The Curse of the Harcourts - Chandler H. Whipple

Since today is Halloween, I want to post about a classic horror yarn that not all that many people are familiar with. But a lot of pulp fans are. I’m speaking, of course, of THE CURSE OF THE HARCOURTS by Chandler Whipple, a collection of six grisly, bone-chilling novelettes originally published in the Weird Menace pulp DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE in 1935 that fit together to form one compelling narrative. These stories were reprinted several years ago by Altus Press in handsome trade paperback and e-book editions.

As John Pelan points out in his excellent introduction, despite being published in DIME MYSTERY, these are not traditional Weird Menace stories. They have historical settings, blatantly supernatural plot elements, and a high degree of graphic violence that isn’t explained away in the end by some logical resolution. No, these are straight out, full speed, blood and thunder horror yarns . . . which happens to be the kind I like best.

The first story, “The Son of Darkness”, appeared in the February 1935 issue of DIME MYSTERY. Set in Normandy, it tells of the visit of an Italian nobleman, Count Pirelli, to the castle of Baron d’Harcourt and his family in the year 1000 (approximately). The baron welcomes Pirelli and even throws a party to celebrate his visit, but when the count tries to seduce d’Harcourt’s daughter, the baron whips him, humiliates him, and throws him out. That causes Pirelli to curse d’Harcourt and all his family and vow to exterminate them from the face of the earth, no matter how long it takes. Since it turns out that Pirelli is in league with Satan and probably can’t be killed, that’s liable to take a while, but he gets a good start on his bloody vengeance in this story.

Two hundred years have passed by the time of “Curse of the Harcourts” from the March 1935 issue. The d’Harcourt family is now English, and the current head of the family, Sir Henry d’Harcourt is in charge of a castle on the border between England and Wales which is besieged by an army of Welsh rebels. Then the castle is infiltrated by Druid sorcerers bent on revenge against the family for disrespecting their gods, revenge that involves human sacrifice and a literal trip to Hell for Henry.

Two hundred years after that, in “Shadow of the Plague” (April 1935), the Harcourt family now lives in London during the time of the Black Plague, and the evil entity that has stalked them through time takes advantage of that deadly disease to further his vengeance.

By the time of “White Lady of Hell” (June 1935), the Harcourt family has shrunk to three—a brother and sister and their mother—and has been exiled to Florence because of political intrigue in England. More than a hundred years has passed since the previous story, but you can bet that the evil Pirelli, who was Florence originally and made his deal with the Devil there, will show up again, and so he does, with the Harcourt siblings barely surviving to carry on the line. Not with each other, mind you. These stories are pretty lurid, but they don’t go quite that far.

In “A Child for Satan”, which originally appeared in the September 1935 issue of DIME MYSTERY, we learn that there were Harcourts living in Salem at the time of the witch trials, because, well, sure, why not? This is the only story in the series with a female protagonist, a young woman who is married to a Harcourt and has an infant son with him. But the evil Count Pirelli wants the child for Satan and will resort to any evil means to get him. In some respects, despite the supernatural menace of the Count, this one does bear more of a resemblance to a typical Weird Menace yarn.

The series concludes with “The Last Harcourt” (October 1935), which takes place in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts in 1932 and features the final showdown between the Harcourts and the satanic Count Pirelli. That showdown has a pretty epic feel to it, too, and then Whipple gives us a nice little twist in the ending.

I enjoyed this series, but I have to give it a qualified recommendation, that qualification being that if you want to read it for Halloween, start at the beginning of October and space out the stories over the entire month, rather than reading the whole thing in less than a week like I did. The sameness of the plots tends to weaken them, and the relentless parade of torture, misery, and death is just overwhelming. I think the series would be more effective with plenty of time between installments, the way the readers of DIME MYSTERY encountered it back in 1935. That said, if you’re a pulp fan, I really think you ought to read THE CURSE OF THE HARCOURTS, because I’ve never run across anything else exactly like it in the pulps. (The art on all those issues of DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE is by Walter M. Baumhofer, by the way.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fantastic Adventures, October 1942

I don't think J. Allen St. John's cover on this issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES is one of his best, but it's still pretty darned good and is intriguing enough to make me want to read the story it illustrates, so I guess it did its job. The whole issue is on-line here, along with lots of other issues of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. Will I ever get around to reading it? Who knows? But there's a good group of writers inside including Robert Bloch, Nelson S. Bond, Don Wilcox, Ross Rocklynne, Leroy Yerxa, Dwight V. Swain (writing as Clark South), James Norman, and Robert Moore Williams (writing as Russell Storm). The lead novel is by house-name E.K. Jarvis, so there's really no telling who actually wrote that one.  

