Now Available: Trails of the Wild

It's been a long day on the trail. The sun is setting, the campfire is burning, and the storytellers are sitting around waiting to entertain you. TRAILS OF THE WILD features six short stories of the Old West and a brand-new Cash Laramie novella by Wayne D. Dundee.

Tension builds as a Texas Ranger is pinned down by an outlaw's rifle fire and a deadly diamondback crawling over his legs.

Laughs abound when a man fights to maintain his own identity in the shadow of his famous, deceased grandfather Davy Crockett.

Fear strikes while shape-shifting coyotes prowl outside the shack of a sole line rider in secluded ranch territory.

All this and more raise the stakes and turn conventions upside-down. BEAT to a PULP's TRAILS OF THE WILD offers the boldest and most thrilling Western tales from the sharpest wordsmiths of our time.

(My short story "Rattler" is included in this anthology. I'm looking forward to reading the others. TRAILS OF THE WILD is available in both e-book and print editions.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: North-West Romances, Spring 1940

With all that action going on, that looks to me like it might be a Norman Saunders cover, but I don't know for sure and I'm not enough of an art expert to do more than hazard a guess. But whoever painted it, I like it, and the stories in this issue look good, too. Authors include Frederick Nebel, A. deHerries Smith, Karl Detzer, Sgt. Dan O'Rourke, and James P. Olsen. Love the title of the story by the house-name John Starr, too: "Sourdough Girl". If it didn't already exist, I might have to write it.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Lariat Story, September 1946

With the girl in that pose, that's got to be an Allan Anderson cover, doesn't it? Looks like a fine issue with stories by D.B. Newton, Les Savage Jr., and Richard Brister, among others.

Forgotten Books: The Archer Files - Ross Macdonald

I don't recall the first Ross Macdonald book I read. It may well have been THE MOVING TARGET, the first book in the Lew Archer series. I remember checking it out of the library very early on. But not long after that I joined The Mystery Guild, and one of the books I got as part of my membership was ARCHER IN HOLLYWOOD, a thick green omnibus volume with three novels in it: THE MOVING TARGET (which I'd already read), THE WAY SOME PEOPLE DIE, and THE BARBAROUS COAST, as well as an introduction by Macdonald about the writing of the books.

Well, that was enough to make me into a lifelong fan of Ross Macdonald's writing and the Lew Archer series in particular. All the books up to that time had been reprinted in paperback (most by Bantam, a few by Pocket Books), and used copies were readily available. I snatched them up and read all I could get my hands on, including the short story collection THE NAME IS ARCHER, which I remember reading at my aunt's house in Blanket, Texas.

All the stories from THE NAME IS ARCHER—and more—can by found in THE ARCHER FILES, a great collection published a few years ago by Crippen & Landru. That "more" I refer to includes a biographical sketch of Lew Archer by Tom Nolan, who edited the book, and what Nolan calls "Case Notes", which are actually the openings of Archer stories that Macdonald never finished. Some of these fragments are brief, only a page or two, but others are fairly substantial. All of them are entertaining and very frustrating at the same time, because we don't get to find out how the stories end. But Macdonald's prose is as compelling and appealing as ever.

I won't claim to have reread all the stories in THE ARCHER FILES for this post, but I reread several of them and they hold up very well, no doubt about that. One of them, "Gone Girl", opens with a couple of lines I really like and have never forgotten: "It was a Friday night. I was tooling home from the Mexican border in a light blue convertible and a dark blue mood." Ah, that sweet first-person private eye narration . . . I just love it.

If you've never read Macdonald's work and haven't made the acquaintance of Lew Archer, THE ARCHER FILES would be a great place to start. If you're an old fan like me, well, reading these stories took me back to the Sixties and early Seventies, when I was devouring all the private eye yarns I could find, and it was a great feeling. Now I might have to try to find the time to reread some of the Archer novels.

Dominic Fortune: It Can Happen Here and Now - Howard Chaykin, et al.

In 1975, writer/artist Howard Chaykin created a character for the short-lived Atlas/Seaboard comics company called The Scorpion. In the two issues under that title produced by Chaykin, The Scorpion was a mysterious, swashbuckling adventurer named Moro Frost who operated in 1930s Hollywood. Due to creative differences, Chaykin left the title after those two issues, and a third issue of THE SCORPION by different creators and featuring a different character was published before Atlas/Seaboard collapsed. The company put out some pretty good comic books during its short life (I read most of them), but my favorite was probably Chaykin's version of THE SCORPION.

