Movie Review: Elevation (2024)

This movie came out in 2024, so I don’t really think it’s old enough to consider it a Movie I’ve Missed Until Now. In fact, I think I’ll just slap an arbitrary rule on here and say that a movie has to have come out before 2020 in order to get that designation. However, ELEVATION is, in fact, a movie I never heard of until I came across it recently and decided to give it a try.

During the pitch meeting for this movie, somebody is bound to have said, “It’s like A QUIET PLACE, only instead of being quiet so the scary monsters won’t get you, you have to stay above 8,000 feet in elevation so the scary monsters won’t get you.” That’s the plot, boiled down. A brief prologue clues us in that several years earlier, giant sinkholes suddenly opened all over the world and indestructible monsters came out to massacre 95% of Earth’s population.

Giant sinkholes with monsters coming out of them immediately makes me think of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and my first question is, “Hey, where’s the Mole Man?” Well, nowhere in sight in this movie. No superheroes come to the rescue. Earth gets its butt kicked, and the monsters have taken over the world except for a few colonies of survivors established above 8,000 feet.

Anthony Mackie and his young son live in one such colony in Colorado, but the boy needs some medical equipment to survive, so he sets off for Boulder with a scientist played by Morena Baccarin. She’s obsessed with finding a way to kill the monsters and believes that if she can reach her lab there, she’ll be able to do so. Unfortunately, Boulder is below 8,000 feet.

Most of the movie consists of them getting there and back, with lots of danger and adventure along the way. And it’s decently done, too. The special effects look a little crude now and then, but overall the movie worked for me. Mackie and Baccarin both do decent jobs. There are a few other characters, but the movie is really theirs to carry. There’s no sex, and despite the presence of scary monsters and death, very little gore.

I was going to gripe about how we don’t even get any handwavium to explain the plot, but then late in the movie there’s a twist that actually does explain some things while opening up other questions. I’ve seen speculation on-line that this movie was made as a pilot for an unsold streaming series, and the plot twist and a mid-credits epilogue make a strong case for that. I liked it enough I wouldn’t have minded seeing it continue. As is, it’s not exactly an overlooked gem, but it is an enjoyable hour and a half and I’m glad we watched it.

Review: Tex: Cinnamon Wells - Chuck Dixon and Mario Alberti

This is the second volume I’ve read from the set of six Tex Willer graphic novels I backed on Kickstarter. Chuck Dixon is one of my all-time favorite comic book authors, and ever since I found out he wrote some Tex stories, I’ve been curious about them.

CINNAMON WELLS, which has artwork by Mario Alberti, opens with a violent bank robbery in the town of the title. The local lawman is organizing a posse to go after the outlaws when Tex, who is a Texas Ranger, rides in. He joins the posse, of course, and off they go after the bank robbers.

Posse stories are one of my favorite Western sub-genres, and Dixon does some unexpected and enjoyable things in this one, rather than sticking with the standard plot. Eventually it’s just Tex and one prisoner on the trail of the gang. That prisoner becomes a reluctant ally when they encounter an unrelated threat. That leads up to a classic showdown and an epilogue that’s also unexpected but quite satisfying.

This volume has some interesting angles besides the story and art. As I was reading it, some of the dialogue seemed, well, unDixon-like. Curious about that, I went to the source, and Chuck confirmed that his script was written in English, translated into Italian for this story’s original appearance, and then translated back into English for this volume by someone else. So it’s Dixon’s plot all the way, but the words are only sort of his. Despite the occasional awkwardness, the script moves along briskly, and Alberti’s art works well for me, too. CINNAMON WELLS is a fast, entertaining read.

Chuck also told me this story was inspired by the many hardboiled Western movies starring Randolph Scott, a mutual favorite of yours, and the outlaw who’s both ally and enemy to Tex is modeled on actor Henry Silva, who played one of the villains in the Scott film THE TALL T. I love finding out this kind of background info, and my thanks to Chuck for answering my questions and allowing me to pass it along here.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, December 1, 1932

I've been quite a fan of Hubert Rogers' pulp covers. Here's another very good one on this issue of ADVENTURE. There's a fine lineup of authors inside, too, including Walt Coburn, Gordon Young, William MacLeod Raine, Lawrence G. Blochman, Paul Annixter, and Ared White. If you'd like to check out this issue for yourself, you can find it on the Internet Archive.  

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Two Gun Western Stories, October 1929

TWO GUN WESTERN STORIES is a pretty obscure Western pulp, although it managed to run for about four years during the late Twenties and early Thirties. I've never seen an issue of it. The cover on this issue is by Fred I. Good, an artist I've never heard of. It has some good authors in its pages, though: L.P. Holmes, Archie Joscelyn, John G. Pearsol, Raymond W. Porter, and Arthur H. Carhart. It also has some authors whose names aren't familiar to me at all: K. Carleton Unthank, Francis W. Hilton, and Gordon E. Warnke.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Hottest Fourth of July in the History of Hangtree County - Clifton Adams

A lot of Western authors have written Fourth of July novels. It’s a situation with plenty of built-in dramatic possibilities: hot weather, small town, lots of people crowded in, etc. I believe Harry Whittington’s well-regarded Gold Medal Western SADDLE THE STORM is a Fourth of July novel. Not sure because it’s been a lot of years since I read it. 

THE HOTTEST FOURTH OF JULY IN THE HISTORY OF HANGTREE COUNTY is Clifton Adams’ entry in this little sub-genre, and it’s a good one. The title itself is an ironic joke, because, as it’s explained in the novel, Hangtree County is only three years old. The book is set in Oklahoma in 1892, three years after the territory was opened for settlement. All the action takes place in one day, which places the novel in another sub-genre I like, books with a compressed time span.

Marshal Ott Gillman is getting too old to be a lawman, or at least he thinks he is. His deputy is another old-timer, even though he’s still known as Kid Fulmer, just as he was when he was a young outlaw in Texas before going straight. They make a good pair, both still more capable than they think they are, but this Fourth of July tests their ability to keep law and order because of all the outsiders coming into town for the celebration. Not everyone is in town because of the holiday, though. Some of them show up because of an old grudge against Marshal Gillman, and violence threatens to break out along with the festivities.

This isn’t a Grand Hotel sort of book with a lot of interweaving storylines, as Adams keeps the focus on Ott Gillman and the danger facing him, as well as several moral dilemmas the marshal has to grapple with. The pace is deliberate, even slow, for most of the book, but the occasional scenes of violence are sudden and brutal and effective. Anybody who thinks that all Westerns are just shoot-em-ups should read a book like this, which is almost all characterization and mood. Everything leads up to a very suspenseful climax.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on September 12, 2008. You'll hardly ever go wrong with a novel or story by Clifton Adams. He's one of the most consistent Western writers I've found when it comes to solid, entertaining yarns. This novel isn't currently in print, but his series about another lawman, Amos Flagg, written under the pseudonym Clay Randall, is available in e-book editions from Piccadilly Publishing, and I highly recommend those books, too.)

Review: Fair Blows the Wind - Louis L'Amour

I argued back and forth with myself quite a bit before I wrote this review. But I’ll get to that. Also, there are some minor spoilers scattered throughout this post, but no more than you find in a lot of book reviews.

