Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Red Seal Western, August 1937

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

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: A Soul in a Bottle - Tim Powers

For whatever reason, I’m not a big fan of ghost stories and seldom read them. But this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. I just read A SOUL IN A BOTTLE, a novella by Tim Powers that was published in a very nice limited edition by Subterranean Press, one of the best of the small-press publishers devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The illustrations are by J.K. Potter and are very, very good.

But what about the story itself? Well, it’s set in Hollywood and concerns a rare book dealer’s encounter with the ghost of a beautiful young poet who committed suicide nearly forty years earlier. Or was she murdered? That question gives this book a bit of a mystery feel, and the literary angle is appealing to me, too. I’d never read anything by Powers before (although I have quite a few of his books on my shelves), but I like his writing here. It’s lean and effective and zips right along. The twist ending isn’t really that much of a surprise, but it works pretty well anyway. Overall I enjoyed this book quite a bit, and I wouldn’t hesitate to read something else by Powers.

(Some years, I try to read at least one horror novel or some classic horror short stories for Halloween. Other years, I ignore it entirely. This year I'm rerunning my review of a novella about a ghost, so I guess that's kind of a middle ground. This post originally appeared on March 13, 2017. The book is still available in the same limited edition and doesn't appear to have been published otherwise. Despite my usual good intentions, I haven't read anything else by Tim Powers in the 18+ years since then.)

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Mirage - Steve Cole

I like this song because parts of it sound like it could be the theme song from a 1960s British TV show produced by ITV, full of international intrigue and adventure. When I listen to it, I can see the opening credits quick-cut montage featuring picturesque scenery, beautiful women, and ugly guys with guns.

Reviews: Internes Can't Take Money/Whiskey Sour - Max Brand (Frederick Faust)

I often have spells when I can’t summon up the energy and attention span to read novels. One of those spells, combined with the urge to read something by Max Brand (Frederick Faust), one of my favorite authors, served to remind me that I’d never read “Internes Can’t Take Money”, the short story that introduced his famous character Dr. Kildare. It appeared originally in the March 1936 issue of the slick magazine COSMOPOLITAN and was made into a movie starring one of my favorite actors, Joel McCrea.

Dr. Jimmy Kildare is an interne who works at a famous hospital, assigned to the emergency room. As an interne, he receives no salary and actually lives in spartan quarters at the hospital. The only times he gets out are when he occasionally visits a nearby tavern for a couple of quick beers.

However, the tavern is owned by a powerful local politician/criminal, and it’s frequented by gangsters and strongarm men, one of whom shows up one evening with a bad knife wound in his arm that he suffered in a fight with a rival mobster. Kildare happens to be there, so against his better judgment he performs emergency surgery on the yegg and saves the use of his arm, if not his life.

That earns Kildare the respect of these denizens of the underworld, who try to turn him into a mob doctor. This creates quite a conflict for the morally upright but somewhat pragmatic Jimmy Kildare, who’s from a poor farming family and has nothing going for him except his medical talent, which is considerable.

As usual with Faust’s work, the writing in this story is very good. The guy could really turn a phrase. It’s full of colorful characters and the pace barrels along nicely. Jimmy Kildare is an excellent protagonist. I raced through this story and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I had such a good time reading it, in fact, that I immediately read “Whiskey Sour”, the second yarn starring Dr. Jimmy Kildare, which was published in the April 1938 issue of COSMOPOLITAN. In this one, Kildare is still mixed up with some of the same shady characters as in the previous story. When a man comes into the emergency room, or the “accident room”, as Faust calls it, with a gunshot wound, Kildare is plunged into another moral dilemma that’s complicated by the involvement of a beautiful redhead who has a secret. This is another really fine, fast-moving tale with a lot of good lines and some genuine suspense. Maybe not quite as good as “Internes Can’t Take Money” but almost.

These are the only two stories to feature this particular version of Dr. Kildare. The movie adaptation of “Internes Can’t Take Money” mentioned above was made by Paramount, but that was the only story to which they had the rights. Faust sold the character to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and MGM wanted some changes. Faust, being the good freelance writer he was, said sure and rebooted the series beginning with the novel YOUNG DR. KILDARE, which was serialized in ARGOSY late in 1938 before being published as a book by Dodd, Mead in 1940. Faust followed that with five more novels and two novellas about Dr. Kildare. I read one of the novels about forty years ago and recall enjoying it quite a bit, but I don’t remember which one it was. Might be time to just start with YOUNG DR. KILDARE and read all of them, since they’re short and move fast.

“Internes Can’t Take Money” was reprinted in THE COLLECTED STORIES OF MAX BRAND from the University of Nebraska Press in 1994. “Whiskey Sour” hasn’t been reprinted, officially. But you can find both of these stories on-line if you know where to look, and I think they’re well worth reading. Faust’s greatest success, by far, was with Westerns, but I think his talents were very well-suited to contemporary yarns as well, and I’m thinking I might just try more of them while I’m stuck in this novel-reading funk. 

