Monday Memories: The Volcano

As I’ve probably mentioned before, a creek ran behind the houses on the street where I grew up. It had steep banks that seemed really high when I was a kid. In places, they actually were twenty or thirty feet tall. We’re lucky none of us ever fell off and busted an arm or a leg—or a neck. But as far as I recall, none of us were ever hurt playing along the creek other than the occasional scratch or bruise.

On the other side of the creek was a large pasture that was anywhere from fifty to a couple of hundred yards wide, depending on the course of the creek, and on the other side of it was a small country road. That pasture was part of our stomping grounds, too, of course. I remember one Saturday morning I was with a couple of friends, and after crossing the creek by jumping from rock to rock, we climbed up the trail on the opposite bank and came out into the field bent on some adventure I no longer recall.

But then we stopped in our tracks and stared at something new that had appeared seemingly overnight. From our point of view, it was a huge, steep, circular bank of dirt that sloped in. As we stood there gazing at it in awe, one of my friends asked what it was.

I said, “I think it’s a volcano.”

Now, I knew good and well it wasn’t a volcano, and my friends quickly figured out that it wasn’t, but for a minute or so I had them going. And it was certainly an intriguing thought, that a volcano could pop up in the pasture behind our houses. That would have been pretty cool.

We climbed up to the top, and as those of you who have lived in the country have probably figured out already, it was just a stock tank, a big ring of dirt shoved up with a tractor to catch rain and provide water for the cows who grazed in that pasture. (That's not the actual tank in the picture above, that's just a photo I found on the Internet, but the one we saw looked a lot like that.) The ground sloped down toward the creek so the bank was a lot lower on one side and the cows could get to the water without any trouble. When the pond it created was full, it was probably fifty feet wide and maybe two feet deep. Certainly not deep enough for anybody to use it as a swimming hole. (We did have a swimming hole in the creek for a while, after some of us dammed it up . . . but that’s another story.)

Anyway, the volcano name stuck, and that’s what we called it from then on. We played some around that tank over the years. Any mound of dirt, if little boys were around, was going to get war played around it sooner or later in those days. One time I was running along the top of it when I tripped and fell and put out a hand to catch myself . . . right into a clump of cactus. That was not fun, and I still remember my mother using tweezers to pick at least a hundred cactus needles out of my palm. I’d like to think that I bore the ordeal in stony, heroic silence, but that’s probably not what actually happened.

Eventually somebody put a mobile home in that pasture, and years after that I think there was a gas well in it. But the volcano remained right where it was, although the banks wore down quite a bit over time. A year or so back, they started putting in an RV park on that property, and I thought, well, that’s it, they were finally going to bulldoze it down and fill it in. But no, even though there are dozens of RVs parked around it, the volcano is still there, or at least it was the last time I drove by. And I hope it stays. Not every kid had a volcano practically in his backyard when he was growing up.

Review: The Adventures of Coffin Kirk - Arch Whitehouse

With my fondness for, shall we say, offbeat pulp stories, how in the world did I miss this series? The Coffin Kirk stories by Arch Whitehouse are unlike anything else I’ve ever read from the aviation/air war pulps. Thankfully, Age of Aces Books has reprinted them in THE ADVENTURES OF COFFIN KIRK, a very handsome trade paperback volume. (Warning: There are SPOILERS below.)

The first story, “Vultures’ Vortex”, is from the October 1937 issue of FLYING ACES. It mostly just serves as a set-up for the rest of the series as it introduces crack pilot Brian “Coffin” Kirk, so-called because of his expressionless, “dead-pan” face. When Kirk was a kid, his father was an allied intelligence agent working undercover in Berlin, and Kirk was there with him. Having witnessed his father’s murder at the hands of a vicious international arms cartel known as the Circle of Death, Kirk vows to avenge his father’s death someday, and now, with the clouds of war gathering once again in Europe and the Circle of Death still active, he launches his quest, aided by his faithful mechanic and tail gunner Tank. Now, here’s the thing about Tank, and yes, this is a SPOILER, but it’s revealed pretty early on in this first story: Tank is actually an extremely intelligent, highly trained gorilla who befriended Kirk when the boy hid out from his father’s murderers in the Berlin Zoo. Tank even talks! Well, not really. Kirk is actually a ventriloquist, but he uses the illusion of Tank speaking to fool the bad guys. Whitehouse establishes all this in the first story, which also features Kirk and Tank getting captured by some Circle of Death agents but escaping.

The duo don’t return until the June 1938 issue of FLYING ACES, which features the story “Sky Guns of Singapore”. Kirk and Tank are in the Far East in this one, trying to foil a Circle of Death plot to destroy a new British naval base and also wipe out Singapore with poison gas. Even though our heroes are successful, of course, the body count in this one almost rivals a Spider or Operator 5 novel. Those Circle of Death guys are really evil!

