Forgotten Books: Outlaw in the Saddle - Tom Roan

I've read and enjoyed a few of Tom Roan's pulp stories, but this is the first novel of his that I've read. It has a great opening: a gang of outlaws led by the Apache Kid (a totally fictional Apache Kid, by the way; no relation to the real-life Army scout known by that name) robs a train and is then betrayed by one of their own and ambushed by a posse.

Roan writes great action scenes. After that, though, there's a long stretch where the book sags as the Kid is rescued by a beautiful girl and nursed back to health by her and her father. He falls in love with the girl, of course, and winds up fighting for her and her father against the villains who are out to destroy them. The book concludes with a couple more excellent action scenes.

Roan is no prose stylist. His writing is full of awkward phrases and oddly constructed sentences. He doesn't handle the romance angle well, either, slipping too easily into flowery melodrama. But he creates sympathetic characters, and I can forgive a lot of flaws for good characters and good action. Roan delivers both. His biggest problem in this book is the pacing. I suspect he's one of those writers who is better at novelette length, but I'll have to read more of his novels in order to determine that.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Amazing Stories, March 1947

The late Forties issues of AMAZING STORIES aren't noted for their fiction. This one has stories by Richard S. Shaver (heard a lot about him, never read a word he wrote), Leroy Yerxa, John and Dorothy de Courcy, and Heinrich Hauser, a German author who wrote only three novels. But it certainly had some eye-catching covers. I mean, look at this one by Robert Gibson Jones. A giant Viking punching a dragon in the belly. I repeat, a giant Viking. Punching a dragon. In the belly. Perhaps not the coolest thing ever, but probably in the top ten. You can bet I would have bought this one if I'd seen it on the newsstand in 1947.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Heart of Courage - Two Steps From Hell

I'm battling that bad cough again, and it looks like I may be at it most of the night. But I have plenty of good stuff to read, and I have Two Steps From Hell songs playing through the computer, including this one, to keep me inspired.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Rodeo Romances, April 1948

A nice Sam Cherry cover on this issue of RODEO ROMANCES, and the list of authors inside confirms my impression that the Western romance pulps drew on the same group as the regular Western pulps: L.P. Holmes, Stephen Payne, Johnston McCulley, Chuck Martin, Lee Bond, and "Jackson Cole". I have a rodeo story in my head that I may get around to writing one of these days.

Forgotten Books: Dead Man's Walk - Richard S. Prather

There's a reason why I picked this Shell Scott novel to reread for Richard S. Prather Week on Forgotten Books, even though in some ways it's not really typical of the rest of the series, but to explain it you'll have to allow me to wax nostalgic for a minute.

As some of you know, my dad was a TV repairman for many years, and during the summers when I was a kid, I often went with him when he made his service calls. I was no great shakes when it came to electrical stuff, but I could carry tool boxes and tube caddies and help load and unload TVs. Inevitably, though, I got bored, so I always slipped a paperback in my pocket. While my dad was on his knees behind one of those giant console TVs of the Sixties with his head buried among its guts, I'd find a place to sit, haul out the current book, and read for a while.

So one day--probably in the summer of 1966--I took along a book in a series of private eye novels that I'd seen around all over the place, although I hadn't read any of them up to that point. That book, of course, was DEAD MAN'S WALK.

Well, I instantly became a fan. In those days I bought most of my books at Thompson's Bookstore in downtown Fort Worth, and they had a bunch of Shell Scott novels. I grabbed as many of them as I could afford and continued to do so, read them throughout the rest of junior high and high school, and had a great time doing it.

Unlike most of the other books in the series, which are set mainly in Los Angeles, DEAD MAN'S WALK takes place almost entirely on a Caribbean island called Verde. Shell inherits a small percentage in a resort hotel there, and he's summoned by the hotel's proprietor when a mysterious murder takes place. Accompanied by a beautiful blond tomato (that's the way Shell talks, and it's catching), he arrives to find that Verde is a hotbed of voodoo and other sinister goings-on. There are a couple more gorgeous babes, including the dancer on the cover, several more murders, some double-crosses, and a voodoo showdown between Shell and the local hungan. The humor, the fast pace, the sexy girls, and Shell's own irrepressible personality are all there, even though the setting is different. I can certainly see why I started gobbling up the rest of the series.

