Secret Agent X is back, this time facing “Death’s Frozen Formula” in a yarn of the same name from the February 1937 issue of the Agent’s pulp magazine. This one was penned by G.T. Fleming-Roberts, probably the most hardboiled member of the stable of scribes that wrote the Secret Agent X novels. It shows, because this is a grim, gritty crime story that has the Agent taking on a drug ring rather than a mad scientist with some super-weapon that threatens the security of the entire country.
Roberts doesn’t pull any punches in his descriptions of the damage being done by the hard drugs dealt by the criminals in this novel, and although he threatens to veer off into REEFER MADNESS territory a few times, he never really does. For the most part, it’s pretty serious stuff as a number of characters die, including some that I didn’t expect. The action scenes and the death traps from which the Agent escapes are fairly realistic, too.
There is a super-weapon, of course, a method of instantly freezing somebody that almost does in the Agent and his friends on several occasions. And there are some bizarre monsters, too, but really, the secret behind them is pretty easy to figure out. These elements are almost afterthoughts, as if Fleming-Roberts felt he had to work in a few hero pulp conventions somehow. The mean streets stuff makes up most of the novel, though, and it’s in these sections that Fleming-Roberts’ writing really shines. For that reason, “Death’s Frozen Formula” goes in the top rank of the Secret Agent X novels I’ve read so far. Pretty good cover on the pulp, too, depicting a scene from the story.
This one will soon be available as an inexpensive reprint from Beb Books.
Two more books from our backlist have been released as e-books for both the Kindle and the Nook. My novel THE WILDERNESS ROAD, originally published by Harper Paperbacks, is a frontier historical set in Kentucky in 1790. Despite this, the cover of the Harper edition features a cowboy who's a dead ringer for Charles Bronson in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST carrying a Winchester. Of course, who am I to argue, since it sold the best of the eight books I wrote for Harper. It's nice to have it available again, since I always thought it was one of my best books.
Livia's GHOST RIVER is one of several Westerns that originally came out in hardback from M. Evans under the name L.J. Washburn. That's the only edition until now, and it's also very nice to have it available again. It's a stand-alone traditional Western, and none other than Len Meares, the author of the iconic Larry and Stretch series under the name Marshall Grover, read it and declared it one of the best Westerns he'd ever read.
Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway) I highly recommend you check 'em both out.
When did you discover crime fiction? Did it have the same amazing effect on you as it did me?
I remember the night well. I had just graduated college and was at the local (now closed) Borders looking for something to read. I had grown up on a steady diet of action/adventure and spy novels, but had lately grown tired of the formula and wanted to find something new. I had no idea what “new” would be, and it came in the form of a book called Cold Caller by Jason Starr. The book is about a telemarketer who murders his boss. I had worked through college as a telemarketer, and I had wanted to murder my boss countless times! He was a skinny four-eyed weasel exiled to our office from the corporate headquarters in Texas (ie, the Lone Star State couldn’t stand him!) and he wasn’t so much a hard task master as he was annoying. While we were on the phones, he’d always shout out mini “pep talks” that were distracting, generic, and irritating—especially when we were trying to sell stuff. If I had murdered him and had to explain my actions to a judge, I would have said, “Your Honor, he always yelled out ‘You’re a Super Star!’ or ‘It’s Time to Smile and Dial!’ at the top of his voice, in that twangy accent, and it finally made me snap.” The judge would have determined that no crime had been committed.
So I bought Starr’s book and took it home. I finished it in three days. For the first time, I had read a thriller featuring people I knew. Maybe I didn’t know them literally, but I knew people that were like the people in the book. I didn’t know people like the protagonist, and I suppose it should scare me that I identified with him so well, but don’t we all love Lou Ford? Of course we do!
It was a revelation. Up until then, I thought all fiction was made up of superheroes that in no way resembled the average person. Jason Starr proved otherwise.
Shortly after I went back to the (now closed) Borders and bought a whole stack of books which my buddy at the store called “a whirlwind tour through modern hard-boiled.” I hit the used bookstores, too, and my bookshelves overflowed. Spillane. Collins. Stark. Hammett. Leonard. McBain. Thompson. Goodis. Rabe. Brewer. Short story anthologies (RIP, Mr. Greenberg). A book called Bag Men by John Flood which brought tears to my eyes. I read everything by Lawrence Block that I could find. I found out Starr wasn’t the only one writing about people I recognized, and soon decided that I needed to quit writing about Bonds and Blondes and Bombs and write crime fiction.
My first foray into the world of hard-boiled crime was the just-published Bullet for One, which I wrote between 1999 and 2001. A very much Spillane-inspired private eye tale, it was a pulp potboiler that in no way resembled what I had envisioned. I was writing about my streets and my town but the characters were the usual superheroes that in no way resembled real people. A couple of rewrites put it into shape, but the market was so swamped with private eye novels that I didn’t think mine would make a dent. I threw it in a drawer and wrote other crime novels.
