Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All-American Fiction, May/June 1938

That's an intriguing cover by Rudolph Belarski on this issue of ALL-AMERICAN FICTION, and what a lineup of authors! It's hard to beat H. Bedford-Jones, Max Brand, Cornell Woolrich, Philip Ketchum, Richard Sale, and Karl Detzer. Also on hard are the lesser-known Eustace Cockrell, Robert Cochran, J.R. Beehan, and Thomas Nelson. The author of the featured story "Meet Me in Miami", Joseph Mickler, has only two credits in the Fictionmags Index, both in Munsey pulps in 1938, for whatever that's worth. I would read this issue just for those other guys if I had a copy.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Exciting Western, October 1945

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The Fictionmags Index attributes the cover to Sam Cherry, but I wonder if it might be by Robert Stanley, based on the facial features and the distinctively large hands. As always when it comes to art, I could be wrong and welcome any opinions on who painted this cover.

One of the longest-running series in EXCITING WESTERN was the Tombstone and Speedy series by one of my favorite authors, W.C. Tuttle. Tombstone Jones and Speedy Smith are a couple of range detectives working for the Cattleman’s Association, but their boss insists they have no detective skills and solve their cases through pure luck. Tombstone and Speedy seem to share that opinion, but I don’t know. They usually manage to do some actual detective work in these humorous, action-packed yarns. “Trouble Trailers in Tomahawk” finds the duo traveling to Tomahawk City to find a rich Easterner’s son who wants to become a rancher, while at the same time assisting an old friend of their boss who needs some help. Not surprisingly at all, the two cases turn out to be connected, and soon the bodies are dropping as three murders take place not long after Tombstone and Speedy arrive in town. Of course, they eventually untangle everything and bring the villains to justice. The plot in this one seems a little weaker to me than some, but it’s still a highly entertaining novelette. I always get a kick out of Tombstone and Speedy’s antics and their non-stop banter.

The longest-running (almost 50 stories) series in this pulp stars Arizona Ranger Navajo Tom Raine, the son of a famous lawman who was raised by the Navajo after his father was killed during a range war. In “Navajo Turns Firebug”, Raine is sent to corral a vengeance-seeking young outlaw who’s been burning down ranch houses. Of course, not everything turns out to be as it appears at first. We know that two authors, Lee Bond and C. William Harrison, wrote Navajo Raine stories that were published under the house-name Jackson Cole, and other authors may have contributed to the series as well. I’m pretty sure this story isn’t the work of Harrison, whose plots and characters were usually a bit more complex. It might be by Lee Bond, but my hunch is that it’s by some as yet unidentified pulpster.

“A Meal For a Rodent” is a short-short by Allan K. Echols about an encounter between a homesteader and a bank robber on the run from the law. Very predictable for the most part, but it’s well-written and has a bit of a twist at the end.

Another long-running series in EXCITING WESTERN featured Pony Express rider Alamo Paige. The by-line is Reeve Walker, a house-name used by Charles N. Heckelmann, Tom Curry, and no doubt numerous other Western pulpsters. I don’t think any of the Alamo Paige stories have been attributed to the actual author. The story in this issue, “Stage Line to Hell”, finds Alamo helping out a friend who quit riding for the Pony Express because of an injury and started a stage line instead. When he’s hurt in a robbery, Alamo steps in to round up the thieves. Alamo Paige is a likable protagonist and this yarn is decently plotted and has some nice action. A worthwhile entry in the series.

I don’t know anything about Jack Gleoman except that he published a few stories in the Western and detective pulps. His short-short in this issue, “A Waddy Counts Days”, is about a cowboy accused of a murder he didn’t commit. It features as an illustration a black-and-white version of the cover art, which actually depicts a scene in the story. This is an okay but very minor story, and I’m not sure why it warranted a piece of cover art. Unless . . . Jack Gleoman was actually the pseudonym of an editor at the Thrilling Group (since all his published stories appear in Thrilling Group pulps) and he wrote the story to fit the cover that was already scheduled to be used on this issue when the contents came up a few pages short. That seems like a plausible explanation, but it’s pure speculation on my part, of course.