First of all, look at this opening line: “My name is Tatton Chantry and unless the gods are kind to rogues, I shall die within minutes.” Isn’t that great? With an opening line like that, how can you not want to keep reading?

It’s the late 16th Century as this novel opens, and our narrator/protagonist Tatton Chantry (not actually his real name, as author Louis L’Amour alludes to often) is an Irishman who has already lived an adventurous life. He has traveled to the New World on an English trading vessel and is marooned on what will someday be the Carolina coast when Indians attack a shore party. While escaping from the Indians, he runs into a group of Spaniards and Peruvians who were also stranded there when their ship began to sink. Chantry suspects treachery from the Spaniards, falls in love with a beautiful Peruvian aristocrat, and meets another castaway who has been living on these barrier islands for a couple of years.

All this leads up to a long flashback that takes up about two-thirds of the book and tells us about Chantry’s life as a fugitive in England and Scotland (his father in Ireland was murdered, and the family estate was destroyed), his various meetings with various scoundrels, gypsies, friends, and enemies, and his efforts to make himself into a master swordsman. Eventually he becomes a successful trader and even a published author of novels, poems, and plays. Then he’s a mercenary soldier and fights in various wars all over Europe before circumstances finally take him to America and we’re back where we started. It’s a busy life.

Now we get to the arguing with myself part. I always feel like when a Western writer says anything negative about Louis L’Amour, there’s a perception of sour grapes. Sometimes it’s more than just a perception, although I honestly don’t think that’s true in this case. But I finally decided to forge ahead with it anyway.

The framing sequence in this book that’s set in the New World is terrific. By itself, it would have made a fine short novel. Tatton Chantry is a tough, likable protagonist and you can’t help but root for him. The flashback is a different story, no pun intended. There are some wonderful scenes in it, but a lot of it just goes on and on and serves very little function. Again and again, L’Amour sets up some plot twist or new storyline, and then totally ignores it for the rest of the book, leaving things unexplained. What’s Chantry’s real name? Why is his life in danger if he ever returns to Ireland? Who’s that mysterious woman? What about the guy who keeps popping up to pull his chestnuts out of the fire? Who’s he? We don’t know. L’Amour never tells us.

There are also numerous continuity glitches of the sort he was notorious for. Chantry has a bag of gold, then he loses it, then he has it again with no explanation. It’s day, then it’s night, then it’s day again, all while one scene is going on. L’Amour said he never revised his work, never even looked at it again after he wrote the first draft. Mistakes like that certainly seem to indicate he was telling the truth.

At the same time, the settings are rendered beautifully, the dialogue is always good, and the ending of this one is great. L’Amour doesn’t hold back on the epic showdown between Chantry and his longtime mortal enemy, and it’s very satisfying.

So my overall opinion of FAIR BLOWS THE WIND is about as mixed as you can get. It’s one of several books from late in L’Amour’s career I never got around to reading, and I’m glad I finally did. It’s mostly entertaining and kept me turning the pages, but it’s also a prime example of the things about his writing that bother me. I suspect that mileage may vary a lot from reader to reader on this one. Like all of L’Amour’s work, it’s been reprinted numerous times and is available in just about any format you can think of. The image above just happens to be the paperback edition I read.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Easter Parade (1948)

Considering that I’m not a big fan of musicals, Fred Astaire, or Judy Garland, it’s not surprising that I never saw EASTER PARADE, a 1948 movie starring those two. But hey, it’s almost Easter, so why not?

You need at least a little plot to hang the songs and production numbers on in a musical, and that’s what you get in EASTER PARADE, a little plot. It’s 1912, and song-and-dance man Don Hewes (Astaire) has his partner in the act (the gorgeous Ann Miller) abruptly desert him to sign with the Ziegfield Follies instead. Angered by this, Hewes tells her he could pick any girl out of a chorus line and make a bigger star out of her. That turns out to be Hannah Brown (Garland), and sure enough, she does become a bigger star and she and Hewes fall in love, although their romance is a rocky one. There’s also a bit of a romantic rectangle with Hewes’ buddy Johnny (played by Peter Lawford, another non-favorite of mine) getting involved with both Garland and Miller.

There’s nothing wrong with that plot. It’s very similar in some respects to the plot of the much better SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN. The script was written by Sidney Sheldon, Frances Goodrich, and Albert Hackett. Goodrich and Hackett contributed to the scripts of some great movies, THE THIN MAN and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE among them, and Sheldon won an Academy Award for his screenwriting long before he created the TV show I DREAM OF JEANNIE and became a bestselling novelist. I’ve enjoyed every one of Sheldon’s novels I’ve read, and I was a regular viewer of I DREAM OF JEANNIE when it was new (admittedly, that was mostly because of Barbara Eden and the great character actor Bill Daily). But I’ve been less impressed by the movies he wrote. The script for EASTER PARADE is thin and predictable and only mildly amusing.

The real stars, of course, are the songs by Irving Berlin. The movie wouldn’t exist without them. They’re okay, but after watching the movie, I don’t remember a single one of them except the title song and “Steppin’ Out With My Baby”, the subject of a long, elaborate production number that’s the highlight of the film. Astaire is at his best in that scene, and it’s the only one in the movie that put a grin on my face.

So EASTER PARADE is okay, one of many movie musicals I’ve seen once and enjoyed, and I’m glad we watched it. There are only three musicals I regard as great films, though: WHITE CHRISTMAS, SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, and BIKINI BEACH. The first two are classics, and before you look too askance at me for that last one, consider: BIKINI BEACH has Frankie Avalon playing both Frankie and British rocker The Potato Bug, Don Rickles as Big Drag, Harvey Lembeck as Eric Von Zipper, a cameo by Boris Karloff, a song by Little Stevie Wonder, and the absolute best closing credits sequence in the history of cinema, Candy Johnson and Renie Riano dancing to “I’ve Gotcha Where I Want You,” by Candy’s band The Exciters. Now that, my friends, is classic filmmaking, and I grinned all the way through it every time I’ve watched it.

Review: Apache Rising - Marvin H. Albert

First of all, check out the upper right corner of this cover: “A Whipcrack Western”. That’s right, this is the first book in a brand-new imprint devoted to reprinting classic hardboiled Western novels. It’s from the fine folks at Stark House Press, who have reprinted some Westerns in their regular Stark House books and in their Black Gat Books line. Now the Westerns have a line of their own, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Nor could they have picked a better book to launch Whipcrack Westerns. APACHE RISING by Marvin H. Albert was published originally by Gold Medal in 1957 and later reprinted by GM under that title as well as DUEL AT DIABLO, the title of the movie based on this novel. It’s been out of print for a long time, though, and it’s great to see it back. I had never read it, so I’m glad to get this chance.

Oddly enough, considering my history of watching Western movies, I’ve never seen DUEL AT DIABLO, so I went into this source novel with no real preconceptions. The protagonist is Jess Remsberg, a tough, seasoned civilian scout for the army who is searching for the man who raped and murdered his wife. That search takes him to southern Arizona Territory and involves him with a cavalry detail taking some wagons full of ammunition from one fort to another. There are rumors that an Apache war chief is about to bring his followers out of Mexico and start raiding again, and the army is getting ready to campaign against him.

