Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure Yarns, August 1938

This pulp lasted only two issues, but it had some good authors in it. This first issue included stories by Will F. Jenkins, Murray Leinster (who was also Will F. Jenkins), Peter B. Kyne, Eugene Cunningham, Cliff Campbell (a Columbia Publications house-name) and the strikingly named Carmony Gove.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Story, January 25, 1941

A pretty good cover that serves as a reminder that telephones were around earlier than we sometimes think they were. Ray Nafziger, W. Ryerson Johnson, and Bennett Foster are the big names in this issue. The lead novel is by Ney N. Geer, an author whose work I've never read, as far as I recall, although I know I have some pulps with his stories in them.

Forgotten Books: Doom Platoon - Richard Gallagher (Len Levinson)

Readers of the World War II series THE SERGEANT by Gordon Davis may notice some similarities between those books and the novel DOOM PLATOON by Richard Gallagher. THE SERGEANT features a big, ugly, extremely tough non-com, Sergeant Mahoney. DOOM PLATOON features a big, ugly, extremely tough non-com, Sergeant Mazursky. Graphic violence abounds in both (although to be fair, these are war novels). There's plenty of crude, politically incorrect dark humor. None of these similarities come as any surprise when you realize that Gordon Davis and Richard Gallagher are actually the same person: veteran paperbacker Len Levinson.

DOOM PLATOON came out a couple of years before THE SERGEANT began, so it can be regarded as a sort of dry run for the later series, I suppose. But it can certainly be read with enjoyment on its own. During the Battle of the Bulge, the platoon of the title is under the command of Sergeant Mazursky after their lieutenant is killed in action. These 29 men are posted on a ridge above a narrow road, and their mission is to stop an entire Panzer division from advancing and hold the road until the retreating American army can regroup. It's a suicide mission, of course, and the first half of this novel is very intense as Mazursky and his platoon try to fight off the overwhelming Nazi forces.

Then, halfway through, DOOM PLATOON becomes a P.O.W. novel as the survivors from the battle are taken to a German prison camp, and the rest of the book chronicles what happens to them from then until the end of the war. While this part of the book doesn't have the urgency of the first half, it's still very well done and keeps the reader flipping the pages.

It's kind of a reviewer's cliché to say that prose is compulsively readable, but Levinson really does have that knack. His characters may not be particularly likable, but he makes you want to find out what's going to happen to them. This book, originally an obscure paperback from Belmont-Tower, is a good example of that.

Luckily, it's just been re-issued as an e-book by Pulp Heaven, an offshoot of Picadilly Publishing. They've published several more Levinson thrillers, and I have them all on my Kindle. If you're a fan of war fiction, or if you've read THE SERGEANT or Levinson's other series THE RAT BASTARDS (about the war in the Pacific, originally published under the pseudonym John Mackie), you'll definitely want to check out DOOM PLATOON.

Vampire Siege at Rio Muerto - John M. Whalen

There's been a surge in popularity for horror Westerns in recent years, and author John M. Whalen has come up with a good one in VAMPIRE SIEGE AT RIO MUERTO. The protagonist is bounty hunter Mordecai Slate, who makes his living tracking down outlaws who happen to be vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures.

Slate is hired by a wealthy rancher in New Mexico Territory to capture the vampire responsible for the death of the rancher's daughter. Slate manages to do that, but as he tries to return the prisoner to his employer, the vampire's brother and the rest of their gang are on Slate's trail. Then he runs into an unwanted complication in the form of a beautiful blonde with troubles of her own, and they all wind up stuck in the little settlement of Rio Verde, which has been renamed Rio Muerto because it's turning into a ghost town. By this time there's a small army of vampires after Slate, which leads up to an epic showdown.

Whalen has created a fine protagonist in Mordecai Slate, and his other characters are interesting, too. There's plenty of well-written action and considerable suspense. Whalen does a good job blending the Western and horror elements. One thing I found surprisingly effective is that there's not a lot of elaborate world-building to explain why vampires and other supernatural beings are roaming the Old West. They simply are, and people accept that, and that matter-of-fact attitude lends a hardboiled edge to the tale.

VAMPIRE SIEGE AT RIO MUERTO is a really entertaining novel. Horror fans should enjoy it, and if you're a Western reader who doesn't mind supernatural elements, you should definitely check it out as well.

More About 2013's Reading

Last week in my year-end post I mentioned that I'd read 128 books in 2013. If anybody's interested, here's the breakdown in what genres they were:

46 Westerns

25 Graphic Novels

22 Mysteries

10 Science Fiction

7 Horror

7 General Fiction

6 Non-fiction

2 War Novels

2 Romance

1 Humor

As far as formats go, here are those numbers:

Books Read Electronically (e-books, PDFs, Word documents – 66)

Hardbacks – 15

Trade Paperbacks – 30

Paperbacks – 8

Pulps – 6 (although there were probably at least a dozen pulp reprints scattered through the other formats)

I read 14 books that were sent to me as review copies. It seemed like more than that, so I may have overlooked one or two. I read 24 books from libraries. I read multiple books by various authors:

Garth Ennis – 5

Ed Gorman – 5

Frank Roderus – 5

Keith Souter – 5

Robert J. Randisi – 4

Jory Sherman – 4

Lawrence Block – 3

Geoff Johns – 3

I read 2 books by 'way too many authors to list. I've never been the type to go on a binge and read a bunch of books by the same author, though. 5 or 6 is usually the most I'll read by the same author in one year.