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Thrilling Western, March 1953

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I’m not sure who did the cover. There’s a signature in the lower left corner that seems to match the signature of an obscure artist named J.G. Hame, whose only credit in the Fictionmags Index is the cover on the November 10, 1950 issue of RANCH ROMANCES. I can’t find anything online about Hame. Maybe some of you know more.

The lead novella in this issue is almost long enough to be considered an actual novel. “Boom-Town Bonanza” (no hyphen on the cover, but it’s there in the TOC and the text) is by Ray Townsend, a dependably entertaining Western pulp author. As you’d expect from the title, it’s a mining yarn. In the early days after the Civil War, ex-Confederate Jim Sheldon comes to Nevada in answer to a summons from his old friend who has found a profitable silver claim. But no sooner does Jim arrive than his friend is gunned down and he finds himself involved in a war between the two big mine owners (one of whom is a beautiful woman) and the owners of the smaller mines (one of whom has a beautiful daughter). It’s basically a range war story, only with mines instead of cattle, and not surprisingly, Townsend does a good job with it. His characters are well-drawn, as is the setting, and the action scenes are excellent. My only complaint is that some aspects of the plot seem to be glossed over rather quickly, as if Townsend had trouble fitting everything into 35,000 words. Townsend’s career was short, only about eight years, but in that time he produced nearly 100 pulp stories and four novels. I plan to read more by him.

I don’t know anything about Don Peterson except that he published two Western stories and had one story in WEIRD TALES, all in the early Fifties. His story in this issue, “Cradled in Hell”, is a really bleak yarn about a stagecoach shotgun guard captured by a gang of Mexican bandits. It’s fairly well-written and it doesn’t end the way I expected it to (always a plus), but it’s so dark I found it more admirable than enjoyable.

“Land of No Surrender” is the only credit for Ray Conley in the Fictionmags Index. I don’t know if that name is a pseudonym or if this is the only story he ever sold. It’s about a crippled Pawnee warrior who seeks redemption and acceptance in a battle against the Sioux. A little on the predictable side, but not a bad story.

Ben Smith’s name is familiar to me mostly from the Western novels he wrote for Ace and Bantam, but he also wrote several dozen stories for the Western pulps in the Forties and Fifties. His novelette in this issue, “Bridge of the Eagle”, is the first thing by him that I’ve read, as far as I remember. In it, drifting cowpoke Johnny Quinn is in Arizona Territory when he gets his horse stolen from him and then a short time later is arrested for holding up a stagecoach and killing the guard. He winds up escaping from jail with a hardened killer who’s on his way to join a gang holed up in an isolated stronghold in the mountains along the border. It’s a colorful, fast-moving yarn, and Smith manages to tie up the various threads of the plot in a way that makes sense. I enjoyed it enough that it made me want to dig out more of Smith’s work. I know I have an Ace Double around here somewhere with half of it by him . . .

“Mama Rides the Norther” is by one of my favorite Western authors, Lewis B. Patten, but it’s not a typical Patten story with noir elements. Instead it’s more of a homespun frontier drama about a married couple and their two young children who leave a life in the city to establish a homestead on the Great Plains. It’s well-written and somewhat suspenseful when a blizzard blows in, but overall a pretty minor entry considering the author.

The issue wraps up with “Turn Home Again”, a short story by J.L. Bouma about a dissatisfied young farm boy who wants to leave home . . . until he has an encounter with an outlaw on the run and a posse. Bouma had a long, prolific career writing for the pulps and as a Western paperbacker, as well as writing other types of novels. I’ve always found his work to be dependably good without being outstanding. That’s the case with this story, which is enjoyable to read and comes to a satisfactory conclusion. I doubt if it’ll be very memorable, though.

Overall, this is about as middle-of-the-road an issue of a Western pulp as you’ll ever find, good but not great stories, but no stinkers, either. It’s worth reading if you have a copy, especially the Townsend and Smith stories.