“Scourge of the Steel Eagles”, from FLYING ACES, October 1938, is a direct sequel to the previous story. Trying to fly back to Europe from Singapore, Kirk and Tank are attacked by some mysterious planes and forced to crash-land in the jungles of Borneo near an extinct volcano. After they find a village full of natives who have died from some unknown cause, they observe some of the planes that shot them down apparently flying into the side of the volcano. I’m not going to bother putting a spoiler notice because it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here: in a plot that could have cropped up years later in a yarn featuring James Bond, Napolean Solo and Illya Kuryakin, or Amos Burke, Secret Agent (how’s that for obscure?), the Circle of Death has a hidden airbase inside the volcano, from which they intend to spread poison gas all over Southeast Asia. But not if our boys Kirk and Tank have anything to say about it, right? I’m impressed by the way Whitehouse manages to cram a novel’s worth of plot and a high body count into these novelettes.

Kirk and Tank are still in the Far East in “Clue of the Breda Brood”, from the April 1939 issue of FLYING ACES. In fact, they’re still flying over Borneo, as hardly any time has passed since the conclusion of the previous story. Once again, their plane (a stolen Heinkel bomber this time; Whitehouse knows planes and doesn’t mind telling you all about them) is forced down. This time they find some hidden hangers full of Bredas, a Belgian plane I’d never heard of. The Bredas are instrumental in another chemical weapons attack by the Circle of Death, and this time Kirk teams up with a group of daredevil RAF pilots to foil it.

“Balloons for a Breda” appears in the August 1940 issue of FLYING ACES, and despite more than a year’s gap between stories, once again it’s a direct sequel to the previous story. There’s less aerial action in this one as it’s more of an espionage story with Kirk and a beautiful female intelligence agent teaming up to keep a Japanese spy from getting his hands on some vital defense plans. The plot isn’t as over the top as the earlier stories in the series, which is both good and bad. You don’t want to see an author writing basically the same story over and over again, but at the same time, I sort of missed the high stakes in what is a more grounded (no pun intended) yarn.

Almost a year goes by before we see Kirk and Tank again in the June 1941 issue of FLYING ACES, but despite that gap, “Fate Flies the Breda” picks up almost immediately after the end of the previous story. Our heroes are still trying to get those defense plans to an American admiral in Singapore when they’re shot down (yes, again) on an island where their survival depends on Tank being able to successfully impersonate a Nazi agent who’s pretending to be a Dutch official. Whitehouse really knows how to stretch a reader’s willing suspension of disbelief. But once again, our boys defeat the villains, and as the story ends, they’re back in the air, headed toward Singapore.

We can only assume they got there safely, because with this story, the Coffin Kirk series comes to an end. It’s a wild one, you can say that for it. The plots are repetitive, but the sheer audaciousness of the whole series carries the stories along successfully. Kirk is an okay hero, but Tank is just a great character, full of personality and honestly the more effective of the pair. He saves the day time after time. If you’re a fan of aviation/war pulp yarns and don’t mind a little goofiness, I highly recommend THE ADVENTURES OF COFFIN KIRK. I had a really good time reading it, and it’s not like anything else you’re likely to read any time soon, I can guarantee that.

Review: Battleborn #1 - Sean C.W. Korsgaard, ed.

Right now, the sword-and-sorcery genre is in the best shape it’s been for long time. For further proof of that, look no further than the first issue of BATTLEBORN, a new magazine/anthology series that has launched with more than 200 pages of excellent work. I backed the Kickstarter for it and have been dipping into it for a while now. I’ve finished reading it and I’m happy to report that it’s a great debut.

The late Howard Andrew Jones, author of the Hanuvar Chronicles and other great novels, is listed as the Editor Emeritus, and fittingly, this first issue leads off with a Hanuvar short story by him. From there, we have these stories and poems:

“Blood of the Oni” by C.L. Werner

“Jaguar’s Children” by Gregory D. Mele

“Vengeance Vow” by TJ Marquis

“To Boast of Victory” by Erik Waag

“Temple of the River King” by Lee Patton

“The Fury’s Blade” by Robert Rhodes

“The Road of Kings” by Robert E. Howard

“Pearls of the Vampire Queen” by Michael Shea

THE LAST SPELL (Part 1 of 3) by Schuyler Hernstrom

Plus articles by Morgan Holmes on the origins of sword-and-sorcery, Jason M. Waltz on great opening lines, Jason Ray Carney on Michael Shea’s story, book reviews by Gregory D. Mele, and Sean C.W. Korsgaard on the Devil Dogs of Belleau Wood.

Every one of the stories is good, no doubt about that, but naturally I have some favorites. I was particularly partial to:

“Blood of the Oni” by C.L. Werner – This is a tale of Shintaro Oba, Werner’s wandering samurai series character. To be honest, I’m not a big fan of samurai fiction, but Werner always wins me over with these stories. Excellent action, appropriately creepy, and Shintaro Oba is a fine protagonist. I’ve read a couple of others in the series and really need to seek out the rest.