At the same time, Jess’s quest is complicated by an American woman who was captured by the Apaches and held captive for a couple of years, only to be rescued by the army and brought back to her husband, who no longer wants her. And she wants to return to the Apaches and the baby she had with the war chief’s son. Both she and her estranged husband wind up traveling with the same cavalry detail as Jess, as does a gambler who’s a former Confederate soldier.

You may think this sounds a little like a frontier soap opera, and it could have been if not for Albert’s storytelling ability and his skill at creating morally complex characters. It helps that there’s plenty of tough, gritty action as the group gets attacked by Apaches numerous times, and the reader honestly doesn’t know who’s going to survive to the end of the perilous journey. This is a really suspenseful novel that had me flipping the pages swiftly to find out what was going to happen.

The Whipcrack Western edition of this book also includes a fine introduction by Eric Compton and Tom Simon, the guys behind the Paperback Warrior blog and podcast, who provide an entertaining, informative look at Albert’s life and career.

I’ve never read a book by Marvin Albert I didn’t enjoy, and APACHE RISING continues that history. It’s a superb hardboiled Western novel, and I give it a very high recommendation. The paperback edition will be out later this week, and it’s available for pre-order now. I assume there’ll be an e-book edition, too, once the book is released.

And I’m very much looking forward to seeing what the next Whipcrack Western will be.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure Yarns, December 1938

This is the second and final issue of a very short-lived adventure pulp from Columbia Publications, edited by Abner J. Sundell who edited most of Columbia's pulps that weren't edited by Robert W. Lowndes. The cover on this issue of ADVENTURE YARNS is by A. Leslie Ross, and a quite adventurous one it is. There's a strong lineup of authors in this issue, as well: Eugene Cunningham, Will F. Jenkins (twice, once under his name and another story as by his famous pseudonym Murray Leinster), Armand Brigaud, L. Ron Hubbard (controversial now but a popular and prolific pulpster then), house-names Cliff Campbell (Sundell, in this case, according to the Fictionmags Index) and James Rourke, along with lesser-known writers Stephen Cumberland, Frank Couch, and Kenneth P. Wood. When a pulp runs for only a very few issues like this, I always wonder if it was never intended to last but was just a way of burning off inventory. I don't know if that's true in this case, but it certainly seems possible.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, May 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, with a dramatic and very effective cover by Sam Cherry. I’ve always liked leather shirt cuffs like the ones the cowboy on this cover is wearing.

“Brains in Broken Fork”, the featured novelette in this issue, opens with our intrepid range detective due Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith on their way to the cowtown of Broken Fork on a rainy night. They start to take shelter from the storm in an isolated cabin, only to find it occupied by a recently deceased corpse, and a rather active one, at that, since it starts to move around and startles our heroes into lighting a shuck out of there.

After that atmospheric opening, the rest of the story is the usual mix of action, mystery, colorful characters, and humorous dialogue. Tombstone and Speedy have been sent to Broken Fork to corral some rustlers, but they find that an old robbery and a cache of missing loot are mixed up in the case, as well. And of course, there’s a pretty girl, an old sheriff, and a deputy who’s smarter than he looks, which is a good description of Tombstone and Speedy, too. As much as I enjoy this series—and I got some good chuckles out of this one—it still strikes me as one of the more uninspired entries. The plot relies heavily on elements that author W.C. Tuttle has employed in other Tombstone and Speedy yarns, and unless I missed something, he leaves one fairly important plot point completely unresolved, as if he totally forgot about it. Tuttle definitely wasn’t at the top of his game in this one, although I enjoyed reading it.

“Shotgun Nester” is by Ray Hayton, an author I’m unfamiliar with. He appears to have been rather prolific for a while, turning out 20 stories in various Western pulps from 1946 to 1948. According to the Fictionmags Index, he died at 1947 at a young age, so I was intrigued enough to do a little research. Turns out he was from Monroe, Louisiana, but committed suicide in New York City when he was only 25. His obituary on the Find A Grave website says that he served in the Army during World War II and had been writing since high school. More than half of his published fiction came out after his death, so he had stories in inventory at several magazines. Judging by “Shotgun Nester”, he was a decent writer. The protagonist is a sodbuster with a chip on his shoulder who clashes with the local cattle baron. It’s a pretty traditional story, nothing special, but well-written. I have to wonder why a writer who was apparently selling stories hand over fist would kill himself, but there’s always a lot more going on in people’s lives than we know, isn’t there?

I’m happy to report that Navajo Tom Raine makes an appearance in this issue, in the novelette “A Ranger to Reckon With”. This series, published under the house-name Jackson Cole, was created by Lee Bond, who shared writing duties on it with C. William Harrison. I’m convinced this story is by Lee Bond. For one thing, the characters stand around explaining the plot to each other, a very common technique in Bond’s stories. For another, the final shootout pits Raine against three villains, a setup that occurs in almost every story I’ve ever read by him. In this one, Raine is sent to find out who’s responsible for lynching three sodbusters. Despite being familiar, it plays out just fine and is an enjoyable read.

The last time I read a Ben Frank story, I surprised myself by kind of liking it. His story in this issue, “Circle C Checker Coup”, doesn’t have a promising title. I was expecting a humorous yarn about a checker game. Well, checkers figures in the plot, all right, but so do robbery and murder. The protagonist is a young cowhand who has a photographic memory, something I don’t think I’ve encountered before in a Western pulp yarn. I liked this one, too, quite a bit, in fact.

“Stranger in Rocky Gulch” is by Reeve Walker, a Thrilling Group house-name, so I don’t know who wrote it and couldn’t hazard a guess from reading the story. It’s about a young trail boss trying to get home with the money from selling his herd, only to be detoured into a poker game with some sinister characters. It’s a decent story, slightly unpredictable in how it plays out.

The novelette “Owlhoot Buckaroo” is the second appearance in this issue by Lee Bond (assuming I’m right about him being the author of the Navajo Tom Raine story). This stand-alone story is about a young cowboy who spent ten years being raised by an outlaw gang, although he didn’t take part in any of their criminal activities. He’s trying to put that shady past behind him, but of course, it keeps coming back to haunt him, especially when he tries to save a ranch belonging to a beautiful young woman. Although the plot is pretty standard stuff, this is an excellent story, well-written with good characters and plenty of action. Bond was a formulaic writer but capable of turning out a really good yarn. This is one of the best I’ve read by him.

“Lead Evens the Score” is by the prolific Gladwell Richardson. The protagonist is a young cowboy who returns to a crooked town to get even with the stable owner, saloonkeeper, and sheriff who robbed him on his previous visit. He discovers he’s not the only one with a grudge against that trio and has to move fast to settle their hash himself. I haven’t read a lot by Richardson. This story is okay, if nothing special.

“Judge Guppy’s Colt Law” sounds like it might be a humorous story, which is not something I expect from Wayne D. Overholser. But no, this tale of a frontier jurist trying to save a young cowboy from a murder frame is the straightforward, slightly dour sort of Western yarn Overholser usually turned out. It’s not bad, but I’ve never been a big fan of Overholser’s work and this one didn’t convert me.

Overall, this is a good issue of EXCITING WESTERN, although I wouldn’t say it’s one of the best I’ve read. With a slightly below average but still entertaining Tombstone and Speedy yarn, a good but not outstanding Navajo Tom Raine story, and better than expected tales by Lee Bond (under his own name) and Ben Frank, it’s worth reading if you have a copy on your shelves.

