Review: Buccaneer Blood - H. Bedford-Jones

I was in the mood to read something by one of my favorite authors, H. Bedford-Jones, and this excellent volume from Altus Press happened to be handy. BUCCANEER BLOOD collects five novelettes and novellas originally published in ARGOSY about Denis Burke, an 18th Century Irish mercenary, soldier of fortune, and pirate.

The first story, “Escape!”, appeared in the November 7, 1931 issue of ARGOSY. It’s 1703, and Denis Burke is serving in the army of French king Louis XIV along with some other Irish mercenaries. A falling out with the king and some other members of the royal court means Burke has to go on the run to save his life. His efforts to get out of France comprise the whole plot of this story, which includes plenty of swordplay, daring schemes, and banter, all of which plays out in Bedford-Jones’ usual clean, fast-moving prose. Does Burke get away? Well, there wouldn’t be any more stories in the series if he didn’t, would there?

Burke returns in “Luck of the Sea Burkes”, a novella that appeared as a two-part serial in the January 9 and January 16, 1932 issues of ARGOSY. He’s made it to the Spanish Main, along with a crew comprised mostly of Irish mercenaries who fled France with him. Once they reach the Caribbean, they become pirates, capture a Spanish ship, and are captured in turn by an evil Spanish aristocrat with a secret. Burke makes a daring escape, rescues a beautiful señorita, pulls off an audacious masquerade, and triumphs in the end, but in a way that leaves the door open for future adventures. This one is almost non-stop action, and of course, Bedford-Jones does it well.

By the time of “Spanish Gold”, a novelette from the March 19, 1932 issue of ARGOSY, Denis Burke is well established as a buccaneer, operating under the piratical alias Captain Mayo (he’s from County Mayo in Ireland, you see). When he gets a lead on a sunken Spanish ship full of treasure, he intends to retrieve it with his crew, but before the quest even gets underway, he’s kidnapped by a couple of rival pirate captains who hate him. Will Burke prove clever enough to escape them and grab the loot for himself? Bedford-Jones introduces a female pirate in this one, and she’s a great supporting character.

“Buccaneer Blood”, the title story of this collection, comes from the September 10, 1932 issue of ARGOSY. In this one, Burke’s masquerade as Captain Mayo is exposed, so he has to adopt a new identity to escape being caught and hanged by the French. In the process, he meets and falls in love with a beautiful Spanish señorita, and once again, his fate comes down to his skill with a sword as he has to battle five opponents at once.

The final story in this volume is “Spanish Blood is Proud Blood” from the March 25, 1933 issue of ARGOSY. Burke and his señorita are on their way to be married, but before they can reach their destination, a hurricane blows their ship all the way to the coast of Central America. There they find more danger, as well as more treasure. This novelette is a fitting end to this series of yarns, which form a somewhat cohesive story. Cohesive enough, anyway, that I’m a little surprised Bedford-Jones never cobbled it together into a fix-up novel.

According to the Fictionmags Index, Bedford-Jones wrote other Denis Burke stories that were published in THE POPULAR MAGAZINE before these, and more published afterward in SHORT STORIES. Not having read them, I don’t know how they’re related, nor do I know right offhand if they’ve ever been reprinted. But I do know BUCCANEER BLOOD is a fine collection, and if you’re a Bedford-Jones fan or just enjoy pirate yarns in general, I give it a high recommendation. It's available in e-book and paperback editions from Amazon.

Review: Fair Blows the Wind - Louis L'Amour

I argued back and forth with myself quite a bit before I wrote this review. But I’ll get to that. Also, there are some minor spoilers scattered throughout this post, but no more than you find in a lot of book reviews.

First of all, look at this opening line: “My name is Tatton Chantry and unless the gods are kind to rogues, I shall die within minutes.” Isn’t that great? With an opening line like that, how can you not want to keep reading?

It’s the late 16th Century as this novel opens, and our narrator/protagonist Tatton Chantry (not actually his real name, as author Louis L’Amour alludes to often) is an Irishman who has already lived an adventurous life. He has traveled to the New World on an English trading vessel and is marooned on what will someday be the Carolina coast when Indians attack a shore party. While escaping from the Indians, he runs into a group of Spaniards and Peruvians who were also stranded there when their ship began to sink. Chantry suspects treachery from the Spaniards, falls in love with a beautiful Peruvian aristocrat, and meets another castaway who has been living on these barrier islands for a couple of years.

All this leads up to a long flashback that takes up about two-thirds of the book and tells us about Chantry’s life as a fugitive in England and Scotland (his father in Ireland was murdered, and the family estate was destroyed), his various meetings with various scoundrels, gypsies, friends, and enemies, and his efforts to make himself into a master swordsman. Eventually he becomes a successful trader and even a published author of novels, poems, and plays. Then he’s a mercenary soldier and fights in various wars all over Europe before circumstances finally take him to America and we’re back where we started. It’s a busy life.

Now we get to the arguing with myself part. I always feel like when a Western writer says anything negative about Louis L’Amour, there’s a perception of sour grapes. Sometimes it’s more than just a perception, although I honestly don’t think that’s true in this case. But I finally decided to forge ahead with it anyway.

The framing sequence in this book that’s set in the New World is terrific. By itself, it would have made a fine short novel. Tatton Chantry is a tough, likable protagonist and you can’t help but root for him. The flashback is a different story, no pun intended. There are some wonderful scenes in it, but a lot of it just goes on and on and serves very little function. Again and again, L’Amour sets up some plot twist or new storyline, and then totally ignores it for the rest of the book, leaving things unexplained. What’s Chantry’s real name? Why is his life in danger if he ever returns to Ireland? Who’s that mysterious woman? What about the guy who keeps popping up to pull his chestnuts out of the fire? Who’s he? We don’t know. L’Amour never tells us.

There are also numerous continuity glitches of the sort he was notorious for. Chantry has a bag of gold, then he loses it, then he has it again with no explanation. It’s day, then it’s night, then it’s day again, all while one scene is going on. L’Amour said he never revised his work, never even looked at it again after he wrote the first draft. Mistakes like that certainly seem to indicate he was telling the truth.

