Review: Men's Adventure Quarterly #12: The Private Eyes Issue - Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham, eds.

I’ve been a fan of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY since it began, and it’s a real pleasure and honor to have an article in the latest issue, #12, The Private Eyes Issue. My contribution is about detectives in Western fiction, and I hope it’s both entertaining and informative, but I’m here today to talk about the rest of the contents. Which, of course, are absolutely top-notch, as I’ve come to expect from editors Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham.

For starters, there are stories from two of my favorite authors featuring two of my favorite fictional private eyes: Michael Avallone and his iconic character Ed Noon, and Frank Kane and his equally legendary private eye Johnny Liddell. The Avallone story is “Make Out Mob Girl”, a Book Bonus condensation of the first Ed Noon novel THE TALL DOLORES, from the October 1962 issue of MAN'S WORLD. David Spencer, author of THE NOVELIZERS, provides a fine introduction to Avallone and his career, and Mike's son David Avallone contributes a touching essay about his dad. As a long time fan of Mike Avallone and his work, I'm really glad I got be his friend-by-correspondence for many years. 

Frank Kane’s “Party Girl” (KEN FOR MEN, May 1957) is a retitled reprint of the story “Frame” from the August 1954 issue of MANHUNT, the great crime fiction digest. This story was also reprinted in the paperback collection JOHNNY LIDDELL’S MORGUE from Dell. Both are really strong stories, and if you’ve never read any Ed Noon or Johnny Liddell stories or novels, this would be a fine place to start.

But of course there’s more. Honey West is probably the most famous fictional female private eye, and this issue includes the only Honey West short story, “The Red Hairing” by G.G. Fickling, actually the husband and wife writing team Forrest (“Skip”) and Gloria Fickling. This one appeared originally in the June 1965 issue of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE. In addition, there’s an article about the TV series HONEY WEST featuring numerous photos of its beautiful star, Anne Francis. I was a fan of the show when it aired originally in the Sixties and am always happy to revisit it.

Walter Kaylin, one of the best authors who wrote for the men’s adventure magazine, contributes “I Had to Amputate My Leg to Save My Life!”, the tale of a private detective trapped by a mad killer, and it’s every bit as harrowing and gruesome as the title makes it sound. It’s also lightning-fast, compelling reading. Kaylin was a master, and this story is a good example of his work.

A story from a short-lived men’s adventure magazine actually called PRIVATE EYE features detective Adam Baxter in “Sing a Song of Sex-Mail”. It’s an entertaining yarn written in a fast-moving, breezy style. The story was published anonymously and I have no idea who wrote it, but I had fun reading it.

There’s also a non-fiction reprint from Alan Hynd called “The Case of the Murdering Detective” (CAVALIER, September 1956) about a real-life murder case from 1910 and the clever detective who solves it. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not much of a fan of true crime stories, but Hynd does a fine job with this one and kept me flipping the pages to find out what was going to happen.

New articles in this issue include the one by me on Western detectives that I mentioned above, a look at some of the latest Sherlock Holmes pastiches, both literary and TV, from Holmes scholar and fan Paul Bishop, and film critic John Harrison on detectives in science fiction films. Plus a feature on early Sixties TV series 77 SUNSET STRIP and HAWAIAN EYE, both of which were favorites of mine, especially 77 SUNSET STRIP. I never missed an episode back in those days. If you're the right age, you can hear the show's theme song in your head right now, can't you? I miss the Sixties just thinking about all this stuff!

I know I’ve said it before, but this is the best issue yet of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY. You can find it on Amazon, and I give it my highest recommendation.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Yaqui Drums (1956)

My dad was a fan of Rod Cameron’s Western movies, and we watched quite a few of them together on TV. I’m pretty sure, though, that I never saw or even heard of 1956’s YAQUI DRUMS. So when it aired recently on Grit, I made sure to watch it.

Cameron plays Webb Dunham, a drifter who rides into southern Arizona to take over the ranch that belonged to his late brother, who was murdered by the local range hog Matt Quigg, played by Roy Roberts. Along the way, Dunham happens to save the life of a Mexican bandit known as Yaqui Jack. Yaqui Jack is played by J. Carrol Naish at his scenery-chewing, Alfonso Bedoya-channeling best. Although he’s an outlaw, Jack pledges his loyalty and assistance to Dunham, so you know that sooner or later the two of them will team up against the evil cattle baron. The situation is complicated by a beautiful saloon singer who is Dunham’s old flame but is now engaged to Quigg’s son. On top of all this, we get Yaqui Jack trying to stage a revolution against the Mexican government with only a single Gatling gun and some Yaqui Indian followers.