“To Boast of Victory” by Erik Waag – This story features Waag’s series character Skarde, a northern barbarian who serves as a mercenary soldier in the siege of a fortress. It’s fast-paced, funny, has some good action, and Skarde is a great character. He stars in several novels I’m eager to read, the first one of which is already waiting on my Kindle.

“Temple of the River King” by Lee Patton – Patton is a relatively new writer, but you’d never know it by this story, which reads like the polished work of an old pro. His protagonist, an undead mercenary known as Izrak the Deathless, has fought evil for centuries, and in this story he has to venture into a watery realm to rescue a princess. A standard plot, you say? Well, no, not in Patton’s hands. This is a beautifully written tale that lingers in the reader’s mind. It’s Izrak’s second appearance, and the first, the novella “A Valley of Shadow”, is also waiting on my Kindle.

My favorite story in this volume is “The Fury’s Blade” by Robert Rhodes, the debut tale of Gabriela de Quetar, a warrior nun (that’s ’way oversimplifying things) who’s sent with her mentor to an alternate version of the Spanish Main to recover a stolen religious icon, a cloak that makes the wearer invulnerable. This has the pace and color of a great historical novel, along with plenty of swashbuckling swordplay, and to make things even better, there’s a volcano looming in the background that just might be about to erupt . . . I love volcanoes in fiction. Maybe not quite as much as quicksand and fights on top of moving trains, but throw a good volcano eruption into a book and I’m happy. There are more stories about Gabriela de Quetar in the works, and I’m eager to read them.

Overall, BATTLEBORN #1 is a very impressive way to launch this series, and I plan to be on hand for every issue that comes out. Very highly recommended. The e-book edition is available on Amazon, and e-book and print editions appear to still be available on Indiegogo. If you’re a sword-and-sorcery fan, you need this one.

The Devil's Dooryard - W.C. Tuttle

I've mentioned before that W.C. Tuttle's stories and novels featuring range detectives Hashknife Hartley and Sleepy Stevens are some of my favorite Western yarns. I recently read "The Devil's Dooryard", a Hashknife and Sleepy novelette from the May 3, 1921 issue of ADVENTURE.

In this one, our two heroes have drifted into a cowtown called Sundown, where they quickly find themselves in the middle of a gun battle. This gets them involved in a feud between two local ranches, one of which is ramrodded by an old friend of Hashknife's. The ranch's owner was killed in the shootout in town, so the foreman, with help from Hashknife and Sleepy, is determined to keep the spread going until the owner's only living relative arrives to claim it.

From there, accusations of rustling, bushwhackings, and plot twists (most of them predictable if you've ever read or watched many Westerns) move along at a fast pace until the final showdown in the desolate wasteland of an extinct volcano known as the Devil's Dooryard.

This is a very early Hashknife story, the third overall, and is narrated by Sleepy in a very dialect-heavy style. That can make it fairly hard going for modern readers, but I've read enough of that stuff that I didn't have any trouble with it. It also leans heavily toward comedy, although there's action and mystery as well. Tuttle employs the same formula in the later third person stories and novels, although it's more balanced there and I think those later entries in the series are considerably better.

Which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy "The Devil's Dooryard". I had a fine time reading it. The ending is a little abrupt for my taste, but other than that I really enjoyed it. You can find it on-line and read it for yourself, if you're of a mind to.

Forgotten Books: The Gladiator #4: Blood on the Sand - Andrew Quiller (Laurence James)

I meant to get back to this series of historical action/adventure novels set in ancient Rome sooner, but other books got in the way. However, I’ve now read BLOOD ON THE SAND, the fourth novel in the Gladiator series (originally published in England under the series title The Eagles). The author behind the Andrew Quiller house-name this time is the prolific Laurence James, who also wrote the first book in the series, HILL OF THE DEAD.

The protagonist of these books is Marcus Julius Britannicus, also known by his gladiator name Vulpus the Fox. As each novel opens, Marcus is the most famous gladiator in Rome, then the story flashes back to his earlier days as a Roman soldier and establishes his history as the son of a Roman centurion and a barbarian princess. Marcus is also motivated by a vengeance quest that runs through the series, as well as getting involved in various historical events such as the Siege of Masada and the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius.

The main storyline in BLOOD ON THE SAND wraps up that quest and also explains how Marcus went from being a soldier to fighting as a free gladiator sponsored by the Emperor Titus. It’s a fast-moving tale without an overly complicated plot, as I’ve come to expect from Laurence James. It’s also lurid, over the top, occasionally crude, and very violent, also hallmarks of James’s work. But he’s a great storyteller, and his books really keep the readers turning the pages. That’s certainly the case with BLOOD ON THE SAND. There’s also a nice, obscure in-joke involving Kenneth Bulmer, one of the other writers who shared the Andrew Quiller house-name.

