Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Mask, September 1933

What would 20 cents buy in 1933? Well, it would buy a lot of things I suppose, but one possible answer is that it would buy an issue of BLACK MASK with stories by Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick Nebel, Raoul Whitfield, W.T. Ballard, Roger Torrey, and Eugene Cunningham. That's just a spectacular group of authors. Cunningham is best remembered as a Western author, but he wrote quite a few hardboiled yarns, too. His story in this issue is the first in a series about hotel detective Cleve Corby. Nebel's story is part of his Kennedy and McBride series, Gardner's features the phantom crook Ed Jenkins, Ballard writes about Hollywood troubleshooter Bill Lennox, Torrey's story is about policeman Dal Prentice, and Whitfield's is the first of two about private eye Dion Davies. Several of the stories from this issue have been reprinted, and I'm sure they're well worth seeking out. By the way, the cover of this issue is by J.W. Schlaikjer, who did quite a few covers for BLACK MASK during this era.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, January 1948

It’s been too long since I’ve read an issue of EXCITING WESTERN. This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy. I think the cover is by A. Leslie Ross, but it also looks to me like it might be by H.W. Scott. So I’m hesitant to identify it as the work of either artist. I’m hoping some of you may be able to provide a definitive answer. Whoever painted it, it’s a pretty good cover.

I’ve enjoyed W.C. Tuttle’s Tombstone and Speedy series ever since I started reading it. The novella in this issue, “Strangers in El Segundo”, finds our eccentric range detective duo in the cowtown of the title, and once again, they’ve been fired by their exasperated boss at the Cattleman’s Association. That unfortunate circumstance doesn’t last long, however, as it just so happens the owner of the local bank has written to the Association asking for help, and Tombstone and Speedy are rehired. But wouldn’t you know it, the banker is murdered before they can talk to him and find out why he needed a pair of detectives. That sets off an apparently unrelated chain of events including a stagecoach holdup, an explosion, a kidnapping, and more murders. Tuttle was great at packing these yarns with plot despite their relatively short length. Tombstone and Speedy unravel everything and bring the villains to justice, of course, after some excellent action scenes and plenty of amusing dialogue. This is one of the few comedy Western series I like, because it’s not all comedy. The stories always feature action and mystery and colorful characters, and “Strangers in El Segundo” is no exception.

Hal White is a forgotten author these days, although he turned out dozens of stories for the Western, detective, and air war pulps. I’d read one story by him before and didn’t like it, but his novelette in this issue, “Powder on the Pecos” is very good. It starts out with a stagecoach robbery and moves on to be a story about a young rancher being framed as a rustler by the local cattle baron. The plot is very traditional, but White supplies a mildly entertaining plot twist and has a nice touch with the plentiful action scenes. I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Johnston McCulley is always a dependable author, of course. This January 1948 issue was on the newsstands during December 1947, so McCulley’s story “Undercover Santa Claus” is very appropriate. It’s a heartwarming tale in which an outlaw risks his life to help out the children of an old friend. Most readers will have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen in this one, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

I’ve always enjoyed T.W. Ford’s stories (he wrote hundreds of ’em for the Western, sports, and detective pulps), and his novelette in this issue, “Man-Bait for a Gun Trap” is no exception. In this yarn, a former deputy goes undercover to infiltrate an outlaw town and rescue the brother of the girl he loves. This story is almost all hardboiled, well-written action, but Ford also manages to make the characters interesting, especially the protagonist, who gave up packing a badge and has to learn how to handle a gun left-handed since his right arm got shot up and crippled. The boss of the outlaw town, who seems to have been modeled on Lionel Barrymore, is pretty good, too. This is just an excellent story all the way around, and I really enjoyed it.

Chuck Martin’s short story “Tanglefoot” is almost as good. This is the first in a short, three-story series about Jim “Tanglefoot” Bowen, another former deputy who has to learn how to cope with a handicap, in his case a leg that never healed right after bullets broke a couple of bones in it. Bowen has retired from being a lawman and makes his living as a cobbler and range detective, but he also helps out the local sheriff from time to time, a situation complicated by the fact that the sheriff is in love with the same girl as Bowen. The two of them team up to solve a mystery and round up some outlaws, including some of the men responsible for crippling Bowen, and Martin spins the yarn in his usual straightforward, fast-paced prose. He even throws in some frontier forensics! Bowen would have made a great character for novels, and I’m sorry there are only three stories about him. I think I have the other two, so I’m looking forward to reading them.

Tex Mumford was a house-name, so there’s no telling who wrote the short story “Powerful Hombre” in this issue, but it’s another good one. It’s a lighthearted tale but not an outright comedy about a cowboy who’s too big and strong for his own good. He doesn’t know his own strength, as the old saying goes, and that gets into trouble, as when he encounters a bank robber in this yarn. This is a minor story, but it’s well-written, moves right along, and I found reading it to be a pleasant experience.

I don’t know anything about Leo Charles except that he published four stories in the late Forties, three of them in Columbia Western pulps. “Remember the Knife” in this issue is his own credit in a Thrilling Group pulp. It’s the third story in this issue with a protagonist who’s handicapped. I doubt if this was an intentional theme, but who knows. In this case, the fellow has a bad leg because a horse fell on him when, as a young outlaw, he was trying to make a getaway. He’s gone straight, and nobody in the town where he runs a stable knows about his past. He has an adopted son who also has a crippled leg and needs an operation, so he tries to get the money for it by using his uncanny skill with a knife. Unfortunately, some of his old outlaw compadres show up, and so does a U.S. Marshal. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this one at first. The writing isn’t as good as in the other stories in this issue. But the author won me over with his characters and the genuine suspense the story generates. This is another good one.

And this is a fine issue of EXCITING WESTERN overall, with a solid Tombstone and Speedy yarn and great yarns from Ford and Martin. I was a little disappointed when I realized this issue didn’t have a Navajo Tom Raine story in it, since I really like that series, too, but I wound up thinking it’s one of the best issues of this pulp that I’ve read. If you have a copy, it’s well worth your reading time.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Sons and Gunslicks - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

It was a wandering daughter job.