This movie packs quite a bit into a running time just over an hour. It’s based on a story by old pulpster and paperbacker Paul Leslie Peil, but I don’t know if the source material was a pulp story, a novel, or a story that Peil wrote directly for Hollywood. It certainly plays like a novella from a late Forties/early Fifties Western pulp, though, which means I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Cameron was getting pretty beefy by this point in his career but still had an impressive screen presence. Roy Roberts was always a good villain. And Naish is a hoot, one of the main reasons to watch this movie.

YAQUI DRUMS was made pretty cheaply, though, and it shows. There are a few good fistfights along the way, but the big epic battle at the end consists of half a dozen of Jack’s Yaqui followers shooting at some Mexican Rurales from inside the courtyard of a hacienda. Since there are also half a dozen Rurales, and we never see the two groups at the same time, I strongly suspect that the same riding extras played both the Yaquis and the Rurales.

Despite it being made on a shoestring and having an ending that’s not as dramatic as it might have been, I enjoyed watching YAQUI DRUMS. I certainly think it’s worthwhile if you’re a Rod Cameron fan. And I think my dad would have liked it, too. At least I hope so.

Review: The Wicked Streets - Wenzell Brown

I first encountered the work of Wenzell Brown in THE SAINT MAGAZINE in the Sixties, where he published a few espionage novellas about a secret agent named Mike Stranger. I don’t remember a thing about them except that I thought the sex scenes in them were pretty graphic for a digest mystery magazine in that era—which I, as a teenage boy at the time, certainly appreciated. I had no idea back then that Brown had had a successful career as a paperbacker, specializing in true crime volumes and juvenile delinquent novels.

But even though I’ve been aware of Brown and his books for many, many years, I don’t believe I actually read any of them until now. THE WICKED STREETS was published originally by Gold Medal in 1958 with a cover by Barye Phillips and has been reprinted recently by the fine folks at Black Gat Books with a cover by Howell Dodd.

The protagonist of this novel, if you can call him that, is Buzz Baxter, a young man from a good family who is definitely not a good guy. He’s left his home for the seedier parts of New York City, where he works occasionally as a jazz musician. His main line of work, though, is pushing heroin, a gig he got by turning in another pusher to the cops. That pusher, psychopathic knife artist Frank Nucci, is out of jail a lot sooner than Buzz anticipated, and now Nucci has a grudge to settle. This grudge endangers Diane Griscom, a beautiful teenage society girl who is in love with Buzz. He leads her along, but he’s really planning to use her in some sort of scheme aimed at her wealthy father.

Then another girl winds up naked and dead in Buzz’s bed, as they have a habit of doing in novels like this, and all his plans start collapsing. Nucci committed the murder, of course, but unless Buzz can cover it up, the cops will pin the killing on him. Danger closes in on all sides, not only for Buzz but also for the innocent Diane.

Brown does a good job in structuring the plot of this novel in a clever manner that continually ratchets up the tension on these characters. The writing is excellent and does an especially good job of creating a nightmarish world spinning further and further out of control. New York City has never been sleazier or more garish and threatening.

THE WICKED STREETS is another top-notch reprint from Black Gat Books and has made me realize that I’m going to have to hunt up more books by Wenzell Brown. In the meantime, this one is available on Amazon in both e-book and paperback editions.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All Fiction Stories, June 1931

Frank McAleer's cover on this issue of ALL FICTION STORIES features a pith helmet, a Tommy gun, a spear, and a canteen. As far as props go, you can't get much more adventure pulp fiction than that! The lead story is by F.V.W. Mason, too, one of the giants of the genre. Also on hand are Harold F. Cruickshank, Jay J. Kalez, and lesser-known authors James Stevens, E.L. Marks, and Polan Banks. ALL FICTION STORIES was one of the Dell pulps, and while I haven't read much published by Dell, it was all good, and this one looks like it probably is, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Novel and Short Stories, July 1937

On this issue of WESTERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORIES, J.W. Scott gives us his version of the Iconic Trio: the Stalwart Cowboy, the Gun-totin' Redhead, and the Old Geezer. The Old Geezer is tied up instead of wounded, and the Redhead doesn't look particularly angry, but the Cowboy is definitely stalwart and wearing a red shirt, to boot. (Red shirts on Western pulp covers don't have the same meaning as red shirts on STAR TREK, by the way.) A fine bunch of writers can be found inside this issue, too: Eugene Cunningham, Harry Sinclair Drago, Larry A. Harris, Raymond S. Spears, and Ken Jason, a house-name but usually used by one of the top authors. I don't own this one, but it looks like a top-notch Western pulp that's probably well worth reading.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Spartan Gold - Clive Cussler and Grant Blackwood

Every so often I get in the mood for a big, globe-trotting thriller with a lot of historical background. SPARTAN GOLD, the first book in a new series by Clive Cussler and Grant Blackwood, fits the bill quite nicely.

