Review: One Man's Treasure - Terrance Layhew

Terrance Layhew is an author, a fan of adventure fiction (we’re acquainted through the Men’s Adventure Paperbacks of the 20^th Century group on Facebook), and the host of a popular podcast called Suit Up!, which is devoted to the kind of fiction he likes to read. And write, as it turns out.

Layhew’s first adventure novel, ONE MAN’S TREASURE, is available on Amazon in e-book and trade paperback editions, with an excellent cover, by the way. The protagonists are two brothers from Chicago, Dixon and Sam Hastings. Dix is a lawyer, a somewhat cold-blooded, calculating sort who lives for work and gambling. Sam is an engineer, a more happy-go-lucky fellow who loves tinkering with things and is recently engaged to a beautiful reporter named Amy. Dix turns all their lives upside down when, in a high-stakes poker game, he wins what’s reputed to be a map to a fabulous treasure buried by a famous pirate on a Caribbean island several hundred years ago. Such a thing couldn’t actually be real, could it? Sam, with his quixotic nature, thinks it could be, and he persuades Dix that they should find out—an effort that leads to swordfights, modern-day pirates, shootouts, harrowing adventures, and romance for both brothers.

Layhew takes a big risk in the very structure of this novel: he tells his story in first-person chapters that alternate between the Hastings brothers. I may be too much of a traditionalist, but I’m not fond of multiple first-person POVs. However, I won’t let that keep me from giving a book a fair try, and in this case, Layhew doesn’t just pull it off, he makes it work very well. Dix and Sam are two very different personalities, and that comes through effectively in the writing. I was never thrown by it.

He also does a fine job with the pacing and action, and while there are some serious moments, the novel also has a very appealing light-hearted tone most of the time. ONE MAN’S TREASURE has the feel of an Eighties action movie, and I mean that in the best possible way. I had a really good time reading it. It’s set up for a sequel, too, and I’m looking forward to it. In the meantime, if you’re a fan of well-written, entertaining adventure novels, ONE MAN’S TREASURE gets a solid recommendation from me.

Review: The Frontier Legion - Jackson Cole (?)

I read this novel when it first came out in paperback during the Sixties and loved it. I was reading all the Jim Hatfield paperbacks as they were published, and THE FRONTIER LEGION was one of my absolute favorites. Then I read it again in the Nineties and still liked it, but I wasn’t as impressed with it as I was the first time around. Now I’ve just read it again, after another thirty-year gap, and my reaction falls somewhere between the previous two: I don’t think THE FRONTIER LEGION is the very best Jim Hatfield novel, but it is really, really good. Why did I pick it up for a third time when I hardly ever reread a book, you ask? Well, I had a bibliographic reason this time around. I was trying to see if I could discover any clues as to who actually wrote the danged thing!

Let’s back up a little to some of the things I didn’t know when I first read the Popular Library paperback edition sixty years ago. For starters, I had no idea who painted the cover. Now all I have to do is look at the hats those hombres are wearing to know that it’s an A. Leslie Ross cover. A good one, too. For another thing, I had no idea that THE FRONTER LEGION was reprinted from the sixth (May 1937) issue of the pulp TEXAS RANGERS, where more than 200 Jim Hatfield novels appeared between 1936 and 1958. Oh, I was vaguely aware of pulps in those days because I was a Doc Savage fan, and the 1937 copyright date in this book was a giveaway that it probably appeared in one, but the details were still well beyond me. I didn’t know that the author, Jackson Cole, wasn’t a real person at all but rather a house-name hiding the true identities of the men who wrote the Hatfield novels.

A. Leslie Scott created this series for publisher Ned Pines and editorial director Leo Margulies. Scott wrote the first two novels, followed by one by Tom Curry, one by Samuel Mines, and then another by Curry. That brings us to THE FRONTIER LEGION, which for many years has been attributed to Scott as well. The thing is, it’s very obvious to anybody who’s read many of Scott’s novels that he didn’t write this one at all. For one thing, the Jackson Cole responsible for this novel gets a couple of things wrong: Hatfield’s commanding officer is Captain McNulty, who’s posted in the West Texas settlement of Alpine, instead of Captain "Roaring Bill" McDowell in Austin, and although he rides a golden sorrel stallion as he does in all the other novels, there’s no mention that the horse is named Goldy. These aren’t hugely important details, but I can’t believe that Leslie Scott would get them wrong. Also, this is the only novel in the entire series where these two discrepancies exist. This leads me to believe that whoever wrote THE FRONTIER LEGION didn’t contribute any other Jim Hatfield novels.