That's a classic set-up for hardboiled private eye fiction, and Chap O'Keefe's series character Joshua Dillard is nothing if not a hardboiled private eye in the Old West. In this novel, originally published in hardcover by Robert Hale in 2007 and recently released in an e-book version, freelance troubleshooter and range detective Dillard is hired by elderly former lawman and town tamer Jack Greatheart to find Greatheart's daughter Emily, who disappeared during a trip to Arizona. Emily was engaged to the son of a widow who owns a large ranch, and after her fiancée was killed in a gunfight before they could even get married, Emily journeyed to Arizona to meet and offer her condolences to the woman who would have been her mother-in-law. She never came back, and a bloodstained coat is the only clue to her disappearance. It's up to Joshua Dillard to find Emily if she's still alive or find out what happened to her if she's not.

Naturally, once Dillard arrives on the scene, things turn out to be even more complicated and mysterious than they appear on the surface. There's a range war brewing, and Dillard has to survive gunfights, fistfights, and bushwhackings before he's able to untangle the various strands of the plot and uncover the truth of Emily Greatheart's disappearance.

As usual, Chap O'Keefe (who's really veteran author and editor Keith Chapman, as most of you already know) spins this tale in terse, no-nonsense prose and skillfully throws in enough plot twists to keep things racing along to a powerful climax. Joshua Dillard is a fine character, a dogged investigator who's plenty tough when he needs to be, and his own tragic background adds a touch of poignancy to his adventures. I've probably said this before, but fifty years ago these books would have made good Gold Medal paperbacks or Double D hardbacks.

As an added bonus in this one, O'Keefe includes "Crime on the Trail" an informative essay about the links between detective fiction and his Westerns. If you're a fan of those genres, SONS AND GUNSLICKS is well worth reading.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on September 25, 2013. SONS AND GUNSLICKS is available in new e-book and paperback editions, and I second my own recommendation from twelve years ago that it's well worth reading.)

Review: Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin' - Cleve Endicott (Norman W. Hay) (Wild West Weekly, November 28, 1936)

I came across this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY on the Internet Archive, and since it features a novelette with the great title “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”, I decided to go ahead and read that yarn so I could post about it today. It’s the November 28, 1936 issue, and the cover is by R.G. Harris. I’ll read the rest of it and feature it as a Saturday Morning Western Pulp in a week or two.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Billy West/Circle J series in WILD WEST WEEKLY, it was the most prolific Western pulp series with more than 400 entries between 1927 and 1943, written by at least 15 different authors under the house-name Cleve Endicott. The protagonist is Billy West, the young owner of the Circle J cattle ranch in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains, along with his sidekicks, the colorful, grizzled old-timer Buck Foster and feisty, redheaded Joe Scott.

In “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”, it’s the day before the holiday and the Circle J’s Chinese cook Sing Lo is on his way back to the ranch with a buckboard full of supplies for the Thanksgiving feast when he interrupts a stagecoach robbery and is taken prisoner by the outlaws. Meanwhile, in town, Buck Foster competes in a turkey shoot to win a prize gobbler and runs afoul of some other hardcases. Unknown to any of our heroes, these two circumstances are connected and will soon lead them into a whirlwind of action.

In fact, this story is almost all action, but it’s well-written and Billy, Buck, Joe, and Sing Lo are very likable protagonists. Despite the thin plot, I found it to be a very enjoyable yarn. The actual author is Norman W. Hay, who wrote more of the Circle J stories than anyone else. If you’re a Western pulp fan and need something to do after your nap this afternoon (I assume everyone takes a nap on Thanksgiving, like I do), I can recommend reading “Buzzards Fer Thanksgivin’”.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A very happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate the holiday. As always, I have a great deal to be thankful for, including all of you reading this blog. I appreciate your patience and your continued interest after all these years. That's the First December 1930 issue of TOP-NOTCH MAGAZINE, by the way, and it looks like a pretty good issue with stories by Donald Bayne Hobart, John Wilstach, Ben Conlon, and a Kroom, Son of the Sea yarn by house-name Valentine Wood. (I feel confident in saying that no one else will mention Kroom, Son of the Sea to you this Thanksgiving, but feel free to bring him up around the dinner table if you want to.)

Review: Men's Adventure Quarterly #13: Fatal Femmes

The latest issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY is out, and as usual, it’s a breathtakingly exciting collection of stories and artwork from the men’s adventure magazines, expertly assembled by editors Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham, ably assisted this time by guest editor Eric Compton and guest contributor Terrance Layhew. The theme this time around: Fatal Femmes!

They lead off with “The Gun Moll Who Hated G-Men” from the July 1957 issue of SEE. The author is David Mazroff, whose work I’ve been familiar with for a long time due to his true crime articles and occasional fiction in MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE. I didn’t know until I read about it in a previous issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY, however, that Mazroff was a career criminal himself and was deeply involved with organized crime. That certainly gives his work an air of authenticity. His story in this issue is a non-fiction piece about the notorious Ma Barker and her sons, and he does a great job of capturing their bloody lives and deaths.

Don Honig, a prolific contributor to the men’s adventure magazine whose work has been reprinted several times in this series, also wrote for the mystery digests. His clever crime story “Mrs. Herman and Mrs. Kenmore” is from the May 1958 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. While AHMM isn’t exactly a men’s adventure magazine, I suspect there was a significant crossover with the readership of those magazines. A guy like me, for example.

W.J. Saber was really Warren Shanahan, and under his real name he wrote one of the novels featuring the comic strip hero The Phantom that were published originally by Avon back in the Seventies. I was an avid reader of those novels and read and enjoyed Shanahan’s entry back then. Under the Saber pseudonym, he wrote extensively for the men’s adventure magazines, including “Rich Lovers Wanted—Apply Mme. Crielle, Champs Elysées” from the January 1960 issue of STAG. It’s a great, lurid yarn set in Paris in the 1920s about young men being murdered and their blood being drained from them, with a dogged police detective determined to get to the bottom of the crimes.