Review: Goddess of the Fifth Plane - William P. McGivern

I really enjoyed that William P. McGivern science fiction novella I read a while back, so I tried another novella of his from the pulp FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. This one falls more into the fantasy category, or at least science-fantasy, since it does have a sort of science fictional element to it.

“Goddess of the Fifth Plane” appeared in the September 1942 issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES and earned the cover painting by Harold W. Macauley. It’s a good cover, too. Not exactly how I pictured the title character but relatively close. And Macauley did a great job on her sidekick.

The protagonist of this yarn is Vance Cameron, a wealthy American explorer and adventurer who is in London as the story opens because he’s volunteered to use his aviator skills as a fighter pilot for the R.A.F. He doesn’t stay in London long, though, because a mysterious painting shows up in his flat, depicting a beautiful young woman and a fierce creature resembling a horned lion. Wouldn’t you know it? The painting is actually an interdimensional gateway, and Vance finds himself in another realm, up to his neck in a civil war between a deposed queen and the bad guy who has seized his throne. There’s a little political intrigue, but mostly two-fisted, swashbuckling adventure ensues as Vance fights to help the beautiful queen reclaim her kingdom. He finds a novel but very effective way to do it, too, as the plot takes a twist or two that are at least slightly surprising.

I really enjoyed this colorful, well-written yarn. It reminded me of some of the science-fantasy stories by Henry Kuttner that I’ve read. The action barrels along in a very pleasing fashion that would have had me enthralled if I’d read it when I was a kid sitting on my parents’ front porch. Reading it now as an old geezer, I was still very much entertained. If there’s still a ten-or-twelve-year-old in you who loves this stuff as much as I do, I highly recommend “Goddess of the Fifth Plane”. It’s been reprinted in the e-book THE WILLIAM P. McGIVERN FANTASY MEGAPACK. I plan to delve into that collection again soon.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, August 27, 1938

I'm not a big fan of giant floating head covers, but this one by Emmett Watson isn't bad. Rather atmospheric, in fact. As always with ARGOSY, this issue has some good authors inside: Donald Barr Chidsey, Bennett Foster, Richard Howells Watkins, Howard Rigsby (best remembered for paperbacks written under that name and as by Vechel Howard), and Robert E. Pinkerton, as well as the lesser-known Frances Shelley Wees, C.F. Kearns, and John Randolph Phillips. The stories by Chidsey, Foster, and Wees are serial installments, also common in ARGOSY. "Lost House" by Wees was published in hardcover by Macrae in 1938. "Cut Loose Your Wolf" by Foster was published in hardcover as TURN LOOSE YOUR WOLF by Jefferson House in 1938. I think the original title is better. And Chidsey's "Midas of the Mountains" was only a three-parter, probably closer to a novella than an actual novel, and as far as I know, it's never been reprinted. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Real Western Stories, February 1954

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my slightly ragged copy in the scan. I think the cover is by A. Leslie Ross, but I’m not absolutely sure about that. “15 Action-Packed Stories”, the cover proclaims, but what it doesn’t tell you is that eight of those are actually Special Features, Fact Features, and Departments—filler, in other words—leaving only seven pieces of actual fiction in this issue.

The lead story is “Judge Bates’ Boothill Court” by Lee Floren, the next to last entry in his Judge Bates series that started in 1940 and lasted for 26 stories, the last one being published in 1955. The stories appeared at first in various Popular Publications pulps and then moved over to various Columbia Publications pulps, where the majority of them appeared. After that, Floren used Judge Lemanuel Bates and his sidekick Tobacco Jones in several novels. Bates is the judge in a Wyoming cowtown and Jones is the local postmaster, and together they also own a ranch. They wind up involved in assorted mysteries.

Since Lee Floren was a very inconsistent writer, I always go into one of his stories with fairly low expectations. That way, if it turns out to be a good one, I’m pleasantly surprised. “Judge Bates’ Boothill Court” is one of the good ones, I’m glad to say. Bates and Jones travel to a different town for once as Bates is called on to replace another judge who’s been wounded in an ambush. As it happens, the young man accused of trying to kill the other judge is well-known to Bates and Jones, and they don’t believe he’s guilty. Not surprisingly, somebody tries to kill both of them soon after they arrive, and they’re off on a case that involves danger, a few pretty girls, and a villain who’s so obvious that he might as well be wearing a sign on his back. While there aren’t any surprises in this yarn, Floren spins it with skill and enthusiasm, and there are only a few instances of the clumsy writing he’s prone to at times. I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

The long-running series by Lon Williams featuring Deputy Marshal Lee Winters is well-regarded, and it’s unusual because many of the stories feature supernatural elements. I’ve read several of them, though, and so far, I’m not a fan. “Misfortune’s Darling” in this issue is the first one I’ve read that doesn’t have anything supernatural in it. Instead, Winters investigates a series of murders and robberies plaguing travelers in his area. There’s a side plot that serves no real purpose. I realize this is damning with faint praise, but this is the best of these stories I’ve read so far. I’m willing to read more, but my patience with them is getting stretched kind of thin.

