If you travel in the same blog circles I do, you've probably read quite a bit about Lee Goldberg's new e-book McGRAVE in the past twenty-four hours. Well, I just finished it, and I'm here to tell you it's the best thing I've read so far this year. LA cop John "Tidal Wave" McGrave is straight out of an Eighties action-adventure movie, and in this yarn about McGrave's international pursuit of a thief and killer, Goldberg pulls off a very neat trick, producing a yarn that's part serious, part satire, and all action. It seemed like I had a grin on my face the whole time I was reading it. McGRAVE comes out tomorrow, and it gets a high recommendation from me. I loved it.
And I'm ready for the next McGrave book right now.
If you've been meaning to try the Rancho Diablo series, today is the perfect time because the first book in the series, SHOOTER'S CROSS (by Mel Odom writing as Colby Jackson), is absolutely free on Amazon. Today only, though, so grab it while you can.
No, Bill's not locked up. But the e-book version of his Truman Smith novel THE PRAIRIE CHICKEN KILL is free for the next three days. This is an excellent book and definitely another Deal You Can't Beat.
My friend Brett Weiss has a new short story collection out from Amazon. Take a look:
Written by Brett Weiss, a frequent contributor to such magazines as Fangoria and Filmfax, this eclectic short story collection pulls no punches, taking readers down a rabbit hole of fear, wonder and imagination. From the Orwellian “Filtered Future” and “What Do They Do While We Sleep?” to the deadly dark “Strange Children” and “Wormboy,” Filtered Future, The Land of Oz and Other Dark Tales of Science Fiction and Horror will keep anyone with a taste for the bizarre reading late into the night (and the next night and the next).
Other stories in this collection include: “I Have No TV, and I Must Watch” (a Harlan Ellison homage/parody); “Washed in the Blood” (a seriously warped religious yarn); “The Land of Oz” (about an early ’80s arcade); “The Creation Proclamation” (an amusing evolutionary tale); and “The Lady Loves Dancing” (introducing a morbidly obese woman’s “Little Helpers”).
Bonus features include a poem (“A New Kind of Light”), an interview with legendary horror novelist Bentley Little and introductions to each story. More than 34,000 words in all.
THE ROGUES is another short-lived series from the Sixties. It ran for one season, 1964-65, and while I didn't see every episode (it was on opposite CANDID CAMERA and WHAT'S MY LINE, two shows that my father loved), I saw enough of them to know that it was a charming, well-written, very entertaining series.
The premise was pretty simple. Three retired con men who were cousins – Charles Boyer, David Niven, and Gig Young – used their larcenous skills to help people who'd been taken advantage of. The idea was that the three leads would alternate, but Gig Young wound up being the star of most of the episodes. British actor Robert Coote often stole the show as Cousin Timmy. The series had that sophisticated, international charm, although most of that was achieved through the use of stock footage.
THE ROGUES was a funny, lightweight piece of fluff that was never intended to be anything else. At least that's the way I remember it. I don't believe it's ever been released on DVD and there are only a couple of clips on YouTube. There probably aren't all that many people who even remember it. But as usual, I do.
This is another Popular Publications pulp, as you might guess by the yellow background and the red banner along the top of the cover. Popular really loved yellow and red. At this stage of BIG-BOOK WESTERN's existence, Ed Earl Repp is in nearly every issue. Of course, there's really no way to know who actually wrote those stories published under Repp's name, since he's known to have used several ghosts. The other stories are by Tom Roan, John G. Pearsol (both Popular Publications regulars), Larry A. Harris (who wrote for nearly all the Western pulp publishers), and a couple of authors I'm not familiar with, I.L. Thompson and Jack Bloodhart, which sounds like a pseudonym to me but quite possibly isn't. I like this cover because it continues the tradition that nearly every woman in the Old West had red hair and was handy with a shootin' iron.
(This post originally appeared on April 26, 2006, in slightly different form.)
There's a story behind why I read this particular book at this particular time -- so naturally I'm going to tell it.
Like a lot of people who have a lot of old paperbacks, I sometimes have trouble remembering which books I own and which I don't. So when I come across something interesting in a used bookstore, I occasionally have to ask myself, do I already have this one or not? And if I can't remember, I err on the side of caution and buy it anyway, because -- in the words of a very wise man -- you never regret the books you buy, only the ones you didn't buy.
Anyway, I was discussing this with Livia the other day, which led me to remark in passing, "That's why I have five or six copies of THE BAMBOO BOMB by James Dark."
She just looked at me and asked, "Have you ever actually read it?"
I had to admit that I hadn't, so she said, "I want you to read it."
Now I have. And it's not bad.
Mark Hood is your typical Sixties secret agent: rich American playboy, Rhodes scholar at Oxford, internationally renowned cricket player, race car driver, karate master, etc. Just the sort of guy who spent the Sixties fighting the bad guys and keeping the world safe. He works for Intertrust, a top-secret international spy organization. In this book he's sent to Singapore to pull the old "American down on his luck" bit so he can infiltrate a group of villains who are out to destabilize the Far Eastern political arena . . . I think. I'll admit I had a little trouble following the plot because I know almost nothing about politics in the Far East during the Sixties. But that's okay, because Hood fights a bunch of bad guys, romances a couple of beautiful girls, and blows a bunch of stuff up real good.