A short time later, the second issue of Marvel's black-and-white magazine MARVEL PREVIEW featured a story called "The Power Broker Resolution" that starred a mysterious, swashbuckling adventurer in 1930s Hollywood named Dominic Fortune. The writer/artist who produced that story? None other than Howard Chaykin. Yep, Dominic Fortune was a reworked version of The Scorpion, with little changed except the character's name. I enjoyed it as much as I had the two earlier issues.

The story didn't lead to much, though. A few years later in one of Marvel's color comics, MARVEL PREMIERE #56, Dominic Fortune surfaced again in a story called "The Big Top Barter Resolution", with art by Chaykin and Terry Austin and script by David Michelinie. This is a fun story that features a pre-Howling Commandos appearance by Dum Dum Dugan. But again it didn't lead to an ongoing Dominic Fortune series.

Over the years other writers and artists used Fortune as a guest star in various stories, filling in his back-story as they went along, something with which I'm not totally in agreement. (The urge to produce "origin" stories is a plague that afflicts mainly Hollywood—the movie version of SOLOMON KANE, anyone?—but it crops up in the comics industry, too. As far as I'm concerned the worst thing that Marvel ever did with Wolverine was to give him a detailed origin. I much preferred the mystery that surrounded his early appearances.)

But back to Dominic Fortune. A few years ago, Chaykin wrote and drew a Fortune mini-series for Marvel's MAX imprint, which means it has a lot of cussin' and nekkid women in it, two things to which I'm not opposed in principle, but it's easy to go overboard on them and that's almost the case here. Not quite. "It Can Happen Here and Now" finds Fortune being hired by a movie executive to ride herd on three drunken, washed-up ham actors who are still valuable to the studio. In trying to keep them out of trouble, Fortune winds up in the middle of a Fifth Columnist plot to assassinate FDR. This story aspires to be a fun romp, and most of the time it is. It's a little too heavy-handed in its politics for my taste, but overall I enjoyed it.

The trade paperback DOMINIC FORTUNE: IT CAN HAPPEN HERE AND NOW reprints the MAX mini-series, the two early Dominic Fortune stories from MARVEL PREVIEW and MARVEL PREMIERE, and a six-part Fortune serial that previously was available only on-line. This story, written by Dean Motter and drawn by Greg Scott, is excellent, a globe-trotting adventure in which Fortune is hired by a young woman who wants him to prove that her sister's deadly leap from the top of the Hollywood sign was murder, not suicide. In the course of the story, Fortune visits Berlin, where he encounters Barons Strucker and Zemo and the young S.S. officer who will become the Red Skull; Latveria, where he meets gypsy healer Werner von Doom and his pregnant wife (no points for guessing who that kid turns out to be); and a tiny country in Africa called Wakanda. There's also a cameo by Howard Stark. The story is a lot of fun for a long-time Marvel fan like me.

Dominic Fortune certainly isn't one of Marvel's top-tier characters, but I like him and I enjoyed this collection. If you're a fan of the character or of Howard Chaykin's work, it's well worth reading.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Boxcar Bertha

This movie is overlooked in the sense that I wanted to see it when it came out in 1972, but for one reason or another I never did until now. Even though it's set during the Depression, it's very much a product of its times with its not very convincing violence, its abundant nudity, and its theme of the little guy striking back against The Man.

Barbara Hershey, surely one of the most beautiful actresses ever, plays Bertha, the daughter of a cropduster who's killed early on when his greedy employer forces him to go back up in a plane that's having engine trouble. (Every character in this movie who isn't broke or who's an officer of the law is a brutal, greedy, psychotic bastard, by the way. Like I said, it came out in 1972.) Left on her own, Bertha falls in with Big Bill Shelley, a union organizer who's battling against the local railroad line. They get separated, and she winds up traveling with a con man and gambler from up north. Eventually they all wind up together, along with the black mechanic who worked for Bertha's father, and decide to hell with union organizing, they'll just become a gang of criminals instead, so we're off on a lot of Bonnie and Clyde-like action.