At the same time, the settings are rendered beautifully, the dialogue is always good, and the ending of this one is great. L’Amour doesn’t hold back on the epic showdown between Chantry and his longtime mortal enemy, and it’s very satisfying.

So my overall opinion of FAIR BLOWS THE WIND is about as mixed as you can get. It’s one of several books from late in L’Amour’s career I never got around to reading, and I’m glad I finally did. It’s mostly entertaining and kept me turning the pages, but it’s also a prime example of the things about his writing that bother me. I suspect that mileage may vary a lot from reader to reader on this one. Like all of L’Amour’s work, it’s been reprinted numerous times and is available in just about any format you can think of. The image above just happens to be the paperback edition I read.

Review: The Lotus and the Dragon - Brent Towns

Brent Towns has been highly successful writing Westerns, men’s adventure novels, hardboiled private detective yarns, and World War II action tales. Now he’s moving into yet another genre, the epic historical adventure novel, with his latest release, THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON.

Taking place in Australia in the 1870s and ’80s, THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is narrated by Jack Crowe, a tough, hardbitten protagonist who starts out as a bounty hunter. After being unjustly convicted of a crime, he’s sent to an isolated sheep station to work off his sentence. When that is finally behind him, he starts a freight business, only to run afoul of violence and tragedy again and start a vendetta against a renegade police officer that will last for years.

The rather episodic plot of this novel follows Jack through stretches involving mining, riverboating, and romances with several beautiful women who may or may not be trustworthy. Encounters with various enemies result in him being beaten up, shot, nearly drowned, and left for dead more than once. Those enemies include not only corrupt policemen and politicians but also bushrangers, whoremongers, slavers, and an American business tycoon who ruthlessly takes over the Australian riverboat trade.

THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is one tough, gritty book. The action never lets up for long, and Jack Crowe takes enough punishment for several novels but is resilient enough to keep fighting all the way to an ending that’s crying out for a sequel. If you’re a fan of Wilbur Smith and Bernard Cornwell, you really need to check out this novel. It’s the same sort of epic, sweeping adventure and is very well-done. THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I give it a high recommendation. It's available from Wolfpack Publishing on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Eagle (2011)

Given my fondness for historical adventure movies, I’m surprised I never saw THE EAGLE, a 2011 film about ancient Romans versus ancient Britons, another favorite plot element for me. Channing Tatum is the new commander of an outpost in northern Britain who carries a family shame: his father was one of the officers in the infamous Lost Legion, the Ninth Legion that marched even farther north and vanished, their disappearance prompting the construction of Hadrian’s Wall.

Now there are rumors that the golden eagle standard carried by the Ninth has been seen being used in religious rites by the savages north of the wall, and so Tatum’s character decides to find and retrieve it, accompanied only by a slave (Jamie Bell) he’s saved from being killed by a gladiator.

Plenty of running, riding, and swordfighting ensue. THE EAGLE is a bloody, violent movie, but the gore isn’t overdone. It uses ’way too much quick-cut editing during some of the fight scenes, a cinematic technique I really dislike, but there’s enough regular action to more than make up for that, and the movie captures a sweeping, epic feel at times that really works for me. There’s a scene involving the surviving remnants of the Ninth that’s great, almost a stand-up-and-cheer moment.

I like Channing Tatum. He usually plays a lovable goofball and does a good job of it. He plays his role in THE EAGLE absolutely straight and turns in a decent performance, although he’s overshadowed a little by Jamie Bell as his morally conflicted sidekick. Donald Sutherland and Dakin Matthews play ancient Romans and are fine as always.

This is kind of an odd movie for me, because in tales like this, my natural sympathy tends to fall more on the side of the Britons than the Romans. But by boiling the focus down to just a few characters, the overall conflict doesn’t matter as much, so I had no trouble rooting for the Romans this time.

THE EAGLE is a well-made film that I thoroughly enjoyed. If you enjoy historical adventure movies, I think it’s well worth watching.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Fright - Cornell Woolrich

I’ve been a Cornell Woolrich fan ever since I encountered reprints of some of his pulp stories in EQMM and THE SAINT MYSTERY MAGAZINE during the Sixties. I’ve read many of his short stories and novelettes and enjoyed them all, but only a couple of his novels, the justly-famous THE BRIDE WORE BLACK and DEADLINE AT DAWN, which I also enjoyed. I’ve just read the Hard Case Crime reprint of Woolrich’s novel FRIGHT, originally published in 1950 under the pseudonym George Hopley.

FRIGHT is one of Woolrich’s historical suspense novels, set in 1915 and 1916, and he does a fine job of recreating that era without going overboard on the historical details. The very strait-laced attitudes of the time period play a part in the plot, too, helping to drive the protagonist to do the things he does. It’s difficult to go into detail about that plot without giving away too much, but let’s just say there’s blackmail, murder, paranoia, more murder, doomed love, more murder, and tragedy galore. Pretty much the essence of noir, in other words, and all told in smooth, if slightly old-fashioned prose that keeps the reader turning the pages. Yes, the coincidences and lapses in logic that Woolrich is notorious for can be found in FRIGHT, but as usual the writing and the raw emotional torment he inflicts on his characters more than make up for any flaws. There are passages in this book that I found genuinely disturbing, and I’m usually not easily disturbed by fiction. FRIGHT is one of the bleakest books I’ve read in a long time.

It’s also one of the best, and I have a feeling that it just might start me on a Woolrich binge. I don’t know if my heart can take it, though.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on September 22, 2007. At that time, the Hard Case Crime reprint of FRIGHT was fairly recent. That edition, pictured above, is out of print and used copies have gotten fairly expensive. However, the novel is available in a different e-book and paperback edition, and it's still well worth reading even though it did not, in fact, start me on a Woolrich binge.) 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Gentlemen of the Road - Michael Chabon

I was prepared to like GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD for a couple of reasons: it looked like the sort of historical adventure novel that I usually enjoy, and I knew that author Michael Chabon has an appreciation of and fondness for genre fiction despite being known as a literary author. And with a couple of quibbles, I did like it, quite a bit.