Yeah, yeah, all this is fine for bibliographic nuts like me, you’re likely thinking, but what about the story? Is THE FRONTIER LEGION a good yarn? Well, it starts off with an absolutely great train wreck and robbery carried out by an outlaw gang commanded by a brilliant but vicious mastermind known only as Allison. Allison’s gang has been wreaking havoc across West Texas, and Jim Hatfield has been assigned to break up the gang and bring Allison to justice. He’s on his way to carry out this mission, and that’s why he’s on this train to start with.

As usual, Hatfield is working undercover, which allows him to infiltrate the gang and get close to a beautiful saloon girl who has some connection with the owlhoot boss. He also has to deal with a young man who’s seeking vengeance on Allison for an earlier atrocity. Even the no-good varmints who work for Allison don’t know his true identity, which makes it very difficult for Hatfield to corral the true villain.

The author keeps this plot galloping along at a breakneck pace with plenty of well-written action, an occasional touch of humor, and a poignant moment here and there. The descriptions of the West Texas landscape aren’t anywhere near as vivid as you’ll find in Leslie Scott’s work, but they get the job done. It’s a very dramatic tale that generates a lot of suspense. I really enjoyed it and recommend it to any Hatfield fan despite the things that don’t quite line up with the rest of the series, as well as to any fan of rousing Western adventure yarns in general.

As to the author’s true identity, I have a pretty strong hunch I know who he was. But I’m still investigating, so I’ll have more to report on that in the near future, I hope.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: North-West Romances, Summer 1944

Since we had a little snow here recently, this seemed like a good time to post the cover from an issue of NORTH-WEST ROMANCES. And of course, it's always a good time to post a Norman Saunders cover, although I wouldn't put this one in the absolute top rank of his work. It's still dynamic and eye-catching, though. I don't own this issue, but it looks like a good one with stories by William Heuman, Archie Joscelyn, and Curtis Bishop (all best remembered for their Westerns but perfectly capable of writing excellent Northerns, as well), along with lesser-known authors Paul Selonke, Michael Oblinger, William Rush, Francis James (who was really the very prolific James A. Goldthwaite), and Q.C. Nindorf. I always enjoy Northerns and really need to read more of them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Masked Rider Western Magazine, July 1938

I don’t own a copy of this pulp, but I recently read an e-book reprint of it that’s also available in a paperback edition. I don’t have any idea who did the pulp cover.  The lead novel was also reprinted in paperback around 1970 by Curtis Books with a cover by Vic Prezio. The fellow on the cover of that paperback edition is definitely our old friend Steve Holland. (Thanks to Martin O'Hearn for his helpful info on the paperback edition.)

“Iron Horse Gunsmoke” is the third Masked Rider novel after the series was taken over by Better Publications and became part of the Thrilling Group, after the first dozen or so issues were published by Ranger Publications. It’s the second Masked Rider tale by veteran pulpster Donald Bayne Hobart, who wrote 19 Masked Rider novels, more than any other writer who contributed to the series. (Walker A. Tompkins was second with 18.) For those of you who don’t recall, the Masked Rider was more than likely inspired by/an homage to/ripped off from The Lone Ranger. He’s a good guy outlaw who wears a mask and travels with a faithful Indian companion as they drift around the West, helping folks in need, dispensing justice to owlhoot varmints, and generally adventuring. But as it turns out, the character is a lot more interesting than you might think. Unlike The Lone Ranger, who only occasionally uses disguises, the Masked Rider spends a large portion of each novel pretending to be drifting cowboy Wayne Morgan. The novels make it clear that Morgan is not the character’s true identity; he’s just as fictional as the Masked Rider himself. Somewhere in the mists of the past, the Masked Rider and his family ran afoul of injustice, and that’s why he dons a black cape and mask and sets out to right wrongs. But who he really is or what his actual background might be, we never find out. His Yaqui friend Blue Hawk, like Tonto to The Lone Ranger, is no mere sidekick. He’s an equal partner in the fight against lawlessness and is tough and smart and just as much of a badass as The Masked Rider. They’re a great team.

