Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, Summer 1944

Let's see, we have a beautiful space babe, a stalwart hero, a ray-gun, and an octopus-like alien. Man, I love Earle Bergey's covers. The lead novella in this issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES is by Ross Rocklynne, an author I've always found to be pretty entertaining, although I haven't read a great deal of his work. Also on hand are two well-known names in the science fiction field, John Russell Fearn writing under his pseudonym Polton Cross and Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, as well as Paul S. Powers, much better remembered these days for his stories about Sonny Tabor and Kid Wolf in WILD WEST WEEKLY. Rounding out the issue are stories by the lesser known Albert De Pina and Frank Ferry, along with an article by my old editor/mentor Sam Merwin Jr. If you'd like to check out this issue, the whole thing can be found on-line at the Internet Archive.

Now Available: The Art of Ron Lesser, Volume 3: Wild, Wild Westerns - Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, eds.

THE WEST WAS WILD!

And no one could visualize its raw, untamed fury and pioneer spirit like artist RON LESSER. From 1959 to today, Ron has painted hundreds of book covers, movie posters, advertisements and gallery artwork depicting the drama, the people, and the colorful vistas of the Old West.

In this 3rd volume of our The Art of Ron Lesser series we examine his portfolio of work in the Western genre illustrating some of the classics from writers like Luke Short, Louis L'Amour, John Benteen, J.T. Edson, and many more. This volume is a unique look into the life and work of an artist who had a powerful impact on our pulp culture, and framed how we look at that period of American history.

The Art of Ron Lesser Vol. 3: Wild, Wild, Westerns is a companion to Vol 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens and Vol. 2: Dangerous Dames and Cover Dolls. All three showcase and provide insight into the 65+ year career of the artist and his groundbreaking work within the art, publishing, advertising, and entertainment industries.

This 3rd volume feature 150 pages of full color artwork and commentary by one of the masters of the western genre. It is a unique art book of a unique artist.

(I'm extremely proud to be part of this project. It boggles my mind a little to look at all the cover images in this beautiful volume and realize how many great books I bought and read over the decades had covers by Ron Lesser. Being able to help pay tribute to him and his work is very gratifying. If you're also a Lesser fan or just a fan of iconic paperback art, this volume is available on Amazon or directly from the publisher.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Six-Gun Western, April 1950

We're still dealing with medical issues here, but I'm trying to get things back on track as much as I can. What better way than with a rather risque cover from a Trojan Western pulp? I feel like I should know who did the lurid artwork on this SIX-GUN WESTERN cover. Joe Szokoli, mebbe? I just don't know. The lead novella by E. Hoffmann Price is actually a reprint from the January 1939 issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES. Ray Gaulden, another consistently good writer, is also on hand, along with house-name Ralph Sedgwick Douglas, Frank Morris (who might well have been Mickey Spillane), and little-known Charles Getts and John White. I hope to read another Western pulp and write an actual review of it soon.

Review: Liberty and a Law Badge - Chap O'Keefe (Keith Chapman)

For those of you who don’t know, prolific Western author and occasional commenter on this blog Chap O’Keefe is really Keith Chapman, who’s been writing and editing a wide variety of genre fiction in comics, magazines, and books for many years now, in addition to his work as a journalist. LIBERTY AND A LAW BADGE is another adventure of range detective Joshua Dillard, a former Pinkerton’s operative with tragedy in his past that drives him to fight outlaws of all stripes.

As the book opens, Dillard is on his way to his latest assignment, stopping a range war in Montana and finding out who’s been rustling cattle from his employer’s ranch. Pretty standard stuff, you say? Well, maybe at first glance, but not by the time Chapman gets through throwing twist after twist into the complex plot. The Liberty of the title is actually a young woman who’s been blackmailed into a sordid affair with a crooked sheriff, who’s the brother-in-law of the cattle baron who hired Dillard, who owns the cattle that Liberty’s husband is accused of stealing. Got that? Then there’s the cattle baron’s sister, who’s married to the crooked sheriff, and she goes on a rampage when she finds out about her husband’s adulterous affair with Liberty (said affair really being nothing more than a series of rapes). Add in a brutal deputy with an agenda of his own, and there’s a whole lot for Dillard to untangle before he can straighten everything out. Naturally, that untangling involves a number of fistfights and shootouts.

This book is a lot of fun, pulpish but with a sharp, contemporary edge. The dark, complex plot, the emotional angst, and the gritty storytelling remind me very much of many Westerns published in the Fifties by Gold Medal, by authors such as Lewis B. Patten, Dean Owen, and William Heuman. The pace is very fast, the action scenes are handled well, and Joshua Dillard is a very likable hero, tough and competent enough to handle just about any situation, despite his occasional self-doubts, but not a superman by any means. You can order LIBERTY AND A LAW BADGE here or at Amazon, and if you’re a fan of hardboiled action Westerns, I definitely think you’ll enjoy it.

(This review originally appeared in a somewhat different form on December 21, 2009. I'm rerunning it now because there's a brand-new edition of LIBERTY AND A LAW BADGE available with an entertaining bonus essay about how and why the book came to be written. You can order it at the links above, they're the current ones, and I can only second my own recommendation from 2009. It's an excellent Western action yarn.)

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western Magazine, November 1952

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. Like all the Western pulps from Popular Publications, NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE consistently delivered good authors and stories, and most of the covers were pretty good, too. I have no idea who painted this one. It’s not one of my favorites, but it’s certainly not bad.

I’m not sure why I haven’t read more by George C. Appell. Every story I’ve read by him was very good. I own several of his novels but haven’t gotten around to any of them. His novelette “Hired Gun!” leads off this issue, and it starts off as a very standard story about a gunfighter, in this case a Texan named Hayes Hockaday, going to work for a corrupt saloon owner/cattle baron but having second thoughts about it when he starts falling for a girl who works in the local mercantile. Appell has a very effective twist up his sleeve in this story, though, and he enlivens the plot with some gritty action scenes and some good descriptive writing. This is a top-notch yarn.

Leonard Huish published only three stories, according to the Fictionmags Index, and I don’t know a thing about him. “The Terror of El Toro Blanco” in this issue is a humorous story about a widow with an axe destroying the various saloons where her late husband quenched his thirst for tequila. El Toro Blanco is one of those saloons, located in a Texas border town. There’s also a bet between a couple of Mexicans with murder as the stakes. My tolerance for comedy Westerns is pretty low, as I’ve said many times, but this one isn’t bad. The author avoids goofy slapstick for the most part and even manages to strike a poignant note or two. This story surprised me by being worth reading.

