Paperback Warrior Primer - Steve Fisher

Steve Gould Fisher (1912-1980) was a prolific author of westerns, crime-fiction, and pulp stories in the early to mid 20th century. We've reviewed a number of Fisher's literary work including both shorts and full-length original novels. Today's primer looks at Fisher's military career and his contributions to all of the genres we adore here at Paperback Warrior.

Fisher was born on August 29th, 1912 in Marine City, Michigan. At some point his family relocated to Los Angeles so his mother could pursue an acting career. Fisher was enrolled into Oneonta Military Academy. It was there that he apparently sold a story to a small magazine as a teenager. But, he had enough of school and his personal life and ran away at age 16. He would later join the U.S. Navy and was stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii. 

Fisher's writing career took off with two articles that he wrote for the Navy's magazines – Our Navy and U.S. Navy. When he was discharged in 1932, Fisher returned to Los Angeles to continue writing for U.S. Navy. His work was so closely aligned with the Navy that they officially advertised Fisher as “The Navy's Foremost Writer”. 

Outside of the Navy publication, Fisher also started writing original short erotic fiction stories, which was published in 1933 and 1934 in magazine format. Sometime in the late 20s or early 30s, Fisher became married. In 1933, he moved to Greenwich Village in New York and lived close to the offices of Street and Smith, the dominant pulp publisher at that time. Friends and contemporaries stated that Fisher had a rough time as a New Yorker and was evicted several times. It became known that he even pawned his typewriter and used rejected manuscripts at lunch wagons promising that someday he would make it.

Author Frank Gruber moved to New York around the same time so the two of them became lifelong close friends. The friendship pushed Fisher in the right direction. Later, the two became friends with Cornell Woolrich. In 1934, Fisher's first non-erotic or romance story was published. It was a nautical story called “Authorized Mutiny” and it was published in the February 1934 issue of Top Notch. Some resources show his first non-erotic story was “Hell’s Scoop” and it was included in the March 1934 issue of Sure-Fire Detective Magazine. In 1935, lowly publisher Phoenix Press published his romance novel Spend the Night. They also bought and published two more of his novels - Satan's Angel and Forever Glory. 

By 1936 Fisher had become divorced. He then married a Popular Publications Inc. editor named Edythe Syme. By 1937, Fisher was really hitting his stride and providing stories regularly for Black Mask. In 1938, Fisher also refined his romance stories and sold them to the slick magazines like Empire, Cosmopolitan, and Liberty. 

Fisher's pulp career is often highlighted by the characters he created and wrote about. I've highlighted some of the prominent characters:

Captain Baby Face – This character's name is Jed Garrett but he's known as Captain Babyface and he works for the American Special Agent's Corps. His mission in the series is to kill Mr. Death, an evil genius working for Germany. There were ten total stories and they ran January through November of 1936 in the Dare-Devil Aces pulp magazine. The publisher Age of Aces has all ten stories combined into one awesome, 230-page volume and you can obtain it through Amazon HERE. 

Sheridan Doome - Doome is a Lieutenant Commander and chief detective for U.S. Naval Intelligence. His job is to investigate crimes committed on Naval bases and ships. Doome flies a special black airplane and his face is monstrously disfigured from a WW1 explosion. These stories appeared in the back pages of The Shadow Magazine beginning on May 1st of 1935. There were six Sheridan Doome stories in The Shadow Magazine in 1935. These six were the only Sheridan Doome stories published under Steve Fisher's real name. Beginning in 1937, they were all written under the pseudonym Stephen Gould. In the pulp magazine The Shadow, there were 54 total Sheridan Doome stories between 1935 and 1943. Fisher also placed Sheridan Doome in two full length novels - 1936's Murder of the Admiral and 1937's Murder of the Pigboat Skipper.

Big Red Brennan – This character is a U.S. Naval Intelligence agent fighting enemy spies in the U.S. and in Shanghai. Accoring to Spy Guys and Gals, who gather information from The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes by Jeff Nevins, Big Red Brennan's adversary is a former American Naval Lieutenant who sold out to a spy ring of Chinese and Mongolians. There are 24 Big Red Brennan stories and they ran from October 1936 through December 1937 in a pulp magazine called The Feds. The rest of the series was in the magazine Crime Busters and that ran from February 1938 through May 1939.

Danny Garrett – Garrett is a 13-year old shoe shine boy in New York City that solves crimes and catches criminals. His nickmane is Shoeshine Kid Detective. There were 65 of these stories from 1936 through 1946. Nearly all of these are in The Shadow. Two were in Crack Detective Stories and one in Mammoth Detective. There were even more Danny Garrett stories during that time written by both William G. Bogart and Fisher under the house pseudonym Grant Lane. The character was so popular that it spawned 18 appearances in comic book form beginning with Doc Savage Comics #1 in 1940. 

Tony Key – This character appeared in 12 stories in Detective Fiction Weekly and Black Mask from 1937 to 1941, beginning with “Murder Game–With Mirrors” in Detective Fiction Weekly, May 15, 1937. Key works in Hollywood and poses as a film and television agent. But, his real job is a detective for the film studios. He solves crimes involving producers, actors, and writers. He's described as always wearing flannels, white shoes, a white sweater, and a black coat. He has “patent leather hair.” His secretary and lover is the smart, pretty platinum blonde Betty Gale, and his ally is Mickey Ryan on the Homicide Squad. You can purchase the Tony Key stories in a collection from Black Mask HERE.

Mark Turner – Turner works as captain of the detectives in Honolulu, HI. He’s described as having red hair and a red Vandyke styled beard. Because of his brown eyes offset by red hair, the natives call him Red Eyes. Turner appeared in five stories. They were published in The Mysterious Wu Fang, Mystery Adventure Magazine, and Ten Detective Aces from 1935 to 1937. 

Johnny Connel – Perhaps the shortest lived character, Connel only appears in two stories. The first was “Murder Melody” and it was in Detective Tales June 1941. That same character is in “Blues for a Dead Lady”, which was in Detective Tales March 1951. I couldn't locate any information about this character. 

Fisher wrote about 500 stories for the magazines and pulps but he also wrote a number of full-length novels. His most popular book is probably the 1941 novel I Wake Up Screaming. It's about a promoter who is a suspect in the murder of a starlet. The book was compared to Cornell Woolrich, which makes sense considering Fisher and Woolrich were friends. He even has a character in the book named Cornell as a tribute to his friend. The book became a hit film the same year and kick-started the crime-noir film era. It was even filmed again in 1953 under the same title. With I Woke Up Screaming, Fisher really made a statement that he had moved on from the pulps.    