In “Iron Horse Gunsmoke”, Hobart gives us a nice twist in the plot. In most Western novels featuring the building of a railroad, the cattlemen are all for it since the steel rails will make it easier for them to ship their herds to market. In this novel, however, through a series of misunderstandings, as well as events manipulated by shadowy villains, the railroaders and the ranchers are mortal enemies, and it’s up to the Masked Rider to uncover what’s really going on and expose the true villains behind the violence erupting on the range. It’s a breakneck, full-tilt yarn full of shootouts, ambushes, fistfights, avalanches, and dynamite blasts. I’ve become a fan of Hobart’s work in recent years because of this high-speed pacing and his solidly written action scenes. He has a good handle on the Masked Rider and Blue Hawk, too, and the supporting characters are always colorful and interesting in a Hobart novel. I raced through this story and really enjoyed it.

Tom Gunn was a house-name used by Syl McDowell on the Sheriff Blue Steele series. Frank Gruber has also been linked to that name, but it’s likely that other Thrilling Group regulars also used it. The short story under that by-line in this issue, “Roaring Verdict”, doesn’t strike me as the work of either McDowell or Gruber. There’s really no telling who wrote this short tale of the violent confrontation between an old lawman and a cunning outlaw. It’s almost all action and well-written, but it probably could have used some sort of plot twist. Even so, it’s an entertaining story.

The issue wraps up with “That Bond of Courage”, a short story by George H. Michener, a fairly prolific but forgotten Western pulp author. It’s about the wintry clash between two sodbusters and a local cattle baron. There’s an attempted murder, a trek through a blizzard, and some unexpected redemption. This is a well-written, low-key story that comes to a satisfactory conclusion. Nothing earthshaking here, but I liked it.

Overall, this is a good issue of MASKED RIDER WESTERN MAGAZINE. The Masked Rider novel by Donald Bayne Hobart is a solidly entertaining Western adventure yarn, and it takes up most of the pages. I’m a Hobart fan and I’ve become very interested in his work, so I expect to read something else by him in the near future.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: The Long Midnight - Daniel Ransom (Ed Gorman)

We all know that Daniel Ransom is really Ed Gorman. This novel was published originally by Dell in 1992 and went unreprinted for many years, but it's available now in e-book and trade paperback editions.

The prologue takes place in the 1940s, an era which Gorman recreates well, much as he does the Fifties and Sixties in some of his other books. Richard Candlemas is a lonely high school student with some sort of mysterious special powers that are vaguely sinister. Jump ahead to the Nineties, and Candlemas is the former director of the Perpetual Light Orphanage, an establishment that closed down years earlier after a tragic car wreck claimed the lives of one of its staffers and several students. I use the word “students” because Perpetual Light, ostensibly an orphanage, was actually a school where Richard Candlemas and the people who worked for him tried to find children with psychic powers and help them develop those powers.

When one of Perpetual Light’s instructors is murdered in Chicago, a former student (the sister of one of the girls killed in the car crash) is drawn into the investigation and develops a romance with the police detective handling the case. Someone starts stalking the woman, there are more murders, the scope of the case expands to include some shadowy operatives who claim to be working for the government, and the woman finds evidence that her sister may still be alive after all, as impossible as that seems.

Gorman weaves all these plot strands together with an expert hand, bringing in a number of surprising twists along the way, but as usual in one of his novels, the characters and the little touches of humanity are the real highlights. Everybody in THE LONG MIDNIGHT seems to be carrying his or her own load of melancholy, which is not to say that the book is without hope or even an occasional bit of humor. This is a novel that’s difficult to classify. It’s part thriller, part horror, part science fiction. Mainly, though, it’s a great yarn that races along, inhabited by characters the reader cares about. That makes it well worth seeking out and reading. Highly recommended.

