Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, February 1945

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat tattered copy in the scan. The dramatic cover is by Sam Cherry, who never painted a bad one.

“Guns of the Haunted Hills” is another fine Jim Hatfield novel by Leslie Scott writing as Jackson Cole. In this one, Hatfield is sent to the San Benito Valley in Texas’s Big Bend country to tackle some trouble brewing there, but in a nice twist, one reason Cap’n Bill McDowell gives him the job is get him away from some mysterious assassin who has been sending ominous drawings of a rattlesnake to Hatfield, before making an attempt to blow him up with a message doctored with explosive. It’s an odd touch for a Hatfield novel, but Scott makes it work.

The trouble in San Benito Valley centers around a coal mining company that has moved in, bringing a lot of Eastern European miners to dig out the coal. The local cattlemen aren’t happy about this, except for one young rancher, and a range war is brewing between him and the local cattle baron. The railroad is building a spur line into the valley as well, complicating matters even more. Hatfield barely shows up before somebody is trying to kill him. Are the attempts on his life connected to the job that’s brought him here, or has his mysterious enemy followed him to the Big Bend?

As usual, there’s quite a bit of trouble for Hatfield to untangle, and also as usual, Scott puts his mining and railroading background to good use. I don’t know how accurate his geology is, but a fella could learn a lot about a lot of things by reading these stories. I’m just out to be entertained, though, not educated, and Scott never fails to deliver on that score. I raced right through “Guns of the Haunted Hills” and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Due to wartime paper restrictions, this is one of the thin issues of TEXAS RANGERS, so it has only three short back-up stories. “Sweet Are the Uses of Sorghum” is a semi-humorous, entertaining tale by Allan K. Echols about an encounter with a Mexican café owner and a bank robber. E.E. Halleran, an author whose work I’m usually not fond of, contributes “Lawman’s Chance”, about a local star packer regarded as a big dummy who gets to use his detective skills to solve a murder. I liked this one all right. Ben Frank (real name Frank Bennett) is the author of two humorous series I don’t like at all, Doc Swap and Deputy Boo Boo Bounce, but his story in this issue, “Singing Bullets”, is a traditional Western yarn about a good-guy outlaw known as The Dodge City Kid catching a killer and clearing a friend’s name. This is the first of a short, four-story series, and I liked it a lot better than the other stories I’ve read by Frank. It reminded me a little of the Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt comic book stories, and I was always a big fan of those series.

This is a good issue overall, not surprising because although TEXAS RANGERS evolved over its 21-year run, I think it stayed consistently good. The mid-Forties issues are excellent with Leslie Scott and Tom Curry at the top of their games, soon to be joined as regular authors on the series by Walker A. Tompkins. Well worth reading if you have this issue on your shelves. It’s on the Internet Archive, too, if you’d prefer to read it there.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Sandstorm - James Rollins

Talk about your mixed emotions. I was predisposed to not like this book: it’s too long, and the author is too successful. (Writers are just as prone to sour grapes as anybody else.) On the other hand, James Rollins is a veterinarian in real life, or at least used to be, and seems like a nice guy, so it’s hard to envy him for his success. And he’s admitted in interviews that he’s a big fan of the Doc Savage novels, my all-time favorite pulp series, so in that respect I was predisposed to like the book. The verdict: I liked it. Quite a bit, actually.

It opens with an explosion at the British Museum that destroys a display of Arabian artifacts, but it’s not the terrorist attack you might expect. Instead, it’s a natural occurrence caused by the convergence of an electrical storm and something hidden inside one of the artifacts. This sends a large and varied cast of scientists, explorers, billionaires, and spies racing off to Oman in a quest to find a lost city buried under the sands before the natural catastrophe that’s developing threatens the continued existence of the entire world. Of course there’s action aplenty along the way, as well as a smidgen of soap opera.

I hardly ever even attempt to read a book that’s almost 600 pages long anymore, and when I do I usually make it thirty or forty pages and then decide that I don’t like it well enough to stick with it for the five or six days it’ll take me to read it. Usually there’s nothing really wrong with the book; it just doesn’t compel me to make that investment of time. That never happened with SANDSTORM, though. I was able to stay with it without any problem . . . although it wouldn’t have broken my heart if it had been a hundred pages shorter. Still, there’s a lot of plot in it, and Rollins seems to be very good about planting things that don’t pay off until two or three hundred pages later. He also writes decent action scenes and has good characters. Things get a little far-fetched now and then; Rollins leads the reader right up to the edge of saying, “Oh, come on!”, but doesn’t quite get there. And he winds up with at least semi-plausible scientific explanations for everything.

I liked this one enough so that I’ll certainly read more by Rollins, and if you like big, epic adventure novels, I think his books are worth a try.

(This post originally appeared on June 24, 2008. SANDSTORM is the first novel in James Rollins' Sigma Force series, and despite the good things I say about it, I haven't read any of the others. I own several of them, however, and still intend to get back to the series. Whether I will or not . . . Well, I wouldn't bet a hat on it, but it could happen. SANDSTORM is still available in an e-book edition, but not in print, as far as I can tell.)

Review: Day of the Buzzard - T.V. Olsen

Val Penmark, a crusty old rancher out for vengeance, and Jason Drum, a young cowboy who wants to recover the money his family depends on, are a two-man posse chasing a gang of bank robbers through the badlands of southern Arizona in DAY OF THE BUZZARD, a 1976 novel by T.V. Olsen published originally by Fawcett Gold Medal. A couple of women wind up involved in the chase, as well as an Apache war party, and you can tell right from the start that this is going to be a really gritty, hardboiled Western yarn.

Considering that he was regarded as a top-notch Western writer for many years, I’ve read surprisingly little by T.V. Olsen. Years ago I read one of his paperback novels and remember not liking it much. Since then I’ve read a few of his pulp stories and thought they were pretty good. But DAY OF THE BUZZARD is the first Olsen novel I’ve read since high school, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

This one is really good, with Olsen doing a fine job of capturing the blazing heat and arid terrain of the setting. For some reason, I don’t associate his work with the Southwest, but he nails it here. None of the characters are particularly likable, even the two protagonists, but they’re all interesting. The outlaws are suitably despicable, especially the gang’s leader. The action scenes are well-done, and Olsen creates some genuine suspense.

I raced through this novel, and it left me very interested in reading more by T.V. Olsen. At one point, Leisure reprinted DAY OF THE BUZZARD in a double volume with Olsen’s novel RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN. Amazon owns the rights to all those old Leisure books now, and that double volume is still available in e-book and paperback editions. Highly recommended if you’re a fan of hardboiled Westerns, with the caveat that since it came out in 1976, the language and sex scenes are a little more graphic, although not Adult Western level.