“Kiss Me and Die” by Hiram J. Herbert (TRUE ADVENTURES, December 1960) is another true-crime yarn about the killing spree of a couple of prostitutes and their henchman/fall guy, an AWOL GI. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of true crime stories, but this one works very well and I enjoyed it.

Buz Rowan, like the author of the previous story, is an unknown quantity, likely a pseudonym. His noir crime yarn “Blood for a Nympho’s Flesh”, from the November 1962 issue of ALL MAN, is about crop-dusting, not a subject that comes up very often in such stories, I suspect. But Rowan, whoever he really was, uses it to craft a gut-punch of a story that could have been a Gold Medal novel in miniature.

I’ve read several stories and a novel by Dean W. Ballenger, and his work never fails to entertain. “The Incredible Norwegian Ice Nymphs” (NEW MAN, September 1963) is a World War II yarn about Norwegian women who fight back against the Nazis and prove to be just as deadly as their men. It’s a punchy, very entertaining tale, as you’d expect from Ballenger.

None other than the great pulp author Paul Chadwick, creator of Secret Agent X and Wade Hammond, shows up with “The Ever-Lovin’ Nude Who Watched Her Boyfriends Die” from the May 1969 issue of REAL MEN. This is the only story Chadwick wrote for the men’s adventure magazines, but it appeared three times under three different titles, in three different magazines, to boot! It’s a good story about a serial murderess who uses poison to dispose of her victims, set in France like one of the earlier stories in this volume. You can always count on Chadwick to spin a good yarn, and this one is no exception.

“Vendetta on the Street of Lonely Frauleins” wraps up the fiction in this issue. It appeared originally in the March 1966 issue of MEN and is by Mario Cleri, a prolific contributor to the men’s adventure magazines who just happens to be better known by his real name: Mario Puzo, author of THE GODFATHER and many other bestselling novels. Taking its cue from the contemporary boom in espionage and secret agent fiction, this story features freelance American operative Scarlet Tracy and her partner Charlie Hunt. Scarlet and Charlie are in Berlin to hunt down a British defector with a briefcase full of top secret documents to sell to the Russians. There seems to me to be a definite Modesty Blaise influence in this one, along with echoes of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., The Lady From L.U.S.T., and the other books, movies, and TV shows from that era that featured beautiful female protagonists. I am definitely the target audience for stories like this, and I loved it. If Puzo had turned this into a paperback series, I would have been right there at the spinner rack to pick up each new book as it came out. As far as I know, this is Scarlet Tracy’s only appearance, but it’s a good one.

Eric Compton contributes a fine article about fatal femmes in novels, and Terrance Layhew has assembled a wonderful photo gallery of some of the beautiful women from the James Bond films. Both are very worthy additions to one of the best issues of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY so far. But let’s face it, all the issues have been great. If you’re a fan of great art and hard-hitting stories, this volume and all the previous ones get my highest recommendation. You can find the Fatal Femmes issue on Amazon.

Review: Ride the Wild Country - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

I read most of Keith Chapman’s Joshua Dillard novels when they were reissued some years ago, but RIDE THE WILD COUNTRY is one that I missed back then. Which is a good thing, because I was able to read it now.

For those of you who don’t know, Joshua is a former Pinkerton operative turned freelance range detective and gun-for-hire in the Old West. In this novel, originally published in hardcover by Robert Hale in 2005 and now available in e-book and paperback editions, he’s hired to accompany a New Yorker who’s paying a visit to Colorado. Instead of the man he’s expecting, his employer turns out to be a beautiful woman with a plan to turn a high country valley into a fancy hunting resort. I don’t recall ever encountering this plot in a Western before, so I was impressed by that.

Ah, but is that what’s really going on? In his usual skillful fashion, Chapman peels back more layers of the plot, adding a shady lawyer, assorted ruffians, some religious fanatics, and a young woman Joshua tries to help, leading to all sorts of trouble.

RIDE THE WILD COUNTRY is a thoroughly entertaining Western yarn with plenty of action and plot twists and a very likable protagonist in Joshua Dillard. He’s fast on the draw and can be plenty hardboiled when he needs to be but is also a genuinely decent guy who seems to have hard luck following him around the West. But that’s good luck for us, who get to read about his adventures. If you’re a Western fan, RIDE THE WILD COUNTRY gets an enthusiastic recommendation from me.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: The Feds, October 1936

THE FEDS was a G-Man pulp published by Street & Smith, a company that usually was very successful with anything they put out there. Not so with THE FEDS, which lasted for only 15 issues in 1936 and '37. But its lack of longevity can't be attributed to the generally pretty good covers, including this one on the second issue which is probably collectable because of the presence of all those Ku Klux Klansmen on it. I don't know who painted it. Nor were the writers any slouches. This issue features stories by Steve Fisher, Wyatt Blassingame, W.T. Ballard, Arthur J. Burks, William G. Bogart, Laurence Donovan, Jean Francis Webb, George Allan Moffatt (Edwin V. Burkholder), James Duncan (Arthur Pincus), and house-name Bruce Harley. Probably some good reading there. I don't own this issue and it doesn't appear to be available on-line, but if I did have a copy of it, I wouldn't hesitate to give it a try. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Speed Western Stories, December 1945, Plus Blog Update

This issue of SPEED WESTERN STORIES features two stories by Edwin Truett Long, one under the transparent pseudonym Edwin Truett and one as by Wallace Kayton. Long died earlier in 1945, apparently from an illness he contracted while serving in Burma during World War II, so these may have been some of the last stories he wrote. Or they could be unacknowledged reprints. With a Trojan pulp, one never knows. Elsewhere in this issue are stories by William R. Cox, Laurence Donovan, James P. Olsen, William J. Glynn, and house-name Max Neilson. The cover is probably by H.W. Scott. This issue can be found on-line at the Internet Archive. With a line-up of authors like that, I may have to read it one of these days.