Ten years later…
I’m doing this Kindle thing, you see, and went through my archives to find out if there was anything that could be uploaded to Amazon. “Hmmm,” I thought, “Bullet for One is the most promising but it needs a good edit (if by ‘good edit’ you mean ‘I chopped 50 pages of worthless material’)”. I handed it to my editor and said, “Be ruthless. I wrote this when I was 25.” He came back a month later and said he liked it so much that he wanted to see a sequel.
My “good edit” and the effort made back in 2001 turned this pulp potboiler into a noir thriller about the futility of revenge. All of the usual characters are present, but portrayed, I am told, in a more realistic light than the usual pulp story. And while it may have been “easy” for Spillane and Hammer, I assure you that it is not easy for John Coburn. What happens in this book will follow him into the next. I guess that means I will write a sequel.
After ten years and a lot of sweat I am proud to make this novel available.
I hope you check it out and enjoy it.
And, by the way, if you have not had the pleasure, go read Cold Caller and John Flood’s Bag Men. They didn’t get the recognition I think they deserve, and you will be blown away. They are amazing books.
(This post originally appeared in slightly different form on April 19, 2005, also a Tuesday, by the way. Bill Crider wrote an Overlooked Movies post about this one a while back.)
I’ve finished watching the serial UNDERSEA KINGDOM, got through this one pretty quickly.It’s fast-moving, with lots of things happening in every episode, even though some of them don't make much (or any) sense. Some quick impressions:
Most of the cliffhangers are real cheats, so blatant that they bothered even me, and I’m normally pretty forgiving about things like that. The plausibility of the cliffhangers was one reason I was so impressed with ZORRO’S FIGHTING LEGION.
Ray Corrigan must have been one heck of a good sport to run around for half the serial in what looks like gold-spangled swimming trunks and a goofy helmet with a huge metal fin on it.
If Atlantis is located in a giant dome on the ocean floor, where does all the bright sunlight come from? (I know, I know, I shouldn’t ask questions like that.)
The plucky kid sidekick, played by Lee Van Atta, is actually one of the most competent characters in the story. He saves the day several times.
The plucky girl reporter, played by Lois Wilde, has nothing to do and has zero chemistry with Corrigan, so she’s not even a decent romantic interest.
I’d swear that Monte Blue, who plays the villainous Unga Khan, was hung over for at least half the filming. But John Merton, who usually played a villain, actually plays a good guy in this one (albeit a reformed villain) and does a fine job of it.
Smiley Burnette was an okay Western sidekick – never Gabby Hayes level, of course, but not bad – but he’s totally wasted here and only appears in about three or four episodes. And unless I missed something, it was never explained how he and the other comedy relief, Frankie Marvin, escaped from the villains after they were captured early on.
Lots of good miniature work and special effects by the Lydecker brothers. I’m still shocked by how much the Atlantean flying warship looks like the original Enterprise. I have to wonder if whoever designed the Enterprise back in the Sixties had seen this serial.
There are some really nice battle scenes, too, some on horseback and some when the minions of Unga Khan lay siege to the Sacred City and finally scale the walls on ladders, much like the Mexican army attacking the Alamo. Even though the rival armies seemed to number no more than twenty men on either side, they made it look like a bigger battle. Yeah, the robots were clunky, the tank-like Juggernaut was laughable, and the high-tech weaponry didn’t look believable, but there was so much enthusiasm I was able to suspend my disbelief without too much trouble.
All in all, silly but very enjoyable.
With a title like an old Gold Medal novel and a cover that shows some vintage paperback influence, I expected to like DIE, LOVER, DIE, the latest round-robin e-book by the members of the Top Suspense Group. And sure enough, I did. Here’s what the promo materials have to say about the story:
“Lauren Blaine is on the run...fleeing across the country, pursued by a pack of ruthless, skilled, and psychopathic killers.
That's because she's dumped her husband and he hasn't taken it well.
Of course, he might have taken it better if he wasn't a major drug dealer with a gale-force temper... and if she hadn't run off with all of his cash.
Now she's marked-for-death, a moving target for every mercenary, hitman, and sadist in the midwest.
What they don't know is that Lauren is nobody's victim... she's a resourceful, brave, and cunning woman who won't go down without a fight.
This is 10,000 words of non-stop action, violence and sex...a wild ride like nothing else you've read before...from twelve masters of suspense, who teamed up to write this rollicking story 250 rapid-fire words at a time, tag-team style, without an outline, without knowing what was coming next. The result is a pure, literary adrenaline rush.”
When they say “10,000 words of non-stop action, violence, and sex”, they ain’t kiddin’, folks. It’s incredibly entertaining, too, and is best read in one sitting if you want to get the full effect. And here’s the best part: I don’t think the story is over yet. The ending is all set up for a sequel, and I, for one, can’t wait. Highly recommended.
A number of years ago Livia wrote a novel for a series of heartwarming Americana romances published by Berkley. It was called MENDING FENCES, and it centers around the Fence-Cutting War in Brown County, Texas during the 1880s. My family is from Brown and Comanche counties, so I've heard about the Fence-Cutting War all my life. My dad told me that some of the fences that got cut are still there, so we drove down to take a look at them and research the area. The result was a novel that may be a heartwarming romance, but it's also a Western and has some nice gunslinging action in it. And it's one of the few novels set in the tiny real-life town of Zephyr, Texas, for those of you who knew where that is. (I know there's at least one of you familiar with the Brownwood area.) Anyway, I thought this was a fine book and it's available now for both the Kindle and the Nook, so check it out.
NAM: Things That Weren't True and Other Stories
some funny ~ some sad
The thirty-seven stories in this sometimes harrowing, sometimes hilarious collection look back at the Vietnam War from a distance of over forty years. It is derived of the author's Vietnam War experience, and adds the perspectives of not only the soldiers themselves, but also their children, spouses, siblings, parents, friends.
This is hardly just another batch of macho war stories. These short fictions, most of them memoir-based, neither glorify nor excuse war. They are, instead, an eloquent testament to the tragic lunacy of war.
Nothing comparable to this collection exists within the literature growing out of the Vietnam War.
Excerpts of reviews for NAM:
"Rob McGowan’s stories have the energy and grip of a pit bull... But the risks any reader takes in entering such tightly leashed tales will be copiously rewarded."
— Brian Bedard, author of the story collection, Grieving on the Run.
"Reading these stories from NAM brings back the heart of the war for all to see and hear. I am a fan of McGowan's work because, even when it’s impossible to know from your own experience whether a story is factually accurate, you know very well that the story is true, really true."
— Carol Brightman, editor of the influential underground Viet-Report during the late 1960s.
"The tales in NAM: Things That Weren’t True and Other Stories approach their troubling subject from all sides, chipping away at the mysterious monolith that was the American war. In this collection, Robert McGowan displays remarkable range and depth."
— Stewart O’Nan, eminent American novelist and editor of the anthology, The Vietnam Reader.
"This collection is unique... a narrative imbued in turn with brutal frankness, pathos, irony, and the blackest of humor. The author’s sense of place is palpable; his eye for detail crazy-clear; his ear for dialogue both true and great fun."
— Susan O’Neill, an Army nurse in Vietnam (1969) and author of the Vietnam War story collection, Don’t Mean Nothing.
(NAM is published by Meridian Star Press, an imprint of the great Murder Slim Press and is an impressive debut for this new line.)
Sometimes, like when I read CAST IN DARK WATERS by Ed Gorman and Tom Piccirilli a few weeks ago, you’re just in the mood for a good pirate yarn. Although very different from the Gorman and Piccirilli book, J. Allan Dunn’s THE SIGN OF THE SKULL fits into the good pirate yarn category, too.
Originally published as a complete novel in the April 18, 1918 issue of the legendary pulp magazine ADVENTURE, the biggest influence on THE SIGN OF THE SKULL is Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic TREASURE ISLAND. (I still have fond memories of Mrs. Wray, my fifth grade teacher, reading a chapter of TREASURE ISLAND aloud to the class when we got back from lunch every day.) The narrator and protagonist of THE SIGN OF THE SKULL is also a young man, although considerably older than Jim Hawkins. Justin Penrith is in desperate financial straits, so bad off that he’s been reduced to becoming (shudder) a writer, authoring penny broadsides about famous pirates, one of whom is about to be hanged in London as the story opens. Justin is in attendance at the public hanging, and he sees the buccaneer throw a ring to someone in the crowd just before dropping through the trap.
That ring becomes important later on, because (MINOR SPOILER, as if you haven’t already guessed) it’s the key to finding a fortune in pirate booty buried on an island off the east coast of Africa. (And yes, this is the sort of story in which the word “booty” is used often. If you read it, try not to snicker.) Justin becomes involved in a quest to find this treasure when he befriends a crippled youngster who has a rich uncle. Before you know it, they’re getting ready to sail off to Africa in search of the loot, but other people know about it, too, and try to stop them, leading to some adventures in England before the ship ever sets sail.
And once it does, you can be sure there’s more excitement, with hurricanes, mutiny, sea battles, bloody cutlasses, booming flintlock pistols, and pirates galore. Treachery abounds, and of course the plot has a few more twists to play out, including a very good one late in the book that I didn’t see coming at all.
Dunn wasn’t as good a writer as Stevenson and the prose is a little stodgy in places, but THE SIGN OF THE SKULL is solidly in the same tradition as TREASURE ISLAND and I found it very entertaining. Of course, it helps if you’re a middle-aged guy who can still channel his inner twelve-year-old. (I think I’ve just described a sizable percentage of this blog’s regular readers.) After ninety years or so, THE SIGN OF THE SKULL will soon be in print again, in an inexpensive reprint edition from our friends at Beb Books. If you enjoy tales of piracy and derring-do, you definitely should keep a lookout for it.
My Western novel THE HUNTED, which was originally published by Harper in 1997, is now available as an e-book for the Kindle and the Nook. Here's the description from the book's page on Amazon:
After the war, a lone Confederate soldier and onetime gunslinger emerges from a Yankee prison camp and faces a harsh frontier winter, outlaws, state police, and Indians in a quest to find his six children.
I like this one a lot and think it's one of my best pure traditional Western novels. Check it out.