Review: The Kissed Corpse - Asa Baker (Davis Dresser)

Davis Dresser was the kind of writer I really admire and have tried to be in my career, a guy who was willing and able to turn his hand to different kinds of fiction and do all of them well. In the late Thirties, he was writing Western novels, spicy romances, and of course mysteries. He’d already had some success with MUM’S THE WORD FOR MURDER, published under the pseudonym Asa Baker, set in El Paso, Texas, Dresser’s home town, and starring special police detective Jerry Burke. In 1939, he published his second Burke novel, THE KISSED CORPSE, which Carlyle House brought out in hardcover.

Asa Baker isn’t just the pseudonym Dresser used on these books. Baker is also a character in them, a Western and mystery novelist who’s pretty obviously a stand-in for Dresser himself. He tags along with his friend Jerry Burke and narrates the stories of Burke’s investigations. In THE KISSED CORPSE, though, it’s Baker who turns up a murder and gets Burke involved.

He’s staying at a friend’s cabin in a canyon just outside El Paso. Millionaire oilman Raymond Dwight has an estate in the same canyon. Also not far away is the bungalow where former soldier of fortune Leslie Young lives with his beautiful wife Myra. Baker discovers that the oil tycoon is a peeping tom, spying on a sunbathing Myra Young through a telescope. Unfortunately, Myra’s husband makes that same discovery, and not long after that, Baker discovers his body while walking through the canyon.

Since this is a Davis Dresser novel, things are nowhere near as simple as they appear to be starting out, though. It seems that the Mexican government has taken over Dwight’s oilfield properties below the border, and he’s trying to put together a shady deal to recoup the loss. There are mysterious notes and threats and a seedy hacienda below the Rio Grande where the beautiful leader of a Mexican nationalist group holds secret meetings. There’s a beautiful, ambitious female reporter poking around who may or may not have been romantically involved with the murdered man. The oilman has a hard-drinking, gorgeous teenage daughter. Throw in a little blackmail, too, and Jerry Burke will have his hands full untangling the whole mess.

With its dangerous nighttime visit to the mysterious hacienda below the border, THE KISSED CORPSE has a rather pulpish feel starting out, but for a long stretch, it settles down and becomes almost an English country house type of mystery, with a bunch of suspects at a fancy estate and the dogged detective interrogating them. It’s a millionaire’s mansion in the Franklin Mountains, but the idea is the same. There’s some moving around later on, but eventually all the suspects come together again so Burke can reveal the killer and explain everything.

Dresser was a master of this sort of blend between the traditional and hardboiled mysteries. I don’t think he has the plot nailed down quite as well in THE KISSED CORPSE as he would in the Mike Shayne novels he wrote over the next decade, but it works well enough. Jerry Burke is a good character, too: a former cowboy, Texas Ranger, intelligence operative during World War I, soldier of fortune, and cop. Asa Baker is a likable narrator. Dresser spins his yarn in fast-moving prose that mostly has a breezy feel to it, although things can get rough now and then.

The same year this novel came out, Dresser also published DIVIDEND ON DEATH, the first book in the Mike Shayne series, and although he worked on other things besides Shayne over the next couple of decades, he never went back to Jerry Burke. I think the Shaynes are much better overall, but I wouldn’t have minded a few more Jerry Burke novels, too. Both books featuring him are pretty entertaining. MUM’S THE WORD FOR MURDER was reprinted twice under the Brett Halliday name. THE KISSED CORPSE got a single digest paperback reprint under the Asa Baker pseudonym. It is, however, available these days in an e-book edition under the Halliday name, and if you’re a Mike Shayne fan, I think you’ll enjoy both of the Jerry Burke novels, too.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Speed Adventure Stories, September 1944

This issue of SPEED ADVENTURE STORIES sports a fine cover by H.J. Ward and a pretty strong line-up of authors. Tom W. Blackburn, best remembered as a top-notch Western author, of course, leads things off. I don't own this issue so I don't know if Blackburn's yarn is a Western, but I'm sure it's good regardless. Also on hand are Dale Clark, Stanley Vickers, house-name Clark Nelson, as well as Victor Rousseau with three stories, one each as by V.R. Emanuel (his actual initials and last name), Clive Trent, and Hugh Speer.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: All Western Magazine, February 1937

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. Although there’s no cover credit on the TOC page and it’s unattributed on the Fictionmags Index, I suspect it’s the work of Arthur Mitchell. It looks like one of his paintings, and he did a lot of covers for ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE during this period.

The lead novella, “Gun Smoke on the Pecos”, is the third and final story in the Roaming Reynolds series by Charles M. Martin. I haven’t read the first one, but I read the second one a while back and liked it fairly well. In this story, Roaming Reynolds and Texas Joe, a pair of drifting cowboys/gunfighters/adventurers, return to their home country in West Texas and immediately find themselves mixed up in a range war. The plot is very much by-the-numbers, right down to the rancher the boys are working for having a beautiful daughter, and Martin’s heavy-handed pulp cowboy lingo and narrative style wear thin pretty quickly. If I’m being honest, and I try to be here, this is a rather mediocre story. And yet . . . the numerous action scenes work really well, the setting rings true, and Martin does a good job of playing up the epic, mythological clashes between Roaming Reynolds and the evil gunfighter on the other side. When they face off at the end, I could hear Ennio Morricone music welling up inside my head. So this novella has that going for it, anyway, and ultimately, that was enough for me, but you might feel differently.

Harry F. Olmsted is one of my favorite Western pulp authors. His story “Headboard Tally” in this issue packs quite a bit of plot in a few thousand words. It’s a revenge yarn, as a cowboy tries to track down the four men responsible for lynching his brother, but as it opens, he’s already killed three of the four and doesn’t know the identity of the final man. He finds out in what turns out to be a pretty far-fetched coincidence, but Olmsted writes well enough I’ll cut him that much slack. For a story that’s mostly bleak and dark, this one turns out to have a heartwarming element to it, as well. It worked for me, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

James P. Olsen, who also wrote a lot for the pulps as James A. Lawson, was a consistently good author, with many stories that tend toward over-the-top action. For that reason, “Malachi Murphy—Cowboy” is something of an oddity among Olsen’s work in that it’s a quiet little slice-of-life story about an old cowboy spending the winter at an isolated high country line camp. Not much happens, but it’s well-written and the title character is an interesting one.

I’ve read quite a few stories over the years by Hapsburg Liebe, real name Charles Haven Liebe. While his work is usually enjoyable, I’ve never considered myself a fan of his stories. “Bullet” is about a teenage boy whose father is an outlaw. When Bullet’s pa and another owlhoot rob a bank and are caught, it’s up to Bullet to save them from being lynched. This is a well-written, cleverly plotted story, one of the best from Liebe that I’ve read.

