Fight Card: The Knockout - Jack Tunney (Robert J. Randisi)

Brooklyn, 1954

Frankie ‘The Piston’ Corleone was an up-and-coming light heavyweight fighter until a broken hand took him out of contention. Now, Frankie works as a private eye, occasionally taking sparring work to stay in shape make ends meet.

Cappy O’Brien has trained a lot of fighters, including Frankie. But Cappy has never had a real contender until now ... Candy Marquez is the real deal, and after being battered by Marquez during several rounds of sparring, Frankie has to agree. But the fight game is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and other trainers and the mob all want a piece of Cappy’s best prospect.

When Cappy winds up dead, it’s time for Frankie to take off the gloves and take The Piston’s punching power to the street to knockout a killer ...

Yes, it's Fight Card stories back to back on the blog. And all you really need to know about this one is that's by Bob Randisi, and you know what that means. It's fast-paced, colorful, and very entertaining. Frankie the Piston is a great character, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him again. The mystery in this one is solid and Bob does a fine job with the setting. THE KNOCKOUT is one of the best Fight Card yarns so far, and that's saying something.

Dave Brubeck, RIP

One of my all-time favorite songs, and many of his others are almost as good. I don't know if I was the only first-grader in our little Texas town listening to "Take Five" when it came out, but there couldn't have been many of us. Rest in peace, Mr. Brubeck. Your music meant an awful lot to so many of us.

Fight Card: Irish Dukes - Jack Tunney (Mike Faricy)

Dublin, Ireland 1951

After winning his latest bout in Berlin, US Army boxing champ Sergeant Kevin Crowley is on military leave in Ireland. Raised in St. Vincent's Asylum For Boys in Chicago, he has finally returned to the place of his birth, where he is sure he will find the family he never knew and lay claim to his dream of a royal fortune.

What Crowley actually finds is the fight of his life... A near destitute grandmother, crippling debt left by a father he never knew, a feisty redhead with hatred in her heart, a villainous landlord and his gang who'll stop at nothing to settle a score going back a generation...

Kevin Crowley has never backed down in the ring or out... The treasures and truth awaiting him in Dublin are not what he first imagined. But with his past, his family, and his future at stake, Crowley will put up his dukes and fight like never before...

Like GOLDEN GATE GLOVES, this Fight Card entry is a nice change of pace due to a different setting. Author Mike Faricy does a great job with his vivid portrait of Dublin and creates a fine, likable protagonist in Kevin Crowley. The other characters are all well-written, too. As usual with the Fight Card series, IRISH DUKES is a fast-moving, entertaining yarn.

99 Cent Sale from Snubnose Press

Snubnose Press is having a month-long sale on their e-books, all of which you can get for 99 cents each during December. I've read several of these books already and enjoyed them all. At that price, I figure I'll probably pick up all the others. Check out all the details here.

New This Week Going on Hiatus

My writing schedule is jam-packed for the next few months, so I won't be doing New This Week posts for a while. I'm also taking a break from the Tuesday's Overlooked Movies and/or TV series for a while, although I plan to resume that after the first of the year. I'll still be taking part in Friday's Forgotten Books, posting pulp covers on the weekends, and reviewing some new books (I hope). Too much work is a good thing to have, of course, especially in this day and age, but it does crowd out some enjoyable things sometimes.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Foreign Legion Adventures, August 1940

I've mentioned before that Foreign Legion stories were popular in various pulp magazines, but I didn't realize there was an entire magazine devoted to them until I came across this title while browsing through the Fictionmags Index. It's a reprint magazine, with stories coming from assorted issues of ARGOSY, but reprint or not that's a fine group of writers: F. Van Wyck Mason, Theodore Roscoe, J.D. Newsom (all well-known for their Legion stories) and all-around top pulpster Richard Wormser. Well worth reading, I'll bet.

Charles E. Fritch, RIP

I heard the sad news today that writer and editor Charles E. Fritch passed away back in October. His obituary is here. Chuck was the assistant editor at MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE when Sam Merwin Jr. was the editor and I assume during Larry Shaw's one or two issue tenure as editor as well, then took over the magazine and ran it for the remaining four or five years of its existence. He was the editor who asked me to write all the Mike Shayne stories, which I did for about two and a half years. That was my first regular writing job, and coming up with that 20,000 words month in and month out was great training for me. Chuck was a movie lover and had an oddball sense of humor, and both of those things showed up in his editing of MSMM. He was also a fine writer himself in the mystery and science fiction fields, although he was never very prolific. After the magazine folded we were out of touch for quite a while, but in recent years we traded the occasional emails. He was a good man and a top-notch pro, and I'm sorry he's gone. Rest in peace, Chuck.

New Interview

There's a lengthy new interview with me at the on-line magazine The Lowestoft Chronicle that I think is one of the best I've done. Lots of information about the early days of my writing career (most of which makes me feel about a thousand years old). Take a look at it if you're of a mind to, and while you're there check out the fine fiction and poetry on the site.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: 3-Book Western, May 1957

Another short-lived Western pulp, this one didn't die for lack of quality contents. The May 1957 issue of 3-BOOK WESTERN has only three novellas in it, but they're by H.A. DeRosso, L.L. Foreman, and Gardner Fox. Those are three pretty good authors. I'd have read this one, that's for sure.

UPDATE: According to Randy Vanderbeek, who owns both issues of 3-BOOK WESTERN, they're both digest magazines, not pulps. So we'll call this one of my occasional stretches, justified by the fact that DeRosso, Foreman, and Fox all wrote extensively for the pulps. 

Forgotten Books: Backfire - Dan Marlowe

BACKFIRE isn't just the title of this 1961 stand-alone novel by Dan J. Marlowe. It's what life has done to its protagonist, police detective Marty Donovan. Marty and his partner Tony Alfieri are on an unauthorized stake-out at a jewelry store, trying to catch an elusive thief who seems to have some connection to the security company that put in the store's alarm system. Things go wrong when the thief shows up, just as Marty and Tony expect, but Tony winds up dead and the killer gets away.

Marty figures he can't just call for help, for a couple of reasons. One, they weren't supposed to be there since they didn't set up the stake-out with their lieutenant, and two, Marty is having an affair with Tony's wife and he's afraid if that fact comes out, he'll be suspected of killing his own partner. So Marty decides to make things look different than they actually, keeping himself in the clear while he tries to track down the killer.

This isn't really a wise decision, because things just keep going wrong, the case gets more and more complicated, and Marty finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into trouble. But you knew that was going to happen, right?

BACKFIRE is a brisk little hardboiled crime novel. Marlowe's style is pretty plain and functional, but he keeps things moving along nicely and the plot has several layers. This isn't on the same level as THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH, Marlowe's masterpiece and one of the best crime novels ever written, but it's certainly worth reading.