The issue wraps up with “Vanishing Trails”, a novelette by R.S. Lerch, an author I associate more with the Fiction House pulps even though he actually wrote for a wide variety of publishers in several different genres. This story, set in Montana during a snowstorm, has a bit of a Northern feel to it, although its plot is pure Western pulp. U.S. Marshal Crack Forsythe (a great name) trails a bandit from Wyoming to Montana and finds himself in the middle of a deadly feud between two families. This is a well-written story with a lot of action. Lerch is pretty much forgotten these days, but I’ve enjoyed most of the stories I’ve read by him. Nothing special, maybe, but dependably entertaining.

Which is a pretty good description of this entire issue. All of the stories are enjoyable but have an air of forgettableness about them. Is forgettableness a word? If it’s not, it ought to be. This issue is worth reading for fans of the Tombstone and Speedy, Navajo Tom Raine, and Alamo Paige series, but if you don’t fall into that category, don’t rush to your shelves to look for it.

Review: Desperate Blonde - Lorenz Heller

Marta Selfron is the desperate blonde of the title in this novel by Lorenz Heller, published originally by Beacon Books of Australia in 1960 under the pseudonym Laura Hale and just reprinted by Stark House. As a young woman barely out of her teens, Marta married the wrong guy, and in order to get away from him, she wound up committing a crime. Now her ex-husband is not only blackmailing Marta, he’s also stalking her. When she meets tough, handsome private detective Dirk Delgar, she thinks maybe she’s found a way out of her problem, but first, she’ll wind up enmeshed in a web of robbery and murder.

As always, Lorenz Heller spins a fine, well-written tale in DESPERATE BLONDE, a revised version of which was published in the United States by Beacon Books as THE MARRIAGE BED in 1962. Considering its pedigree, there’s really very little sex in this book, and it’s not graphic at all. Some nude swimming is about as racy as it gets on the actual page. No, this is a pure suspense yarn, as Marta, with the help of private eye Dirk, tries to get out of the trouble in which her bad decisions have landed her. Heller was really good with setting, character, and pace, and he keeps the reader flipping the pages to find out what’s going to happen. A few plot twists near the end help make for a satisfying conclusion.

I don’t think this is quite as strong a novel as the others I’ve read by Heller, but it’s a very solid, entertaining book and well worth reading. It’s available in trade paperback and e-book editions on Amazon.

Review: The Cowpuncher - Bradford Scott (A. Leslie Scott)

Alexander Leslie Scott is best remembered for his novels starring Texas Rangers Jim Hatfield and Walt Slade, of course, and rightly so. But he wrote quite a few stand-alone Western novels as well, most, if not all, of them rewritten and expanded from novellas he wrote for various Western pulps. His novel THE COWPUNCHER was published under the pseudonym Bradford Scott in hardcover in 1942 by Gateway Books, one of the lending library publishers, then reprinted in paperback by Leisure in 2009 and large print hardcover by Center Point in 2010. It’s still available in e-book and trade paperback editions on Amazon, and used copies of the Leisure paperback are easily found for sale on-line.

The original version of this story was published under the title “Black Diamonds”, as by A. Leslie, in the pulp WEST in the October 1940 issue. The black diamonds of the title refer to coal, which leads to a nice twist because this novel is about coal mining rather than gold or silver, as most Western mining yarns are. The hero, a cowboy named Huck Brannon, goes on a bender in Kansas City after the crew he belongs to delivers a trail herd there, and as a result he misses the train back home to Texas, where a rancher’s beautiful daughter is waiting for him. Circumstances forces him to hop a train to Colorado in the company of a couple of hoboes who become his friends and sidekicks.

