New This Week: Special Christmas Edition

These are the books I received as Christmas presents yesterday:

MEANWHILE . . .: A BIOGRAPHY OF MILTON CANIFF, Robert C. Harvey -- A massive (nearly 1000 pages) bio of one of the greatest comic strip creators ever and one of my all-time favorites.

MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY, Sean Howe -- Comics have been a big part of my reading life for more than half a century. I've heard many of the stories about the early days of Marvel, but I'm looking forward to finding out plenty of stuff I didn't know.

THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF SENORITA SCORPION, VOL. 2, Les Savage Jr. and Emmett McDowell -- I have the first volume of this series reprinting the pulp stories by Les Savage Jr., along with the one entry by Emmett McDowell.

THE BEST OF SPICY MYSTERY, VOL. 1 -- A collection of Weird Menace stories, with Robert Leslie Bellem represented at least three times, twice under his own name and once as Jerome Severs Perry. Some of those other by-lines may be Bellem, too.

I'm looking forward to reading all of these. I also got some Amazon and Half Price Books gift cards, so I'll be picking up some more things in the near future.

New This Week Going on Hiatus

My writing schedule is jam-packed for the next few months, so I won't be doing New This Week posts for a while. I'm also taking a break from the Tuesday's Overlooked Movies and/or TV series for a while, although I plan to resume that after the first of the year. I'll still be taking part in Friday's Forgotten Books, posting pulp covers on the weekends, and reviewing some new books (I hope). Too much work is a good thing to have, of course, especially in this day and age, but it does crowd out some enjoyable things sometimes.

New This Week

Well, this week I bought some print books again, for the first time in a while. These were all in the clearance section at Half Price Books, marked down from the regular nostalgia section.

THE STORY POCKET BOOK, edited by Whit Burnett – This is an early collection of mostly mainstream literature stories selected by Whit Burnett, one of the long-time editors of STORY MAGAZINE. Authors include Erskine Caldwell, Jesse Stuart, William Faulkner, Cornell Woolrich, Eric Knight, Lord Dunsany, William Saroyan, and the proverbial many others. This is the first printing of this early paperback, from December 1944. The cover and spine are a little faded, there's some sticker damage on the back cover, but the paper is barely tan. They used great paper back then. Who knows if I'll ever get around to reading it, but it only cost me a buck.

DARK UNIVERSE and THE INFINITE MAN by Daniel F. Galouye – A couple of science fiction novels by an author I've heard about for a long time but have never read, as far as I recall. Galouye published some well-regarded stories in the SF digests of the Fifties. I'll bet Bill Crider has read his work.

GIANTS IN THE DUST by Chad Oliver – I met Chad Oliver a few times at SF conventions but didn't really know him. We had a number of mutual friends, though. This is a science fiction novel from the Seventies.

THE DISAPPEARING ISLAND by Geoffrey Jenkins (originally published as A GRUE OF ICE) – Adventure novel set in Antarctica by a British (or possibly South African) thriller writer whose books I've seen around for decades but never read.

SIREN IN THE NIGHT, MURDER WITH SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY, and WASHINGTON WHISPERS MURDER, all by Leslie Ford – Three mystery novels from the Forties and Fifties, two of which feature Ford's series characters Grace Latham and Colonel Primrose (which name always makes me think of the board game CLUE). I seem to remember that Ford is controversial for some reason, but I don't remember why.

On the e-book front, only one to report that I haven't already reviewed: SHOCK TROOPS OF JUSTICE by Robert R. Mill, another fine collection from Black Dog Books. I've read some of Mill's other pulp stories and liked them.

New This Week

Again, only e-books to report on this week. I just don't seem to buy print books much anymore. No room!