Darrell Jordan is best remembered for almost a hundred stories he wrote for the aviation and air war pulps, but he also turned out a few detective and Western yarns, including the novelette “Range War Nemesis” in this issue. The protagonist, young cowboy Brad Bannon, wants to repay the man who grubstaked his father twenty years earlier, but that effort lands Brad in the middle of a range war, and the fact that he’s a dead ringer for a notorious gunman complicates the issue. This isn’t a bad story and there are some nice action scenes, but the plot is pretty muddled and hard to keep up with. I don’t recall ever reading anything by Jordan before. I ought to try one of his aviation stories.

Sam H. Nickels wrote the long-running Hungry and Rusty series in WILD WEST WEEKLY as well as a lot of stand-alone stories under his own name and various house-names. His stories appeared outside of the pages of WILD WEST WEEKLY from time to time, too, as in this issue with “When the Sheriff Lied”. This is a pretty good action yarn with a protagonist who pretends to be an outlaw and winds up saving a lawman’s life. The reason behind the deception isn’t very surprising, but the story works effectively.

Ralph Condon was a life-long newspaperman who wrote several dozen stories for various Western pulps in the Thirties and Forties. “Red Trail” is about a cowboy and his grizzled old sidekick trying to track down a herd of stolen horses. It’s almost all action and fairly well-written, nothing special but entertaining enough.

There’s also a story by S. Omar Barker in his Boosty Peckleberry series, and that’s another one I don’t read. Just not a fan of humorous tall tales, I guess.

Overall, this is probably the weakest issue of ALL WESTERN MAGAZINE I’ve read, with most of the stories falling into the readable but unmemorable range. The ones by Olmsted and Olsen are the best, but I wouldn’t put either in the top rank of those authors’ work. I believe I’ve now read all the issues of ALL WESTERN that I own and I probably won’t seek out any more.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Team Zero - Chuck Dixon

Some of the first comic books I remember reading are an issue of OUR ARMY AT WAR that I read at a cousin’s house and an issue of G.I. COMBAT I bought at Tompkins’ Drug Store when it was on Main Street in an old wooden building that’s now well over a hundred years old and still there. [It's now a very good burger joint.] The drug store is long gone, though, along with its soda fountain and spinner rack of funny books. However, I digress. My point is that I’ve been a fan of war comics for almost fifty years [more than sixty years now, good grief], so it’s not surprising that I enjoyed a recent trade paperback from DC/Wildstorm reprinting their Team Zero mini-series from a couple of years ago.

When Image Comics first came on the scene in the mid-Nineties, I read quite a few of the titles in their Wildstorm imprint, which is now part of DC, of course. My favorite was DEATHBLOW, and I also liked a character called Grifter who appeared in their WILDC.A.T.S. title. Both Deathblow and Grifter appear in the World War II yarn TEAM ZERO . . . but not the same Deathblow and Grifter. No superheroics here. This is a straight-out war story following a specially-assembled team of commandos dropped far behind enemy lines in the waning days of the war to snatch up the German rocket scientists at Peenemunde before the Soviet army can get its hands on them. It’s exactly the sort of assignment that in another comics era would have been given to Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos (and what a great comic book that was for a lot of years). The soldiers recruited for this mission are given code-names that would later figure prominently in the Wildstorm Universe – Deathblow, Grifter, Backlash, Claymore, etc. – but with one exception, they’re not the same characters. That tenuous connection to what comes later chronologically isn’t really important to the reader’s enjoyment of this story; TEAM ZERO can be read as a complete stand-alone.

It’s written by Chuck Dixon, who was one of my favorite comics authors during the Nineties with his work on AIRBOY and THE PUNISHER. There’s plenty of action in the story, a few plot twists, and plenty of blood ’n’ guts, as you’d expect from a war comic. I enjoyed it a lot and highly recommend it to any comics fans out there.

(This post, which appeared originally on June 10, 2008, is a good example of how the world is an odd place, and the Internet has made it even more so. When I wrote this review, I was just a long-time fan of Chuck Dixon's work. These days, I consider him a good friend, and I've even been privileged to edit a few novels in his very popular Levon Cade series. The trade paperback edition of TEAM ZERO that I read back in 2008 is out of print, but e-book editions of the six comic book stories it collects are available on Amazon and I still highly recommend them if you're a fan of gritty, well-written war yarns.)

Review: The Gun Man Jackson Swagger - Stephen Hunter

These days, I’m always a little leery when a big name in some other genre decides to write a Western. It’s not like the old pulp and paperback days when writers moved back and forth between genres all the time. On the one hand, any very successful author who writes a Western almost has to have a genuine fondness for them. You can bet the publishers aren’t clamoring for Westerns from their big-name thriller writers. On the other hand, whether they really like Westerns or not, that doesn’t mean they’re suited to write them. Maybe that’s just a skill set they don’t have.

But if any modern-day thriller author seems cut out to write a Western, it would be Stephen Hunter, who has made a career out of writing books about laconic heroes who are capable of great violence, usually with guns. And that’s just what he’s done in THE GUN MAN JACKSON SWAGGER.

This novel goes back another generation in the Swagger family, the fictional clan that has starred in most of his novels over the years. It’s 1897, and a grizzled old cowboy who just calls himself Jack shows up at the Crazy R ranch in southern Arizona, not far from the Mexican border. The owner of the spread, Colonel Callahan, is no more honest than he has to be, and he employs a group of hired gunmen to take care of any dirty work benefiting the ranch or the railroad that’s building a line through the region. The colonel and the railroad are in cahoots, and he also has a connection with a corrupt Federale officer below the border. Once Jack demonstrates his skill at handling a rifle, the colonel hires him, but Jack’s not really looking for a job. He has another reason for coming to the Crazy R.

And you’ll figure out what that reason is pretty easily as Jack navigates through all the danger and treachery surrounding him. I mean, we know who he really is, it’s right there in the title. But it’s still very entertaining to watch him go about it, manipulating people and events to uncover the information he needs and then taking action to achieve his ends. Nobody these days writes as well about guns and gunfights as Hunter, and Jack is a very sympathetic protagonist, managing the neat trick of being mythic and realistic at the same time.

My only real complaint is that Hunter is maybe just a little too leisurely in getting where he’s going. The best way I can think of to put this is to say that THE GUN MAN JACKSON SWAGGER is probably around 70,000 words long (actually a little on the short side for a New York-published hardback by a big name), while Ben Haas would have written the exact same story at about 50,000 words. It’s easier to forgive such an ambling pace when an author writes as well as Hunter does.

I’m also not that fond of the ending, but hey, that’s just me.