Review: Shane and Jonah #1: Gun Law at Hangman's Creek - Cole Shelton (Roger Norris-Green)

I’ve been a fan of Australian Westerns ever since I read the American editions of Len Meares’ Larry and Stretch books and Big Jim books (Larry and Streak and Nevada Jim in the Bantam editions I read in high school). But for a long time, few of them were readily available in the United States. In addition to those “Marshal McCoy” books (the pen-name on the original Australian editions was Marshall Grover), Leisure did some double-volume reprints by various Australian authors, but that’s about it. Now, of course, in the e-book era, we have access to many, many more of these books, thanks in large part to the fine folks at Piccadilly Publishing and Bold Venture Press.

Which brings us to Shane and Jonah, a long-running series by “Cole Shelton”, who was really Roger Norris-Green, who is not only still alive and writing, thankfully, but is also my Facebook friend. Another friend and fellow author, Brent Towns, recently recommended the Shane and Jonah books to me, so I checked out the first one, GUN LAW AT HANGMAN’S CREEK.

Shane is Shane Preston, once a happily married rancher, but when his wife is brutally murdered by outlaws, he becomes a deadly hired gun to support himself as he searches for the killers. This is back-story, and by the time this book opens, Shane has settled the score with all but one of his quarry, but he’ll continue the search for as long as it takes.

His sidekick is Jonah Jones, a pudgy, white-bearded old-timer who saved Shane’s life when he was wounded. The two of them drift through the West, sometimes working as hired guns, sometimes as bounty hunters. In GUN LAW AT HANGMAN’S CREEK, they’re summoned to the settlement of the title to serve as town taming lawmen, since Hangman’s Creek has been taken over by a corrupt, vicious saloon owner and the gun-wolves who work for him. Shane doesn’t want to just wipe out the bad guys, he wants to rally the decent citizens of the town behind him so they won’t allow anyone to run roughshod over them again.

That’s the extent of the plot, and while it’s pretty traditional, the story plays out in fine fashion thanks to Norris-Green’s deft touch with character, his appealing protagonists, and some top-notch action scenes. He does a good job of capturing the setting, too, and everything comes across as suitably authentic. GUN LAW AT HANGMAN’S CREEK is a fast, satisfying read, just the sort of thing I’m looking for in a Western. I plan to read more of the Shane and Jonah series, so I’m glad they’re being reprinted. This one is available in an e-book edition from Piccadilly Publishing and a double-volume paperback edition from Bold Venture Press. By the way, I couldn’t find an image of the original edition from Cleveland Publishing in Australia or when it came out, so if any of you have either of those things, please let me know and I’ll add it to the post. 

Review: Taming the Nueces Strip: The Story of McNelly's Rangers - George Durham as told to Clyde Wantland

I mentioned the other day that I sometimes read Western history books, and here’s a good example. As research for the second Johnny Colt novel (currently being written), I just read TAMING THE NUECES STRIP: THE STORY OF McNELLY’S RANGERS by George Durham as told to Clyde Wantland.

Durham was a member of Captain Leander McNelly’s Special Force of Texas Rangers that was sent to the Nueces Strip are of Texas, between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande, to clean out the rustlers and outlaws plaguing the area in the 1870s. Years later, Durham told the story to journalist Wantland, who turned the old Ranger’s reminiscences into this book first published in 1962.

And it’s a great yarn, not the least bit dry and academic. Most of it, in fact, reads like a novel, and I had a fine time reading it. I’m pretty sure I read it when I was in college for the Life and Literature of the Southwest course I took, and I knew quite a bit about McNelly and his Rangers from other research over the years, but that didn’t prepare me for the vividness and sense of authenticity found in this account. It’s a fine example of Texana and Western history, and if you’re interested in those subjects, I give it a very high recommendation. TAMING THE NUECES STRIP is still in print in e-book and paperback editions.

And if you’ll allow me an infrequent bit of blatant self-promotion, JOHNNY COLT #2: BLOOD ON THE BORDER will be along presently from Dusty Saddle Productions.

Review: Kid Colt, Outlaw #106, September 1962

I was feeling nostalgic, so I bought all the issues available on Kindle of KID COLT, OUTLAW, one of my favorite Western comic books when I was a kid. The first one I read, eager to see if it held up, was #106, with a cover date of September 1962. The cover art is by Jack Kirby with inks by Dick Ayers, a combination I always loved.

As usual, the Kid Colt story in this issue was written by Stan Lee with art by Jack Keller. In “The Circus of Crime!”, our hero Kid Colt (an outlaw unjustly accused of a crime and forced to go on the run) is being chased by a posse when he throws in with a traveling circus in order to elude pursuit. The owner of the circus seems a little too eager to shelter a wanted outlaw, but we quickly discover there’s a reason for that: the circus performers are all outlaws, too, and use their travels to cover up their bank robbing spree! Well, the Kid’s not going to put up with this, of course, so we get some nice scenes of him clashing with the strongman, the knife thrower, the acrobats, the tightrope walker, etc. In the end, he brings the owlhoots to justice and rides off before the local law can corral him. Lee’s script moves along nicely, as they always did, and other than constantly misspelling Abilene as Abiline, it comes across as reasonably authentic for a Western yarn. I always liked Jack Keller’s art when I was a kid, but it seems a little inconsistent to me now with some excellent panels and some that are rather crude and sketchy. But I still found it enjoyable.

The lead story has 13 pages, and it’s followed by a couple of 5-page backup stories. “The Black Mask”, again written by Lee but with art by Dick Ayers this time, is a pretty traditional tale about a lawman trying to track down a masked bandit. Even though it’s only 5 pages, it has a couple of minor plot twists in it. Ayers’ art is really good, too, reminding me of Joe Kubert in places. I don’t know what sort of reputation Ayers has these days as an artist, but I loved his long run on SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS and consider him Kirby’s second-best inker from those days, behind Joe Sinnott.

The issue wraps up with a 5-page Kid Colt story, again by Lee and Keller, called “Fury at Fort Tioga”. The Kid is captured and winds up at a fort under attack by Apaches. He comes up with a novel way of ending the attack. This is kind of an oddball story and I’m not sure I buy the plot, but it’s the kind of ending you don’t see often in a Western comic book from those days.

Overall, I enjoyed this issue quite a bit. It’s nice to read a simple, well-told comic book story that has a beginning, middle, and end and no need to read the previous 400 issues to know what’s going on. If you’re hankerin’ to give the Kid a try, you can find the e-book edition on Amazon.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Easy Virtue (2008)

I’d never heard of this movie, let alone seen it, and I’m not a huge fan of British drawing room comedies, but hey, I liked DOWNTON ABBEY, so why not give it a try?

EASY VIRTUE is based on one of Noel Coward’s lesser-known plays. A young Brit from an aristocratic family is touring Europe when he meets and falls in love with a female race car driver from America. He marries her and takes her home to introduce her to his eccentric and somewhat dysfunctional family. Cultures clash and witty banter ensues, along with a few surprisingly poignant dramatic moments, leading up to a so-so but somewhat satisfying conclusion.

