The Faust Award

IAMTW’s 2024 Grandmaster and Faust Award Winner

With great pleasure, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers presents the 2024 Faust Award for Grandmaster to James Reasoner.

A veteran writer with over four decades in the publishing industry, James Reasoner has written more than 350 novels and more than 100 short stories. Although perhaps best known for westerns, he has written across many genres from mystery to fantasy to science fiction. In addition, he’s penned essays, articles and reviews. He has contributed tie-in novels to the following series: Abilene, Longarm, Lone Star, Trailsman, Cody’s Law, Wagons West, Wind River, Stagecoach Station, and Tales from Deadwood. His non‑western tie-ins include The Dead Man series, Kolchak, and Walker Texas Ranger.

This is a tremendous honor, and I’m very pleased and proud to be considered a grandmaster of tie-in fiction. My history with tie-ins as a reader goes back to the Whitman juveniles and Big Little Books of the Fifties and Sixties. I loved reading about Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Leave It to Beaver, Spin and Marty, and all the other TV shows and movies that served as the basis for those books. Those were the first tie-in novels I read, although nobody used that term then. They were just books that I enjoyed.

Then, almost 60 years ago, I went into Buddies’ Grocery and picked up an Ace paperback called The Man From U.N.C.L.E., written by somebody named Michael Avallone. From that point on, I picked up everything I could find by Avallone, and many of them were tie-in novels and movie novelizations. The Get Smart novels by William Johnston were also early favorites. I couldn’t tell you how many tie-in books I read over the years, but there were a lot.

As a writer, I had been in the business for only a little more than a year when Sam Merwin Jr., the editor of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE, who had been buying short stories from me, asked me to try my hand at one of the Mike Shayne novellas that were published in the magazine under the house-name Brett Halliday. As Sam put it, “they run 20,000 words and pay a flat, lousy $300.” Three hundred bucks didn’t seem so lousy to me, so I told him, sure, I’d love to, and he sent me a copy of the Mike Shayne bible, which he had put together for the series’ writers. I didn’t really need it; I’d been reading the original Mike Shayne novels by Davis Dresser (the original Brett Halliday) for years and was a big fan of the series.

Sam also said for me not to worry too much about the details, just to get the story down and he’d fix anything I got wrong. As far as I could tell when I compared the published story (“Death in Xanadu”, MSMM, December 1978) with my original, he changed one word in the manuscript.

That was my first try at writing characters and settings created by other authors, and I knew right away that I had a knack for it. Since then, series work has made up the vast majority of my writing. Some highlights: Being asked to write a couple of Lone Ranger stories. The Ranger was probably my first hero. I never missed the TV show on Saturday mornings when I was a kid. Almost as exciting was writing a Green Hornet story. Inside the grown man typing that story was the eight-year-old kid who stayed up ‘way past his bedtime sneak-listening on a transister radio to syndicated reruns of the radio shows featuring the Green Hornet and the Lone Rangers. (The Shadow was in that same package and I’ve never written a Shadow story, but maybe one of these days.) I never missed an episode of Kolchak, the Night Stalker, and writing a Kolchak story was a great opportunity. One day my editor at Berkley called and asked if I was familiar with the TV show Walker, Texas Ranger. I answered honestly that not only had I seen every episode of the series, I could sing the theme song. Luckily, I didn’t have to sing, but within minutes I was on a conference call with Chuck Norris’s brother Aaron and a couple of CBS executives in New York, and I had the job of writing three novels based on the series. Those of you who have worked on tie-in projects for properties that you love as a fan know how much pure fun it can be.

My thanks to everyone in the IAMTW. I can’t express how much I appreciate this award, but I’m truly grateful for it.

Forgotten Books: Station Six - Sahara -- Michael Avallone

I remember when this book came out, as well as the movie on which it’s based, even though I never saw the movie and never read the novelization until now. I remember them because they both came out in 1964, when I was eleven years old, and that artwork featuring Carroll Baker was on the movie poster as well as the book cover. Yowza!


And since I never saw the movie, I can only judge STATION SIX – SAHARA as a novel. I’m happy to report that it’s pretty good. The story opens with German engineer Martin Donetz arriving at the Medina Oil Company Pumping Station Six, somewhere deep in the Sahara Desert. The station is manned – and I mean that literally – by several guys of various nationalities, all of whom are at each other’s throats due to the monotony and isolation of their existence. Another German, Kramer, is in charge of the station. There’s a wisecracking Australian, a stiff-necked former British Army officer, and an enigmatic Spaniard, plus some assorted Arabs. The first half of the book gives us back-stories and a steadily increasing sense of tension, then a beautiful blonde and her possibly sinister ex-husband show up to make all hell break loose.


Well, it never quite does, but there’s some nice suspense anyway. The legendary Michael Avallone plays it pretty straight here, as he did in most of his novelizations. There’s no sign of the goofy Avallone humor you find in the Ed Noon novels. Old pro that he was, he keeps the plot moving along briskly, or as briskly as he can considering the somewhat stodgy storyline he was handed. The movie itself was written by British authors Bryan Forbes and Brian Clemens (who worked on THE AVENGERS, among other iconic British TV series), and in a sign of how times have changed, the copyright of the novelization is in the names of Avallone, Forbes, and Clemens, rather than Allied Artists, the movie production company.