I suspect this may be a one-and-done for Hunter when it comes to writing Westerns, but I could be wrong about that. I’d certainly be willing to read more if he ever decides to write them. I think he loves and respects the Western, and overall he does a very good job, with some top-notch action scenes and great dialogue. I give THE GUN MAN JACKSON SWAGGER a high recommendation. It’s available on Amazon in e-book and hardcover editions.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dare-Devil Aces, July 1937

Man, Frederick Blakeslee could really pack a lot into an air-war pulp cover! Nine planes (assuming I didn't miss any), plus a bunch of ack-ack bursts in the air and bombs going off on the ground. I think this scene does a great job of conveying the controlled chaos of aerial combat in World War I. Inside, this issue features three authors I associate more with Westerns: Orlando Rigoni, Claude Rister, and William O'Sullivan. Also on hand are aviation pulp stalwarts Robert Sidney Bowen and Darrell Jordan, house-names William Hartley and Larry Jones, and Fred Flabb, which I suspect is this little-published author's real name, because it doesn't sound like what you'd come up with as a pseudonym.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, May 1947

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my somewhat ragged copy in the scan. The cover is by Sam Cherry, as usual, and I like it, also as usual.

Ah, Tombstone and Speedy! A ghost story seems perfect for this pair of bumbling but surprisingly astute range detectives, and the novella “Ghost of the Tumbling K” brings them to the title ranch on their latest assignment for the Cattlemen’s Protective Association. However, they don’t know why they’re there, because the rancher who sent for them lies seriously wounded and unconscious. Tombstone and Speedy fetch help for the injured man and, in the process, discover that the ranch is supposed to be haunted. Since they don’t know why they were summoned, they decide to stay there and keep an eye on the place, which, of course, leads to a ghostly encounter.

Author W.C. Tuttle packs a lot of plot into his yarn, as he always does with the Tombstone and Speedy stories. Most of it revolves around the hidden loot of a mysterious outlaw known as the Yellow Mask, who is believed to have died several years earlier. But is he really dead? If he is, could it be his spirit haunting the Tumbling K? Tombstone and Speedy untangle the whole thing, of course, with plenty of action and humorous banter along the way. These stories are pretty formulaic, but they sure are entertaining.

“Indian Slap” is by Barry Scobee, the only pulp Western author with a mountain named after him. Scobee’s work is hit-or-miss for me but mostly good, and I enjoyed this tale about a white boy who was a captive of the Comanches trying to fit back in among a community of settlers. Scobee does a good job with the Central Texas setting, too.

“West of Windigo” is a novelette by Norrell Gregory. I don’t recall if I’ve read anything by Gregory before, but I liked this story of a railroad detective trying to find out who’s been stealing construction supplies, smuggling whiskey to the Indians, and generally trying to stir up trouble on a spur line that’s being built. Gregory moves things along nicely. This would have made a good B-Western movie in the Forties or Fifties.

“Badmen Are Plumb Foolish” is by Donald Bayne Hobart, a very prolific pulpster whose work I’ve come to enjoy. This story is about a gambler framed for a murder he didn’t commit, and despite its short length, maybe 2500 words, Hobart manages to work in a train robbery and a plot twist, too. This is a nice, enjoyable yarn by a real pro.

“Sheriff” by William O’Sullivan uses the “old lawman whose time has passed” plot, and not surprisingly, the old badge-toter has some life left in him after all, as an election campaign against his young whippersnapper deputy proves. This isn’t a memorable story at all, but it’s well-written and pleasant enough.

I’m convinced that Donald Bayne Hobart is also the author of “Bait for a Range-War Gallows”, even though it was published under the house-name Jackson Cole. The style reads very much like Hobart’s work. This is a range war story, as you probably guessed from the title, but it starts with a very nice twist: the range war is already over when the story begins. And everybody who supported the losing side is now considered an outlaw, including young cowboy Dake Latimer, who is holed up in an old adobe hut trying to fight off a horde of gunmen led by his mortal enemy who hates him because Latimer once stopped the lowdown hombre from raping a young woman. Hobart drops the reader down right in the middle of the action, which is something I always enjoy. Latimer gets out of that scrape but almost immediately finds himself in another one with a wounded youngster’s life on the line. Hobart packs a lot into this story and the action never slows down for more than a few paragraphs. This is just a superb Western yarn, one of the best I’ve read recently.

The protagonist of Nels Leroy Jorgensen’s novelette “Longrider Gun-Law” is also a good-guy owlhoot, the son of an Arizona lawman. He’s been below the border in Mexico rustling cattle and horses as part of a gang of American outlaws, but when the group disbands, he heads home to find the area being plagued by a series of stagecoach robberies. The plot developments in this one are pretty predictable, but Jorgensen’s tough prose makes it entertaining reading. Jorgensen’s career started in the early Twenties with detective and adventure yarns. He was a regular contributor to BLACK MASK during that pulp’s early glory days and eventually became a prolific Western pulpster, as well. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by him.

There’s also an animal story by Harold F. Cruickshank in this issue, but I didn’t even try to read it. I loved wildlife yarns when I was a kid, but they just don’t work for me anymore.

Other than that, every story in this issue is good and I think it’s a fine issue overall. Although, as usual when there’s not a Navajo Tom Raine story, I missed that series.

To end on a more serious note that usual, I’ve realized that on several occasions recently, I’ve read and reviewed books and pulps that I previously read and reviewed several years ago, with absolutely no memory of reading and reviewing them before. At my age, this is a mite worrisome. If I have any doubts about a book or a pulp, I try to remember to search the blog and see if I’ve already covered it. But the key phrase there is “try to remember” because that’s where the problem lies, isn’t it? If any rate, if you see such duplication, it’s not intentional, and don’t hesitate to bring it to my attention. It’s helpful for me to know about such things.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Where is Janice Gantry? - John D. MacDonald

It takes me a long time to read a book these days, a combination of being really busy, not having much time to read, and a rather scattershot attention span. But even though it took me about a week, I read John D. MacDonald’s novel WHERE IS JANICE GANTRY? and enjoyed it quite a bit.

I liked the narrator/hero in this one, Sam Brice, a former pro football player and insurance appraiser who lives in a small town on the west coast of Florida. Trouble comes into his life in the form of a young acquaintance of his who has escaped from prison and needs his help. Somewhat against his better judgment, Sam goes along with the request, and that sets in motion a series of violent events that include the disappearance of his former girlfriend, the Janice Gantry of the title.

The plot’s a little thin and probably won’t surprise many readers, but MacDonald’s ability as a pure storyteller is clearly in evidence here, pulling the reader along. I don’t doubt that under normal circumstances I would have finished this book a lot faster than I did, because when I did get a chance to read I got caught up in it and was really flipping the pages. The last fifty pages or so are very suspenseful. Well worth reading, I say.

(Wait a minute. This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on February 18, 2008, so that means I've been complaining about how long it takes me to read a book for at least 18 years now. Dang! I think I just need to get used to it. I'm a long-time fan of John D. MacDonald, and I plan to read the books of his that I've never gotten around to. Problem is, many of them I don't recall if I've read them or not. Oh, well, even rereads are worthwhile with JDM. This one is still in print and is available in e-book and paperback editions on Amazon.)

Review: Texas Land Grab - Johnny Nelson (Gordon Clive Bleeck?)