Fisher authored 16 total full-length novels including No House Limit in 1958, which was later reprinted by Hard Case Crime. 

Fisher moved to Hollywood, CA and began a long-running, highly successful career writing and producing films and television shows. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1944 for his screenplay Destination Tokyo, which was adapted from his novel. He wrote and produced seemingly hundreds of shows and films up until his death on March 27th, 1980 in Canoga Park, CA.

Doc Savage #93 - Tunnel Terror

I'm no authority on Doc Savage. I've read a handful of pulp stories featuring the Man of Bronze and his bickering all-star team of supporting characters. I've enjoyed the stories for the most part, but always found the plot-development to build to a disappointing reveal as to who, or what, was creating the hideous, menacing, and all-consuming evil that plagued society for roughly 130-paperback pages. In some books the reveal is senseless, like in Quest of Qui (July 1935) when the mysterious glowing liquid found in the New York harbor is left unanswered. Or, why Vikings appeared ageless in the story. But, with a new mindset and determination, I journeyed into the dark to experience the August 1940 story Tunnel Terror, which was authored by William G. Bogart and reprinted as a Bantam paperback (#93) in February 1979.

Engaging the part of my brain that loves Scooby-Doo and Hardy Boys, I read and enjoyed Tunnel Terror. The book begins with a drifting laborer named Hardrock Hennesey wishing he was in the safety of New York City instead of an undisclosed Western-American mining town. While walking along a rural highway, Hennesey experiences a strange fog that seems to instantly dry out people into a brittle, crispy husk. Someone call Doc Savage!

For sake of time, I'll fast-forward through the complex mini-mystery of how Savage is brought from New York to the mining town. Instead, we get Savage, Renny, Ham, and Monk arriving by plane with their two pointless pets, a pig and a runt-sized ape. Together, they begin interviewing Hennesey and the mining supervisors. The goal is to figure out what the fog is and how it scientifically works. But, the fog can't be duplicated or analyzed until someone can actually find it. The secret is in the mines, specifically an unexplored section that hints at a lost race of giant people that commanded torture and sacrifices. Are the giant people still alive? Are they haunting the mines? Only Savage can find the answer.

Tunnel Terror has a great pace and for the most part is very entertaining. The addition of an engineer's brother, a woman named Chick Lancaster, added a little something extra to the narrative. Her team-up with Savage takes place outside of the mining town and involves an investigation into a missing governor. How his capture ties into the weird fog and dried-up people is the detective journey readers embark on. Overall, nothing to dislike here. Tunnel Terror may be one of my favorites of my small Doc Savage sample size. Recommended.

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Spawn of Blackness

Carl Jacobi (1908-1997) authored short stories for the pulps like Doc Savage, Weird Tales, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Top-Notch. Many of his tales were compiled into short story collections published by Arkham House including Revelations in Black (1947), Portraits in Moonlight (1964), and Disclosures in Scarlet (1972). My first experience with the author was his short story “Spawn of Blackness”, which was originally published in the October, 1939 issue of Strange Stories. 

The story begins with a ferocious pace as Dr. James Haxton, the story's protagonist, is introduced as racing through the city streets at midnight to answer a disturbing call from his old friend Stephen Fay. Haxton had received a call from his friend that something terrible had happened to him and that he needed urgent medical help. 

Arriving at Fay's home, Haxton and readers are brought up to speed on the astonishing events that have led to Fay lying in a bloody heap. From his bed, Fay explains that he had taken a trip to a South African village. While there he purchased a small wooden statue of a large rat. Upon returning to the US, he showed the statue to an anthropology expert that recognized it as a religious fixture used by a tribe in New Guinea. Learning of its history, Fay dropped an old piece of black cloth over it. But, sometime in the night, the rat came alive and burrowed through the wall. Fay describes it as “...a gray shape and a head with red eyes and white gleaming teeth.” The rat creature threw itself at Fay ripping and tearing.

“Spawn of Blackness” wasn't particularly scary, but it was a real pleasure to read. Jacobi's approach is more of the arm-chair detective style as the hero Haxton tries to solve the mystery behind the savage rat attacks. Is the rat real or some figment of the overworked scientist? The author also included some great usage of colors, particularly the scientific approach of black absorbing all of the primary colors. There's some use of the concept that is crucial to the story's ending. Overall, a very entertaining story. 

The Sins of War

 John Rester Zodrow was a screenwriter of made-for-TV movies in the 1970s and 1980s who also authored four novels, including a WW2 thriller called The Sins of War, originally published in 1986 and currently available as a trade paperback reprint.

In the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, the U.S. was focused upon filling the president’s request for 70,000 warships and 100,000 tanks. U.S. manufacturers worked around the clock to make this happen — particularly in New York City. The Sins of War is based on a true story about 1942 efforts to prevent the German sinking of newly-minted U.S. warships leaving New York harbor.

The allied victory in World War 2 is now the stuff of legends, but the early days of the war were anything but smooth. The U.S. and our friends suffered Naval defeats in Guam, the Philippines, Burma, and throughout the seas. Meanwhile, ships leaving the ports along the U.S. east coast were regularly sunk by German submarines waiting offshore, killing American troops and destroying supplies en route to our soldiers overseas. It was a grim dilemma, and the U.S. Navy was stymied in their efforts to stop it.

Meanwhile, in the book, a German-American secretive organization called The Bund are quietly loyal to Hitler and sabotaging the ships under construction through acts of terrorism and arson. Someone needs to do something, or America will be neutered in our efforts to save the world.

In the novel, President Roosevelt comes up with a plan: Have the New York Mafia patrol the waterfront ports where the warships are constructed looking for any signs of German saboteurs. Rather than having the U.S. Navy negotiate this deal with the mafia, the President tasks Roman Catholic Archbishop Francis Spellman to handle the deal since the mobsters are likely all Catholic. Roosevelt dubs the plan “Operation Underworld.”

Our hero is a welder in New York named Nick Remington working to secure the metal paneling on ships bound for the war in the seas surrounding Africa. Before becoming a welder, Nick was a Catholic priest driven from the clergy in the wake of a financial scandal. Nevertheless, the Archbishop chooses Nick to be the go-between with the mob and the Navy to coordinate the protection of the ports.