The Soft Whisper of the Dead - Charles L. Grant

I haven’t forgotten that Halloween is coming up and that I usually read at least a little horror fiction at this time of year. I’ve read a few novels by Charles L. Grant over the years and enjoyed them. He wrote mostly what some people call “quiet horror”, which is generally a little too slow-paced for my taste, so I’ve never considered him a favorite of mine. However, I was intrigued by a trilogy he wrote as a tribute to the great Universal and Hammer horror films of the past and recently read the first one in that series, THE SOFT WHISPER OF THE DEAD.

A lot of Grant’s fiction is set in the small Connecticut town of Oxrun Station, but in the modern day. This novel is the first Oxrun Station book set in historical times, 1881, to be precise. The daughter of one of the town’s richest men is expecting a visit from a childhood friend, but when the young woman arrives, she brings some unexpected companions: a giant wolf, some mysterious flying thing, and a tall, dark, sinister European count named Brastov. Our heroine has to cope not only with these vague threats but also a romantic triangle that includes a dashing young businessman and a police detective whose father is the chief of the local force.

Grant isn’t trying to break any new ground here. He’s just having fun writing an old-fashioned horror yarn, complete with some bloody murders, a lot of lurking around, and an action-packed finale. Well, actually, that finale could have used a little more action. I found it to be not as dramatic and over-the-top as I would have liked. Also, Grant has a habit in this book of skipping over important scenes and then summarizing them later. I think it would have been more effective to have some of that on-screen, so to speak. It’s been long enough since I read any of his other work that I don’t know if that’s a regular technique of his, but it happens enough in this book that I found it distracting.

That said, I enjoyed THE SOFT WHISPER OF THE DEAD. It has a nice, playful sense of fun about it, a feeling that Grant is winking at the reader and expecting the reader to wink back. I believe his heart was in the right place when he wrote this, and I certainly had a good enough time reading it that I intend to read the other two books in the trilogy.

This book was published originally in hardcover in 1982 by Donald M. Grant (no relation, as Charles Grant points out in his foreword), reprinted in paperback by Berkley in 1987, and is currently available from Amazon in an e-book edition published by Crossroad Press.

Acapulco G.P.O. - Day Keene

(Since Black Gat Books has just reprinted this novel, it seems like a good time for me to repost my review of it from 15 years ago. This post originally appeared in slightly different form on August 29, 2008.)

Day Keene, whose real name was Gunard Hjertstedt, started his writing career in the pulps and went on to become one of the most reliably entertaining authors of paperback suspense novels for Gold Medal and other publishers during the Fifties. In the Sixties, in addition to his crime and suspense novels, he also began writing glossy soap opera-type novels. ACAPULCO G.P.O., from 1967, fits quite nicely in that category.

Not that there’s no crime and suspense in this novel. There’s plenty, as there is in any good soap opera. Centered around Acapulco and a nearby former fishing village that’s now home to a number of wealthy jet-setters, Keene spins a yarn with a large cast and a number of intersecting storylines. Among the characters are a former Red Chinese army general who defected and wound up in Mexico, a beautiful movie star whose popularity has faded (you’ve got to have one of those in a book of this type), an angst-ridden artist and his model wife, and numerous horny teenagers. As for plotlines, you get drug smuggling, prostitution, kidnapping, murder, and lots of sex to go along with the crime and violence. Make no mistake about it, this is a lurid book.

Which, of course, is part of its guilty-pleasure appeal. Keene knows what he’s doing and does it extremely well. The storytelling skills he honed in the pulps keep things moving at a very fast pace, and then he springs a late twist in the outcome of one of the storylines that took me completely by surprise. ACAPULCO G.P.O. is well worth reading.

(The Black Gat Books reprint is available from Amazon in both paperback and e-book editions.)

Priestess of the Fire-Gods - Steve Dilks

Still in the mood for sword and sorcery, I decided to give Steve Dilks’ character Gunthar a try. “Priestess of the Fire-Gods” is the opening novella in the collection GUNTHAR: WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD. Gunthar is a brawny, blond-haired warrior, thief, and mercenary from the northern steppes of his world—which may or may not be Earth in the far, post-apocalyptic future. In this story, he’s hired by a priestess to steal an idol from the temple of a rival cult and deliver it to her on her private island where she’s surrounded by warrior women. Naturally, he and a beautiful young woman who falls in with him are pursued by the evil high priest from whom he stole the idol. The whole thing turns out to be involved with a sorcerous threat that could destroy the world in which they live.

