Review: Rex Brandon #1: Death Warriors - Denis Hughes

Sometimes I’m just in the mood for a jungle adventure. In 1951 and ’52, British author Denis Hughes wrote twelve novels under the pseudonym Marco Garon about Rex Brandon, a two-fisted geologist, explorer, and big game hunter, and his adventures in Africa. These were published by a British paperback publisher, and these days, the first six in the series are available as paperbacks and e-books from Bold Venture Press. They’ve been sitting on my Kindle for quite a while, so I figured it was time I read one of them.

The first book in the series, DEATH WARRIORS, finds Rex acting as an agent for the British and French governments. (I assume Rex is British, but you know, I’m not sure it ever says that in the book.) It seems that several years earlier, a geologist named Georg Traski located a deposit of a rare ore called irikum, which is more valuable for making nuclear weapons than uranium. But Traski disappeared somewhere in the jungle, and an expedition sent to look for him, led by another geologist and his beautiful daughter, never came back, either. Now Rex is going in to this dangerous area to locate the irikum deposit and find out what happened to the previous expeditions.

Well, you know with a set up like that, there are going to be plenty of adventures with wild animals (leopards, lions, and a rogue gorilla with an ear for music, in this case), despicable villains, and a madman or two. And so there is. Does it all play out about the way you’d expect? Sure it does. Is getting to all the expected destinations fun? You bet! DEATH WARRIORS has a lot of action, a stalwart protagonist in Rex Brandon, a couple of colorful sidekicks, and a beautiful, competent young woman. All the ingredients for a very entertaining jungle adventure yarn in the grand tradition. If you’re a fan of such things, like I am, I give it a high recommendation, and I look forward to reading the other Rex Brandon novels that are available.

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: Naked Curse: A Larry Kent Mystery - Don Haring

Larry Kent was the protagonist of an Australian radio crime drama in the early Fifties called I HATE CRIME. The character was an American reporter who moved to Australia and became a private eye. The show was successful enough that enterprising paperback publisher Cleveland decided to put out a line of Larry Kent novels. In those books, Larry was an American private detective operating out of New York City. “Larry Kent” was both the main character and the by-line. Nearly all of the 400 novels that followed were written either by Des R. Dunn or Don Haring, an American who had moved to Australia, just like the character. Several years ago, the fine folks at Piccadilly Publishing began doing e-book reprints of some of the Larry Kent novels by Don Haring, teaming up with Bold Venture Press for the paperback editions. I’d been intrigued by the series, so I tried one of the e-books, and to my surprise, I didn’t like it and stopped reading after a couple of chapters.

However, I had a strong hunch that the fault lay with me as much as it did with the book. I just wasn’t in the right mood for it. That happens sometimes. When it does, especially when it’s a series that I expected to like, I give it some time and then try another of the books. Which is how I came to read NAKED CURSE.

In this one, Larry gets three cases, one right after the other, in short order. He’s hired because a beautiful young female artist is being stalked by an ugly brute. Then another beautiful woman hires him because she’s being blackmailed. And finally, he’s hired by an invalid millionaire stockbroker to find the man’s missing son. Sure enough (and you don’t get any bonus points for seeing this coming), those three cases turn out to be connected.

And this is one of those books where very little is what it seems to be at first. As he carries out his investigation, Larry runs afoul of a gangster and his hulking henchman, meets another beautiful young woman who may or may not be trustworthy, stumbles across several corpses, and gets knocked out more than once. In other words, classic private eye novel stuff. There’s a late twist that raises the stakes even more before Larry straightens everything out and winds up romancing one of the gorgeous babes he’s run into in the course of the story.

I enjoyed NAKED CURSE and plan to read more of the Larry Kent books. The story is interesting and moves right along, and Larry is a pretty good protagonist, smart and tough enough to deal with the trouble he encounters but far from superhuman. Haring’s writing strikes me as a little flat and I wish he’d had a bit more of a distinctive voice, but the prose certainly isn’t bad. And I don’t want to sound like I’m damning with faint praise. If you’re a fan of private eye novels, NAKED CURSE is well worth reading. It’s available on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions.

Now Available: Pulp Adventures #46 - Audrey Parente, ed.

PULP ADVENTURES #46 is out, and it’s another fine issue of this book/magazine from Bold Venture Press. More than half of this issue is devoted to the classic movie KING KONG, with a lengthy, in-depth examination by Bart Pierce of a long-time mystery: who played the woman Kong plucked out of her hotel room in the mistaken belief she was Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) and then callously threw her to her death when he realized she wasn’t? The answers—and there are indeed more than one—are surprising, and along the way there’s a lot of fascinating background information about the making of a movie that means a great deal to many of us.

Will Murray, one of my favorite authors in the business today, contributes a fine article detailing the writing of his two novels featuring King Kong that also feature another couple of guys you might have heard of: Tarzan and Doc Savage. Even though we’re from different parts of the country and our careers have developed in much different ways, I’ve always felt a certain kinship with Will Murray during the 40+ years we’ve known each other, so it came as no surprise in this article when he mentions knowing the lyrics to the theme song of the King Kong animated TV series from the Sixties. At one time, so did I, and although I can’t recall the whole thing right now, I can definitely still hear parts of that song playing in my head!