Along the way, there are conflicts and cooperation with Lucky Luciano’s New York mafia, a German social club in New York serving as a counterintelligence squad for Hitler, and a sexy military lady who partners with our defrocked priest to get the job done. Trust me, it’s a wild ride.

The author wrote the novel in the style of a propulsive men’s adventure paperback with short chapters — 70 of them over 300 pages — and pulpy dialogue with limited character development. The Germans are cartoonishly-evil and the Mafia characters are all walking stereotypes. To his credit, the author did not make this a faith-based novel as the characters find themselves in graphic sexual and extremely-violent situations. The action scenes are remarkably vivid and exciting.

This paperback is so much fun to read. It’s an audacious bit of historical fiction begging for a Hollywood adaptation. The reader can’t help but want to know more about the reality surrounding the implementation of this audacious plan. It seems that the facts largely came from a 1977 non-fiction book called The Luciano Project: The Secret Wartime Collaboration of the Mafia and the U.S. Navy by Rodney Campbell.

The climactic ending was a fun series of harrowing adventure set pieces similar to something you’d read in a Doc Savage pulp story. Overall, The Sins of War was, without question, one of the finest adventure novels I’ve read this year. Highest recommendation.

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Black Eye

According to publisher Bold Venture Press, Tony Masero was born in London, attended art school, and trained as a graphic designer. He eventually began illustrating book covers for the major publishing houses and agencies. Masero has created artwork for Dr. Who, Edge the Loner, Indiana Jones, and countless fanzines and paperbacks. Along with illustrating, Masero also writes men's action-adventure, crime-fiction, and western novels. My first experience with his literary work is Black Eye, published by Bold Venture Press in 2020.

In first-person perspective, Phil Black explains to the reader that he does favors for people. He served in WW2's Pacific Theater, and now hangs around San Francisco reading the paper, smoking, and gazing out the window. He has an old Marine buddy that camps out at the local bar, a guy nicknamed Gunny, that can quickly get the word from the street, the city's gossip, and the ins and outs of localized crime. So, it's no surprise when a beautiful woman named Linda crosses Black's path. 

Linda's husband served with Black in the war. Now, he's gone missing, she's filed a missing persons report with the police, and she wants Black to look into it. Semper-Fi and all of that. Black agrees to the opportunity and begins his search by scouring the man's boxing history, specifically finding his corner-man. With Gunny's help, Black weaves in and out of clues and amateur gumshoe tropes to learn that the man's disappearance connects to a heist made during the war.

On Iwo Jima, some of Black's unit were involved in heisting some treasures through an undercover operation. Later, the Chinese became involved, mostly with a Syndicate attempting to recover a sacred tablet. The book's first half is a violent, pulpy romp as Black attempts to locate the tablet and its owner while combating the nefarious individuals out to stop him. Surprisingly, the book's second half is sort of a different story that places the hero and Gunny in Argentina working with the FBI. This second half is more of a prison breakout as an espionage-styled adventure. 

Masero pays homage to plenty of mid-20th century crime-noir and men's action-adventure, but mostly his entertaining story is like something exploding right out of the pages of Black Mask. By placing the story in the late 1940s/early 1950s, his emphasis on style and pulpy characteristics really stands out. The violence wasn't over-the-top, but still offered enough brutality to keep the pages flying by. 

In some ways Masero's writing style, complete with the genre tropes we all love, reminds me of author Will Murray (Doc Savage). While not necessarily original, it still compliments the genre and offers fans exactly what they want – story and style. Black Eye has it all in spades and I highly recommend it. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Rex Brandon #01 - Death Warriors

In 1951 and 1952, British author Denis Hughes (1917-2008) wrote 12 novels under the pseudonym of Marco Garon starring international adventurer Rex Brandon. These were among the 50 titles Hughes wrote using a variety of pen names over the five year period between 1949 and 1954. Bold Venture Press is reprinting the series, starting with the first installment, Death Warriors, from 1951.

Rex Brandon is a geologist and big game hunter by trade, but a swashbuckling adventurer at heart. Death Warriors finds Rex summoned to the heart of savage Africa by a French colonialist in the fictional African nation of Mandibarza. Brandon’s mission is to locate an explorer who went missing in the jungle while he was searching for irikum, a rare mineral valued for its potential to produce atomic energy.

Using the guise of a big game hunt with a goal of shooting gorillas (which, I guess, was a thing in 1951?), Rex and his small expeditionary team set off into the jungle to locate the missing explorer and the irikum. The reader also learns that another search party with the identical mission previously became lost and never returned from the wilds. The previous mission included a beautiful woman named Coralie, and you’d correctly surmise that she will be the damsel in distress requiring saving at some point.

In the jungle, it quickly becomes clear that there are others in the woods - beyond the man-eating lions - who wish to thwart the expedition. Members of the party start disappearing, and supplies are scarce. There’s not a ton of action in the novel’s first half, but the Blair Witch Project vibe of the thick and menacing woods is certainly unsettling. Things go from bad to worse for Rex and his companions when the war-painted, jungle savages (of the “ooga-booga” variety) make their inevitable appearance halfway through the adventure.

If the novel’s first half is mostly setup (although not uninteresting), the second half moves quickly from one pulpy action set-piece to another. Rex and his sidekicks are forced to tangle with every flavor of African jungle menace you can imagine, and it’s a cartoonish blast building up to a conclusion that leaves Rex alive to experience the next 11 adventures in the series. 

Fans of Tarzan and Doc Savage will feel right at home with Rex Brandon. Based on this short novel, it seems that pulp-fiction from Great Britain in 1951 has a lot in common with American pulp-fiction from the 1930s. While Americans were turning a page to the gritty realism of 1950s noir, British readers were still enjoying square-jawed heroes rescuing women from the jaws of killer crocodiles in the darkest realms of Africa. Whichever your preference, we should all be grateful that there are outfits like Bold Venture Press keeping these works of pulp literature alive in the 21st Century. 

Buy a copy of the book HERE

The Smuggled Atom Bomb

Philip Wylie (1902-1971) was a prolific author of the pulp era whose fiction inspired the creation of the characters Superman and Doc Savage. His 1948 thriller, The Smuggled Atom Bomb, has been reprinted many times over the past 70 years and remains available today.

Duff Bogan is a boarder in the home of the wheelchair-bound widow named Mrs. Yates. Duff is a Physics grad student at the University of Miami, and he loves doing housework and landscaping for Mrs. Yates for reduced rent. The household also features a beauty queen daughter named Eleanor (you see where this is going immediately) and a mysterious tenant named Harry who works for a trucking company.

