Lola: Locked & Loaded - Peter Brandvold

"Lola: Locked & Loaded" is the latest short story offering from Peter Brandvold, ol' Mean Pete his own self. It ties in with his Rogue Lawman series and serves as an origin story of sorts for the character Saradee Jones, who plays an important role in that series. So if you're a fan of Gideon Hawk, the Rogue Lawman, you definitely need to read this story.

However, it serves perfectly fine as a stand-alone yarn, too, a classic revenge tale as the 19-year-old daughter of a murdered sheriff sets out to bring her father's killers to justice. As always in a Brandvold story, there's plenty of gritty action and vivid writing, and he throws in a nice twist in the plot as well. I enjoyed it a lot and give it a high recommendation.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Mystery Novels Magazine, May 1935

I don't know much about this pulp except that it ran for nine issues during the mid-Thirties. Nor do I know anything about the author of the lead novel, Stanley Hart Page. That sounds like a pseudonym to me, but since the Fictionmags Index has possible birth and death dates for him, maybe not. Wyatt Blassingame was a prolific pulpster, mostly in the Weird Menace magazines, and of course Leslie Charteris's Saint stories are some of my all-time favorites. MYSTERY NOVELS MAGAZINE isn't one of the top pulps, but it probably wasn't bad.

Movies: Here Comes the Boom

I may be in the minority in this group, but I like Kevin James's movies. I always find them funny and good-hearted, and this new one is no exception. Sure, the plot is contrived and pretty silly. He plays a burned-out high school biology teacher who decides to become a UFC fighter so he can make enough money to save his school's music program, which is led by Henry Winkler (yep, the Fonz his own self). I watched it with a couple of teachers, and they cracked up again and again at the school scenes. I thought it was pretty funny, too. Oh, and did I mention that the movie has Salma Hayek in it? That's enough reason to watch right there, as far as I'm concerned.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Indian Stories, Summer 1950

There were only three issues of this pulp, which would seem to bear out the theory that stories featuring Indians weren't that popular with the readers. None of the other Indian-themed pulps lasted very long, as far as I know. But it wasn't for lack of good writers being involved. This first issue of INDIAN STORIES featured contributions from Les Savage, Jr., Walt Sheldon, and John Murray Reynolds, among others. And it had a decent cover by Allen Anderson, to boot.

Forgotten Books: So I'm a Heel - Mike Heller (Arnold Hano)

In a genre known for its often unlikable narrators/protagonists, SO I'M A HEEL fits right in. Ed Hawkins is a heel, all right. He's a World War II vet who got his lower jaw blown off in the South Pacific. It was replaced with a plastic prosthetic, but that still leaves Ed full of resentment over what happened to him. He comes home to a life with his wife and ten-year-old son in a small town in California and ought to be happy, but for one reason or another he can't hold a job, he's mean and sullen, and he blames everybody else for his troubles.

Then one day, the opportunity to blackmail one of the richest men in town practically falls into Ed's lap, and he seizes on it as the way out of all his troubles. But I think we all know things aren't going to work out that easily for Ed . . .

I used to have a copy of the Gold Medal edition of this book, but I never got around to reading it and had no idea who Mike Heller really was. Now I know the author is Arnold Hano, and the book is available again in the Stark House collection 3 STEPS TO HELL. That's good because it's a compelling novel with some really fine writing in it. It's a little offbeat for a Gold Medal because of some of its subject matter – saying any more than that would be too much of a spoiler – and because of its approach, which is decidedly low-key and realistic. There's crime in it – maybe – but it's not really a crime novel, more of an examination of just how low somebody can sink. And of how unsympathetic an author can make his leading character and still have the reader rooting for the guy.

Hano succeeds admirably in this, which makes for a very satisfying ending. SO I'M A HEEL is fast-paced, hardboiled, and paints a vivid picture of small-town life that can be both noble and sordid. Highly recommended.

Tuesday's Overlooked TV: The Pacific

Overlooked, of course, only in the sense that I didn't see it until recently . . . although it didn't take me as long to catch up to it as it did the companion series BAND OF BROTHERS.

THE PACIFIC is set up similarly to the earlier series, following a group of real-life characters through the war in the Pacific, starting with the battle for Guadalcanal and following on through to the beginning of the post-war era. It's based primarily on two books written by the participants, HELMET FOR MY PILLOW by Robert Leckie and WITH THE OLD BREED by Eugene Sledge. I own both of those books but haven't read them yet.