This was the final Gladiator novel published by Pinnacle (that’s my beat-up copy in the scan), and with the wrapping up of several storylines it reads like the final book in the series. But it’s not. There’s one more, SEA OF SWORDS, written by Bulmer and published only in England. Copies of it can be hard to find, especially at an affordable price, but I came across one a while back and grabbed it. So I’ll be reading it, too, maybe in the reasonably near future.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, January 1946

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by Robert Stanley. I’m so used to seeing his work on mystery and Western pulps and paperbacks, I’m not sure I would have recognized it in a pure adventure setting like this. But it’s a good cover and I like it.

If you’re like me, you saw “One For France and One For Me” by Georges Surdez and thought, “Ah, a French Foreign Legion yarn!” Surdez was famous for them. But no, this novella (and it’s almost long enough to be an actual novel) takes place entirely in France. Captain Norman Kenton, an American pilot who was shot down over France during the war, returns several months after V-E Day to look up the members of the Resistance who helped him avoid capture by the Nazis. It’s not just gratitude that motivates Kenton. One of those Resistance members was a beautiful young woman.

But he runs into more trouble than he expects and finds himself involved in black marketeering, a vengeance quest against people who collaborated with the Germans, murder, espionage, and tragedy. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Well, it’s actually just okay, because the plot pokes along at an exasperating pace, and a lengthy flashback in the middle of the story derails things even farther. I generally like Surdez’s work, and the final scene of this one, which takes place in a courtroom, is pretty good, but things just take too long to get there. Good plot, good characters, not so good execution.

The next story, “Un-Reversible Error” by Wallis Reef, also involves a court case, as you might guess from the title. It’s a contemporary (for the time the pulp was published) Western mystery with the protagonist being an old sheriff. The tone is a little light without the story being an actual comedy. The plot involves a hoodlum who looks like he’s going to get away with murder until the sheriff comes up with a surprise. Not an outstanding yarn, but fairly entertaining.

Stuart Cloete’s name is familiar to me. I think I may even own a few of his novels set in Africa. His short story in this issue, “A Death in the Family”, is a grim tale about two twin brothers discussing a family tragedy that took place in the trenches of World War I. The whole thing is a little slow and bland until Cloete springs a wry, triple-twist ending that took me by surprise and redeems the story for the most part.

“The Peacekeeper” by Hugh Fullerton is a short bit of folklore/tall tale about Finn McCool. Or something. I can’t be more precise than that because I didn’t read much of the story before saying, “Nope, not for me.” Something about Fullerton’s style just grated on me.

“Blood and Guts” by William Langer is much better. It’s a well-written, character-driven story about an Army medic seeing his first action during an assault on a Japanese-held island in the Pacific.

“You Ain’t Gonna Believe This” is a Runyonesque tale about a prizefighter with four arms. Lawton Ford’s story evokes a few smiles, but no outright chuckles.

“The Shadow of a Mountain” by William Arthur Breyfogle is set in an unnamed Central American country where the German general who’s in command of the army stirs up a war with a neighboring country. There’s also a volcano that’s about to erupt. This starts out like it’s going to be a comedy but turns pretty grim before it’s over. Not a bad story, but decidedly odd.

It's not surprising that my favorite story in the issue is by Day Keene, who had a good career in the pulps before becoming one of the top paperback authors of the Fifties and Sixties. “In the Halls of Montezuma” is a crime yarn that also has a military angle, as a prizefighter-turned-gangster sets out getting his revenge on the guy who caused his fall from grace. The big twist at the end is completely predictable, but Keene was such a good storyteller that it doesn’t matter.

The final story in the issue, “The Mule That Loined Brooklyn” by Nick Boddie Williams, is similar in one way to Surdez’s “One For France and One For Me”. It’s about a downed pilot trying to escape from the enemy in World War II, only Williams’ story is set in Burma, the enemies are the Japanese, and the story is more of a farce than anything else. It’s okay, but lightweight enough to float off.

With that lineup of stories, this issue never rises above the merely okay level and flirts with below average. Day Keene’s story is good but definitely a minor entry in his body of work, and it’s the highlight. Langer’s story about the Army medic is also worth reading. There are some good issues of ADVENTURE from this era, but this one is pretty forgettable.

Review: Safari to the Lost Ages - William P. McGivern

After reading William P. McGivern’s grim and gritty crime novel SHIELD FOR MURDER a couple of weeks ago, I got the urge to try one of his science fiction stories. “Safari to the Lost Ages”, a novella that appeared originally in the July 1942 issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, seemed like a good bet. It’s about a trip 30,000 years into the past, and I like a good time travel yarn now and then.

The first thing to know about this story is that there’s almost no science to it, not even any handwavium to explain how time travel exists. It just does, that’s all, and it’s so commonplace that there are companies rich people hire to take them into the past as a vacation. One such company is run by two-fisted adventurer Barry Rudd and his assistant, the burly McGregor.

Barry and McGregor are hired by beautiful Linda Carstairs to find her father, a scientist who went 30,000 years into the past but never returned to the present. Linda insists on going along on the expedition, of course, and so does her fiancé. Barry doesn’t like this, but Linda is paying for the trip, so he reluctantly agrees to her presence.