Almost like a Harry Stephen Keeler novel, this one starts out with a lot of seemingly unconnected elements – Napolean making a startling discovery in an ice cave in 1800; a German mini-sub sunk for sixty years in a Delaware river; a Ukrainian gangster originally from Turkmenistan who believes himself to be a direct descendant of the ancient Persian emperor Xerxes the Great – and weaves them all together into a coherent story. The protagonists responsible for untangling all of this and staying alive through an assortment of dangers are husband-and-wife scientists and treasure hunters Sam and Remi Fargo.

If you’re thinking this sounds a little like a Gabriel Hunt novel, you’re not far wrong in some respects, that is, if Gabriel were married. Sam and Remi are even independently wealthy and have the Fargo Foundation to finance their adventures. SPARTAN GOLD is much longer than a Gabriel Hunt novel, though, and lacks the breakneck pace. Which is not to say that it doesn’t have considerable appeal of its own.

Whoever did the bulk of the writing in this book (I suspect Blackwood, although I should stress that I have absolutely no knowledge of whether that’s correct) does a good job of making Sam and Remi very likeable characters who are easy to root for. Likewise, the frequent infodumps are easy to follow and not obtrusive. The plot is complex but winds up making perfect sense, at least as far as I could tell. My biggest complaint is that the ending doesn’t quite reach the dramatic heights I would have preferred. Anybody who’s read very many of my books knows my motto: If you’re going over the top anyway, you might as well go ’way over.

I get bored easily with long books, but I didn’t have any trouble staying with SPARTAN GOLD. It’s worth reading, and I won’t hesitate to pick up the next one in the series when it comes out.

(Good intentions, road to hell, etc., etc. When this post originally appeared on May 18, 2010, I had every intention of reading the next Fargo novel from Clive Cussler and Grant Blackwood. But you guessed it, I never did. And when I looked it up, I was surprised to see that the series is still going on, with the 13th book due to be released next winter. Blackwood wrote a couple more after this, then Thomas Perry took over for two books, Russell Blake wrote two, and Robin Burcell has done all of them since then, including the one in the pipeline. I'm tempted to read the two that Thomas Perry wrote since I know his work is pretty good. But good intentions . . .)

Review: The Guns of Fort Griffin - James J. Griffin

For more than twenty years, James J. Griffin has been turning out top-notch traditional Western novels and contemporary Western thrillers, often featuring Texas Rangers. I’ve always enjoyed his books, so I didn’t hesitate to pick up his latest novel, the first in a new series. Instead of a Texas Ranger, THE GUNS OF FORT GRIFFIN features a new character, Deputy United States Marshal Vic Verdugo, who enforces the law in Texas during the late Reconstruction Era, just before the Rangers were reformed and became the premier law enforcement organization in the Lone Star State.

Verdugo is sent by his boss, a federal district judge, to the lawless frontier settlement of Fort Griffin with orders to tame the town. The U.S. Army is establishing a fort of the same name near the settlement, but Verdugo can’t expect any help from the commanding officer. In fact, the man wants to declare martial law and place the town under federal jurisdiction. With Reconstruction coming to an end, Verdugo wants to prevent the army from taking over, knowing that would just cause more trouble from the resentful Texans in the long run.

It’s a good thing that Verdugo is fast on the draw and skilled with his fists, because he finds himself surrounded by enemies as he tries to bring about law and order. The owners of the saloons and gambling dens and whorehouses all oppose him, of course, and so do the wild cowboys from the trail herds that travel through the area and the buffalo hunters who make Fort Griffin their headquarters. As if all that wasn’t enough, three newcomers show up in town and are looking for trouble. Their names: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Bat Masterson.

The action never lets up for long in this yarn, and Griffin does a fine job of making the fists and bullets fly. Vic Verdugo is a tough, likable protagonist and faces plenty of vicious enemies. There’s also a real sense of authenticity in the setting and historical characters. Griffin knows his stuff. I think this is one of his best novels and recommend it for fans of traditional Westerns. It’s available on Amazon from Dusty Saddle Publishing in e-book and paperback editions.

As an aside, Fort Griffin was a real place and it’s just a coincidence that the author has the same name. But the title, THE GUNS OF FORT GRIFFIN, isn’t really a coincidence because Jim Griffin is, like me, a long-time fan of the Western pulp TEXAS RANGERS. In fact, at one point he had a complete collection before donating it to the Texas Ranger Museum in Waco, Texas. And the November 1949 issue of TEXAS RANGERS features a Jim Hatfield novel by Tom Curry writing as Jackson Cole entitled (you guessed it) “Guns of Fort Griffin”. So now you know, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.