One day while cleaning the house, Duff notices a new lock on the closet door in Harry’s room. Conveniently for the novel’s plot, Duff is also an amateur locksmith hobbyist. As such, he easily breaks into Harry’s closet where he finds, hidden inside a hatbox, what appears to be a metallic container filled with uranium and what appears to be the core of a small atomic bomb. Could the quiet tenant be a spy or a terrorist?

Duff shares his suspicions with the lovely Eleanor and makes an appointment with the local FBI field office. The special agent conducts a preliminary inquiry and comes to the conclusion that Duff was likely mistaken in his assessment. This basically leaves Duff and Eleanor to solve the mystery themselves - just like an Encyclopedia Brown/Nancy Drew crossover.

Despite the sweet innocence of the amateur sleuthing, Young Duff does a nice job following logical leads in a high-stakes situation. Thankfully, things become a bit more edgy as the story unfolds. The dirty bomb conspiracy was solid, but the interpersonal drama between Duff, Eleanor, and her myriad of suitors was a teen-drama snooze.

The Smuggled Atom Bomb is a basic and straightforward thriller for the easy-reading crowd. The story held my interest, but no one will mistake this for a genre classic. It’s interesting how enduring the paperback has been with multiple reprints over the decades when so many superior works have fallen out of print. At best, this Wylie paperback can be seen as an enjoyable, wispy diversion to be read between more substantial works. 

Buy a copy HERE.

Paperback Warrior Primer - Nick Carter: Killmaster

The character of Nick Carter (or Nicholas Carter) was created by Ormond G. Smith and John R. Coryell in 1886. Smith was heir to the New York City publisher Street & Smith, the early catalyst for dime novels and pulp fiction as far back as 1855. Smith wanted a private-eye or detective character similar to Old Sleuth or Old Cap Collier to star in various forms of media. The first Nick Carter literary appearance began in New York Weekly, September 18, 1886, in a story called "The Old Detective's Pupil" or "The Mysterious Crime of Madison Square." The serial ran 13 total installments with the setting mostly being Victorian-Edwardian New York.  

Carter is described as 5' 4" and having bronze-skin, gray eyes, dark hair and a square jaw. The character was trained by his father, Old Sim Carter, to fight criminals, essentially becoming the opponent of global evil. He's a genius that is inhumanly strong and a master of disguise. The character was so popular with readers that Street & Smith created the Nick Carter Weekly dime novel series. These stories would later be reprinted as stand-alone titles under New Magnet Library. 

With its premier issue on October 15, 1915, the Nick Carter Weekly publication transitioned into Street & Smith's new Detective Story Magazine (just 10-cents twice a month!). The magazine ran 1,057 total issues, most of which concentrated on short crime-fiction with appearances from pulp heroes like The Shadow. The magazine's first 20 years featured covers by illustrator John A. Coughlin. In 1935, the magazine began suffering financial stress and officially stopped publishing in 1949.

Between 1924 and 1927, Street & Smith attempted a revival of the Nick Carter character in the pages of Detective Story Magazine. These stories also featured many of the same villains that Carter had faced in the prior Nick Carter Weekly publication (Dazaar the Arch-Fiend, Dr. Quartz, etc.). It seemed as if Carter's appearance in literature was over in 1927, but due to the success of The Shadow and Doc Savage, Street & Smith revived the character again. Between 1933 to 1936, the Nick Carter Detective Magazine was published. These stories introduced Carter as a more traditional hard-boiled detective. 

Beyond the page, two Nick Carter shows were featured on radio. Nick Carter, Master Detective radio show aired on Mutual Broadcasting System from 1943 to 1955. Nick Carter's son was the star of Chick Carter, Boy Detective from 1943 to 1945, followed by a film in 1946 under the title Chick Carter, Detective.

In 1908, the French film company Eclair ran a six-episode series starring Pierre Bressol as Nick Carter. Two French films were released, Nick Carter va tout casser (1964) and Nick Carter et le trefle rouge (1965). In Germany, four silent Nick Carter films were released: The Hotel in Chicago (1920), The Passenger in the Straitjacket (1922), Women Who Commit Adultry (1922), and Only One Night (1922). In the US, MGM released a trilogy of Nick Carter films: Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939), Phantom Riders (1940), and Sky Murder (1940). A television show called The Adventure of Nick Carter filmed one pilot, later released as an ABC movie.

The pulp version of Nick Carter continued in comic book form, with appearances in The Shadow, Army & Navy, and Doc Savage comics from 1940 through 1949. There was also a 1972 Italian comic strip and a Nick Carter comic book series from 1975. It lasted 12 issues and stars a character named Nick Carter that is a British soldier in WW2. However, it is not related to the Nick Carter spy series.

Little did fans know that a British secret-agent named James Bond would play a part in reviving the literary character 37 years later.

In the 1960s, Lyle Kenyon Engel began his plunge into paperback publishing. He was heir to his father's magazine publishing company, but sold that to become a publicity agent (supposedly one of his clients was the Today Show) and also a producer of children's records. To make an impact in publishing, he revived the familiar character of Nick Carter to capitalize on the 1960s spy fiction market. 

Nick Carter: Killmaster debuted in 1964 as a marketing attempt to cash-in on Ian Fleming's James Bond. The character was reinvented as a secret agent instead of a detective or private-eye. These novels were to be international adventures with a more robust approach compared to the serials, pulps and dime detective magazines. Basically, everything prior to 1964 was erased and this series was a complete reboot.

The general theme is that Nick Carter is an American secret-agent or spy working for an organization called Axe. The organization's leader is David Hawk. Axe and Hawk work closely with the American government and Hawk answers to "The Chief", presumably the U.S. President. Carter is referred to as N3 and we know there are other agents like him, also known as an N/number combination. In the first book, Run Spy Run, readers learn that Carter served in WW2 and also worked for OSS, the pre-cursor to what is now known as the CIA (like Matt Helm). Read our review of the book HERE.

One of the predominant characteristics of this version of Nick Carter is the three weapons he uses in the field. In the debut novel, it is explained that Carter took a Luger handgun from a German SS officer he killed in Munich during WW2. Carter named the gun Wilhelmina and it's included in nearly every novel. Hugo is the name for his Italian stiletto. He also carries a marble sized gas pellet that goes by the name Pierre. Carter can twist each half of the marble in separate directions and it will release a deadly toxin within 30-seconds, giving Carter enough time to flee the area. 