HOT LEAD, COLD HEART -- A Western from the always dependable Matthew P. Mayo.
FIGHT CARD: IRISH DUKES -- The latest entry in the great Fight Card series.
RANCHO DIABLO: THE HOLD UP -- Mel Odom as Colby Jackson this time.
GUNSHOTS IN ANOTHER ROOM -- A biography of the great crime and noir paperbacker Dan J. Marlowe from Charles Kelly. I read about this on Bill Crider's blog and bought it immediately. I think I'm going to read a Marlowe novel for an FFB entry to get in the mood, then read the bio.

That's a pretty solid line-up of books, I think.

New This Week

 
Only one e-book to report on this week: HELL & GONE, an action/adventure novel by Henry Brown.  I read his Fight Card book, TOMATO CAN COMEBACK, and really enjoyed it, so I've been meaning to pick up something else by him. I finally got around to it, and I hope it won't be too long before I'll get a chance to read this one. My reading time has been pretty limited recently, and I've also run into a string of books that I started, didn't like, and didn't finish. I hate it when I get in a reading funk like that.

New This Week

A couple of e-books to report on this week:

THE ROGUE GENTLEMAN by Brian Drake, the full-length novel version of a story Brian serialized earlier this year. A guest post talking about his reasons for writing this one will be coming up later today on the blog.

HARKNESS: A HIGH DESERT MYSTERY by Michael Bigham, a new mystery novel that got a good review recently from my friend Evan Lewis, so I thought I'd give it a try.

New This Week

Print books first this week, an odd assortment, as usual:

WAR STORIES, VOLUME 1 – A trade paperback reprinting four long comic book stories set during World War II, written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by several different artists. Ennis has written a lot of good stuff, including the series PREACHER, which I read in the seven or eight paperbacks collecting the whole run. His work probably isn't to everybody's taste – it runs toward the grotesque and profane – but I nearly always find it interesting. And of course I'm a long-time fan of war comics.

THE BIG WESTERNER, Robert Easton – This is the fine biography of Frederick Faust by his son-in-law Robert Easton. I read it years ago and hadn't replaced the copy I lost in the fire, but Half Price Books had a copy in the clearance section for $2. It's well worth that just for the extensive Faust bibliography included in it.

MAD STRIKES BACK! – This one is really odd, because it has an extra "Phony MAD Paperback" cover taped onto it, which you can see in the scan. It extends onto the spine as well, although the back cover is the regular one. This is a collection of parodies from the first couple of years of MAD Magazine, with an introduction by Bob and Ray. Some great stuff in here, such as "Prince Violent" with art by Wally Wood; "Ping Pong" with art by Bill Elder; "Poopeye", also by Elder; "Teddy and the Pirates" with Wood doing a great pastiche of Caniff; and "Manduck the Magician" with Elder taking on Lee Falk's creation. I've read some of these stories before, but I'm looking forward to reading them again. The copy I bought is a 14^th printing from October 1963. Those of you who are fans of vintage paperbacks will know exactly what I mean when I tell you that it smells great.

MR. TOMORROW, Con Sellers – This is perhaps the oddest of all, what appears to be a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by Con Sellers. For those of you not familiar with his work, Sellers wrote a bunch of Sixties soft-core erotica for such houses as Novel Books and Merit Books. In the Eighties he wrote a good family saga/historical novel centered around a whorehouse called KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE, as well as a series of historical novels about World War II that ran for several volumes. What little I've read by him has been pretty good. MR. TOMORROW was published by Papillon Books, an outfit I've never heard of, and copyright 1974 by Aware Press, Inc., another one that's a complete mystery to me. This novel will definitely get a Forgotten Books post, if I can get around to reading it. I'd venture to say that "forgotten" is an understatement.

Now, on to the new e-books:

THE CANYON, Frank Leslie (Peter Brandvold) – a brand-new Weird Western novella starring Brandvold's series character Yakima Henry. A review of this one will be coming soon.

HARD BITE, Anonymous-9 – The novel-length expansion of a great story that first appeared on BEAT TO A PULP (I think; I make no guarantees about my memory).

BIG MARIA, Johnny Shaw – a new novel by the fine writer behind BLOOD & TACOS.