Well, naturally, things go wrong. After an encounter with a dinosaur, Barry is captured by some beautiful winged bird-girls and winds up the prisoner of some cavemen who have a village inside an extinct volcano. McGregor and the others are also taken prisoner by the cavemen. (Yes, this is one of those stories where cavemen and dinosaurs exist at the same time.) We get human sacrifice, desperate battles, treachery, noble gestures, and nick-of-time escapes. All the stuff of classic pulp adventure yarns, in other words.

And a pulp adventure yarn is really all this is, despite the minor science fiction trappings. It might as well have taken place in the Africa that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote about, where there’s a lost race around every corner. Of course, that’s fine with me. I read to be entertained, so the only question is whether or not “Safari to the Lost Ages” is entertaining.

Let me put it this way: If I had read this when I was ten years old, I would have thought it was one of the greatest stories ever written. As it is, reading it at a considerably older age, I still galloped right through it and had a very good time reading it. This is Front Porch stuff for sure. McGivern’s prose is colorful, breakneck fast, and heavy on the adverbs (I love adverbs, even though I know I’m supposed to hate them in this day and age). Barry Rudd is a stalwart hero, the villains are suitably despicable, the bird-girls are an intriguing concept I wish he had done more with, and the whole thing just raced by. If I had read this story without a by-line on it, I never would have guessed it was written by the same guy who did the bleak, low-key SHIELD FOR MURDER.

From what I’ve written about it, you ought to be able to tell whether you’re the sort of reader who would enjoy “Safari to the Lost Ages” or think it’s the stupidest thing ever. So proceed accordingly. The novella is included in THE FIRST WILLIAM P. McGIVERN SCIENCE FICTION MEGAPACK, which is available as an e-book on Amazon. I definitely plan to read more of McGivern’s science fiction and fantasy. By the way, McGivern also wrote the story under the house-name P.F. Costello that's featured on the cover of that issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, and it's included in THE WILLIAM P. McGIVERN FANTASY MEGAPACK.

The City of the Black Flame - Steve Dilks

It’s back to sword and sorcery I go with “The City of the Black Flame”, the second novella in Steve Dilks’ GUNTHAR—WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD. In this one, Gunthar and two companions—a pirate who has a grudge against him and a female warrior—are hired to cross a desert and an inland sea and then penetrate an untamed jungle to a lost city where the secret of eternal life can be found. Along the way they pick up an ally, a mutant “reptiloid”, evidently part man and part snake and a further indication that these Gunthar stories are set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, long after some sort of nuclear war or disaster.

But as in the previous story, “Priestess of the Fire-Gods”, Dilks never allows his world-building and back-story to interfere with the headlong pace of the action. Gunthar and his companions face all sorts of dangers in the ruined city, which is a little reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Opar, and everything builds up to a pretty explosive climax. (The lost city is built next to a volcano, if that gives you any ideas.)

Gunthar is just a really likable protagonist, young and a little inexperienced but plenty tough. Dilks gives us a little more of his background in this story. The supporting cast is excellent all around, the villain is suitably despicable, and there are even a few poignant moments to go along with the slam-bang action. Dilks’ writing style is a blend of Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Lin Carter, Gardner Fox, and John Jakes (the Brak stories). Reading these first two Gunthar stories has given me a real sense of nostalgia. This is sword and sorcery in the classic mold and done very well. It's available on Amazon in paperback and e-book editions.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, June 1947

This is a pulp that I own and recently read most of. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover art is by Peter Stevens, who did quite a few covers for ADVENTURE during this era.

This issue starts off with the initial installment of an espionage serial set in post-war China entitled “He Who Rides the Tiger” by James Norman. As I usually do with serials if I don’t have all the installments on hand, I skipped this one. It may be an excellent yarn, but I don’t see any point in starting a story I can’t finish. Some of the other installments can be found in issues posted online. Maybe I’ll get around to reading it someday. To be honest, though, that’s not very likely.

Next up is a Western short story by the always dependable Frank Bonham. “Last Drive” is about the final run of a stagecoach. The former driver who is almost completely blind goes along as a passenger, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s forced into taking over the reins when Apaches attack the stagecoach. This is a well-written story with a nice final twist.

It's unusual to find a Dan Cushman story in a pulp that’s not published by Fiction House. He was a regular contributor to LARIAT STORY, ACTION STORIES, and JUNGLE STORIES. His long novella in this issue of ADVENTURE, “The Cask of Khabar”, which is set in the Congo, would have been right at home in JUNGLE STORIES, and again to be honest, it’s the main reason I picked this issue to read. Because of his resemblance to a dead man, American trader and self-professed “jungle tramp” Craig Thebes finds himself mixed up with a gang of ruthless criminals. A couple of beautiful women are involved in the scheme, too, of course. At times in this story, it seems like Cushman is trying to do a jungle version of THE MALTESE FALCON. Thebes is certainly hardboiled, and his banter with the evil Sir Roger Humphries reads like Sam Spade and Casper Gutman trading veiled quips. I think the ending is a bit less dramatic than it could have been, but that’s the only drawback in an otherwise superb pulp yarn that just makes me eager to read more by Cushman.