Richard Brister is a fairly dependable Western writer. His story in this issue, “Big Man in This Town”, is about a banker who turns to murder to save his failing institution. But of course things don’t play out the way he hopes. This isn’t a bad story and is decently written, but there’s not much to it.

The same can be said of John T. Lynch’s short-short “Hassayampa Hassle”, a tall tale about a whiskey drummer who drinks from a magical river that’s supposed to prevent people from telling the truth. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but it’s not really funny and just sort of ends without making any kind of point.

I’ve read a few stories by A.A. Baker that were okay, but “Death at the China Mine” in this issue isn’t one of them. It’s about a mine cave-in and a stagecoach carrying a lot of cash, I think. The plot is so muddled and the writing so poor that I just skimmed through it.

“The Golden Spike” by Gene Rodgers is a little better. A golden spike is used to complete the last link in a railroad in Oregon, and a couple of outlaws decide to steal it out of the ground. Again, things don’t play out according to plan. This short-short is somewhat entertaining, and at least it has a beginning, middle, and end.

Finally, we come to Seven Anderton’s novelette “Peaceful Pilgrim”. Thank goodness for Seven Anderton, I say. This story is about a hired gun who’s tried of fighting in senseless range wars, so he decides to go back to where he came from, the Pecos country in West Texas. So what happens as soon as he gets there? He gets mixed up in a range war, of course, as the local cattle baron decides to force all the small ranchers and sodbusters out of the valley any way he has to, including burning them out and killing them. But standing in his way is the protagonist Hank Sawyer, who finally has something worth fighting for besides pay.

You can tell from that description that this is a very traditional plot we’ve all read and seen many times before. But Anderton’s writing is top-notch as always, Hank Sawyer is a good protagonist, and there are some well-done action scenes. The only flaw in this story is that the ending isn’t as dramatic as it could have been, a tendency that I’ve discovered is common in Anderton’s Westerns. He seems to prefer not to give the reader the kind of action-packed showdowns that I like in my Western reading. That’s his choice, and I’ll still read his stories because his prose is very good, but that keeps him from becoming a real favorite of mine.

This is a very typical issue of a Columbia Western pulp edited by Robert W. Lowndes: a couple of good but not great stories by Floren and Anderton and the rest poor to mediocre. I’ll keep reading them because from time to time Lowndes got his hands on a real gem despite not being able to pay much. But I’ve learned not to expect a great deal from them. The covers are usually pretty nice, though.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Dark Brand - H.A. DeRosso

H.A. DeRosso wasn’t prolific at novel-length works, turning out only a handful of books in a career cut short by a mysterious death that might have been suicide or an accident. He wrote a lot of short stories and novelettes for the pulps, though, some of which have been collected. Several of his novels have been reissued as well.

THE DARK BRAND is one of those novels. It opens with the hero, Dave Driscoll, in jail for rustling, but the fellow in the next cell has it even worse. He’s going to be hanged the next morning for killing a bank teller during a robbery. This doomed hombre is a hardscrabble rancher with a wife, a son, and a failing spread who became a bank robber to help his family. Because of that, he’s hidden the money he got away with and refuses to tell anyone where it is, including the brutal sheriff who wants the loot for himself.

However, when Driscoll gets out of prison three years later and returns to the same town, he finds that a lot of people believe the condemned man told him where the money was hidden, and now there are various factions who want to force him to lead them to the loot by any means necessary, including torture. Driscoll really doesn’t know where the money is, but he wants to find it to help the hanged man’s wife and son.

None of DeRosso’s heroes are actually very heroic, and Driscoll fits that mold. He’s a brooding, emotionally tormented man who’s sort of forced into doing the right thing most of the time. What he goes through in this book doesn’t make him any more cheerful, that’s for sure. The story takes place near a mountain range called the Sombras that figures in some of DeRosso’s other books. The name certainly fits because there’s a somber air that hangs over THE DARK BRAND. And the title itself is an indication of the mood here, of course. Actually, THE DARK BRAND is regarded as one of DeRosso’s less bleak books, which tells you how grim he can sometimes be.