During the Seventies, Leisure Books in the United States reprinted several Western novels originally published in Australia by Cleveland Publishing, including one of the Larry and Stretch novels by Leonard F. Meares writing as Marshall Grover and several double volumes of Benedict and Brazos novels by Paul Wheelahan writing as E. Jefferson Clay. My friend Anders Nilsson, who is doing some excellent bibliographic work regarding Australian Westerns, tipped me off to the existence of another American edition of an Australian Western I’d never come across: TEXAS LAND GRAB, published under the house-name Johnny Nelson. The most likely author of this one, according to Anders, is Gordon Clive Bleeck, a very prolific Australian writer who turned out more than 400 novels in a variety of genres under many different pseudonyms and house-names. I was curious enough to find a copy of TEXAS LAND GRAB and read it.

The protagonist of this yarn is Chad Walford, a cowboy who has homesteaded some land to start his own ranch. Unfortunately, he finds himself in the middle of a three-cornered range war involving a cattle baron and a group of sodbusters who have moved in and established a new town. In a nice twist, the cattle baron and the leader of the farmers join forces against Chad, whose only allies are a hotheaded young gunfighter and a wily, half-Apache old-timer. Also involved in the story are a long-winded judge and his beautiful niece.

There are some good action scenes in this novel, including a stampede that threatens to wipe out the sodbuster town. Chad is a stalwart protagonist, if a little bit bland, and the judge and the old half-breed are colorful, well-done supporting characters. The villains are suitably despicable. Overall, TEXAS LAND GRAB is nothing we haven’t seen many times before, but it’s put together reasonably well and is a fast, entertaining read if you’re a fan of traditional Westerns like I am. There are only a few instances of words and phrasing not quite ringing true to indicate that the author was Australian, not American.

Given Leisure’s history, I’ve always figured they pirated the Australian Westerns they published, and that may well be true. The American edition gives a 1979 copyright date for the Cleveland edition, but Anders believes TEXAS LAND GRAB was published originally in the mid-Sixties, based on its cover price. I’m perfectly willing to accept that because Anders knows more about this stuff than probably anybody else in the world. And I’m glad he brought this one to my attention. I had a good time reading it, and a short, enjoyable Western yarn was just what I needed right now.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Science Fiction Quarterly, August 1951

The cover by Leo Morey on this issue of SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY caught my eye as I was looking through the Fictionmags Index. There's a decent group of writers inside this issue as well: Arthur C. Clarke, James Blish, Frederik Pohl (writing as James MacCreigh), James E. Gunn (writing as Edwin James), Larry T. Shaw (who was my editor, officially, for one issue of MSMM, although I never had any contact with him whatsoever), Morton Klass, and Joe Kennedy (writing as Joquel Kennedy). I'm not familiar with Klass and Kennedy, but I've read and enjoyed work by all the others. This issue is available at the Internet Archive, along with other issues of SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, July 1946

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my rather tattered copy in the scan, with a fine action cover painted by Sam Cherry.

The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue is by A. Leslie Scott writing under the Jackson Cole house-name, as is obvious from the vivid descriptions right from the start. The Lucky Hammer of the title is the name of a silver mine in Texas’s Big Bend region, so-called because the two old prospectors who discover the vein also find an ancient Aztec carving of a snake that’s shaped in the form of a hammer. Oh, and the hammer just happens to be lying next to the body of a dead man who appears to have guzzled down a drink from a poisoned waterhole.

Naturally, the silver strike results in the founding of a boomtown, and a boomtown always brings owlhoots, and eventually things get so lawless in the area that a call for help goes out to the Texas Rangers. And who’s going to respond to that call? I think we all know the answer to that question.

“The Lucky Hammer” is a dandy Jim Hatfield yarn full of the things that make Leslie Scott’s stories so enjoyable: a historical background, a terrible sandstorm on the desert, underground scenes in a mine, exploding dynamite, a missing archeologist, rustlers, smugglers, and gunfights galore. The big twist in the plot is fairly obvious, but to be honest, I would have felt cheated if it hadn’t been there. Sure, I knew it was coming, but I liked it anyway. Actually, there’s nothing in this novel that we haven’t seen in numerous other Hatfield novels by Scott, but he puts the various elements together so well, I still greatly enjoy reading them. He was at the top of his game in these mid-Forties Hatfield novels.

Bennie Gardner, who wrote as Gunnison Steele, turned out some excellent novels for the Thrilling Group Western character pulps, but he was also very prolific when it comes to short-short stand-alone stories. “Cold Creek Killer” in this issue is probably about 1500 words long, but in those words Gardner packs rustling, murder, and a canny sheriff bringing a killer to justice. The twist ending to this one is a little weak, I thought, but Gardner’s fast-moving prose still makes it fun to read.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t make it very far in Ben Frank’s “Doc Swap’s Powder Puff”. I just don’t like this series. I’m not sure why. The author, whose real name was Frank Bennett, puts words together well enough, but the Doc Swap stories just don’t work for me.

On the other hand, I really like the Long Sam Littlejohn stories by Lee Bond, and they’re every bit as formulaic as the Doc Swap yarns. In “Long Sam Collects a Bounty”, the good-guy outlaw is trying to corral a notorious outlaw and collect a reward, when he’s usually the one who’s the quarry in a situation like that. Naturally, his long-time nemesis, Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe Fry, shows up, too. Quite a few of the Long Sam stories, like this one, take place in the Big Thicket in East Texas, and that makes for a nice change-of-pace. I wish Bond had done a little more with the character, but I still enjoy the series and am always glad to read another one.

And the same holds true for most issues of TEXAS RANGERS. Even with Doc Swap and a slightly below-average Gunnison Steele story, this one is well worth reading if you have a copy on your shelves.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Wounded and the Slain - David Goodis

Some critics have said that David Goodis’s novels read like book-length suicide notes. That’s certainly an apt description of THE WOUNDED AND THE SLAIN, originally published by Gold Medal in 1955 and recently reprinted by Hard Case Crime [in 2007]. This one even opens with the protagonist, James Bevan, contemplating doing away with himself, even though he’s on vacation at a luxurious Jamaican resort with his beautiful young wife. Bevan’s wife is his problem, though, since their marriage is one of the most corrosive you’re likely to encounter in fiction. Like other Goodis characters, Bevan seeks refuge from that unhappiness in booze, which leads him into an encounter with violence and death.

Then, yep, you guessed it, Things Get Worse.

THE WOUNDED AND THE SLAIN is somewhat unusual among Goodis’s novels, in that it takes place in Jamaica rather than Philadelphia or some other large American city. It veers away from the noir stereotype in another way as well, with many of the scenes taking place in hot, bright sunshine rather than dark alleyways. The interior of James Bevan’s mind is plenty dark on its own, though, and ultimately the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, are just as mean as those of Philadelphia or New York. The motivations of some of the characters may seem a little clichéd today, but Goodis’s writing still makes them ring true. The headlong pace carries the reader along to a very satisfying conclusion. All in all, and not surprisingly, this is an excellent novel and comes with a high recommendation from me.