Despite the fact that he’s working with a historical setting here, rather than a fantasy one, what GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD most resembles are the stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber. Zelikmann and Amram are a couple of traveling adventurers, mercenaries, and con artists. Zelikmann is an angst-ridden Frank with medical training (and in his description he bears a certain resemblance to Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane), while Amram is a massive Abyssinian who wields a Viking axe. They find themselves in the Caucasus Mountains near the Caspian Sea, in what would be modern-day Azerbaijan, helping a young nobleman who’s a fugitive from the usurper who murdered the rest of the young man’s family. But of course, not all is as it seems to be, and after a series of picaresque adventures, several massacres, an attempted coup, and encounters with assorted elephants, Zelikmann and Amram finally get everything straightened out satisfactorily.

While I thought this novel was a lot of fun, a couple of things about it bothered me. Chabon’s colorful but long-winded style worked pretty well for the first seventy or eighty pages but began to get a little tiresome after that. If he had cut back on it and picked up the pace just a little, I think I would have enjoyed the book even more. The other thing is a curious lack of action. There are several big battles, but they occur off-screen with Zelikmann and Amram showing up after all the fighting is over. The few action scenes that actually take place are described in such a restrained manner that it’s hard to get excited about them. Maybe reading and rereading Howard for forty years has spoiled me, but in a story like this I want swords to flash, heads to roll, and blood to flow in rivers. But that’s just me, I suppose.

Overall, GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD is pretty entertaining, and if Chabon decides to write another novel with these characters, I wouldn’t hesitate to read it.

(In the 17+ years since this post originally appeared on April 13, 2008, I haven't read anything else by Michael Chabon, and as far as I know, he hasn't written anything else about these characters. I haven't really looked into it, though, so I could be wrong about that. This is one still available in e-book and paperback editions.)

Review: Jedediah Smith - Alfred Wallon

Alfred Wallon is the most prolific and popular German author of Westerns and historical novels published in the United States. His latest release is JEDEDIAH SMITH, a historical novel about the life of one of the most important figures of the Mountain Man era, and it’s excellent.

Jedediah Smith was a member of one of the first fur trapping expeditions to go all the way up the Missouri River. He helped discover the route to the northwest through South Pass, which became one of the vital parts of the great westward migration. He traveled to the Great Salt Lake and on to California, helping to open up the idea of trade with the Mexican settlements on the West Coast. And he helped scout what became the Santa Fe Trail, leading to a fateful encounter with Comanches. Wallon covers all of this in his thoroughly researched novel based primarily on journals kept by Smith and other members of his expeditions.

Along the way, there’s plenty of action: battles with Indians, clashes with Mexican soldiers, even a fight with a bear. Numerous colorful historical characters from the Mountain Man era make appearances, including Jim Bridge, John Colter, Hugh Glass, Jim Beckwourth, and the Sublette brothers.

Wallon captures not only the epic scope of these explorations that shaped the country, but he also provides a compelling insight into the mind of an explorer, as Smith is always pushing on, looking for something new, wanting to see places he hasn’t seen. The fur trapping business is what led Smith to travel throughout the West, but his own wanderlust comes through clearly as well.

JEDEDIAH SMITH is a well-written, informative, but above all entertaining chronicle of the opening of the West. Alfred Wallon has done a fine job on it, and if you’re a fan of top-notch, realistic historical fiction, I give it a high recommendation. It’s available on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions.

Review: Celtic Adventures - D.M. Ritzlin, ed.

My ancestry is mostly British (which I assume includes some Scots, too) and Irish, so I’ve always had a fondness for Celtic heroes. The latest collection from DMR Books, CELTIC ADVENTURES, offers a fine assortment of such heroes, too.

After an informative and entertaining introduction by Deuce Richardson, the book opens with the poem “The Druids” by Kenneth Morris, an author whose name is familiar to me, but I don’t believe I’ve ever read anything by him until now. It’s an atmospheric poem that does a good job of setting the stage.

“The Devil’s Dagger” by the well-regarded writing team of Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur and Farnham Bishop is set in 13^th Century Scotland and finds a young soldier trying to solve the seemingly impossible murder of one of the King’s officials. If he doesn’t, the father of the girl he’s fallen in love with will be executed for the crime. There’s some great action in this one including a lengthy swordfight that covers a lot of ground in the castle where the majority of the story takes place. I really like the way Brodeur and Bishop wrote. This is the first thing I’ve read by them, although I have a copy of their acclaimed novel IN THE GRIP OF THE MINOTAUR and need to get around to reading it. “The Devil’s Dagger” first appeared in the September 3, 1918 issue of ADVENTURE.

One of Robert E. Howard’s many Celtic heroes was Conan the Reaver, an Irish pirate who shared the same name as a certain Cimmerian. “People of the Dark”, from the June 1932 issue of STRANGE TALES OF MYSTERY AND TERROR, is actually one of Howard’s “past lives” yarns, in which a modern-day man bent on murder takes a fall in a cave, knocks himself out, and winds up reliving a break-neck adventure that happened to one of his ancestors (the above-mentioned Conan the Reaver). It’s a great story, too, full of action as Conan and a couple of companions battle a genuinely creepy race of little people who live underground (another common element in Howard’s work). I had read this one several times before, but it had been a while so I thoroughly enjoyed it all over again.

“The Harping of Cravetheen” is by-lined Fiona MacLeod, which was actually a pseudonym for William Sharp, another author unfamiliar to me. It appeared originally in a collection called THE SIN-EATER, published in 1895. It’s a very well-written tale about romance, a young woman forced to marry a man she doesn’t want to, feuding families, infidelity, and violent death, along with a supernatural element and some harp music. I think. To be honest, half the time I wasn’t sure what was going on in this one. It’s worth reading for the sheer beauty of the language, but it wasn’t really to my taste, either.

“A Claymore for the Clan” is by Donald Barr Chidsey, one of my favorite pulp authors, and appeared originally in the July 1948 issue of ADVENTURE. Told from the point of view of a ten-year-old boy, it’s another tale of blood feuds and desperate sword battles. Chidsey, equally at home with hardboiled contemporary crime yarns and fast-paced swashbucklers like this one, is always worth reading, and this story barrels along in very entertaining fashion.

