Review: Wild - Gil Brewer

WILD is actually the first Gil Brewer novel I ever read, approximately 40 years ago. I had heard of Brewer but didn’t know anything about him or his books except that my buddies Bill Crider and Ed Gorman said they were good. That was enough of a recommendation for me. When a copy of the original Fawcett Crest edition from 1958 came in at the used bookstore I managed, I grabbed it for myself and read it. All these years later, with Black Gat Books reprinting this novel recently, it seemed like a perfect time for one of my rare rereads.

Lee Baron is one of the few private eye protagonists in Gil Brewer’s fiction. Lee, who has been working as a private detective in California, returns to his hometown of Tampa, Florida, to take over the agency of his late father, who has just passed away. For his first case, he’s hired by an old flame to talk to her husband, from whom she’s estranged, and try to set up a reconciliation. This seems like an odd assignment for a private detective, but Lee takes the case and, wouldn’t you know it, discovers a dead body almost right away. The corpse has been mutilated, so it’s hard to tell who the dead man is. Is it the old flame’s husband? Is it one of the guys who was involved in a recent bank robbery that netted the thieves almost half a million bucks? Loot which is still missing, by the way. Or maybe the dead man was tied in with whoever hired the hulking, out-of-town thug to hand Lee a beating and scare him off the case, or kill him if he won’t scare. Let’s not forget the second murder, or the old flame’s beautiful but slutty sister, who Lee was also involved with in the old days.

And all of this is just in the first twelve hours after Lee takes the case.

WILD is a real whirlwind of a novel. Gil Brewer is known for the propulsive nature of his plots and writing, and that quality is in full force in this one. I had no clue what was going to happen next, and Lee Baron sure as hell doesn’t. But something is going to happen, you can be sure of that, and it’ll probably be bad.

I have a confession to make. When I first read WILD back in the Eighties, I didn’t care much for it. It didn’t make me a Gil Brewer fan, and I didn’t read anything else by him for quite a while. But then I read the Hard Case Crime reprint of his novel THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN (which just happens to be the next novel Brewer published after WILD) and thought it was terrific, one of the best hardboiled/noir novels I’d read in a long time. I’ve gone on to read many more of his novels and have enjoyed every one of them.

So what did I think of WILD when I reread it? I’m happy to report that I liked it much better this time around. The plot is suitably twisty, the characterization is vivid, and Brewer’s writing is quite poignant, almost poetic in places. At the same time, it still manages to capture the white-hot desperation of the people involved in this swamp of lust and greed. If you’re already a Gil Brewer fan and haven’t read WILD, you’ll definitely want to check it out. If you haven’t read Brewer, as I hadn’t all those years ago, you might want to start with one of his classics like 13 FRENCH STREET, SATAN IS A WOMAN, or THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN, as mentioned above. But WILD is well worth reading, make no mistake about that. It’s available in paperback and e-book editions. 

 

Manville Moon #7: Pay Up or Die - Richard Deming

“Pay Up or Die” is the seventh and last of the Manville Moon novellas to be reprinted in e-book format. It originally appeared in the May 1951 issue of BLACK MASK DETECTIVE. There are about a dozen more Moon short stories and novelettes that appeared in various pulps and digests, mostly MANHUNT, throughout the Fifties. Maybe a publisher will collect them one of these days.

This yarn finds our one-legged private eye protagonist being hired to protect an actress who’s been getting death threats. Before Moon can even get started, though, a murder takes place. His client is the intended victim, and there are several suspects for the killer, including a dangerous mobster who used to be married to her. Sure enough, Moon gets taken for a ride again (this seems to happen a lot) and barely escapes with his life before he untangles the case and discovers the murderer’s identity.

The plot in this one is a little more complicated than in the previous two stories, but I still figured it out well before the end. No matter. Manville Moon is as likable as ever and Richard Deming’s polished prose is a pleasure to read. There are three full-length novels featuring Moon. I have all of them and am looking forward to reading them.

Dead Man's Chest - Norbert Davis

Norbert Davis is one of the authors I was introduced to in the legendary, Ron Goulart-edited anthology THE HARDBOILED DICKS in the Sixties. I’ve been reading and enjoying Davis’s work off and on ever since. He’s best remembered for his hardboiled yet humorous mysteries, but he wrote other kinds of stories for the pulps, too, including straight adventure. One such example is the novelette “Dead Man’s Chest”, originally published in the November 1936 issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES.

