Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Marvel Tales, May 1940

MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES started as a science fiction pulp, as you'd expect from that title, but after five issues, it abruptly changed to a Weird Menace pulp under the name MARVEL TALES. That experiment last only two issues, then it switched back to MARVEL STORIES, then MARVEL SCIENCE STORIES (again), and finally MARVEL SCIENCE FICTION. None of them were successful, but it wasn't for lack of trying. This is the second and final issue under the MARVEL TALES name, with a cover by J.W. Scott that's certainly worth of a Weird Menace pulp. Most of the authors inside were top-notch, although they tended to use pseudonyms, maybe because of the generally disreputable air the whole enterprise gave off. The lead story in this issue is by Nils O. Sunderland, who was really Jack Williamson, and backing him up are Robert O. Wentworth (Edmond Hamilton), Russell Gray (Bruno Fischer), and a couple of guys using their real names, Frederic Arnold Kummer Jr. and George E. Clark. If you want to check out this pulp for yourself, the entire issue can be found here. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, January 15, 1938

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with tape around the edges placed there by a previous owner. I know that tape on pulps gives most collectors the fantods, but it doesn’t bother me as long as it’s not too heavy-handed, probably because I’m more of a reader than a collector. A case like this one is okay. The cover is by Emery Clark, who, if I recall correctly, did some DOC SAVAGE covers for Street & Smith as well. (I know I could look it up on the FMI, but I’m too lazy right now.) I like this cover okay, although I think the best WILD WEST WEEKLY covers are by H.W. Scott and R.G. Harris.

The lead story in this issue is the novelette “Comanche”, published under the house-name Andrew A. Griffin and attributed to Lee Bond, an attribution I agree with. It reads like Bond’s work. The title character is a young troubleshooter for a wealthy ranch owner who has spreads across the West. Comanche’s background is a mystery. He’s white, but he was raised by a band of Comanche Indians until he was ten years old, when he was taken in by the rancher he now works for. Where he came from, nobody knows. But he’s smart, tough, and gun-swift, making him perfect to get to the bottom of the rustling that’s plaguing one of his mentor’s spreads in New Mexico Territory. Of course, the situation turns out to be more complicated than it appears at first. Bond piles on the action and includes a case of mistaken identity to complicate things. Bond’s work tends toward the formulaic at times, but at his best, he was a top-notch Western pulpster, and I really enjoyed this yarn.

Except . . . what I didn’t realize until I got to the end of it is that it’s just the first of a series of six linked novelettes featuring Comanche, so it really doesn’t have much resolution to it. Usually in a case like this, the novelettes would then be put together into a novel published as a hardback. I don’t find any evidence of that being true with these stories, so it’s likely I’ll never know what happens with Comanche after this. (The next week’s issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY with the second Comanche story is available on the Internet Archive. I may read it or I may not, I haven’t decided yet.)

Young Texas Rangers Hungry Hawkins and Rusty Bolivar starred in scores of stories by Samuel H. Nickels, including this issue’s “Prospectin’ fer Gun Trouble”. In this one, Hungry and Rusty help an old prospector protect his claim from a bunch of outlaws. That’s the entire plot. Nickels does an excellent job with the action and Hungry and Rusty are very likable protagonists, but the thin plot kind of works against the story. Also, one of the henchmen wonders why the boss outlaw wants to take over the mine in the first place, since it’s not very productive. That’s a darned good question, and it’s one that Nickels fails to answer. I don’t know if he just forgot and none of the editors at Street & Smith called him on it, but that plot hole is left wide open.

George C. Henderson was a pretty solid Western writer during the pulp era. “War on the Broken Wheel” is a stand-alone story featuring a good pair of protagonists, a couple of deputy U.S. marshals working undercover as surveyors as they try to find out who’s stirring up trouble between the cattlemen and the sodbusters. Again, nice action and characters, but not much plot keeps this story from being as strong as it might have been. I wouldn’t have minded seeing these protagonists again, but it seems this was their only appearance.

Under his pseudonym Ward M. Stevens, Paul S. Powers wrote approximately 150 stories about Kid Wolf, a wandering adventurer and self-styled Soldier of Misfortune. I prefer Powers’ other main series character, good-guy outlaw Sonny Tabor, but I really enjoy the Kid Wolf stories, too. In the novelette “Kid Wolf on Wild Hog Range”, the Kid comes across an injured young prospector who has been attacked by outlaws and left to die at the tusks of a herd of wild javelinas. The Kid saves the fellow from that grisly fate, of course, and learns from him that the outlaws have kidnapped the young man’s partners in order to torture the location of their valuable mine from them. Naturally, Kid Wolf isn’t going to stand for that, so he and the young man set off to right that wrong. Powers was really good at dishing out fast-moving, action-packed prose, and this yarn races along in a very entertaining fashion, ending with an epic fistfight and a suitable comeuppance for the bad guys. An excellent story and my favorite of the Kid Wolf series I’ve read so far.

I’m also a fan of the Shorty Masters series by Allan R. Bosworth, who wrote some really fine Western novels in addition to his hundreds of top-notch pulp yarns. Shorty is a muleskinner and wagon driver who operates a freight line along with his partner, gunslinger Willie Weatherbee, also known as the Sonora Kid. Naturally, the jobs they take on usually result in trouble, as in “The Calaboose at Caliente”, which finds the intrepid due thrown in jail, accused of killing a steer and stealing its hide. Bosworth also works in a jail break, a bank robbery, and a rodeo. Although there’s usually some humor to be found in these stories, they aren’t really comedies, and they include some unusual touches like the mules in Shorty’s team being named after famous musical composers. This story has plenty of action and is very well-written. I’d say that somebody ought to collect the Shorty Masters stories, but there are more than 130 of them, so it would be a pretty big project.

Flash Moran was the hero of about 40 novelettes by William F. Bragg in WILD WEST WEEKLY. A young deputy sheriff in the cattle town of Piute, Wyoming, Flash got his nickname more for his hot temper than for his red hair. In “Ridin’ the Rustler Special”, he’s a long way from his home range on the trail of a murderer when he gets mixed up in a fight defending a hapless tramp who’s caught stealing a ride on a train. Not long after that, Flash himself is the target of a murder attempt. Naturally, everything ties together, with some rustling and a series of train robberies thrown in, to boot. This is a great story. Bragg provides plenty of well-written action with a lot of it taking place on a train thundering through the night on a rendezvous with disaster, and I love that kind of stuff. Flash Moran is likable enough, and the other characters are interesting as well. As far as I recall, this is the first Flash Moran story I’ve read and the first thing by William F. Bragg, as well. I need to read more by him, because I really enjoyed this yarn.