Jessica Biel plays the young race car driver. She’s gorgeous, no doubt about that, and although some of the reviews for this movie fault her acting, I thought she was okay. I’ve always liked Colin Firth, and he’s fine as Biel’s new father-in-law with some dark secrets in his past. The rest of the cast is all right, and the movie looks great. It sort of plods along at times, but overall, I enjoyed it. Except . . .

The filmmakers make the choice to use deliberately anachronistic music in the score, a technique that seldom works for me. In this movie, it’s not too jarring other than the moment we hear the theme from CAR WASH, but I’m still not a fan of it. (I did, however, love CAR WASH when I saw it back in the Seventies, but that’s neither here nor there.) The other problem I have with this movie is that it has a cute little dog in it, and (SPOILER) the dog does indeed die. So if this bothers you, be warned. I might not have even watched it if I had known.

And that wouldn’t have been a great loss. EASY VIRTUE isn’t a terrible movie, and it has some very nice moments scattered through it. But I can only give it a mixed recommendation at best, if you’re a big Noel Coward and/or Colin Firth fan.

Review: Secret Agent X vs. Doctor Death - Will Murray

Will Murray has written the Wild Adventures of Doc Savage, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, The Spider, and Cthulhu, and included in those books such iconic characters as The Shadow, John Carter, King Kong, G-8, Operator 5, the Suicide Squad (the original pulp version), and others I’m probably forgetting. Now he tackles another famous pulp character, along with some more obscure ones, in SECRET AGENT X VS. DOCTOR DEATH.

Secret Agent X, for those of you unfamiliar with the character, was a master of disguise who could pretend to be anybody, almost at a moment’s notice. A former intelligence agent, he has abandoned his former identity to fight crime as the nameless, faceless Secret Agent X. He starred in his own pulp that ran for more than forty issues from Ace Magazines. The character was created by Paul Chadwick and written by Chadwick and various other pulp hands, most notably G.T. Fleming-Roberts.

On the other hand, we know who Doctor Death was. A former academic named Dr. Rance Mandarin, he is a master of both scientific and mystical arts and believes our modern society should be wiped out so Earth can return to a more primitive state. One of the few super-villains to headline his own pulp, he appeared in several short stories and five novels, all of which have been reprinted by Altus Press. (I own these volumes but haven’t read them.) Doctor Death was the creation of Harold Ward, who penned the novels under the pseudonym “Zorro”. (I don’t know what Don Diego Vega, or Johnston McCulley, for that matter, had to say about that.)

Anyway, at the end of the final Doctor Death novel, he was apparently, probably, maybe dead. I think we all know how unlikely that is. And sure enough, in SECRET AGENT X VS. DOCTOR DEATH, the crazed genius has returned and menaces humankind again with a bat-owl that can compel people to commit suicide, a couple of minotaurs, a flock of harpies, a ray that can transmute people and objects into golden-colored stone, and other threats that, again, I’m probably forgetting. Who can stop his campaign of terror?

Well, police detective Jimmy Holm, who battled Doctor Death in his previous appearances, intends to try. So does Secret Agent X, and after clashing a few times with the deadly doctor without much success, he recruits a Secret Circle of fellow pulp heroes: criminologist Wade Hammond (also a creation of Paul Chadwick in a long-running series), occultist Ravenwood, Stepson of Mystery (protagonist of five novelettes by top-notch pulpster Frederick C. Davis), the Moon Man (another long-running series by Davis), the mysterious Cobra (star of a short-lived series by Richard Sale, who went on to much bigger things), and high-flying pilot/detective Kerry Keen, the Griffon (from Arch Whitehouse, author of scores of aviation-related pulp yarns). That’s a pretty potent line-up of heroes to battle one guy and his minions, but as this novel slam-bangs along with almost non-stop action, the reader can’t help but wonder if even they can emerge triumphant over Doctor Death.

This is another wonderful pulp adventure from Will Murray, who’s been writing this kind of stuff for decades and does it better than anyone else. I’ve read more than half of the original Secret Agent X novels, and this is a worthy addition to the series as Murray really captures the character, although the menace X faces in this one is considerably different. I’ve also read and enjoyed many of the Wade Hammond stories. Although I’d heard of all the other characters, I hadn’t read any of their exploits, but now I think I’ll have to do that.

So if you’re a pulp fan or just want to read a well-written, strikingly bizarre adventure that barrels along full-tilt, I highly recommend SECRET AGENT X VS. DOCTOR DEATH. It’s available in e-book and paperback editions on Amazon.

And to end on a bibliographic note, Doctor Death’s original stories and novels were published by Dell, while all the other characters in this novel originally appeared in Ace Magazines.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch Magazine, July 1, 1928

Well, that cover makes me nervous just looking at it. I don't know who painted it. There's a signature in the lower right corner, but my eyes aren't good enough to make it out. I think it's safe to say that the most well-known author in this issue of TOP-NOTCH is Erle Stanley Gardner with a story in his Speed Dash series. I haven't read any of these and don't really know anything about the character. Burt L. Standish, the author of the Frank Merriwell series, is also on hand, but he's pretty much forgotten these days, I would think. Other than that, we have George E. Powers, Seaburn Brown, Vic Whitman, Ruland V.E. Waltner, Reg Dinsmore, Harold Bradley Say, George Commodore Shinn, and William Wallace Whitelock, and I don't know a blessed thing about any of them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western Magazine, April 1948

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, ragged edges and all. That’s one tough-lookin’ hombre on the cover! I think it was painted by Robert Stanley, but I’m not sure about that.

Walt Coburn leads off the issue, as he so often did, with a novelette called “Law of the Lawless”. The Table of Contents may refer to it as a novel, but it’s about 10,000 words, I’d say. And man, does Coburn pack a lot of back-story in those words, also as usual. Most of the story takes place at the outlaw hideout known as Hole-in-the-Wall, and it consists of tense verbal clashes between two owlhoots who share some history. There’s a neglected wife, a crippled kid, an attempted suicide, hidden loot from a bank robbery, and a sinister bounty hunter who has already wiped out all of the gang led by one of the main characters. Yeah, this is melodramatic stuff, but nobody did it better than Coburn. This suspenseful opening leads up to a couple of fine action scenes that provide a satisfying conclusion. I’ve been told that by this time in his career, the editors at Popular Publications were rewriting Coburn’s stories pretty heavily because his drinking caused him to turn in unpublishable manuscripts, and that may well be true. But the complex plot, the emotional torment some of the characters go through, and the sense of frontier authenticity are pure Coburn, as far as I can tell. It’s not a perfect story—there are a couple of continuity errors that can probably be chalked up to the above-mentioned boozing—but I loved it anyway. It’s just a real gut-punch of a hardboiled Western yarn.

As I mentioned last week, Tom W. Blackburn was a very dependable Western author. His story in this issue, “A Matter of Quick Buryin’”, is about a government investigator trying to break up a ring of thieves that’s been selling stolen horses to the army. Reluctantly, he winds up with a colorful sidekick in a drunken ex-preacher. The ending in this one seems a little rushed to me, but other than that it’s excellent and is still very good overall.