The protagonist of this yarn is drifting adventurer Poco Kelly (a great name if I’ve ever seen one). A character in this story refers to him as a soldier of fortune, but Kelly immediately corrects that to “soldier, but no fortune”. He finds himself in a small town on Mexico, rescuing a beautiful American girl being pursued by sinister stalkers, getting mixed up in a torture killing, clashing with a vicious criminal, and getting captured by a gang of bandits, all while trying to locate a map (drawn on a piece of tanned human skin, no less) that’ll lead him and the beautiful girl to a fortune in gold.

There’s nothing in “Dead Man’s Chest” that we haven’t seen before, but the key to its appeal is in Davis’s handling of the material. And luckily, he does a great job of it. His prose is fast and vivid and action-packed, Poco Kelly is a very likable protagonist, and there are just enough touches of humor to remind you that you’re reading a story by Norbert Davis. And then, at the very end of the story, he throws in a nice twist that I wasn’t expecting. It put a grin on my face, too.

I really enjoyed “Dead Man’s Chest”. It’s a very solid pulp adventure tale that I found well worth reading. It’s available in a stand-alone e-book edition from Wildside Press with an informative and entertaining introduction by publisher John Betancourt. (I had no idea until I read the introduction that Davis was married to mystery author Frances Crane. I have most, if not all, of Crane’s novels about married sleuths Pat and Jean Abbott, but I’ve never read any of them. I can’t help but wonder if Davis had any influence on them. I’ve got to get around to trying those.)

Nordic & Finn - Peter Brandvold

Anders Nordic is a big, bearded Scandinavian from Dakota Territory who’s working holding down a line camp on a ranch in New Mexico. He’s an unsociable sort, so the solitary life at the line camp suits him very well. But he has to go into the nearby town of Cimarron from time to time to pick up supplies, and once day while he’s in the settlement, he sees some boys picking on a stray dog. Anders likes dogs and maybe even senses a certain kinship with this one, so he puts a stop to the abuse and sends the scared youngsters scurrying away.

Unfortunately, one of the boys is the son of the local banker, whose pride and arrogance prompts him to try to have Anders arrested. This does not go well, and Anders’ simple impulse to carry out a good deed is instead the opening move in a series of increasingly bloody and tragic circumstances.

NORDIC & FINN is the latest novel and the first in a new series from Peter Brandvold, one of today’s most popular Western writers. He’s long been a favorite of mine, and he certainly doesn’t disappoint this time around. He writes action as well as anyone in the business and always creates compelling characters. Anders Nordic is a great protagonist, very likable despite his solitary nature, or maybe because of it since the reader gets to see him temper that self-imposed isolation in his developing relationships with Finn (the dog he rescues) and several humans who prove to be good friends.

However, this is a Brandvold book, so it’s not all warm fuzzies. The action is tough and unrelenting, and not everything turns out exactly as you might expect. It sure had me turning the pages to find out what was going to happen, and it even kept me up later than I intended in order to do just that, something that almost never happens these days. If you’re a Western fan, I give NORDIC & FINN a very high recommendation. It’s available from Wolfpack Publishing in e-book and trade paperback editions on Amazon, and it's one of the best books I’ve read this year. I’m looking forward to the next volume in the series.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Speed Detective, September 1943

I haven't seen too many tennis court shootouts on pulp covers. In fact, this one painted by H.J. Ward for an issue of SPEED DETECTIVE is the only one I recall. There are some familiar names inside, including Robert Leslie Bellem (twice, once as himself and once as Jerome Severs Perry, one of my favorite pseudonyms), Laurence Donovan (as Larry Dunn), house-names William Decatur and Randolph Barr, and Harold de Polo and Arthur Feldman, both real names as far as I know. There's a story by Lloyd Sanders, too, but it's his only credit in the Fictionmags Index, so he could be one of the Trojan Publications regulars. Or not. 

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, October 1944

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by George Rozen, and it accurately illustrates a scene from the lead novella in this issue of EXCITING WESTERN.

That lead novella, “Gun Thunder in Broken Bow”, is by one of my favorite Western authors, W.C. Tuttle. Most of Tuttle’s career was spent writing novels and stories in the several different series he created, but he wrote a fair number of stand-alone yarns, too. This is one of them, and it finds former convict Tex Colton returning to his hometown after spending several years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Everybody believes Tex has returned so he can get the loot he stashed, but he can’t do that since he didn’t pull the robbery in the first place. However, his brother, who has taken over his ranch in the meantime, did. (Not a spoiler—this is revealed very early on.) To add injury to insult, or vice versa, Tex’s brother has also married his old sweetheart.