One of the best things about this book is its length -- 127 pages. And there's more plot in that 127 pages than in a lot of 500 - 600 page thrillers that I've read. True, there's not much characterization or back-story, but sometimes I don't care. You pays your money and you takes your choice. More than anything else it reminded me of the Sam Durell books by Edward S. Aarons, with its hardboiled hero and exotic locations and convoluted plot. "James Dark" didn't write as well as Aarons, but then, few people ever did when it comes to this particular sort of book.
"James Dark" was really J.E. MacDonnell. I know nothing about him other than the fact that he wrote a lot of war and espionage novels in various series under various names. The Mark Hood books were originally published by Horwitz in Australia during the mid-Sixties, and at the same time about half of the books were reprinted in the U.S. by Signet, cashing in on the secret agent boom of the time. I think I have all the U.S. editions -- multiple copies of some of them, in fact.
But just to set the record straight, I checked my shelves and I don't have five or six copies of THE BAMBOO BOMB.
I have three.
(Update: I never got around to reading any more of those James Dark books, and I haven't replaced any of them since the fire. But I have fond enough memories of this one that if I ever run across any of them at a reasonable price, I'll pick them up. I might even read them. And this won't come as any shock, but I once again have multiple copies of some books because I saw them in the store and couldn't remember if I already had them. In fact, just the other day I barely caught myself in time to keep from ordering a book on ABE that I had just ordered another copy of maybe a month earlier.)
A while back I read and enjoyed the first volume in THE GREEN HORNET: YEAR ONE, and now I've read the second trade paperback collection from the comic book series. Volume Two is called THE BIGGEST OF ALL GAME, and it's an appropriate title as The Green Hornet and Kato step up their war against gang boss Skid Caruso. In fact, they cause so much trouble for Caruso that he calls in the brutal gangland killer known as The Scourge and sets him on the trail of the Hornet.
Interspersed with this storyline are flashbacks detailing how The Hornet came to be equipped with his famous car The Black Beauty, his electrified weapon The Hornet's Sting, and his downtown headquarters with its secret alleyway entrance. Britt Reid's secretary Lenore Case is also introduced in this volume. All of this is classic Green Hornet lore, told in a little grittier fashion for modern readers maybe, but faithful enough to the original that a purist like me really appreciates it. I'm still not crazy about the series being set in Chicago rather than Detroit, but I can live with it.
As usual Matt Wagner's scripts are excellent, fast-paced and hardboiled and occasionally humorous. He's also credited with art direction on the series, which I suppose means he did rough breakdowns for Aaron Campbell's pencils and inks. I like Campbell's art for the most part. His storytelling is fairly easy to follow, and his characters all look right.
I've liked The Green Hornet ever since I first listened to the radio show in the early Sixties. Wagner's doing a fine job with this retelling, and when the next volume comes out, I'm sure I'll read it.
Following up on Bob Randisi's suggestion from last week, today I want to look back at a summer replacement series that surprised everybody and still has a cult following, CORONET BLUE.
Some of you probably remember summer replacement series, which were exactly what they sounded like, new programming that took the place of reruns during the summer. Bear in mind that back in those days, most TV series produced between 30 and 40 episodes per year, not the 22 that's considered a full season now. Even so, all the networks would have a handful of summer replacement shows.
When CORONET BLUE made its debut in the summer of 1967, it's likely no one expected much out of it. It had been produced a year or two earlier and had been sitting on the shelf. The premise seems to have been inspired somewhat by ROUTE 66, THE FUGITIVE, and RUN FOR YOUR LIFE: a semi-anthology series with one or two continuing characters. The twist here was that Michael Alden, the protagonist of CORONET BLUE (played by Frank Converse) didn't know who he really was. He didn't know if that was really his name. All he knew was that he had climbed out of the East River in New York, the mysterious phrase "Coronet Blue" had some meaning to him . . . and people were trying to kill him.
That's a classic thriller set-up, and CORONET BLUE made the most of it as Michael Alden spent the summer trying to discover his true identity and find out why those mysterious enemies wanted him dead. The series caught on and became extremely popular, with the ratings rising each week. The on-going mystery had something to do with that, and so, I think, did the great theme song and opening credit sequence. That song has been stuck in my head for more than 40 years now.
Then suddenly it was over, with no resolution at all. Rumors abounded that there was a mysterious final episode and CBS, for some reason, decided not to show it. That seems not to have been the case. After all, when the episodes were produced in the first place the hope was that the series would be successful and would continue. Some executive decided that wasn't going to happen, and everyone involved moved on to other project while the episodes sat gathering dust until CBS trotted them out as a summer replacement series. Even after they saw its popularity, there was nothing they could do about it. Frank Converse was already working on another series, the short-lived cop show NYPD.
The rumors about the intending ending of CORONET BLUE persisted, and eventually creator Larry Cohen revealed in an interview what his plans had been. You can find the information easily enough on-line if you really want to know. But I'll say here and now that I don't buy it, not for a second. I hate to second-guess the guy who came up with the whole series, but I would have been severely disappointed if I had seen that ending. Maybe this is one of those rare cases where something was better because the outcome was left up to the imagination of the viewer.