Looks like a good line-up all around this week.

New This Week

No new print books this week, but I did pick up three more e-books from Black Dog Books: THE SILVER MENACE/A THOUSAND DEGREES BELOW ZERO, a pair of early science fiction novellas by Murray Leinster; THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER, a collection of Middle Eastern adventure yarns by G.G. Pendarves; and DEAD MEN TELL TALES, a collection of Craig Kennedy scientific mysteries by Arthur B. Reeve. I've read a lot of Leinster's work over the years and enjoyed all of it. I've heard of Reeve's Craig Kennedy stories but never read any of them. Pendarves is a new author for me. I expect to enjoy all three books. (These are all available as print editions directly from Black Dog Books, too, of course.)

New This Week

No new print books this week, but I have three new e-books on my Kindle. I have a review of one of them, "The Spider Tribe" by Heath Lowrance, coming up later today. It's another fine entry in his Hawthorne series. These stories are some of the best Weird Westerns out there. A HEALTHY FEAR OF MAN by Aaron Philip Clark is a hardboiled crime novel, the sequel to Clark's THE SCIENCE OF PAUL, which I read and enjoyed last year. And finally THE SPUR: LOKI'S ROCK is the first book in a new science fiction adventure series by Mark Ellis, creator and principal author of the long-running Outlanders series. Links are below, so check 'em out.                                                                                 

New This Week

This week I bought all of Tom Piccirilli's e-books that I didn't already have, since the publisher is donating all the proceeds to help with Tom's medical expenses following his cancer surgery. Links are below, and I highly recommend all of them, along with Tom's other books. He's a fine writer, and you won't go wrong with anything he's written. I also got the e-book of horror novel HELMET HEAD by Mike Baron, who wrote many of the comic books I read during the Eighties. Look for a review of this one coming soon.

Also picked up a couple of used books. RAWHIDERS & RENEGADES is the paperback edition of a WWA anthology originally published in hardback under the title THE FALL ROUNDUP. This is from 1955, so it's not surprising that the line-up of authors is a really good one: John Prescott, Wayne D. Overholser, Bennett Foster, Walt Coburn, Luke Short, Frank Bonham, Will Cook, Norman A. Fox, Thomas Thompson, Bill Gulick, Charles N. Heckelmann, Harry Sinclair Drago, Steve Frazee, S. Omar Barker, Nelson Nye, Noel M. Loomis, and Gene Markey. The stories by Luke Short, Will Cook, and Steve Frazee are originals, the others reprints from an assortment of pulps and slicks. The other paperback is a double edition of the first two novels in the Buckskin series, RIFLE RIVER and GUNSTOCK by "Roy LeBeau", who I've been told was Mitchell Smith. Whoever wrote them, I know RIFLE RIVER is really good because I read it a number of years ago and remember liking it a lot. Never got around to reading GUNSTOCK. I figured it was worth a buck in Half Price Books' clearance section.

New This Week

The only thing I have to report this week is an ARC of ARCHIE MEETS NERO WOLFE, which comes out in November. I read some, maybe all, of Robert Goldsborough's earlier Nero Wolfe pastiches and thought they were okay. We'll see.

New This Week

Several new books came in this week, starting with REDHEADS DIE QUICKLY, the first collection of Gil Brewer's short fiction, edited by David Rachels and published by the University Press of Florida. All the stories in this book come from assorted detective pulps and digests published during the 1950s. It took me a while to become a Brewer fan, probably because I didn't really like the first novel of his that I read (WILD!), but his work has won me over. He was one of the great noir novelists of his era. (Actually, come to think of it, the first Gil Brewer novel I read was one of his IT TAKES A THIEF novelizations in the Sixties, but that doesn't really count because I didn't have any idea then who Gil Brewer was, just a name on a book, and I was crazy for anything and everything in the secret agent/espionage vein.)