When you see a story in a Western pulp bylined “Doc Winchester”, your first thought is that the name has to be a pseudonym or house-name. Mine certainly was. But that turns out not to be the case. The author of the novelette “Pit of the Living Dead” in this issue is actually Charles Ward “Doc” Winchester, born in Nebraska in 1888, who appears to have spent most of his life in Wyoming and then died in New Mexico in 1954. Other than that, I don’t know anything about him. Was he actually a doctor, or was that just a name he or someone else hung on him? If anyone knows I’d be happy to learn more. As for the story itself, which is the first one I’ve read by Doc Winchester, it’s about a couple of men doing some scouting, surveying, and mapping for the government who run into an archeologist and his beautiful daughter who claim to have found Cibola, the fabled lost city of gold. It’s an interesting plot, and there’s even a Lost Race to liven things up (I love me some Lost Race yarns), but the whole story is rather muddled and the prose just isn’t very good. I wanted to like this story just because it’s by somebody called Doc Winchester, but unfortunately, I didn’t.

Hascal Giles was a long-time newspaperman in Tennessee who wrote more than 60 stories for various Western pulps in the Forties and Fifties, including several Masked Rider and Range Riders novels. After retiring from newspaper work, he wrote several more novels published as paperback originals in the Nineties. I haven’t read much by him. His story in this issue, “Reunion in Blackjack”, finds two ex-cons, recently released from Yuma Prison, heading back to the town where they have a grudge against the sheriff. They have very different plans on how to proceed once they get there, however. This is a well-written story, and I admire the way Giles tries to give its resolution a fresh angle, but I’m not sure it really works. I really ought to read one or two of his novels, though.

Bruce Cassiday wrote dozens of Western and detective stories for the pulps in the Forties and Fifties, but I know him mainly for the many paperbacks he turned out later in his career. He wrote some of the Nick Carter, Killmaster novels, entries in the Phantom and Flash Gordon paperback series under the name Carson Bingham, and quite a few softcore novels, also under the Bingham name. His novelette in this issue “The Bigger They Are—” is interesting in its approach. For once, the point-of-view character is the bad guy, a cattle baron/town boss who brings in a town-taming lawman to enforce his will, only to have things not go the way he’s expecting. It’s kind of a gamble to tell a Western pulp story like this, but Cassiday makes it work for the most part with interesting characters and top-notch writing. I read some of his Carson Bingham books years ago and enjoyed them. He’s a mostly forgotten writer, but I think his work is worth reading. (Bold Venture Press has reprinted some of his mystery novels, and I really need to read them.)

“Nobody’s Pardner” by Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount) is a reprint of a story published originally as “A Maverick Fights for a Brand” in the July 1937 issue of STAR WESTERN. Mount was a top-notch Western author who has become one of my favorites in recent years. This story is about a young tinhorn gambler who has to decide whether he wants to continue his shady ways or reform and make something of himself, even though the process is definitely a reluctant and unpleasant one. While not as good as Mount’s Silver Trent or Five Mavericks stories, this is a fine yarn that I really enjoyed.

This issue wraps up with a novelette, “Last of the Llano Kid!”, from another favorite, C. William Harrison. In this story, a bloody Texas feud reaches out with its violence all the way to Arizona, and as a result, an Arizona lawman trails a killer back to the Lone Star State for a showdown and gets involved with the fugitive’s beautiful sister along the way. This is a very good story marred only by an ending that’s not as dramatic as it could be.

In fact, several stories in this issue featured endings that were a bit of a letdown. I don’t know if this was something the editors at Popular Publications wanted in order to increase the realism of the stories, but if so, I’m not sure it worked. These are Western pulps! I want leather to be slapped and powder to be burned. Despite that, this is a decent issue of NEW WESTERN MAGAZINE. Not one to seek out, maybe, but worth reading if you have a copy.

Medical Matters

Posting here may be sporadic for a while due to some ongoing medical issues in the family. Not me, I'm pretty much fine, just busy dealing with real life. I looked around the hospital for Dr. Kildare and Dr. Gillespie while I was there and didn't see them anywhere. The pulp posts should return this weekend and with any luck I'll have a few book reviews coming up.

Review: Kruger's Korps - H.W. Crocker III

I’m just the right age to have been a big fan of the TV series THE RAT PATROL when I was a kid, and I read all the paperback tie-in novels based on the show, too. Plus, the first issue of SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS I bought brand-new off the spinner rack was #6, featuring the classic story “The Fangs of the Desert Fox”. Since those days, I’ve read a lot about the North African Campaign in World War II and have even written about it some in my series THE LAST GOOD WAR.

However, I’ve never read anything about it quite like H.W. Crocker III’s new novel KRUGER’S KORPS.

This yarn has a great set-up: Rolf Kruger, a young lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, looks enough like a German aristocrat and officer that he’s recruited into Wild Bill Donovan’s newly formed Office of Strategic Services and sent to North Africa to take the place of that German officer and infiltrate a special unit in the Afrika Korps. OSS spies have gotten wind of some top-secret German operation about to be launched, and they want to know what it is.

This plot strikes me as just the sort of thing you might find in a novel by Jack Higgins, Alistair Maclean, or W.E.B. Griffin, and for the first third or so, that’s what KRUGER’S KORPS reminds me of. But then Crocker veers off in another direction entirely, and wherever you might guess this novel is going . . . that ain’t it.

I can’t go into too much detail without ruining the surprises, but I will say that there are plenty of the things I love about World War II espionage novels: a stalwart but not infallible hero, some dastardly villains, murders, double-crosses, double identities, and of course, a beautiful woman who may or may not be trustworthy. Those elements are put in service of a plot reminiscent of those authors I mentioned above, but with a considerable amount of Sax Rohmer and Robert Kanigher thrown in.

This might be the first book of a series, or it might not be, but either way, KRUGER’S KORPS is a heck of a lot of fun, with plenty of action and a surprising amount of wry humor. Crocker is known primarily for his non-fiction books about war, leadership, and religion, but he’s written several novels as well, including a series of alternate history adventures starring George Armstrong Custer. I think I’m going to have to check those out. KRUGER’S KORPS is available on Amazon in hardcover and e-book editions.