The Nick Carter: Killmaster series became immensely successful, running from 1964-1990 and offering 261 total novels. Each book on average sold 115,000 copies. Ironically, the series just lists Nick Carter as the author. The real authors aren't credited on the book's copyright page, a painful trademark of the series that frustrates readers, fans and collectors to no end. Engel typically split 50-50 with the authors he hired. He demanded lightning fast work, sometimes novels written in less than three weeks to meet furious deadlines. These books were released monthly, first by Avon and then later by Charter.

Notable author statistics:

- Valerie Moolman authored or co-wrote 11 novels between 1964 and 1967.

- Michael Avalone authored or co-authored 3 novels in 1964

-Manning Lee Stokes, of Richard Blade fame, wrote 18 novels

-Popular crime-fiction author Lionel White authored one Nick Carter book, the 18th installment from 1966. This was his second foray into spy fiction. He also wrote a stand-alone novel called Spykill under the name L.B. Blanco.

- Jon Messmann wrote 15 installments. Messman was a heavy contributor to action-adventure paperbacks. He was behind the popular adult western series The Trailsman along with the short-lived series titles Handyman: Jefferson Boone and The Revenger.

- George Snyder did 8 installments. He also wrote novels for the Grant Fowler series.

- Ralph Hayes authored 8 volumes in the series. He is known for his John Yard: Hunter series and Check Force among others.

- Martin Cruz Smith wrote 3 installments. Smith is primarily known for his Arkady Renko series that is still current to this day. The 1983 film Gorky Park was an adaptation of that series debut.

- Surprisingly, Chet Cunningham only wrote 1 book, # 72 Night of the Avenger, that was co-authored with Dan Streib. 

- Dennis Lynds authored 9 and his wife at the time, Gayle Lynds, wrote another 4. I've read one of Dennis Lynds' novels and I really enjoyed it. It was #211 Mercenary Mountain and it is reviewed HERE. Many will know Dennis Lynds as American author Michael Collins. He wrote the popular Dan Fortune series before his death in 2005.

- Saul Wernick wrote 5. Many remember him as writing the first Mack Bolan novel after Don Pendleton sold the series to Gold Eagle. 

- David Hagbert authored 25 books. He is primarily known for his CIA series starring Kirk McGarvey. 

- Death Merchant creator Joseph Rosenberger wrote 1.

- Jack Canon is the heaviest contributor with over 30 installments. I lost count, but I think it was 35. Not to be confused with Nelson Demille pseudonym Jack Cannon. 

- Robert Randisi authored 6 in the series. He's a respected western writer who also wrote 3 Destroyer books as well.

- Joseph Gilmore wrote 8.

- There are numerous authors that authored three or less that I haven't mentioned, but you can find a detailed list on spysandgals.com or Wikipedia.

- There is yet another Nick Carter series that ran from 2011-2019 called Project. It's written by Alex Lukeman and again features a starring character named Nick Carter that is an anti-terrorist sort of hero. Again, not related to the Nick Carter spy series.

Lyle Kenyon Engel would go on to create Book Creations in the 1970s. Ultimately, it was a cash cow and a rather unique company. Engel would create a series, imagine the story, hire authors to write it and even create book cover art. Then he sold these to various publishers. He was the paperback king and died a multi-millionaire in 1986. 

You can listen to the Paperback Warrior Podcast episode dedicated to Nick Carter HERE and the episode spotlighting Lyle Kenyon Engel HERE.

Steve Holland: The World's Greatest Illustration Art Model

On the Paperback Warrior Podcast, and on this very blog, I've often reminisced about my early childhood and my father's love of 20th century paperbacks. I can still remember summer days walking up our creaky staircase, hoping to discover something new or exciting about my humble, and often very quiet, father. In an unfinished guest bedroom, there were leaning stacks of welding manuals and plastic bins of old bolts. There were also stacks of boxes spilling over with western paperbacks. Occasionally, I would read one just to break up the monotony of Stephen King and Dean Koontz, but sifting through the books was the real pleasure for me at that age. Thumbing through the stacks, I began to think the vivid gun-slinging character depicted on the covers was actually the same hero, but was just calling himself Buchanan, Nevada Jim or some other tough-as-nails sounding name to fit the book. It wasn't until many years later that I discovered it was the same hero, only his real name was Steve Holland.

In a new coffee-table book called Steve Holland: The World's Greatest Illustration Art Model, author Michael Stradford reveals that he had a similar experience in the 1960s when he discovered Doc Savage in a Cleveland book store. In this visual and informative book, Stradford delves into the life and career of Holland, the most iconic male model of 20th century literature. My softcover version weighs in at over 200 pages and features hundreds of paperback covers, exclusive photos, and larger than life paintings that honor the man that launched a thousand paperbacks. 

The book's introduction is written by Jason Savas, a friend of mine that inherited Holland's crown in the 1980s. Savas, a former model employed by the esteemed Wilhelmina Model Agency, has been featured on a 1,000 book covers himself. Savas details his experiences in the industry working with Holland, a man he deemed “the consummate pro.” Stradford includes a biography of Savas, featuring a handful of stirring, action-adventure book cover scans as well as the beautiful Steve Assel painting The Iron Marshall (Louis L'Amour) that Savas posed for. 

Stradford's layout is divided into sections dedicated to various eras of Holland's career. For example, numerous pages detailing his paperback career are divided into genres like action, adventure, romance, western, sci-fi, etc. There is a complete section focusing on just the men's adventure magazine paintings, the Doc Savage era, and various advertisements featuring Holland's face or likeness. There is a biography on Holland, and a detailed interview with Holland's daughter Nicole and third wife Jean. Also, author Will Murray's expanded interview with Holland from Starlog is expanded and exclusively included. Murray has been the primary contributor to the Doc Savage series for decades. 

I really enjoyed artists Bob Larkin (Conan, Iron Fist, Hulk) and Bob Caras (The Avenger) discussing their experiences painting Holland. There are so many amazing artists and photographers interviewed for the book, including Alex Ross, Frank Reilly, Joe DeVito, Robert Osonitsch, and Jack Faragasso. It was personally rewarding to learn how humble and kind Holland was as described by his peers, friends and family. I never needed validity, but the real life Holland seemed to parallel the admirable, heroic characters he became on canvas.

