Before he became a popular author of quirky crime fiction bestsellers, Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) was a working author of gritty, well-crafted westerns. He started with short works in the western pulp magazines and transitioned seamlessly to paperbacks in the 1950s. Last Stand at Saber River was released by Dell in 1959, and the subsequent British edition was re-titled Stand on the Saber. Somewhere along the way, the novel was also released in hardcover as Lawless River. Over 60 years later, the book is still in print as a paperback, ebook and audiobook.
Our hero is Paul Cable who fought for the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War for over two years and is returning home to his ranch on Arizona’s Saber River to be with his family. The war had been rough on Cable as he took bullets in his hip and thigh and was sent home to Arizona before the outcome of the war was determined.
Upon arrival back in Arizona, Cable finds that things have changed in his absence. Specifically, there are men living in his house that he and his wife built themselves. While Cable was at war, a man named Vern Kidston came to town with a sizable crew of men and set up a business supplying horses to the Union Army. He took over the Cable house and has been housing his men there while Vern’s horse herd grazes on Cable’s land. As you can imagine, Cable isn’t thrilled with this arrangement. Likewise, Vern and his men are not interested in negotiating with or taking any guff from a former rebel soldier.
At times, the book felt like a home invasion horror novel with a lot of cat-and-mouse suspense. Other times, it was a straight-up combat adventure tale with lots of gun-pointing stand-off scenes. As the title of the paperback indicates, all the disrespect and mini-skirmishes along the way lead to a series of showdowns where Cable defends his property rights against Vern’s men.
Elmore Leonard was a master at plotting and dialogue, and this knack is on full-display in Last Stand at Saber River. The characters are vividly drawn and they always seem to say the right thing at the right time in the right way. The author wisely steers clear of the relative merits of the Confederacy vs. the Union and uses the divide to explain the mutual distrust and hostility between the novel’s combatants.
The short paperback’s resolution was intelligent and unexpected - if a bit abrupt, and it was a testament to Leonard’s superior storytelling abilities. If you like westerns filled with moral dilemmas and smart character development, Last Stand at Saber River is definitely for you. Recommended.
Movie Night:
In 1997, Last Stand at Saber River was adapted into a TV movie starring Tom Selleck on the TNT cable network. It remains a available as a $2.99 rental on all the major streaming services. You won't be surprised to learn that the universal consensus is that book is better than the movie.
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Author Jack Bennett (1934-2000) was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He became a cadet reporter in 1957 and later joined the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1974. One of his first novels, Mister Fisherman, was published in 1964 and examined racial tensions. In 1981, Bennett wrote Gallipoli, a war novel based on the Australian film of the same name. Of the eight novels I can identify by Bennett, it appears the author's literary work was mostly outdoor/nature fiction that examined social or environmental issues. Those themes are the heart of Bennett's 1967 novel The Hawk Alone, published by Bantam.
The book examines the life of Gord Vance, an elderly man who lives in South Africa with his wife, Julia. Vance is a former soldier, serving in a number of military campaigns including the South African War (often called Boer). Over the years, Vance has worked a number of professions, but his life's work has been as a safari hunter. After years of struggle, Vance now finds himself impoverished due to the environmental changes that have impacted the hunting industry. Living hand to mouth has made Vance disgruntled with his “golden years” and regretful regarding the decisions he's made throughout his life.
Bennett's narrative is written in the past and present with Vance remembering key events in his life – crippled in a bar skirmish, his military experience, prior hunts and various interactions with his friend Roy. These events are sometimes mirrored by present failures like a horse dying, his derogatory credit at the town store, his truck's engine stoppage and the inability to hunt. Vance's skill-set is shooting, but he doesn't own a large parcel of land and his ability to hunt other lands has dwindled. Bennett conveys these emotional defeats perfectly.
As an adventure novel, The Hawk Alone fails. But, this isn't a disappointment credited to the author or the story. Bennett's storytelling is steeped in Hemingway and exhibits primitive simplism. Bantam's marketing strategy was to present the book as an adventure novel, complete with a misleading cover and the exciting premise of “an aging white hunter takes four teenagers on his last and most dangerous safari.” This is only partially true. The book is an emotional, end of age tale about regret, failure and purposeless life – essentially Vance is “the hawk alone.” The promise of a dangerous safari and four teenagers arrives twenty pages before the book's end. While the finale is riveting, it's credited to Vance's disappointments and Bennett's strength as a story-teller, not a dangerous, savage safari.