Now for some pulp reprints, starting with three from Black Dog Books. BRING 'EM BACK DEAD collects the first three novels from the long-running Dan Fowler series, which were originally published in G-MEN. These are by George Fielding Eliot, the creator of the series. I've read quite a few Dan Fowler novels and enjoyed all of them, but I don't think I've read any of these three. The introduction in this volume is by best-selling thriller writer Matt Hilton. DUSTY AYRES – INVASION OF THE BLACK LIGHTNING likewise reprints the first three novels in a series, although Dusty Ayres and His Battle Birds didn't last nearly as long as Dan Fowler. I read the first novel in this series many, many years ago in the Corinth Regency paperback reprint, but I have no memory of it except that I liked it. The author is prolific pulpster and boys' books author Robert Sidney Bowen, and the intro in this one is by publisher Tom Roberts. IN THE NAME OF HONOR by Albert Payson Terhune is a historical adventure novel originally published in THE ARGOSY in 1908. Terhune is best known for his dog stories, but he got his start in historical fiction.

Moving on, we have four volumes from Altus Press. BETTER THAN BULLETS is Volume 1 in The Complete Adventures of Thibaut Corday and the Foreign Legion by Theodore Roscoe, who was one of the best writers in the pulps. The Thibaut Corday series, which appeared in ARGOSY, is top-notch adventure fiction all the way. This volume reprints the first six stories from the series, and I look forward to getting the others. I've read scattered Corday stories, but now I can read the whole saga from the start. Altus Press has also started a series called TERROR TRIOS, with introductions by John Pelan, each of which reprints three novellas from the Weird Menace pulps by a specific author. The three volumes so far are DEVILS OF THE DARK by Hugh B. Cave, DEATH UNDERGROUND by Wyatt Blassingame, and SPAWN OF THE FLAMES by Wayne Rogers (whose real name was Archibald Bittner). I love Weird Menace stories when I'm in the right mood for them, and these look like dandies. Anyway, you can never go wrong with Hugh B. Cave, a fine writer and a real gentleman with whom I traded a number of emails during the last few years of his life.

As if that wasn't enough, last week I paid a visit to a used bookstore where I'd never been, J&E Recycled Reading in Brownwood (I was down there for a family get-together). It's a good store overall, but it has an excellent Western section. Not many vintage paperbacks, but a lot of Eighties series books that just don't show up much around Fort Worth anymore. I bought too many to list, but some highlights are a couple of Ernest Haycox books (one novel and a collection of two novellas from SHORT STORIES), some Sundance novels by Peter McCurtin, a couple of Lassiters by Jack Slade (also, in this case, Peter McCurtin), and some Gordon D. Shirreffs. To top it off, a good friend sent me a stack of Westerns by William Hopson, a writer whose style could be a little odd but whose books are generally very good. And of the ones my friend sent, I'd read only one, so it's a real treasure trove for me.

Now my only problem is finding the time to read some of these great books! If I start blogging a little less, you'll know I'm up to my ears in fiction . . .

New This Week

Three new print books came in this week, all of them review copies. BULLETS AND LIES by Robert J. Randisi is the first book in Bob's new Western series about detective Talbot Roper. This is a spin-off from the Gunsmith series but is being published under the Randisi name instead of the J.R. Roberts pseudonym, and the books are traditional Westerns, not Adult Westerns. I'm really looking forward to reading this one. From Stark House comes the latest A.S. Fleischman double volume, which includes the previously unpublished mystery novel THE SUN WORSHIPPERS and Fleischman's only non-juvenile Western, YELLOWLEG, on which the Sam Peckinpah film THE DEADLY COMPANIONS was based. I have the DVD of THE DEADLY COMPANIONS around here somewhere, but I've never watched it. I may remedy that after I've read the book. Also from Greg Shepard but under a new imprint, Shepardson Books, is CALIFORNIA CORNERSTONE, a collection of newspaper columns about historical events in California that were written by Greg's dad Bill Shepard. I'm a history buff from 'way back, so I'm looking forward to this one as well.