As in BAND OF BROTHERS, the battle scenes are brutal and graphic and very well-staged, and the acting is good all the way around, especially James Badge Dale as Robert Leckie and Joseph Mazzello as Eugene Sledge. Overall, though, this series suffers a little in comparison with the earlier one. Admittedly, BAND OF BROTHERS is one of the best mini-series ever made, so that comparison may not really be fair, but it's unavoidable. There are three main storylines in THE PACIFIC, including many scenes set far away from the action in Australia and in the United States. That jumping around in the plot, along with the romances in which several of the characters become involved, can't help but make THE PACIFIC feel like a really well done war soap opera rather than a recreation of history. I also missed the narration by actual veterans that figured so prominently in BAND OF BROTHERS, but again to be fair, most of the participants in THE PACIFIC, including all three main characters, had passed away by the time the series was produced.

So I feel bad about quibbling over these points when I really did enjoy THE PACIFIC and am glad we watched it. If you enjoyed BAND OF BROTHERS, you definitely should give this one a look, too.

Hit Me - Lawrence Block

If you were to ask me, I'd probably say that I don't care much for books about hitmen. But at the same time, I've read all of Lawrence Block's books about Keller and thoroughly enjoyed every one of them, including the latest, HIT ME, which will be out in a couple of weeks.

On the surface, Keller is retired, living in New Orleans with his wife and daughter, working at an honest job renovating houses, and enjoying his hobby of stamp collecting. Not surprisingly, though, his old profession lures him back in, and he finds himself taking assignments again from his former handler Dot. As usual, these jobs take him all over the country and sometimes out of it.

HIT ME is made up of four loosely connected novellas, "Keller in Dallas", "Keller's Homecoming" (which takes him back to New York City), "Keller at Sea" (his target is on a cruise ship), and "Keller's Sideline" (in which his stamp collecting hobby becomes an actual business of sorts), plus a short story, "Keller's Obligation", which is probably my favorite because it puts a very interesting new twist on the series. These stories are all smoothly plotted, of course, and as has been said before, nobody writes a better sentence than Lawrence Block. There's also a lot of stuff about stamp collecting in the stories, and even though I have zero interest in that subject, Block makes it fascinating anyway. The addition of Keller's wife Julia, who knows what he really does for a living, has made him a deeper and more sympathetic character, which if anything makes the contrast between his home life and his professional life even more interesting. You can't help but like Keller, even when you know maybe you shouldn't.

This is a fine book and I really enjoyed it. It's not necessary to have read the others in the series to appreciate this one, so if you haven't made Keller's acquaintance yet this is a good place to start. If you're read the other books, you'll certainly want to read this one, too. Highly recommended.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Sea Stories, May 1927

That's just a pretty cover on this pulp. I also like the line "Once a reader, always a reader". Very true, at least in my case. SEA STORIES ran for 118 issues from 1922 to 1930, so this issue is sort of in the middle of that stretch. Murray Leinster is probably the best-known author from this issue, which also includes stories by Bob Du Soe, George Allan England, A. Hyatt Verril, and S.B.H. Hurst, all of them pulpsters of some popularity. I don't think I've ever seen an issue of SEA STORIES, but I'll bet there were some good stories in its pages.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Dime Western, May 15, 1935

This issue of one of the leading Western pulps features a good cover by Walter Baumhofer and a great line-up of authors: T.T. Flynn, Walt Coburn, Ray Nafziger, Cliff Farrell, Robert G. Pearsol, Art Lawson, and Bart Cassidy. And this was just an average issue of DIME WESTERN! That would be an all-star issue of most pulps. Some people claim that everything worth reprinting from the pulps has already been reprinted. I don't believe that for a second.

Forgotten Books: Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, May 1968

I think I can fudge enough to call a digest magazine a book. It's approximately 50,000 words of fiction, after all. And while I was looking for something else the other day, I came across a stack of old issues of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE that a friend sent to me. The urge to read some of them hit me, so here are my comments on the first one I got to.