Samuel W. Taylor wrote a lot of Western, detective, and adventure stories for a wide variety of pulps. His story in this issue is called “Do Not Molest the Miracles” and is billed as an “Off the Trail” story. That fits it pretty well. It’s a whimsical tale of elves building houses for needy veterans during the post-war housing crisis, only to run afoul of government red tape. As a general rule, whimsy isn’t something I really enjoy, but this story is well-written and mildly amusing. It would have made a good, lighter-than-usual episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

Steve Hail wrote Westerns and nautical adventures. His story story “Doghole Circuit” in this issue definitely fits into the latter category. It uses the old “disgraced skipper is forced by a catastrophe to redeem himself and pull of a daring stunt” plot. In this case, the catastrophe is an erupting volcano and a passenger liner that’s run aground just off the Big Island of Hawaii. To a confirmed landlubber like me, this plot probably doesn’t resonate as much as it would with somebody who likes and knows something about ships. But I still thought it was a pretty good story anyway.

Being an Oklahoman, Clifton Adams knew the oilfields pretty well and could spin a good yarn using that setting. “The Crazy Kind” is about a prizefight between two oilfield workers with a rich new lease as the stakes. This is a lighter-weight, more humorous story than most of Adams’ work, but it’s still well-written and very entertaining. I never worked in the patch, but I had relatives who did and have been around that world some, so I’ve always had a fondness for novels and stories set there.

I’ll sometimes make an exception to my policy of not reading serial installments. If it’s the final installment, or by an author I particularly like, and the story wasn’t published later as a novel that I might read someday, I’ll give one a try. The final installment (of three) of “Salmon Sweepstakes” by Robert E. Pinkerton wraps up this issue. Pinkerton wrote a lot of stories and serials for the adventure fiction pulps, but I don’t recall ever reading anything by him before. This story is about the rivalry between salmon fishermen in the Pacific Northwest following World War I. I started it but couldn’t get interested in it, so I wound up setting it aside. If I’d been able to read the whole thing, I might have liked it better.

The stories by Cushman, Bonham, and Adams are good enough that I have to consider this a pretty solid issue of ADVENTURE. None of the other stories are bad, and I can't count off for serials because they're just the nature of the beast, so to speak. So I'd say that if you have a copy of this one, it's worth pulling off the shelf and giving it a shot.

Forgotten Books: The Gladiator #3: City of Fire - Andrew Quiller (Angus Wells)

Moving on to the third book of the GLADIATOR series (or THE EAGLES, as it was known in the original English editions), CITY OF FIRE is the only one in this series written by Angus Wells, one of the prolific British paperbackers of that era. And that’s kind of a shame, because it’s an excellent novel and my favorite tale of Vulpus the Fox so far.

The famous gladiator Vulpus is really the half-British former Roman soldier Marcus Julius Britannicus. Sticking to the structure of the first two books written by Laurence James and Kenneth Bulmer under the house-name Andrew Quiller, CITY OF FIRE begins with a scene in the arena. This time Vulpus is fighting a tiger, and just when it looks like things are about to go really bad for him, the story flashes back and picks up the storyline where it left off in the previous book. Marcus is on a vengeance quest, hunting down and killing the men who planned and carried out his mother’s murder, but while he’s doing that, he also gets involved in some political intrigue that takes him back to Italy. Luckily for him, he wanted to go there anyway, and it’s an even bigger stroke of luck that the mission he’s given will provide him with a chance to kill two of the men he’s after.

But that’s where his luck looks like it’s going to run out, because where does his mission/quest take him? To the city of Pompeii, where nearby volcano Mount Vesuvius has started rumbling recently, although no one in the city takes it seriously. So . . . what do you think is going to happen? Let’s see . . . Pompeii . . . Vesuvius . . . You might as well go to San Francisco in 1906 or take in an opera or a ball game with Ellery Queen. It ain’t gonna end well.

But our boy Marcus isn’t going to let a little thing like an apocalyptic volcanic eruption stop him from going after the guys he wants to kill, and Wells does a fantastic job of capturing the chaos of that deadly natural disaster. The whole book is well-written, with vivid, flowing prose and plenty of graphic action, but Wells really shines in the last section. This is the first book I’ve read by him, but I was pretty impressed with his writing. Enough so that I ordered more books by him.

If you’ve read and liked the first two books in this series, you’re probably going to want to go on with it, and I give CITY OF FIRE a high recommendation. But if you haven’t read the series, don’t start with this one. It’s not absolutely necessary to read the books in order, but I think it’s probably much better that way.

Tuesday's Overlooked Movies: The Deadly Mantis

I thought I'd seen nearly all of these movies, but Svengoolie keeps coming up with ones that I hadn't, or at least don't remember. Obviously, my cultural education was severely lacking in some respects. THE DEADLY MANTIS is from 1957, and as giant bug movies go, it's not bad.