I also picked up a few used books this week. The first one, SECRET SEA by Robb White, I bought simply because I couldn't resist that great cover. It's a young adult adventure novel from 1947. I recall reading other books by Robb White that I enjoyed when I was a kid. I suspect that this one will hold up for me. And if it doesn't, that's still a great cover.

Then we have PERFECT PIGEON, a 1962 Gold Medal caper novel from the old pulpster and paperbacker Richard Wormser. I don't recall ever seeing this book before or reading anything about it, but everything I've ever read by Wormser was entertaining. And it's a Gold Medal.

Finally, THE POWER OF BLACKNESS by Jack Williamson, a science fiction adventure novel that appears to have been a fix-up job combining novelettes from F&SF, GALAXY, and AMAZING. Fix-up or not, it's a science fiction novel by Jack Williamson that I didn't have, so no way was I leaving it in the store.

On the e-book front, I have two new ones to report, both reprints by veteran pulpster Charles Boeckman writing as Charles Beckman, Jr.: a noir crime novel called HONKY-TONK GIRL and a Western, SAGE BRUSH AND SIX-GUNS. They sound like my kind of books, and I'm looking forward to reading them.

New This Week

All e-books this week, one of which includes a new story by me. We might as well start off with it.

BEAT TO A PULP: SUPERHERO is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of superhero stories by some of the best young writers in the business and one old codger (that would be me). My story is called "Drums" and is set during the Revolutionary War, not exactly the usual setting for a superhero yarn. But I had a great time writing it and wouldn't mind revisiting the characters if I ever get a chance.

COMMANDO: OPERATION ARROWHEAD is a World War II adventure by Jack Badelaire, a prequel of sorts to his fine debut novel KILLER INSTINCTS. Also by Badelaire is NANOK AND THE TOWER OF SORROWS, a sword-and-sorcery tale. That's another of my favorite genres.

BLOOD ON BLOOD is a new hardboiled crime novel by Frank Zafiro and my buddy Jim Wilsky. Review coming soon, I hope. And speaking of blood, I also picked up the first three issues of BLOOD & TACOS, dedicated to pastiches and reviews of Seventies men's adventure novels. These look like great fun. Links to everything mentioned in this post can be found below.

New This Week

I picked up a couple of older books this week. I've talked about Sam Merwin Jr. quite a bit on this blog, since he was sort of a mentor to me and published the first stories under my own name when he was the editor at MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE. He gave me my first steady writing work when he asked me to ghost the Shayne novellas under the Brett Halliday name, and ghosting and working under house-names has turned out to be the hallmark of my career. Now, this may or may not be a good thing. It's entirely possible I might have done better to concentrate on work under my name . . . but I haven't had a job other than writing for more than thirty years now and I've managed to publish around fifty novels under my name, so I'll take it.

But I digress. CHAUVINISTO is a science fiction novel set in a 22^nd Century ruled by women. It was published by Major Books in 1977, during one of the stretches when Merwin was also the editor of MSMM. It may well be his final novel. Major was a small paperback house in California, an imprint of a company that primarily published porn novels. It wasn't the absolute bottom of the barrel during that era – that would have been Manor Books, the publishers of my first novel – but it was close. Despite that, Major managed to publish some very interesting books: a Western novel supposedly written by actor Rory Calhoun, the first Western novel by Jory Sherman, and first novels by Loren Estleman and Robert E. Vardeman. I have no idea if CHAUVINISTO was a trunk novel of Merwin's or if he wrote the book specifically for Major, which I can see happening, especially if the editor there was one of Merwin's friends. I've enjoyed the other fiction by Merwin that I've read. When I get around to this one I'll let you know how it is.

The other old book I bought is by a familiar author but is an unfamiliar title. THE LIGHTS OF SKARO is by David Dodge, who wrote TO CATCH A THIEF, PLUNDER OF THE SUN, THE LAST MATCH, and a number of other medium-boiled mystery/adventure novels. This one was published in 1954 and is set in Eastern Europe. Again, I've liked what I've read by Dodge, so it seemed worth gambling a dollar, which is what it cost me. (The Merwin book was $2.00.)