(This post originally appeared on June 20, 2007. The Hard Case Crime reprint mentioned above is out of print, and you can actually find copies of the original Gold Medal edition for about half the price of the HCC edition. Either way, this book is well worth reading. Goodis, however, remains one of those authors I like a lot and want to read more of, but I don't seem to get around to it.)

Review: The Shadowed Circle #8 - Steve Donoso, ed.

THE SHADOWED CIRCLE #8 is out, and it leads off with a fantastic cover by Joe Booth that ties in with Tim DeForest’s excellent article about The Shadow’s battle with the criminal organization known as The Hand that took five issues of the pulp magazine to wrap up. I’ve never read any of those particular novels, but after reading DeForest’s article, I may have to. I can’t say enough good things about Booth’s cover. I think it’s one of my favorite Shadow illustrations ever.

Elsewhere in this issue, Will Murray returns with a lengthy, informative, and entertaining article about the search for the identity of a previously unknown author who ghosted some of the novels about The Phantom Detective. What does that have to do with The Shadow, you ask? Well, quite a bit, as it turns out, since there are indications that this mysterious author may have also written a Shadow novel. It’s a great bit of pulp scholarship on Murray’s part, and for what it’s worth, I agree with the conclusions he comes to.

As editor Steve Donoso points out in his introductory remarks, this issue of THE SHADOWED CIRCLE covers just about all the various aspects of the character. Evan Lewis writes about The Shadow’s guest appearances in Street & Smith comic books other than his own. John Olsen tells us about one of his favorite episodes from the radio show. Robert Kroll examines some material that never made it into the 1994 movie, and I’m intrigued enough by this article that I might have to hunt up a copy of the novelization, which does make use of the scenes Kroll mentions. Nicholas Montelongo also writes about the various movie and television versions of The Shadow, Michael Stradford details the process of having some of the comic books featuring The Shadow bound into collected volumes, and Spencer Draper gives us the lowdown on something I never even knew existed, a pinball machine that ties in with the 1994 movie! There are tie-in pinball machines? I had no idea. The Shadow also makes a cameo appearance in “Dead Air”, a comic strip written and drawn by Ron Hill. Having worked at a small-market radio station myself, I know all about dead air.

Of course, there are fine illustrations throughout, as THE SHADOWED CIRCLE continues to be a beautifully produced journal. If you’re a fan of The Shadow, I’m sure you’re reading it already, but if by some chance you’re not, you should remedy that as soon as possible. THE SHADOWED CIRCLE #8 is available on Amazon or directly from the publisher, and you can subscribe or catch up on back issues on the journal’s website, as well. I don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood to read a Shadow novel now.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Double-Action Gang Magazine, April 1938

Here's a non-Western pulp cover by A. Leslie Ross. I think he was more at home on the range, so to speak, but his non-Western covers are okay. DOUBLE-ACTION GANG MAGAZINE was part of what eventually became the Columbia pulps, so there are at least two house-names here, Mat Rand and "Undercover" Dix. Pierson Bryan, who wrote the cover story, has only this single credit in the Fictionmags Index, so I'm suspicious that might have been a pseudonym, too. Also on hand are Margie Harris, a top gang pulp author, the prolific Thomas Thursday, Robert Martin, who would go on to be a well-respected author of hardboiled private eye novels, and Bertrand L. Shurtleff. I'm still not very well-read in the gang pulps, but this looks like an okay issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Cowboy Stories, July 1934

I don't know who painted the gritty cover on this issue of COWBOY STORIES, but I like it. I think it would have made a good cover for a Western paperback, too. COWBOY STORIES was Street & Smith's third-string Western pulp behind WESTERN STORY and WILD WEST WEEKLY, and the authors in this issue kind of reflect that. Philip Ketchum and S. Omar Barker were top-notch Western pulpsters, but the others are unfamiliar names to me: Allan Martin, Rand Rios, Joseph C. Salak, William Lester, W.F. Bilbrey, Guy Carson, and Wallace K. Norman. Several of those published only one story, and none were prolific. Even so, that doesn't mean their stories weren't good. I don't own this issue, so I doubt if I'll ever find out.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy - Chester Gould

When I was a kid (funny how many of my posts start out that way), one of the features on the front page of the comics section in the Sunday newspaper was DICK TRACY. So I grew up reading this comic strip about the square-jawed police detective. Unfortunately, that was during an era in which the strip’s creator, author, and artist Chester Gould had taken it in some weird directions, getting away from the hardboiled police action and bringing in more and more science-fictional elements, such as hidden civilizations on the Moon. I read DICK TRACY anyway and enjoyed it, although it was never one of my favorites.

THE CELEBRATED CASES OF DICK TRACY, an oversized volume containing more than a dozen storylines ranging from Tracy’s first case in 1931 to episodes from the late Forties, is an excellent introduction to this classic strip, featuring numerous examples of the things that made DICK TRACY a success: hardboiled, even brutal, action with fistfights, elaborate death traps, and shoot-outs in which characters, both good and bad, actually died; grotesque villains with colorful names like Flattop, Mumbles, and the Brow; and at least an attempt to be realistic when it comes to police work, making TRACY an early example of the police procedural.

Chester Gould’s plotting, writing, and willingness to pull no punches in his stories are what made this strip work. The artwork starts off pretty crude, and while it improves some with time, it never comes close to the level of, say, Milton Caniff, Alex Raymond, or Hal Foster. But by the Forties it’s good enough not to detract from Gould’s fast-moving storylines. My main complaint about this volume is that it reprints only the daily strips, leaving out the Sunday pages that were part of the continuity. As a result, there are some jarring gaps in the action where the reader has to figure out what happened on Sunday from the context of Monday’s strip. This isn’t a huge problem, but it can be annoying.

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I have another Dick Tracy collection, THE THIRTIES: TOMMYGUNS AND HARD TIMES, which reprints practically the entire first two years of the strip, and I’m looking forward to reading it, too.

(This post originally appeared on June 26, 2007. I don't believe I got around to reading TOMMYGUNS AND HARD TIMES, and six months after this post, that copy was lost in the Fire of '08. I don't recall ever replacing it . . . until now. My interest in Dick Tracy has been rekindled recently by reading the new strips being published on GoComics.com. The current writer, Matthew K. Manning, and artist, Howie Noel, are taking a very vintage approach to the strip and spinning a great yarn so far. So I ordered a copy of TOMMYGUNS AND HARD TIMES as well as another classic Tracy collection. With luck I'll be writing reviews of those books before another 18 years go by!)

