The Wrap Up

There’s no point in denying that 2022 was a rotten year in many ways, but there’s also no point in dwelling on that. So let’s turn our attention to more pleasant endeavors, such as writing, reading, editing, and publishing.

To take those things in reverse order, for most of this year I was the editor of Rough Edges Press, the mystery/thriller/men’s adventure imprint of Wolfpack Publishing. It was a wonderful job, as I got to work with Mike Bray, Jake Bray, Patience Bramlett, and all the other great people at Wolfpack, in addition to all the authors involved. While there, I was privileged to edit some really excellent books, and I’m proud of what the line accomplished. However, I stepped down at the end of October because I discovered that I couldn’t both edit and write at the level I wanted to, and although I didn’t mind slowing down some on my page production (more about that in the next paragraph) I just wasn’t ready to stop writing full-time. There are still too many books in my head clamoring to get out.

As I mentioned a few posts back, 2022 was the first year since 2004 that I didn’t write at least a million words of fiction. So the streak ends at 17 years, and while I might have preferred an even number (yes, I am a little OCD), I’m absolutely fine with that. I wrote approximately 900,000 words this year. That’s plenty. I think 750,000 would be a good total for 2023. I wrote at that level for many years before I started hitting a million, and I think I can continue producing at that level for a while yet. My plan for next year is to keep up with my regular ghost-writing job (I’m committed to approximately half a million words there) and devote the rest of the wordage to a few books of my own. We’ll see.

On the reading front, it was a good year, not at all rotten. I read 138 books. Here are my top ten favorites, in the order in which I read them:

A GUIDE TO THE GOOD LIFE: THE ANCIENT ART OF STOIC JOY, William B. Irvine

GUNS OF THE DAMNED, Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount)

IN THE PULP FICTION TRENCHES, Len Levinson

STAND UP AND DIE!: THE LOST THRILLERS OF MICKEY SPILLANE, Mickey Spillane

THE SPIDER: SCOURGE OF THE SCORPION, Will Murray

GHOST OF THE HARDY BOYS, Leslie McFarlane

FROM THE FILES OF . . . MIKE HAMMER, Mickey Spillane

THE RANCH CAT (apa STRAIGHT FROM BOOT HILL), Willliam Hopson

JANE FURY, James Robert Daniels

CALICO, Lee Goldberg

I’m aware that’s a pretty odd mix. Two of them I edited (the Levinson memoir and the Spillane prose collection; the other Spillane book is a collection of the Mike Hammer comic strip I had nothing to do with). Two of them aren’t out yet because I read them in manuscript, JANE FURY and CALICO, but they’ll be out next year and you should remember those titles because they’re great. The pulp influence is there in GUNS OF THE DAMNED, the first novel in the Silver Trent series originally published in THE WESTERN RAIDER and STAR WESTERN, and in the Hopson novel because he got his start in the Western pulps, and in the new Spider novel by Will Murray since the Spider is one of the iconic pulp hero characters. My study of Stoic philosophy kind of petered out as the year went on, but the lessons I learned from it came in handy more than once and I still plan to get back to it.

There were at least two dozen other books right on the verge of making this list, including quite a few I edited, starting with Jamie Mason’s Father Barrett series and Ryan Fowler’s Father Tag Nolan series. Both of those feature priests/detectives and both are absolutely excellent, but beyond that, they couldn’t be more different. You should check them out if you haven’t already. Chuck Dixon’s Levon Cade series continued this year with several great entries. Brent Towns added another top-notch action/adventure series to his tireless output with TALON and also gave us some fine hardboiled private eye novels set in Australia. Nik Morton’s Leon Cazador books are fast-paced international thrillers with a great protagonist. Stephen Mertz’s latest Cody’s War novel demonstrates that he hasn’t lost a step and is still a legend in the action/adventure field. And these are just Rough Edges Press books. I also read some great pulp reprints from Altus Press/Steeger Books and several superb hardboiled/noir novels from Stark House/Black Gat Books/Staccato Crime. I swear, if you can’t find plenty of great books to read these days, you’re just not looking hard enough!