Clyde Irvine’s story “The Horror in the Glen” first appeared in the April 1940 issue of WEIRD TALES. A Scottish warrior avenges the murder of his family by a rival clan, but not before being banished for seven years to a supernatural realm and acquiring eldritch powers. This is another well-written story that I thoroughly enjoyed. Irvine’s name wasn’t familiar to me, so I looked him up and found that he published 18 stories during the early Forties, most of them adventure yarns in JUNGLE STORIES. I’ll have to keep an eye out for his work.

The highlight of this collection (other than REH) is “Grana, Queen of Battle” by John Barnett. This was published as a complete novel in the October 11, 1913 issue of THE CAVALIER, but it’s actually a series of six linked short stories about a beautiful female pirate in Ireland during the Elizabethan era. Grana can handle a sword when she needs to, but she usually outwits her opponents. After inheriting a castle and ships from her father, a famous pirate, she deals with mutinies, English tax collectors, treacherous Spaniards, and rival pirates. Finally, she’s captured by the English and sentenced to hang. This leads to a smashing climax that manages to be very satisfying while still hitting a slightly bittersweet note. I don’t know anything about John Barnett, but this is a terrific yarn.

This volume concludes with a poem by Robert E. Howard, “Feach Air Muir Lionadhi Gealach Buidhi Mar Or”. I don’t know what that translates to, but the poem itself is dramatic and strikes an excellent ending note to this collection.

CELTIC ADVENTURES is available in paperback and e-book editions on Amazon, with an excellent cover by Jim FitzPatrick, and I give it a high recommendation if you’re a fan of fine adventure stories. Up above, I mentioned that my ancestry is mostly British, but the part that’s not? That’s Scandinavian, so naturally, I like Viking tales, too! And DMR Books just happens to have published a book called VIKING ADVENTURES, as well as a four-volume collection of Arthur D. Howden-Smith’s famous pulp series about Swain the Viking, so I have a pretty good idea about some of the books I’m going to be reading in the reasonably near future . . .

Review: Sharpe's Tiger - Bernard Cornwell

My history with Bernard Cornwell’s fiction has been odd. I read THE ARCHER’S TALE, the first book in his Grail Quest series, loved it, and never read any more of them. I read REBEL, the first of his Nathaniel Starbuck series, loved it, and never read any more of them. For a long time, I’ve been wanting to try what’s arguably his best-known series about British soldier Richard Sharpe, but I worried I’d read one and never get back to them. But you never know without trying, and since I own almost all of the series in one form or another, I decided I might as well go ahead and read the first one, SHARPE’S TIGER.

Actually, this is the first Sharpe book chronologically but not the first one published. After the series was well-established, Cornwell went back and wrote several books filling in the character’s early history in the army, beginning with Sharpe being a private during the British forces siege of the Indian city of Seringapatam in 1799. Sharpe, who was a thief before joining the army, is pretty much of a rogue, but he’s a great fighting man and has a core of decency to him. He runs afoul of a truly despicable villain, a brutal sergeant named Obadiah Hakeswill, and is tricked into committing a crime that gets him sentenced to a flogging of two thousand lashes, an extreme punishment that will probably kill him.

However, before the sentence can be carried out fully, Sharpe is picked for a vital espionage mission. He has to pretend to be a deserter, get into the besieged city, and rescue a captured British officer who has some vital intelligence that may mean all the difference between victory and defeat. Failing a rescue, Sharpe is supposed to obtain the information from the officer and then escape.

That’s the basic plot, but while it’s fairly simple, Cornwell layers in some twists and turns that are very clever and still sticks pretty close to the actual history while at the same time giving the fictional Richard Sharpe plenty of important stuff to do. I was really impressed by the way Cornwell manipulated his plot and characters in this novel. To be honest, I thought this book started on the slow side and I was beginning to wonder about the series’ sterling reputation, but when things kicked into gear about a quarter of the way in, I was really hooked and dragged along. I mean, Sharpe fights giant warriors, has to escape from a vicious tiger, and blows a bunch of stuff up. I was really flipping the pages to see what was going to happen next.

There are also epic, very well-written battle scenes, vividly drawn historical characters, effective touches of humor and pathos, good supporting characters, and a top-notch protagonist in Richard Sharpe himself. SHARPE’S TIGER is a terrific book, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. If you’re a fan of historical adventure novels, I give it a very high recommendation. It's available on Amazon in e-book, audio, hardcover, and paperback editions.

And now the question remains . . . will I read more of the series? I’m pretty sure I will, but as always, we’ll have to wait and see.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Island of Kings - Blaine Stevens (Harry Whittington)

Late in his career, Harry Whittington wrote several historical novels under the pseudonym Blaine Stevens. ISLAND OF KINGS is the final book to appear under that name, and in fact, it may be the last book that Whittington wrote. I believe it was the final new Whittington novel to be published, but if I’m wrong about any of that, I hope someone will speak up in the comments.

At any rate, whether or not it possesses the historical significance of being the last Whittington novel, ISLAND OF KINGS is worth reading. It’s set in Hawaii in the 1770s and is a fictionalization of the young prince Kamehameha’s efforts to avenge his brother’s murder, unite all the Hawaiian islands, and establish himself as the king. Kamehameha’s rise to power is complicated by the arrival of the British explorer Captain James Cook and the two ships under his command. This is the first time the islanders have ever encountered anyone from the outside world.

The other protagonist in this novel is a roguish young British officer on one of the ships who falls in love with an island girl, deserts the ships, and goes native, eventually winding up involved in Kamehameha’s plan to unite the islands.

As usual in a Whittington novel, the story is fast-paced, colorful, and filled with sex and violence. Not all the characters turn out the way you’d expect, either, and such surprises are always nice. Never having studied Kamehameha or Captain Cook, I don’t know how historically accurate the book is, but it’s definitely a good yarn, which is all I was looking for.

The only real flaw in ISLAND OF KINGS is the head-scratcher of an ending, which reads like Whittington ran out of time, energy, or both. Despite that, it’s an entertaining, fast-moving novel, and worth reading despite being a definite notch or two below Whittington’s great suspense novels and Westerns.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on March 26, 2010. After almost 15 years, I no longer remember the ending, but I do recall where I bought the book and where I read it. Funny the things that stick in the mind. This novel is long out of print and has never been reprinted, as far as I know, but used copies are out there and don't seem too expensive, if you're a Whittington fan and want to check it out.)