Fittingly, DeRosso writes in a spare, fast-moving style, and there are some excellent twists in the plot here, the sort that I should have seen coming but didn’t. His work has echoes of Cornell Woolrich and David Goodis, but what his books most remind me of are the noir Westerns of Ed Gorman. If you like any of those writers, I highly recommend that you pick up THE DARK BRAND or any of DeRosso’s other novels or short story collections.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on June 13, 2008. THE DARK BRAND is still available on Amazon in an e-book edition and is well worth reading.)

Review: The Deadly Combo - Jack Webb

When I started reading hardboiled mysteries in junior high, I thought Jack Webb, author of the series featuring priest/detective duo Father Joseph Shanley and Sammy Golden, was the same guy as Jack Webb the star of DRAGNET (and some excellent movies like PETE KELLY’S BLUES and -30-, but I hadn’t seen those yet). It didn’t take long to figure out that Webb the novelist was a totally different person. I read a few of his novels, which were easy to find in those days in their Signet paperback reprint editions, and remember enjoying them. But I hadn’t read anything else by him, as far as I recall, in the 50+ years since then.

Until Stark House recently reprinted two of Webb’s stand-alone novels in a handsome double volume, THE DEADLY COMBO and ONE FOR MY DAME. I started with THE DEADLY COMBO, originally published as half of an Ace Double mystery under Webb’s John Farr pseudonym. The novel opens with the discovery of a corpse in the alley behind a Los Angeles jazz club. The victim is a former jazz musician named Dandy Mullens. The cop who catches the case is Mac Stewart, a big, ugly, former prizefighter who happens to be a jazz aficionado himself and a friend of the murdered man. Mac’s quest to catch Dandy’s killer reminded me a little of how Mike Hammer often set out to avenge the murder of a friend.

Mac’s investigation takes him through a series of jazz clubs, strip joints, and fancy apartments, from the sleazy and sordid to the high class (but perhaps no less sordid). It seems there’s a legend in the jazz world that Dandy owned a solid gold trumpet, given to him as a publicity stunt decades earlier when he was one of the top musicians in the world, rather than the washed-up bum he was when he was killed. Somebody wanted that trumpet bad enough to kill for it, Mac believes, but at the same time, he happens to know that the whole story is a myth. Or is it? Halfway through this novel, the plot takes an abrupt but believable twist, and things that seemed apparent suddenly aren’t. Mac will have a lot to untangle to find the killer, if he lives long enough himself.

THE DEADLY COMBO is both a fast-paced, violent, hardboiled mystery and a love letter to jazz music, all at the same time. Mac Stewart is a great character, a bit of an intellectual as well as a tough, hard-nosed cop. Webb’s style in this novel is the prose equivalent of jazz, swooping and swirling almost into a stream-of-consciousness improvisation at times. It takes a little getting used to, but it works and is very effective. The plot winds up almost as dense and convoluted as a Ross Macdonald novel, but I think it all makes sense in the end.

What I know for certain is that I raced through THE DEADLY COMBO and really enjoyed it. I stayed up later than I normally do to finish it, and that takes a pretty compelling book at my age. The Stark House double volume, complete with a top-notch introduction by Nicholas Litchfield, is available in e-book and paperback editions on Amazon. I’ll be reading ONE FOR MY DAME soon.

Review: Rails Into Hell - Brent Towns

I enjoy railroad yarns, especially ones featuring railroad detectives, so the Faraday series is a natural for me as both writer and reader. I’m strictly a reader on the latest novel in the series to be released, RAILS INTO HELL by Brent Towns.

The thread that ties these books together is Faraday Security Services, owned by Matthew Faraday, a Pinkerton-like detective agency that works only for the railroads. Other than that, the books are largely stand-alones featuring different Faraday agents as the protagonists. In RAILS INTO HELL, Jack Quade has a reputation as a gunslinger for hire, and at one time that’s exactly what he was, after clashing with his rancher father and leaving home. For the past several years, however, he’s been working as an undercover Faraday agent while maintaining his reputation as a fast gun.

The murder of a surveyor who’s laying out the route for a spur line brings Quade back to his old stomping grounds, where he discovers that a range war is brewing between his father and a rich man who has moved in and started gobbling up all the smaller spreads in the area. Quade has to juggle both problems and try to find out if they might be connected, while at the same time dealing with complications involving a couple of beautiful women. And then there are the continued attempts on his life, one of which might just prove successful before he can untangle the dangerous threads of this assignment.

Towns provides a lot of genuinely surprising plot twists in this novel, along with plenty of action told in an effectively gritty style. RAILS INTO HELL reminded me of the great hardboiled Westerns published by Gold Medal, Ace, and Dell in the Fifties and Sixties. It’s well-written and fast-paced, and I hope there’ll be more Faraday novels in the future. In the meantime, this one from Wolfpack Publishing is available on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions, and if you’re a fan of tough-minded Western novels, I give it a high recommendation.