The Hawk Alone is brilliant. After the last page was turned, I felt emotionally moved. What you may feel will be in the eye of the beholder, but the novel will certainly make you feel something. The ability to convey some sort of emotional experience on to the reader or listener is the cornerstone of good storytelling. The conversational style of Bennett's narrative had me entranced, but again readers should control their expectations.
Paperback Warrior fans should realize this is a different novel than the usual action-adventure shooter or vintage crime-noir. However, this literary variation was a rewarding change of pace that I think you should experience. I can't say enough good things about this pleasant surprise of a novel. Highly recommended.
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S. Craig Zahler is a novelist, filmmaker, and voracious consumer of old pulp fiction. While watching his movies Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99, and Dragged Across Concrete, his literary influences are crystal clear: Zahler is a Paperback Warrior kind of guy. As such, it’s only fitting that I divert from vintage fiction for a day to review his 2010 gritty western, A Congregation of Jackals.
The year is 1888, and Virginia brothers Oswell and Godfrey both receive telegrams inviting them to the wedding of James Lingham in Montana. The invitation causes the bothers much consternation because they haven’t heard from Lingham in decades. Moreover, the invitation ominously references that “all old acquaintances” will be there.
The author slow-deals the revelations and reasons why the invitation sparks worries in the invitees, but the gist is that they were once part of a group of outlaws years ago that included the groom. Things went nightmarishly wrong for the gang, and vengeance was sworn by a terrifying adversary. Everyone went their separate ways hoping to put their pasts behind them, and then the vexing invitation to a wedding arrives. The fear is that failing to travel to Montana for a reckoning might bring trouble to the no-shows and harm to their respective families.
One of the other invitees - also an alumnus of the long-disbanded outlaw gang - is a Manhattan playboy named Dicky. He’s smart, charming and funny - by far the most charismatic and relatable character in the paperback. Dicky joins the brothers on their journey westward via train and stagecoach to a wedding they’re all pretty certain will be a total bloodbath. Of course, the reader is counting on that being true, and the Montana scenes definitely don’t disappoint.
A Congregation of Jackals is a well-written and engaging paperback and the pages turn quickly thanks to the cinematic quality of the set-pieces the author creates. Mahler’s novel is also periodically violent and shocking with scenes of brutality rivaling the darkest moments of the Edge series by George Gilman with the sheen of a literature written with time and care. Admittedly, there’s a lot of build-up to the final confrontation, and some readers may find it slow at times. However, stick with it because the extended climax is really something special.
Nothing about this strong recommendation should come as no surprise to fans of Zahler’s films, and if you liked Bone Tomahawk - or the westerns of Quentin Tarantino - you’re going to enjoy the heck out of A Congregation of Jackals.
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Author John Gearon (1911-1993) began his career play-writing for theater in the 1930s. His first novel, 1935's The Velvet Well, was a hit. While not that much is known about Gearon, my research suggests that he authored eight total novels under the pseudonym John Flagg. Most, if not all, are espionage stories. Of the eight, five make up the Hart Muldoon series. Being unfamiliar with the series, I jumped in with installment number four, Death's Lovely Mask, published in 1958 by Fawcett Gold Medal.
Hart Muldoon was a former operative in the O.S.S., the early version of what is now known as the C.I.A. After leaving the business, Muldoon is then hired as an international private-eye or spy by the U.S. government investigating murders, kidnapping, heists and the early blueprints for criminal activity that may plague America or it's allies. It's the last part that brings Muldoon to Venice in Death's Lovely Mask.
A senate committee member named Hirem, who Muldoon served with in the O.S.S., threatens Muldoon into an assignment he doesn't want to accept. The job is to tail a young Prince named Sir-el-Donrd from the small, fictional country of Donrd-Arabia. His father has become gravely ill and it looks like the young Prince will be taking the throne soon. The country exists as a feudal state and if Sir-el-Donrd takes over, the applecart is turned over and the Arab chieftains will begin grumbling over oil interests. The U.S. involvement is through the German-American Oil Company within the country, jointly controlled by American and German management. To make matters worse, Sir-el-Donrd is defying generations of feuding by dating the daughter of an Israeli leader. It's essentially Romeo and Juliet with global implications between the rival households.
The author fails to convey to readers what Muldoon's actual job entails. From what we gather, it's frolicking around Venice having an affair with an oil-executive's wife while also banging a 15-year old girl on the side. The bulk of the narrative plays rather operatic with the hero guesting with the super rich Winthrop family. It was like an episode of Downton Abbey with Queens and Countesses and upright pinkies. The murder mystery superimposes itself during an elaborate costume party. However, by this point I just didn't care anymore. The last 20-pages were agonizing.