TV Series I've Missed Until Now: Detectorists (2014-2022)

I absolutely love this series.

With that succinct review out of the way, allow me to elaborate. DETECTORISTS is a British comedy TV series made between 2014 and 2022, consisting of three seasons of six episodes each plus two specials, for a total of twenty episodes. The protagonists are Lance (Toby Jones) and Andy (Mackenzie Crook), a pair of working class friends whose hobby is going out and searching in fields using metal detectors. They belong to a small club of fellow detectorists that often clashes with a rival group. The stories revolve around Lance and Andy’s efforts to find something worthwhile—Roman artifacts are the most highly prized, especially golden ones—along with their personal lives, including a few romances.

Doesn’t sound like much to build a TV series around, does it?

And yet DETECTORISTS is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Mackenzie Crook wrote and directed the entire series in addition to playing Andy. The scripts are superb. Most of the humor is of the gentle, whimsical type, but some of it is hilariously funny, especially if you have a hobby to which you’re devoted yourself. I mean, Lance being able to look at a button he’s unearthed and spout very detailed information about how old it is and where it was manufactured isn’t really that different from me looking at a vintage Western paperback and declaring that the cover art is by A. Leslie Ross because of the way the hats look.

You get invested in the characters in this series to the point that some of it is heartbreakingly poignant, too, and genuinely suspenseful. The characters are all fleshed out very well, and while most of them are eccentric, they’re never silly and are always believable, credit for which goes both to the writing and the fine performances by the cast, which includes the great Diana Rigg in one of her last roles as Andy’s mother-in-law.

It's safe to say that DETECTORISTS really resonated with me. I wish there were more seasons. Crook decided that it was time to end the series, though, and I have to respect that. The older I get, the more I seem to enjoy books, movies, and TV shows that have some warmth and humanity to them. DETECTORISTS really possesses those qualities. I give it my highest recommendation.

Review: Naked Curse: A Larry Kent Mystery - Don Haring

Larry Kent was the protagonist of an Australian radio crime drama in the early Fifties called I HATE CRIME. The character was an American reporter who moved to Australia and became a private eye. The show was successful enough that enterprising paperback publisher Cleveland decided to put out a line of Larry Kent novels. In those books, Larry was an American private detective operating out of New York City. “Larry Kent” was both the main character and the by-line. Nearly all of the 400 novels that followed were written either by Des R. Dunn or Don Haring, an American who had moved to Australia, just like the character. Several years ago, the fine folks at Piccadilly Publishing began doing e-book reprints of some of the Larry Kent novels by Don Haring, teaming up with Bold Venture Press for the paperback editions. I’d been intrigued by the series, so I tried one of the e-books, and to my surprise, I didn’t like it and stopped reading after a couple of chapters.

However, I had a strong hunch that the fault lay with me as much as it did with the book. I just wasn’t in the right mood for it. That happens sometimes. When it does, especially when it’s a series that I expected to like, I give it some time and then try another of the books. Which is how I came to read NAKED CURSE.

In this one, Larry gets three cases, one right after the other, in short order. He’s hired because a beautiful young female artist is being stalked by an ugly brute. Then another beautiful woman hires him because she’s being blackmailed. And finally, he’s hired by an invalid millionaire stockbroker to find the man’s missing son. Sure enough (and you don’t get any bonus points for seeing this coming), those three cases turn out to be connected.

And this is one of those books where very little is what it seems to be at first. As he carries out his investigation, Larry runs afoul of a gangster and his hulking henchman, meets another beautiful young woman who may or may not be trustworthy, stumbles across several corpses, and gets knocked out more than once. In other words, classic private eye novel stuff. There’s a late twist that raises the stakes even more before Larry straightens everything out and winds up romancing one of the gorgeous babes he’s run into in the course of the story.

I enjoyed NAKED CURSE and plan to read more of the Larry Kent books. The story is interesting and moves right along, and Larry is a pretty good protagonist, smart and tough enough to deal with the trouble he encounters but far from superhuman. Haring’s writing strikes me as a little flat and I wish he’d had a bit more of a distinctive voice, but the prose certainly isn’t bad. And I don’t want to sound like I’m damning with faint praise. If you’re a fan of private eye novels, NAKED CURSE is well worth reading. It’s available on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective Magazine, July 1937

There's a lot going on in this great cover by Malvin Singer, all of it dramatic. And as usual with DIME DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, there are some great authors inside: Norbert Davis, Leslie T. White, John K. Butler, O.B. Myers, William E. Barrett, Maxwell Hawkins, and B.B. Fowler. The last couple of those I'm not familiar with, but I'm sure that if they were in DIME DETECTIVE, they had to be pretty good. I don't own this issue and it doesn't appear to be on-line anywhere, but there are a lot of issues on the Internet Archive and I need to get around to reading some of them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, January 1947

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with a little scribbling on a dramatic Sam Cherry cover that I like. EXCITING WESTERN has become one of my favorite Western pulps because I really enjoy two of the series that ran regularly in its pages.