It starts from a pretty ridiculous premise, though. A volcano erupts in Antarctica, and somehow that thaws out a giant prehistoric praying mantis frozen in the Arctic. Okay, we'll go with that, I guess. The mantis destroys an isolated radar station manned by the Air Force, which brings it to the attention of our stalwart hero, a colonel played by Craig Stevens. Yep, Peter Gunn his own self. But that not all. The scientist called in by the Air Force to help figure everything out is played by none other than William Hopper, best known as Paul Drake on PERRY MASON. So we have two iconic private eyes fighting a giant praying mantis. Yeah, I'll watch that. There's also a spunky gal reporter involved, but I thought she was kind of annoying.

The movie takes a documentary-like approach to a lot of the scenes, and that works pretty well. The mantis itself doesn't appear on-screen until well into the film, which is probably good. In some shots it appears fairly scary (well, it would have scared me when I was ten years old, which is how I try to approach movies like this), but in others it just looks fake and silly.

The odd thing is, as the movie goes on, I started to feel sorry for the mantis. I don't know if this was intentional or not, but the final scenes kind of tug at the ol' heartstrings, and I found myself not liking the human characters as much. I don't really think the filmmakers were trying to make any sort of statement, but looking at it from that angle, it's kind of a powerful ending.

Anyway, I'm glad I finally saw THE DEADLY MANTIS. It's not a great film, by any means, but I enjoyed it.

Forgotten Books: Ghost Mine Gold - Walker A. Tompkins

This short pulp novel was published originally in the September 1942 issue of MASKED RIDER WESTERN, then reprinted in paperback in 1969 by Curtis Books (the edition shown in the scan, which I got from the Internet), and in 2011 as a large print hardback from Thorndike (the edition I read).

The Masked Rider, for those of you who haven't encountered the character before, is actually drifting cowboy Wayne Morgan . . . except he's probably not, and Wayne Morgan is just a pose that the so-called Robin Hood Outlaw uses, much like The Shadow pretended to be Lamont Cranston. Only there actually was a Lamont Cranston and The Shadow just used his identity, and the various authors of the Masked Rider's adventures never make it clear whether someone named Wayne Morgan really exists or if the Masked Rider just made him up. In fact, during the course of the long-running series, we never find out much about the Masked Rider except that he battles for justice and has a faithful Indian companion, the Yaqui warrior Blue Hawk. (Any resemblance to a certain other masked rider of the plains and his faithful Indian companion is strictly not coincidental.)

Anyway, before I go too far astray (too late!), this particular exploit is by Walker A. Tompkins, one of my favorite Western authors. The story gets underway with a pretty suspenseful scene in which a stagecoach is carrying a bomb, but the driver and the lone passenger, an old prospector who has just filed a claim on a fabulously valuable lost gold mine he's found, aren't aware of their danger. Will the bomb go off, or will it be discovered in time?

It's not too much of a spoiler to say that the bomb does go off, and that it was planted by the crooked assayer who wants the mine for himself, since Tompkins reveals both of those things very quickly. The Masked Rider, in his Wayne Morgan guise, is framed for the killing and arrested, but Blue Hawk helps him escape, and then they're off after the real bad guys, the crooked assayer and his minions. The old prospector who was blown up has a twin brother, and the twin brother has a beautiful daughter, and the daughter has a beau who's a Pony Express rider, and all of them get mixed up in the adventure, too, along with the marshal and his posse who are after the Masked Rider and Blue Hawk. Everybody winds up in the crater of an extinct volcano (trust me, it makes perfect sense in the context of the story) and much action ensues.

Tompkins always brought a lot of professionalism to his pulp work. He wrote many excellent Jim Hatfield novels for TEXAS RANGERS and also contributed good yarns featuring the Rio Kid (in RIO KID WESTERN) and Steve Reese, Hank Ball, and Dusty Trail, the trio of range detectives who starred in RANGE RIDERS WESTERNS. The guys from RANGE RIDERS never made it to paperback reprint in the Sixties and Seventies, but some of Tompkins' novels from the other three series did.

GHOST MINE GOLD doesn't ascend to the upper levels of that work because the plot is a little on the thin side, but it is an entertaining yarn with plenty of good action in it. Tompkins had a knack for coming up with inventive ways to put his characters in danger, and that quality is on display in this novel. I think the ending could have been a little more over-the-top, but it's satisfying enough, and the fade-out is really reminiscent of that other masked rider of the plains. Maybe it's not a classic, but I found GHOST MINE GOLD to be a perfectly pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

Ozar the Aztec -- Valentine Wood (Walker A. Tompkins)

You’ll need to pull out your pulp adventure checklist for this one. Let’s see . . .

Lost city? Check. Takes place in Karnux, a lost city populated by Aztecs and located in the crater of an extinct volcano in northern Mexico, five hundred years after the Aztec empire was destroyed in Cortez’s conquest of Mexico.