(This post was published in a somewhat different form on January 15, 2010. My admiration for Ed Gorman and his work remain unchanged since that time. I miss the guy and always will.)

Review: Tam, Son of the Tiger - Otis Adelbert Kline

Many, many years ago I read one or two novels by Otis Adelbert Kline and remember enjoying them, but I couldn’t tell you exactly which books I read. I do know, however, that TAM, SON OF THE TIGER wasn’t one of them, because I just read it and I'm certain I’d never read it before.

This adventure yarn was serialized in the June/July through December 1931 issues of WEIRD TALES, all with covers by C.C. Senf, by the way. It was reprinted in hardback by Avalon Books in 1962, probably in an abridged edition because most of Avalon’s editions were abridged. The pulp version was reprinted in 2010 by Pulpville Press in trade paperback and hardcover editions that are still available from the publisher. The pulp version can also be found on-line.

Kline is remembered primarily as a literary agent for some of the best-known authors of science fiction and fantasy from the pulp era, but he wrote several novels himself. They were heavily influenced by the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs and others. TAM, SON OF THE TIGER definitely shows that ERB influence as Tam Evans, the two-year-old son of an American soldier and adventurer in Burma, is carried off by a rare white tigress. She raises Tam to be a tiger (just like the apes raised Tarzan to be an ape), but eventually he meets an aged lama who befriended the tigress many years earlier, and this man educates Tam and teaches him how to use various weapons. Combined with his own strength and agility, these attributes make 20-year-old Tam a deadly and intelligent fighting man. So naturally, he soon runs into a beautiful princess wearing golden armor who is fighting some four-armed warriors. All of them come from a vast underground world populated by various races that gave rise to the legends of the Hindu gods, and when Tam ventures into this subterranean world to help the princess, he’s drawn into a war between those semi-deities just as you’d expect. Oh, and his father, who is still an adventurer and has believed for many years that Tam is dead, shows up, too, along with a scientist friend of his.

As you can tell from that description, TAM, SON OF THE TIGER is a real kitchen sink book. Kline keeps throwing in complication after complication, peril after peril, and in true Burroughs fashion splits his characters up and lets them have separate but interweaving storylines. Coincidences abound. While ERB is the most obvious influence in this novel (both Tarzan and Mars series), I also detected echoes of A. Merritt and Ray Cummings. Some of the vivid, bizarre descriptions of the underground world really reminded me of Merritt’s work, and I couldn’t help but think of Cummings’ THE GIRL IN THE GOLDEN ATOM, too.

If I had read this when I was twelve years old, sitting on my parents’ front porch on a lazy summer day, I would have thought it was one of the best books I’d ever read. No doubt about that. Reading it now when I’m much older, I still had a pretty darned good time racing through it. Derivative or not, Kline was a good storyteller and knew how to keep the reader turning the pages. I think I’m going to have to read more by him. These days, pure entertainment is what I want most of the time, and TAM, SON OF THE TIGER definitely provided that.

Review: Chaffee of Roaring Horse - Ernest Haycox

Jim Chaffee is a young cowboy who tries to start a spread of his own, but after several bad years in a row, he loses it to the bank. Jim figures he’ll go back to riding for the neighboring ranch where he used to work, but before he can do that, he finds himself mixed up in murder, a land swindle, and a range war, as well as a romantic triangle involving a wealthy Easterner and a beautiful girl who may or may not be exactly what she seems.

CHAFFEE OF ROARING HORSE has all the elements of a traditional Western, but Ernest Haycox’s usual careful attention to character and style makes this a top-notch novel. He really puts his protagonist Jim Chaffee through the wringer, too. The guy gets shot, barely survives a stampede, has to ride some deadly rapids, nearly breaks his ankle, and gets thrown in jail and is targeted by a lynch mob. Jim is tough, though, and figures out a way to set things right.

CHAFFEE OF ROARING HORSE (the title refers to Roaring Horse River, which flows through Roaring Horse Canyon) is a fairly early effort by Haycox. It was only his second full-length novel, following FREE GRASS, and was serialized in the pulp magazine WEST in October, November, and December 1929. Doubleday published it in hardcover in 1930, and Popular Library reprinted it in paperback at least twice, the first time in 1953 with a cover by Sam Cherry (I think) and in 1958 with a cover by A. Leslie Ross. I’m pretty sure that the cover on the earlier paperback was used originally as the cover of a Thrilling Group Western pulp, but I haven’t been able to find it to confirm that.