In addition to being a pulp writer, William Chamberlain was in the army and in fact had a long, successful career there, retiring as a general. So it’s not surprising that his numerous Western and adventure yarns for various pulps usually had some sort of military connection. “Mount Up, You Sons of Glory!”, his story in this issue, is a cavalry tale about a campaign against the Sioux in Dakota Territory in the dead of winter. It uses the standard plot of a new, heavy-handed commanding officer ignoring the advice of his more seasoned junior officers, but Chamberlain’s straightforward, effective prose, his sense of realism, and a very poignant ending elevate this to something more than the ordinary.

I’ve come to appreciate C. William Harrison as one of the better Western pulpsters. His short tale in this issue, “Too Tough to Tame”, is about a young man whose father was an outlaw, and when he’s unjustly accused of a crime, he decides he’ll go ahead and follow the owlhoot trail. There are a couple of twists in this one, one that I saw coming and one I didn’t, and that makes for a very good story.

When he wasn’t writing classic comic book scripts in the Forties, Gardner F. Fox was writing Westerns and science fiction stories for the pulps, just as he would soon be turning out dozens of paperback original novels during the Fifties and Sixties while continuing his comics career. “The Town That Bullets Built” in this issue is about a lawman who has retired but keeps getting drawn back into trouble. Fox was a fine storyteller and keeps this one moving along briskly with well-drawn characters until a couple of very good action scenes wrap things up and bring the story to a heartwarming and satisfying conclusion. I haven’t read that many of Fox’s Westerns, but this is certainly a good one.

Peter Dawson was one of the most dependable Western writers of the Twentieth Century. In real life, he was Jonathan Glidden, brother of Frederick Glidden, also known as highly successful Western writer Luke Short. I’d hate to have to pick between the two of them as far as which one was the better writer. The Peter Dawson novella in this issue, “Hell’s Free for Nesters!” is excellent. Against his better judgment, a drifting cowboy helps a nester girl whose wagon is stuck in a river, and that lands him in the middle of a range war, a land swindle, and a murder for which he’s blamed. Just top-notch stuff all the way around, with plenty of action, good characters, and polished writing.

Also on that list of most dependable Western writers of the Twentieth Century is Clifton Adams, who nearly always turned in really fine yarns. As an Oklahoma writer, Adams was very familiar with the oil industry there and wrote a number of stories and novels set in the early days of that business. “Boss of Purgatory’s Pipeline”, Adams’ novelette in this issue, finds a range detective becoming an oilfield detective when his client, the owner of an oil pipeline suffering from sabotage, is murdered before the protagonist even arrives on the scene. The mystery is a good one and fairly complex for a story of this length, and as always, Adams’ writing is very, very good, carrying the reader along at a swift pace. This is a terrific story.

In fact, this is a terrific issue, one of the best Western pulps I’ve ever read. If you own some issues of DIME WESTERN, I’d advise you to check your shelves for this one, because it’s definitely worth reading.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Puzzle for Fiends - Patrick Quentin

Years ago I read quite a few novels by Patrick Quentin (a pseudonym used by several different combinations of writers, but most often Richard Webb and Hugh Wheeler) featuring producer Peter Duluth and his movie star wife Iris. I remember these as being witty and sophisticated and generally enjoyable, a little along the lines of the Pam and Jerry North books by Richard and Frances Lockridge, but not as good.

I never read PUZZLE FOR FIENDS until now, though. It’s a Peter Duluth novel, too – sort of. I say that because for most of the book, Peter has amnesia and doesn’t know who he is.

Ah, the old amnesia plot! Well, it wasn’t quite as old in 1946, when this book was first published. After a brief opening in which Peter sends Iris off to Japan for a post-war USO tour, he wakes up in a mansion populated by three beautiful but vaguely sinister women who claim to be his mother, his wife, and his sister, as well as a vaguely sinister doctor who’s there because Peter has been in a car wreck and has a broken arm and leg. Only he’s not Peter anymore (although the reader knows he really is). Everybody claims he’s somebody named Gordon Friend, whose father died recently under mysterious circumstances.

I like a book where nothing is what it seems and the plot has twist after twist. That’s the case here, especially in the second half, which winds up playing like something from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The first half is mostly set-up and pretty slow, but I can forgive that if there’s a good payoff, as there is here. PUZZLE FOR FIENDS is more of a psychological thriller than an actual mystery, although Peter does wind up solving several murders. It’s worth reading, and in fact I’d recommend just about anything under the Patrick Quentin pseudonym. (Webb and Wheeler also wrote as Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge, but I don’t believe I’ve ever read any of the books published under those names.)

(This post originally appeared on September 5, 2008. I've meant to read more by the various authors who wrote as Patrick Quentin since then, but you know how that goes. These days, PUZZLE FOR FIENDS is available as an e-book on Amazon, as are the other Peter Duluth books, and it's a series well worth reading.)

Review: Tex: Challenge at the Old Mission - Pasquale Ruju, Sergio Tisselli, Luca Barbieri, Walter Venturi

Tex Willer is the hero of a very long-running Italian comic book series that debuted in 1948. The creation of writer Gian Luigi Bonelli and artist Aurelio Galloppini, Tex is both a Texas Ranger and an adopted member of the Navajo tribe, of which he becomes a chief known as Night Eagle. Neither of those things keeps him from gallivanting all over the West and having all sorts of adventures that have been chronicled by dozens of Italian comics creators and an occasional American, too.

Recently I backed a Kickstarter for a collection of hardcover Tex Willer graphic novels translated into English. The boxed set of six volumes is beautiful. I’ve just read the first one, TEX: CHALLENGE AT THE OLD MISSION, written by Pasquale Ruju with art by Sergio Tisselli. In this story, Tex and his sidekick Kit Carson (who is also a Texas Ranger; historical accuracy is not something with which this series greatly concerns itself) are in Arizona to rescue a white woman named Patricia Graves from the Apaches who have taken her captive. Patricia is the wife of an army colonel who broke a treaty with the Apaches, and the chief, Octavio, kidnapped her as a means of taking revenge on the colonel.

However, there’s more to the story than that, as there usually is, and although Tex and Kit succeed in freeing Patricia after a stand-off at the old mission of the title, that’s not the end. Things do come to a satisfying conclusion, though.

Tisselli’s impressionistic artwork isn’t the sort that usually appeals to me, but I have to admit, I like it. It has a strong sense of storytelling and dramatic action. Ruju’s terse, understated script is effective. The combination makes for an enjoyable Western yarn.

This volume includes a bonus short story entitled “A Rag Horse”, written by Luca Barbieri with art by Walter Venturi. I liked this one even better. It’s a simple tale about Tex tracking down the killers of a family of settlers in New Mexico. Venturi’s artwork is much more traditional than Tisselli’s, and Barbieri’s script is even leaner than Ruju’s, with many wordless panels. The poignant story works very well.

I guess you could call these Spaghetti Western comics. The tone is certainly similar to Spaghetti Western movies. I happen to like those, so it’s no surprise I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the others in the set. It appears that backing the Kickstarter was the only way to get these limited editions, but other Tex graphic novels are available on the website of the publisher, Epicenter Comics.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Donnie Brasco (1997)

I love gangster movies, by which I mean the classics from the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties. I enjoy gangster movies made after that, too, as long as they’re about those earlier decades. But when it comes to stories about organized crime set after the late Forties, those are a lot more hit-and-miss for me. The closer you get to the present day, the less I’m likely to enjoy them. Movies like that set from the Seventies onward, I consider mobster movies, rather than classic gangster movies. I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but it does to me.

