Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All Star Adventure Fiction, September 1935

I'm not sure I've ever heard of ALL STAR ADVENTURE FICTION, let alone come across a copy. But I'm also not sure why it's not better known and wasn't successful at the time, running for only seven issues. It had decent covers by J.W. Scott, including this one, and some fine authors. This issue features stories by Donald Barr Chidsey, J. Allan Dunn, Frank Richardson Pierce, Lemuel de Bra, Rollin Brown, and Arthur Hawthorne Carhart, all of them fine pulpsters who appeared regularly in the top magazines. Their stories here may well have been rejects from ARGOSY, ADVENTURE, etc., but they were probably still pretty good.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Best Western, August 1953

Norman Saunders' work is instantly recognizable on the cover of this issue of BEST WESTERN, and he's probably the best-known name associated with this issue, too, although Noel M. Loomis and Lauran Paine are well-regarded as Western pulpsters and novelists. The other stories are by Robert L. Trimnell, Paul L. Peil, Theodore J. Roemer, and Jim Brewer. And of course, this is yet another appearance of our old friends The Stalwart Cowboy, The Beautiful Redhead (she may be angry, but she's not gun-toting this time), and The Wounded Old Geezer. I have got to write those three into a book.

The Man Who Tamed Dodge - Philip Ketchum

Philip Ketchum had a long, very successful career as a Western pulpster and novelist and also wrote many excellent crime, detective, and historical adventure yarns for the pulps. THE MAN WHO TAMED DODGE, published in 1967 by Lancer Books as a paperback original, is one of his later novels and is the first of at least three books about the character known as Cabot.

However, despite the title, the cover copy, and the cover art by Don Stivers featuring the iconic model Steve Holland, THE MAN WHO TAMED DODGE is not about a gun-slinging, town-taming lawman. Cabot, whose real name is Elijah Cabot Pickering, is a former sea captain who, after an argument with his shipping magnate father, heads west to make his own fame and fortune after vowing to return to Massachusetts someday and buy his family’s shipping line. On his way to Dodge, he makes the acquaintance of an affable gambler who promptly robs him. But when he reaches his destination, he finds that the gambler has used the stolen money as the stakes in a poker game and won big, which he splits with Cabot. Now Cabot has enough money to put his plan into motion: He’s figured out a way to cut in on the town’s fledgling cattle shipping business.

You should be getting the idea by now that this is not a shoot-em-up Western. In fact, it’s pretty deliberately paced and thoughtful, with a protagonist who’s not a traditional Western hero. But don’t assume it’s slow and boring, either. Cabot was tough enough to captain ships, and he doesn’t back down from trouble. He gets into several brutal fistfights, and although he’s not a natural gunman, he handles a Colt fairly effectively when he has to. He’s also smart and has the knack of getting people on his side. Ketchum piles on the twists and turns in the plot until everything comes together for a classic Western showdown at the end.

This is the first book I’ve read from the Will Robertson Collection, and that’s the copy in the scan above. It’s the third printing from 1969. As far as I know, it’s never been reprinted since then and neither have the other Cabot novels. THE MAN WHO TAMED DODGE is really good, a slightly offbeat Western that I had a great time reading. Ketchum never disappoints, at least in my experience.

The Will Robertson Collection

Will Robertson and I became friends through his comments on this blog and from emails we traded over the years. He passed away a while back, and before he died, he told his wife that he wanted me to have his book collection. She honored those wishes and passed the books along to me. It took a while for everything to line up so that I could get them, but Saturday I drove down to where she lives now and picked them up. Will and I shared very similar tastes in reading. So far I've opened only one of the boxes, but you can see from the photo that there are a lot of good books inside it. And there are 32 more boxes. I'm reading that Philip Ketchum Western now, and it's great so far. From now on, every time I read and review one of the books from this collection, I'm going to be sure to mention where it came from. So get used to posts tagged "The Will Robertson Collection". It's the least I can do to remember a great guy and a good friend.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, July 25, 1936