Speaking of issues, I've been dealing with some health-related ones recently. Nothing serious, the blog's not going anywhere and neither am I, but it's left me without the time and energy to get everything done that I wanted to, including updating the blog. However, I'm hoping that normal posting will resume next week, although it may get sporadic now and then. 

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Dillinger (1973)

Given my fondness for gangster movies, and for Ben Johnson, I’m surprised I never watched 1973’s DILLINGER until now. It’s also an American International Picture, and AIP turned out some mighty entertaining movies over the years. I watched many of them at the Eagle Drive-In, but not this one. By the time DILLINGER came out, the Eagle had already switched over to showing X-rated movies.

But now I’ve seen DILLINGER. Warren Oates plays the title character, and Ben Johnson is Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent who doggedly pursues not only John Dillinger but most of the other famous criminals who roamed the Midwest during the Depression, robbing banks and mowing down cops and anybody else who got in their way. Most of them show up in this movie, too, including Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson. Bonnie and Clyde are mentioned numerous times, but their paths never cross that of Dillinger, which is probably a good thing because he looks down on them as non-professionals. For him, on the other hand, it’s just his job, and he’s the very best at it, at least according to him.

The script by John Milius, who also directed, has only a nodding acquaintance with historical accuracy, starting with the fact that the FBI didn’t exist when Dillinger was active. It was still the Bureau of Investigation. The various gangster characters are killed off out of historical order, often in ways that didn’t happen. But take it for what it is, a piece of entertainment, and DILLINGER is pretty darned good, with interesting characters, good dialogue, excellent photography, and a bunch of bloody shootouts. It’s a loud movie most of the time.

Oates does a fine job as Dillinger, playing him with a real zest for life and fondness for excitement. Ben Johnson, one of my favorite actors, is great as Melvin Purvis. Johnson is one of those actors I could listen to all day, no matter what he was saying. Just a great voice. Michelle Phillips is okay as Dillinger’s girlfriend, and a young Richard Dreyfuss shows up as Baby Face Nelson. The top-notch Seventies character actor Geoffrey Lewis is also a member of the gang. It seemed like Lewis was in just about every movie made for a while back then.

I had a fine time watching DILLINGER. It’s probably not a great movie, but it’s a very good one. I’m still a little flabbergasted that I didn’t see it back when it was new, but on the other hand, that gave me something good to watch now.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Leading Western, October 1946

The cover on this issue of LEADING WESTERN is by H.W. Scott, an artist I generally like. This one is okay, but I'm not all that fond of the sketchy, unfinished look which was common on Western pulps in the late Forties and Fifties on covers by Scott and other artists. Inside are stories by some pretty good writers, including Philip Ketchum, Laurence Donovan, Giff Cheshire, Paul Craig (who was also Giff Cheshire), Norrell Gregory, and Harold R. Stoakes. The Trojan Western pulps, like those from Columbia, were low-budget, hit-or-miss affairs, but there are good stories to be found in them if you look. I don't own a copy of this one, but with those authors, I'd be willing to give it a try if I did.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Power of Positive Loving - William Johnston

When I was a kid, I read all the tie-in novels by William Johnston based on the TV series GET SMART. I think I liked them even more than the TV show. I also recall reading and enjoying the novelization of the movie LT. ROBIN CRUSOE, USN, which Johnston wrote under the pseudonym Bill Ford. Johnston’s books were all over the spinner racks back in those days, since he wrote dozens of excellent movie novelizations and TV tie-ins. 

However, a friend mentioned to me that Johnston’s early, non-tie-in novels are very good, too, so I decided to try a few of them. First up is THE POWER OF POSITIVE LOVING, published by Monarch Books in 1964. I don’t mind admitting that one reason I bought this book is because of the cover. That’s one of the cutest redheads I’ve seen on a paperback cover, and the wink really sells the book.

As for the novel itself, well, that’s pretty good, too. The protagonist is Harry Ash, a down-on-his-luck public relations guy who comes up with a scheme to promote a sleepy little coastal town in California as a hotbed of sin and sensationalism. He plans to do this by teaming up with sexpot movie starlet Babe O’Flynn (that’s a great name), who has a habit of losing her clothes and winding up in the slick magazines like LIFE and LOOK. Harry comes up with a wild story for the gossip columnists about Babe going to this little town to recover from a broken heart after a top-secret love affair with the Secretary of State. He’s going to have a photographer get pictures of her on the beach in a bikini – or less – and figures that tourists, scandal-seekers, and sensation-mongers will converge on the motel and bar that he buys in partnership with a hamburger magnate. Naturally, things don’t work out quite like Harry plans.

Monarch Books lasted only a few years, but the company published quite a few books including some Westerns and mysteries. However, it’s best known for the abundance of slightly less graphic sleaze novels it put out. Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, and Robert Silverberg all wrote pseudonymous books for Monarch, including a number of so-called non-fiction studies of various sexual subjects that were really fiction, under imposing sounding names like L.T. Woodward, M.D., and Dr. Benjamin Morse.

THE POWER OF POSITIVE LOVING is risqué enough to fall into the sleaze category, but just barely. Unlike most books in that genre from that era, this one is a comedy, a racy, romantic, screwball farce that takes satiric shots at morality, the advertising business, politics, show business, the military, the media, and just about anything else you can think of. The title itself is a pun on the self-help bestseller THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING by Norman Vincent Peale. If it had been made into a movie in 1964, it probably would have starred Jack Lemmon as Harry and Ann-Margret as Babe. As usual with such a scattershot yarn, not all the jokes work all the time, but enough of them do that this is a pretty funny book. It reminds me a little of the work of Max Shulman, for those of you old enough to remember his books. (Probably the same ones who remember Jack Lemmon and Ann-Margret.)