Most of the plot is so ham-fisted that it's cartoonish, even though it's supposedly based on real events, and being that this was an American International picture produced by Roger Corman, the production values sometimes are a little less than top-notch. However, director Martin Scorsese (yep, that Martin Scorsese; I believe this was the first movie he directed) keeps things perking along at a pretty entertaining pace, and the film's crudities actually wind up being part of its charm. I probably would have liked it better if I'd seen it in 1972—I definitely would have been more a member of its target audience then—but I enjoyed it now. The day Livia and I watched it, we had started two current movies that turned out to be incredibly boring and wound up stopping both of them after half an hour in which nothing happened. As I said to Livia after we'd watched BOXCAR BERTHA, "At least stuff happened in this movie." Yes, it does. And for that reason, along with the nostalgia value, it's worth watching.

The Castro Directive - Stephen Mertz

Stephen Mertz has been one of the leading authors of adventure fiction and a good friend of mine for more years than I like to think about. His latest novel THE CASTRO DIRECTIVE is a fine addition to his body of work, and it's a special pleasure and honor for me to read it since it's dedicated to me.

Set in 1961, it's the behind-the-scenes story of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and the aftermath of that bungled operation. Aware that Castro has a mole somewhere in the group of Cuban refugees planning the invasion, President Kennedy sends for a special operative, Green Beret Sergeant Michael "Graveyard" Morgan, to root out the spy.

A book like this is very tricky to write. Most readers already know the historical outcome, so in order to generate any suspense you have to make the story about how events wind up the way they did. In other words, the story is about the journey, not the destination. Mertz does an excellent job of accomplishing this by coming up with compelling fictional characters and some plausible twists and turns that probably didn't happen but could have. He also makes good use of the historical characters and events. The scenes featuring JFK, Bobby Kennedy, and other historical figures come across as very authentic.

Then, part of the way through, Mertz throws in another highly effective twist by involving Graveyard Morgan's estranged wife and daughter in the mix and making the mission personal for him. This ratchets the suspense up to an even higher level.

I remember this era and the Bay of Pigs invasion fairly well, although I was pretty young at the time and more concerned with surviving elementary school. But I recall enough, and have studied enough history since then, to know that Mertz does a top-notch job capturing that time period. If you want to read an excellent historical thriller by a real pro at the top of his game, you definitely should check out THE CASTRO DIRECTIVE, which is available in both trade paperback and e-book editions. It gets a high recommendation from me.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Uncanny Tales, November 1939

Nobody ever bought a Weird Menace pulp because its cover was tasteful and restrained, and this is a perfect example of that. Creepy villains in space helmets, nearly naked girl, stalwart raygun-toting hero . . . what more do you need? Well, how about stories by Robert Leslie Bellem, Arthur J. Burks, Ray Cummings, Allan K. Echols (better known for his Westerns) and Russell Gray (Bruno Fischer)? Over the top, sure, but I'll bet it's fun.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Variety Western, March/April 1939

I'm not sure I'd ever heard of this Western pulp from Ace, and I've definitely never seen any of the issues. This one has a busy but not bad cover, and one of the featured authors is the great Harry F. Olmsted. His story here was probably a reject from Popular or Street & Smith, but I'll bet it's pretty good anyway. Almost every other author in this issue is a house-name, so I have no idea who really wrote the stories.

Forgotten Books: The Savage Hours - L.P. Holmes

When I read RUSTLER'S MOON by L.P. Holmes last month, I enjoyed it enough that I knew I'd be reading more by him soon. And so I have. THE SAVAGE HOURS is a short novel published by Ace Books in 1966, and it's another fine piece of Western entertainment.

The protagonist of this one is undercover lawman Jim Bannion, who's sent in to a rich ranching area in Oregon find out if the local badge-toter has turned crooked. Immediately, Bannion finds himself in the middle of a land grab and swindle cooked up by the local judge (not a spoiler, Holmes doesn't have any real mystery in these stories). Several murders, bushwhackings, and brutal fistfights later, Bannion and an unexpected ally close in on the bad guys and set everything to rights in fine hardboiled style.

There's a decent plot twist in this one (that unexpected ally mentioned above), but for the most part veteran Western readers will know what's going to happen. Holmes writes so well, though, that it doesn't really matter. A book like this is pure comfort food to somebody like me who grew up on them and would have made a fine early Fifties movie directed by Andre de Toth and starring Randolph Scott as Bannion. Or if you want a little lower budget, substitute Joseph Kane for de Toth and Rod Cameron for Scott. I have several more L.P. Holmes novels on hand and plan to get to them soon.