Once there, they wind up hunting a lost treasure supposedly hidden by an evil Spanish nobleman a hundred years earlier. What they find is a coal deposit that they’re soon mining, a successful operation that makes good money and leads to a friendship with railroad magnate James G. “Jaggers” Dunn, a supporting character who often makes appearances in Scott’s novels. Of course, there are also villains who have their sights set on ruining Brannon.

THE COWPUNCHER is more epic in scope than most of Scott’s Westerns, with its action spanning a couple of years rather than a few days. It has the same vivid settings and dramatic action scenes, though, including a great one where our hero Huck has to ride a makeshift raft down a raging river in an attempt to stop a runaway train. Scott had a lot of experience with both mining and railroading, and he brought a definite air of authenticity to his stories concerning those endeavors. At times, the technical jargon gets so thick I had trouble keeping up with what was going on, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the story.

This is a really good Western novel, the sort of yarn that would have made a great big-budget, late Forties movie from Republic Pictures. I had a fine time reading it and give it a high recommendation for fans of traditional Westerns centered around mining. By the way, I have the pulp in which the original version, “Black Diamonds”, was published, and other than changing the hero’s name from Chuck Brannon to Huck Brannon and the rancher’s beautiful daughter from Millie Doyle to Sue Doyle, Scott doesn’t appear to have revised it. Either version is well worth reading.

Review: The "Iblis" at Ludd - Talbot Mundy (William L. Gribbon)

“The ‘Iblis’ at Ludd” is the third story featuring Talbot Mundy’s most famous character, Major James Schuyler Grim, better known as Jimgrim, an American adventurer who’s a member of the British intelligence service in the perilous days following the First World War. The first two stories were combined in the fix-up novel JIMGRIM AND ALLAH’S PEACE, which I reviewed earlier this year. The short novel “The ‘Iblis’ at Ludd”, from the January 10, 1922 issue of the pulp ADVENTURE, is a direct sequel to those two yarns.

Jimgrim is still in Palestine, which is occupied by the British army and torn between Zionist and Arab factions. His assignment is to find out who stole two tons of TNT that figured in the plot of the previous story, as well as to discover the identity of the ringleader of a gang of thieves that has been stealing munitions from the British army. This ringleader is rumored to be the Iblis, which means “devil”, a dervish afflicted with leprosy. But there may be co-conspirators, and the scheme may reach all the way into the ranks of the British army. Jimgrim is assisted in his investigation by the stalwart Sikh, Narayan Singh, and Suliman, an incorrigible young beggar.

While I liked it overall, my main complaint about JIMGRIM AND ALLAH’S PEACE was that it was really talky and lacking in action. That’s kind of true in this story, as well, although I think that overall Mundy (whose real name was William Lancaster Gribbon) sets a faster pace and the prose is a little leaner. Things move along quickly enough to keep me interested, and while there’s still not much action, several scenes are genuinely suspenseful and Mundy does a great job with the setting.

The main virtue of “The ‘Iblis’ at Ludd” is the Iblis his ownself, who’s a great villain reminiscent of the Thuggee cult leader in GUNGA DIN as played by Eduardo Ciannelli. I could certainly see Ciannelli in this role, too. The biggest weakness in the story is the way it’s structured. There are several storylines going on, and Mundy moves back and forth between them in a disjointed fashion that makes it a little difficult to keep up with what’s going on. It’s not confusing enough to ruin the story, but I think it would have been more effective if a few things had been shifted around a little.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I read some of the later Jimgrim novels when they were reprinted in the Sixties, and the character in these early tales isn’t as dominant and competent as he would be later on. But it’s interesting watching him develop, and as a writer, Mundy’s prose ranges from good to excellent, so I intend to continue with the series. “The ‘Iblis’ at Ludd” is available on Amazon in several different e-book and print editions. I suspect that when it was first published more than a hundred years ago, Mundy didn’t give much if any thought to the possibility people would still be reading and reviewing it a century later.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, December 1933