One of those series is, of course, the Tombstone and Speedy stories by W.C. Tuttle. The lead novella in this issue, “Trail of the Flame”, finds our intrepid heroes, range detective Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith, enjoying some unexpected and newfound wealth in the form of a reward they received for capturing a notorious outlaw. Despite that, they run smack-dab into trouble—literally—when there’s a collision between the buggy they’ve bought and a fella on horseback fleeing from some pursuers. This lands the duo in the middle of a case involving a fabulously valuable gem, a herd of stolen polo ponies, a wealthy eastern dude who has come west, a town south of the border that’s a bandit stronghold, and a sinister Chinese smuggler. As you can tell, Tuttle crams a lot of plot into this yarn, and to be honest, it doesn’t hold together quite as well as some of the other stories in the series. But there’s plenty of action, the story races along at a fast clip, the banter is genuinely amusing, and Tombstone and Speedy are as likable as ever. As always, I really enjoyed reading it.

The other long-running series in EXCITING WESTERN that I like a lot is that featuring Arizona Ranger Navajo Tom Raine, the son of a famous lawman who was raised by the Navajo after his father was murdered in a range war. This series was started by Lee Bond writing under the house-name Jackson Cole, and C. William Harrison is known to have written many of the stories, too. I have a pretty strong hunch that the novelette “Loot of the Lobo Legion” in this issue is by Harrison. He’s a more polished and less formulaic writer than Bond. (Don’t get wrong, I enjoy Bond’s work, too.) In this story, Raine is sent to investigate the mysterious lynchings of three men, but when he arrives on the scene, he discovers that they were actually murdered before they were strung up. It appears that the local cattle baron is making a land grab and trying to get rid of the smaller ranchers in the area, but everything may not be exactly as it seems at first. Harrison’s Navajo Tom Raine stories usually have some sort of mystery angle to them, which is another thing that makes me believe he wrote this one. It’s a well-plotted tale, not much action until the end, but still very entertaining. Every time I read one of these, I find myself wanting to write a Navajo Tom Raine story myself. He’s a fine character.

I read another story by Barry Scobee not long ago and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I was predisposed to like his story in this issue, a novelette called “Hated Wire”. It has an intriguing premise: a cattle baron fences off his entire spread with barbed wire and has only one gate into the place. Any outsiders who venture onto the wrong side of the fence are never seen or heard from again. A neighboring rancher sets out to find out what happened to one of the men who disappeared. There’s a bizarre late twist which kind of comes out of left field, but it’s the sort of thing I generally like. However, in this case, I just didn’t care for the story. Something about the style rubbed me the wrong way, and none of the characters are likable, even the protagonist. This one might strike some other readers completely differently, but for me it’s a misfire.

Stephen Payne’s short story “Old Timer” is an unacknowledged reprint from the April 7, 1934 issue of STREET & SMITH’S WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE. It’s a well-written, low-key, poignant tale about an old range rider who gives up cowboying to become a farmer in partnership with an old friend. There’s no action and the entire story is character-driven, but I liked it anyway. I need to read more of Payne’s work.

Gunnison Steele was really Bennie Gardner. He was a top-notch writer who did some fine novels for the Western character pulps, but he was great with short stories, too, like this issue’s “The Meanest Man”. In this one, a rancher robs the local bank, kills the banker, and gets away with it, but then his partner turns him in. But is that what actually happened? Gardner throws in a clever way of getting to this story’s resolution and I enjoyed this one.

Sam Brant was a house-name, so we don’t know who wrote “Manhunters Ain’t Human”, the short story that wraps up this issue. The plot seems pretty simple: a merciless lawman tracks down a killer, but again there are some twists waiting for the reader that lead to a very satisfying conclusion. This story has a very similar feel to the Gunnison Steele story, which makes me suspect that Bennie Gardner might have been the author here, too, but again, it’s impossible to say for sure.

This is a good issue of EXCITING WESTERN. Not an outstanding one due to the Scobee story I didn’t like and the slightly below average Tombstone and Speedy yarn. But the Navajo Tom Raine novelette is excellent and the short stories are all solid. I’m already looking forward to the next issue of EXCITING WESTERN that I read.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: A Great Day for Dying - Jack Dillon

As far as I know, this is the author’s only crime novel, although he wrote a few other novels about the advertising business. Jack Dillon was a successful ad executive, responsible for, among others, the series of TV commercials for Polaroid that featured James Garner and Mariette Hartley. Those of you of a certain age are bound to remember those commercials, since Garner was so affable and charming and Hartley was, well, so beautiful.