Review: The Monkey's Raincoat - Robert Crais

I remember when THE MONKEY’S RAINCOAT was published to great reviews, followed by more critically acclaimed novels featuring Los Angeles private detectives Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. But even though I read and really enjoyed several stand-alones by author Robert Crais, I never get around to reading any of this series. Until now. Several friends recommended it to me, so I figured it was finally time to give it a try.

So naturally, I read the first book, published as a paperback original by Bantam in 1987. For comparison purposes, me reading THE MONKEY’S RAINCOAT now is the same as me reading THE MALTESE FALCON in 1969, although THE MONKEY’S RAINCOAT feels a lot more contemporary until you start noticing that there aren’t any computers and Elvis Cole has to find a phone booth when he’s away from his office or home and has to make a call.

Elvis is the narrator of this yarn. He owns a private detective agency in partnership with the violent, enigmatic mercenary Joe Pike, who also owns a gun shop. Elvis is hired to find a missing talent agent by the man’s wife, and that’s the start of a case that spirals into murder, kidnapping, and drug dealing.

That’s really are there is to say about the plot, because there’s nothing even resembling a twist in this novel. It’s straight ahead, about as linear as a mystery novel can get and still be considered a mystery. The characters are all good, though. Elvis is a likable narrator with a talent for banter, and Pike is particularly intriguing. The writing is fast-paced and paints a good portrait of Hollywood in the Eighties. The case comes to a satisfying conclusion.

But something still seemed lacking to me. There are a few echoes of Raymond Chandler, but the Robert B. Parker influence is much heavier and I’ve seen other readers refer to the first several books in this series as Spenser in Hollywood. That’s a fairly apt description. But I’ve also been assured that the series develops into something more than that. Crais is a talented writer and I’m certainly willing to read more by him. After my mixed reaction to this one, I may wait a little while to do it.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Death Takes a Holiday (1934)

A bunch of rich aristocrats gather at an Italian villa for a weekend of partying, all of them except one unaware that Death walks among them. That’s right, Death, wanting to experience what it’s like to be human and understand why they fear him so, has taken on the form of the mysterious, monocle-wearing Prince Sirki, and he’s there to romance their women and engage in deep philosophical discussions.

I had heard of DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY but never watched it until recently. I’m really not the target audience for this sort of romantic fantasy/drama, but when it comes to movies, I’m willing to give almost anything a try. Sometimes a film takes me by surprise and I like it a lot more than I expected to.

However, DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY never really won me over. The concept is interesting, and the black-and-white photography is really good. After a promising opening involving some fast cars and driving stunts, it settles down to become really stage-bound, not surprising since it’s based on a play, and the script is pretty long-winded and pompous. It doesn’t help that I’m not a fan of Fredric March, who plays Death/Prince Sirki, and the rest of the cast is pretty bland except for the always dependable character actor Henry Travers. There are a few suitably eerie moments, but mostly this was an effort to stay awake. Which I did, so that ought to count for something, I guess. This one just wasn’t for me, but your opinion of it could be different.

Review: Desperate Times: Stories From the Great Depression - Cornell Woolrich

My recent reading of Cornell Woolrich’s MARIHUANA put me in the mood to read more of his work, which I’ve enjoyed for many years. My attention span hasn’t been very conducive to reading novels lately, but luckily there are a number of Woolrich collections available on Amazon, reprinting some of his shorter work from the pulps. DESPERATE TIMES: STORIES FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION caught my eye, so I started there.

The first story is “The Heavy Sugar” from the January 1937 issue of POCKET DETECTIVE. A down-and-outer in New York City finds a diamond necklace hidden in a sugar bowl in a seedy cafeteria. He figures, correctly, that some crook stashed it there to keep from having the cops find it on him. Our protagonist quickly discovers, however, that having a valuable necklace in his possession is a dangerous thing, since the gang that stole it in the first place is on his trail. As always, Woolrich does a great job depicting a squalid world of bars and flophouses, and he ratchets the suspense up skillfully to a twist ending that I should have seen coming but didn’t.

A guy tries to rob his miserly, corrupt former employer to recoup some lost wages he was cheated out of. Things go wrong. And then they get worse. That’s the plot of “Murder Always Gathers Momentum” from the December 14, 1940 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY. Once again, this tale is pure headlong suspense, barreling along to a twist ending, and yes, Woolrich got me again. It’s a very effective gut punch.

“Goodbye, New York” (STORY, October 1937) also concerns a robbery that turns into murder and the killer’s flight from the law. Only this time, his wife accompanies him, and she’s the narrator of this story. It’s tense and well-written, but it never grabbed me quite as much as the others and I didn’t care much for the ending. Interestingly, at least to me, the version that appears in this e-book edition seems to have been taken from a later reprinting rather than the original, because there’s a reference to the characters watching TV, not likely something they would have been doing in 1937. I suspect it was originally listening to the radio. I also suspect this version comes from the reprint in the March 1953 issue of ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, since TV was a huge fad in those days and EQMM editor Fred Dannay was known to edit/revise some of the stories he reprinted.

“Borrowed Crime”, from the July 1939 issue of BLACK MASK, once again concerns a robbery that turns into murder, but this time the protagonist of the story has nothing to do with the crime. However, he has a very good reason for confessing to it anyway. He also has an alibi that will keep him from being found guilty. But then something happens to that alibi, and he’s facing conviction and a trip to the electric chair unless he can convince someone that his wild story is true. Something similar could be said for Woolrich, who was famous, or infamous, for his far-fetched plots. This story is a good example of that. Did I find it believable? Not at all. Did I keep flipping the digital pages to find out what was going to happen? I sure did. Woolrich’s slick prose and storytelling ability get all the credit for that.

“Dormant Account” appeared in the May 1942 issue of BLACK MASK. The narrator, down on his luck George Palmer, comes up with an unusual way to try to turn his life around. He sees a list of dormant bank accounts in a newspaper and decides to pretend to be one of the people listed who has money coming to them. Through Woolrich’s careful manipulation of the plot, Palmer makes this crazy scheme work, but only up to a point. Then everything falls apart and he winds up running for his life. Once again, Woolrich spins a yarn that seems too ridiculous when you look at it logically. But who looks at a Cornell Woolrich story logically? And since when is life logical? All I know is that I enjoyed this story, and I loved the final twist even though you could see it coming the proverbial mile away.

“I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes”, from the March 12, 1938 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY, is one of Woolrich’s best-known stories and a prime example of how he could stretch coincidences and unlikely twists into a suspense yarn that gallops along and keeps the reader enthralled. A guy loses his temper and throws his shoes out the window at some yowling cats who are keeping him awake. Then, before you know it, he’s arrested and charged with murder. He’s tried, convicted, and on the brink of execution, his only chance a police detective who comes to believe his wild story. Not only does Woolrich construct a compelling story out of not much more than thin air, he even throws in a couple of entirely logical late twists that give this yarn a really bittersweet ending.