Review: A Rage of Desire - Clayton Matthews

We’ve all encountered guys like Mitch Sutton in noir novels before, but there are some important differences in Mitch’s character, too. He doesn’t have a great job—he’s a used car salesman in Los Angeles—but he’s good at it and enjoys the work. He’s not exactly trapped in a loveless marriage—he genuinely cares for his wife and their twins—but there’s definitely a spark that’s missing, too. One day, when Mitch drops into a neighborhood bar for his usual beer on the way home from work, that lack prompts him to take a drink of hard liquor instead—and Mitch can’t handle the hard stuff. He knows that, but he gets drunk anyway and picks up a woman at the bar who turns out to be a high-class prostitute. Things don’t work out between them, though, because Mitch is too drunk.

He would have been luckier if things had stayed that way.

But no, the woman winds up marrying Mitch’s boss, but Mitch falls hard for her anyway, leading to a torrid affair that, sure enough, winds up with somebody dead and a murder charge hanging over Mitch’s head.

A RAGE OF DESIRE is the latest reprint from Black Gat Books. Originally published as a paperback original by Monarch Books in 1960, with a cover by Harry Barton, it’s the first novel by Clayton Matthews, who went on to a career as a prolific paperbacker over the next three decades. I’ve read a couple of other novels by Matthews, and this one is very similar, utilizing the sort of crime and noir elements we’ve seen in scores of novels but changing things up enough that the books also work as domestic dramas. Matthews was a very good writer and had that paperbacker’s knack of keeping the reader turning the pages.

Over the years, Matthews wrote Westerns, family sagas, romantic suspense, and traditional mysteries. In the early Seventies, he married author Patty Brisco, and together they produced a bunch of bestselling historical romance novels under the name Patricia Matthews. This is hearsay, or gossip, if you will, but I was told by a mutual writer friend that Clayton Matthews did nearly all the writing on those romance novels published under his wife’s name, in addition to the ones that were credited collaborations. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the person who told me that was in a position to know.

And speaking of mutual friends, Clayton Matthews was also the cousin of my long-time friend Tom Johnson, who was one of the leading figures in pulp fandom for many years. He always referred to Matthews as “Matt” and told me that some of Matthews’ family sagas set in Texas were based on actual people and incidents. Again, I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s certainly plausible enough.

A RAGE OF DESIRE may have been Matthews’ first novel, but it’s a polished debut, no doubt about that. It’s not as hardboiled as some, but it has a gritty edge and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This novel is available on Amazon in paperback and e-book editions, and I think it’s well worth reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, May 25, 1942

I don’t have this issue of SHORT STORIES, and I’m not particularly fond of that Pete Kuhlhoff cover, but Wildside Press just reprinted the lead novella, “Master of Dragons” by E. Hoffmann Price in paperback and e-book editions, and since I just read it, I want to write about it.

Price is a long-time favorite of mine. Some of his stories are better than others, of course, but it seems like he always brought a solid effort to everything he wrote, no matter what the genre or market. Many years ago I got my hands on a copy of FAR LANDS, OTHER DAYS, a massive collection of his adventure stories from various pulps, and I absolutely loved it. I own a copy of that volume now, and I ought to reread it one of these days.

In the meantime, “Master of Dragons” is a World War II espionage yarn. Naval intelligence agent Gil Jordan undergoes plastic surgery to make him look like a shady Australian who may be working as a spy for the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies in the days shortly before Pearl Harbor. When the man is murdered, Jordan takes his place and finds himself up to his neck in a dangerous investigation involving a Japanese society of assassins, a beautiful and mysterious blonde who can’t be trusted, hidden airfields, and a date with a firing squad. Price keeps things moving along briskly, and although there are definitely some pulpish elements, this reads a little more like a serious espionage story of the type that would become more prevalent in the Fifties and Sixties.

I have a strong hunch that it was written a short time before Pearl Harbor, when people suspected the Japanese were about to do something but weren’t sure what, and then the ending was revised before the story was published in May 1942. But like I said, that’s just a hunch. Either way, it’s a good story and I enjoyed it.

Elsewhere in this issue, there’s a really strong line-up of authors, including H. Bedford-Jones, Day Keene, William MacLeod Raine, Caddo Cameron, Robert R. Mill, S. Omar Barker, H.S.M. Kemp, and Phil Richards. SHORT STORIES was a consistently top-notch adventure pulp and this appears to be an above-average issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Max Brand's Western Magazine, October 1950

MAX BRAND'S WESTERN MAGAZINE was a reprint pulp, but it had new covers including this dandy one by Norman Saunders. Once again, trouble has reared its ugly head at an Old West poker game! MAX BRAND'S WESTERN MAGAZINE usually included a story by Max Brand, naturally, but not this time around. The stories are reprints from various 1920s and '30s issues of ARGOSY and ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY. The best-known authors are Bennett Foster and Kenneth Perkins. Also on hard are Christopher B. Booth and Carroll Lichty, neither of whom is familiar to me. Even though the stories are reprints, chances are few if any of the readers of this pulp had read them in their original appearances, so they probably got their quarter's worth.

Review: Boss of the Chisholm Trail - Guy L. Maynard

Guy L. Maynard wrote thirteen stories starring red-headed, gunslinging trail boss Flame Burns for the pulp WILD WEST WEEKLY in 1936, ’37, and ’38. But Flame also starred in BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL, a Big Little Book published in 1939. Most of you are probably familiar with Big Little Books, those small, thick, chunky juvenile novels that featured text on the left-hand pages and illustrations on the right-hand pages. That wasn’t always the case—there are a couple of places in this book where text appears on both pages—but for the most part the books are about half as long as they appear to be, and the print is pretty big, so BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL is more of a novella than a novel.

The question is, did Maynard adapt it from any of his Flame Burns stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY? That certainly seems possible. Most of the Flame Burns pulp stories also feature Billy the Kid as a character, and in BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL, Flame meets Billy for the first time, suggesting that this Big Little Book may have been taken from “Trail Pardners”, Flame’s debut novelette in the February 29, 1936 issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY. Not having a copy of that issue, I can’t check for sure.