So I definitely took a wait-and-see attitude toward DONNIE BRASCO, a 1997 movie set in 1978. It’s based on the true story of an undercover cop named Joseph Pistone who creates the fictional identity of Donnie Brasco, a low-level fence and would-be wise guy, in order to infiltrate the mob. He becomes friends with a mid-level hood named Lefty Ruggiero and works his way up in the organization. Lots of suspense ensues as Pistone constantly walks a fine line between doing his job, not having his true identity discovered, and being drawn deeper and deeper into the violent world of organized crime. There’s some domestic drama, too, as the strains of being undercover begin to affect Pistone’s marriage.

A movie like this is going to rise and fall largely on the acting. Johnny Depp plays Joseph Pistone/Donnie Brasco. I realize Depp can be sort of a polarizing figure, but I’ve always enjoyed his work and I think he does a good job in this one. Al Pacino plays Lefty Ruggiero and is, well, Al Pacino. I can’t fault his performance, and I really feel for the character at times because he’s kind of a sad sack, but I’m just not a big Pacino fan and never will be. Elsewhere, Michael Madsen and Bruno Kirby play wise guys because of course they do, and they’re fine. The movie perks right along, and I enjoyed it. Not a classic by any means, but I’m glad I watched it.

Review: Faith and a Fast Gun - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

FAITH AND A FAST GUN is another adventure of hard-luck range detective Joshua Dillard, who’s in Del Rio to visit the grave of his late wife when he finds himself drawn into a clash between the daughter of a murdered rancher and the cattle baron responsible for the man’s death. Faith Hartnett’s brother Dick won a herd of longhorns from ruthless rancher Lyte Grumman, who rules Del Rio with an iron fist, then left with the cattle on a trail drive to Montana. Faith wants to head north, too, and rejoin her brother, but Grumman wants to prevent that. Even though it’s not Joshua’s trouble, he decides to help Faith get away from Grumman and be reunited with her brother.

Well-written though it is, with good characters and some nice hardboiled action, this is a pretty standard beginning for a Western novel. But old pro Chap O’Keefe (actually Keith Chapman, as many of you already know) is just luring the reader in before springing some great twists in the plot. Those twists don’t come fast and furious, as they do in some books. The sense that something isn’t quite right builds at a more deliberate but very effective pace, picking up steam as the storyline moves from Texas to Montana and winds up in a stunning climax that’s more like something out of Greek tragedy than a traditional Western.

This is a fine novel, with O’Keefe working solidly in the tradition of noirish Western authors such as Lewis B. Patten, H.A. De Rosso, and Dean Owen. Joshua Dillard is a very appealing, tough but flawed hero, and the other characters are drawn vividly as well. If you’re a Western fan and haven’t tried a Chap O’Keefe novel yet, you really should.

(This review was written about an earlier edition of this novel, but nothing has changed except that there's a new edition with an excellent cover and a fine bonus article "No Trail to Fortune" that discusses some of the editorial resistance FAITH AND A FAST GUN got from its original publisher, Robert Hale, as well as the ever-changing and challenging landscape of writing and publishing. I'm always interested in anything Keith Chapman has to say on this subject, since he's been in this crazy business longer than almost anyone. This is one of the best of the Joshua Dillard series, and I highly recommend it. It's available in e-book and paperback editions on Amazon, as well as all the other platforms, and you can find links to those here.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine, March 1939

Hubert Rogers provides a nice deep sea diving cover for this issue of STREET & SMITH'S DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE. Inside are well-known authors Erle Stanley Gardner (with a Lester Leith novella), Steve Fisher, and William G. Bogart, along with lesser known (at least to me) Edmund M. Littell, Chris Sieyes, and Carl Clausen. Of all the ESG characters I've read, Lester Leith is probably my least-favorite. However, I'm not sure I've ever read any of the stories except the one in Ron Goulart's iconic anthology THE HARDBOILED DICKS, so that's hardly a fair trial. I ought to see if I can hunt up a few more Leith yarns and give them a try. I own a few issues of DETECTIVE STORY (not this one) but I don't believe I've ever read any of them. I probably ought to do that, too. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Frontier Stories, Winter 1944

I featured this issue of FRONTIER STORIES several years ago, but I’ve since acquired a copy and just read it. Unfortunately, that copy is completely coverless, including the spine, but I’m not a fan of that Sidney Reisenberg cover anyway and all the pages are complete and easily readable, so I’m all right with that. Once again, the scan is from the Fictionmags Index, but my comments below are new.

Les Savage Jr. is one of my favorite Western writers. His mountain man novella “Queen of the Long Rifles” leads off this issue. That title is somewhat deceptive, and I suspect editor Malcolm Reiss may have come up with it. The story features a strong female character in Mira Phillips, the daughter of a trading post owner in the Big Horn Mountains during the fur trapping era. The actual protagonist is Batteau Severn, a French-Canadian trapper who clashes with a ruthless New Englander trying to take over the fur trade. This winds up as an out-and-out war between the two factions, which provides Savage with the opportunity for plenty of big, sweeping action scenes, as well as some brutal fistfights and one-on-one showdowns. This is a terrific story, full of excitement and a vividly portrayed, historically accurate setting. Batteau is a tough and very likable hero, Mira is a fine heroine, there are several top-notch sidekicks, some thoroughly despicable villains, and several surprisingly poignant moments. Savage could just write the heck out of a yarn like this. I loved it.

Tom W. Blackburn was also a consistently excellent Western author. His novelette “Devil’s Cache” starts with a freighter following the trail of whoever stole four of his horses. Not very far along, though, the story takes an abrupt turn and appears momentarily that it’s about to turn into a lost race yarn. That’s not how things play out, but the plot is still fairly off-beat for a Western pulp tale. This one is very well-written and I enjoyed it a lot, too.

Sometimes reading a pulp is educational. “Red Reckoning” is about a stagecoach trying to make it across the country to San Francisco before a ship can sail around South America and reach the same destination. An enormous wager is riding on the outcome. The protagonist is a frontier scout hired to help the stagecoach make the journey safely. Naturally, there’s a lot of trouble and treachery along the way, as well as romance with the daughter of the stagecoach line owner who made the bet. It’s a well-written yarn that moves along at a nice pace. I had never heard of the authors, Frankie-Lee Weed and Kelly Masters, so I did a little research on them, and that’s where the educational part comes in. My first thought was that they might be a husband-and-wife writing team, but nope, turns out they were just occasional writing partners who had much more prolific careers on their own. Kelly Masters published a few stories under his real name, but most of his work, which consisted mainly of slick magazine stories and boys’ adventure novels, was published under the pseudonym Zachary Ball. A couple of his novels were adapted as episodes of the original Walt Disney TV show. Frankie-Lee Weed published quite a few stories in the Western romance and love pulps under her real name, as well as the pseudonym Saliee O’Brien. Under the O’Brien name she went on to publish numerous historical romance novels in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. I remember seeing those books when they were new. So both authors went on to bigger (not necessarily better) things but got their start in the pulps.