In the past, I’ve complained about the lack of action in Ernest Haycox’s books, despite them being very well-written in general, but that’s not the case with this one. There are gunfights, fistfights, and stampedes, and Haycox doesn’t shy away from the violence and have it happen off-screen or not at all, as he sometimes does. I really enjoyed CHAFFEE OF ROARING HORSE and think it may be the best Haycox novel I’ve read so far, even though it’s one you never hear much about. If you’re a fan of traditional Westerns, I recommend it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Crack Detective Stories, March 1944

I'm always a sucker for a good-looking redhead, especially one with a gat like the dame on this issue of CRACK DETECTIVE STORIES. I don't know who did the art. There are some mighty good authors inside this issue, too, including Bruno Fischer (as Russell Gray), T.W. Ford, Robert Turner, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Robert C. Blackmon, Tom Thursday, and Henry Morton. I don't own this issue and haven't read it, but it's probably another example of editor Robert W. Lowndes providing a quality product on a low budget.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, January 1935

This is the second issue of NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE. I don't own this issue, but I like the action-packed cover. I don't know the artist. There's a really fine group of writers in this issue: W.C. Tuttle (with a Happy Hay story, a series about which I know nothing except that it ran for eight stories in NEW WESTERN), Tom Roan, Frank C. Robertson, and house-name Wes Fargo, who was sometimes E.B. Mann, sometimes Roy de S. Horn, and undoubtedly sometimes other authors, as well. No clue who wrote the novella under that name in this issue.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Three Worlds to Conquer - Poul Anderson

While I’ve never considered Poul Anderson one of my absolute favorite science fiction authors, I realized the other day that I’ve been reading his books off and on for more than forty years, starting with his Flandry series back in the mid-Sixties. I don’t recall ever reading a book of his that I didn’t like, either.

THREE WORLDS TO CONQUER is a non-series novel from 1964 that I’d never read before. It’s set in the Jovian system, on Jupiter itself and on the moon Ganymede, where there’s a mining colony from Earth. Humanity doesn’t have interstellar space travel yet, but there are colonies scattered throughout the solar system. Somewhat to the surprise of the colonists, they’ve made radio contact with a fairly primitive, centaur-like species native to Jupiter’s surface. One of these beings is smart enough to have mastered the radio on one of the scientific instruments sent down to the planet’s surface from Ganymede, and a friendship has sprung up between him and one of the scientists at the mining colony on the moon.

Then things go to hell for both of them. Civil war breaks out back on Earth, and a warship with a captain that’s still loyal to the losing side shows up on Ganymede, where most of the colonists backed the winners. The spaceship captain takes over the moon and plans to use it as a base to launch a counter-revolution. Down on Jupiter, a horde of barbarians have invaded the country of the native being who’s in contact with the mining colony. It’s no surprise that these two storylines intersect, and the two friends from different species wind up helping each other out.

Anderson makes it believable that sentient beings could live on Jupiter’s surface, and those chapters of the book are my favorites because they read almost like a sword-and-planet yarn, what with all the barbarians and fighting with swords and axes and such. Anderson handles all that very well. The political intrigue in the scenes set on Ganymede aren’t as compelling, but at least Anderson keeps the pace moving along swiftly and the reader can’t help but wonder how he’s going to tie everything together . . . which he does, quite neatly.

THREE WORLDS TO CONQUER is a prime example of the sort of adventure science fiction I grew up reading. If you haven’t tried Poul Anderson’s work before, it wouldn’t be a bad place to start. If you’ve read and enjoyed Anderson’s novels but not this one, it’s worth seeking out. Plus it has a decent Jack Gaughan cover.

(Since this post originally appeared on January 8, 2010, I've found out that THREE WORLDS TO CONQUER was serialized in 1964 in the science fiction digest magazine IF. I saw issues of GALAXY now and then, but IF didn't get any distribution around where I lived, so I never would have come across that version.)