But what about BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL, you ask? Is it any good? Well, I enjoyed it quite a bit, for whatever that’s worth. As the book opens, Flame has just arrived in Santa Fe with a trail herd he had to take over and bring in when the regular trail boss was killed. This is the first time Flame has acted as trail boss, but it won’t be the last. He soon meets the famous rancher known as “Old Man” Chisholm, whose bodyguard and closest ally is Billy the Kid. Chisholm hires Flame to ramrod a trail drive from the Texas Panhandle to Abilene.

This is as good a place as any to mention that Maynard totally mixes up Jesse Chisholm, who laid out the route that came to be known as the Chisholm Trail, and John Chisum, the New Mexico rancher who was both friend and enemy to Billy the Kid at different times. However, is strict historical accuracy all that important in a book like this? Probably not.

Flame sets out to deliver Chisholm’s cattle to Abilene, but trouble lurks along the way in the person of the evil Whiskey Dick Slavens and his gang of rustlers. Flame has a personal run-in with Slavens even before leaving Santa Fe, so the varmint has a grudge against our hero to start with. Stampedes and gunfights ensue as Flame tries to meet the challenges of his first real job as a trail boss.

Despite being aimed at a juvenile audience, BOSS OF THE CHISHOLM TRAIL is no namby-pamby, “nobody dies” kid’s book. On the contrary, guns blaze a lot, and hombres both good and bad get ventilated on a regular basis. The violence may have been toned down a little, but this is a pretty hardboiled yarn. Obviously, kids in the Thirties were expected to be tough enough to take it. The story races along and comes to a satisfying conclusion.

My copy is missing the spine and is in fairly rough shape, but the text is all there and easy to read. The cover is truly ugly. The interior illustrations are by Ralph Hitchcock, and while most of them are pretty crude, some are not bad and do a good job of capturing the action. I’m not a collector or a regular reader of Big Little Books, although I read a lot of them as a kid when they were easier to find. But when one comes my way, I’m not going to hesitate to pick it up if it looks interesting.

I had read one of the later Flame Burns stories in WILD WEST WEEKLY and thought it was okay but nothing more than that. I think I actually enjoyed this version more. It’s an oddity, sure, but an entertaining one.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Duke (2020)

The last time I did a movie post, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a film called THE DUCHESS. So what movie am I writing about today? THE DUKE, of course. Purely a coincidence, and other than both films being British, they couldn’t be more different.

THE DUKE is set in 1961 and is about an older Englishman who’s a failed playwright and has a hard time holding down a job. His long-suffering wife works as a maid to keep the family together. One son works building boats, and the other is a criminal. All the old guy wants to do is watch TV, but the British government requires people to buy a license to own a television, and as a matter of principle, our protagonist won’t pay it. (Wait, you have to buy a license to watch TV? That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard!)

Anyway, the British government is really proud of a portrait of the Duke of Wellington painted by Goya that they’ve just bought to keep it out of the hands of an uncouth American, so our rabble-rousing protagonist steals it from the museum where it’s being displayed and holds it for ransom to raise money to buy TV licenses for elderly people and war veterans. A heartwarming mix of comedy and drama ensues, and as a bonus, not everything turns out to be as it appears at first.

Despite my rather snarky tone above, THE DUKE is a wonderful movie that took me completely by surprise. It’s based on a true story, and it has great characters, nice plot twists, and top-notch acting all around led by Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren as the husband and wife. I really enjoyed this movie. Nothing flashy, no pyrotechnics or special effects, just a solid story well told. Highly recommended.

Now Available: Johnny Colt #2: No Tears in Hell

The second exciting adventure in a brand new Western series from James Reasoner!

The path to justice winds through the Gateway to Hell. Fourteen soldiers are dead, the shipment of rifles they were guarding is gone, and those responsible are hiding behind whiskey, cards, and dirty money. Johnny Colt arrives in Harker City, where nobody asks too many questions—unless they're prepared to pay for the answer. He is supposed to track down the killers and uncover the truth, but first, he needs to make them believe he is one of them.

Every man he meets seems meaner than the last, and a knife might be hiding behind every pretty smile in town. No Tears in Hell is a gritty Western about stolen guns, border bloodshed, and a Texas Ranger risking everything under an outlaw’s name. On the border, the truth often comes out with a gunshot!

(I realize I'm hardly an unbiased observer here, but I think this novel is a really good Western yarn with lots of interesting characters and plenty of fast-paced action. I had a great time writing it, and I hope many of you will have a great time reading it. It's available now on Amazon in very affordable e-book and paperback editions. I don't promote my stuff often, but if you've been thinking about buying this one, today would be a great day to do it. Release day sales always bump up the Amazon rankings, which help a lot.)

Review: Ezra Flint, U.S. Marshal: Gunfighter's Grave - Paul L. Thompson and Scott McCrea

I read one of Scott McCrea’s Ezra Flint novels a while back and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I wanted to try another book in the series. The most recent one, GUNFIGHTER’S GRAVE, finds Flint teaming up with another U.S. Marshal, Shorty Thompson, the star of his own series of novels from Paul L. Thompson, who collaborates with McCrea on this novel.

The pair of lawmen prove to be a very potent duo as they set out on the trail of a man who just may be Billy the Kid, although as far as the world knows, the notorious outlaw is dead, gunned down in New Mexico by Pat Garrett. Flint and Shorty, who are old friends, are out to rescue a young woman they both consider a niece/little sister, who has recently married this mysterious stranger who may be one of the West’s most deadly killers.

Thompson and McCrea spin a really entertaining yarn in GUNFIGHTER’S GRAVE, a story that brings in historical characters such as Dirty Dave Rudabaugh and Pat Garrett himself, retired now from being a lawman. The plot and the writing remind me a little of Bob Randisi’s long-running and legendary series The Gunsmith as the book races along in a blend of Old West history and fictional action.

What really makes GUNFIGHTER’S GRAVE stand out, though, are the characters, especially the two protagonists. I already knew I liked Ezra Flint, a brooding, stoic philosopher who enforces the law while quoting Marcus Aurelius. He always puts me in mind of John Carradine. I hadn’t encountered Shorty Thompson before, but I’m glad I have now. Small in stature but mighty tough and feisty, he reminds me of a young Bob Steele. What a great series of B-Westerns those would have been, had these books been written ninety years ago.