But to get back to A GREAT DAY FOR DYING. Don’t pay any attention to that Hemingway comparison on the cover. The only similarity I see is that the protagonist of this novel, Jimmy O’Niel, reminded me a little of Harry Morgan from TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. Jimmy is a friend and former associate of mobster Red Christian, but he’s trying to live a respectable life and start a charter boat business in Puerto Rico. People don’t want to believe that he’s no longer involved in anything crooked, though, but the only shady thing Jimmy’s mixed up in is running guns to anti-Castro revolutionaries in Cuba.

Unfortunately for Jimmy, he gets drawn into one of his former boss’s schemes and winds up on the wrong side of the Syndicate. From there, things just get worse for Jimmy, up to and including several murders and a hurricane.

The clipped style of the prose and the realistic dialogue remind me more of Elmore Leonard, although Leonard started writing crime novels about the same time as this book came out, so I don’t think his work was any influence on Dillon. A GREAT DAY FOR DYING also reminds me a little of a James Patterson novel, because the chapters are short and there’s a mixture of first person chapters from Jimmy’s point of view and third person chapters featuring other characters. That’s a technique I normally don’t care for, but Dillon makes it work fairly well. I don’t know if he was the first to do it, probably not, but this novel surely has to be one of the early examples of it. The pace is fast, even though there’s really not a lot of action except for an occasional short burst, and there are a lot of good lines.

A GREAT DAY FOR DYING is a fine book, worth seeking out, and it’s certainly good enough to make it a shame Jack Dillon didn’t write any other crime novels. Recommended.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on May 7, 2010. I was surprised then that A GREAT DAY FOR DYING had never been reprinted, and it still hasn't. It seems like a prime candidate for somebody to bring back into print.)

Review: Sneeze That Off (Flying Aces, November 1930)/The Hardware Ace (Flying Aces, February 1931) - Joe Archibald

Regular readers of this blog know that with a few exceptions, I’m not a big fan of comedy in pulp stories. For that reason, I’ve avoided Joe Archibald’s work for the most part, since he specialized in comedy stories in several different genres, although he did some serious yarns as well. One of his most popular series appeared in the air war pulp FLYING ACES and starred Lt. Phineas “Carbuncle” Pinkham, an American pilot from Boonetown, Iowa, who’s assigned to the Ninth Pursuit Squadron in France during World War I. Between 1930 and 1943, Archibald wrote more 150 stories chronicling Pinkham’s adventures. Since I’d read a few other stories by Archibald recently and enjoyed them more than I expected to, I decided to give this series a try by reading the first two stories, “Sneeze That Off” (from the November 1930 issue of FLYING ACES) and “The Hardware Ace” (February 1931).

In “Sneeze That Off”, Pinkham arrives for the first time at the aerodrome where the Ninth Pursuit Squadron is based. He makes a lot of enemies almost right away, including the commanding officer, Major Rufus Garrity (“the old man”), and fellow pilots Howell, Wilson, and Bump Gillis. You see, Pinkham is a prankster, a practical joker, a would-be funnyman addicted to exploding cigars, rubber snakes, dribble glasses, and sneezing powder. His antics rub everybody the wrong way, especially since the squadron has been plagued lately by the German ace von Kohl. Despite his annoying habits, however, Pinkham is a talented flyer and a deadly fighter, even when he’s armed only with some of his tricky gimmicks.

By the time of the second story in the series, “The Hardware Ace”, Pinkham is maybe a little more accepted by his fellow pilots, although they still get annoyed with him most of the time. But most of the squadron’s ire in this yarn is directed toward the stuck-up pilots and officers of a French squadron also operating in the area. Pinkham’s antics just make the situation worse when the two units need to be teaming up to take on a new aerial threat from the Germans. But of course, it’s Pinkham who comes up with a unique way to resolve the situation and defeat the enemy.

These stories are slightly more serious and less silly than I expected them to be, probably because it’s hard to get too wacky when men are fighting and dying all the time. Archibald writes well, too, and manages to make Pinkham a sympathetic character despite his abrasive nature. I surprised myself again by liking these stories considerably more than I expected to, and I can see how Pinkham’s adventures could be kind of addictive. These two, and many more, are available to download as PDF files from the Age of Aces website. I’m sure I’ll never read the whole series, but I definitely plan to continue making the acquaintance of Phineas Pinkham.

Review: Heart's Misdeal - Elsa Barker (Ranch Romances, Second February Number 1944)

Elsa Barker was married to S. Omar Barker, the cowboy poet and prolific contributor of both fiction and non-fiction to many Western pulps. She was also a writer and specialized in Western romances, with dozens of her stories appearing during the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties, mostly in RANCH ROMANCES but also in a few of the other Western romance pulps. Her novella “Misdeal” was the lead story in the Second February Number, 1944 issue of RANCH ROMANCES and has been reprinted by Buckskin Editions Westerns as an e-book under the title HEART’S MISDEAL. Being in the mood to read a Western romance, I gave the e-book a try, and I’m glad I did.