Johnston was nothing if not a versatile writer, though. I have several more of his non-tie-in novels on hand, and it looks like every one of them is considerably different from the others. I’ll be getting to them in due time and reporting on them here. For now, if you want a nice entertaining slice of mid-Sixties comedy, THE POWER OF POSITIVE LOVING is well worth reading.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on August 27, 2010. Despite the good intentions expressed in the final paragraph, I haven't read any more of William Johnston's novels, tie-in or otherwise, since then. But I still might. I know where they are on my shelves--I think. And I stand by my comment about the redhead on the cover. She's really cute. The cover art is by Tom Miller.)

Review: Marihuana - William Irish (Cornell Woolrich)

For collectors, MARIHUANA by Cornell Woolrich writing as William Irish is one of the most sought-after of the legendary Dell 10-Cent editions. I’ve owned several copies over the years, but despite being a Woolrich fan ever since discovering his work in stories reprinted in ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE and THE SAINT MYSTERY MAGAZINE during the Sixties, I’d never read it until now.

MARIHUANA was first published as a novelette under Woolrich's name in the May 3, 1941 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, which was a large-format pulp at the time but still a pulp. Ten years later it was reprinted as a Dell 10-Cent book. Like many of the protagonists in Woolrich’s stories, King Turner, the main character in this yarn, is kind of a sad sack, an average guy who’s depressed over the break-up of his marriage. So a couple of his so-called friends (they aren’t, really) show up at his apartment with a girl he doesn’t know, and they drag him off to a marihuana den (I’m just going to use the spelling the story does) where he smokes a couple of reefers and goes a little crazy from the drug.

When he accidentally kills somebody, he takes it on the lam and his marihuana-induced paranoia results in several more murders. It doesn’t take long for the cops to get on his trail, and Woolrich skillfully goes back and forth between Turner’s descent into violent madness and the law’s efforts to catch him.

Granted, from our perspective today, this is a pretty silly plot, but when were Woolrich’s plots not a little far-fetched? What makes MARIHUANA work is its relentless pace and Woolrich’s ability to make us sympathize with a protagonist who’s caught up in things he can’t control, even though he’s a killer and an all-around unlikable guy. (Is it just me, or does the description of King Turner—the slight build, the sandy hair, the sunken cheeks—sound suspiciously like Woolrich himself?)

There are a couple of late twists that work pretty well. And even though it's pure coincidence, I can’t help but like the fact that the cop who leads the effort to find Turner is named Spillane.

I’m glad I finally read MARIHUANA. It’s a suspenseful yarn that really had me flipping the pages. Whether you’re a Woolrich fan or have never read any of his work, I give it a high recommendation. If you want to read it but don’t have the Dell 10-Cent edition, there’s a very affordable e-book edition available on Amazon.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Daylight (1996)

Back in the Seventies, we watched all the big disaster movies: AIRPORT, THE TOWERING INFERNO, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, etc. I even read Arthur Hailey’s novel AIRPORT that was the source of the movie. It was hardly my favorite genre, but I found those movies to be reliable, if forgettable, entertainment.

So when I came across DAYLIGHT, a 1996 Sylvester Stallone movie I’d never seen, I didn’t hesitate. The description made it sound very much like one of those earlier disaster movies: some thieves fleeing through a tunnel under the Hudson River in New York City cause a wreck with a truck carrying toxic waste, and the resulting explosion and fire close off both ends of the tunnel, sealing a dozen or so survivors in there to look for a way out.

It's lucky for them that a taxi driver up on the surface is really the disgraced former chief of Emergency Services (Stallone, of course), who’s the only one who can figure out a way to get into the tunnel and lead the survivors out.

Naturally, before that we get a number of scenes introducing us to the characters who will make it through the explosion (and some who won’t). There are no real villains in this movie except the thieves who cause the disaster with their attempted getaway, and they’re not around long. Most of the movie is Stallone vs. the tunnel. The other characters are stereotypes: the would-be writer, the bickering couple and their teenage daughter, the old couple and their dog that used to belong to their dead son, the heroic cop, a few convicts from a transport van. But even though we’ve seen them all before, they’re still handled pretty effectively.

DAYLIGHT really plays a lot like CLIFFHANGER, another Stallone movie from a few years earlier in which he also plays a guy who’s the best at what he does but has personal demons from past failures haunting him. And like that earlier film, DAYLIGHT is well-made, well-acted, decently written (Stallone isn’t credited as one of the writers but contributed to the script, as usual), and an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. That’s plenty for me.

Review: John Standon of Texas - Johnston McCulley

Johnston McCulley is mostly remembered, and rightly so, as the creator of Zorro, but he wrote all sorts of pulp yarns, including a five-part serial called “John Standon of Texas” which appeared in WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE in September and October 1920. It was reprinted in a hardcover of the same title by Chelsea House, Street & Smith’s book publishing arm, in 1924. There was also a British edition from Hutchison in 1934. I have the Chelsea House edition and read it recently. Since my copy is coverless and is just a very plain-looking brown hardcover, I’ve used images I’ve found on-line of both covers.

John Standon, the hero of this one, is an American adventurer who has been prospecting in the mountains of Mexico for several years. As the story opens, he’s on his way back to Texas, having given up on finding gold. Before he can cross the border, though, he finds himself caught up in a revolution as he helps rescue some aristocrats from a gang of bandits led by a self-styled revolutionary who’s really just after loot and power.

Standon’s efforts to help these people escape from the bandits is really all this books amounts to. The plot is very simple. But there’s a ton of action, the characters are colorful and interesting, the bandit leader and his second-in-command, an American gunslinger, are suitably villainous, and McCulley plays out the whole thing in exciting, fast-paced prose. While the style is slightly old-fashioned now and then, for the most part you wouldn’t guess that this novel was written and published more than a hundred years ago.

Also, while it was published originally in WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE and the hardcover edition even says “A Western Story” on the title page, it’s not a traditional Western but rather is set in the early 20th Century. Standon packs an automatic pistol and there are mentions of airplanes. I like this setting and am always glad to come across a story that makes use of it.