You can count me as a fan of both series now, and I definitely plan to read more. In the meantime, if you enjoy gritty, fast-paced Western action, I think GUNFIGHTER’S GRAVE is well worth reading. It’s available on Amazon from Dusty Saddle Productions in e-book and paperback editions.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Mammoth Mystery, January 1946

MAMMOTH MYSTERY was a fairly short-lived pulp from Ziff-Davis that put out only a dozen issues in 1945, '46, and '47. The first issue truly was mammoth at 276 pages, but by the second issue--this one--it had shrunk to 178 pages, still pretty hefty by pulp standards. This cover is by an artist named Richard R. Epperly, who's not familiar to me at all. Pretty nice back on that lady, though. The lead novel is by Bruno Fischer, an author whose work I've enjoyed quite a bit. I need to read more by him. Also on hand are Larry Holden (actually Lorenz Heller, many of whose novels have been reprinted by Stark House in recent years), Z-D regular Chester S. Geier, and lesser-known authors Phyllis Dayton and A. Boyd Correll. If you want to check out this issue, a PDF of it can be found here.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Wild West Weekly, March 12, 1938

I don’t own this pulp, but thanks to the kindness of my friend Cullen Gallagher, I was able to read a PDF of its lead novelette, “Feud of the Haunted Corral”, featuring T.W. Ford’s best-known series character Solo Strant, also known as the Silver Kid. The cover on this issue of WILD WEST WEEKLY is by H.W. Scott, and it’s an excellent illustration of the Silver Kid in action.

Solo Strant is a drifting gunfighter. He doesn’t hire out his gun, but he’s quick to pitch in when he sees someone being taken advantage of or an innocent person being threatened. As this yarn opens, that’s what happens when a gang of gun-wolves attacks a small ranch. Solo rides to the rescue, but as it turns out, he may not have done the right thing after all, since it looks like the rancher he rescued may be a murderer!

That’s the first mistake Solo makes in this story, but it’s not the last one. In fact, he seems uncharacteristically prone to making the wrong decisions. But that may have something to do with the extremely complicated plot Ford comes up with, which deals with a generations-long feud between two ranching families, assorted murders, mistaken identities, and the Haunted Corral, which is not a corral at all but rather an area of badlands where folks go in, but they seldom come out alive. The whole “shadow of the past” element in this novelette reminds me of many of Walt Coburn’s novels and stories.

“Feud of the Haunted Corral” is a fast-moving, entertaining story. Solo Strant is a likable protagonist, and I’ve enjoyed every story I’ve read about him. It’s pretty easy to spot the evil mastermind in this one, but that doesn’t take away from the pleasure of reading it. My thanks to Cullen for making that possible.

Elsewhere in this issue are stories by a number of WILD WEST WEEKLY stalwarts. Norman W. Hay, writing under the house-name William A. Todd, contributes a Risky McKee yarn. (All the Risky McKee stories are by Hay, and while William A. Todd is considered a house-name, it’s possible Hay wrote everything under that by-line. We’ll probably never know for sure.) There’s a Calamity Boggs story by Lee Bond. Guy L. Maynard pitches in with a Reckless Blaine story. (There are six Reckless Blaine stories, published in six consecutive issues of WILD WEST WEEKLY. I’d be surprised if Maynard didn’t cobble them together into a fix-up novel, but if he did, I can’t find any record of it.) J. Allan Dunn, Charles M. Martin, and Carl Raht contribute stand-alone stories. This appears to be a very good issue of one of my favorite Western pulps.

Review: Chainlink - Owen Evens (Dudley Dean McGaughey)

A friend of mine recommended this Western novel, so I hunted up a copy and read it. The author, Owen Evens, was actually Dudley Dean McGaughey, one of my favorite hardboiled Western writers, best known under his pseudonym Dean Owen. He also wrote as Dudley Dean, Owen Dudley, Dean McCoy, and Hodge Evens. As far as I know, CHAINLINK is the only novel on which he used the name Owen Evens. It was published as a paperback original by Ballantine in 1957 with a good cover by Mel Crair.

Purely coincidentally, this is the second novel I’ve read this month in which a ranch is named Chainlink. The other was in T.V. Olsen’s RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN. And like the Olsen novel, this CHAINLINK is pretty bleak and grim. In the days following the Civil War, former Union officer Griff Jordan returns to the Big Bend in Texas as the partner of former Confederate Major Milo Clay, who has just bought the Chainlink ranch.

Chainlink formerly belonged to brother and sister Clyde and Lisa Benbow. Clyde has vowed to reclaim the ranch, no matter what it takes, and he’s willing to kill to accomplish that goal. Making him an even more despicable villain, he has feelings for Lisa that are anything but brotherly. Also complicating matters is Major Clay’s niece Maydelle, who’s become the madam of the local whorehouse after being seduced by Clyde Benbow when she was sixteen. And no one in the area knows that Griff fought for the Union despite being a Texan, a secret that would cause plenty of trouble if it ever came out.

It’s a set-up that’s ripe for violence, angst, lust, and tragedy, and McGaughey provides plenty of all of those as Clyde Benbow sets out to take over Chainlink again. But Griff is plenty tough and fast on the draw, so he’s well-matched in this clash with the brutal Benbow and his minions. There’s plenty of gritty action, and as in Roe Richmond’s MONTANA BAD MAN, which I wrote about last week, the sexual elements are surprisingly graphic for a paperback Western published in 1957.

McGaughey was an excellent writer, able to spin a yarn with a relentless pace and interesting, if not always likable, characters. CHAINLINK is a fine example of his work. There was a large print edition in 2001, but other than that it hasn’t been reprinted. Reasonably priced copies of both editions can be found on-line. If you’re a fan of hardboiled Westerns, I recommend it and any of the other books by McGaughey, under all his pseudonyms.

Review: The Long Vendetta - Clifton Adams

Buck Coyle is a former race car driver, a World War II vet who was the commander of a tank crew, and the owner of a successful body shop and garage in a small city. He’s a widower, his wife (also a race car driver) having been killed in a crash on the track a year earlier. But he has his successful business and a beautiful new girlfriend he intends to propose to. It’s a pretty good life.

Until somebody hires a hit man to kill Buck.

That’s the setup of THE LONG VENDETTA by Clifton Adams, the second book in the recent double volume from Stark House reprinting two of Adams’ crime novels. From there it’s full-tilt suspense and action as Buck, who is also the narrator of this novel, tries to discover who wants him dead. Sometimes he works with the police lieutenant assigned to the case, but at times, circumstances force Buck to strike out on his own. One thing is pretty sure: the origins of this vendetta go all the way back to the war and a tragedy that occurred during that conflict. Will Buck figure out what’s going on, though, in time to save his life and the life of his girlfriend?