As usual in a Tuttle story, there are some broadly comic characters and situations to go along with a solid Western mystery and some good action. It’s a winning formula with variations from story to story regarding which element is stressed the most and never fails to entertain me. The balance is very good in this one, with the added bonus of a nice twist in the end that I probably should have seen coming but didn’t. “Gun Thunder in Broken Bow” isn’t the equal of Tuttle’s Hashknife Hartley series, but it’s a solidly enjoyable yarn.

T.W. Ford was a pulp editor as well as an author, and he turned out hundreds of Western, detective, and sports stories for just about every publisher in the business. I’ve found him to be an inconsistent but mostly very good author. His short story in this issue, “Law in His Blood”, about a rancher who’s mistaken for a notorious outlaw, has a pretty predictable main twist to it, but the writing is excellent and Ford sneaks in another twist at the end that’s very effective. I liked this one as well.

Ralph J. Smith’s short story “Gunned From the Grave” is his only credit in the Fictionmags Index. It’s about an old gunsmith’s encounter with the man who killed his son in a shootout. A poignant, reasonably well-written story that is okay but doesn’t leave much of an impression.

The novelette “Boothill Beller Box” is a notable one. It’s part of a long series starring Arizona Ranger “Navajo” Tom Raine, and this story features Raine teaming up with Wayne Morgan, the Masked Rider, and Morgan’s sidekick, the Yaqui Indian Blue Hawk. As far as I know, this is one of only two such crossover stories between Thrilling Group Western characters. Steve Reese from RANGE RIDERS WESTERN appears in an earlier Navajo Raine story, “Rawhide Ranger”, in the April 1944 issue of EXCITING WESTERN. The title “Boothill Beller Box” refers to a telephone line being strung from a cowtown to a nearby logging camp. This is a loggers vs. cattlemen story in which Wayne Morgan is framed for murder. Just like in 1960s Marvel Comics, the two heroes meet and fight at first before realizing they’re on the same side, after which they team up to defeat the bad guy. The author of this one packs quite a bit into it and it’s a really good yarn. Unfortunately, a proofreading and/or typesetting error almost ruins the story by completely invalidating the big twist in the plot. I salvaged it by editing it in my head back to what it should have been. The author’s identity is also a mystery, since the Navajo Raine stories were published under the house-name Jackson Cole. I suspect this one may be by Chuck Martin. It reads like his work to me, and he’s known to have written Navajo Raine stories as well as contributing several Masked Rider novels to that pulp under his own name. But that’s just an educated guess on my part and may be totally wrong.

I also suspect that the next story in this issue, “Cheyenne Death Trap”, is by Chuck Martin. It’s part of the long-running series featuring Pony Express Rider Alamo Paige that was published under the house-name Reeve Walker. Paige is a good character, compact in stature as most of the Pony Express Riders were but tough, smart, and handy with a gun. In this yarn, another rider is robbed and murdered, and Paige sets out to track down the killer. In the process, he faces a death trap unlike any I’ve ever encountered in a Western pulp. This is a clever story and also a very good one.

Mel Pitzer published about 50 stories in various Western pulps between the mid-Thirties and the late Forties. His story “Killer on the Range” wraps up this issue. He uses present tense to tell this story, a technique I hardly ever see in a Western pulp and one that I don’t really care for. It works okay in this case, as an old wrangler tells the story about a stallion accused of killing a rancher. What really happened is pretty obvious, but the story reads okay and is entertaining, although still the weakest in the issue.

This is an above average issue overall of EXCITING WESTERN, which was usually pretty good to start with. W.C. Tuttle, T.W. Ford, Navajo Tom Raine, and Alamo Paige are all dependable Western pulp enjoyment. If you have a copy on your shelves, it’s worth reading.

Down Range - Taylor Moore

I don’t read many modern thrillers, but I’d seen enough good comments about Taylor Moore’s debut novel DOWN RANGE that I decided I’d give it a try. Plus, it’s set in Texas which is always a nice bonus as far as I’m concerned.

The protagonist is Garrett Kohl, a DEA agent who’s working for the CIA in Afghanistan. That’s where this novel begins, but the setting switches quickly, and logically, to the Texas Panhandle, where it remains for the rest of the book. Garrett, who grew up on a ranch near the town of Canadian, is tasked with protecting the life of a little Afghan boy who witnessed a massacre. He figures going home will be the best way to do that.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t figured on landing up to his neck in an even worse mess that will threaten the life not only of the boy he’s charged with protecting but also everybody else in Garrett’s family.

It takes a while to get everything in the plot set up, and consequently the first half of DOWN RANGE is a little slow despite a few bursts of action. But then the second half is almost all action, and Moore does a great job with it. I know from experience as both a writer and a reader that it’s hard to do lengthy firefights without them getting boring, but Moore pulls that off and kept me flipping the pages with enthusiasm and eagerness to find out what was going to happen. However, as much as I enjoy action in my reading, that’s not the main appeal of this book for me.