This is a fine issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. The first three stories are all good, despite my having a few quibbles about them, but the last three by Powers, Bosworth, and Bragg are all top-of-the-line Western pulp stories as far as I’m concerned and elevate this to an above average issue of a consistently good pulp. Definitely worth reading if you have a copy on your shelf, as long as you don’t mind that you’re getting only the first part of what’s basically a serial in “Comanche”. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Fugitive Pigeon - Donald E. Westlake

When Donald E. Westlake passed away, I don’t recall seeing any mentions of this book in the numerous tributes to him and his work. I think it’s an important novel, though, because it’s part of the transition in his career, the divergence between Westlake the comic crime novelist and Richard Stark the hardboiled novelist. THE FUGITIVE PIGEON is his sixth book, originally published in 1965. I haven’t read the two Westlake novels immediately preceding it, KILLY and PITY HIM AFTERWARDS, but judging by those titles, they don’t sound like laugh riots. I know the first three novels under the Westlake name (THE MERCENARIES, KILLING TIME, and 361) are hardboiled, because I’ve read them. So I’m guessing that THE FUGITIVE PIGEON is something of a departure, a book that still has some hardboiled elements (gangsters, hit men, crooked cops) but also a considerable amount of screwball comedy. As such, it provides a template for a lot of Westlake’s later work that mixes comedy and crime.

But, now that the pontificating is out of the way, how’s the book itself, you ask? Great fun, I’m happy to report. The narrator is Charlie Poole, an unambitious young man who’s perfectly content to run a neighborhood bar in Canarsie. The bar is owned by Charlie’s Uncle Al, who’s a mid-level gangster. Occasionally, Charlie has to hold a package at the bar for somebody until it’s picked up later, and while he suspects this has something to do with his uncle’s criminal activities, he never asks for details. He doesn’t want to know.

But then late one night as he’s about to close up, two strangers come in, and Charlie quickly realizes that they’re hit men sent there to kill him. He has no idea why anybody would send killers after him, but when he manages to escape with his life, he decides that he’d better figure it out in a hurry, because the two assassins are still on his trail. This is the beginning of a whirlwind three days in which Charlie tries to find out who wants him dead and why, an investigation complicated by the fact that he has to keep dodging the two hit men. Along the way he runs into a murder (for which he’s blamed, naturally) and a beautiful young woman (for whom he falls, naturally). It’s all very fast and entertaining and sharply plotted and written, and while there’s not much of the slapstick humor that shows up in Westlake’s later books, it’s pretty funny in places, too.

I really enjoyed this one a lot. If you haven’t read Westlake before, it wouldn’t be a bad place to start. If you’re a Westlake fan but have never gotten around to reading it, I highly recommend that you do so. Either way, you’re in for a treat.

(This post originally appeared on March 22, 2009. I included a link to that post because you really should click on through to it and read the comments. Not just because of what they say, but also for the sense of nostalgia and fond memories they're liable to invoke. Showing up to comment on that post were several wonderful friends gone too soon: Bill Crider, Ed Gorman, Bob Randisi, and Randy Johnson. Those were the days, and we won't see their like again. Thankfully, Juri Nummelin, Patti Abbott, David Cranmer, and Frank Loose are all still with us. As for THE FUGITIVE PIGEON, it's available as an e-book, and used copies of the hardback and paperback editions are easily found, too.)

Movie Review: The Fall Guy (2024)

We weren’t big fans of the TV series THE FALL GUY. In fact, I can’t remember for sure if we ever even watched an entire episode of it. Maybe there was something on opposite it that we watched instead. Even though we had a VCR by that time, we didn’t record a lot. Blank tapes, you may remember, were expensive starting out!

Anyway, you might think that would make me not exactly the target audience for the movie version that came out a couple of years ago. But hey, I like Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, so why not give it a try.

Even though we didn’t watch the TV show, I knew that Colt Seavers was the name of the character played by Lee Majors, a Hollywood stuntman who also worked from time to time as a bounty hunter/private detective. In the movie, Ryan Gosling plays Seavers, but as the movie opens, he’s just a stuntman who’s badly injured in a stunt gone wrong. It’s only after months of recuperation that he’s dragged back into the movie business as a favor to his former girlfriend, a camera operator who’s directing her first feature (Emily Blunt). The shoot is in Australia, and things quickly go wrong. The star of the movie, an obnoxious action star, goes missing, and Colt Seavers becomes an unofficial private eye, pressured by the film’s producer into tracking the guy down.

Of course, this leads into a complicated plot involving murder and almost non-stop, over-the-top action reminiscent of the Fast and Furious movies. Meaning it’s loud, silly, and totally unrealistic . . . but I, uh, enjoyed it anyway.

Actually, I got a huge kick out of this movie and grinned almost all the way through it. Lots of movie and writing jokes, rapid fire banter, and all that action. I mean, you know my motto: If you’re going over-the-top anyway, you might as well go ’waaayyy over. Really, the only things this movie is missing are quicksand, a swordfight, and (my favorite) a fight on top of a moving train.

I know THE FALL GUY didn’t get very good reviews and flopped at the box office, but I had a good time watching it. It’s no masterpiece of the cinema, but neither are a lot of the movies I like. I may have to hunt up some episodes of the TV series and see if it might be a good candidate for a TV Series I’ve Missed Until Now post.

An Announcement

There are going to be books reviewed here that have AI covers because I wanted to read them, and when I did, I liked them. While I post mixed reviews from time to time and have been known to quibble about a few points here and there, I try to concentrate on books that I've enjoyed. Most of the ones with AI covers I've reviewed have been reprints of older books written long before AI existed. I know for a fact that they're either in the public domain or have been properly licensed from the rights holders. When I've reviewed new books with AI covers, it's usually because I know the author personally or have some reason to trust that the book wasn't written by AI.

I removed a comment from another post where the commenter implied that the publisher was guilty of illegal behavior. If an AI cover makes you not want to buy a book, that's fine, what you buy is entirely up to you. You can skip that post, and if you do, I hope you'll come back the next day for a post about a pulp or an old movie or a vintage paperback, because those things are still going to account for most of the content here. If not, again, that's entirely up to you. As for me, I'd rather have a copy of that 80-year-old Western novel I want to read, even if it has an AI cover.

And as for this blog, AI covers have joined the ranks of politics and religion. FIGHT THAT WAR SOMEWHERE ELSE.

Forgive me for posting in, well, anger is too strong a word. Annoyance, maybe. Forgive me for posting in annoyance. Unfortunately, there have been times in the past when I've backed off on reviewing certain books because I knew people I care about would be upset. I still believe in not going out of my way to cause trouble, but maybe I'm going to worry about it a little less in the future. So if you see something on here you don't like, I hope it won't run you off for good, but if I'm writing about something, I truly think it's worth your time and I want to tell you about it.