Steve Hollad: The World's Greatest Illustration Art Model is absolutely a mandatory reference for anyone fascinated by 20th century paperbacks, magazines and male-oriented advertisements. I was enthralled for days just researching the paperbacks and building my shopping list based on these incredibly vivid covers. More than 20 years after his death, Holland's face is still selling publications. That is a testament to his phenomenal physique, likable face and ability to provide the perfect likeness for all of these amazing visuals. Stradford has honored Holland in such a beautiful way and I can't thank him enough for his labors in creating it. 

Get the book HERE

Dirk Pitt #03 - Iceberg

Clive Cussler (1931-2020) was a massively-popular novelist who dominated the bestseller lists for the duration of his writing career. His most enduring series character was Dirk Pitt, a troubleshooter for the fictional National Underwater and Marine Agency. My first exposure to the author and the character was his third installment, 1976’s Iceberg.

The book opens with a U.S. Coast Guard mission mapping the locations of icebergs floating in the North Atlantic near Newfoundland. From the air, the Coastie crew spots one impossibly large iceberg - 200 feet high weighing upwards of one-million tons. Closer examination of the iceberg reveals the impossible - an entire ship embedded within the ice but still visible from the sky. The Coast Guard estimates that once the iceberg drifts into the gulf stream, it's sure to melt - likely submerging the ghost ship into the depths of the sea. The iceberg must have dislodged from some northern glacier, but there’s no way to know its origin.

Enter Dirk Pitt. He’s an U.S. Air Force Major on permanent loan to NUMA - the National Underwater and Marine Agency. NUMA dispatches Pitt to a Coast Guard cutter with a mission to get inside the ghost ship and better understand what’s happening. As a character, Pitt is a combination of James Bond and Doc Savage. He’s a funny and likable hero stacked with core competencies. He can fly a helicopter, dive to great depths and bag the babes as needed. His deductive capabilities rival those of the great Sherlock Holmes.

The providence of the ship-in-the-berg is a plot point that I won’t spoil for you here, but it only serves as starting point into a variety of mysteries Pitt is called upon to solve over the 400-pages. He’s a smart cookie and not afraid to kick ass when needed. His relationship with his Admiral boss and the boss’ lovesick personal secretary make for some fine human moments throughout the paperback.

I was expecting Iceberg to be filled with dense plotting and littered with incomprehensible nautical jargon that would cause my eyes to glaze over. I’m pleased to report that Cussler avoids this trap and makes the pages fly by with a basic good guys vs. bad guys plot and a propulsive story. His books are about twice as thick as other men’s adventure paperbacks from the same era, so I was expecting a complex story akin to the work of Tom Clancy. Instead, Iceberg was pulpy as all-heck. The action and villainous motivations were over-the-top like a good Destroyer novel, and the layered twist endings were pedestrian, outrageous and fun. No one should ever accuse Cussler of writing high-brow, smartypants fiction. I hereby stand corrected.

The appeal of Cussler’s novels is now clear. If Iceberg is any indication, the series is a lot more fun than you might expect. The books can apparently be read in any order, and there are plenty of lists online ranking them based on quality. I look forward to diving deeper into this author and his famous series. Recommended. Get it HERE

The Masked Detective #01 - Alias the Masked Detective

Before he ventured into three decades of paperbacks, Norman Daniels was one of pulp’s most published authors. Along with writing adventures starring The Purple Scar, The Eagle and Phantom Detective, he used the byline of C.K.M. Scanlon for a late pulp arrival The Masked Detective. The magazine's first issue, featuring “Alias the Masked Detective”, was published in 1940 and would run 12 total issues (a 13th story appeared in Thrilling Mystery). Daniels wrote the first few issues before handing the project off to Sam Merwin Jr., W.T. Ballard and other work-horse authors of that era. I purchased The Masked Detective Archives Volume 1 from Thrilling Publications, published in 2017 and featuring reprints of the first three Masked Detective stories.

Essentially, The Masked Detective is a standard vigilante named Rex Parker. Unlike other pulp heroes of the time, Parker isn't a wealthy entrepreneur or district attorney. Instead, Parker is a newspaper reporter who practices martial arts in his spare time. Using the French art of la savate, Parker routinely gives Hell to a plastic mannequin in his apartment. When his friend and newspaper colleague Winnie Bligh witnesses his fists of fury on the dummy, she suggests that he utilize his skills to fight the city's rising crime problem. Parker agrees and the two decide that an eye mask (black bandanna with eye holes) and some make-up could transform the easily identifiable Rex Parker into the unidentifiable night vigilante The Masked Detective!

Along with the origin tale, “Alias the Masked Detective” also features Parker's first crime-fighting adventure. A criminal named Carson is “accidentally” knocking off professors, art critics and antique collectors thinking that they are rival gangsters. But are these accidental murders really just cases of mistaken identity? After this sequence of murders continues, Parker, Bligh and a homicide detective named Gleason team up to root out the real motive. There's a dense backstory about an art exhibit and precious jewels, but I didn't really care. Instead, I wanted a fist and feet vigilante flurry as Parker progresses to the inevitable fight with Carson.

I found this debut issue to be a really swift read with a propulsive narrative that was quite compelling. Beyond the far-fetched hi-jinks, which one has to overlook when reading this stuff, the story was presented in a gritty, violent way. In the opening pages, a professor is shot six times in the stomach and then two more times point blank in the skull. This was 1940, nearly 27-years before Mack Bolan began violently “executing” Syndicate snakes. When guys like Doc Savage and The Avenger mostly tend to repress lethal blows, Parker proves to be the opposite. As also seen in The Black Bat, Daniels isn't afraid of a little bloodshed.

If you love this era of pulp storytelling, there's no reason why The Masked Detective isn't in your library already. This was well-executed and just a real pleasure to read. You can buy a copy of this awesome omnibus HERE.

The Black Bat #01 - Brand of the Black Bat

Thrilling Publications, also known as Standard Magazines, created a number of pulp characters  including Green Ghost, Crimson Mask and The Phantom Detective. Beginning in July 1939, the publisher introduced The Black Bat (not the 1933-1934 character) in their magazine Black Book Detective. This character was created and written by Norman Daniels (under the name of G. Wayman Jones), a prolific author who cut his teeth on early short stories featured in pulps including All Detective, Shadow Magazine and Detective-Dragnet. The Black Bat character appeared from 1939 through 1953, encompassing a total of 64 issues. After enjoying many of Daniels' crime-noir paperbacks, I was anxious to read his pulps. I'm beginning with the very first Black Bat story, "Brand of the Black Bat", published in July, 1939 and featured in Thrilling Publications' The Black Bat Archives Volume 1 from 2017.