The cover on this issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES was done by Emmett Watson, an artist I associate more with the Munsey pulps, but it's a fine, dynamic Foreign Legion scene that I like quite a bit. Inside this issue are stories by Johnston McCulley (his first Whirlwind story; I have the Altus Press volume that reprints the entire series and really need to get around to reading it), Oscar Schisgall, Allan K. Echols, Bob du Soe, George Allan Moffatt (really Edwin V. Burkholder), Ralph R. Fleming (who published only a handful of stories), Captain Kerry McRoberts (probably Norman A. Daniels), and house-name Jackson Cole. I'll bet if I had a copy of this issue, which I don't, I'd enjoy the stories every bit as much as the cover.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Western Action, September 1948

Okay, who painted this cover, H.W. Scott or A. Leslie Ross? I can't make up my mind. I don't own this pulp, but I do have a paperback copy of the novel featured in this issue of WESTERN ACTION, "The Lost Buckaroo" by Bliss Lomax, who, of course, was really Harry Sinclair Drago. I haven't read the novel, but I believe it features his series characters, railroad detectives Rainbow Ripley and Grumpy Gibbs. Also in this issue are stories by Gerry Walker (his only credit in the FMI), the prolific Harry Van Demark, and Harold Preece, who I know mostly as a friend and correspondent of Robert E. Howard. I don't think I've ever read any of his fiction.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: White Indian - Donald Clayton Porter (Noel Gerson)

Since yesterday was Thanksgiving, I thought it would be appropriate to take a look at a novel that has a connection to the Pilgrims, although it’s set somewhat later. WHITE INDIAN is the first book in what started out as the Colonization of America series. It opens in 1685, several generations after the founding of the first English colony in North America. Settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony have established an outpost known as Fort Springfield in the valley of the Connecticut River, but they have to worry constantly about Indian attacks, and with good reason. During one such raid by Seneca warriors, a young couple named Jed and Minnie Harper are killed, and their infant son is carried off by the Seneca chief Ghonka, who adopts the boy, names him Renno, and raises him to be a great warrior.

That’s just the beginning of this novel, which follows Renno to manhood. Like Tarzan, he comes to realize that he’s different from those who have raised him. Also like Tarzan, he’s the biggest, fastest, strongest bad-ass in the jungle – I mean forest – and eventually allies himself with the English while still maintaining his ties to the Seneca. He fights on the side of the English during clashes with the French, who are also trying to establish colonies in North America, and starts a long-running feud with a Frenchman who’s so evil he practically twirls his mustache. Like most of the historical fiction produced by the book packaging company Book Creations Inc., WHITE INDIAN and its sequels contain a heaping helping of soap opera to go along with plenty of colorful and sweeping action. Sometimes the historical accuracy was less than rigorous, but the editorial policy at BCI was “Never let history get in the way of a good story.” And BCI was definitely in the business of turning out good stories.

Now here’s the background of this series, for those of you who are interested. “Donald Clayton Porter”, the author of this book, was actually Noel Gerson, who was also the original “Dana Fuller Ross”. Gerson wrote a number of historical novels over the years, under his own names and those two house-names, as well as the pseudonym Bruce Lancaster and possibly others. His style is pretty unmistakable, no matter what name is on the book. His prose is a little clunky in places and sometimes he skimped on the action scenes, but he possessed the true storyteller’s knack of getting the reader to keep turning the pages. There’s also a mild edge of sexual kinkiness in many of his books, and it shows up in the White Indian novels as well. Renno has a habit of deflowering most of the beautiful English virgins he meets, and then his sidekicks among the colonists marry them and everybody is happy.

