novel about the circus!” I know that’s the first thing that went through my mind. Well, as it turns out, this is a Secret Agent X novel, all right, from the November 1935 issue of the pulp magazine of the same name, but there’s no sign of a circus. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good pulp yarn.

This one finds New York City being terrorized by a series of robberies and kidnappings being carried out by brutal, misshapen fiends who look like Neanderthal men. (And speaking of Neanderthals terrorizing modern-day America, I believe there’s a Spider novel by Norvell Page that features the same sort of menace.) Naturally, Secret Agent X has to investigate, and he starts at a fabulous society party being hosted by one of the rich men targeted for kidnapping. While he’s there he has his first violent encounter with one of the beast-men and also runs into a beautiful, redheaded, evil female spy he first crossed swords with during the Great War. From there it’s one breathless adventure after another as the Agent battles the schemes of the mysterious mastermind who calls himself Thoth, after the Egyptian god of the dead, and even wears an ibis-headed mask to make himself look like Thoth.

You know by now whether or not you love this stuff or think it’s just about the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard of. And you know which camp I fall into. You’ve got your Neanderthals serving as henchmen for a criminal genius. You’ve got said criminal genius lashing his prisoners with an electric whip. You’ve got Secret Agent X escaping death-trap after death-trap by the skin of his teeth. And finally you’ve got a battle royal in a network of abandoned sewers along the East River that’s being flooded. There’s not much time to take a breath in this one, and that’s good, of course, because it is wildly, unabashedly, and wonderfully goofy.

But no circus. That setting was a staple of pulp yarns. I don’t know if any of the Secret Agent X novels takes place in a circus, but it would have been a good setting for the Agent to have an adventure. As it is, RINGMASTER OF DOOM is a lot of fun.

(This post originally appeared on August 6, 2010. Since then, this novel has been reprinted in Volume 5 of SECRET AGENT "X": THE COMPLETE SERIES, published by Altus Press. It's still available in a handsome trade paperback edition from Amazon.)

Review: The Joy Wheel - Paul W. Fairman

Eddie Kiley is just a normal 16-year-old guy growing up in Chicago in 1926. His dad is a salesman, his mom is a housewife, and he has an older sister he squabbles with. One of his uncles is a cop, and another is a drunk. He spends his time going to school, hanging around with his friends (some of whom are his cousins), and thinking about girls, especially the beautiful but unattainable Mimi Taylor.

Eddie is the narrator/protagonist of THE JOY WHEEL, a 1954 novel by Paul W. Fairman published originally by Lion Books and just reprinted by Black Gat Books. The story follows Eddie for a year or so as he learns about life, falls in with shady company, wrestles with his conscience, uncovers family secrets and tragedies, and generally just grows up. There’s plenty of crime in this book, as Eddie gets a job working around bookies and gangsters and even inadvertently witnesses a murder, but it’s not really a crime novel. Likewise, although Eddie’s relationships with several different young women are very important, it’s neither a romance novel or a softcore novel.

Instead, THE JOY WHEEL is a coming-of-age novel that’s a little on the gritty side, and I think it’s a great one. Paul W. Fairman is best remembered for his work as an author and editor in the science fiction field—and his reputation there is a little mediocre, to be honest—but he was also a journeyman writer who turned out mysteries, Westerns, movie novelizations, and TV tie-in novels. I haven’t read a great deal by him, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read and consider his SF to be pretty good.

But THE JOY WHEEL is so good it took me very much by surprise. The characters are great, Eddie’s narrative voice is fun to read, and Fairman really had me turning the pages to find out what was going to happen. I wish he had written more novels like this.

Maybe he did. I have a couple of his mysteries and one Western but haven’t gotten around to reading them yet. Very late in his career, Fairman also wrote two historical romance novels under the name Paula Fairman (although you won’t find any mention of that on-line, for some reason), then died while writing a third one which a friend of mine finished and then continued ghosting as Paula Fairman for twenty or so more books. I have the two that Paul Fairman wrote and hope I get around to reading them, and more by him, one of these days. Meanwhile, I give THE JOY WHEEL a high recommendation. You can get it on Amazon in paperback and e-book editions.