Review: The Buffer - J.E. Macdonnell

J.E. Macdonnell was an Australian author who wrote several hundred novels in a variety of genres. Some of his espionage thrillers were reprinted in the United States under the pseudonym James Dark, and I read a couple of those back in the day and enjoyed them. These days, however, Macdonnell is best remembered for the many World War II novels he wrote about the Australian Navy, many of which are available as e-books from Piccadilly Publishing. I recently read THE BUFFER, published originally in paperback by Horwitz in 1963.

From what I gather, Macdonnell’s novels often feature a destroyer known as the Wind Rode, and the books have a continuing cast of characters including the captain, the first lieutenant, and the chief bosun’s mate, a rank nicknamed The Buffer. In this case, The Buffer is William “Hooky” Walker, so called because his right hand was shot off during a battle and replaced with a steel hook. That doesn’t prevent Hooky from carrying out his duties and being much admired by the ship’s crew.

Not everybody gets along with Hooky, though. A new junior sub-lieutenant clashes with him almost immediately because the youngster is very much by-the-book and Hooky is an old vet who knows how to get things done even if he has to bend the regulations a little now and then. One of the sailors also hates Hooky because he’s a slacker and a malingerer and Hooky won’t let him get away with it. He has another reason for hating The Buffer, too, which comes out in time.

In addition to all the details of shipboard life, Macdonnell provides a considerable amount of action as the Wind Rode delivers a load of aviation fuel to an isolated island airfield and is attacked by Japanese bombers; runs into a submarine and trades shots with it; and finally goes into battle against a Japanese cruiser that has our heroes much outgunned. There’s also a very suspenseful scene involved an unexploded bomb. The personal drama that’s been simmering under the surface finally breaks through at the end.

THE BUFFER runs into the same problem as a lot of nautical fiction I read: much of the time, I don’t have a clue what it’s talking about. I am not a boat guy and much of the terminology sails (ha!) right over my head. However, I can figure out most of that stuff from context, and my lack of nautical knowledge isn’t a great drawback. (I do know a considerable amount about Mississippi riverboats, having researched them for numerous books, but even there, I’m far from an expert.)

Despite my comment about the terminology, I really enjoyed THE BUFFER. Hooky is a great protagonist, and Macdonnell’s prose has a blunt, straightforward style that’s very appropriate for the situation and characters. The story drew me along at a fast pace. With its ensemble cast and episodic structure, this novel reminded me a great deal of a good Sixties TV show about World War II. Being a huge fan of COMBAT! and THE RAT PATROL, I consider that high praise. There’s a direct sequel to this book and I already have it, so I plan to read it soon. I also want to go back and pick up some of the earlier books. This is great stuff, and I highly recommend it. You can find it for various platforms here.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Flight of the Silverbird - Two Steps From Hell

I came across this song by Two Steps From Hell and absolutely love it. I've heard it said of their music that it inspires you to create movies in your head, and that's certainly the case here. This is perfect for the opening credits sequence of an epic Western movie. I'm not a big one for playing music while I'm writing, but I have a hunch I may be listening to this one some while pounding the keyboard.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Big-Book Detective Magazine, February 1942

I've read several issues of BIG-BOOK WESTERN MAGAZINE over the years, but I've never read or even seen an issue of BIG-BOOK DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, Popular Publications' attempt to launch another detective pulp. Unlike its Western cousin, BIG-BOOK DETECTIVE MAGAZINE wasn't successful and ran only eight issues from December 1941 to February 1943. This is the second issue, and based on the good cover (don't know who painted it) and the lineup of authors, the magazine's failure wasn't warranted based on its quality. Authors on hand in this issue are T.T. Flynn, W.T. Ballard, Russell Gray (actually Bruno Fischer), Robert Sidney Bowen, Jackson Gregory Jr., and house-names Daniel Winters, Ray P. Shotwell, and David Crewe. The thing about those house-names is that this being Popular Publications, the actual authors were probably pretty darned good. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: West, September 10, 1927

William Reusswig did some nice covers, and I like the one on this issue of WEST, when it was still being published by Doubleday and coming out every week. The authors are a mix of familiar names and ones I don't recognize. The familiar: Stephen Payne, Ralph R. Perry, Oscar J. Friend, Kenneth Gilbert, and Homer King Gordon. The ones I don't know: William West Winter, Edwin Hunt Hoover, and Robert V. Carr. Perry wrote a really fine Western novel called NIGHTRIDER DEPUTY. Friend is best remembered probably as an agent and editor, but I've enjoyed the fiction by him that I've read, too. Payne had a long, productive career as a Western pulpster. I don't recall reading anything by Gilbert or Gordon, but they published steadily, too. This looks like a pretty good issue. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Stirrup HIgh/Western Word Wrangler - Walt Coburn

I’ve discussed Walt Coburn’s work here before. He’s one of my favorite Western authors, while at the same time being one of the most maddeningly inconsistent. Today, though, I’m talking about his non-fiction, not his hundreds of pulp stories and dozens of novels. Coburn is the author of two memoirs, STIRRUP HIGH and WESTERN WORD WRANGLER, and they’re both well worth reading.

STIRRUP HIGH is the better of the two. It’s the story of Coburn’s life as a boy growing up on his father’s vast ranch in Montana around the turn of the Twentieth Century. Although there were a few modern conveniences, such as cars and telephones, ranch life in Montana at that time hadn’t changed much from the Old West days (which weren’t so old then, only a couple of decades past). Young Walt was a high-spirited kid, and STIRRUP HIGH is full of his adventures, many of them in tandem with the old cowboy who served as his father’s foreman. Even in Coburn’s worst pulp stories, there’s an air of authenticity, a feeling of “this is the way it really was” when it comes to ranch life, and when you read STIRRUP HIGH, you can see why that’s true. Now, you have to remember that Coburn was a born yarn-spinner, and like a lot of fiction-writers who turn their hands to non-fiction, he can’t resist embellishing a little bit. Some of the dates that he gives don’t quite add up, and some of the stories he tells in this book don’t quite jibe with established facts . . . but I’m not sure either of those things matter. The spirit is true, and STIRRUP HIGH is vastly entertaining.

WESTERN WORD WRANGLER covers some of the same ground but also carries the story on into Coburn’s later life and is fairly unstinting in dealing with some of the mental problems that plagued him throughout his adult years, along with the physical problems that made him give up cowboying and turn to writing. Much of the material in this volume is drawn from “The Talley Book”, the long-running column that Coburn wrote for the magazine TRUE WEST. That makes for a pretty episodic narrative, and WESTERN WORD WRANGLER is not nearly as polished as STIRRUP HIGH. It also doesn’t go into the amount of detail about his writing career that I wish it would have. But it’s still entertaining and filled with information.

Walt Coburn came to a bad end, tormented by alcoholism and finally dead by his own hand because he couldn’t sell his work anymore. His stories have made a small comeback in recent years, with several paperback collections of his pulp stories from Leisure, as well as a number of hardback and large print reprints of his novels. Everything he wrote in the Twenties and Thirties is worth reading, at least based on what I’ve read so far, and good stories can be found in his work from the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties, as well, although you might have to dig a little harder for it. He deserves to be remembered, and STIRRUP HIGH and WESTERN WORD WRANGLER are pretty good places to start.