To be honest, although DEAD MAN'S WALK is pretty entertaining, it doesn't hold up quite as well as I thought it might. The plot seems to meander around quite a bit in the middle of the book. But it ends with several great action scenes, and Shell is . . . well, Shell, still one of my all-time favorite fictional private eyes.

Now, I'm pretty sure I've told this story before, but I'm going to tell it again, since it's appropriate to this week's topic. When I was a freshman in high school, my Algebra I teacher was the head football coach (and an excellent teacher, too). One day in class, Coach Hall gave us time to start our homework. I went through mine pretty quickly, and since I was done, I hauled out the book I was reading, one of the Shell Scotts. Coach Hall got up from his desk, walked toward me, and said, "What are you reading there, Reasoner?" I thought I was in trouble, but I said, "It's a, uh, mystery novel, Coach." He smiled and said, "I think I've read all those Shell Scott books. They're great."

The coach and I were fast friends after that, bonded by our enjoyment of Shell Scott. And to be fair, I may well have been the only other person in our high school reading them.

Years later, I was lucky enough to correspond briefly with Richard S. Prather, so I got to tell him how much his books meant to me. I'm glad I did.

A Middle of the Night Music Post: Cast Your Fate to the Wind - Vince Guaraldi

So I'm sitting here sneezing and coughing from a cold and battling insomnia, and I decide to kill some time by going back through some of those Music I Like posts I ran a few years ago. For some reason Blogger has stripped the video clips from many of them, So I thought maybe I'd post some more, not every night, certainly, but on those nights when I'm not sleeping much anyway, which are becoming increasingly more common. And I suspect the selection will be as wide-ranging as ever. The great Vince Guaraldi gets us started.

Now Available for Pre-Order: Crossfire - John Hegenberger

A vanishing corpse...a clout on the head...industrial espionage with millions of dollars at stake...an international conspiracy that threatens the 1988 Summer Olympics...These are just some of the problems private investigator Eliot Cross has to untangle in CROSSFIRE: THE SCALES OF JUSTICE, the newest novel from popular author John Hegenberger. Fast-paced, filled with mystery, action, and humor, CROSSFIRE is a private eye yarn in the classic mold and a sure bet for entertainment.

"Cross is engaging, the secondary characters are colorful and skillfully drawn, the writing is crisp and well-paced. It all makes for an entertaining trip down the hardboiled side of the street." - Wayne D. Dundee

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The Mummy's Hand

I'm a little under the weather, so this will be quick. Like several other movies I've watched recently, THE MUMMY'S HAND is really a pulp adventure yarn masquerading as something else, in this case a horror movie. Although it's definitely creepy in the late stages after the Mummy (played pretty effectively by cowboy actor Tom Tyler) and starts shambling around and killing. Before that we've got two-fisted archaeologist Dick Foran, his sidekick/comedy relief Wallace Ford, the stage magician who finances their expedition (the great Cecil Kellaway), his beautiful daughter Peggy Moran, and George Zucco (who else?) as the High Priest of Karnak (Sim-sallah-bim!) who wants to stop the Americans from finding the ancient tomb of Princess Annanka. Some of the movie does resemble an early version of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. The acting is no great shakes, but journeyman director Christy Cabanne (whose career goes all the way back to 1912!) keeps things moving along fairly well. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Not a great film, but certainly fun.

New Low Price for Blaze! #1

 BLAZE! by Stephen Mertz, the novel that launched the bestselling Western series, is now available for the new low price of 99 cents. With nine books available and more coming later this year, this is a great time to start reading the Blaze! series. High quality Western entertainment! (Ignore the price in the link. If you click on it, the book is actually 99 cents the way it's supposed to be.)

Tripl3 Cross On Sale for a Limited Time

 John Hegenberger's next Eliot Cross novel CROSSFIRE will be available next Monday, and to mark the occasion, this week the previous novel in the series, TRIPL3 CROSS, is on sale for only 99 cents. It's a great deal on this critically acclaimed book!