In this origin tale, the author introduces readers to Tony Quinn, a highly successful District Attorney working in an unnamed metropolis. In the opening pages, Quinn's home is burglarized by a destitute man named Silk. Oddly, once Quinn discovers this intruder in his bedroom, Silk explains that he can hear someone else in the house. After Quinn receives Silk's apology, he places him in a closet and welcomes the next intruder, a hired killer who works for a notorious criminal named Snate. After the man attempts to kill Quinn, Silk reacts and assists Quinn in killing the assassin. Quinn then hires Silk to be his bodyguard.

Later, when Snate is on trial for murder and extortion, his goons kill a witness in the courtroom in a wild melee of violence. During the exchange, Quinn is splashed with a deadly acid leaving him blind and horribly disfigured (think of Batman's Two-Face character). Snate is found innocent, and all of the charges are dropped. This entire debacle leaves Quinn and Silk searching for justice. Thankfully, a mysterious woman arrives at Quinn's house and orders him to a small rural town for a highly secretive eye-surgery.

After completing the surgery, Quinn finds that his eyes have become nearly telescopic. He can see things in the most vivid detail including the ability to see in the dark. Using his known disability, Quinn takes on the secret disguise of a hero named Black Bat (complete with facial mask and cape) while still being the very blind public figure of Quinn. This dual identity keeps him from being identified as this heroic nighttime vigilante.

Norman Daniels has a lot of fun with this wacky pulp tale. Origin stories are always important and I think the author did a fantastic job making Quinn's journey from civilian to crime-crusader into a compelling story. The Black Bat's first case brings him full circle to Snate, an inevitable showdown between hero and villain. Unlike Doc Savage, Quinn doesn't avoid killing. His weapons are two guns that he uses with pinpoint accuracy. Shockingly, Daniels' includes a ton of violence to make The Black Bat a really gritty read. There's torture by blowtorch, stabbings, beatings and gunfire. I was surprised at the level of violence and death, but appreciated the gritty realism to combat the far-fetched fantasy. Eventually Quinn builds a team that is similar to those of The Avenger and Doc Savage. It isn't necessarily about the lone hero, but the collective teamwork used to investigate and eliminate the wrongdoers.

If you love this early pulp-fiction era, The Black Bat should be mandatory. It's a fun, over-the-top hero story filled with violence and intrigue. With the affordable price on these reprints, I definitely recommend Volume 1 which chronologically collects not only this story but also "Murder Calls the Black Bat" and "The Black Bat Strikes Again." There's also an introduction by acclaimed pulp collector Tom Johnson (RIP).

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Killer Tank (aka Strike Force)

Norman Daniels found enormous success authoring various pulp characters like The Masked Detective, The Black Bat, Phantom Detective and even Doc Savage. After the pulps gave way to paperback originals, Daniels transitioned into a prolific author of crime-noir, romance, television novelizations and military-fiction. In 1965, Daniels wrote the WWII novel Strike Force for low-end publisher Lancer. In 1969, the equally low-brow publisher Magnum reprinted the novel as Killer Tank with the sales tag of “In the blazing tradition of Guns of Navarone.” Loving most of Daniels' literary work, as well as military-fiction, was enough motivation to spend a few bucks on this old paperback.

The book is set in Germany during WWII. The U.S. military formulates an idea that they can create a huge, powerhouse diversion on the German border. Using a number of planes, tanks and troops, they will fake an impending invasion and engage the enemy just long enough for a team of 30 tanks to slip in over the border and become a mobile task force. This task force, led by Colonel Hagen and Sergeant Dixon, will orchestrate hit-and-run attacks on German forces, towns, bases and airstrips. By disguising the tanks as German, and using old, overgrown roads, the force plans on creating as much undetected destruction as possible. The problem with that strategy? Hagen and Dixon despise each other.

The adventures of a WWII tank battalion operating in Germany can be an entertaining read with enough attention to the action. What makes Killer Tank different is that Daniels creates this really interesting back story between Hagen and Dixon. Through the first 100-pages the readers can easily determine that the two have history with each other. But, when Hagen begins to romance a beautiful French woman, Dixon becomes Hell-bent on destroying any hopes for Hagen's happiness. What is the history between these two American commanders? How could anything warrant this much hatred and animosity? I won't ruin the story for you, but the tension and suspense eventually percolates to a hot, boiling inferno. Just when I thought I had it figured out, the last few pages came out of left field with a right hook. I was dumbfounded.

With the focus on character development and a thick tension between Dixon and Hagen, Killer Tank serves as a hybrid of WWII and crime-noir storytelling. While I wasn't necessarily bored with the plotting and pace, I will say that Daniels never fully commits to either genre. When I wanted a more serious action novel the story slowed to a conversational tone. When I needed the characters to come to blows, the military action consumed the story. I couldn't quite walk the high beam that Norman Daniels built for me. The balancing act didn't work as well as I had hoped for. But, nevertheless Killer Tank is an entertaining read that probably could have been improved with a few precise touch-ups to the storytelling. You won't hate it, but I'm not sure how necessary this paperback really is. There are far better crime-noir and WW2 books out there.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

South Pacific Fury

Australian born novelist James Edmond Macdonnell (1917-2002) utilized pseudonyms including Kerry Mitchell, Michael Owen and variations of his own name to construct a robust catalog of literary work. Fans of spy-fiction may recognize the name James Dark, a pseudonym that Macdonnell used to write the 14-book Mark Hood series from 1965-1970. My first experience with Macdonnell is South Pacific Fury, one of nearly 150 naval mens-action adventure novels authored by Macdonnell for Australian publisher Horwitz (the same international publisher that printed Carter Brown). South Pacific Fury was originally published by Horwitz in 1968 and subsequently published in the US by Signet with cover art featuring model Steve Holland (Doc Savage).

Like the name suggests, the novel's premise is about a U.S. PT44 torpedo boat in action in World War 2's Pacific Theater. The main character is Captain Walt Kenyon, an admirable hero who commands his small crew to perform at their peak despite the overwhelming odds. In the book's exciting opening pages, Kenyon's crew shoot down a Japanese “Zeke”, a common Japanese fighter craft formally called the A6M Zero. After discussing the plane's placement and mission, the crew then intercepts a Japanese Destroyer in a harrowing firefight.