THE LONG VENDETTA was published originally in hardcover by Avalon Books in 1963 under the pseudonym Jonathan Gant. Adams, who is one of my favorite Western authors, wrote only five crime novels, and Stark House has now reprinted all of them. This one is a great yarn with a likable protagonist. It barrels along to a final showdown that features some real white-knuckle writing from Adams. His background serving in the Tank Corps in both North Africa and Europe gives the story a gritty authenticity. For what it's worth, I figured out the big twist before the end, but it took me a while.

This edition features a fine introduction by Eric Compton, as I mentioned when I reviewed the other novel included in it, THE VERY WICKED, and that intro just makes this volume even more worthwhile. It’s available in e-book and paperback editions on Amazon, and I think it’s excellent and well worth reading.

Memorial Day

Many of the pulps had military-themed covers during World War II, such as this one by Rafael De Soto, and some of the stories in this issue of ARGOSY are war-related, too, judging by their titles: "Armchair Admiral No. 2" by Fletcher Pratt, "WACS, Macs and Warlocks" by Theodore Roscoe, "Always Victorious" by Jacland Marmur, "Red Sun Over Bengal" by Kenneth Perkins, "Flight to Nowhere" by Leslie T. White, "Hell Afloat" by Eustace L. Adams, and "Somali Contraband" by E. Hoffmann Price. I don't own this issue, so I can't check those stories to make sure they're actually war yarns, but they sound like it. I'm old enough to remember when Memorial Day was on May 31, no matter what day of the week it fell on, but I don't want to be too much of a curmudgeon and complain about how they've gone to moving holidays around.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: North-West Romances, Summer 1941

Nothing like a Norman Saunders cover on an issue of NORTH-WEST ROMANCES. The two go together perfectly. This issue features a story by one of my favorite authors, Frederick Nebel (a reprint from a 1932 issue of ACTION STORIES), as well as yarns by William Byron Mowery, Ralph R. Perry, Owen Finbar (who was really A. DeHerries Smith, who wrote a lot of stories for the Northerns under his own name), Dan O'Rourke (who was also A. DeHerries Smith), Reg Dinsmore, Evan M. Post, and house-name John Starr (quite possibly A. DeHerries Smith, too). I love Northerns and ought to read more of them.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: .44 Western Magazine, February 1941

This fine cover by Albin Henning is another prime example of how you couldn't sit down to enjoy a game of poker in the Old West without a gunfight breaking out. The hombre swinging in on a rope with his gun blazing is a nice twist, though. Some good authors are on hand in this issue of .44 WESTERN MAGAZINE: Stone Cody (Thomas E. Mount), John G. Pearsol, Eli Colter, J.E. Grinstead, Ralph Berard (Victor H. White), and the lesser known Archie Giddings and Jay A. Constant, whose story in this issue is his only credit in the Fictionmags Index.

Review: Montana Bad Man - Roe Richmond

A friend of mine recommended this book to me recently, citing an unusual degree of sexual obsession and angst for a paperback Western published in 1957. Well, I found that intriguing enough to scout out a copy, and that’s it in the scan. I’ve read it now, and my friend was right. MONTANA BAD MAN isn’t as graphic as the Adult Westerns that began appearing a decade or so later, but it’s certainly got a lot more sex in it than you’d expect from a book of its vintage.

The protagonist of this novel (it’s hard to call him the hero) is Faris Dodrill, one of many characters who have somewhat odd names. I don’t know if author Roe Richmond was trying to be more realistic in naming his characters, but if he was, he went a little overboard. That said, I got used to it and it didn’t really bother me. As the book opens, Dodrill is working as the driver of a freight wagon. He and his brother were raised on a ranch in Montana, but after their father was killed by outlaws, they set off on an unsuccessful vengeance quest after the owlhoots. Eventually, they wind up marrying half-sisters whose father owns the freight company. Faris goes to work for his father-in-law while his brother Tucker returns to the family ran to try to keep it going. Faris hates the job, he and his wife have come to despise each other, and she regularly cheats on him with the local deputy sheriff.

Then, in the first of many tragic twists, Faris finds himself on the run from a murder charge with a big bounty on his head. He’s not really guilty, but circumstances keep pushing him farther and farther over the line into becoming an actual rustler and outlaw.

Even though it’s a relatively short book, maybe 60,000 words, MONTANA BAD MAN takes on an epic scale as it covers a year in the life of Faris Dodrill. Faris covers a lot of ground during that time, too, around Montana and Wyoming, visiting Devil’s Tower, the Hole in the Wall, and Cheyenne. He makes friends and enemies, buries murdered friends and loved ones, engages in numerous shootouts, cavorts with several women, and even winds up back on the other side of the law for a time, working for the cattleman’s association as a range detective. It’s all building up a final showdown with the mortal enemies who have harmed him the worst.

Although it’s not quite as much of a kitchen sink book, MONTANA BAD MAN reminds me a little of my favorite Louis L’Amour novel, TO TAKE A LAND, which has that same epic feel and numerous plotlines. Roe Richmond’s work is hit or miss with me, but most of his stand-alone novels and stories are excellent. This novel certainly falls into this category. Only an ending I found somewhat dissatisfying keeps it from being one of the top two or three books I’ve read this year. Richmond’s hardboiled prose is relentless, and his characters, although mostly unlikable, are compelling. Like the T.V. Olsen novel I read a few weeks ago, MONTANA BAD MAN is a thoroughly bleak and grim yarn, but that’s all right some of the time. If you’re a reader of Western noir, this is one of the best I’ve come across, and I give it a high recommendation. It's never been reprinted as far as I know, and I appear to have gotten the last reasonably priced copy on-line, but it's worth keeping your eyes open for one.

Review: American Treasure Hunters: The Hunt for Confederate Gold

I’ve written here before about how much I enjoyed the boy’s adventure series I read as a kid, especially Rick Brant, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift Jr., and the Three Investigators. As far as I know, that sort of series hasn’t existed for a long time. Until now.