(This post originally appeared on February 27, 2009. I've continued to read novels and stories by Walt Coburn, although not as frequently as I was doing back then. I still consider him one of my favorite Western writers, though, despite the inconsistency of his later work. I once had him make a cameo appearance in a house-name novel set in the early 1900s. The protagonist was a friend of Coburn's father, so he stopped at the family ranch while passing through Montana. Mention was made of young Walt, who was already quite a yarn-spinner. I hope some reader, somewhere, caught that reference. I never saw any comment about it in any of the Amazon reviews of the book.)

Review: Just a Johnny Reb - Kirk Hamilton (Keith Hetherington)

Keith Hetherington was one of the best and most prolific of the Australian Western writers who turned out hundreds of books for Cleveland Publishing Company, and the fine folks at Piccadilly Publishing are doing a top-notch job of making his books available for a new generation of readers as well as for long-time fans of Hetherington’s work like myself.

One of the latest releases I read as an ARC is JUST A JOHNNY REB, which will be available August 1 as half of a double volume along with LEGACY OF THE COUGAR. It was published originally by Cleveland in 1996 under Hetherington’s most common pseudonym Kirk Hamilton. The Johnny Reb of the title is Laramie Coyle, a former Confederate soldier who would be content to leave the war behind him, but not everyone is willing to do that. A clash with a Northerner results in a gunfight that leaves a man dead and earns Coyle a mortal enemy whose efforts at revenge dog his trail.

Eventually, to repay an elderly couple who help him out, Coyle takes on the job of finding another former Confederate who was a prisoner of war in a Union prison camp. The trail leads him to San Antonio, Texas, where he runs into more trouble from the Reconstruction forces occupying the town, as well as getting mixed up with a rancher who’s determined the South will rise again, even if it means restarting the war.

As always in a Keith Hetherington novel, there’s plenty of well-written action. He was one of the best at fistfights and shootouts, giving them a suitably gritty and realistic feel. The plot is solid, and Laramie Coyle is a good protagonist. The little bit of romance that crops up in the novel is handled well, too.

I enjoyed JUST A JOHNNY REB, and if you’re a fan of traditional Westerns, I think there’s a good chance you will, too. You can pre-order it at Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Bookshop.org.

TV Series I've Missed Until Now: Family Tree (2013)

I really like actor Chris O’Dowd (THE I.T. CROWD and GET SHORTY) and will watch him in almost anything. So when I came across a comedy series starring him called FAMILY TREE, I didn’t hesitate to give it a try. It ran on HBO in 2013 for only one season of 8 half-hour episodes, so it wasn’t going to be much of an investment of time. I was a little leery of the format: it’s a mockumentary, written and directed by Christopher Guest, who is, of course, very well-known for the genre. But sometimes they don’t work great for me. Even so, I wanted to watch this one.

I’m glad I did. O’Dowd plays Tom Chadwick, who grew up in Ireland with his mother after his parents divorced. His sister (Nina Conti) remained in London with their father (Michael McKean) and is, well, a mite eccentric, carrying around a monkey puppet and talking through it. Tom has returned to London after a break-up and has a good but somewhat goofy friend who works in a zoo. All that is established pretty quickly, and then we get to the meat of the series. Tom’s great-aunt has died and left him a box full of family mementoes that pique his interest in his ancestors, and so he sets off to explore the family tree, leading to encounters with all sorts of bizarre relatives he didn’t know he had.

This series is known for being heavily improvised, and you can tell that. It’s also very funny at times, although I’ll admit it took a couple of episodes to grow on me. Most of the comedy is the same gentle, character-driven humor to be found in DETECTORISTS, one of my favorite series of recent years. FAMILY TREE can manage to be hilarious, uncomfortable, and heart-warming, all in the same half-hour. Tom’s dad is a fan of several fake British TV sitcoms, and the clips we see of those are very funny, too.

Quite a few fine comedic actors show up in supporting roles along the way: Fred Willard, Ed Begley Jr., Kevin Pollack, Will Sasso, Joe Lo Truglio, Graham Greene, and Bob Balaban are all on hand. I always enjoy seeing Michael McKean, and as always when I do, I wonder why Lenny went on to have such a long, productive career and Squiggy didn’t, but such are the ways of fame, I suppose.

The ending left me unable to tell if they hoped the series would continue or if it was always intended to be a one-and-done. But it’s sweet and wraps things up well enough. I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy FAMILY TREE, but I wound up liking it a lot. It’s a very nice change from the type of TV we usually watch, and I recommend it if you’re in the mood for an offbeat comedy.

Review: Some Day I'll Kill You - Dana Chambers

Until recently, I’d never heard of hardboiled mystery author Dana Chambers, whose real name was Albert Fear Leffingwell. Looking at his books, though, they seem to be right in my wheelhouse, and since Stark House Press is making it easy by reprinting them, I recently read the first in the Jim Steele series, SOME DAY I’LL KILL YOU, published originally in hardback by Dial Press in 1939 and reprinted twice in paperback by Popular Library in 1949 and 1953, prior to the recent Stark House double volume that also includes the second novel in the series, TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING, and an informative introduction by Curtis Evans.

With a name like Jim Steele, you’d figure the narrator/protagonist of this book is a private detective, but no, he’s actually a writer of radio thrillers, although he’s one of the toughest, most two-fisted radio scripters you’re liable to run across. Hey, he even fought in the Spanish Civil War as a pilot for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. But as this novel opens, he’s back in the States and concerned with the trouble in which an old flame finds herself. Beautiful Lisa Ridgman, married to psychiatrist Mike Ridgman, is being blackmailed over accusations that she murdered her first husband. She’s gotten three anonymous letters so far, not only demanding money but being threatening, as if her own life is in danger.

Well, Jim knows the girl he’s in love with isn’t a killer, of course, and when she asks him to come along to her husband’s country estate in Connecticut for a weekend get-together with some of their wealthy friends, Jim agrees right away. Of course, he doesn’t know that he’ll barely be on the scene before murder strikes—and it won’t be the only killing before the weekend is over, either.