This is an issue of ARGOSY that I've read (well, probably not the serial installments), but it was so many years ago I don't remember anything about it except that the Nick Fisher/Eddie Savoy story by Donald Barr Chidsey was excellent. Other authors with stand-alone stories are Tom Curry, William Merriam Rouse, Foster-Harris, and William Edward Hayes. The serials are by Frederick Faust writing as George Challis ("The Golden Knight", a novel that as far as I know hasn't been reprinted), Ralph R. Perry, and Patrick Lee. The cover is by John A. Coughlin. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, July 1951

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I’m not sure who the cover artist is. Possibly Robert Stanley. But it’s a good cover no matter who painted it.

As always with a Popular Publications pulp, this issue of NEW WESTERN has some good authors in it. The author of the lead story, John Prescott, is a familiar name to me, although I’m not sure if I’ve ever read anything by him until now. The “Man-Sized Novel” as it’s referred to on the Table of Contents page, “Bad Trouble in Lincoln County”, is more of a novelette, taking up a mere 15 pages in the magazine. But it’s a darned good yarn about a fictional clash taking place on the periphery of the historical Lincoln County War. His family wiped out in a raid on their ranch, the young protagonist sets out for vengeance but finds some unexpected enemies and allies. Prescott has a little more literary style than some of the Western pulpsters but doesn’t skimp on the hardboiled action, either. I need to read more by him.

Edward S. Fox wrote scores of Western and sports stories in a career that lasted from the early Thirties to the mid-Fifties. “A Man’s Land Is His Own!”, despite the exclamation mark, is a low-key tale about a young rancher battling a drought. It’s very well-written, and between that and the subject matter, it reminded me a little of Elmer Kelton’s work. I have to say I hated the ending, though.

I read a decent story by Marvin De Vries in another pulp recently. His story “Loot-Starved!” in this issue of NEW WESTERN falls into the same range. Set in Death Valley, it’s about how the search for a lost mine turns into a quest of another sort. It’s okay, certainly readable enough, but not very memorable.

The other “Man-Sized Novel” in this issue is “Sons of the Gunsmoke Breed” by Walt Coburn, which is a little longer than Prescott’s story but still basically a novelette. By this stage of his career, Coburn’s work was pretty hit-and-miss, but this is definitely a hit. It’s the story of two step-brothers, one an honest cowboy, the other an outlaw’s son who inherited his father’s gun and dishonest tendencies, who travel with a trail drive from Texas to Montana and stay to make a name for themselves in different ways. In Coburn’s best work, there’s an epic feel, and that comes through in this one as it builds to a very satisfying conclusion.

I generally enjoy Tom Roan’s work, but from time to time he wrote animal protagonist stories, and although I read and liked a bunch of those when I was a kid (Jim Kjelgaard’s dog stories were some of my favorites), I have a hard time with them now. Roan’s “Fangs of the Brave” in this issue features an old wolf, and although I tried, I didn’t make it all the way to the end.

I usually enjoy Frank Castle’s stories, too, and I’m happy to report that “Born Bad” in this issue is a good one. It’s from fairly early in Castle’s career, and he hadn’t yet developed the oddball style that marked much of his later work. It’s a more straightforward yarn about a rancher waiting for his ne’er-do-well brother to arrive on a train. The rancher has vengeance in his heart because his brother stole his girl from him a few years earlier and they ran off together. The girl came to a bad end. Now our protagonist plans to gun down his brother as soon as he steps off the train. But, not unexpectedly, things don’t quite play out that way. This one has some good action and a nice hardboiled tone. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