Perhaps the fourth book isn't a fair representation of the Hart Muldoon espionage series. From what I can gather, Gearon's other novels written under the Flagg name are of the same pedigree – castles, watery canals, wining and dining in plush locales throughout Europe. In essence, Death's Lovely Mask revealed enough to show its true self: an extremely dull book.
Hart Muldoon Series:
1. Woman of Cairo (1953)
2. Dear Deadly Beloved (1954)
3. Murder in Monaco (1957)
4. Death's Lovely Mask (1958)
5. The Paradise Gun (1961)
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Paperback Warrior Podcast Episode 51 delves into the shadowy world of CIA operative, Watergate burglar, and vintage genre fiction author Howard Hunt. Also on the show: Shopping excursions, Reviews of End of a Stripper by Robert Dietrich and .44 by H.A. DeRosso and much more! Stream the show on your favorite podcast app, below or download directly HERE.
Listen to "Episode 51: Howard Hunt" on Spreaker.
Along with Alistair Maclean and Desmond Bagley, British author Hammond Innes (real name: Ralph Hammond Innis, 1913-1998) is one of the masters of high-adventure fiction. Hammond authored 34 novels from 1937 through 1996 and also penned nonfiction and children's stories as well. My first experience with the author is his 1947 novel The Lonely Skier, which was released in the U.S. as Fire in the Snow. The book was adapted for cinema in 1948 under the title Snowbound.
Set in the snowy Dolomite mountains of Northeastern Italy, the book focuses on a British man named Neil Blair. As an ex-Army officer, Blair is a family man who's unemployed in the book's opening chapter. His friend Engles, a movie producer, asks Blair to vacation at a remote ski lodge called Col Da Verda. The purpose is to write a movie script and team with a photographer named Joe Weston. Aside from the primary role of film creator, Engles asks Blair to search for a mysterious woman named Carla.
Upon Blair's arrival at Col Da Verda he is introduced to a cast of characters that become mainstays in the book's narrative. Blair eventually meets Carla and learns that she is a wealthy Countess and has a romantic past with a few of the book's characters. The most interesting revelation is that the lodge was once owned by Stefan, a former Nazi officer who was later captured and ultimately died from suicide. The resort supposedly holds an abundance of stolen Nazi gold that Stefan hid for safekeeping.
Innes' novel teases high-adventure, explosive action and perilous skiing. However, the reader is forced into the lodge as a spectator for most of the plodding narrative. In fact, the bulk of the book is Blair and the cast of characters drinking at the bar and accusing each other of withholding information on the treasure's location. There are chapters upon chapters of suspicions, finger pointing and threats of violence. Sadly, none of this comes to fruition until the book's last 20-pages. It's as if Innes just didn't have enough story to create a pleasurable experience for readers.
Innes is a fine author and I'm certainly not doubting his literary legacy. It appears I simply picked a bad book. Oddly, his 1948 novel Blue Ice seems to have the same story-line – a stashed treasure in the cold Norwegian mountains. Like his contemporaries, the idea of lost treasure (mostly Nazi) seems to be a prevalent sales pitch for avid readers. I'll certainly read more Innes, and I have a short-list of what fans consider his best work. I'm hoping I'll find a real gem there, but Fire In the Snow isn’t it.
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Milo March was a fictional spy turned insurance investigator created by Kendell Foster Crossen using the pseudonym M.E. Chaber. The series ran for 22 novels and a handful of short stories from 1952 to 1973, and is currently being reprinted by Steeger Books with fetching cover art. Based on a tip from Crossen’s daughter, author and literary estate curator Kendra Crossen Burroughs, I decided begin my march into the series with the second installment, No Grave for March from 1953.
March is an investigator for Denver-based Intercontinental Insurance, but he used to be a OSS operative during World War 2. Some of his books are straight-up property crime investigations and in other books, the U.S. government presses March back into service for an espionage assignment. This series setup provided the author great flexibility to plug his hero into any kind of pulpy genre book he felt like writing. No Grave for March is an international spy adventure paperback.
As the novel opens, March has been away from the spy business for seven years. He is summoned to a clandestine meeting in Washington, D.C. with an old colleague from his war days. It seems a diplomat with a head full of secrets has defected to the Soviet client state of East Germany. Because March speaks German, he is the choice to slip behind the iron curtain, kidnap the diplomat, and bring him back to the West. One of the secrets at stake is a mind-control device that can reprogram the public to either love Stalin or apple pie depending on who’s pulling the trigger.