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: White Indian - Donald Clayton Porter (Noel Gerson)

Since yesterday was Thanksgiving, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look at a novel that has a connection to the Pilgrims, although it’s set somewhat later. WHITE INDIAN is the first book in what started out as the Colonization of America series. It opens in 1685, several generations after the founding of the first English colony in North America. Settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony have established an outpost known as Fort Springfield in the valley of the Connecticut River, but they have to worry constantly about Indian attacks, and with good reason. During one such raid by Seneca warriors, a young couple named Jed and Minnie Harper are killed, and their infant son is carried off by the Seneca chief Ghonka, who adopts the boy, names him Renno, and raises him to be a great warrior.

That’s just the beginning of this novel, which follows Renno to manhood. Like Tarzan, he comes to realize that he’s different from those who have raised him. Also like Tarzan, he’s the biggest, fastest, strongest bad-ass in the jungle – I mean forest – and eventually allies himself with the English while still maintaining his ties to the Seneca. He fights on the side of the English during clashes with the French, who are also trying to establish colonies in North America, and starts a long-running feud with a Frenchman who’s so evil he practically twirls his mustache. Like most of the historical fiction produced by the book packaging company Book Creations Inc., WHITE INDIAN and its sequels contain a heaping helping of soap opera to go along with plenty of colorful and sweeping action. Sometimes the historical accuracy was less than rigorous, but the editorial policy at BCI was “Never let history get in the way of a good story.” And BCI was definitely in the business of turning out good stories.

Now here’s the background of this series, for those of you who are interested. “Donald Clayton Porter”, the author of this book, was actually Noel Gerson, who was also the original “Dana Fuller Ross”. Gerson wrote a number of historical novels over the years, under his own names and those two house-names, as well as the pseudonym Bruce Lancaster and possibly others. His style is pretty unmistakable, no matter what name is on the book. His prose is a little clunky in places and sometimes he skimped on the action scenes, but he possessed the true storyteller’s knack of getting the reader to keep turning the pages. There’s also a mild edge of sexual kinkiness in many of his books, and it shows up in the White Indian novels as well. Renno has a habit of deflowering most of the beautiful English virgins he meets, and then his sidekicks among the colonists marry them and everybody is happy.

When the series began in 1979, following on the success of John Jakes’ Kent Family Chronicles and Gerson’s Wagons West novels as Dana Fuller Ross (both BCI series), it was known as the Colonization of America series, as noted above. But within three or four books, it became the White Indian series, and subsequent reprints of the early books carried that name instead. I suspect this was because someone at BCI or the publisher, Bantam, realized that readers were asking for more of those White Indian books, rather than using the more cumbersome original title. The series ran for 28 books, most of them featuring descendants of the original Renno (the longest-lasting hero in the series was also named Renno), and the books continued to appear until the mid-Nineties. Gerson wrote the first twelve, Hugh Zachary wrote #13 through #26, and BCI editor Paul Block authored the final two books in the series, which are collectible now because the series had pretty low print runs by that time. Zachary took over at least two other BCI series in mid-stream, THE AUSTRALIANS under the name William Stuart Long (originated by Vivian Long) and CHILDREN OF THE LION, published under the house-name Peter Danielson (originally George Warren). The Donald Clayton Porter name was also used on the stand-alone novel PONY EXPRESS, which I believe was by Gerson, and the short-lived Winning the West series, written probably by Gene Shelton, although Zachary may have contributed to it, as well.

As for my own connection with all this, I worked for BCI, too, and while I wrote six books as Dana Fuller Ross (the Wagons West prequels known as The Frontier Trilogy and The Empire Trilogy), I was never Donald Clayton Porter. I did one book as Peter Danielson, the final book in the Children of the Lion series. At its high point, BCI was a great place to work, with excellent editors, and the company turned out a tremendous amount of top-notch historical and Western yarns during the Seventies, Eighties, and early Nineties. If you’ve never sampled any of their series, WHITE INDIAN would be a fine place to start.

(This post originally appeared on November 27, 2009. I meant to read the rest of the White Indian series someday, but you know me. I haven't gotten around to it. I'd like to read the rest of Gerson's entries, anyway.)

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: King of the World's Edge - H. Warner Munn

Originally serialized in the September through December 1939 issues of WEIRD TALES, H. Warner Munn’s KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE was a prime candidate for reprinting in the Sixties paperback fantasy boom sparked by Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and J.R.R. Tolkien. It features swordplay, magic, and lost civilizations. What else do you need?

Well, an Arthurian angle doesn’t hurt. There’s also a nice framing sequence in which a mysterious bronze cylinder is discovered in Key West following a hurricane, and inside the cylinder there’s an ancient document purportedly written by one Ventidius Varro, a Roman legionnaire posted in Britain at the time of Arthur’s rise to power. Like Jack Whyte’s Camulod novels and the movies THE LAST LEGION and KING ARTHUR, KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE is set during the last days of Roman occupation in Britain, when most of the Roman soldiers are actually second- or third-generation Britons. Ventidius Varro is one of them. Cut off from Rome, these hold-out legionnaires align themselves with Arthur and the enigmatic mage Myrdhinn in order to oppose the invading Saxons and unite the various British tribes. After Arthur’s efforts are crushed and he himself is mortally wounded in battle, Myrdhinn places him in what amounts to suspended animation, hides his body, and then sets sail with a band of legionnaires commanded by Varro in search of a place where they can regroup and figure out a way to retake Britain.

Things don’t work out that way, however. Instead, Myrdhinn and the rest of these British adventurers wind up in a new world far to the west, across the ocean, where they are captured by, escape from, and wind up doing battle with various groups of native tribes. Along the way Varro becomes the staunch ally of a native leader named Hayonwatha, founds his own empire in the new world, and battles to overthrow the evil Mia, who have extended their grasp over the entire continent.

Part of the fun of a book like this is seeing the way Munn comes up with new explanations for all the history and legends of early North America, from Florida up to the Great Lakes, across the continent to the Rocky Mountains and down to Texas. Varro, Myrdhinn, and their friends wander all over and have numerous adventures. The pace is a little slow at times and the writing style is old-fashioned, but after all, the story is being told by Ventidius Varro in a letter intended to be carried back to whatever emperor is currently in power in Rome.