My copy also has the names of a couple of previous owners written in it. So I have to thank Howard D. Lindamood of Atkins, Virginia, and Slaylin M. Kittredge, address unknown, for passing along this book until it finally wound up in my hands. Because I really enjoyed JOHN STANDON OF TEXAS. If you’re a Johnston McCulley fan or just enjoy good adventure novels, it’s worth reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Detective, December 1935

This issue of THRILLING DETECTIVE sports a gruesome but eye-catching and dramatic cover by Rafael DeSoto. Nothing good ever comes from a suit of armor on a pulp cover! Inside this issue are stories by Barry Perowne (a Raffles yarn), Arthur J. Burks, Steve Fisher, Dwight V. Babcock, John Scott Douglas, Paul Hawk, Edmond Du Perrier, and the oddly named Tom Erwin Geris, who, if you rearrange the letters, turns out to be none other than Mort Weisinger, who wrote quite a few pulp stories but is best remembered as the long-time editor of the Superman titles at DC Comics during the Silver Age. He had a reputation as quite a curmudgeon as far as the writers and artists were concerned, but I didn't know any of that at the time. I just read the comic books and enjoyed them. I don't believe I've ever read any of his pulp stories, though. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, December 1954

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my taped, trimmed, and tattered copy in the scan, but other than being beat up, it’s intact and fully readable. The cover art is by Sam Cherry, as usual during this era of TEXAS RANGERS. It’s not one of his better covers, in my opinion, but it’s certainly not bad. I don’t think Cherry was capable of painting a bad cover.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, “El Diablo’s Treasure”, is by Roe Richmond. I’ve mentioned many times in the past that Richmond’s Hatfield novels aren’t really to my taste, but I read one now and then anyway because he was a pretty good writer otherwise. This one starts out very promising. Hatfield is in Del Rio, on the Texas-Mexico border, and is already in the middle of his current assignment. He’s supposed to accompany a famous archeologist, the man’s beautiful daughter, and a young mining engineer who’s engaged to the girl, as they search for a famous lost mine in the Sierra Madre of Mexico. Not only is there the potential for gold, but the mine also is supposed to be the hiding place for a fortune in gems left there a couple of hundred years earlier.

Unfortunately, the arrangement with Mexico calls for the party to be escorted by a troop of Rurales commanded by an officer who is actually little more than a bandit, and there’s a gang of actual bandits roaming the area where the search is to take place. Throw in the fact that the archeologist’s daughter is a beautiful hellcat with her eye on Hatfield, angering her fiancée, and there’s plenty going on to wind up with Hatfield getting plenty of trouble heaped on his head.

That’s exactly what happens, as Richmond provides plenty of gritty, well-written fistfights, shootouts, and even some epic battles. There’s quite a bit to like in this novel. However, Richmond makes a serious misstep by never providing any sort of interesting backstory for the fortune that’s supposed to be hidden in the mine. It’s just sort of there, with a couple of vague hints that maybe the Conquistadores left it. There’s also no mention of anyone known as El Diablo, let alone an explanation of why it’s his treasure. Was Richmond simply referring to the Devil? Who knows?

My main objection to Richmond’s Hatfield novels is the presence of the annoying sidekicks he introduced to the series. Hatfield is called the Lone Wolf for a reason! Thankfully, although those characters are mentioned once, they play no part in this novel.

Ultimately, “El Diablo’s Treasure” isn’t a bad yarn. But Richmond shares something with Joseph Chadwick: he just doesn’t have a feel for the Jim Hatfield character. Hatfield never really seems like the same person who’s in the novels by Leslie Scott, Tom Curry, Walker Tompkins, and Peter Germano. If this had been a stand-alone with a totally different Texas Ranger, it would have been a better story. As is, it’s worth reading but not a great example of the series.

“War Bonnets in Wyoming” is a cavalry yarn by Gordon D. Shirreffs, one of the best all-around Western writers who was especially good in the cavalry sub-genre. In this one, the captain who’s in charge of establishing a new fort saves the life of a young Shoshone brave who’s being pursued by hostile Arapahoes. Will this be enough to save the lives of the captain, an Indian agent’s beautiful daughter, and a troop of cavalry later on? I think we know the answer to that, but Shirreffs is such a good writer it doesn’t matter. This story doesn’t have a lot of action, but it’s very suspenseful and I enjoyed it.

Harry Harrison Kroll isn’t somebody I think of as a Western writer. He wrote non-fiction about folklore and Americana, and his fiction is usually of the backwoods, hillbilly variety. But he made a few appearances in Western pulps, including the story “Catchers is Keepers” in this issue. It’s not actually a Western, though. It’s about a riverman on the Mississippi who finds a valuable raft and tries to salvage it, only to end up with trouble and a beautiful girl (but I repeat myself). Out of place though it may be, this is a fairly entertaining story.

Frank Castle got his start in the business assisting and ghosting for Western author Tom W. Blackburn, then went on to write dozens of stories under his own name for the Western pulps in the late Forties through the mid-Fifties. After that he became one of the most reliable novelists in the business, turning out books by the score: Westerns, hardboiled crime, nurse novels, soft-core novels, movie novelizations, and a lot of juvenile TV tie-in novels for Whitman under the name Cole Fannin. I’ve always thought Cole Fannin would have been a great Western pseudonym, but Castle chose to use Steve Thurman instead for the Westerns he didn’t publish under his real name. He also wrote some of the Lassiter novels under the house-name Jack Slade. I really like his work, so I was glad to see that he has a novelette in this issue called “Wild Night in Dodge”.

And a wild night it is. Dodge City is past its hell-raising peak since the railhead has long since moved on westward, but plenty of trouble is lurking there anyway for Kelly Shannon, who brings in a herd from Colorado. Before you know it, he’s met a beautiful redhead who looks just like a long-dead lover of his from Texas, he’s been accused of cheating at cards, he’s been blackjacked and knocked out, and he’s had ten thousand dollars stolen from him. And that’s just the start of a night full of fights, shootouts, double-crosses, and nefarious plans.

