Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Fiction Weekly, June 15, 1935

I don't know who painted the cover on this issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, but it's certainly eye-catching. George F. Worts, the author of the lead novel, was a fine writer, too, and always worth reading, at least in my experience. He's the biggest name in this issue, although there's an installment of a serial by Anthony Rud, certainly a prolific and popular pulpster, and one of the other authors, H.W. Guernsey, was really Howard Wandrei. Other than that, we have Edward S. Williams, whose name I at least recognize, Mary Plum, Richard S. Hobart, and Maurice Beam. They may have been fine writers, for all I know, but Worts is enough to make this issue worthwhile, especially with that striking cover.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Pete Rice Magazine, June 1934

You can't go wrong with a Walter Baumhofer cover, and this one featuring Pete Rice is pretty dramatic. I've read two Pete Rice stories, one by Ben Conlon writing as Austin Gridley in Pete's own magazine, which I thought was just okay, and the other one of his adventures in WILD WEST WEEKLY penned by Laurence Donovan under the Gridley house-name that I really liked. The story in this issue is by Conlon, and I've got to admit "Wolves of Wexford Manor" is a pretty intriguing title for a Western! I certainly wouldn't mind seeing the whole series reprinted and would be happy to buy those volumes. There are two back-up stories in this particular issue, both by Harold A. Davis, one under his name and one as by Rand Allison. I don't know much about Davis except that he ghosted some Doc Savage novels for Lester Dent, and I didn't like them very much when I read them all those years ago when the Bantam reprints were new. But maybe I should try something else by him one of these days.

UPDATE: I just realized I posted this cover before, almost seven years ago, and said almost exactly the same things about it. I'm too lazy to take it down and replace it, but I apologize for the accidental duplication.

Review: Buccaneer Blood - H. Bedford-Jones

I was in the mood to read something by one of my favorite authors, H. Bedford-Jones, and this excellent volume from Altus Press happened to be handy. BUCCANEER BLOOD collects five novelettes and novellas originally published in ARGOSY about Denis Burke, an 18th Century Irish mercenary, soldier of fortune, and pirate.

The first story, “Escape!”, appeared in the November 7, 1931 issue of ARGOSY. It’s 1703, and Denis Burke is serving in the army of French king Louis XIV along with some other Irish mercenaries. A falling out with the king and some other members of the royal court means Burke has to go on the run to save his life. His efforts to get out of France comprise the whole plot of this story, which includes plenty of swordplay, daring schemes, and banter, all of which plays out in Bedford-Jones’ usual clean, fast-moving prose. Does Burke get away? Well, there wouldn’t be any more stories in the series if he didn’t, would there?

Burke returns in “Luck of the Sea Burkes”, a novella that appeared as a two-part serial in the January 9 and January 16, 1932 issues of ARGOSY. He’s made it to the Spanish Main, along with a crew comprised mostly of Irish mercenaries who fled France with him. Once they reach the Caribbean, they become pirates, capture a Spanish ship, and are captured in turn by an evil Spanish aristocrat with a secret. Burke makes a daring escape, rescues a beautiful señorita, pulls off an audacious masquerade, and triumphs in the end, but in a way that leaves the door open for future adventures. This one is almost non-stop action, and of course, Bedford-Jones does it well.

By the time of “Spanish Gold”, a novelette from the March 19, 1932 issue of ARGOSY, Denis Burke is well established as a buccaneer, operating under the piratical alias Captain Mayo (he’s from County Mayo in Ireland, you see). When he gets a lead on a sunken Spanish ship full of treasure, he intends to retrieve it with his crew, but before the quest even gets underway, he’s kidnapped by a couple of rival pirate captains who hate him. Will Burke prove clever enough to escape them and grab the loot for himself? Bedford-Jones introduces a female pirate in this one, and she’s a great supporting character.

“Buccaneer Blood”, the title story of this collection, comes from the September 10, 1932 issue of ARGOSY. In this one, Burke’s masquerade as Captain Mayo is exposed, so he has to adopt a new identity to escape being caught and hanged by the French. In the process, he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Spanish señorita, and once again, his fate comes down to his skill with a sword as he has to battle five opponents at once.

The final story in this volume is “Spanish Blood is Proud Blood” from the March 25, 1933 issue of ARGOSY. Burke and his señorita are on their way to be married, but before they can reach their destination, a hurricane blows their ship all the way to the coast of Central America. There they find more danger, as well as more treasure. This novelette is a fitting end to this series of yarns, which form a somewhat cohesive story. Cohesive enough, anyway, that I’m a little surprised Bedford-Jones never cobbled it together into a fix-up novel.