Walt Carmack is a young cowboy who lives with his widowed mother on the ranch owned by his grandfather. The spread will be Walt’s someday, and that doesn’t sit well with the ranch’s foreman, whose good-looking blond daughter is being courted by another of the crew, Billy Gamel, who is Walt’s best friend.

Then beautiful, petite brunette Lucy McAdams shows up on the ranch, hired to tutor the foreman’s younger children. Walt is interested in her, but a former beau of hers has followed her all the way to New Mexico and wants to win her back. Also, Lucy makes it clear pretty quickly that she’s not interested in Walt.

Now, you might think that with a setup like this, the story would be mostly arguing and making up—but you’d be wrong. We get a little of that, to be sure, but along the way there’s a bushwhacking, a murdered cowboy, a disappearance and maybe another murder, a couple of fistfights, a few chases, and a final shootout. Mind you, the action scenes aren’t as wild and over-the-top as you’d find in a story by, say, Leslie Scott, but they’re definitely there.

And Barker has a sure hand with characterization and writes very well, so the romantic scenes go down easily, too. This is a top-notch yarn that I whipped through and thoroughly enjoyed. Yes, the real bad guy who’s behind all the villainy might as well be wearing a neon sign on his back, but that didn’t bother me. You have to expect that sort of thing in pulp stories.

I’ve read only one other story by Elsa Barker, and I liked it, too. I definitely need to read more by her. I think HEART’S MISDEAL is the only thing of hers that’s currently in print, so I’ll have to look through my issues of RANCH ROMANCES. If you’ve never read anything from the Western romance pulps, this novella would be a fine place to start.

Review: The Tripods #1: The White Mountains - John Christopher (Samuel Youd)

I’ve been vaguely aware of John Christopher’s name for quite a while and had heard of (but not read) his famous science fiction novel NO BLADE OF GRASS. I’d also seen mentions of his young adult series known as THE TRIPODS. Those three books are available now as e-books, so I decided to give the first one, THE WHITE MOUNTAINS, a try. The trilogy was published originally in the late Sixties, and I tend to like most of the science fiction produced during that era, other than the New Wave stuff, most of which I never cared for.

Anyway, it quickly becomes apparent that THE WHITE MOUNTAINS is set during a time after an alien invasion has conquered Earth. Machines known as the Tripods, towering things that stomp around on three legs, rule the world. The humans left alive have no idea if the Tripods are sentient or simply machines in which the true invaders ride around. When humans reach the age of thirteen, they are taken by the Tripods and implanted with a brain control device known as a Cap. Human life under the Tripods has devolved into a medieval, feudalistic society. Christopher, whose real name was Samuel Youd, does a great job of conveying all this background to the reader in a clear, fast-moving fashion that avoids infodumps.

It helps that he gives us a very likable narrator/protagonist named Will Parker, a young village boy who is still a year or so away from the Capping ceremony that will put him in thrall to the Tripods. Then a stranger comes to the village, and Will learns from him that there’s a mysterious place somewhere far to the south known as the White Mountains, where people live free from the control of the Tripods and even fight back against them. Will runs away from his village (which is obviously in what used to be England) with his cousin Henry, who is also Will’s enemy but wants to get away, too. They wind up in what used to be France and make friends with another young misfit they dub Beanpole (his actual name is Jean Paul). After some adventures, and making some friends and enemies, the three boys wind up on the run with the Tripods pursuing them.

All this is great. Christopher writes very well, and while there’s really nothing here we haven’t read in other science fiction novels, he does a fine job with it and I really enjoyed reading the book. And then we get to the end.

Well, I knew going in that this was the first book of a trilogy, so I didn’t expect much resolution. But even so, I found the ending much too abrupt and jarring, a real “Wait . . . what?” moment totally lacking in drama. It threw me so much I wasn’t even sure I was going to read the other two books. I’m going to, because I had a great time for most of this book and I want to see what’s going to happen, but man, talk about a letdown.