This is a terrific story, a 1950s Gold Medal Western novel in miniature. It’s got a hardboiled hero, a beautiful girl, and despicable villains everywhere Kelly Shannon turns. Frank Castle developed a very distinctive style that makes his later novels easy to identify, but it’s just in the formative stages here. The story races along and comes to a satisfying conclusion, and it just makes me want to read more by Castle. 

“Bedlam on the Box X” is by Ben Frank, the author of the Doc Swap series and a writer whose work I’ve grown to heartily dislike. This isn’t a Doc Swap story, so I had a little hope for it, but it’s the same sort of cutesy, allegedly humorous story and I gave up on it after a few pages. Ben Frank just isn’t for me, and I think I’m going to stop trying to read his stories. (I felt the same way about Syl McDowell’s Swap and Whopper series and finally warmed up to it, but I don’t believe it’s going to happen with Ben Frank.)

I don’t know a thing about Garold Hartsock except that he published a couple of dozen stories, mostly Westerns and a few detective stories, in the pulps during the Forties and Fifties. His story “Feud” in this issue is a grim tale about feuding families in Oregon and includes a stereotypical Romeo-and-Juliet element. Hartsock’s writing is pretty good, though, and he kept me turning the pages to the end, which was a major letdown. So, not bad, but not particularly good, either.

And that’s a pretty accurate description of this issue of TEXAS RANGERS, too. The Frank Castle novelette is superb, and the Shirreffs cavalry yarn is very good and well worth reading, too. The Hatfield novel is okay if you’re not expecting too much but frustrating in that it could have been much better, although if you just want to sample one of Richmond’s novels, this would be a good pick because the sidekicks aren’t in it. Otherwise, I’d say that if you own this one, read Castle and Shirreffs and skip the rest.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Lawman and the Songbird - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

One of my favorite characters in current Western fiction, Chap O'Keefe's freelance range detective Joshua Dillard, returns in THE LAWMAN AND THE SONGBIRD, a novel originally published by Robert Hale in 2005. It's now available in e-book and paperback editions and is well worth reading. (This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on November 20, 2014, but not to worry, those links are current and will take you right to the book on Amazon. More about that below.)

This novel delves into Joshua's past, flashing back to his days as a Pinkerton operative when he was sent to a mining boomtown in Montana to corral a gang of outlaws operating in the area. While he's tackling that job, he gets mixed up in the schemes of a beautiful saloon entertainer and is unable to prevent a deadly saloon robbery. The loot vanishes, and so does the songbird.

Years later, after personal tragedy has led him to quit the Pinkertons and embark on a hardscrabble life as a drifting troubleshooter, Joshua returns to that same Montana town, which is still plagued with lawlessness. This time he's hired as the local marshal, and a daring stagecoach robbery is the first act in a chain of events that might give Joshua a chance to redeem himself for his earlier failure—if he can survive a hail of outlaw lead.

As usual, Chap O'Keefe (who is really Keith Chapman) throws in some nice plot twists and packs the yarn he's spinning with plenty of gritty action. The pace never falters, and THE LAWMAN AND THE SONGBIRD delivers top-notch Western entertainment. Highly recommended, as are all of Keith's books.

(In addition to being a very entertaining Western yarn, the new edition of this novel has been expanded with a bonus article about how it came to be written and the editorial back-and-forth between the author and the publishing company. I find behind-the-scenes stuff like this fascinating, and it's one more reason I still highly recommend this book.)

Review: Run, Killer, Run - Lionel White

Before there was Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake) and his famous protagonist Parker, there was Lionel White, the first real master of the heist novel. White didn’t write about a series character, but many of the protagonists of his novels bear a resemblance to Parker, including Rand Coleman, the lead character in White’s first novel, RUN, KILLER, RUN. The original version of this novel was published as a digest novel by Rainbow Books in 1952 under the title SEVEN HUNGRY MEN. White revised it and Avon published it as a paperback original in 1959 under its current title. Then Black Gat Books reprinted that version in a very nice paperback edition that comes out today. (You can see the covers of the two previous editions below. I don't know who did the art on the Avon edition of RUN, KILLER, RUN, but the cover on the Rainbow Books edition of SEVEN HUNGRY MEN is by the great George Gross.)

Rand Coleman is a professional criminal serving time for robbery when a corrupt lawyer manages to secure his release and recruits him to pull off a big job: an armored car robbery that will net a cool two million dollars. In telling his story, White employs the classic structure of the heist novel. Coleman assembles his team and we get to know them: a couple of veteran mobsters, a hotheaded young punk, a washed-up boat skipper, a sullen first mate. A couple of beautiful girls wind up involved in the proceedings. The plan for the robbery is laid out, and then we get the execution of it.

Do things go wrong? Of course, they do! But Coleman and his team get their hands on the loot, and now all they have to do is make their getaway to Florida, and from there, who knows? Cuba? South America? Unfortunately, treachery, greed, lust, and violence are along for the ride, too.

RUN, KILLER, RUN may not have much in it that we haven’t seen before, but this is a very early example of this sort of noir crime novel. And White spins the yarn with such skill that I was totally caught up in it, eagerly turning the pages to find out what was going to happen. The twists and turns that White introduces in his plot never disappointed me, either. RUN, KILLER, RUN is a terrific novel, fast-paced and well-written and very entertaining. If you enjoy heist novels, I give it a very high recommendation.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Uncertain Glory (1944)

I watched this movie a while back but decided I wanted to wait and let my reaction to it percolate in my brain some before I wrote about it, to see if I felt differently after I thought it over. UNCERTAIN GLORY, made in 1944, stars Errol Flynn, and I usually really enjoy Flynn’s movies. The script was co-authored by Max Brand. And it was directed by Raoul Walsh, one of my all-time favorite directors. So it seemed to be a movie I would really enjoy.

I hated it. And I can’t talk about why I hated it without tons of spoilers, especially about the ending. So if you’ve never seen this movie and think you might watch it someday, you might be well-advised just to move on and not read this post.