THE HUNT FOR CONFEDERATE GOLD is the first book in a new series called AMERICAN TREASURE HUNTERS, written by Andrew M. Dare and published by Ark Press. The publisher’s website does a better job of summarizing it than I can, so I’m going to quote it:

“Ben Prescott, Porter Rockwell, and Latch McRae couldn’t be more different. Ben is a home-schooled brainiac. Porter is the starting quarterback for the Ridgeport Raiders, and Latch is a grease-smudged prodigy who never saw an engine he couldn’t take apart and set to purring. Yet the three have been friends forever, drawn together by a shared passion: treasure hunting for the forgotten loot of American history. 

During a raucous Fourth of July fireworks battle, the trio stumbles onto a lost Confederate blockade-runner. Locked inside: a rusted safe, a sealed pouch, and the first breadcrumb to a vanished fortune in Confederate government gold, missing since the final days of the War Between the States. 

They’re not alone. A bitter ex-employee of Ben’s father and a well-funded outsider are willing to lie, steal, and threaten to take the treasury for themselves, and wipe out the story of its origin. 

Now the hunters must face danger and work their way through knotty clues and ciphers as they seek a long-lost map drawn in invisible ink on the back of a letter from General Robert E. Lee himself! It’s a map that may point to one of America’s richest lost treasures.”

My reaction to reading this book is pretty simple. If I’d read it when I was 13 years old, I would have thought it’s one of the greatest books ever written. From the perspective of being 60 years on down the road from that point, I still thoroughly enjoyed it and think it’s an excellent yarn. Ben, Porter, and Latch are fine protagonists, and the story moves along at a fast pace through a well-constructed historical mystery.

Of the vintage series I mentioned above, the one I’m most reminded of by THE HUNT FOR CONFEDERATE GOLD is the great Rick Brant series. Like Rick and Scotty in those books, the heroes of this series are old enough and athletic enough to take care of themselves in the action scenes, and there are a few hints of espionage and intrigue, the way Rick and Scotty used to find themselves helping out JANIG, the Joint Army Navy Intelligence Group (that’s right, I remember what the initials stand for after 60 years). The emphasis in this series is more on history than on science, but you get the same mixture of educational stuff with action, mystery, a little romance (that angle is handled quite well), and a little humor.

I enjoyed this book a lot and look forward to the others in the series. It’s available on Amazon in e-book and hardcover editions, or you can get it directly from the publisher’s website here. If you’re looking for a book a teenage boy would find entertaining, or you’re an old geezer revisiting your own reading as a kid, I highly recommend it. 

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The Duchess (2008)

When you’re watching a movie called THE DUCHESS starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes (yep, that guy again), you have a pretty good idea what to expect: big hair and low-cut, fancy dresses on the ladies, and powdered wigs, tricorn hats, and puffy shirts for the fellas. That’s what you get in this 2008 historical drama, along with political shenanigans and lurid love affairs. Unfortunately, for a high-class soap opera, THE DUCHESS is pretty slow and stodgy and never works up any real momentum. It’s very well-made and well-acted, and we watched it all the way to the end, but I can’t really recommend it unless you’re a big fan of British period dramas. A few swordfights might have helped it a lot.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Wings, Winter 1948/49

In the late Forties, WINGS got away from the usual aerial dogfights that most aviation/air war pulps used and started putting good-looking women on their covers, probably in a shameless attempt to boost sales. I have a hunch it would have worked on me, because I like this cover quite a bit. I have no idea who painted it. The authors inside are pretty darned good, too, starting with iconic aviation pulpster Arch Whitehouse, who in this issue brings back his characters the Casket Crew, the stars of a series going back to 1931. A volume of early Casket Crew stories has been published by Age of Aces Books, and of course I have a copy, but equally inevitably, I haven't read it yet. Also on hand in this issue are Walt Sheldon, a prolific pulp writer and a well-respected paperbacker, J.L. Bouma, best remembered for his Westerns, Alfred Coppel Jr., known for his science fiction and mainstream novels, and an assortment of names unfamiliar to me: Cornelius Morgan, Scott Sumner, Frank Harvey, and Joe James. Whitehouse, Sheldon, Coppell, and Bouma would make this issue worthwhile for me.

UPDATE: Eagle-eyed commenter b.t. not only identified this cover as probably being by Norman Saunders, he even provided the information that Saunders based it on an earlier cover from WINGS COMICS #93 by Bob Lubbers, which you can see below. Many thanks!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, Second August Number, 1957

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, and it’s in halfway decent shape for a change. The cover art is by Sam Cherry. Most of his covers aren’t signed, but you can see his signature in the lower right corner of this one, although it’s backwards, meaning the art was flipped.

Edwin Booth is a familiar name to me because he wrote at least a dozen Western novels, many of them published in the Ace Doubles line. I don’t recall ever reading anything by him until now. He’s the author of this issue’s lead novella, “Once a Killer”, which finds the protagonist, Fred Irwin, returning to the hometown he left ten years earlier after killing a man in a gunfight. Everybody figured that meant he had turned into an outlaw, but in reality, he’s become a hard-working cowboy and finally saved up enough money to buy a ranch of his own. Unfortunately, he finds himself in the middle of trouble orchestrated by a crooked saloon owner who wants to take over the town and all the surrounding ranches. Naturally, Irwin comes to the aid of an old rancher and the man’s beautiful daughter, and more trouble ensues. This is a very standard plot, but Booth provides some nice action scenes and a few well-developed characters. Overall, though, his style is definitely on the bland side, and that keeps this story from having the impact it might have had otherwise. It’s not bad, and I would read Booth’s work again, but I’m not going to be on the lookout for it.

Frank C. Robertson was a long-time, very prolific Western pulpster and novelist. His short story in this issue, “Practical Woman”, is a contemporary Western set in the Fifties, a domestic drama about the marriage of a spinster schoolteacher and a hard-headed rancher. It’s well-written, as all of Robertson’s work that I’ve read is, but it’s very low-key and unexciting and really peters out in the end. Robertson was a good author, but this isn’t a very good story.

Thankfully, old reliable Walker A. Tompkins comes along next with the novelette “The Deputy’s Daughter”. In this one, a young cowboy who buys a ranch finds himself framed for murder by the local cattle baron who wants to take over his spread. His only hope is the deputy sheriff’s beautiful blond daughter, who takes a likin’ to him and believes he’s innocent. This is a fast-moving, very entertaining yarn that suffers a little from the fact that it’s not a novella or even an actual novel. I felt like it could have used some room to develop the plot and characters more, and because of that, the ending feels a little rushed. I still liked it quite a bit, though.