I had always written off the Milo March books as being lightweight, inconsequential paperbacks along the same lines of Richard Prather’s Shell Scott or the many heroes of Carter Brown. Instead, the author put some actual thought into his work with summaries of communist theory embedded into the plot-line and interesting historical tidbits. This isn’t a work of genius, but it’s also not completely disposable fiction.
It’s also not a fast-moving shoot-em-up paperback. March spends a good bit of the novel just trying to convince the commies that he’s one of them and not an American spy. I found this fascinating, but it’s certainly not a breakneck Killmaster thrill ride. Crossen also has an annoying habit of writing lots of dialogue in German and Russian with no translation. You get the gist, but why bother showing off like that? There’s also a lot of specifics about East German tactics, ambitions, and party machinations that you will find either interesting or not.
Things become very exciting in the novel’s final act with a pulpy action sequence among the best I’ve read. I wish the rest of the paperback had set pieces as thrilling as the conclusion. Despite some missteps along the way, I genuinely enjoyed No Grave for March, and I look forward to exploring more of the series in the future.
Addendum:
No Grave for March has been reprinted several times. In the Paperback Library 1970 edition pictured above, the publisher numbered the installment #13. Don’t be fooled: it was truly book #2 in the series. An earlier printing of the novel was titled All the Way Down. Unless you’re a hardcore collector, don’t buy the same book trice.
Also, the Steeger House reprint contains an interview with Kendell Foster Crossen from 1975 that was informative for both his fans and pulp fiction historians.
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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.
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Ohio-born Daniel Da Cruz (1921-1991) served as a U.S. Marine rifleman from 1938 to 1942 before pursuing a career in journalism with an expertise in Middle-Eastern affairs. His body of work as an author includes a three-book Men’s Adventure series starring an international gunslinger-for-hire named Ape Swain. The series conclusion from 1976, The Captive City, won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original Novel. Life is short, so that’s where I’m starting the series.
First, let’s address the protagonist’s name. It’s A.P. Swain, but you can call him Ape. Everyone does. In all fairness, Ape is big, strong, and hairy - so it works on multiple levels. As the novel opens in mid-action, Ape is wearing a business suit and parachute when he bails out of a Cessna into the night sky over the Arabian desert. According to plan, Ape lands in the fictitious, reclusive and oil-rich Kingdom of Al-Akhiri. Before his death by dehydration, rescuers find our hero and deliver him directly to a fetid jail cell to await his execution by firing squad the next morning.
A flashback informs the reader that Ape has been pressed into service by a U.S. oil worker’s union to rescue over 3,700 Americans who have been held in the Kingdom for 17 years inside a city enclosed by an electric fence. The U.S. government has given up on the idea of mounting a rescue mission and seems to be actively covering-up news of this alleged concentration camp. Are the Americans inside the camp happy employees of the Arab nation’s oil operation or hostages being kept from their relatives and countrymen? This premise is beautifully-executed by the author who sets up a vexing conundrum for our hero to solve in this fast-moving adventure.
As it becomes clear what’s happening inside The Captive City, the reader must suspend his disbelief that thousands of Americans would simply be forsaken by the U.S. government. Of course, this opens the door for a hero like Ape Swain to enact a dangerous and audacious plan to discover the truth. By the time Ape makes it inside The Captive City, the suspense level is high. It reminded me of “The Others” village on the ABC TV show Lost. I won’t spoil it, but nothing is as it seems inside the fenced city. Meanwhile, the author doles out the answers judiciously with several red herrings and a fantastic payoff.
The novel’s terrific ending sets up a great new turn for the series, but it never happened. For reasons lost to history (but it’s always money), there was no Book 4 in the Ape Swain series. As such, The Captive City will go down in history largely unremembered. But those who find and read a yellowing paperback copy will recognize it as a work of genre fiction that outperformed both its predecessors and the reader’s expectations. Recommended.
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On Paperback Warrior Podcast Episode 50, we explore the life and books of Thomas B. Dewey, the Casca Controversy fallout, and a review of Hillary Waugh's Roadblock. Listen on any podcast app, paperbackwarrior.com, or download directly HERE
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E. Howard Hunt authored over 70 novels utilizing pseudonyms including David St. John, Gordon Davis, John Baxter and variations of his own name. He also used the name Robert Dietrich to write 12 novels, 10 of them featuring a fictional Washington D.C. tax accountant named Steve Bentley. The character debuted in 1957's Murder on the Rocks and continued with two to three books per year through 1962. In 1999, Hunt revisited the character with one final chapter, Guilty Knowledge. Cutting Edge Books has released several of them as affordable ebooks. I really enjoyed my experience with the series debut and was happy to obtain a digital copy of the second installment, 1959's End of a Stripper.