Finally, this blog suffered a bit in 2022 because I just didn’t have enough time to devote to it. As a result, there were fewer posts than any year since I started it in 2004—and since I started it in July, that was only half a year. I hope to post more in 2023, including more book reviews, the return of movie reviews, and maybe an occasional post about what else is going on in my life, although generally, that stuff is pretty boring. My thanks to all of you reading this, whether you’ve been a regular reader since 2004 or just found the blog. Like the WesternPulps email group (which will celebrate its 24^th anniversary this spring), I intend to keep this going for a good long while yet.

Now Available: Grip of Death - Len Levinson

Someone is murdering prominent Wall Street financiers in New York City during the first year of the Civil War.  Is the culprit a disgruntled investor?  Marxist revolutionaries?  A Confederate conspiracy to destabilize the Union banking system?

To make matters worse, a crime wave has been engulfing New York City since the War Between the States began, as if that conflict has loosened the darkest passions in the hearts of men and women. Amidst this turmoil, the Detective Precinct is under political pressure to figure out who is killing financiers.  Unfortunately, the best detectives have enlisted in the New York regiments.

Out of desperation, Deputy Chief of Detectives Timothy Flanagan hires a former army officer wounded at the Battle of Bull Run, and a former Southern Belle stranded in the Empire City.  Flanagan calls her his secretary because women can’t be detectives, but she carries a revolver and does actual detective work.

Their investigation takes them from Fifth Avenue mansions to the dangerous slum called Five Points, from Gramercy Park to Battery Park, from fashionable men’s clubs to elegant and not so elegant whorehouses, gambling dens, the glittering Broadway theater district, and the Peyster Street docks where a man’s life isn’t worth a dead fish.

Will the Detective Precinct solve the case?  They dare not fail.  The future of the war and fate of the nation is at stake!

(This is a really top-notch historical mystery, and I'm proud to have published it.)

Forgotten Books: Doom Platoon - Richard Gallagher (Len Levinson)

Readers of the World War II series THE SERGEANT by Gordon Davis may notice some similarities between those books and the novel DOOM PLATOON by Richard Gallagher. THE SERGEANT features a big, ugly, extremely tough non-com, Sergeant Mahoney. DOOM PLATOON features a big, ugly, extremely tough non-com, Sergeant Mazursky. Graphic violence abounds in both (although to be fair, these are war novels). There's plenty of crude, politically incorrect dark humor. None of these similarities come as any surprise when you realize that Gordon Davis and Richard Gallagher are actually the same person: veteran paperbacker Len Levinson.

DOOM PLATOON came out a couple of years before THE SERGEANT began, so it can be regarded as a sort of dry run for the later series, I suppose. But it can certainly be read with enjoyment on its own. During the Battle of the Bulge, the platoon of the title is under the command of Sergeant Mazursky after their lieutenant is killed in action. These 29 men are posted on a ridge above a narrow road, and their mission is to stop an entire Panzer division from advancing and hold the road until the retreating American army can regroup. It's a suicide mission, of course, and the first half of this novel is very intense as Mazursky and his platoon try to fight off the overwhelming Nazi forces.

Then, halfway through, DOOM PLATOON becomes a P.O.W. novel as the survivors from the battle are taken to a German prison camp, and the rest of the book chronicles what happens to them from then until the end of the war. While this part of the book doesn't have the urgency of the first half, it's still very well done and keeps the reader flipping the pages.

It's kind of a reviewer's cliché to say that prose is compulsively readable, but Levinson really does have that knack. His characters may not be particularly likable, but he makes you want to find out what's going to happen to them. This book, originally an obscure paperback from Belmont-Tower, is a good example of that.

Luckily, it's just been re-issued as an e-book by Pulp Heaven, an offshoot of Picadilly Publishing. They've published several more Levinson thrillers, and I have them all on my Kindle. If you're a fan of war fiction, or if you've read THE SERGEANT or Levinson's other series THE RAT BASTARDS (about the war in the Pacific, originally published under the pseudonym John Mackie), you'll definitely want to check out DOOM PLATOON.