Micah Swanson Harris continues the King Kong theme by examining the possible influence of H. Rider Haggard’s fiction on Kong’s creator Merian C. Cooper. Haggard is one of those authors I really need to get around to reading more of, so I appreciated this article.

Over on the fiction side, this issue reprints H.P. Lovecraft’s “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” (also published as “The White Ape”), which is a Lovecraft story I hadn’t read until now. (That’s not unusual since I really haven’t read that much of Lovecraft’s work.) As often happens with Lovecraft, I love the creepy concept of this one. There are other reprints by John Russell Fearn (a nifty little suspense tale, the first non-SF by Fearn that I’ve read), John Burke, and Shelley Smith, plus brand-new stories by Riley Hogan (a nice Weird Western tale), Dr. Richard A. Olson (one of his stories about private eye Nick Stihl, a series I haven’t tried until now, but based on this one, I need to), and an action-packed yarn by the always entertaining Teel James Glenn about a convenience store robbery that features some surprising sword-swinging. There are some assorted book reviews by me, as well.

All in all, this issue of PULP ADVENTURES is great fun with some fine articles and great artwook. You can find it on Amazon or on the publisher’s website. Highly recommended.

Benedict and Brazos #2: A Badge for Brazos - E. Jefferson Clay (Paul Wheelahan)

A while back, I read ACES WILD, the first novel in the long-running Benedict & Brazos series by E. Jefferson Clay, actually the extraordinarily prolific Australian author Paul Wheelahan. I thoroughly enjoyed that one, so there was no question I’d read the next one, A BADGE FOR BRAZOS. Several people have mentioned that this series gets better as it goes along, and so far I’ve found that to be true. A BADGE FOR BRAZOS is a very entertaining Western novel.

In case your memory needs to be refreshed, the two protagonists of this series set shortly after the Civil War are former Union officer Duke Benedict and former Confederate sergeant Hank Brazos. The two met during the war, fought first against each other and then on the same side against a gang of renegades who stole a fortune in Confederate gold. Even though there’s a lot of friction in their relationship, Benedict and Brazos have teamed up to hunt down the varmints who stole that gold. Benedict is the slick one of the pair, a handsome, fast-on-the-draw gambler, while Brazos is bigger and more of a rough-and-tumble brawler.

When they run short on funds, they come up with a scheme where Brazos will go into a town without any lawman, pretend to kick up a ruckus, and then Benedict will ride in and “subdue” him, thereby prompting the grateful citizenry to offer him the job of marshal, which he’ll hold down until they have enough money to move on again and continue their quest for the stolen gold.

However, through a series of unexpected events, Brazos is the one who winds up wearing a lawman’s badge, and because of that, our heroes find themselves in the middle of a shooting war between the crew from a local ranch and a group of miners working a silver vein that’s just about played out. Not surprisingly, more is going on that is obvious at first, and there are hidden villains to be uncovered. Also on hand are a beautiful librarian, a world-weary gunslinger, and a female saloon owner tougher than any of the men thereabouts.

There’s nothing in the plot of A BADGE FOR BRAZOS that will surprise anybody who’s read many Westerns, but Wheelahan writes well overall and has an extremely likable pair of protagonists. He’s also a master at pacing, keeping the action moving along at a very fast clip and wrapping things up with a huge, very effective gun battle that also features some poignant moments.

These books remind me very much of episodes in the various Western TV series I grew up watching in the late Fifties and early Sixties. I loved those sorts of yarns then, and I still love them now. So A BADGE FOR BRAZOS gets a big recommendation from me, and I look forward to reading the next one. This series is available in e-book editions from Piccadilly Publishing and in handsome trade paperbacks from Bold Venture Press.

Benedict and Brazos #1: Aces Wild - E. Jefferson Clay (Paul Wheelahan)

Paul Wheelahan has to be one of the most prolific writers of all time. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote well over a thousand novels, most of them Westerns for the Australian publishers Cleveland and Horwitz, under a number of different pseudonyms, the most common being Emerson Dodge. A few of his books under the name E. Jefferson Clay were published (pirated, most likely) in the U.S. by Leisure, all of them in his series featuring handsome, womanizing gambler Duke Benedict and burly saddle tramp Hank Brazos, one a former Yankee (Benedict), the other a former Confederate (Brazos), who fought against each other during the Civil War but then teamed up, albeit reluctantly, for a long series of adventures in the post-war Old West.

The Benedict and Brazos series is being reprinted from the start by Piccadilly Publishing as e-book editions and Bold Venture Press as handsome trade paperbacks. I recently read the first novel, ACES WILD, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It begins in a Kansas cattle town where the two protagonists run into each other months after the war is over, then flashes back to their first meeting during a battle in Georgia, where they fight against each other, then team up to ward off an attack by renegades not loyal to either side. There’s a wagonload of Confederate gold mixed up in the affair, and it’s still unaccounted for when Benedict and Brazos meet after the war.

Along with the missing gold, Wheelahan throws several other things into the plot: a gang of outlaws, a bounty hunter and his beautiful, flirtatious wife, a newly opened bordello, and the leader of the renegades Benedict and Brazos tangled with during the war. The story races along in fine fashion, with plenty of action and interesting twists as Benedict and Brazos not only work together when they have to but also plot against each other when it suits them.

ACES WILD is a really entertaining traditional Western with a pair of likable protagonists, and I’m glad that the books are readily available again. I’ll be reading more of them, you can count on that. Recommended.