Though it lacks the storytelling power of a yarn by Howard or Burroughs, KING OF THE WORLD’S EDGE is an entertaining, inventive novel with quite a bit of action. Getting the book back in print from Ace was enough to prompt the never prolific Munn to write a sequel, THE SHIP FROM ATLANTIS, almost thirty years after the original. I have that one, too, and hope to read it soon. (I believe both novels were also issued in a combined volume called MERLIN’S GODSON, from Del Rey in the Eighties, but I have the Ace editions.)

Update: Don Herron informs me that there's a third book in the series, MERLIN'S RING, and refers to it as Munn's masterpiece. He also recommends Munn's historical novel THE LOST LEGION. There's two more books for me to look for!

(I'm sure it will come as no surprise to any of you that despite what it says above, I haven't read another word by H. Warner Munn since this post first appeared almost exactly fifteen years ago on November 6, 2009. Will I read more by him in the future? No way of knowing for sure, but at this late date, I wouldn't bet a hat on it.) 

Review: The Pirate and the Lady - Leslie Turner White

Sometimes I’m in the mood for a good, old-fashioned, swashbuckling historical adventure novel. THE PIRATE AND THE LADY by Leslie Turner White, published as a paperback original by Ace Books in 1961, seemed like it might be just what I was looking for. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover is by an artist named Chuck Smith, whose work I’m not familiar with.

The book opens in Cornwall, where the protagonist, a ship’s captain known as Black Anthony Bartholomew, works for the local magistrate, who also happens to be the kingpin of the smuggling ring that’s operating in the area. Tony is also the lover of the magistrate’s insatiable young wife, and that’s what ultimately leads to him being charged unjustly with murder and forced to flee to the colonies. During that voyage, he meets and falls in love with the daughter of an English nobleman who’s being sent to the Caribbean to put a stop to the piracy plaguing the area. The nobleman’s plan includes issuing letters of marque to British sailors so they can hunt down the French and Spanish pirates. This seems like a perfect job for Tony.

Unfortunately, he gets sidetracked to a plantation in Virginia owned by the brother of his former lover back in England. She’s there, too, and expects that she and Tony will take up right where they left off. Tony wants to get to the Caribbean, though, and be reunited with the fair Kathleen, and this leads to no end of trouble.

All this set-up actually takes up too much space in the book, but once Tony finally makes it to the Spanish Main, there’s buccaneering action a-plenty. Capture, escape, sea battles, daring plans, swordfights, even a great sidekick named Half-Arsed Jones. White, whose writing career started in the pulps, seems torn between spinning a breakneck yarn and writing a more sedate, respectable historical novel, albeit one with some spicy plot twists. It’s a combination that works more often than it doesn’t, thankfully.

Although THE PIRATE AND THE LADY looks almost like a romance, there’s actually not much domestic drama in it, mostly in the opening and then very late in the book. I enjoyed this novel quite a bit. It’s short, colorful, and reads quickly. The author, as Leslie T. White, wrote quite a few detective and adventure stories for the pulps before becoming a bestselling novelist as Leslie Turner White. The line “First Book Publication” on the cover of this one might be an indication that it’s an expanded serial or novella from the pulps, but if that’s the case, I couldn’t pin down the source. I think it’s just as likely that White wrote it as an original and then maybe sold it to Ace when it failed to sell to a hardback publisher. Either way, it’s a good yarn and well worth reading if you enjoy vintage historical adventures.

The Last Line - Stephen Ronson

I’m a little bit leery of any book where the protagonist is compared to Jack Reacher. That seems to have been an overdone trend in recent years. On the other hand, how many paperbacks did I buy back in the Sixties and Seventies with “In the Tradition of CONAN!” emblazoned across the front cover? (The answer: a lot.) So I didn’t worry too much about the blurb on THE LAST LINE, the debut novel from Stephen Ronson, and just plunged into the book. I’m glad that I did, because it’s a terrific thriller.

The title is a reference to the phrase “the last line of defense”, and that’s what narrator/protagonist John Cook becomes part of during the summer of 1940 when it appears that France is about to fall to the invading German army and everyone in England expects that Hitler will soon have them in his sights. Most people expect the bombers to show up any time, and no one really holds out much hope that the country will be able to withstand the Nazi onslaught for very long. So Cook, a middle-aged farmer and former soldier during the first World War, is recruited to become part of a planned resistance movement that will try to wreak havoc on the German occupiers. Cook has more skills than most at such things, having fought for British forces in Afghanistance following the end of the World War. He’s a lot more dangerous than he might appear to be at first glance.

The looming threat of the Germans isn’t all Cook has to contend with, however. A young woman is murdered on his property, and he’s the leading suspect in her murder. In the course of trying to clear himself of that charge, he uncovers two dangerous conspiracies that may or may not be linked. Children who have been evacuated from London to the countryside to protect them from the expected bombing have gone missing, and then there’s the matter of what’s being hidden in a locked barn on a neighboring estate. Tragedy, romance, and a lot of gritty, well-written action ensue.

You wouldn’t know this was Ronson’s first novel because he keeps the story racing along with the sure hand of a longtime professional. I’m not an expert on the location or the time period, but the setting and background certainly ring true to me. John Cook is a great narrator/protagonist, plenty tough and smart and sympathetic even though at times he’s not all that likable. The supporting cast is good and the villains suitably creepy. Not everything plays out exactly as I suspected it would, and that’s always good, too.

I stayed up later than usual to finish THE LAST LINE, and as I mentioned recently, it takes a really good book to make me do that. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and hope it’s the first of a series. It’s available in hardback and e-book editions on Amazon.

Hell Strip - Lee Richards (Lee E. Wells)

Art by Lu Kimmel

The year is 1851, and Texas Ranger Dave Fleming is gripped by gold fever. He resigns from the Rangers and heads for Panama, intending to make his way to California and find his fortune in the goldfields. Unfortunately, through a series of misadventures, Dave winds up stranded in that tropical hellhole and goes to work for Marie Hooper, a beautiful redheaded American who owns the biggest saloon, gambling den, and bordello in Panama City. He also makes a bad enemy in Krim Paletz, the owner of a freight line who may well be the mastermind behind the outlaw gang terrorizing the whole country.