Below are links to this week's e-books. THE FURIES is a series of World War II adventures by John Steiner, PROTECTORS is the new benefit anthology in which I have a story, "The Lonely Widow" is Pete Brandvold's new Rogue Lawman short story (reviewed yesterday), and SAVAGE SLAUGHTER is a Western novel by Gary Dobbs writing as Jack Martin (review coming later this week, I hope). Looks like lots of good reading here.

New This Week

All e-books this week, and a wide assortment, at that. Check 'em out.

New This Week

This week I paid a visit to a Half Price Books location I'd never been to before (the one in Burleson, Texas) and came away with a few things. First up are three books by John Whitlatch: FRANK T.'S PLAN, GANNON'S VENDETTA, and TANNER'S LEMMING. Whitlatch is something of a legendary figure among action/adventure fans because not much is known about him. I've seen his books around for years and at one time owned all of them, but I've never read any of them. I have to remedy that soon.

Next a trio of vintage hardboiled mysteries: BLOW HOT, BLOW COLD by Gerald Butler, THE FOURTH POSTMAN by Craig Rice, and SHAKEDOWN by Richard Ellington. Butler was a British author who came up with one of the all-time great hardboiled titles, KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS. I have several of his books but have never read any of them. This one is set on the French Riviera. The Craig Rice book is one of her novels featuring lawyer John J. Malone. Everything I've read by her has been good. I've also read several novels by Richard Ellington that I liked. SHAKEDOWN, originally published in hardback under the title JUST KILLING TIME, features his private eye character Steve Drake.

I nearly always pick up Zebra horror novels from the Eighties and Nineties when I come across them, especially if they're by William W. Johnstone. In this case I found two of them, WOLFSBANE and THE DEVIL'S CAT. I may already have one or both of these, I'm not sure, but I wasn't going to leave them there.

Finally a couple of Westerns: THE KINCAID COUNTY WAR, another entry in the Wild Bill series by Judd Cole (John Edward Ames) and BLOOD ON THE GRASS by Lewis B. Patten, a Leisure paperback that includes the title novel and a bonus novella "Sharpshod", both of which appeared originally in Western pulps in the early Fifties, the former in the April 1953 issue of GIANT WESTERN under the name Lewis Ford, a Patten pseudonym I wasn't aware of, and the latter in the May 1953 issue of WEST. Should be good.

New e-books this week include a handful of pulp reprints from Radio Archives, including The Spider, Operator #5, The Scorpion, and The Mysterious Wu Fang.

New This Week

Only one new print book to mention this week (it's also available in a Kindle edition), but it should be a good one: THE BELLS OF EL DIABLO, the first book in a new Western series by Frank Leslie, also known as Peter Brandvold, also known these days as Mean Pete his own self, head honcho of Mean Pete Press.

Speaking of which, one of the new e-books I picked up this week is DEVLIN AND JOHNNY FOREVER, also by Mr. Brandvold. This Southern horror yarn may be his first published contemporary story. My review of it is coming up later today.

Another old friend has his first original e-book out. That's Stephen Mertz with THE CASTRO DIRECTIVE. I don't like to think about how long I've known Steve, but his top-notch thrillers have been entertaining me for decades and I'm sure this one will, too.

I didn't buy any used books this week, but my daughter Shayna put together some shelves for me, she and my other daughter Joanna sorted all the paperbacks that had been piled around in my office/studio, and now they're all where I can see them again, prompting me to say on numerous occasions, "I didn't know I had that book!" It was almost like buying them all over again. (Which I actually did in a few cases, as multiple copies of some titles showed up. I was a little surprised there weren't more like that.) At any rate, now I've started trying to organize all the hardbacks and trade paperbacks. Then there are all the graphic novels, and several thousand pulps . . . I have a feeling this is a job that will never end. Not that I'd really want it to . . .