The story begins with Bentley entertaining an old war buddy at a swanky strip-club called Chanteclair. It's here where Bentley first sets eyes on a gorgeous Scandinavian stripper named Linda Lee. Enthralled with the woman, Bentley notices that a shady man is taking quick, discreet photos of Lee. After a few minutes, the man is assaulted by two bouncers and hauled outside. Right before his exit, the man furtively slides his camera into Bentley's pocket. After the show, Bentley has a private-eye friend analyze the photos only to determine they are just poorly lit, poorly planned shots of Lee. But, Bentley learns the man taking the photos was a bottom-shelf private-eye named Mousey found murdered in a nearby warehouse. After Bentley is visited with threats to return the camera, the narrative accelerates to furious pace under Hunt's talented writing skills.
With Bentley the target of the bouncers and whoever hired Mousey, the only solution is to discover the identity of the mysterious stripper. In doing so, Bentley finds himself mired in the inner workings of politics in the D.C. beltway. Using his trusted ally Lieutenant Kellaway, the duo investigate Chanteclair's ties to a wealthy criminal mastermind and his connection with a secretive U.S. Congressman.
Hunt's second Bentley thriller is an intriguing, pulse-pounding hardboiled crime-novel with all of the desirable genre tropes – sultry women, crooked men and the inevitable chase for wealth and power. End of a Stripper is a more superior offering when compared to the series debut, Murder on the Rocks. Both are excellent, but it's Hunt’s narrative that readers will find fascinating. His contemptuous views of 1959's amoral Washington D.C. serve as a prophetic message for readers in 2020.
In an odd twist, it is Hunt himself who would later contribute to unlawfulness in our nation's capital with his involvement in the famed Watergate Scandal. Despite the author's political experiences, Hunt proves once again that he can write the proverbial hardboiled crime classic again and again. End of a Stripper may or may not be one of his best literary offerings. After all, he authored over 70 novels, so further investigation is warranted.
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After serving as a U.S. Marine in the Pacific during World War 2 and storming Iwo Jima, Harold John “Tedd” Thomey (1920-2008) returned to the states to pursue a career as a journalist with the San Francisco Chronicle and the Long Beach Independent with a specialty in restaurant reviews. He also wrote 20 books, including a 1956 Fawcett Gold Medal original titled Killer in White.
Dr. Douglas Webb is a fraud. He pretends to be a chiropractor healing female patients with dubious therapy such as his fancy magno-therapy machine, but it’s all a scam. He doesn’t have a degree in medicine - not even one in chiropractic nonsense. He just makes it up as he goes along. Why bother? Two reasons: 1. For the money, and 2. To have unlimited sex with his unlimited cadre of adoring female patients.
So, our protagonist is a bit of a heel. His fun is interrupted by an investigator from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Federal Security Agency who figures out Dr. Webb is a non-credentialed con-man. The investigator also has reason to believe that the magno-therapy machine forming the centerpiece of Dr. Webb’s practice is also a bunch of hokum. The only way for our fake doctor to get rid of this pesky investigator is to bribe him $15,000.
The bulk of the 144-page paperback is Dr. Webb trying to raise the cash to bribe the federal agent. He does this mostly by bedding down rich ladies and then shaking them down for money while they’re still in an orgasmic haze. There are lots of subplots that the author juggles - some more interesting than others. As Dr. Webb is forced to put out fire after fire to keep his scam afloat, the novel becomes an frantic read with some great moments sprinkled throughout. The final act’s “getting away with murder” story-line was excellent and worth the wait - as was the resolution to a romance that develops throughout the novel.
Despite some minor reservations, I genuinely enjoyed Killer in White. There’s are some pretty nifty plot twists towards the end and some genuinely tense moments involving medical stuff. Thomey’s writing is serviceable and all the plot threads are neatly resolved by the end. I wouldn’t move heaven and earth to acquire a copy, but if you can snag one on the cheap, it’s definitely worth your time.
Former NFL player Don Kingery had only four published novels during his short literary career – Death Must Wait (1956), Swamp Fire (1957), Paula (1959) and Good Time Girl (1960). The rest of his writing was dedicated to print journalism, a career that spanned over 50 years in and around Southwest Louisiana. His novels were of the Erskine Caldwell variety, centering around strong southern roots and a penchant for poverty-ridden family dynamics that make up the blue collar highways of rural America. Nothing expresses that literary sense more than Kingery's Death Must Wait.