SOME DAY I’LL KILL YOU is a really offbeat blend of an English country house mystery and a rock’em, sock’em hardboiled crime yarn. Sure, you’ve got brittle banter among rich folks, much discussion of wills and inheritances, and some genteel flirtations. But then you’ve also got gangsters and shootings and slugfests (Jim gets hit on the head and knocked out twice in 24 hours), lots of hard drinking, beautiful babes, and surprisingly risque dialogue for the era. Chambers mixes and stirs all these elements in amusing, fast-paced prose that’s also suitably brutal when it needs to be. Jim Steele may spend his days typing scripts, but you don’t want to make an enemy of him.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s a Front Porch yarn for sure, the kind of book I grew up loving and still do. Highly recommended. You can find ebook and paperback editions of the double volume on Amazon.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Stories, March 1930

Despite having "Thrilling" in the title, as far as I know THRILLING STORIES was not part of the Thrilling Group. Instead, it was a short-lived adventure pulp from 1929-30. This is the fourth and final issue with a cover by an artist I'm not familiar with, John Hoff. His three covers for this pulp are his only credits in the Fictionmag Index. Likewise, the authors inside are mostly unknown to me. I recognize Achmed Abdullah and Bob du Soe, and that's it. The others are Owen Atkinson, W.P. Gardner, Kenneth Duane Whipple, Arthur Styron, Allison W. Ind, Jasper B. Sinclair, and Edward F. Medosch. Their stories may be good for all I know, but it's doubtful that I'll ever find out because I don't expect to have a copy of this pulp in my lifetime.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, November 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, complete with a slam-bang cover by Sam Cherry. I’ve said it many times before, but I really like his work.

I also consistently enjoy the adventures of range detectives Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith as penned by W.C. Tuttle. This issue’s novelette is called “Lovable Liars”, and as it opens, the pair of them are a-foot, having sold their horses and saddles anticipating that their boss at the Cattleman’s Association will send them to their next assignment via train. The boss expects them to ride horseback to the settlement of Smoke Tree, however, and since they sold their mounts and Tombstone then lost all their money trying out his supposedly foolproof system for blackjack . . . Well, the boys wind up riding the train, but they have to hop an illicit ride on a boxcar to do so. And then what happens? Why, the train gets held up, of course, and through a series of coincidences, Tombstone and Speedy are blamed for the robbery!

Clearing their names and corralling the actual train robbers complicates their original mission, which was to solve a murder for which the son of an old friend of their boss has been arrested. Our intrepid duo manage to accomplish all of that, of course, through a combination of luck, banter, fast action, and detective work that’s more clever than anyone gives them credit for. This is a consistently entertaining entry in a series I really like.

Cliff Walters, a prolific contributor to the Western pulps who’s all but forgotten these days, is next up with a story called “Bone Bonanza”, in which a young rancher who fancies himself an artist goes east in search of a career in fine art, only to have things work out differently than he expected. This is a very mild, lightweight story with a few interesting angles, and it’s an easy read that I don’t think will linger very long in anyone’s mind. But it’s a pleasant enough way to pass 15 minutes.

I sometimes wonder if the readers who bought these pulps realized that A. Leslie, Bradford Scott, and Jackson Cole (part of the time) were all the same guy. Some of them must have suspected. Under the A. Leslie name, Leslie Scott contributes the novelette “Washed in Blood” to this issue. The first part of the tale is fairly standard as young cowboy Jim Wayne clashes with three crooked brothers who run almost everything in the county. A saloon shootout leaves one of the brothers dead and Jim on the run as a fugitive. It’s when he holes up in an abandoned mission still being tended to by an old priest that the story becomes one of ghost pirates and hidden treasure. As always with a Scott story, the action is plentiful and well-written, and the settings are vivid. I really enjoyed this one.

I’ve read a couple of stories by Harold R. Stoakes, another forgotten writer, and enjoyed them. “The Red Stallion” in this issue is a modern-day Western about a horse that can’t be ridden and the relationship between a young man and his stepfather. Honestly, this seems less like a Western pulp story and more like something that would have appeared in a slick or even a literary magazine. It’s got enough angst to it that it could have been mawkish, but Stoakes keeps things pretty low-key and makes it work in a well-written story that reminds me of something Larry McMurtry might have written early in his career.

“One Man Wrecking Crew” is a short (maybe 2000 words, tops) story by the always dependable Donald Bayne Hobart. There’s not much plot to it, just some conflict between a young cowboy and a crooked saloon owner and his henchmen, and that’s just an excuse for a brutal fistfight scene. Hobart probably didn’t spend much time on this and picked up a quick 20 bucks or so, but he was enough of an old pro to make it fun to read.

The Navajo Tom Raine series has become one of my favorites. The novelette in this issue, “Ranger Out of Bounds” drops the reader down in the middle of the action as the Arizona Ranger investigates a land-and-water swindle that also involves the kidnapping of a beautiful young woman. The only break in the action comes when Raine is knocked out cold for a while. It’s a bit more complicated plot than usual for Lee Bond, who wrote this entry under the house-name Jackson Cole. Bond’s stories are pretty easy to identify: at least once in the story, the villains will stand around and explain the plot to each other, and the hero will face multiple enemies in a big, final gunfight. I thought this was an excellent story, and as usual, when I finished it I was eager to read more adventures of Navajo Tom Raine.

I don’t know anything about Clark Gray except that he published more than a hundred stories in various Western pulps and that he wrote the two worst Jim Hatfield novels in the whole series, “Lobo Colonel” (TEXAS RANGERS, January 1952) and “Warpath” (TEXAS RANGERS, June 1952). His story in this issue, “Tortilla Tenderfoot”, is about Pedro Gonzales, a reformed rustler who has lived a law-abiding life for years, only to be drawn back into a life of outlawry by the return of his former partner. This is a decent plot, but Gray plays it for laughs and the actual humor to be found in the story is pretty sparse. However, the writing isn’t bad, and although unimpressive, this is a much better story than either of Gray’s Hatfield novels.

All in all, this is a good solid issue of EXCITING WESTERN, due to top-notch series entries by Tuttle and Bond, a very good stand-alone by Scott, and some interesting short stories. It’s worth reading if you have a copy on your shelves.

Review: City - Clifford D. Simak

A couple of weeks ago when I reran my review from 2009 of Clifford D. Simak’s novel WAY STATION, I mentioned that Bill Crider recommended Simak’s novel CITY to me at least 40 years ago and said that I would try to get around to reading it. Well, this may surprise you, but I actually did go ahead and read it. There’s a lot of classic science fiction I’ve never gotten around to, and I’d like to read some of it while I still have the chance. This is as good a place to start as any.

CITY is a fix-up novel composed of eight novelettes that appeared originally in the pulps ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION and FANTASTIC ADVENTURES between 1944 and 1951, plus a short story written for an anthology in 1973. The stories are: “City”, ASTOUNDING, May 1944; “Huddling Place”, ASTOUNDING, July 1944; “Census”, ASTOUNDING, September 1944; “Desertion”, ASTOUNDING, November 1944 (this is actually the first story in the series Simak wrote, although it wasn’t published first); “Paradise”, ASTOUNDING, June 1946; “Hobbies”, ASTOUNDING, November 1946; “Aesop”, ASTOUNDING, December 1947; “The Trouble With Ants”, FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, January 1951 (Simak’s title for the story was “The Simple Way”); and “Epilog”, ASTOUNDING: JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL ANTHOLOGY.