This novella is a lot of fun. There’s a decent level of characterization and world-building, but no real info-dumps like you might expect in the first story of a series. Instead, Dilks gives you just enough information for everything to make sense without ever interfering with the headlong pace. The action never slows down for long in this yarn, and it’s well-written action, at that. The prose is maybe a little unpolished at times, but the story’s sheer enthusiasm more than makes up for that. I also found Gunthar to be a very likable protagonist.

I really enjoyed “Priestess of the Fire-Gods” and look forward to reading the other stories in this collection, which you can find on Amazon in both e-book and paperback editions. Based on what I’ve read so far, I give it a solid recommendation for sword and sorcery fans.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective Magazine, August 1936

Yikes! What a disturbing cover by Walter Baumhofer for this issue of DIME DETECTIVE. I'm sure there are quite a few jolts in the stories, too. Authors in this issue include Fred MacIsaac (with a Rambler story), William E. Barrett (with a Needle Mike story), John K. Butler (with a "Tricky" Enright story--I'm not familiar with that character at all), Leslie T. White (with a Duke and Phyllis Martendel story--nope, don't know them, either), and forgotten pulpster Denslow M. Dade.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Texas Rangers, August 1951

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover is by Sam Cherry, of course.

The Jim Hatfield story in this issue, “Rustlers Ride”, has been attributed to A. Leslie Scott, but when I started reading it, I said, “Wait a minute. This has to be a Tom Curry story.” The first two chapters have all the hallmarks of a Hatfield yarn by Curry, including several scenes setting up the plot before Hatfield is ever introduced and a proxy hero in the person of stalwart young rancher Arch Haley. The prose is the straightforward storytelling of Curry, as well, lacking any of the descriptions and catch phrases you always find in Scott’s work.

Then, in Chapter 3, everything changes. The writing is definitely Scott’s, and that continues to the end of the novel. There are a number of plot twists that don’t turn out the way they seem to be set up in the first two chapters. If I had to guess, I’d say Tom Curry started this novel, and then for some unknown reason Scott took over with the third chapter. I could be ’way off on that theory, of course. This is pure speculation on my part. But it comes from reading a bunch of both authors’ work over the past 60 years.

Anyway, regardless of who wrote what, is “Rustlers Ride” a good Jim Hatfield novel? Yes, it is. Despite the title, rustling plays almost no part in this story. Instead, it’s about a gold strike in West Texas and the gang of outlaws preying on the mines and the nearby town. Hatfield foils numerous of the gang’s plans before finally figuring out who the mastermind is, and even though the big boss’s identity is pretty obvious, it still involves one of those nice twists mentioned above. The breakneck pace and the action scenes are good, as always. There’s nothing here Hatfield fans haven’t read many times before, but it’s done well and I had a really good time reading this story.

Moving on, Leslie Ernenwein’s short story “Outlaw Hunch” is about a former owlhoot gone straight and turned livery stable owner who has to consider a return to outlawry, but for noble reasons. This is a fairly lightweight, almost humorous story until it turns deadly serious near the end. I really like the way Ernenwein writes, and this is a very good story, reprinted from the March 1946 issue of THE RIO KID WESTERN. I need to read more of Ernenwein’s novels.

Wayne D. Overholser’s novelette “Traitors’ Blood is Red” originally appeared in the April 1947 issue of THRILLING WESTERN. Like much of Overholser’s work, it’s set in the Pacific Northwest. This story involves espionage and a conspiracy during the Civil War which, if it succeeds, will not only alter the course of the war but change the entire country as well. It’s an odd plot—you don’t often think of the Pacific Northwest in terms of being important to the Civil War, or at least I don’t—but Overholser makes it work. The writing is a little bland, but I find that to be true of most of Overholser’s stories.

Tom Curry appears under his own name with a short story original to this issue, “Stranger in Town”. A drifting gambler is blamed for a murder he didn’t commit and has to uncover the truth. It’s a fairly common plot, but Curry, always a dependable writer, does a good job with it.

I don’t know anything about Cibolo Ford except that he published several dozen stories in various Western pulps in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties. The name has always sounded like a pseudonym to me, but I don’t know that it is. His story story “Widelooper Luck”, also original to this issue, features cowpokes Stony Lonesome and Stingaree Stanton helping their friend Gooble Nutter save his ranch from the evil scheming of lawyer J. Tubelo Zero. Those names were almost enough to make me skip this one, but I stuck with it and it’s actually okay. Mildly humorous, and I found myself liking the characters, which I didn’t expect to.