Like Caldwell's superior Tobacco Road, Kingery explores criminal behavior, immorality and mental issues throughout the thick narrative of Death Must Wait. Arguably, the book's only protagonist is Jed, a poor working man who hunts and traps in a dense section of Louisiana Bayou called Morganzas Pass. His father is complacent in his family's rags-to-more-rags lifestyle, never rising above the lowest tier of low class. Often Jed's parents lament their decision to marry, breed or even rise to exist. Jed's sister is a prostitute and his brother a drunk. A sense of escapism feeds Jed's desire to flourish in the outdoors, a trade that provides the only honest wage for the family.
Kingery's narrative expands once Jed is provoked into a fistfight with a belligerent bar patron. Jed's social inadequacies, short-temper and neanderthal strength leads to his undoing. When the man Jed scuffles with seemingly dies on the bar’s sawdust floor, Jed runs to the swamps to avoid a demented, corrupt small-town sheriff who wants to secure his bid for reelection. Eventually Jed is captured and arrested, but it is his love for a young woman named Nila that stirs a cause for action. Jed must either escape or prove his innocence before the backwoods lawyer and sheriff condemns him.
Death Must Wait was an intriguing story that displays crime-noir tendencies despite the abstract approach. Jed is the common-man placed into extreme circumstances, but the author's description of this small-town existence – failures, poverty, corruption, greed, despair – is the focal point. While still retaining a crime-fiction element, the book works more as a cynical look at this era of American history and the social degradation that formed so many of the southeastern cities. If you need more crime in your fiction, Death Must Wait may not spin your wheels. But for a solid, intriguing testament about rural America and it's deficiencies, look no further than this.
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Very little is known about author William L. Rohde (1918-2000). Born in Dallas, the author wrote a handful of early Nick Carter: Killmaster installments as well as crime-fiction novels like Help Wanted for Murder (1950), Uneasy Lies the Head (1957) and V.I.P. (1957). He also wrote a number of western short stories as well as one full-length paperback, The Gun-Crasher (1957). My first experience with him is his 1951 novel High Red for Dead published by Fawcett Gold Medal. It was re-printed by Fawcett in 1957 as Murder on the Line with new cover art.
The book introduces readers to Daniels, a detective for the A&N Railroad. His base of operations is the main rail station that runs through the New England lakeside community of Vicksboro. Daniels is a former war veteran and operates a real-estate practice on the side. Due to the railroad's declining profits, the owners have petitioned Washington DC to restructure the shaky company. Daniels' theory is that the owners want to sell off fast and capitalize on obtaining a large one-time sum of millions instead of the dwindling thousands they receive yearly in profit and stock dividends. When one of the railroads lobbyists is found murdered on an incoming train, it's Daniels job to locate the killer and motive.
The book has a robust cast of characters that drained my pen dry when drawing the org-chart. It's a labor to navigate the twists and turns of the railroad industry, technical wire communications and the obligatory gamblers and love interests that saturate the narrative. The author's voice is clearly an experienced train aficionado, evident from his 1940s writings in the old Railroad magazines. High Red for Dead, and its procedural investigation, would have worked better as a western with enough gruff characters, land-barons, gamblers and cheats to host any 1800s shindig. While I liked the characterization of Daniels, I felt that the author used too much technical jargon to drown readers. It was as if Rohde just assumed I knew enough about betting through railroad communication wires. Or, how land development deals works in complex lake establishments. News flash – I don't.
If you love trains and mid-century railroad politics, High Red for Dead is definitely in your lane. For my limited experience with the railroad industry, Rohde derailed me. Buyer beware.
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Episode 49 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast tackles a literary mystery regarding authorship of an obscure series from the 1970s that may have been written by a Catholic priest. We also discuss and review novels by Hammond Innes, Gil Brewer, and Louis Charbonneau. Listen on your favorite podcast app, paperbackwarrior.com, or download directly HERE
Listen to "Episode 49: The Search for the D.C. Man" on Spreaker.
Lorenz F. Heller (1910-1965) was a New Jersey guy - and eventual Florida transplant - who authored genre books under the names Laura Hale, Larry Heller, Lorenz Heller and Larry Holden as well as TV scripts as George Sims. Black Gat Books has recently re-issued his 1957 paperback Dead Wrong originally published under the Larry Holden pseudonym.