Despite all that, if you’re a fan of vintage science fiction, I give THE WHITE MOUNTAINS a pretty high recommendation. It reads fast, it has a real sense of wonder, and the characters are excellent. I’m hoping the next two books will redeem that ending.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Sky Devils, March 1938

SKY DEVILS was a short-lived (7 issues) air war pulp from the Red Circle group. This is the first issue, and it has a nice cover by J.W. Scott. Inside are some of the usual suspects--Robert Sidney Bowen, John Scott Douglas, and Anatole Feldman writing as Anthony Field--plus some names that may well be pseudonyms and/or house-names: Terry Dell, John Loring, John Carlisle, and "Ace" Denver (the by-line has the quotes in it). It wouldn't surprise me at all if all of those were either Bowen or Feldman.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, September 1949

This issue of WEST (which I don't own and haven't read) has a great, action-packed cover by Sam Cherry. That lightning bolt in the background really adds to the atmosphere and drama. The authors inside are pretty darned good, too. Jim Mayo was really Louis L'Amour, of course, and his novella in this issue was later expanded into the novel WHERE THE LONG GRASS GROWS. Also on hand are Johnston McCulley with a Zorro story, Allan K. Echols, Francis H. Ames, house-name Tom Parsons, and Porter West, who is quite possibly a pseudonym, as well, since this is his only credit in the Fictionmags Index. I've read the L'Amour story in this novella form, but so many years ago that I don't remember anything about it. I've never read the novel version.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Outlaw Canyon - Lewis B. Patten

This is another fine early novel by Lewis B. Patten. It opens in the middle of the action, as Matt Springer, the foreman of the vast Fortress Ranch, is about to lead his men into the dreaded Outlaw Canyon in an attempt to recover a herd of rustled cattle. What makes this even more difficult than it would be otherwise is the fact that the rustlers were led by Wes Knudson, the son of Fortress’s elderly owner Chris Knudson – who also happens to be like a father to Matt.

Other than Ed Gorman and H.A. DeRosso, no Western author puts his characters through more emotional torture and turmoil than Lewis B. Patten. In OUTLAW CANYON, after setting the scene Patten launches into a series of flashbacks that establish why Wes Knudson hates his father so much that he’ll lead a gang of outlaws against him. The plot, which involves adultery, murder, and general mayhem, is gritty to say the least, and as is often the case in a Patten novel, there are some sex scenes that are pretty graphic for the era, since OUTLAW CANYON was published in 1961. All of it leads up to the expected big showdown at the end.

Veteran Western readers probably won’t be surprised at any of the plot twists in this book, but odds are they’ll be entertained. Patten’s prose is tough and fast-paced and there’s plenty of action. Despite the fact that his books always have relatively positive endings, his vision of the West is a consistently bleak one, and the characters who manage to achieve happiness usually pay a high price to do so. Most of his books are well worth reading, and OUTLAW CANYON certainly falls into that category.

(This post originally appeared on May 14, 2010. I think that's the first edition in the scan. It's the copy I own. OUTLAW CANYON had several other paperback editions. Scans of them, gathered on-line, are below.)

Review: Give a Man a Gun - John Creasey

When I was checking out books from the bookmobile in the early Sixties, the fellow who drove it out to our little town every Saturday allowed me to get books from the adult fiction sections even though I was only 10 years old. John Creasey was a popular author in the mystery section, and I read and enjoyed several of his novels featuring Inspector Roger West of Scotland Yard. West, nicknamed Handsome because he’s, well, handsome, stars in 43 novels published between 1942 and 1978. Since I remembered liking them and hadn’t read any in more than 60 years, I decided it was time to give the series a try again.

So when I was in Recycled Books in Denton recently, I picked up several of them, and I just read GIVE A MAN A GUN, originally published in hardcover in England in 1953 by Hodder & Staughton as A GUN FOR INSPECTOR WEST and reprinted in American paperback by Berkley in 1963. That’s the copy I read in the scan, somewhat the worse for wear because of age (as am I).

A murder has already taken place when this one opens. A pawnshop owner and dealer in stolen merchandise has been knifed. This killing sets off a string of events that lead to an organized campaign of violence directed against London’s police force. Several cops are shot and killed and numerous others are wounded in gun and knife attacks. The newspapers set up a howl about this and demand that the police be armed. Vigilante groups form. Roger West is in charge of the effort to get to the bottom of this and keep the violence from getting worse.

This is basically a police procedural novel, so a lot of pages are taken up with interrogations and following suspects around, interspersed with scenes of West’s home life. He’s married and has two young sons. For a book with a bunch of murders in it, there’s very little action on-screen, although everything does lead up to a satisfying slam-bang climax.

I enjoyed GIVE A MAN A GUN, but I have to admit I found it slightly disappointing and thought it didn’t quite live up to my good memories of the series. I think this is because the plot really just meanders along and despite the dangers facing the characters Creasey doesn’t generate much urgency or suspense for most of the book. As I said above, it does end well, and Roger West is just such a likable protagonist that I want to read more about him. Maybe this just isn’t one of the better entries in the series. I’ll certainly read the other two I bought, and if nothing else, I’m glad to have renewed my acquaintance with the character after all this time.