When Simak put the eight novelettes together in a book published by Gnome Press in 1952 (“Epilog” wasn’t written until years later), he wrote notes between each story in the voice of a future historian as bridging material. Even so, CITY reads more like a collection than an actual novel because of the vast sweep of time it covers and the varying protagonists. However, there’s enough continuity between the stories that I think it’s best to read them in this form. They wouldn’t make as much sense if they were read out of order.

As for the tale (no pun intended) itself, even though I hadn’t read this book, I’ve known for a long time what it’s about: a world in which humans have all but disappeared and things are run by robots and sentient, talking dogs. Come to find out, though, that set-up doesn’t really take shape until well past the halfway point of the book. Instead, the stories cover the gradual decline of humanity and its eventual exodus from Earth, except for a few stragglers. Sure, there are some robots and dogs, but humans—to be specific, several generations of the Webster family, who are all doctors and scientists—are the protagonists. Eventually, though, it’s just the robots, led by the nigh-immortal butler Jenkins, and the dogs, and they face the same sort of challenges the humans did. Will they be more successful in overcoming them?

Anybody who knows me very well knows that I love dogs. There are some good dogs in this book, although somewhat oddly, we never get to know any of them very well. Simak does a good job, though, of writing them as dogs, not as humans with four legs and a tail. Some of my favorite parts of this book are the between-story notes, in which academics named Tige, Bounce, and Rover argue about the origins of the stories and whether or not humans really existed or were just made up as some sort of doggish fairy tale. These sections are clever and very funny.

And that humor is welcome, because, man, overall this is a bleak book! Humans make the wrong decisions and things fall apart over and over again. There are glimmers of hope here and there, but mostly I was just left shaking my head in despair.

That’s where my problem with this book lies. There’s very little action, mostly just people sitting around talking or interior monologues (and you’d be surprised how many interior monologues robots can have). The concepts are huge, sweeping, and compelling, but there’s not much to the book other than the concepts. If I had actually read this 40 years ago, or better yet, when I was in junior high or high school, I think the ideas would have been enough to blow me away. As it is, CITY is probably not the best book for a tired old man who’s inclined to gloominess to be reading.

I think I’ve gotten shallow in my dotage. Mostly when I read, I just want to be entertained. CITY is an impressive book, very well-written and thought-provoking, but its entertainment value is slight. You might react entirely differently to it. I can certainly see why it’s considered classic science fiction, and I’m glad I read it, but for me, it was somewhat of a disappointment.

Review: The Corrupters - William Francis

One of my favorite types of hardboiled novel is the one where the protagonist takes on the organization of a crooked boss who runs the whole town. That’s the basic set-up of THE CORRUPTERS by William Francis, published originally by Lion Books and coming soon in a new reprint edition from the fine folks at Black Gat Books.

The narrator/protagonist of THE CORRUPTERS is Mike Moyden, a former cop in an unnamed city four hours up the coast from Los Angeles. Framed with a bribery charge because he made enemies, he was kicked off the force five years earlier and moved to Texas, where good luck made him a fortune in the oil business. Now he’s come back to his hometown because his ex-wife has been charged with murder. She’s a nightclub singer and has been arrested for killing the owner of the club where she worked, who happens to have been the younger brother of the town boss. She was also the guy’s mistress, rumor has it. Mike’s feelings about her are conflicted, but he believes she’s no killer and doesn’t want to see her railroaded for a crime she didn’t commit.

We’ve all read enough of these books to have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen. Mike charges around poking his nose in where it’s not wanted, he meets some good-looking dames including a newspaper reporter who’s sort of an old flame, and he clashes repeatedly with gangsters, goons, and brutal cops. Oh, and he stumbles over dead bodies. Lots and lots of dead bodies. I kind of lost count of how many murders there are in this book, over and above the one that kicks off the action, but the corpses definitely pile up before Mike sorts out the whole complicated plot.

Familiar it may be in some respects, but man, THE CORRUPTERS is fun to read. I’d never heard of William Francis, let alone sampled any of his books, but he spins this yarn in a fast-moving, tough yet breezy style that’s a pure pleasure to read. This is the kind of book I grew up reading, and I enjoyed it a lot and give it a high recommendation for hardboiled fans. You can pre-order the Black Gat edition on Amazon.

Review: The Outlaw and the Lady - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

THE OUTLAW AND THE LADY by Chap O'Keefe (really our friend Keith Chapman) was published originally by Robert Hale in 1994 as part of Hale's Black Horse Western line. It's now available in newly revised e-book and paperback editions that include an entertaining foreword about how this book almost became a movie.

THE OUTLAW AND THE LADY is certainly deserving of finding a whole new audience of Western readers. The protagonist is Tod Larraby, a former Confederate guerrilla who rode with Quantrill until he got sick of the violence and bloodshed. Although he tried to go straight after the war, he was charged unfairly with crimes he didn't commit and has spent nearly twenty years on the dodge, growing wearier all the time. Because of his status as an outlaw, he has to take whatever jobs he can, so when he's blackmailed by a corrupt lawman into helping an English nobleman find his missing son, Larraby is forced to shoulder this dangerous chore. It's made even more hazardous by the fact that the Englishman insists on coming along on the quest and bringing his beautiful young wife with him.

Chapman's work continues to remind me of the hardboiled Westerns published by Gold Medal during the Fifties and Sixties, and this one also has echoes of the early Lassiter novels by "Jack Slade" (really W.T. Ballard, Ben Haas, and Peter Germano, among others). The plot moves along at a suitably brisk pace, and the action scenes have a nice gritty feel to them. Larraby is a good hero, too, world-weary but not so full of angst that it leads to an excess of navel-gazing. As always, Chapman includes some effective twists and complications in the plot.

THE OUTLAW AND THE LADY is lean, fast, and very entertaining, and as usual when I finish a Chap O'Keefe book, I'm eager to read more. If you're a Western fan I think you'll enjoy it, too.