Then another former Ranger arrives in Panama, an old friend of Dave’s named Ran Runnels. Runnels, a deadly gunfighter and manhunter, has been recruited by representatives of the American, British, and French governments to bring law and order to Panama, no matter what it takes. He immediately gets Dave to sign on as his second-in-command, and they set out to track down the leaders of Panama’s criminal underworld.

HELL STRIP is a terrific book, a fast-moving blend of Western, historical, and hardboiled crime in an unusual setting. The actual author behind the Lee Richards pseudonym is the old pulpster and paperbacker Lee E. Wells. I read one of Wells’ Rio Kid pulp novels some years ago and thought it was okay, but I wasn’t impressed enough to seek out any more of his novels. Clearly, based on this Gold Medal paperback from 1955, that was a mistake. It could be that Wells just wasn’t all that well-suited to write a pulp series character. That’s been true with other authors I’ve encountered. But he sure spins a great yarn here.

In addition to the intrigue and gunplay and strong, likable protagonist, there’s a well-done romantic triangle, some harrowing scenes in a Panamanian prison, and a vivid rendering of the exotic setting. Wells even gives the reader a slight plot twist late in the book that’s effective even if it’s not really surprising, and the ending is very satisfying. This would have made a great 1950s movie with Clint Walker playing Dave, Audie Murphy as Runnels, Rhonda Fleming as Marie, and maybe John Dehner as the sinister Krim Paletz.

Even though HELL STRIP doesn’t break any new ground other than the Panama setting, Wells did such a good job spinning his yarn that it doesn’t matter. I had a wonderful time reading this book. Somewhat surprisingly, there’s an inexpensive e-book edition of it available on Amazon. If you’re a fan of hardboiled Westerns, I give it a very high recommendation.

D'Artagnan - H. Bedford-Jones

I’ve been a fan of the Three Musketeers for a long time, ever since I bought the Whitman edition of the novel when I was a kid and read it. I read the Classics Illustrated comic book version, too, and over the years I’ve watched and enjoyed most of the movie versions. I really liked the BBC TV series from a few years back and that’s how I see the characters in my head now.

So when I was in the mood to read a swashbuckler recently, I picked up D'ARTAGNAN, a pastiche sequel to the original, written by one of my favorite authors, H. Bedford-Jones. It was published originally as a three-part serial in the pulp ADVENTURE in September and October of 1928 and reprinted several years ago by Altus Press.

Set approximately a year after the events in THE THREE MUSKETEERS, this novel is supposedly, according to Bedford-Jones, expanded from an unpublished manuscript by Alexandre Dumas. ADVENTURE plays that up on the cover of the issue containing the first installment of the serial. However, according to the Fictionmags Index, the only material by Dumas is a one-page excerpt from an article that has nothing to do with the book itself. No matter. D’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are back, protecting Queen Anne of France from the schemes of the evil Cardinal Richelieu, although D’Artagnan does most of the heavy lifting in this book, befitting the title. Aramis is wounded and barely shows up. Athos and Porthos are busy with other things for most of the first half, although they play major roles in the second half of the book.

The plot, which involves various rings used for identification, missing documents and letters, wild coincidence after wild coincidence, ambushes, swordfights, disguises, and a mysterious child, is almost impossible to summarize. All the political intrigue is so complicated that I’m still not sure I understood everything that was going on. But again, no matter. D’Artagnan and his friends gallop hither and yon and save the day. That’s all that’s really important.

Bedford-Jones’ prose is a little more flowery than usual, which I suppose is understandable since he was writing a Dumas pastiche, and the plot, as I mentioned, is downright murky. But the action scenes, and there are a lot of them, are great. The final climactic battle, in which D’Artagnan, Athos, and Porthos face overwhelming odds in a French tavern, is just terrific, the sort of thing that would have had me bouncing up and down in my chair in suspense and excitement if I’d read this when I was a kid.

The good stuff far outweighs the weaker bits in D’ARTAGNAN. I had a great time reading it. If you’re a Three Musketeers fan like me or just enjoy a good swashbuckler, you should definitely give it a try. It’s available in paperback and e-book editions on Amazon.

The Horse - James Ciccone

James Ciccone is the author of two critically acclaimed Western novels, A GOOD DAY TO DIE and STAGECOACH JUSTICE. His latest book, THE HORSE, is quite a departure from his previous books. Set mostly in Saratoga, New York, in 1863, it’s a historical/psychological thriller/horror novella centered around the world of horse racing.

The protagonist/narrator of this story is a horse trainer named Alexander Whitfield Holmes, who enters into a partnership with wealthy Charles Ogden Tripps to buy and train a filly named Lizzie W for the racing game. Things go bad between the partners, which leads to a horrific murder. The rest of the novella concerns the aftereffects of that crime as they spread out like ripples in the lives of several characters. It’s not a mystery—the reader knows right away what’s going to happen and who is responsible—but what we don’t know is how the various angles of the tragedy are going to unfold.

This story is deliberately old-fashioned in its prose—Ciccone does a superb job of capturing the texture and pace of 19th Century fiction—but harrowingly modern in its depiction of evil and the depths to which human beings can sink. It’s definitely not an easy book to read, although it becomes more so after the killing takes place. But it’s also very much worth reading because it’s one of the most compelling portraits I’ve encountered of a character who is both sympathetic and despicable at the same time. Because of the graphic violence, THE HORSE probably isn’t for everyone, but I found myself unable to put it down and give it a high recommendation. It's available in paperback and e-book editions.

Lysander - F. van Wyck Mason

LYSANDER is a historical adventure novel by F. van Wyck Mason published as a paperback original by Pocket Books in 1957 with a cover by James Meese. That's my copy in the scan. Mason was an old pulpster, of course, and this novel is an expansion of his serial “Lysander of Chios” serialized in ARGOSY in June and July of 1935. Set in the ancient world, it’s the story of how Lysander, the young king of the conquered island nation of Chios, sets out with a small band of allies to wage a guerrilla war against the Persian Empire. Daring exploits, tragedy, and romance ensue until Lysander and his friends find themselves part of Alexander the Great’s army and Lysander is able to fulfill the vow of vengeance he took. Mason packs plenty of history into his tale, which results in it being a little dry and slow in places. Mason the pulp yarn-spinner was great; Mason the mainstream historical novelist isn’t quite as much to my taste. But his books are still worth reading and this one is no exception. There are plenty of great battle scenes and Lysander is a likable protagonist. Not having read the pulp version, I suspect it’s better, but this is still a good book.