For those of you still reading, Flynn plays a somewhat different sort of character for him, a French criminal who’s a professional thief and quite possibly a murder. He’s been convicted of murder, anyway, and is about to taken to the guillotine when an Allied bombing raid wrecks the prison and he escapes. World War II is going on, you see, and of course France is currently occupied by the Nazis.

So far, so good. A French police inspector played by Paul Lukas is on Flynn’s trail, and for a while we get an excellent cat-and-mouse movie with Lukas trying to catch Flynn and Flynn trying to stay ahead of the law. Flynn, of course, makes friends with some villagers, because he’s charming and likable despite being a criminal. How could he be anything else? He’s Errol Flynn! He’s not really a bad guy. He’s just a rogue!

Or maybe not. He probably did all the things he’s accused of, the script deliberately leaves that ambiguous. But Lukas finally catches him and is ready to take him back to Paris for another date with Madame Guillotine.

But wait! The Resistance has blown up a bridge in the area, and the Nazis have taken a hundred of the local men prisoner and the local S.S. commander is threatening to execute them unless the saboteur turns himself in. Flynn hatches the idea of pretending to be the saboteur and turning himself in so that he can save the hostages, but only if Lukas will allow him to have a few more days of freedom. Lukas agrees, reluctantly.

This is all very well-done. The acting is great, the script is nice and crisp, and even though there’s not much action, Walsh keeps things moving along at an entertaining pace. I was enjoying this, waiting for what I figured was the inevitable twist: something would happen that results in a big, action-packed climax in which Flynn reveals he really is a good guy as he rescues the hostages, kills a bunch of Nazis, and redeems himself, after which Lukas lets him go to join a Resistance unit. Or else he rescues the hostages and dies in a blaze of glory with a machine gun chattering in his hands.

BIG SPOILER NOW.

What really happens: Flynn turns himself in to the S.S. and they execute him, I guess. We’re never really told one way or the other.

I was left staring at the screen with the proverbial “Wait . . . What?” look on my face. No bullets flying, no grenades going off, no stirring music? Would the ending I expected have been hokey as all get-out? Well, yeah, but it’s still what I wanted, and what I figured I was sure to get from Errol Flynn, Max Brand, and Raoul Walsh. I didn’t want some artsy “statement.”

I almost just let this one go and didn’t write about it. I’m a firm believer in the idea that you should review a book or a movie or a TV show for what it is, not what you want it to be. And to be fair, UNCERTAIN GLORY is a very well-made, well-acted movie. As a piece of cinema, it’s worth watching. But I was enormously disappointed in it.

Those of you who disagree—or agree, for that matter—feel free to let me know. Won’t bother me a bit either way.

Reviews: Fixed/Beyond the Finish - Max Brand (Frederick Faust)

After reading and enjoying the first two Dr. Kildare stories by Frederick Faust writing as Max Brand, I decided to read more of Faust’s contemporary stories. Although most famous, and justly so, as a Western author, Faust wrote all sorts of stories. “Fixed” and “Beyond the Finish” are two with sports backdrops.

“Fixed” appeared in the June 13, 1936 issue of the slick magazine COLLIER’S. As you might suspect from the title, it’s a prize fight yarn about a middleweight title bout between the champ, a young Irishman named Slam Finnegan, and the challenger, a black fighter known as “Little David” Larue. Attending the fight is a gangster Faust refers to only as “Big Bill”. Bill knows something nobody else does: Slam Finnegan is going to take a dive in the ninth round, and Bill is going to clean up on a bet he made at long odds.

Of course, fixed fights never go exactly the way they’re supposed to. We all know that from the movies we’ve seen and the boxing yarns we’ve read. Sometimes the fix works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I won’t say which way it turns out here, but the fun for the reader is in the getting there, and Faust makes it fun, indeed, with lots of great dialogue between Big Bill, his lackey who attends the fight with him, other crooks and gamblers, and a beautiful girl who’s also ringside. You knew there had to be a beautiful girl, right? It’s fast and colorful and with more plot would have made a great movie with, say, Eugene Pallette as Big Bill, Joel McCrea as Slam Finnegan, and maybe Jean Arthur as the girl. I can’t help but see this stuff in my head.

“Beyond the Finish” also appeared in COLLIER’S, in the March 24, 1934 issue. With that title, it’s got to be a horse racing story. The protagonist is a young man who, after being orphaned, goes to live with his cousin, a wealthy horse breeder and trainer in Virginia. He becomes an excellent rider and is picked by his cousin to ride a new horse in the big steeplechase race. But there’s something shady going on, hijinks among horsey high society, if you will, and our hero winds up with quite a conflict going on, complicated (as these things always are) by the involvement of a beautiful young woman. Given all that, it’s not surprising that this story reminded me a little of a Dick Francis yarn, although it’s nowhere nearly as hardboiled and crime-oriented as Francis’s work. But Faust does a great job with the characters and the race itself, and he had me eager to find out what was going to happen next.

I really enjoyed both of these stories and plan to read more of Faust’s contemporary tales, even though I think maybe I’ve shaken out of my funk and am ready to go back to reading novels. We’ll see.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, Summer 1945

This issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES has a great zero-g cover by Earle Bergey and a few writers inside you may have heard of: Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, Jack Vance, Murray Leinster, and Frank Belknap Long (twice, once as himself and once as Leslie Northern). That's just a spectacular lineup. If you want to read this one, you can find it here, along with a bunch of other issues of THRILLING WONDER STORIES.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Red Seal Western, August 1937

RED SEAL WESTERN is a little-remembered Western pulp these days, but it had some good covers and good authors, too. I think this cover is by Tom Lovell. The cowboy looks like his work, and so does the redhead. Inside this issue are stories by Harry Sinclair Drago, Claude Rister, Dean Owens (almost certainly a typo for Dean Owen/Dudley Dean McGaughey), Cibolo Ford (with his name misspelled on the table of contents), Mel Pitzer, and Wilfred McCormick, one of my favorite authors as a kid for his juvenile sports novels and dog stories. This certainly looks like an enjoyable Western pulp to me.