Music I Like: In the Summertime - Mungo Jerry

Summer can now start. I've listened to Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime". Let the good times commence.

Forgotten Books: The Lure of "Adventure" - Robert Kenneth Jones

Robert Kenneth Jones, who wrote THE SHUDDER PULPS, a study of the Weird Menace pulps, also produced this slim volume about one of the leading general fiction pulps and in the opinion of some the best pulp magazine ever, ADVENTURE. I don't quite agree with that assessment, but ADVENTURE certainly belongs in the top five or six pulps.

Jones concentrates on the magazine's first fifteen years, from 1910 to 1925, an era generally acknowledged as ADVENTURE's golden age. He takes a look at the work of some of its best-known writers, such as Talbot Mundy, W.C. Tuttle, Arthur O. Friel, Arthur D. Howden Smith, Walt Coburn, Harold Lamb, Georges Surdez, Hugh Pendexter, H. Bedford-Jones, and many others. He also discusses the magazine's letters column, "The Campfire", the site of many spirited discussions between the magazine's writers and readers, and its other features such as "Ask Adventure", a source of advice and information on just about any subject under the sun.

One of the most entertaining parts of this book is the section on legendary editor Arthur Sullivant Hoffman. Hoffman had a number of idiosyncracies, such as the persistent misspelling of some words (one has to wonder if Robert E. Howard, known to be an ADVENTURE reader, picked up his spelling of "surprize" from Hoffman) and his editorials railing against the government.

There are a few minor mistakes here and there, but when this book was first published in 1989 research wasn't nearly as easy as it is now, and Jones, along with the other pulp scholars of that era and earlier, deserve a great deal of credit for paving the way with books like this. THE LURE OF "ADVENTURE" also includes a lot of black-and-white cover reproductions. Sure, you can find good color scans of many of those covers on-line now, but you couldn't back then and as far as I'm concerned they contribute quite a bit to the book's charm.

I believe a reprint of this volume is still available from Wildside Press. It has a plain cover, but the interior is a facsimile reprint of the original 1989 edition from Borgo Press. THE LURE OF "ADVENTURE" is an entertaining, informative book, and if you're a pulp fan it's definitely worth reading.

Music I Like: Island in the Sun - Weezer

I first heard this song on the episode of THE SIMPSONS where Homer and Bart go to the leper colony and immediately liked it. Livia is a big Weezer fan and has all their CDs. I like just about all their songs, too.

Robert J. Randisi Westerns on Sale at Amazon

All these Western e-books by Bob Randisi are on sale at Amazon right now for either $1.99 or $2.99, depending on the book. Lots of great reading here for a very affordable price, and they'd make great Father's Day gifts, too!

Music I Like: Sam's Town - The Killers

Love the opening of this song, and the rest of it is pretty good, too. I know a lot of people preferred The Killers' first album, HOT FUSS, but I like SAM'S TOWN better, myself. It has a bit of a noir feel to it.

Now Available: West of the Big River: The Avenging Angel - Michael Newton

< Orrin Porter Rockwell is more than just a deputy United States marshal and a deadly gunfighter. He's a member of the Mormon Danites, the group of enforcers known as the Avenging Angels, and he's the personal troubleshooter for Governor Brigham Young. And when Young sends Rockwell to the rough-and-tumble mining town of Tartarus, there'll be plenty of trouble for him to shoot. A group of Mormon miners has vanished, and before Rockwell uncovers the secret of their disappearance he'll face deadly danger from all sides. What his adversaries don't know is just how dangerous the Avenging Angel is . . .

Award-winning author Michael Newton spins an action-packed, historically accurate yarn in THE AVENGING ANGEL, another exciting adventure west of the big river.

Also available for the Nook and in a large print edition.

Music I Like: Houston - Dean Martin

Ol' Dino is about the last guy you'd expect to be singing a hobo song, but danged if he doesn't pull it off.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: Catlow

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Yep, another movie based on a Louis L'Amour novel. I didn't plan it this way, it just sort of happened. I needed something to watch and had a DVD of this movie handy, so I sat down and took a look at it for the first time since the fall of 1971, when I was a freshman at what was then Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos. I remember watching it at a theater on the courthouse square with my friend Dennis, who was a big L'Amour fan.

Yul Brynner plays the title role in this one, a charming outlaw named Jedediah Catlow. An old friend of his from the Civil War, Ben Cowan, is now a U.S. marshal and has a warrant for Catlow's arrest. A vicious hired gun named Miller is also after Catlow. They all wind up south of the border chasing after two million dollars in Confederate gold that was stolen and taken to Mexico.

There's a certain repetitiousness to this movie: Cowan captures Catlow, Catlow escapes. Catlow captures Cowan, Cowan escapes. Shootout, fight, Indian attack, dalliance with one of the two beautiful women in the film, a fiery revolutionary (Daliah Lavi) and a Mexican general's daughter (JoAnn Pflug). Then back to the cat-and-mouse game between the two adversaries/old friends.

CATLOW is a pretty lightweight film with quite a bit of humor that I don't remember from L'Amour's novel (although it's been even longer since I read it than it has since I'd seen the movie). Even though this was a feature film, the production values are more TV level. But the scenery is nice, Yul Brynner was always oddly effective in Westerns, and Ben Cowan, who's actually the hero of the movie, is played by Richard Crenna, an actor I always liked. Jeff Corey is Catlow's Gabby Hayes-like sidekick. The villainous Orville Miller is played by Leonard Nimoy, and during one fight scene that interrupts his bath, you get possibly your only chance to see Spock his own self buck naked, if that sort of thing interests you. It's some pretty graphic nudity for 1971.

CATLOW is available on DVD in a multi-disc set called The Louis L'Amour Western Collection, along with a couple of better films, CONAGHER and THE SACKETTS. It's very much of its time, but it's an entertaining little movie.

Music I Like: Glory to the Brave -- Hammerfall

I really like the song. It has a nice epic quality, which makes it good writing music.

Revenger #1: A Bullet for Sartain - Clifton Drago (Peter Brandvold)

A BULLET FOR SARTAIN is the first book in a new Adult Western series from Clifton Drago, who in this case is really none other than Mean Pete Brandvold his own self. Mike Sartain, a tough, fast on the draw Cajun from Louisiana, is a freelance gunfighter who only hires out to people seeking justified revenge on those who have done them wrong. This desire to settle the scores for people who are unable to do so themselves springs from tragic events in Sartain's own past.

In this first novel, however, the plot involves Sartain seeking personal revenge on whoever murdered a friend of his instead of hiring out to someone else. The trail eventually leads him south of the border to a hacienda filled with gunmen whose only goal in life is to see Mike Sartain dead.

As we've come to expect from Brandvold's work, A BULLET FOR SARTAIN features compelling characters, vividly realized settings, and action, action, and more action. Brandvold has written for a couple of the leading Adult Western series, and this one is definitely in that genre with several beautiful women getting tangled up in Sartain's life. The pace never slows down for long, and this novel is great fun from start to finish. Highly recommended, and I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.