The issue wraps up with the novelette “Don’t Brand Him Yellow!” by Stone Cody, who was actually Thomas E. Mount. It’s a reprint from 1936, but there’s a bit of a mystery that goes with that. There’s no story by that title in Mount’s listing in the Fictionmags Index except this appearance in NEW WESTERN. So either its original appearance was a pulp that hasn’t been indexed yet, or it appeared under some other title, perhaps under Mount’s other pseudonym Oliver King. Whatever its origins, “Don’t Brand Him Yellow!” is a terrific story, with a professional gambler as the protagonist for once, rather than one of the villains. Bret Carew is an honest gambler and a fast gun, although he refuses to fight when accused of cheating because after a saloon shootout he promised his late wife that he would never kill another man. Carew’s beautiful daughter Pat travels with him, and when they run into trouble in a town run by a brutal saloon owner, it looks like luck has gone bad for both of them. Mount was great with action, and there’s plenty of it in this story. There’s also a late twist that’s somewhat predictable, but it still results in a great ending. This is my favorite story in this issue, and Mount is becoming one of my favorite Western writers.

This is a really strong issue of NEW WESTERN considering how late it came in the pulp era. The Coburn and Mount stories are excellent, and the ones by Prescott and Castle aren’t far behind them. If you have a copy of this one, it’s well worth pulling off the shelves and reading, especially those four stories.

The Nightmare Riders - Lynn Westland (Archie Joscelyn)

The very prolific Archie Joscelyn’s best-known pseudonym was Al Cody, but he wrote quite a few Western novels under the name Lynn Westland, too. THE NIGHTMARE RIDERS is an early Westland novel, published by lending library publisher Phoenix Press in 1940. My copy doesn't have a dust jacket, but I found the above image on-line.

This novel makes use of the old amnesia plot. I used it myself in one of my Longarms, I recall. In THE NIGHTMARE RIDERS, a drifting cowpoke who can’t remember who he is comes across a bushwhacked old-timer who recognizes him and calls him by the name Jody Johnson. But who is Jody Johnson? The old-timer dies before he can reveal that. Jody decides he might as well use that name, even though it means nothing to him, and soon discovers that the murdered man owned a ranch and had a beautiful granddaughter. The local saloon owner/cattle baron has his eyes on the ranch and also on a gold mine located on the spread, even though the diggings have never paid off. Jody hangs around to help the granddaughter, of course, and maybe find out more about who he really is.

That doesn’t take long, because he soon sees the deputy in town tacking up a reward poster stating that Jody Johnson is wanted for murder.

Well, we’re off on a whirlwind of action after that, as Jody foils the villain’s schemes and gradually uncovers the truth of his own identity. Joscelyn’s prose, especially at this stage of his career, runs toward the melodramatic, but a little purple prose never bothered me much. There are some excellent, highly suspenseful scenes late in the book that take place in the mine’s underground tunnels. I’m a little claustrophobic to start with, and this section was genuinely creepy to me. The ending’s not quite as dramatic as it could have been, but it still worked okay.

THE NIGHTMARE RIDERS reminded me of a 1930s B-Western movie, maybe not top tier Republic Pictures stuff, but better than, say, Monogram or PRC. It’s not one of Archie Joscelyn’s best novels but I still had a fine time reading it.

#415

I've turned in my 415th novel and gotten a good start on #416. There was a time when a book had to mark a real milestone before I'd mention it, but the older I get and the closer I come to the end of my career, even these smaller increments mean something to me. I'm committed to enough work for the rest of this year and next year to carry me to #425. Will I pack it in after that? I don't know, something about 450 seems appealing to me. 500 is out of reach. I'd have to write hard for another 15 years to do that, and that's not going to happen.

Whatever the total winds up being, I've had fun and entertained some folks.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958)

Regular readers of this blog probably know that I’m not a big fan of humorous Western fiction, with the notable exception of work by Robert E. Howard and W.C. Tuttle. I like it better, however, when it comes to movies and have enjoyed a number of lighthearted Westerns over the years. For some reason, though, I never got around to watching THE SHERIFF OF FRACTURED JAW (1958) until now, maybe because one of the leads is Jayne Mansfield, and I’m not a fan of her work, either.