The E. Hoffmann Price Spicy Adventure Megapack - E. Hoffmann Price

Thank goodness for the Spicy pulps! I don’t know of a better cure for the reading funks in which I sometimes find myself, when I don’t have the attention span to tackle a novel and none of them I have on hand appeal to me, anyway. But a Spicy pulp yarn that I can read in half an hour or less . . . yeah, now that I can handle.

For a while now I’ve been working my way through THE E. HOFFMANN PRICE SPICY ADVENTURE MEGAPACK, reading stories between other things. Price is a long-time favorite of mine, one of those writers who could tackle almost any genre and do a good job of it. The stories in this collection certainly provide a wide variety in their subject matter:

“Satan’s Daughter”, SPICY MYSTERY STORIES, January 1936 – Ancient evil in a Middle Eastern archeology dig

“Pit of Madness”, SPICY MYSTERY STORIES, April 1936 – Devil worshippers in Paris

“The Walking Dead”, SPICY MYSTERY STORIES, November 1935 – Zombies (what else?) in the Louisiana swamps

“Every Man a King”, SPEED ADVENTURE STORIES, November 1943 – Political intrigue and civil war in 14^th Century Samarkand

“Revolt of the Damned”, SPICY-ADVENTURE STORIES, March 1937 – Drug smuggling and gang war along the California-Mexico border.

“Crystal Clues”, SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES, August 1936 – Hardboiled detective yarn set at a hot springs resort featuring hotel dick Cliff Cragin (which I first read as Cliff Clavin, which would have been a totally different story . . . but not necessarily a bad one).

“Night in Manila”, SPICY-ADVENTURE STORIES, November 1935 – A two-fisted Yank soldier goes undercover to bust up a smuggling ring in the Philippines.

“Murder Salvage”, SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES, April 1941 – Private eye yarn featuring Price’s series character Honest John Carmody tangling with murder and a stolen car racket.

“Triangle With Variations”, SPICY DETECTIVE STORIES, August 1935 – A man is murdered, and the man who’s in love with his wife sets out to find the killer.

“Scourge of the Silver Dragon”, GOLD SEAL DETECTIVE, December 1935 – A G-Man goes undercover to bust up an opium smuggling ring in California and Arizona.

“Drink or Draw”, SPEED WESTERN STORIES, December 1943, and “She Herded Him Around”, SPICY WESTERN STORIES, February 1941 – These are entries in Price’s long-running series of humorous, tall-tale Western yarns about wandering gunfighter Simon Bolivar Grimes.

“You Can’t Fight a Woman”, SPICY WESTERN STORIES, January 1939 – Starts out as a Romeo-and-Juliet/cattlemen vs. nesters story, becomes a chase the bad guys to El Paso story before circling back to the original plot.

“Short-Cut to Hell”, THRILLING ADVENTURES, January 1939 – A wagon train yarn featuring drifting peddler/tinker Saul Epstein, who appeared in three other stories by Price. Epstein is a supporting character in this one and I suspect in the other stories with him, as well.
 
Of course, some of these stories are better than others. Here are some highlights.

Despite being a novelette, “Revolt of the Damned” is a hardboiled, large-cast mini-epic about the drug trade along the border with enough plot for a full-length novel. It rockets along from character to character at a breakneck pace in a yarn filled with double-crosses, revenge, brutal murders, and an apocalyptic climax. This is just a terrific story, one of the best things I’ve ever read by Price.

“Murder Salvage” is the first of Price’s Honest John Carmody stories I’ve read. A private detective who got his nickname because he was a cop who got kicked off the force for not going along with corruption, he’s a good character and I’d happily read more about him. This particular story has a nice, twisty plot and good supporting characters.

“Triangle With Variations” has a good twist with the protagonist who’s in love with a married woman setting out to find her husband’s murderer so that he can pursue her in good conscience. Note that Price’s first published story, which appeared in the June 1924 issue of DROLL STORIES, is also called “Triangle With Variations”, but it’s a totally different story.

“Scourge of the Silver Dragon” is a solid action tale with a confusing but interesting bit of business in it: the sinister criminal mastermind and the type of opium that he’s smuggling are both known as the Silver Dragon. Plenty of good shootouts and fistfights in this one.

I read all the Simon Bolivar Grimes stories years ago, including “Drink or Draw” and “She Herded Him Around”, and even wrote the introduction to a collection of some of them, so I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t reread them this time around. But the Grimes series is consistently entertaining and well worth reading. If you haven’t tried them, you should pick up NOMAD’S TRAIL from Black Dog Books, the collection I just mentioned.

“You Can’t Fight a Woman” is interesting because, in addition to being a well-written, action-packed yarn, one of the characters mentions being from Cross Plains, Texas. I’m sure nearly all the readers of SPICY WESTERN STORIES read right past that, but it jumped out at me, of course, since Cross Plains was the home of Price’s friend Robert E. Howard, who had been gone five years at the time this story was written. A nice Easter egg in a good story. (Price, as you’ll recall, was the only person to meet REH, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith in person.)

“Short-Cut to Hell” has a small romance element, but it’s really not a spicy yarn, which isn’t a surprise considering that it appeared originally in THRILLING ADVENTURES. But this story of a wagon train journey and the dangers along the way has a nice epic feel, and the character of Saul Epstein is a good one, serving as sidekick and behind the scenes manipulator much the same way as John Solomon in that series by H. Bedford-Jones. This is an excellent story and shows that Price could write a serious, hardboiled Western when he wanted to.

Overall, THE E. HOFFMANN PRICE SPICY ADVENTURE MEGAPACK is a top-notch collection full of fast-paced, entertaining stories. Well worth the time to read, and it makes me glad that I have several other megapacks of Price’s work on my Kindle, ready for the next time I need one of them.