When the series began in 1979, following on the success of John Jakes’ Kent Family Chronicles and Gerson’s Wagons West novels as Dana Fuller Ross (both BCI series), it was known as the Colonization of America series, as noted above. But within three or four books, it became the White Indian series, and subsequent reprints of the early books carried that name instead. I suspect this was because someone at BCI or the publisher, Bantam, realized that readers were asking for more of those White Indian books, rather than using the more cumbersome original title. The series ran for 28 books, most of them featuring descendants of the original Renno (the longest-lasting hero in the series was also named Renno), and the books continued to appear until the mid-Nineties. Gerson wrote the first twelve, Hugh Zachary wrote #13 through #26, and BCI editor Paul Block authored the final two books in the series, which are collectible now because the series had pretty low print runs by that time. Zachary took over at least two other BCI series in mid-stream, THE AUSTRALIANS under the name William Stuart Long (originated by Vivian Long) and CHILDREN OF THE LION, published under the house-name Peter Danielson (originally George Warren). The Donald Clayton Porter name was also used on the stand-alone novel PONY EXPRESS, which I believe was by Gerson, and the short-lived Winning the West series, written probably by Gene Shelton, although Zachary may have contributed to it, as well.

As for my own connection with all this, I worked for BCI, too, and while I wrote six books as Dana Fuller Ross (the Wagons West prequels known as The Frontier Trilogy and The Empire Trilogy), I was never Donald Clayton Porter. I did one book as Peter Danielson, the final book in the Children of the Lion series. At its high point, BCI was a great place to work, with excellent editors, and the company turned out a tremendous amount of top-notch historical and Western yarns during the Seventies, Eighties, and early Nineties. If you’ve never sampled any of their series, WHITE INDIAN would be a fine place to start.

(This post originally appeared on November 27, 2009. I meant to read the rest of the White Indian series someday, but you know me. I haven't gotten around to it. I'd like to read the rest of Gerson's entries, anyway.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Review: Horror Movies, The First 75 Years, Volume 1: The Mummy - David Whitehead

I always think of David Whitehead as a Western author, either under his real name or his pseudonym Ben Bridges, and he’s a top-notch Western writer, too. But he’s also written horror novels and he’s a long-time fan of the genre. How long-time I wasn’t really aware of until I read his recent non-fiction book, HORROR MOVIES: THE FIRST 75 YEARS, VOLUME 1: THE MUMMY.

I’m a horror fan, too, although on a somewhat limited basis. I tend to like the older stuff (no surprise there), including the classic Universal monster movies from the Thirties and Forties. As I’ve mentioned before, I saw a bunch of them on NIGHTMARE, the Saturday night monster movie showcase on one of the local TV stations, hosted in suitably creepy fashion by Bill Camfield as Gorgon. During the week, Camfield was also kid’s show host Icky Twerp, playing cartoons and Three Stooges shorts on SLAM-BANG THEATER. I loved both shows but had no idea Gorgon and Icky were actually the same guy.

I’ve wandered ’way off into the weeds of nostalgia. To get back to David Whitehead’s book, he’s a fan of the same era of horror movies as me, although his expertise extends up to the Hammer Films horror boom in the Fifties and Sixties. I like those movies, too, just not as much as the ones from Universal. Whitehead starts what promises to be a very entertaining series by focusing on movies featuring sinister mummies. I had no idea there was a mummy movie made in 1899, in the dawn of filmmaking. The subgenre really gets underway, though, with 1932’s THE MUMMY, starring Boris Karloff, and its assorted sequels. THE MUMMY is an excellent film, and Whitehead covers its story, cast, production details, and reception in fascinating detail. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about this movie, its sequels, and other movies featuring mummies, most of which I’ve never seen. I’ve already made a list of several I intend to try to hunt up.

If you’re a fan of classic horror movies, I can’t recommend this volume highly enough. It’s written in a fast-moving, entertaining style and presents a lot of interesting information but never in a ponderous way. Honestly, it’s easy for a book like this to bog down in minutiae. Whitehead avoids that trap and delivers a fine book of movie history. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the books in this series, which will cover Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, and other classic horror movie characters.