Our narrator, ex-boxer Joe Molone, is planning to host an old friend named Harry Loomis who’s visiting town. As young men, Joe and Harry used to raise hell in the saloons of Newark, but nowadays Malone owns a modest building supply company, and Loomis works on cargo ships. Things take an early head-scratching turn when Harry doesn’t show up for their planned night of debauchery. Instead, Harry’s 24 year-old estranged daughter Claire shows up with a note from her father.
According to the letter, Harry has become fabulously wealthy from a savvy investment and wants to retire to Florida from the cargo ship business. Harry wants his daughter to be with him in Florida while Harry nurses his arthritic bones back to good health. As Joe is wondering why his old friend has stood him up, he learns that Harry has been murdered with a mysterious package missing. If you guessed that this is one of those books where the narrator has to solve a murder to clear his own name with the help of a beautiful girl, you’d be spot-on.
On the road to the truth, there are some excellent action sequences where Joe uses his fists on adversaries as if he was back in the boxing ring. Heller also creates some vivid secondary characters like the street hood with a knack for crafting edge weapons out of anything. Joe’s old flame - a nightclub chanteuse with some real street smarts - is another fantastically-drawn member of the supporting cast. These interesting, well-developed characters propel this rather standard crime-noir plot into something special and unusual. The prose is smooth and there’s no confusion in the storytelling despite many clever twists and turns leading to the tidy ending.
After reading both Dead Wrong and Heller’s A Rage at Sea, I’m beginning to feel that the author may be an unsung hero of 1950s crime fiction deserving greater recognition. Both novels were outstanding, and I’m looking forward to seeking out more of his work. Highly recommended.
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In addition to two excellent stand-alone novels published under the Thomas Brandt pseudonym, Thomas B. Dewey (1915-1981) was the author of three successful and highly-regarded crime-fiction series titles: Singer Batts, Mac, and Pete Schoefield. Conventional wisdom is that the Mac books, which ran for 18 installments from 1947 to 1970, are the strongest of the three. I decided to start with the second book in the series, Every Bet’s a Sure Thing from 1953 - a novel currently available as a $5 ebook.
Mac (his only provided name) is a Chicago ex-cop turned private investigator who is hired to shadow a woman and two kids as they make their way from New York to Los Angeles on a train. What could be easier? You ride the train with her and keep an eye on the dame, right?
The identity of the client is a mystery to Mac, and it’s clear from the outset that this isn’t a simple domestic surveillance job. The target - her name is Harriet - gets off at every stop and uses the payphone, and local hoodlums are milling about every time she disembarks for a few minutes. Most relevantly, an prior operative who had been following Harriett is gunned down in the street as Mac takes over the cross-country surveillance during a Chicago layover. Someone in the shadows is playing for keeps.
Much of the book’s first half takes place on the train, and Mac’s curiosity gets the better of him. He gets to know Harriet and her kids along the journey. And that’s the thing about Mac that separates him from the other hardboiled private eyes from the mid-20th Century: he’s a nice guy with compassion and empathy for others. After reading hundreds of blood-on-the-knuckles mysteries with stoic heroes, having a protagonist narrator who cares about others was a breath of fresh air. Mac is no softy - he’s just human. He can kick ass and take a beating, but he does it because he wants to help others. When the paperback’s action shifts to Los Angeles, the big picture becomes clearer to both Mac and the reader.
By 1953, Dewey has been writing genre fiction professionally for nearly a decade, and his storytelling chops are solid. Mac is a fantastic narrator - self-deprecating and funny - and the reader will want to be his friend. Every Bet’s a Sure Thing is filled with delightful surprises at every turn. Don’t sleep on this one - get yourself a copy and read it ASAP. Highest recommendation.
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Earlier this year, I read a novel called The Captive by Norman Daniels (real name: Norman Danberg, 1905-1995). I enjoyed it so much that I've upset my bank account by acquiring all the Norman Daniels books I can find. It's no easy task considering the price of these vintage titles and the abundance of his books written under various pseudonyms. My most recent acquisition is his 1970 novel, The Rape of a Town, published by Pyramid Books.
The book stars a former L.A. Police Captain named Kelly who recently quit the force due to the city's flawed justice system. In the opening chapter, Kelly is invited to a swanky Beverly Hills party hoping to find an employment connection. It's here where his life takes a drastic turn when he is introduced to a woman named Merryl Atwill.