THE SHERIFF OF FRACTURED JAW makes use of the old “dude goes West” plot. In this case, the dude is an English gun salesman named Jonathan Tibbs (Kenneth More) who winds up in West Texas trying to expand his company’s sales territory. The stagecoach he’s riding in is attacked by Indians, and through a series of misunderstandings he manages to make the Indians break off their attack and allow the stage to proceed to the town of Fractured Jaw, where Tibbs is hailed as a hero. The town is in the middle of a range war between two rival ranches. Both sides mistake Tibbs for a hired gun brought in to fight for the enemy. Things get more complicated when Tibbs is appointed sheriff and also falls in love with the beautiful saloon owner played by Mansfield. Eventually everything works out, of course. Peace is restored, and Tibbs even puts an end to the threat of Indian attacks in an unexpected but effective way.

This is far from a hilarious movie. I smiled a few times and I think I chuckled once. But it is lighthearted and whimsical and thoroughly inoffensive. Kenneth More does a good job, and Mansfield is miscast but okay. There are a few musical numbers with her singing voice dubbed by Connie Francis. The supporting cast includes Bruce Cabot, Robert Morley, William Campbell, and Henry Hull, none of whom have much to do with the exception of Hull, who plays the mayor of Fractured Jaw and does some effective scenery-chewing. This is a pretty minor film overall, but not a bad way to pass a couple of hours. I’m glad I finally watched it.

Why Didn't They Ask Evans? - Agatha Christie

I had such a good time reading an Agatha Christie novel a few weeks ago that I decided to give another one a try. I went with one of her stand-alones this time, WHY DIDN’T THEY ASK EVANS?, which was published originally in 1934 under the title THE BOOMERANG CLUE. I have both versions on my shelves, a Dell from 1966 of THE BOOMERANG CLUE and a trade paperback tie-in edition of WHY DIDN’T THEY ASK EVANS?, with the stars of the recent TV mini-series on the cover. I went with the newer one simply because the print is larger and easier to read, an increasingly important consideration at my age.

The book opens with a young man named Bobby Jones (not the famous American golfer, as Christie points out) playing a round on a course next to some seaside cliffs in Wales. Bobby is the son of the local vicar, a former naval officer who is at loose ends at the moment. When he hits a slice over a cliff, he looks for the ball and spots a body lying on the rocks below. Since he’s playing with the local doctor, Bobby scrambles down to check on the fallen man and finds that he’s still alive but badly injured. He regains consciousness long enough to say just one thing: “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” And then dies, seemingly the victim of an accident.

Ah, but we know better than that, don’t we? The man was murdered, and Bobby sets out to find the killer, with help from his childhood friend, the beautiful Lady Frances Derwent, who lives on a nearby estate. Frankie, as she’s known, tackles the case with as much enthusiasm as Bobby does, and their investigation sends them to London, among other places, and involves them with numerous potentially shady characters, including a drug addict, a sinister doctor, and the doctor’s beautiful young wife, who’s being held a virtual prisoner in her husband’s spooky sanatarium.

WHY DIDN’T THEY ASK EVANS? has a lot of thriller elements to go with its traditional mystery. The plot itself is a bit convoluted and bogs down slightly in the middle of the book, but it all fits together nicely enough in the end although there are a couple of things that stretch suspension of disbelief quite a bit. The main things that appeal about this novel are its extremely likable protagonists, the witty dialogue, and the headlong pace of much of it. Most of the time, Christie had me turning the pages eagerly to find out what was going to happen.

There is one twist at the very end of the book that I didn’t really care for, because it negated one of the things that I liked most about the novel. No spoilers, but you’ll probably know it when you come to it, if you haven’t read this one before. I wouldn’t put WHY DIDN’T THEY ASK EVANS? in the top rank of Christie’s work, but it is a good, solid, very enjoyable mystery yarn. Certainly worth reading, if you haven’t already. I might watch the TV adaptation, one of these days.