While these early hit-and-run exercises are a pleasurable reading experience, South Pacific Fury thankfully settles into a central plot. A Coastwatcher named Cook has become trapped on Golo Island, now completely occupied by enemy forces. After months of relaying strategic codes and instructions, the Navy doesn't want to abandon him. Orders are given to Kenyon's crew to circumvent a large Japanese fleet in an effort to successfully rescue Cook from behind enemy lines.

In some ways this reminded me of the excellent novel Skylark Mission, written by Marvin Albert under the British-sounding pseudonym Ian MacAlister. Like that adventure, the exploits of Cook surviving on the island and avoiding detection are carefully inserted into alternating chapters that really helped me escape the small confines of Kenyon's boat. This novel of “land and sea” ratcheted up the suspense and action through the use of both perspectives.

South Pacific Fury is an outstanding work of war-fiction and, to the detriment of my wallet, has led me down the rabbit hole of Macdonnell's body of work. Highly recommended!

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Mike Shayne #01 - Dividend on Death

It's no secret that Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series was an empire. It's like the KISS of crime-fiction and by the late 1940s Spillane and Hammer boosted the genre to lofty commercial heights. Detective fiction was real cool...again. But, a decade before, a guy named Davis Dresser had done the same.

Dresser's Mike Shayne character was a media phenomenon. Beginning with the character's debut in 1939's Dividend on Death, Dresser, using the pseudonym Brett Halliday, penned fifty novels through 1958. The series forged 12 films, three decades of magazines, over 300 short-stories, comics, nine years of radio and 32-episodes of NBC television. Not that anyone is counting...but after Dresser's departure the book series continued for another 27 installments. That's remarkable considering Dividend on Death was reportedly refused by 21 publishers before finally being finding a home. Unfamiliar with the character, I chanced on a copy of Dividend on Death and spent the night with it.

While the series debut doesn't reveal much backstory, Shayne is a red-headed, Miami private-eye. Like most of his literary peers, Shayne is a heavy drinker and smoker who enjoys mingling with the ladies. Mixing business with pleasure is his M.O., and occasionally he can rely on his friendship with Miami Police Chief Will Gentry to ease him out of the most complex jams. In this first case presented to readers, Dresser creates a conundrum for Shayne and Gentry to navigate together. 

A young woman named Phyllis drops in on Shayne and asks him for a rather odd job. Phyllis' mother is arriving at the family's Miami mansion and Phyllis wants Shayne to keep her from killing her own mother. The client suffers from a fixation that makes her want to kill her own mother to keep from sharing her with her new stepfather. Shayne takes the case but later finds Phyllis wandering around in the dark mansion with blood on her nightgown. A further probe shows that Phyllis' mother has indeed been murdered and Phyllis is the likely suspect. But here's the curveball: Shayne quickly scoops up Phyllis and drops her at his own apartment - including the bloody knife! Any reader would feel Phyllis is guilty as sin, but Shayne draws a different conclusion.

Dividend on Death was excellently written for 1939. For 2020 readers, I feel that Dresser's voice hasn’t aged as well as Mickey Spillane, Frank Kane, Ross MacDonald or even Richard Prather for that matter. This early novel comes across in a pulpy style that reminded me of the Golden Age detectives. I enjoy stuff like The Avenger, Green Lama and Doc Savage because I know what I'm getting. Dividend on Death took me by surprise in its rudimentary story-telling. Shayne is beaten senseless, shot four times, hides Phyllis from the very people that want to help him and her, including the city's police chief. Shayne seemingly steers completely off-road when he doesn't have to. These things don't necessarily ruin the story, but they certainly don't elevate the hero to a heightened sense of alertness and heroic turpitude. Maybe that's the whole point – screwball clumsiness meets investigative hunches. Like Shell Scott.

As a new Mike Shayne reader, I have an entire universe to explore. I'm not going to saddle my criticism, disappointment and lack of enjoyment on the fact that Dividend on Death wasn't a fabulous book. It probably isn't a fabulous representation of Dresser's voice and the style that he attained after numerous novels. If there is a short-list of Shayne’s greatest paperback hits, I'd entertain a deeper dive. For now, I respect the character, enjoyed witnessing Dresser's developing talents and appreciate what the Shayne character has contributed to the success of the crime-fiction genre.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

The Avenger #02 - The Yellow Hoarde

Publisher Street and Smith used their own pulp heroes Doc Savage and The Shadow as the prototype for their series of pulp adventures starring Dick Benson, the man known as The Avenger. The hero first appeared in magazines from 1939-1943 authored by Paul Ernst using the house name Kenneth Robeson. While always a likable hero, The Avenger became odd man out in a very crowded pulp market. The series of adventures ended after a brief run in The Shadow Magazine. Like the Doc Savage novels, The Avenger stories were reprinted in paperback format beginning in 1972. After thoroughly enjoying the series debut, Justice, Inc., I was anxious to begin the second installment, The Yellow Hoard.

The story begins as Benson's two teammates Smitty and Mac (introduced in Justice, Inc.) witness the explosive destruction of a four-story building in New York City. After determining that the culprits were after some mysterious “Mexican Bricks,” Smitty and Mac chance upon a young, diminutive woman named Nellie Gray. While the two watch, Nellie uses martial arts to overcome her captors and eventually become freed. Impressed, the two introduce Nellie to Benson.

Benson learns that Nellie's father, Professor Gray, recently led an expedition to Mexico to study Aztec ruins. Connecting the mysterious bricks to Gray's expedition plunges the team into a murder mystery. I won't ruin the shock for readers, but Nellie becomes an active member of the team to find the killer(s). In a way, this is her origin story just as the series' third volume introduces Josh and Rosable Newton.

Ernst's narrative focuses on Benson and his colleagues discovering the whereabouts of five Mexican bricks that display a treasure map when placed together. It's the 'ole “one ring to control them all” bit as the search runs through banks, bombed out buildings, warehouses and, of course, Mexico's Aztec ruins. While pulpy, it isn't an overly zany, suspicious spectacle of weird characters. The action is more of a procedural hardboiled crime mystery that asks the readers to suspend their disbelief during the obligatory hypnosis segments. Benson is still the chameleon as he changes his facial features to infiltrate criminal gangs, but at least he gets caught to prove he's a flawed hero.

The Yellow Hoard should appeal to fans of The Shadow, Doc Savage and other likable pulp heroes from this place in time. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I'm anxious to learn where the team's next mission takes them. Purchase a copy of this novel HERE.