“Heritage of Wrath” by M.E. Bradshaw (Marjory Bradshaw) is a Mountie story about a young RCMP officer who has to arrest the father of the girl he loves for murder, which makes her break off their engagement because she refuses to believe he’s guilty. Our Mountie hero has to dig deeper into the case to find out what really happened. This is an okay tale with a somewhat disappointing ending. Bradshaw published two dozen stories during the Fifties, all of them in RANCH ROMANCES.

Stephen Payne was very prolific, turning out several hundred stories for various Western pulps and digests between 1925 and 1970, along with a handful of novels. “Killer’s Conscience” in this issue is narrated by a 14-year-old ranch kid whose father was convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and sent to prison. The narrator’s encounter with an outlaw may hold the key to clearing his father’s name. This is a solid, well-written story that I enjoyed.

There’s also an installment of a serialized novel, Philip Ketchum’s THE STALKERS, that I didn’t read. I may have the book version of that one. I’ll have to check my shelves.

I should mention, as well, that there are several excellent interior illustrations by Everett Raymond Kinstler. I don’t talk about interior illustrations much, and I probably should. Kinstler was one of the very best at those.

Overall, considering how highly I rate many of the 1950s issues of RANCH ROMANCES, this one is probably a little below average. All of the stories kept me reading, but none of them really stood out as being top-notch, either. The ones by Tompkins and Payne are easily the best of the bunch, and the one by Booth is worth reading. Maybe don’t rush to your shelves to see if you have a copy, though.

Review: Run to the Mountain - T.V. Olsen

A while back I read T.V. Olsen’s hardboiled Western novel DAY OF THE BUZZARD and enjoyed it quite a bit, so I decided to give RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN a try. To be honest, both novels are available together in a double volume that you can find on Kindle Unlimited, which is the version I read instead of the original paperback from Gold Medal shown above.

With winter closing in, drifting cowboy Bowie Candler seems to be out of luck. He’s on foot after a mountain lion kills his horse, and bad weather is threatening. But wouldn’t you know it, things just get worse for him. He finds some horses and takes one of them, but that just gets him in trouble with the vicious son of a local rancher. Bowie winds up working on the ranch, which is a hotbed of lust, ambition, and tragedy. RUN TO THE MOUNTAIN is part noir, part soap opera, and part hardboiled Western (the ranch is losing stock to rustlers, which is the most traditional Western part of the plot).

Olsen writes really well, spinning his yarn in tough, terse prose that does a particularly good job with the harsh Colorado landscape. (I think it’s Colorado; Olsen never gets specific about that, but people go to Denver.) The supporting cast is excellent, with a number of truly despicable villains and a great sidekick for Bowie.

But man, this is a dark book! Several sympathetic characters die, Bowie isn’t a very effective protagonist most of the time, and although there are a few slivers of hope here and there, the ranch is a pretty grim place. I haven’t read a lot of Olsen’s work yet, but he reminds me of Lewis B. Patten and H.A. DeRosso. I think he writes well enough that I want to read more of his books, but I may try one of his historical adventure novels next, instead of another Western.

Movies I've Missed Until Now: The English Patient (1996)

Although I tend to avoid long movies these days, occasionally I give one a try. And the same thing could be said of movies that win the Best Picture Oscar, most of which in the past couple of decades seem calculated not to be the kind of film I enjoy. But a whim led me to pick up a DVD of THE ENGLISH PATIENT at the library. I knew it was partially a war movie, so I thought why not?

I’m sure most if not all of you know the plot. In the late days of World War II, spring of 1945, four people find themselves sharing an abandoned Italian villa: a French-Canadian nurse, her dying patient, a badly burned amnesiac who was pulled out of the wreckage of a burning biplane, a former Canadian soldier who was once a thief in Montreal, and an Indian bomb disposal officer. Over the course of the nearly three-hour running time, we find out more about the histories all of them, although only the mysterious English Patient gets lengthy flashbacks to fill in all the details of how he came to be flying an ancient biplane over the North African desert, only to be shot down by German anti-aircraft fire.

If you’ve seen the movie, you already know what’s going on. If you haven’t, you should watch it to find out, because it really is a fine film, a throwback of sorts to the kind of epic love and war movies popular in the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties. I’ll just comment on a few things.

The script and direction by Anthony Minghella are great. This is a long movie, but it moved right along and I was never bored, always intrigued. There’s one scene that’s really suspenseful, too.

The movie looks beautiful. Production values are superb, and so is the musical score. Again, very old-fashioned, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

The acting is top-notch all around. I never paid much attention to Kristin Scott Thomas before, but good grief, she’s gorgeous in this movie. I always like Colin Firth, too, although he doesn’t have a whole lot to do in this one. Ralph Fiennes plays the title character, and he’s excellent as always.

I could quibble a little about some of the historical aspects. I think the timeline of the war happening in the background isn’t quite right in a couple of cases. But that would be quibbling.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed THE ENGLISH PATIENT. Watching it and EL CID recently have put me in the mood to watch, or in some cases rewatch, more epic historical movies. I’ll be interested to see what I come up with.

Review: The Very Wicked - Clifton Adams

Clifton Adams is one of my favorite Western authors, and like a lot of Western writers in the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties, he also wrote hardboiled crime yarns, although not as many as some. His novel THE VERY WICKED was published by Berkley in 1960 under the name Nick Hudson, the only time he used that pseudonym as far as I know. The cover on this edition is by Charles Copeland.

In this novel, a serial killer is targeting prostitutes, and circumstances force him to go after some of their pimps, as well. There’s no mystery to it. We know the killer’s identity and his motivation fairly early on. Instead, this novel is pure suspense and characterization as we watch the killer continue his crimes while the police try to close in on him.

Adams was a great yarn-spinner who also had the knack of peopling his stories with flawed but compelling characters. All of that is on display in THE VERY WICKED. It’s one of those books that keeps you turning the pages. The fine folks at Stark House have just reprinted it in a double volume with one of Adams’ other crime novels, THE LONG VENDETTA, and this volume also includes an excellent introduction by Eric Compton about Adams and his career and a cover by Rudy Nappi. Available from Amazon in e-book and paperback editions, and highly recommended.