As usual, the May 1968 issue of MSMM leads off with a "short novel" featuring Miami private eye Mike Shayne. This is actually a 20,000 word novella (although I think this one might be closer to 25K). "The Baby Doll Murder", which is a good title, by the way, is almost certainly by Dennis Lynds writing under the house-name Brett Halliday. Lynds wrote nearly all the Shayne novellas from 1963 to 1970, making him the most prolific "Brett Halliday" of all time. Coming up with that many mystery plots, month after month, year after year, is an amazing achievement. I had a pretty good continuous run as Brett Halliday, too, but only for two and a half years, and by the end of that stretch my brain was running on fumes, let me tell you. (Of course, I've written 76 full-length novels in the past 60 months, which will also wear out your brain, but at least I've switching back and forth between a lot of different Western series, not to mention some thrillers and mysteries, too.)

Anyway, "The Baby Doll Murder" finds Shayne investigating a murder that took place a year earlier. A beautiful blond model who was famous for a series of ads for baby doll pajamas was found bludgeoned to death with a candlestick, and the police never solved the crime. But then a young man comes forward out of the blue to confess to the killing, and his father, believing that confession to be false, hires Shayne to find the real killer. Shayne doesn't know at first whether the kid is lying, but an attempt on his life when he starts poking around in the case convinces him that somebody is trying to hide something.

And of course that's true, as Lynds twists the plot this way and that with his usual skill. Shayne's secretary Lucy Hamilton, his reporter buddy Tim Rourke, and Miami chief of police Will Gentry don't have much to do in this one, but Shayne gets in some nice sparring with his old nemesis, Miami Beach chief of detectives Peter Painter. Eventually Shayne uncovers the truth, but not before wading through a number of nicely done red herrings. The actual solution is a little weak, but it's a product of its era.

The back-up stories in MSMM were usually pretty good. The first one in this issue, "Tell Tale" by George Bellefontaine, is a little bit of an odd fit for a hardboiled crime digest since it's a domestic drama about the trouble a woman gets into by gossiping, but it's well-written and fairly effective.

"Arizona 'Ma' Barker – The Devil's Daughter" is one of a series of true crime yarns by David Mazroff that ran in MSMM for quite a while. It's pretty long, probably 10,000 words, a well-researched tale of Depression-era crime that's lightly but luridly fictionalized, as Mazroff comes up with thoughts and dialogue for the historical characters he's writing about. It works well, and the story is very entertaining. I'm looking forward to reading more of these.

Next up is a relatively early novelette by Bill Pronzini, "The Bomb Expert", which is about a hired killer who goes beyond his assignment. It's cleverly plotted and well-written, as you'd expect.

"The Obvious Way Out" by Richard O. Lewis is about a tyrannical college professor and an unexpected confrontation with some students. This one is okay, but that's as far as I'd go.

"The Stubble of Beard" by Dan Ross is one of a series about Mei Wong a Chinese art dealer in Bombay who serves as an amateur sleuth, helping out his friend Inspector Bannerjee. The Mr. Wong series ran for nearly twenty years in various mystery digests. I've read a number of them. They're mild little puzzle stories, usually entertaining, as this one is. Ross is an interesting author. A Canadian, he started out as an actor and playwright and wound up writing more than 300 books, most of them Gothics and historical romances under the names Marilyn Ross, Clarissa Ross, and a few other pseudonyms. He also wrote the long-running series of paperback tie-in novels based on the TV show DARK SHADOWS. He didn't follow the show's continuity, however, deciding instead to go off on his own storylines with the characters, creating a sort of alternate universe DARK SHADOWS. I can't imagine a tie-in author being allowed to get away with that today. I read some of the DARK SHADOWS novels back when I was in high school, when the show was still on the air in its original run, and I remember thinking they were pretty good.

The issue wraps up with "Peabody's Obsession", a tale about an art theft by Hal Ellson, an author I usually like. I didn't think much of this story, though.

MSMM was probably past its prime in 1968, although it ran for a long time after that (and I'd like to think it was pretty good during the era I wrote for it). I think the magazine peaked in the stretch from 1960 to '65, when nearly every issue was full of good hardboiled private eye action. But it was still a solidly entertaining magazine in '68, and this issue is a good example of that. Actually, almost any issue from the Fifties and Sixties is well worth reading, if you're lucky enough to come across any. (By the way, the scan accompanying this post is of the actual copy I read. The cover's a little grimy, but hey, that just gives it character.)