The earliest story in this collection, “The Death of Me” appeared originally in the December 7, 1935 issue of DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY. It opens with a man attempting to commit suicide because of his financial straits, but bad luck prevents him from taking his life. Or is it good luck, because a short time later, an opportunity to start over falls into his lap. Or is that bad luck, too? Nothing works out as you might think in a Woolrich story, or at least nothing works out as the characters think it will. Things pile up in this one until it seems that the protagonist has no way out. Or will fate come to his rescue yet again?

This volume wraps up with “Even God Felt the Depression”, a lightly fictionalized autobiographical essay that went unpublished when Woolrich was alive but appeared in BLUES OF A LIFETIME, a collection of such essays published in 1991. Set in the early Thirties, it centers around Woolrich’s attempt to write and sell a novel that will then sell to the movies and make him enough money to rescue him from poverty. Along the way, it presents a vivid portrait of those unfortunate times and the people who suffered through them. I missed BLUES OF A LIFETIME when it came out, but it’s still available and after reading this, I ordered a copy.

This is a fine collection, although the similarity of plots in some of the stories means it might be best to space them out a little, as I did. Twin themes of the vagaries of fate and the lengths to which desperate people will go run through all of them, and that’s a great framework for Woolrich’s distinctive style. If you’ve never read his work before, this might not be the best place to start because of those plot similarities I mentioned, but if you’re already a fan, I give this collection a high recommendation. It's available in print and e-book editions on Amazon.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, April 1935

I've read quite a few stories published originally in Street & Smith's TOP-NOTCH, but never an issue of the pulp itself. I don't own any, as far as I recall, but there are a number of issues available on the Internet Archive. Not this one, though. That cover by William Soare caught my eye, as did the fact that the lead novel is by Thomas Walsh, an old pulpster who was still active and writing for ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE when I was reading EQMM in the Sixties. Also on hand in this issue are Philip Ketchum, William Merriam Rouse, Bob du Soe, Bruce Douglas, and Harold F. Cruickshank. That's a pretty good bunch of writers.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Double Action Western, May 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. A hat that big has to have been painted by A. Leslie Ross. I don’t have any confirmation that he’s the cover artist, but I’m pretty confident in that opinion.

In “Winchester Express to Boothill”, the lead novella by Lee Floren, his pair of drifting heroes, Buck McKee and Tortilla Joe, are on their way to help an old friend who has run into trouble and summoned them. That’s a common set-up in Floren’s novels and stories. Blackbeard Smith has a horse ranch in Montana, and he’s been bushwhacked and confined to a wheelchair by his injury. Not surprisingly, he has a beautiful daughter. A range war is brewing with a neighboring spread that’s owned by another beautiful young woman. Not far away is a mining boomtown, and that’s connected somehow, too. Our intrepid pair hasn’t been on hand long when somebody takes a shot at Buck and tries to kill him.

Floren was a regular contributor to DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN. My opinion of his work has improved slightly in recent years, but this particular yarn is maddening in its inconsistency. I actually like Buck and Tortilla Joe quite a bit. As a cowboy detective, Buck is a very low-rent version of Hashknife Hartley, and Tortilla Joe, despite the stereotypical way in which Floren writes him, is a pretty smart, tough, capable hombre. The plot is interesting and so are the characters. There are some nice action scenes. But man, the whole thing is really muddled, as if Floren forgot what he was doing from scene to scene. Some bits are vivid and well-written, and some are so clunky and repetitive that they’re wince-inducing. And those two opposites can be on the same page! By the time I got to the end of this one—and I did finish it, no problem—I still wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. Call it an interesting misfire, which, unfortunately, describes all too much of Floren’s work.

Fortunately, next up in this issue is a long novelette by Roe Richmond, usually a dependable author when he’s not doing series characters. “War on the Chippewa” is a timber Western, a sub-genre where I haven’t encountered Richmond so far. It’s about two brothers, prodigal sons who return to help out their father in a rivalry with another timber baron. This is an excellent yarn with a lot of colorful background, emotional heft, and gritty action. At times it reminded me of Dan Cushman’s timber Westerns, and that’s a good thing. My only complaint is that the ending is maybe a little less dramatic than it could have been. But still a very good story.

Noel Loomis is a well-regarded author in both Westerns and science fiction. I haven’t really read that much by him in either genre, but he seems pretty consistent. “There Are No Trees in Kansas” is kind of an odd title, but it works in this story of a crusading newspaper editor’s clash with a crooked saloon owner who has a distinctive feature: his right hand is missing, cut off by Indians when he was a young man, and instead of a fake hand or a hook, like you usually find with characters like this, he has a short length of chain with a two-pound iron ball attached to it. That’s a pretty vicious weapon in a hand-to-hand fight! That colorful bit of business is probably the best thing about this story, but it’s an okay tale with some nice action and I enjoyed it.

I’ve always figured Harrison Colt had to be a pseudonym, but if that’s the case, no one has ever identified the author who wrote under that name, as far as I know. His story in this issue, “Gunsmoke Samaritan”, is about a rancher who’s framed for murder when, against his better judgment, he gets involved in a clash between two of his neighbors. This story moves along very nicely, is well-written, and has a likable protagonist.

Lauran Paine was an extremely prolific author of Westerns, especially novels. Although he published around a hundred stories in the Western pulps during the Fifties, he wrote more than a thousand novels, most of them published only in England under many different pseudonyms. Late in his life, quite a few of his novels were published in the United States by Walker Books under the name Richard Clarke and reprinted in paperback by Ballantine. I’ve read very little of his work. But his story in this issue, “The Challenge”, is excellent. It’s about a rancher who goes to work as an undercover deputy to infiltrate a gang of train robbers. The prose is straightforward and effective, the action is hardboiled. Just a good yarn.

W. Edmunds Claussen is a hit-or-miss author, for sure. Stories by him that I’ve read have ranged from okay to not very good. “Guns at La Paz” in this issue falls into the okay group. Set during the Civil War in Arizona, it's about a cavalry officer who’s being sent back to Washington, but before he goes, he and a friend of his who’s a civilian scout try to get to the bottom of an Apache ambush that wiped out a patrol. There’s some nice action in this one and a plot twist that’s predictable but still effective because it’s unusual for a Western pulp. It could have been a lot more unusual, but if it had, it probably would have rendered this story unpublishable. I don’t think Claussen will ever be one of my preferred authors, but so far he’s at least worth trying when I come across one of his stories.

Overall, this is a pretty decent issue of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN. While several of the stories have flaws, they’re all entertaining and held my interest just fine. I’ve read quite a few issues of this pulp over the past couple of years, and the reason for that is simple: most of my pulps are either in storage or hard to get to for other reasons, and I had a big stack of DOUBLE ACTION WESTERN issues handy. I think there are four or five more unread issues in this batch, so I’ll continue spacing them out.