Another Nice Review of The Blood Mesa

This time from the Post Modern Pulps blog.  I really appreciate all the kind words.

Permission to Kill Reviews The Blood Mesa

There's a very nice review of THE BLOOD MESA on the excellent blog Permission to Kill this morning.  "Rapid fire pace and unflinching brutality", the review says, which is exactly what I was trying to achieve in the book.  Check it out.

New Interview on Criminal-E Blog

There's a new interview with me this morning on Allan Guthrie's Criminal-E blog. Many of you know Al and know that he's a fine writer, but he's also one of the best editors I've ever had, and I've always thought that his suggestions on my novel DUST DEVILS (the focus of the interview) improved the book immensely.

Tuesday's Overlooked TV: Covington Cross

If you blinked very many times in 1992, you probably missed this short-lived medieval adventure series. According to IMDB, thirteen episodes were produced, but only six ever aired on ABC. That’s a shame, because while I haven’t seen it since then and don’t know how well it holds up, I remember it as being a pretty entertaining series.


COVINGTON CROSS was the story of Sir Thomas Grey and his teenage and young adult children. Unlike the current BBC series MERLIN, which I also enjoy, there was no mystical element to COVINGTON CROSS, no monsters or magic. It was a more straightforward adventure series, although with plenty of soap operatic elements and a certain anachronistic modern feeling to it. Some reviewers on IMDB refer to it as “90210 in the Middle Ages” (probably because of all the young, attractive characters and their romances with each other), while one of the producers is quoted as calling it “Bonanza in the Middle Ages”, which seems to me more accurate than the 90210 comparison. Some of the reviewers also seem to think it was a sitcom, which isn’t accurate at all. I wonder if they’re mixing up COVINGTON CROSS with the Mel Brooks series WHEN THINGS WERE ROTTEN.


I remember watching all the episodes that aired and enjoying them. The action scenes were pretty good (you know what a sucker I am for swordfights), and I remember being quite taken with Ione Skye as Sir Thomas’s tomboyish daughter. The rest of the cast was good, too. If all thirteen episodes were available on DVD, I might well watch them. Unfortunately, they’re not. But I’d be interested to know if anyone else besides me even remembers this series.

More About The Dead Man #5: The Blood Mesa

Here's my post on the Dead Man blog about writing THE BLOOD MESA.

The Dead Man #5: The Blood Mesa

Today is the official launch of THE BLOOD MESA, my entry is Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin's series THE DEAD MAN.  This was something of a departure for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  And I love that cover!

Book Alert: The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes - Marcus Sakey

Marcus Sakey, a writer called "genius" (Chicago Tribune), "astoundingly good" (San Jose Mercury News), and "brilliant" (The Huffington Post), is returning to the crime scene this summer with his most ambitious novel to date.  THE TWO DEATHS OF DANIEL HAYES is a captivating story of love and memory that asks an intriguing question: if you lost your memory, who would you choose to be?


THE TWO DEATHS OF DANIEL HAYES starts with a man waking up cold, alone, and half-drowned on an abandoned beach, with no memory of who he is.  Inside a nearby BMW, he finds clothes that fit perfectly, a Rolex, a bank envelope stuffed with cash, and an auto registration in the name of Daniel Hayes, resident of Malibu, California.  What is he doing here?  Is he Daniel Hayes, and if so, why doesn't he remember?  While he searches for answers, the world searches for him -- beginning with the police that kick in the door of his dingy motel, with guns drawn.


All he remembers is a woman's face, so he sets off for the only place he might find her.  The fantasy of her becomes his home, his world, his hope.  And maybe, just maybe, the way back to himself.


(I've read this book, and it's excellent.  Sakey is a fine writer.  Recommended.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Range Riders Western, Fall 1940

Like TEXAS RANGERS with the Jim Hatfield novels, THE RIO KID WESTERN, and MASKED RIDER WESTERN, RANGE RIDERS WESTERN was another example of the Hero Pulp formula transplanted to a Western setting. Every issue featured a novel starring a trio of range detectives who work for the Cattleman's Protective Association.  The leader of the group is Steve Reese, and his two sidekicks are Hank Ball and Dusty Trail, who serve not only as back-up for Reese but also occasional comedy relief (although both are pretty competent and the series doesn't descend into slapstickery too often).  I've read a bunch of these stories and enjoyed most of them, especially the early ones by Oscar J. Friend, who evidently created the series.  Later on, Friend took some of his Range Riders novels, changed the titles and the names of the three main characters, and resold them to hardback publishers, a common practice in the pulp era.  Steve Reese became Simon Carter in these revisions.  I don't recall the new names of the other two characters.  This particular issue includes short stories by the always-reliable Gunnison Steele (Bennie Gardner), Jackson Cole (no telling who was behind this house-name), and Frank Carl Young.  I'm unfamiliar with Young's work, but a check of the Fictionmags Index shows that he was relatively prolific in the Western pulps from the mid-Thirties through the early Fifties.  I've probably read some of his stories, but if so, I don't remember them.

Western Fictioneers 2011 Peacemaker Awards Now Open

The Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Awards competition for 2011 is open. You can find out all the details of what's eligible and how to submit on the WF website. If you have a Western novel or short story you plan to enter in the competition and it's already available, you can go ahead and submit it now so the judges can get started reading. I know some people probably feel like it's best to wait until late in the year to submit so that the book or story will be fresh in the judges' mind, but having been a judge for the Peacemaker, Spur, Shamus, and Scribe Awards, I can promise you that's not the case. The good entries always rise to the top no matter when they're submitted.

Forgotten Books: Death's Frozen Formula - Brant House (G.T. Fleming-Roberts)

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.