According to the Fictionmags Index, Bedford-Jones wrote other Denis Burke stories that were published in THE POPULAR MAGAZINE before these, and more published afterward in SHORT STORIES. Not having read them, I don’t know how they’re related, nor do I know right offhand if they’ve ever been reprinted. But I do know BUCCANEER BLOOD is a fine collection, and if you’re a Bedford-Jones fan or just enjoy pirate yarns in general, I give it a high recommendation. It's available in e-book and paperback editions from Amazon.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Entrapment (1999)

I always enjoy movies with Sean Connery in them, so I’m not sure how we missed ENTRAPMENT when it came out in 1999. It’s a heist movie, with Connery playing a world-class thief and Catherine Zeta-Jones playing the insurance investigator who’s out to catch him. Through a series of plot twists, they wind up working together on a series of heists that become more complicated and dangerous as they go along. Then we get a bunch more plot twists before things wrap up in a satisfying manner.

Connery is, well, Connery, and you either enjoy that or you don’t. (I do.) Zeta-Jones is incredibly beautiful, and you either enjoy that or you don’t. (Again, I do.) Top-notch character actors Ving Rhames and Will Patton are on hand, but the movie really belongs to the two leads. There are plenty of “Sure, why not?” moments in this one, and in the end, the plot is the kind that works only if you squint your eyes and hold your mouth just right, but I found ENTRAPMENT to be a really entertaining two hours. One good thing about missing movies when they come out is that you’ve got some good stuff to watch later when you finally catch up to them.

Review: Never An Even Break - Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg’s softcore novel NEVER AN EVEN BREAK was published originally under the title PASSION PATSY and the Don Elliott byline in 1963 as an entry in the Midnight Reader line published by William Hamling. It’s been reprinted recently by Stark House, under what I’m guessing is Silverberg’s title for the manuscript, as part of a double volume with another softcore novel of his, STRIPPER. I read and enjoyed STRIPPER a while back and have now read NEVER AN EVEN BREAK.

The protagonist, if you can call him that, of this novel is Harry Fletcher, a mousy little accountant who has a gold-digging mistress, a bored wife, and a teenage son and daughter who are beginning to explore sex. This is a setup that’s bound to get worse, and so it does. Harry resorts to blackmail to finance his affair. His wife, already a drinker, starts hitting the booze even more and rekindles an affair with a lesbian girlfriend from far in her past. The kids get up to all sorts of things that are destined to end badly.

And boy, do they! NEVER AN EVEN BREAK is one of the bleakest novels I’ve ever read. As always with Silverberg’s work, though, it’s really well-written, and the prose just races along effortlessly to the story’s grim but inevitable conclusion.

Maybe it’s just me, but the older I get, the more I think I prefer the somewhat optimistic endings of Orrie Hitt’s softcore novels, contrived and far-fetched though they usually may be. But an occasional gut-punch like Silverberg’s books provide is worthwhile, too. The story in NEVER AN EVEN BREAK may not leave you with a smile on your face, but Silverberg’s skill as a yarn-spinner will. This latest double volume from Stark House is available in e-book and paperback editions.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Oriental Stories, Winter 1932

A classic cover by J. Allen St. John graces this issue of the legendary adventure pulp ORIENTAL STORIES. And speaking of classics, this issue contains the story "The Sowers of the Thunder" by Robert E. Howard, a poem by REH, a collaboration between Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffmann Price, and stories by Warren Hastings Miller, S.B.H. Hurst, G.G. Pendarves, and the lesser known James W. Bennett, H.E.W. Gay, Grace Keon, and Lt. Edgar Gardiner. I have some reprinted issues of ORIENTAL STORIES, and of course I've read quite a few stories, by REH and others, that appeared there originally, but I don't think I've ever seen a copy of an actual issue, or of its successor, THE MAGIC CARPET. But that's okay. This whole issue is available on the Internet Archive if I ever decide to read it. I know I ought to, but there are just so many pulps and so little time . . .

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, September 1938

J.W. Scott liked to use blondes on his Western pulp covers instead of redheads, but he teams them with the usual Stalwart, Red-Shirted Cowboy and Wounded Old Geezer, as on this issue of WESTERN SHORT STORIES. Ed Earl Repp is the author with the biggest name in this one, and he's on hand twice, once as himself and once as Brad Buckner. Other authors include the distinctively named Carmony Gove, Jack Sterrett, Rolland Lynch, Nels Leroy Jorgensen, Harold F. Cruickshank, Luke Tyler (who sounds like a house-name but apparently wasn't), and Ken Jason and John Cannon, who were house-names. I don't own this issue or any other issues of this pulp, as far as I remember, but it looks pretty good. For a lower-rung Western pulp, WESTERN SHORT STORIES ran a long time, from December 1936 to January 1957.