I said up in the first paragraph that I don’t read many modern thrillers, and here’s the reason for that: they all sound alike. Too many of them read as if they could have been written by any of a hundred different contemporary thriller authors. My theory—and this is only a theory—is that many of these authors haven’t read extensively among older thriller authors and mostly read the work of their peers. They’ve had so many rules hammered into their heads that they don’t know any other way to write. And so everything they produce reads the same.

To be honest, there’s some of that in DOWN RANGE, too. There are scenes that could have come out of any of a thousand other books. But then . . . ah, but then . . . there’s a bit of description, or a line of dialogue, or an interaction between characters, or even a throwaway moment of transition, and a grin appears on my face as I think that nobody else in the world would have written this particular thing this particular way. Only Taylor Moore. And that’s what makes DOWN RANGE an excellent novel. He knows the place and he knows the people and he writes about all of it in his own voice.

Now, there are a couple of quibbles I can make. I don’t think it takes two and a half hours to drive from the Joint Reserve Base in west Fort Worth to Possum Kingdom Lake (but I’m thrilled that a contemporary thriller even mentions Possum Kingdom Lake). I think I could make it in an hour and a half, two tops. But you know what, I could be wrong about that, especially since Moore doesn’t specify exactly where on Possum Kingdom Lake Garrett is going. The other thing (and I’ll die on this hill) is that y’all is spelled y’all, not ya’ll.

You see why I called them quibbles.

Anyway, all in all, DOWN RANGE is an absolutely superb book, and if you enjoy thrillers, I give it a very high recommendation. It's available in e-book, hardback, paperback, and audio editions. I don’t know if I’ll become a fan and read everything Taylor Moore writes, but I’ll definitely read the next book in this series.

Above the Line - Raoul Whitfield

Raoul Whitfield's short story "Above the Line" appeared in the November 1928 issue of AIR TRAILS, only the second issue of that aviation pulp. It features pilot Buck Kent and is probably the second of approximately 20 stories about Buck. There's a Whitfield story in the first issue of AIR TRAILS and I suspect it's the one that introduced the character. In this one, Buck is flying to meet a friend at an isolated cabin on the border between California and Mexico (or possibly Arizona and Mexico; Whitfield is a little vague about that). Instead, he runs into a dangerous mystery involving gangsters and stolen loot.

I read this story on a whim. I was kind of in the mood for an aviation yarn, and I've really enjoyed everything I've read by Whitfield, so I gave it a try and I'm glad I did. There's plenty of violent, well-written action both in the air and on the ground. I had a very good time reading it, and if you're a Whitfield fan, it's worth checking out. You can read it, and a bunch of other pulp aviation stories, on the Age of Aces website, which gets a high recommendation from me.

48 Years Ago Today

 

Movies I've Missed Until Now: Apache Rifles (1964)

As many Audie Murphy movies as my dad and I watched when I was young, I’m surprised I never saw APACHE RIFLES, one of Murphy’s later movies that came out in 1964. But missing it back then gives me the opportunity to watch and enjoy it for the first time now.

This is a cavalry vs. Indians movie, but only sort of. Murphy plays Captain Jeff Stanton, a young officer whose father, also a soldier, got himself and his troops massacred because he was sympathetic to the Indians. Naturally enough, this makes Murphy’s character more hostile to the Apaches . . . until he gets to know some of them and falls in love with a young missionary teacher who lives among them. A bunch of white men scheming to get control of Apache land so they can mine on it complicates matters. These plotters are led by L.Q. Jones and Ken Lynch, both of whom are suitably despicable.

This is an odd little movie, a bit of a forerunner to the revisionist Westerns of the Seventies in which all Indians are noble and all white men (except for the one or two who sympathize with the Indians) are evil. Honestly, Murphy looks a little uncomfortable playing a character who becomes so sensitive by the end of the movie. For another thing, when I saw that this movie was directed by William Witney, I thought, “Oh, boy, lots of action!” Well, no. There is some action, and when it takes place, it’s staged excitingly and effectively, as you’d expect from a movie helmed by Witney. But an awful lot of time is spent on guys standing around talking.

All that said, I had a good time watching APACHE RIFLES. Murphy may not have been a very technically skilled actor, but the camera loved him and he takes full advantage of that screen presence. The movie looks great with excellent photography and production values. If you’re a Western fan, it’s a perfectly fine way to spend an hour and a half and I’m glad I finally saw it. Just don’t go into it expecting a lost gem.