The most important thing is that I read a bunch of good books last year. My plan is to do that this year, too.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The Losers

I missed the comic book series on which this movie is based, and I didn't see the film version which came out several years ago until now. As I recall it didn't make much of a splash, which qualifies it as overlooked as far as I'm concerned because I thought it was pretty good.

As the movie opens, The Losers aren't really losers at all. They're an elite team of Special Forces operatives (I think; their official designation isn't really clear) about to take out a jungle fortress belonging to a drug overlord. But things go bad, they're double-crossed by their CIA handler, and everybody thinks they're dead.

Actually, though, they've escaped, and they want revenge on the man who betrayed them. They're contacted by a beautiful, mysterious woman whose agenda seems to coincide with theirs, and when she offers to hire them, they're willing to go along with it.

From there, lots of stuff Blows Up Real Good, there are numerous plot twists and more double-crosses, and over-the-top action scenes abound. THE LOSERS bears a definite resemblance to THE EXPENDABLES, although it's not as bloody, the plot is slightly more realistic, and there are no big names in the cast, just solid actors like Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, and Chris Evans. The script also features a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor that had me laughing out loud a few times.

I was also pleased to see a mention in the credits of Andy Diggle, the creator and author of the comic book series, and the artist Jock, rather than the usual "Based on comics published by Vertigo/DC Comics" or some such. I'm always glad to see the actual creators get some credit, not just the corporation.

THE LOSERS is a pretty entertaining film. If you like action movies and haven't seen it yet, you might want to give a try.

Now Available: Jason Evers: His Own Story - Frank Roderus

The Western Fictioneers Library reprint of Frank Roderus's great Western noir novel JASON EVERS: HIS OWN STORY is now available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. As I mentioned the other day, this is a great yarn that will really keep you turning the pages. Check it out if you're a fan of fine Westerns.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Novels, February 1944

A gun-toting clown, a gorilla, and a blonde in a skimpy outfit...what more does a pulp cover need, anyway? Inside this eye-catching issue of DETECTIVE NOVELS is a Candid Camera Kid yarn by Norman Daniels (a pretty good series; I've read several installments from it), a Norman Conquest story by Berkeley Gray reprinted from the British magazine THE THRILLER, and some assorted short stories. Somebody needs to do a complete collection of the Candid Camera Kid stories. I wouldn't be surprised to see that one of these days.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, March 7, 1942

I have a real fondness for WILD WEST WEEKLY from the mid-Thirties up until it ended in 1943, when it seems to me it was aimed less at a juvenile audience and was more of a standard Western pulp. The series characters weren't gone completely, but a lot of the stories were stand-alones. The only series character in this issue is Lee Bond's The Oklahoma Kid. I don't think I've read any of those, but I like Bond's work overall. This issue also has stories by Gunnison Steele, Chuck Martin, Ed Earl Repp, and Archie Joscelyn. I'll bet that's good readin'!

Forgotten Books: Jason Evers: His Own Story -- Frank Roderus

JASON EVERS: HIS OWN STORY was published originally by Doubleday in 1980 as part of the Double D line aimed primarily at the library market, then reprinted about fifteen years ago in paperback by Leisure. I don't recall ever hearing much about it, which is a little surprising because it's the best novel I've read so far by acclaimed, long-time Western author Frank Roderus.

The story opens with a prologue in which the narrator, Jason Evers, is in jail. Declaring that he wants to set the record straight about his life and the circumstances that landed him behind bars, he launches into a tale that takes the reader back to Texas soon after the end of the Civil War, where 17-year-old Jason finds himself on the run from the law, charged with killing a State Policeman. From there Roderus follows Jason on a picaresque adventure that takes him all across the frontier. He travels for a while with an old peddler who teaches him a lot about life. Finding himself in possession of an extremely fast but unimpressive-looking horse, Jason makes his living for several years by matching the horse against others in a series of high-stakes races.

Along the way, Jason discovers that he's not only fast on the draw but also deadly accurate with the big Colt .44 that he took from the State Policeman back in Texas. His skill with a gun leads him into some shady business when he becomes a troubleshooter for a railroad executive, but he tries to put all that behind him when he falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a wealthy rancher in New Mexico. As in all noir novels, though, the past has a way of catching up with everyone...

The biggest appeal of this book is its remarkable narrative voice. Jason Evers may well be the ultimate in unreliable narrators. He insists again and again that he never shot anybody except in defense of his own life, but he admits that on several occasions he reached for his gun because the other man "had murder in his eyes" and uses that to justify his own actions. He's so blasted wide-eyed and likable that the reader wants to believe him, but the evidence that Jason Evers is really a cold-blooded killer continues to pile up as the suspense mounts. Do we really want him to get away with it? That's something every reader will have to decide.

It's cheating a little to call this a Forgotten Book, I suppose, because it's about to be reprinted any day now by the Western Fictioneers Library. But I was so impressed by it that I wanted to post about it anyway. If you're a fan of Western noir, JASON EVERS: HIS OWN STORY is right up there with the work of Ed Gorman, H.A. De Rosso, and Lewis B. Patten. Highly recommended.