(An earlier version of this review appeared on March 11, 2012. Keith Chapman is doing a fine job of making his novels available again, and Western readers who haven't yet discovered his work definitely need to check out his books. The Amazon links for this one are above, and you can find it for all the other platforms here.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, April 1951

Even late in the pulp era, you could still find some mighty good reading in the magazines that remained. This issue of DETECTIVE TALES features stories by John D. MacDonald, Hugh B. Cave, Cornell Woolrich, and Leslie Turner White, along with lesser-known authors Dan Gordon, Don James, and P.B. Bishop. Granted, the Cave, Woolrich, and White stories are reprints from DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, but hey, if you've never read a story before, it's as good as new to you, right? I don't know who painted this cover, but it's pretty effective, too.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Golden West Magazine, February 1937

That's a pretty graphic clinch for a Western romance pulp cover. It was painted by Harry Fisk, who did several dozen pulp covers and interior illustrations. I wasn't familiar with his name or work, but he seems to have been a decent artist. This incarnation of GOLDEN WEST MAGAZINE didn't last very long, only half a dozen issues in 1936 and '37. There's a later GOLDEN WEST ROMANCES from the Thrilling Group, but it also ran for only six issues in 1949 and '50. But to get back to this one, there are only four stories in it, three of them by fairly well-known Western authors: Charles M. Martin, W.D. Hoffman, and Kenneth Sinclair. The fourth story is by Lulita Crawford Pritchett, who published quite a few stories in RANCH ROMANCES among other Western romance pulps. I don't recall ever hearing of her, though. I was curious enough to do a little investigating and found that there's a website devoted to her and her work. Pretty interesting stuff, too. You never know what you're going to find when you start looking into the backgrounds of some of these pulp authors.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Slice of Hell - Mike Roscoe (John Roscoe and Mike Russo)

During the Fifties, following the huge success of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels, everybody was looking for more books in the same vein, including Spillane’s own publisher. Mike Roscoe contributed to the cause by writing five novels featuring tough Kansas City private eye Johnny April. One difference is that “Mike Roscoe” is actually a pseudonym for two real-life private investigators, John Roscoe and Mike Russo. And to me, “his” work seems to be influenced not so much by Spillane, but by the author some people consider an influence on Spillane as well: Carroll John Daly.

SLICE OF HELL is the first Mike Roscoe book I’ve read, although it’s the middle book in the series. In this one, Johnny April is hired to leave his usual Kansas City stomping grounds and go to San Francisco to investigate a crooked trucking company executive who’s rumored to be on the verge of expanding his operation to Kansas City. Since he’s going to San Francisco anyway, Johnny takes on another case that has come his way, a low-paying job for an elderly woman who wants him to arrange a funeral for a friend of hers who has just passed away.

Well, you don’t have to have read many of these books to know that those two cases are going to wind up being connected. The predictability of the plot is one of this book’s failings. So is the overall thinness of the story. And a lot of the tough guy dialogue doesn’t really resemble anything that might actually come out of a human mouth. “Mike Roscoe” has the same sort of tin ear for dialogue that could be found in much of Carroll John Daly’s work.

So why am I recommending this novel? Well, it’s written in an odd, punchy style that takes some getting used to but is very effective once you do. Even the stiff dialogue didn’t bother me as much after a while. And I wound up liking big, dumb Johnny April. (But, Lord, he really is dumb.) The authors keep the pace moving nicely. April has a touch of the same vigilante mentality as Race Williams, and there’s a scene that seems like a direct homage to one of Daly’s stories. Really, that’s a good yardstick. If you enjoy Carroll John Daly’s work, which I certainly do, then you’ll probably enjoy the Mike Roscoe novels, too.

(I'm a little surprised I haven't read any more of the Mike Roscoe books since this post first appeared in somewhat different form on February 6, 2009. Despite my quibbles about the plot, I seem to have liked it pretty well, and overall, I enjoy books with a distinctive voice. I'm pretty sure I own at least some of the other books in the Johnny April series, so maybe I'll dig out one of them. I'm kind of surprised they haven't been reprinted as e-books. By the way, that's a Robert Maguire cover on the Signet edition pictured above. Maguire did some great covers, and this one is very dramatic and eye-catching.)

Review: On the Dodge - D.B. Newton

Jim Bannister rides into the town of Antelope, Colorado, on the morning of the Fourth of July, but he’s not there to celebrate. Bannister is a fugitive from the law, the victim of an unjust murder conviction and a death sentence. But he escaped from jail and is now on a quest to clear his name, and there’s a chance that a man he hopes to find in Antelope can help with that goal.

Unfortunately, there’s a range war brewing in the area, and even though the town is full of Independence Day festivities, trouble is lurking right under the surface and quickly crops up, catching Bannister right in the middle of it.

I’ve been a fan of D.B. Newton’s Western novels for more than forty years. I first discovered them in the late Seventies when he was writing hardback Westerns for Doubleday’s Double D line under the pseudonym Dwight Bennett (his first and middle names, of course). It wasn’t long before I found out that he was also a prolific contributor to the Western pulps and even wrote a few of the Jim Hatfield novels in TEXAS RANGERS under the house-name Jackson Cole.

Eventually, when I became a writer myself, my first Westerns were entries in the Stagecoach Station series, which was created by D.B. Newton, who also wrote a number of them. I’ve always liked the fact that I shared a house-name with someone who wrote Jim Hatfield novels.

In the Sixties, Newton wrote an eight-book series for Berkley featuring a hero named Jim Bannister who was a fugitive from the law but not really an outlaw. ON THE DODGE is the first of those novels, all of which are in the process of being reprinted by Piccadilly Publishing. I just read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Newton drops the reader down at a point where all hell’s fixin’ to bust loose, and I always appreciate an author who doesn’t waste any time getting the story going. Newton is from the same school of Western writing as L.P. Holmes and T.T. Flynn. He uses traditional plots but elevates them to a higher level with fine writing, well-developed characters, and moral and emotional complexity. ON THE DODGE has a real air of Greek tragedy about it, along with plenty of action and a very human and likable protagonist.

I had a paperback copy of the Berkley edition of ON THE DODGE for many years but never got around to reading it. That’s a good thing in a way because now I can read the new editions as they come out from Piccadilly. This one is a superb hardboiled Western that’s available in e-book and paperback editions. It gets a high recommendation from me. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Clues Detective Stories, March 1941

I don't know who painted the cover on this issue of CLUES. It's okay, but I'm not overly impressed with it. However, I am impressed with the contents. There's a Race Williams novella by Carroll John Daly, a novelette by Norvell Page, and short stories by Lawrence Treat and Edward S. Aarons writing as Edward Ronns. That's a pretty good lineup!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, December 1945

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my brittle, battered, and tattered copy in the scan. The dramatic, eye-catching cover, as usual, is by Sam Cherry, who never painted a bad cover as far as I’m concerned, although of course I like some better than others.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue, “The Timber War”, has been attributed to Tom Curry, but I believe that’s incorrect. I’m convinced this one is actually by Leslie Scott. The terms “skalleyhooting” and “big skookum he-wolf”, common in his work, are used numerous times. There are quite a few vivid descriptive passages, although maybe not as many as you often find in a Scott novel. My theory is that Scott could always fill a few pages with description when he needed to, but also that whenever an editor needed to cut a few pages, those lengthy portraits of the landscape would be his first target. The plot, which finds a hidden criminal pitting two opposing forces—in this case, loggers and cowboys—against each other for his own benefit, is also classic Scott. To be fair, that’s a common Western plot no matter who the author is. I’ve written a few loggers vs. cowboys yarns myself. But this one, including the villain’s identity and the motivation for his scheming, is pure Scott and easy to see coming if you’ve read as many of his novels as I have. As further evidence, most of Curry’s Hatfield novels feature a proxy hero who winds up with the pretty girl. That happens in “The Timber War”, too, but it’s pretty much an afterthought, not a major part of the plot like it usually is with Curry. That’s my reasoning, but basically it boils down to knowing a Scott novel when I read one, and that’s what I think this is.