Merryl's brother Carl was involved in a large investment firm with a partner named Mander. After a long-term partnership, Mander murdered Carl and explained to the authorities that Carl was sleeping with his wife. After Mander was tried, the case was thrown out over a legal bumble. Now, Merryl wants her brother's killer brought to justice. But instead of thrusting this one case at Kelly, she introduces the idea of having Kelly serve a team of backers looking to right the wrongs of the legal justice system. With a panel consisting of attorneys, U.S. Senators, police chiefs and other high-ranking professionals, Kelly will seek out the cases that were thrown out of court and determine how to avoid these failures in the future. It's a unique concept that the author will expand upon in the book's two sequels.
The entire narrative consists of Kelly becoming the police chief in a tiny town called Vineland, an hour north of his old stomping ground in Los Angeles. But once he arrives, the entire police force quits. Kelly's investigation into Carl's murder, the company the two founded and Mander himself quickly become dead weight in the watery narrative. As the town's Fourth of July celebration commences, Kelly learns the reasoning behind the police force's departure. An entire criminal army has invaded Vineland and the police were all paid to leave. It's up to Kelly to solely defend the town in a climactic finale that helped compensate for the book's rather lackluster narrative.
Norman Daniels is a great writer and The Rape of a Town introduced some clever ideas. Unfortunately, it appeared that the author had three distinct novel ideas and just needed a reason to combine them. The idea of a “vigilante” task force is sadly never really developed in this novel. The initial idea of Carl's murder investigation is minimal but thankfully resolved by the book's end. The best concept is the lone police officer facing a mob of criminals, but the author only dedicates the last few chapters to it.
Overall, The Rape of a Town was a satisfying read but definitely requires some patience from the reader. Despite it's psychedelic artwork, Daniels provides a gritty, violent crescendo to please men's action-adventure readers. The book had two sequels - One Angry Man (1971) and License to Kill (1972).
Note – This novel was featured as a book bonus called “The Town that Battled a Hoodlum Army” in the April 1971 issue of MEN with illustrations by the great Samson Pollen.
Along with Hammond Innes and Alistair MacLean, British author Desmond Bagley (1923-1983) helped create the basic conventions of high-altitude storytelling within men's action-adventure fiction. His first novel, The Golden Keel, was published in 1963 and propelled a literary career that featured a total of 16 novels, five of which were turned into feature films. As a fan of frosty fiction, I decided to read Bagley's 1970 novel Running Blind, which is set in Iceland. The novel was later adapted for British television in 1979.
In the Scottish highlands, retired British spy Stewart is visited by his former boss Slade (who also appears in Bagley's The Freedom Trap). Slade's pitch is for Stewart to deliver an important package to a gentleman in Iceland. Stewart's experience in the country and his fluency in the Icelandic language make him the perfect operative for the job. Stewart is hesitant to take the assignment post-retirement but agrees in favor of visiting the country again.
The clandestine task of deliveryman for British intelligence evolves into a deadly cat-and-mouse game when Stewart is attacked and the package is stolen. Further, Slade's dismissal of Stewart's account of what happened to the missing package leads him to believe that the whole assignment was a crafty set-up. While Stewart is still in Iceland, he learns that Slade has aligned with a Russian nemesis named Kenniken, a man Stewart shot and hoped to kill earlier in his career. As the net descends, Stewart and his lover must flee into the rural landscape of Iceland, complete with volcanoes and rivers created from melting glaciers. Once there, the two are hunted by Slade's British operatives who are unaware that their leader has defected to Russia. The whole thing makes sense at the end, but some of the finer plot points are "blind" to the protagonist and reader. That's the enjoyment.
Running Blind is an excellent adventure-espionage hybrid that is presented to readers as a first-person narrative. The author, through Stewart's eyes, explains strategies, experiences, old combat stories and the most minuscule details to aid readers. As a fan of Jack Higgins' Paul Chavasse, a spy hero used in five of the author's novels, I felt that Stewart was of the same caliber and breed – sharp, salty and seasoned. The author also included some of Iceland's history and geographical highlights, a bonus for the average suburbanite who may never venture there. At 220-pages of smaller font, I felt the book could have been shorter. But that's the drawback when you become a massive bestseller – publishers want more. Other than the length, there's isn't anything to not like about Running Blind. Highly recommended.
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On the controversial Episode 48 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast, we discuss the history of Barry Sadler’s CASCA books and investigate allegations of plagiarism that plague the series today. You don’t want to miss this one. Listen on every podcast platform, stream below or download directly HERE:
Listen to "Episode 48 - The Casca Controversy" on Spreaker.