Stalwart hero? Check. Larry Starling is the infant son of a pair of American geologists whose expedition runs afoul of . . . well, we’ll get to that.

Beautiful heroine? Check. Esta, the young, hot queen of the Aztecs.

Evil villain? You bet. Tarx, the high priest who sacrifices Larry Starling’s parents and is about to kill the innocent toddler when King Montezirka intervenes and decrees that the kid must live because he might turn out to be Ozar the Aztec, who, according to legend, is supposed to be a fair-skinned god who will someday come to free the people from oppression. So Larry Starling, instead of being sacrificed, is sent off to live in the mountains with the old arrow-maker Claxitl for the next twenty years, after which time he will return to Karnux to see if he can fulfill the Five Sacred Commands that will prove him to be Ozar the Aztec.

Back in the Twenties and Thirties, it was a common practice in pulp magazines to run a series of linked novelettes that, read in order, constitute a novel of sorts. Quite a few such serials were later published as fix-up novels, in fact. In the six issues from January through June of 1933, the Street & Smith pulp TOP-NOTCH published the Ozar the Aztec series, written by Walker A. Tompkins under the pseudonym Valentine Wood. The titles of the stories are “Ozar the Aztec”, “Ozar and the Plumed Serpent”, “Ozar and the Jade Altar”, “The Death Drums of Ozar”, “Ozar and the Black Skull”, and “Ozar’s Crown of Victory”. Each story recounts another story of Ozar romancing Queen Esta and foiling the nefarious plots of the high priest Tarx.

If you’ve read this far, you probably have a pretty good idea whether or not you’ll like these stories. They’re full of action and melodrama and were rather obviously inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs. More than anything else, though, they reminded me of a Thirties movie serial, full of death traps, secret passages, and narrow escapes by our hero Ozar. I can almost see it in my mind, with the Republic Pictures back lot standing in for the lost city of the Aztecs, Ray Corrigan or Buster Crabbe playing Ozar, and William Witney and John English directing the action. It would’ve been a dandy.

Walker A. Tompkins is better known as a Western writer, and I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time. His plots tend to have some holes in them, and that’s certainly the case in these stories, but I like the headlong pace and the way his writing flows. I thoroughly enjoyed the Ozar stories. They’re going to be reprinted soon in a single volume by Beb Books, and if you’re still in touch with your inner 12-year-old, as I am, I think you might enjoy them, too. Just imagine you’re reading one of those small-size Ace paperbacks from the mid-Sixties, with a Roy G. Krenkel or Frank Frazetta cover. Ozar would have been right at home in one of those. My only complaint is that the stories are left crying out for a sequel, and as far as I know, there never was one. If I had more time and a market, I’d be tempted to write it myself . . .

The Stock Tank Mystery

“The Stock Tank Mystery”. Sounds like the title of a Hardy Boys book, doesn’t it? But in reality, it’s an on-going mystery I’ve been meaning to do a post about for a while now, and it’s finally deepened to the point that I have to.

For those of you unfamiliar with stock tanks, they’re ponds that are usually created by bulldozing up shallow walls of dirt on three sides of some gently sloping ground to form a reservoir in which rainwater collects. There was one in the field on the other side of the creek from where I grew up. I nicknamed it The Volcano. They’re used for watering livestock, hence the name, but this being Texas, more often than not they’re dry. You can tell how much rain we’ve gotten by whether or not there’s any water in the stock tanks.

There’s one about a mile and a half up the road from where we live. The image above isn't the actual tank, it's just one I found online, but the one I'm talking about looks similar. A few years ago, I was driving past it when I noticed a small boat sitting in the middle of it. I’m not a boat guy so I can’t go into details, but it looked to me like the kind of boat you’d take out fishing on a lake. It sat there, and the next time it rained and the tank got enough water in it, the boat floated and drifted around a little. But then the water dried up, and the boat sat there on the dry, cracked dirt.

Time passed.

And then, out of the blue, a second boat appeared, very similar to the first. Now there were two of them sitting in the dry stock tank, floating a little when there was water in it, and then sitting some more.

More time passed.

Then, about a year ago, something else appeared in the stock tank, but it wasn’t another boat. No, it was the tail assembly of a small airplane. Just sitting there with the boats, but it doesn’t move when water collects. I guess because it’s built to fly, not to float.

Now we come to today. I was driving by this morning and I noticed something new had been added to the collection. Sitting in the middle of the dry stock tank is a four-or-five-foot-tall replica of the Statue of Liberty, uplifted torch and all. I just kind of shook my head and drove on because I had places to be, but when I went back by later I checked again, and my eyes hadn’t played tricks on me. The Statue of Liberty was still there, beckoning the huddled masses to the other side of the stock tank.

I have no explanation for any of this, but never mind what I said about the Hardy Boys. This is starting to feel more like I’m living in a Harry Stephen Keeler novel, for those of you familiar with his work. Maybe someday I’ll find out the connection between two fishing boats, a small airplane tail assembly, and the Statue of Liberty. But for now, I’ll just have to remain puzzled.