But is “The Timber War” any good, you ask? Oh, heck, yeah. Hatfield is sent to get to the bottom of the trouble brewing between Justin Flint’s logging crew and Clyde Cranley’s Double C ranch outfit. Sabotage has taken place on both sides. Tensions are running high and threaten to break out into open warfare. Hatfield gets ambushed a few times, helps out both sides, and figures out what’s really going on. There’s plenty of well-written action, and the pace never lets up for long. It’s formulaic, but nobody ever worked that formula better than Scott. I had a great time reading this, as I nearly always do with his work.

“Tenor on Horseback” is the only credit in the Fictionmags Index for Matt Sprague. Was that a pseudonym, or just the only story that Matt Sprague managed to sell? I don’t know, but I can say that this story about a couple of ranchers getting mixed up with an opera company touring the West is pretty polished and entertaining. It’s a humorous yarn without ever descending into slapstick, and there’s a nice twist at the end. I liked this one more than I expected to.

The issue wraps up with a story by an author I always expect to enjoy, Johnston McCulley. “Merry Christmas, Ranger” is about a Texas Ranger’s encounter with two outlaws when all he wants to do is make it home for Christmas so he can propose to the girl he wants to marry and then resign from the Rangers. The plot is pretty simple, but McCulley executes it very well and his fast-moving prose is always fun to read. The holiday is just a minor plot device; the story could have been written just as effectively without it. But the whole thing is enjoyable, and I’d say it’s another winner for McCulley.

This whole issue is a winner, in fact. All three stories are top-notch, and I greatly enjoyed reading this pulp. It’s well worth your time if you have a copy.

Happy Fourth of July!

I hope it's a great 250th anniversary of our country's founding for those of you in the United States, and a great day for those you elsewhere, as well. This is the Second July 1922 Number of SNAPPY STORIES with a cover by Carl Becker, an artist I'm not familiar with. I've never read or even seen an actual issue of SNAPPY STORIES as far as I recall, and the only authors whose names I recognize in this one are J.U. Giesy and C.S. Montanye. So it's not a pulp in which I have a particular interest except for the covers . . . and this one ain't bad. Again, Happy Fourth of July to one and all!  

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Way Station - Clifford D. Simak

Tucked away in an isolated corner of Wisconsin farmland is an old house that dates from before the Civil War, but it’s strangely unchanged in all that time. So is the man who lives there, Enoch Wallace, who fought with the Union Army in that conflict and is now still alive more than a hundred years later and apparently not much older than when he fought at Gettysburg. Enoch’s secret is that inside the house is an intergalactic transport apparatus, and he’s the keeper of Galactic Central’s way station on Earth.

That’s the set-up of Clifford D. Simak’s Hugo-winning novel WAY STATION, first published in 1963 and reprinted several times since. Simak was a veteran of the science fiction pulps dating back to before what’s now considered the Golden Age of those magazines, and as the pulps faded he made a seamless transition to writing well-received hardback SF novels. Although he wrote some Western stories for the pulps and later dabbled in fantasy novels as well, he’s best remembered for what some have called pastoral SF – stories and novels usually taking place in rural settings, with low-key, somewhat unsophisticated (at least on the surface) protagonists. WAY STATION fits neatly into that sub-category and may well be the best example of it I’ve encountered.

Simak was never a flashy writer. His prose style is functional and plain-spoken, like the people he writes about. In WAY STATION, the story unfolds in a gentle, leisurely fashion, with the main elements of the plot never really getting into gear until about halfway through the book. Most writers today couldn’t get away with that, but Simak makes it work. And once things do start rolling, the scope of the story rapidly expands, with the fate of entire galaxies ultimately at stake, even though all the action takes place here on Earth.

When I was younger, I read a number of Simak’s novels, and while I enjoyed them, he was never a particular favorite of mine. I think maybe I just wasn’t ready to appreciate his virtues. WAY STATION is a fine novel and has dated hardly at all. I plan to read more of his work soon.

(I swear, if I had the attention span even of a six-week-old puppy, I might be dangerous. Despite my good intentions, I haven't read anything else by Simak since this post first appeared on January 30, 2009. I still plan to one of these days, though. Bill Crider recommended CITY to me at least 40 years ago. I'll get to it.)

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet

I heard this song on the radio and was reminded of how much I like it, especially the intro. I had to look it up and was a little surprised to see that it came out in 2003. Seems like I've heard it around for longer than that. But I'm always glad to listen to it again.

Review: American Treasure Hunters #2: The Boston Tea Party Conspiracy - Andrew M. Dare

I really enjoyed the first book in the American Treasure Hunters series, THE HUNT FOR CONFEDERATE GOLD. The second book, THE BOSTON TEA PARTY CONSPIRACY, finds our three teenage heroes—brainy Ben Prescott, brawny Porter Rockwell, and jack-of-all-trades Latch McCrae—investigating another historical mystery. This time they’re trying to discover whether Samuel Adams had an ulterior motive for orchestrating the Boston Tea Party. Evidence has surfaced that Adams was really after some sort of treasure that may have been hidden among the tea, and striking a blow of American independence may not have been the reason he organized the Sons of Liberty.

So off go the trio of treasure hunters from their homes in North Carolina to Boston, where their investigation involves them with a tech mogul, a pretty history professor (there’s not even a hint of romance despite the fact that she’s only about ten years older than the guys, because these are very clean books), assorted bruisers who also believe there’s a treasure to be tracked down, some Freemasons, and at least one 250-year-old murder to be solved. Author Andrew M. Dare keeps the action racing along and also peels away the layers of the mystery in very satisfying fashion.

I think I enjoyed THE BOSTON TEA PARTY CONSPIRACY even more than the first book in the series. There’s more action as the boys find themselves up against some ruthless adversaries, and the historical mystery is intriguing and well-developed. I also liked the fact that all three of our heroes pitch in on the brain work. They’re all very likable guys. The large supporting cast from the first book is mostly absent this time around and I kind of missed them, but it was also nice seeing Ben, Porter, and Latch operating mostly on their own.

If you’re an old codger like me and grew up reading boy’s adventure series such as Rick Brant, the Hardy Boys, and the Three Investigators, the American Treasure Hunters series definitely should be on your radar. If you have young friends or relatives who are big readers, or even who aren’t, these books are aimed squarely at them. The hardcover edition of THE BOSTON TEA PARTY CONSPIRACY is already out, and the e-book edition will be released on July 7. I had a great time reading it and give it a high recommendation.

And next time around, the guys are headed for Texas and the Alamo. I can’t wait.