This is a fairly entertaining novel, not a classic by any means but worth reading. And it’s got that great cover art. Well, it was great when I was eleven years old.

Slattery's Hurricane -- Herman Wouk

SLATTERY’S HURRICANE is something of an oddity in the career of Herman Wouk. It’s usually not included in the lists of his novels, and I’d never even heard of it until I happened to run across a copy at Half Price Books recently. As it turns out, this paperback original published in 1956 is a novelization of a 1949 movie based on a story by Wouk that was published in the slick magazine AMERICAN. Why there was a seven-year gap between the movie and the novelization, I have no idea.

I’ve never seen the movie, at least not that I recall, but I’ve read the book now and it’s pretty darned good. It’s definitely a Forties-style drama. Navy pilot Will Slattery is passed over for the medal he deserves for sinking a Japanese ship because his squadron leader lies about what happens and claims the honor for himself. Embittered by this experience, after the war Slattery goes to work as a private pilot for a mysterious millionaire and becomes pretty much of a heel, indulging in a series of meaningless love affairs and ignoring the fact that his boss is probably a shady character of some sort. Meanwhile Slattery’s best friend and fellow pilot “Hobby” Hobson stays in the Navy and becomes a hurricane chaser, helping to track the big storms that develop in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida. Hobby also has a beautiful young wife, and when Slattery meets her, sparks fly between them.

Well, if you’ve ever seen very many movies from the Forties, you can predict just about everything that’s going to happen in this novel, from the romantic triangle to the criminal goings-on to the giant hurricane that’s bearing down on Miami before the book is over. It’s the same sort of glossy soap opera that was popular during that era. I thoroughly enjoyed the book anyway because I’m a sucker for that sort of stuff. The movie starred Richard Widmark, Veronica Lake, and Linda Darnell. That should tell some of you all you need to know about the novelization, except for the fact that it’s well worth reading if you should happen to find a copy.

My reading of Herman Wouk’s work has been spotty. I’ve never attempted to get through his giant bestselling historical novels like THE WINDS OF WAR and WAR AND REMEMBRANCE. But I have read his fine early novel THE CITY BOY and his first big success THE CAINE MUTINY and an often overlooked novel from the early Sixties called DON’T STOP THE CARNIVAL (which should have ended one chapter sooner than it did). I read YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE, his novel about a Thomas Wolfe-like novelist, and loved it. I might even reread YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE one of these days, although I probably won’t because it’s so long. I keep picking up a large print copy of MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR at the local library and being tempted to check it out, but again, it’s so blasted long that I haven’t tried to read it yet.
I’m glad I read SLATTERY’S HURRICANE, though. It’s a lot of fun.

Morgan the Pirate -- Robert Carse

I wrote this review a good while ago for Juri Nummelin's magazine PULP and meant to post it on here once it had been published, but . . . I forgot. So here it is now.

Following up on his roles in the internationally successful films HERCULES and HERCULES UNCHAINED, in 1961 actor Steve Reeves took on the role of pirate captain Henry Morgan, who put together one of the largest forces of buccaneers ever to sail the Spanish Main and led a massive raid on Panama before ultimately being knighted by King Charles II. The real Henry Morgan’s life has served as the basis for numerous books and films, including John Steinbeck’s first novel, CUP OF GOLD. The novel MORGAN THE PIRATE, by veteran pulp author Robert Carse, is the novelization of Reeves’ 1961 film.

I remember seeing this movie when it was first released, but I haven’t seen it since then and have no real memory of it. So I approached Carse’s novel as if it had no connection with the film and read it strictly as a piece of historical fiction. In that respect, it works quite well part of the time, but not at others.

Most of the book deals with Morgan’s early activities in the Caribbean and Central America. Sold into indentured servitude in England because his family fell out of favor politically, he winds up working as a slave on a plantation, eventually escapes, falls in with a pretty incompetent bunch of pirates, gets captured, survives the tortures of the local Inquisition, falls in love with the daughter of the Spanish colonial governor, escapes again, and finally winds up leading his own band of pirates. This section of the novel is well-written and fast-moving and provides a vivid contrast between the pampered life of the Spanish rulers and the harsh existence of the natives in Panama.

Unfortunately, the section of the novel concerning Morgan’s actual career as a pirate and then a privateer sailing under a letter of marque from the King of England gets cut short. The action is rushed, the writing is flat, and the ending of the book is almost totally lacking in drama. I don’t know if Carse simply ran out of room and/or energy, or if this is the way the movie was written and he was forced to follow the screenplay. Whatever the reason, MORGAN THE PIRATE is about three-fourths of a pretty good historical novel. Unfortunately, that last fourth drags down the overall effect of the book.

Carse had a long career as a pulp author, beginning in 1928. His stories appeared frequently in ARGOSY, one of the leading pulp magazines, as well as in slicks like THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. After the collapse of the pulp industry, he wrote quite a few swashbuckling historical novels that appeared as paperback originals and several books of historical non-fiction, usually dealing with ships and sailing. I suppose it was these credits that got him the job of writing the MORGAN THE PIRATE novelization. It is reminiscent in places of Carse’s best pulp work but in the end falls considerably short of that standard.