Barry Scobee is the only pulp writer to have a mountain named after him. It’s in the Davis Mountains in West Texas, near the town of Fort Davis. In addition to writing for the pulps, Scobee was a journalist and newspaper publisher and was instrumental in getting old Fort Davis, an abandoned military outpost from frontier days, restored and turned into a tourist attraction. His story in this issue, “Always Wanting Something”, is a reprint from the January 1946 issue of THE RIO KID WESTERN. It’s about a young cowboy at a turning point in his life, trying to figure out which direction to go, and is well written enough but never really very involving.

Best remembered for his Western poetry, S. Omar Barker turned out quite a bit of fiction as well. His story “Rowdy Romance”, as you’d expect from that title, is a humorous tale about a cowboy who sets aside his wild, devil-may-care ways in order to try to win a girl, only to have things turn out differently than he expects. Barker had an appealing way with words and the story is entertaining without ever really amounting to much. It’s a reprint from the December 1936 issue of THRILLING WESTERN.

There are also interior illustrations by H.L. Parkhurst and Nick Eggenhoffer, among other, unsigned illustrations.

I enjoyed this issue because “Rustlers Ride” is a slightly above-average Jim Hatfield novel and the short story by Leslie Ernenwein is pretty good. The other stories are highly forgettable. But I’m glad I read the Hatfield yarn.

Conan: Black Starlight

Having read John C. Hocking’s two Conan novels, CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS and CONAN AND THE LIVING PLAGUE (both of which are soon to be published in an omnibus volume, by the way), I expected to like his novella BLACK STARLIGHT, the second in Titan Books’ new series of short fiction based on Robert E. Howard’s characters. I was not disappointed in the least.

BLACK STARLIGHT is a sequel to CONAN AND THE EMERALD LOTUS and finds Conan traveling with three companions: a powerful sorceress, her mute Khitan bodyguard/lover, and a beautiful, knife-throwing scribe. They arrived at a bordertown on the river Styx, intending to cross from Stygia to Shem, but the place turns out to be a ghost town full of dangers, and to survive they have to penetrate a powerful enemy’s stronghold on some cliffs overlooking the Styx.

Hocking’s Conan yarns always feature numerous supernatural menaces, and that’s certainly true in BLACK STARLIGHT. Several different kinds of evil, necromantic creatures threaten the Cimmerian and his friends, and the action scenes as Conan battles to survive are excellent. The sorcerous stuff is genuinely creepy, as well, providing a blend of adventure and horror that works really well. I raced through this novella and really enjoyed it.

BLACK STARLIGHT was serialized previously in one of the Conan comic book series, but since I wasn’t keeping up with the comics at that time, I vaguely knew of its existence but never read it. I’m glad Titan Books has brought it back and published it in stand-alone form. Not surprisingly, it’s one of the best Conan pastiches I’ve read. Available now and highly recommended.

A Mystery, Crime & Noir Notebook - Gary Lovisi

I’ve known Gary Lovisi for more years than I like to think about and have been a fan of his work, both fiction and non-fiction, for all that time. His magazine PAPERBACK PARADE has been an indispensable resource for fans of genre fiction for decades, and his Gryphon Books imprint has published a lot of top-notch novels and collections in the mystery and science fiction fields.

His latest collection from Stark House, A MYSTERY, CRIME & NOIR NOTEBOOK, brings together approximately 50 articles and essays covering those title subjects. Originally published in a variety of magazines, anthologies, and collections, they concentrate mostly on vintage hardboiled paperbacks but discuss some newer books, too. (In this case, newer generally means 20 years old, instead of 50 or 60.) There are articles about specific publishers and many about particular authors. And lots and lots of beautiful cover reproductions, of course.

This is a wonderful book, perfect for dipping in and out of, although to be honest, I was so engrossed I went through most of it pretty quickly. It’s the sort of book where as I read it, I kept saying to myself “I have that one!” or “I read that one when I was a kid!” or “Oh, I have to find a copy of that one and read it!” I have a hunch most of you know exactly what I mean and would really enjoy A MYSTERY, CRIME & NOIR NOTEBOOK. It’s available on Amazon now. I give it a very high recommendation. It’s really a lot of fun.