Curtis Bishop was a Texas newspaper reporter who followed the rodeo circuit while also writing scores of Western and sports stories for various pulps, along with a number of juvenile sports novels and some well-regarded Western novels. I haven’t read much by him, but everything I’ve read has been very good. So I expected to enjoy “Turning Trails”, his novelette in this issue set in Texas during the days right after the Civil War. It starts off strong with a former Confederate officer having left his home and headed west after the war, as many actually did. He arrives in San Antonio and gets mixed up in the clash between the beautiful blond owner of a nearby ranch and the brutal, corrupt Reconstruction authorities who run things in Texas at this point. Then it becomes a trail drive story as the protagonist tries to help the young woman get a herd of cattle across the Red River into Indian Territory before the crooked sheriff can seize them. Bishop writes with a nice sense of time and place, but this story goes off the rails in the second half as he makes a number of geographical errors (I mean, I understand dramatic license, but that only goes so far, especially when you’re a Texan writing about Texas), and the plot twist that fuels the story’s resolution stretches willing suspension of disbelief ’way past the breaking point. I just didn’t accept that things could ever happen that way—and I’m a guy who has no problem with, say, Jim Hatfield’s almost super heroics. So this story, despite having some good stuff in it, wound up being a major disappointment.

This issue wraps up with the novella “The Conestoga Pirate” by another of my favorite authors, Dan Cushman. It’s an important story in Cushman’s career because it introduces his series character, the good guy outlaw Comanche John, although in this story and the next one in the series, he’s called Dutch John. This story was reprinted in the Leisure Books collection NO GOLD ON BOOTHILL, but since I have the original pulp version, that’s what I read. I hadn’t read any of the Dutch/Comanche John stories until now, although I think I own them all in one form or another.

Something about “The Conestoga Pirate” struck me as familiar right away, and a glance at the story intro in NO GOLD ON BOOTHILL explained why. Cushman used parts of this novella in his later novel NORTH FORK TO HELL, which I read several years ago, although he dropped Dutch John from that version. In this one, Dutch John is more of a supporting character, although an important one. The protagonist is young Wils Fleming, who, along with the old-timer Bogey and the disreputable gunfighter/outlaw Dutch John, encounter a wagon train full of immigrants being duped by a group of villains pretending to be guides and scouts. This leads to drama, gunplay, ambushes, and attempted lynchings. It’s a good, fast-moving story, with a little bit of an off-kilter tone, as many of Cushman’s stories have. He wrote a lot of Western and adventure stories for the pulps that were firmly in those traditions yet just a little different at the same time. It took me a while to understand that and appreciate his work, but as I said above, he’s now one of my favorites. I guess I need to read the rest of the Comanche John stories and novels.

There are also two Western history articles in this issue, one about the outlaw Black Jack Ketchum by Harold Preece and one about the Bannock War by Fairfax Downey. As usual, I just skimmed these. I like Western history and have read a bunch of it, but when it comes to pulps, I’m there for the fiction. And despite my ultimate disappointment in Curtis Bishop’s novella, this is an excellent issue of FRONTIER STORIES overall, with outstanding yarns from Savage, Cushman, and Blackburn. If you have a copy, it’s well worth reading.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Blonde in Lower Six - Erle Stanley Gardner

THE BLONDE IN LOWER SIX is Carroll & Graf’s second volume of Ed Jenkins stories reprinted (mostly) from the pulps, and I wish there were more of them. As far as I know, however, this is it for Ed Jenkins collections.

The Phantom Crook is back in three novelettes that originally appeared in BLACK MASK in 1927, being pursued by the underworld and the police alike, although as far as Ed is concerned, there’s not much difference between the two. If anything, most of the cops Ed encounters are more crooked and corrupt than the criminals they’re supposed to pursue. Ed’s still a hardboiled kind of guy, gleefully sending off his enemies to be caught in their own traps, running around Chinatown in various disguises, making hair’s-breadth escapes, befriending tong leaders, and fending off the attentions of two beautiful young women, because, after all, it wouldn’t be fair to them if he let them fall in love with a crook who has all hands against him. These yarns strike me as being a little more melodramatic than the ones in the previous collection, DEAD MEN’S LETTERS, but they’re still very entertaining.

Then you have the title story, “The Blonde in Lower Six”, which is a different sort of animal. Set in 1943 but published in ARGOSY in 1961 – and I’d love to know the story of how that came about – it’s a full-length novel that’s almost completely devoid of the Phantom Crook melodrama. Instead Ed acts more like an unlicensed private eye as he helps out an old friend from Chinatown in a case involving wartime espionage, embezzlement, characters pretending to be other characters, and at least three murders. The plot is so complicated I sort of lost track, but by the end I think I pretty much had everything straight. Vintage Erle Stanley Gardner plotting, in other words, and told in a very terse, tough style that reads really fast. I loved it, even though I couldn’t always keep up with what was going on.

My only quibbles aren’t with Gardner but rather with Carroll & Graf. On a book called THE BLONDE IN LOWER SIX, why would you use a cover illustration of a girl who’s definitely not a blonde? And if you read this collection, be sure to read the stories reprinted from BLACK MASK before you read the title story, which, although it comes first in the book, is actually more of a sequel to the pulp yarns. I have no idea why they were arranged that way for publication.

I highly recommend both DEAD MEN’S LETTERS and THE BLONDE IN LOWER SIX, and if any publisher wants to reprint some more Ed Jenkins stories, I’d read them without hesitation.

(This post originally appeared on August 15, 2008. Like DEAD MEN'S LETTERS, THE BLONDE IN LOWER SIX is long out of print, but it must be a lot more scarce because all the copies I saw for sale on-line are pretty expensive. If you already have it on your shelves, though, it's well worth reading. As far as I know, these two collections are still the only Ed Jenkins stories that have been reprinted. Maybe one of these days we'll get some more of them.)

Review: The Lotus and the Dragon - Brent Towns

Brent Towns has been highly successful writing Westerns, men’s adventure novels, hardboiled private detective yarns, and World War II action tales. Now he’s moving into yet another genre, the epic historical adventure novel, with his latest release, THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON.

Taking place in Australia in the 1870s and ’80s, THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is narrated by Jack Crowe, a tough, hardbitten protagonist who starts out as a bounty hunter. After being unjustly convicted of a crime, he’s sent to an isolated sheep station to work off his sentence. When that is finally behind him, he starts a freight business, only to run afoul of violence and tragedy again and start a vendetta against a renegade police officer that will last for years.

The rather episodic plot of this novel follows Jack through stretches involving mining, riverboating, and romances with several beautiful women who may or may not be trustworthy. Encounters with various enemies result in him being beaten up, shot, nearly drowned, and left for dead more than once. Those enemies include not only corrupt policemen and politicians but also bushrangers, whoremongers, slavers, and an American business tycoon who ruthlessly takes over the Australian riverboat trade.

THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is one tough, gritty book. The action never lets up for long, and Jack Crowe takes enough punishment for several novels but is resilient enough to keep fighting all the way to an ending that’s crying out for a sequel. If you’re a fan of Wilbur Smith and Bernard Cornwell, you really need to check out this novel. It’s the same sort of epic, sweeping adventure and is very well-done. THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I give it a high recommendation. It's available from Wolfpack Publishing on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions.