Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Saucy Detective, May 1937

What a bizarre cover on this issue of a short-lived pulp that seems to have had some connection with the Spicy line. Robert Leslie Bellem has a story in here, under the name Reeves L. Black. The only other author names I recognize are Lawrence Sternig, who became much better known as a literary agent, and Lars Anderson, really Thelma Ellis, author of the original Domino Lady stories. Others on hand are John Beck, Roger Orange, Gig Lockhart, Donald Hogarth, Cliff Everard, Pierre Monte, Peg Dougherty, and Mildred Walsh, some or all of whom may be pseudonyms or house-names. It's not every day you see a gorilla--or Bigfoot, I dunno--packing heat.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 10 Story Western Magazine, March 1942

The cover on this issue of 10 STORY WESTERN MAGAZINE is more proof, as if we needed it, that the barber shop was one of the most dangerous places in the Old West. I don't know who painted this one, but I like it quite a bit. There's the usual fine bunch of writers inside the magazine, too: Tom W. Blackburn, Frank C. Robertson, Tom Roan, Leslie Ernenwein, Art Lawson, Glenn Wichman, Dabney Otis Collins, and James C. Lynch. No Olmsted or Coburn, surprisingly. But solid pulpsters, for sure.

Forgotten Books: 14 Seconds to Hell - Nick Carter (Jon Messmann)

I’ve mentioned before that when I was a kid, I was a huge fan of the secret agent boom in books, movies, and TV during the Sixties. As a freshman in high schoool, I came across a book called HANOI, part of a series of spy adventures starring a secret agent named Nick Carter, a name that also functioned as the series by-line. I was familiar with the original, dime novel version of Nick Carter because I’d read an anthology of those old detective stories a year or so earlier, and I had already learned enough about publishing to realize that this new Nick Carter was a house-name, although I had no idea who wrote the books, of course.

All that mattered to me was that HANOI was a great yarn, full of sex and violence and all the other stuff that appealed to my 14-year-old brain. (My 67-year-old brain isn’t that much different, but that’s neither here nor there.) I bought and read every Nick Carter novel I came across all the way through high school and on into college, getting many of them new off the paperback spinner rack at Lester’s Pharmacy.

14 SECONDS TO HELL, which was published in 1968, is one that I missed somehow, and I’d never read it until recently. It’s a fairly early entry in the series, #37, although the books themselves weren’t numbered at that point. (There are 261 Nick Carter novels in this modern incarnation.) During this part of the series’ run, the books are in third person and Nick is usually referred to as Nick, something that makes him a pretty likable and approachable character. He works for a super-secret government agency called AXE, where he carries the Killmaster designation. (Any resemblance to James Bond’s 00 status is entirely not coincidental.) His boss is David Hawk. He carries a Luger that he calls Wilhelmina, a dagger called Hugo, and a tiny gas bomb he’s dubbed Pierre. (There’s a reason the weapons have names, which I’ll get to later.)

In this novel, a tenuous world peace is threatened by the insane scheme of a Red Chinese scientist, Dr. Hu Tsan, who has a secret base in China from which he intends to launch seven nuclear missiles at the free world. Nick’s job is to destroy that base and the missiles, and since Russia doesn’t want a nuclear war breaking out, they assign one of their top agents to team up with him. That agent, of course, is a beautiful blonde, and she and Nick team up in more ways than one, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. The Russian girl has a secret which the cover copy totally gives away, but it’s pretty obvious so that spoiler doesn’t actually ruin much.

The first half of this book is a little slow, since it’s mostly about Nick trying to reach the evil scientist’s base and overcoming a few relatively minor obstacles along the way. The pace picks up considerably at that point, with a lot going on leading up to a slam-bang climax. The problem is, when that climax is over, there are still thirty pages left in the book, so even though there’s a little more action, it feels tacked-on to pad out the wordage.

Overall, though, 14 SECONDS TO HELL is a pretty entertaining book, and it’s not just because of its nostalgia value, either. The author behind the Nick Carter house-name is veteran paperbacker Jon Messmann, and this is the first of fifteen novels he wrote for the series in a two-year span, making him the most prolific Nick Carter author during that particular stretch. Messmann went on to create the Trailsman Adult Western series and write more than a hundred of those novels, many of which I’ve read. His style is pretty easy to recognize in this book. He tends to write long paragraphs and fairly long chapters, but despite that, his stories move along very well. I think the pacing problems in 14 SECONDS TO HELL are probably the result of its being his first entry in this series. I remember some of his later Carters, such as THE LIVING DEATH, THE AMAZON, THE SEA TRAP, and OPERATION SNAKE being excellent. Really, though, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by him, since he has a good touch with characters and plot and writes good action scenes.

I mentioned the weapons Nick carries and the fact that they have names, and to get back to that . . . I may have written about this in other posts, and some of you know the background already, but for those who don’t, this Nick Carter series was packaged, starting out, by Lyle Kenyon Engel. In interviews, Engel claimed to have created it, but having worked for Book Creations Inc., the book packaging company he founded later on, I suspect his contribution consisted of saying, “Hey, that James Bond stuff is selling well. We should do a secret agent series.” The author hired to write the books was Michael Avallone, and my hunch is that all the details about the character came from him. Avallone was a long-time fan of the pulps and surely remembered the pulp version of Nick Carter, and possibly the dime novel detective before that. He was also a big fan of the pulp series The Avenger, in which the hero carried a pistol and a throwing knife he called Ike and Mike. (Don’t ask me which was which, I don’t remember and I’m not going to look it up.) I’m certain that’s where Hugo, Wilhelmina, and Pierre came from. AXE and Nick’s boss Hawk both sound exactly like things Avallone would have come up with. It’s no secret that Mike and I were friends and corresponded for a number of years, and we probably talked about all this in our letters, but again, that’s too long ago and I don’t recall all the details. But I’m confident that’s what happened and I believe the whole basis of the series came from Avallone, even though he wound up writing only two heavily edited novels and part of another one before he and Engel had a falling out.

Also, ‘way back at the beginning of this post, I mentioned the novel HANOI, the first Nick Carter I read. I had no idea who the author was then, but now I know it was written by Valerie Moolman, the series’ first editor who also wrote or co-wrote a dozen books in the series, including the first eight, so along with Avallone, she really set the tone for everything that came later. Those Nick Carters are her only published fiction, as far as I know, although wrote some non-fiction books and worked as an editor for many years. I owe her and Mike Avallone a debt of gratitude for their work on a series that was one of my favorites and entertained me for a long time . . . and as this post proves, still entertains me today.

Infestation - William Meikle

When you tell me that a book is about commandos fighting monsters, you’re really appealing to the inner 12-year-old in me. And that’s what INFESTATION is all about. This is the first book in the S-Squad series by Scottish horror author William Meikle, and I really enjoyed it. The story follows a squad of British Special Forces soldiers sent to a remote Inuit village in Canada, north of the Arctic Circle, to investigate the suspicious presence of what is believed to be a Russian spy ship. When they reach the village, though, they find that something terrible has happened and the inhabitants have been wiped out in bloody fashion. The suspected spy ship, anchored a short distance off-shore, also appears to be deserted . . . but it’s not.

Then things get worse.

The plot of this novel may be familiar, but Meikle’s execution of it is pretty much flawless. He does an excellent job of keeping the story moving along at a fast pace and handles the action scenes very well. The characters are interesting, and Meikle makes the reader care if they survive or not. (Spoiler: some don’t.) He really had me flipping the digital pages. I had a great time reading INFESTATION, even though I’m generally not much of a horror fan, and I’m glad that there are quite a few more in the series. There’s a good chance I’ll be reading another one soon.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Black Book Detective Magazine, May 1936

Now here's a pulp that actually does have a Norman Saunders cover, although I wouldn't say it's one of his best. Eye-catching, though. The only authors in this issue of BLACK BOOK DETECTIVE MAGAZINE who are familiar to me are Richard Sale and James P. Olsen. Some of the other names--George H. Michener, David Redstone, Ernest M. Poate, John Kobler, and Emmett B. Hargett--are just names. They all seem to have been fairly prolific pulpsters, though, so they must have had some talent.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Short Stories, December 1942

There's so much happening on this cover, I thought at first it might be by Norman Saunders. But it's not listed on his website and I don't think the style is quite right to be one of his. However, lots of action there and I still like it. Inside is a pretty good bunch of authors, including Tom W. Blackburn, James P. Olsen, Gunnison Steele, Ralph Berard, Archie Joscelyn, Kenneth Fowler, and Rod Patterson. 

Forgotten Books: The Dawn Riders - Dan Roberts (W.E.D. Ross)

When I was a kid, I watched DARK SHADOWS during the summers when school was out. It aired too early for me to get home and watch it during the school year, but I was still a fan. So it’s not surprising that when paperback original tie-in novels loosely based on the series began to be published, I read quite a few of them, too. The author was some lady named Marilyn Ross. I’d never heard of her, didn’t know anything about her.

Around the same time, I was a faithful reader of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. digest magazine published by Leo Margulies. Several stories featuring a detective named Mei Wong appeared in that magazine. (There were a bunch more Mei Wong stories in MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE, I discovered many years later, but in those days MSMM got little or no distribution in my area.) The author of the Mei Wong stories was some guy named Dan Ross. I’d never heard of him, didn’t know anything about him.

Some of you already know where this is going. “Marilyn Ross” and “Dan Ross” were the same person, a Canadian author named W.E.D. Ross who wrote several hundred gothics and romance novels under the names Marilyn Ross, Clarissa Ross, and other pseudonyms. What I didn’t know until recently was that he also wrote a dozen or so Westerns for the American library publishers market under the name Dan Roberts. Out of curiosity, and because I read those DARK SHADOWS books and Mei Wong stories all those decades ago, I picked up a few of Ross’s Westerns to give them a try. I recently finished the first one I’ve read, THE DAWN RIDERS, published by Arcadia House in 1968 and reprinted in a large print trade paperback by Curley years later (the edition I read).

The protagonist, young lawyer Chet Lane, returns to the town where, as a boy, his father was lynched for a crime he didn’t commit. Chet’s looking for revenge on the local cattle baron he blames for his father’s death. The brutal deputy sheriff from years earlier is now the sheriff and hates Chet. The sleazy lawyer who works for the cattle baron wants him run out of town. Chet’s only friends are the town drunk, a beautiful saloon singer with a heart of gold, and the cattle baron’s beautiful daughter. Oh, and there’s a gang of raiders known as the Dawn Riders who are trying to terrorize all the smaller ranchers into leaving so the cattle baron can gobble up their spreads, too.

In other words, there’s nothing in this book you haven’t read or seen hundreds of times already, but Ross does a decent job of handling the traditional material and adds a couple of nice flourishes, including the talisman the Dawn Riders carry to identify themselves, a tiny, carved wooden skull. There’s a late twist in the plot that I saw coming, but not right away. All in all, THE DAWN RIDERS is about as generic a Western novel as you’re going to find but written well enough that it kept me reading. I’ll probably read the others by Ross that I picked up, too, but I doubt if I’ll search out any more. I get the feeling that despite doing a competent job, Westerns just weren’t Ross’s strong suit. I seem to recall that his steamy historical romances under the name Clarissa Ross had good covers and sounded intriguing. Maybe I’ll try to find one of them.

A Middle of the Night Music and Pages Post: What Now My Love - Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass

I've posted this song before, but here it is again because I heard it on the radio and it was one of my favorite songs when I was in high school. I was that weird kid who liked easy listening music as much as rock. Rock was what I listened to in the car and when I was with my friends, but I had a good FM radio in my bedroom that I got for Christmas one year, so I usually had an easy listening station playing (FM in those days was mostly easy listening stations) while I sat in my recliner and read paperbacks and comic books.

Anyway, when I heard it on the radio, I had one of those odd solipsistic moments when I wondered if everything that's happened in the past 53 years is just an extended fantasy sequence, and it's actually still 1967 and I'm still sitting in my room listening to Herb Alpert and thinking about what might be coming in the future. I don't really believe that, mind you . . . but I can see the appeal of it.

I was on a nice little run with the writing for a few days, averaging around 15 pages a day, but then real life kept me busy all day and I haven't gotten anything written the past two days. That will probably continue for another day or two. I always get antsy when I can't write, but sometimes that's the way things work out.

Assuming any of this is actually real.

Classic Hardboiled Pulp: Dead Evidence: The Complete BLACK MASK Cases of Harrigan - Ed Lybeck

Ed Lybeck’s name was vaguely familiar to me, and when I read Will Murray’s excellent introduction to this collection of Lybeck’s stories published in BLACK MASK, I realized why: Joseph T. Shaw included one of Lybeck’s stories in the iconic anthology THE HARD-BOILED OMNIBUS, which I read about fifty years ago. I have no memory of Lybeck’s story in that book, however, and after rereading it in this one, I still have no memory of it from back then. Which proves nothing except that I didn’t always recognize greatness when I came across it, because these yarns are absolutely fantastic.

Lybeck had only four stories published in BLACK MASK, all of them novella or novelette length, and they all feature the same protagonist, tough guy reporter Francis St. Xavier Harrigan, who covers the crime beat for the New York Leader and who, Lybeck implies, was once a crook and a gunman himself. Lybeck doesn’t seem sure whether abandoning gangdom for journalism is a step up or down for Harrigan.

In the first story, “Leaded Ink” (BLACK MASK, December 1931), Harrigan goes after the mobsters who murdered a young reporter who was his protégé. The second story, “Kick-Back” (January 1932) finds him clashing with a corrupt politician running on a reform ticket and the gangster backing the politician. This is the story that appeared in THE HARD-BOILED OMNIBUS. “Dead Evidence” (March 1932) is a direct sequel to “Kick-Back”, with Harrigan framed for a killing and fighting to clear his name. The final Harrigan story, “Silent Heat”, didn’t appear until February 1934. In this one, Harrigan takes on a white slavery ring.

These are all action yarns and don’t have much actual detection in them, but as fast-moving tales of crime-busting, they’re some of the best I’ve ever read. Lybeck’s style is a joy to read, a mixture of tough violence, snappy patter, and unexpectedly breezy humor. I laughed out loud a number of times reading these stories. Harrigan’s a great character, able to absorb a tremendous amount of punishment and still keep slugging away at his enemies. I probably never would have been able to read these stories if Steeger Books hadn’t reprinted them in the new Black Mask line, so I really appreciate the opportunity. Based on only four stories, you can’t put Lybeck in the same rank as Hammett, Chandler, Nebel, and the other giants from BLACK MASK, but he was mighty good anyway and I had a great time reading this collection. If you love hardboiled pulp like I do, it gets my highest recommendation.

Classic Westerns: Taps at Little Big Horn - John Benteen (Ben Haas)

Although Ben Haas wrote a lot of books under a lot of different names (including some well-regarded mainstream novels under his real name), he’s probably best remembered these days as the author of two Western series from the Seventies, Fargo and Sundance, both of which he wrote under the pseudonym John Benteen. I’ve been a fan of his work for many years and have read most of the Fargo novels, but for some reason I read only a few books in the Sundance series. I intend to remedy that, starting with the fifth entry, TAPS AT LITTLE BIG HORN. (I read the first four years ago, plus another book or two from later in the series.)

Jim Sundance is the son of a Cheyenne mother and a British remittance man father. He’s a professional fighting man and is equally at home in either world, Indian or white . . . although if he had to choose, he’d probably stick with the Cheyenne. He’s a staunch defender of the Indians and uses the money he makes as a mercenary to fund efforts to combat the schemes of the Indian Ring, a notorious cartel of ruthless businessmen and corrupt politicians. This much is based on history, and actual events crop up in the novels from time to time.

TAPS AT LITTLE BIG HORN, as you’d expect, is a prime example of that. In an earlier book, Sundance met and fell in love with Barbara Colfax, the beautiful daughter of the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Barbara now lives with the Cheyenne and has adopted the name Two Roads Woman. But her father still wants her to come home, and he persuades Sundance to bring her to a meeting with him. The bait he dangles is a promise to use his influence to keep the army from trying to move the Cheyenne and the Sioux out of their hunting grounds in Montana.

Well, I think any reader of Westerns and men’s adventure fiction will know that things don’t work out as Sundance hoped. He winds up putting the white part of his heritage aside and throwing in with the Cheyenne as Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads the Seventh Cavalry on its fateful mission to force them out of their hunting grounds.

One of the problems with a book like this that’s so tied in with actual history is that the reader already knows a lot of what’s going to happen. The challenge to the novelist is to blend the fictional characters and events in with the real ones skillfully enough to create an interesting story that holds the attention. Ben Haas is more than up to this challenge. Sundance is a strong, likable protagonist, and even though we know things aren’t really going to work out for him in this book, we root for him anyway. And as always, Haas provides plenty of great, gritty action scenes.

Personally, I wouldn’t put TAPS AT LITTLE BIG HORN in the top rank of Ben Haas’s books, because while it’s as well-written as always and compelling enough that it kept me up later than usual reading, I’m just not as fond of books set during the Indian Wars, especially ones that focus on actual battles. It’s a good solid novel and I’m glad I read it, but I’m looking forward to some of Sundance’s more fictional adventures. Which I plan to be reading soon.

That's my copy in the scan above, by the way, complete with tape on the cover and price sticker from the Used Book Warehouse in Rockport, Texas.