New This Week

I'm trying to cut back on the number of print books I'm buying because of space issues, but this week I ran across a couple of old Westerns I wanted. THE TENDERFOOT KID is an early Peter Field novel, and in this case Harry Sinclair Drago was the actual author behind that house-name. Although later on the Field name was used exclusively on the Powder Valley series, featuring rancher Pat Stevens and his sidekicks Sam and Ezra (and I've read many of those), it also appeared on some stand-alone Western novels, and this is one of them. It's about a washed-up prizefighter who goes west, and I expect it to be a good one. CUTLER #5: MUSTANG is by H.V. Elkin again, which I've discovered in HAWK'S WESTERN SERIES AND SEQUELS is a pseudonym for Vernon Hinkle. The four books Hinkle wrote in the Cutler series, plus two mystery novels he did for Leisure under his own name about the same time, apparently represent Hinkle's total output as an author.

New This Week

I have one new e-book book to mention this week. BRUCE MINNEY: THE MAN WHO PAINTED EVERYTHING by Thomas Ziegler is a biography of artist Bruce Minney, who was a prolific contributor to a number of pop culture venues, including covers and interior illustrations for men's adventure magazines as well as paperback covers. I'll have a review of this book coming up later in the week.

I picked up two new print books, SUSANNA'S CHOICE and CLAIMING THE HEART, a couple of Western historical romances by "Sara Luck", who is really a husband-and-wife writing team I know, and some of you do, too. (Don't misunderstand me, I'm not hinting that these are by me and Livia. They're not. Trust me, if they were, you'd know about it.) I don't read a lot of romances, but I expect these to be top-notch.

Speaking of romances, in the used book arena I came across a copy of a romantic suspense novel with a boxing background, KNOCKOUT by Erica Orloff. This is part of the old Silhouette Bombshell line, which published quite a few excellent books, and I couldn't pass this one up. I also got a copy of a Sidney Sheldon novel I haven't read, THE SANDS OF TIME, because, well, sometimes I'm in the mood for a Sidney Sheldon novel.

The rest of the used books this week are all Westerns, starting with two more books in the alternate history series about Wild Bill Hickok, YUMA BUSTOUT and BLACK HILLS HELLHOLE by Judd Cole, who is probably John Edward Ames. Then we have some more Buckskin books, the double edition RETURN FIRE/RIMFIRE REVENGE, both by Chet Cunningham writing as Kit Dalton, and a couple by Roy LeBeau, RECOIL and HANGFIRE HILL. I've been told that the author of these is actually Mitchell Smith, but I don't know if that's true. I've read a couple of the Roy LeBeau entries, and whoever wrote them, they were very good.

Moving on to a short-lived series I've never read, LOBO by Dennis Crafton, who was evidently really Dennis Crafton, judging by the copyright in the one I picked up, #2 COMANCHE DUEL. I don't know anything about this author or series and bought the book because the cover is by Bruce Minney, but I intend to read it.

THE DEVIL'S DOLLAR SIGN by Joe Millard is one of his original novels based on Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name character. Millard wrote a number of these after doing the novelizations of FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE and THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. I read FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE when it was new and remember liking it a lot, but I've never read any of the original tie-in novels.

CUTLER: TIGER'S CHANCE by H.V. Elkin is another entry in the continuation of a series begun by Ben Haas under the John Benteen name, although again there's no mention of that in this book. It's listed on the cover and title page as #6 in the series. I didn't know there were that many, or if I did, I've forgotten it.

I also found a copy of ZORRO: THE COMPLETE CLASSIC ADVENTURES BY ALEX TOTH, which reprints comic book stories written and drawn by Toth in the Fifties, based on the Zorro TV show. This collection was published by Eclipse Comics in 1988. I like Toth's work a lot, and I like Zorro, and although this copy is a little beat up, it was on sale for a dollar, so there was no way I was leaving it in the store.