Unmasking the author behind a pseudonym is a bit of a pastime for modern readers of vintage adventure paperbacks. Recently, the desire to play armchair detective or cultural anthropologist lead to the discovery of the real man behind the somewhat obscure, five-book McLeane’s Rangers series written under the pen name of “John Darby.” A little digging revealed an accomplished journalist who later became a well-established writer in the mystery genre after authoring several other action novels many of you have undoubtedly collected and read.
The choice of the John Darby pseudonym and McLeane’s Rangers series name is almost certainly a nod to WW2 U.S. Army hero William Orlando Darby who was fictionalized in a movie called “Darby’s Rangers” starring James Garner in 1958. The premise of the McLeane’s Rangers series from Zebra Books is similar to Len Levinson’s “Rat Bastards” novels or any number of the “team of badasses” war fiction subgenre in which a group of misfit military men participate in fictionalized versions of famous battles. In this case, the legendary conflicts involved pivotal moments in the Allied victories over Japanese forces.
Basic internet queries came up empty for any clues regarding the real identity of author John Darby. Likewise, the writing style didn’t provide much of a lead as all the books seemed to be written in the same voice (ergo: likely a pseudonym, not a house name).
All of this begs the question: Who the hell was John Darby?
While internet search engines provided no clues, a deep dive into the U.S. Library of Congress Copyright database revealed that the MacLeane’s Rangers series was authored by someone named Michael Jahn.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
According to Wikipedia, Jahn was hired as the first rock music journalist for the New York Times in 1968, a job largely unheard of at big-city newspapers at the time. In that capacity, the Times sent him to cover the now-legendary Woodstock Festival in 1969 among the 400,000 muddy attendees. He remained at the Times for three years covering rock for the “Paper of Record” during a remarkable time in music history.
Jahn later shifted gears to mystery fiction where he won an Edgar Award in 1978 right out of the gate for his novel, “The Quark Maneuver,” about a homicidal Vietnam vet. This lead to a popular mystery series starring NYPD Chief of Special Investigations Captain Bill Donovan that spanned 10 books between 1982 and 2008. His papers and manuscripts are stored at the at the Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
Interestingly, no available bibliography of Jahn lists the McLeane Rangers series as part of his body of work. Luckily, I was able to track down Jahn, now 74, and ask him if he was, in fact, John Darby.
“Guilty as charged,” he replied. “You’re the first to ever notice that they even existed.”
It turns out that McLeane’s Rangers wasn’t Jahn’s first foray into Men’s Adventure Fiction. Starting in 1975, Jahn wrote five TV tie-in “Six-Million Dollar Man” paperbacks, including the popular, “The Secret of Bigfoot Pass.” Fanboys of the Bionic Man praise Jahn’s adaptations for merging the divergent continuities of the TV series with the Martin Caiden’s “Cyborg” novels that inspired the show.
Soon thereafter, Jahn wrote two paperbacks tied into the “Black Sheep Squadron” TV show that spun off from the movie “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” as well as a 1981 installment in the Nick Carter: Killmaster Series, “Cauldron of Hell” (#153).
All of this experience opened the door for his own original action series in 1983. “Those days I was friends with a bunch of guys who wrote military-related adventures and I had a history in the genre. Zebra Books was an imprint of Kensington, which was best known for romances. I was invited to write those but never did. I did the McCleane’s series plus four quickie novelty mysteries under another name for them. Zebra paid less than anyone but tended to like everything you did,” Jahn said.
“When I had offered McLeane to Zebra, it seemed like a good fit. I don’t recall whose idea it was. The Zebra editor was not especially action-oriented. But I think they wanted something different than ‘Black Sheep Squadron,’ maybe an infantry thing suggestive of ‘Merrill’s Marauders.’ I was a fan of ‘Rat Patrol,’ so a handful of men was good.”
Although Jahn was the brains behind the series, the authorship remains a less-than-straightforward affair. “There was a friend of mine, an aspiring writer, who was on the verge of getting evicted and was desperate for money,” Jahn said. “I was up to my ass in work those days with lots of contracts, so I gave him McLeane’s to write and cooked up the byline John Darby. He struggled severely, and I had to re-write his work. After the first two books, I basically took the series back and finished it myself. So if the books seem a bit choppy, that’s the reason.”
Who are McLean’s Rangers? The team of American ass-kickers consists of:
- McLeane: the fearless leader of the group who takes his orders from the top and manages to have a good bit of graphic sex between adventures.
- Contardo: the violent, Brooklyn-born psycho is likely to fall into a deep depression if he doesn’t tear off someone’s face at least twice per week.
- Heinman: the hillbilly of the team earned a doctorate in Oriental Studies from Oxford. Conveniently, he’s also a martial arts expert and speaks several useful Asian languages.
- O’Connor: the mandatory Chicago Irishman of the team is an explosives expert built like a bull with fists like hams. Spoiler alert: he’s not afraid to use them.
- Wilkins: the expert marksman of the group is also the youngest among them. He knows how to ventilate any enemy with his rifleman skills.
During the fictional team’s time in WW2, the men covered a lot of ground:
#1 “Bougainville Breakout” - the group’s first adventure pits the Rangers against the entire Japanese garrison in Bougainville. The mission is to destroy a Japanese ammo depo invulnerable to American air attack while securing the release of a captured spy.
#2 “Target Rabaul” - During World War II, Papua New Guinea was captured by the Japanese, and it became the main base of Japanese military activity in the South Pacific. McLeane’s Rangers are sent there to bring their jungle warfare talents to the Japanese stronghold.
#3 “Hell on Hill 457” - McLeane and his men parachute into a heavily-fortified Japanese position around a mountain fortress that can only be dealt with using some heavy explosives.
#4 “Saipan Slaughter” - Only McLeane’s elite commando unit has the skill and the nerve to penetrate the island of Saipan in advance of the pivotal U.S. invasion.
#5 “Blood Bridge” - In this final adventure of McLeane’s Rangers, the team embarks on a mission to save China from a deadly invasion by the Japanese military juggernaut.
The McLeane’s Rangers series touches all the important bases of 1980s Men’s Adventure Series Fiction - violence, drama, sex, gore, salty language, and excess testosterone. The paperbacks are generally well-written but clearly not the work of a professional historian or anyone with great inside knowledge of the U.S. Military. For example, the McLeane’s Rangers are a U.S. Marine Corps unit, yet the term “Rangers” is strictly a U.S. Army designation. For readers capable of suspending their disbelief and embracing some fictional escapism, there’s a lot to enjoy in Jahn’s version of WW2.
For his part, Jahn is learning a lesson about the enduring legacy of Men’s Adventure Fiction of the era. “You know, there’s something going on that I never expected,” he said. “Despite my Edgar Award and the 10 Bill Donovan Mysteries, all of which were critically well recieved, what I’m being remembered for is the 70s and 80s paperbacks. There’s a whole thing about the Six Million Dollar Man. My 1982 space shoot-em-up book ‘Armada,’ which in my opinion was ripped off by the film ‘Independence Day,’ was nearly made into its own film a few years back. I’ve also been asked about Nick Carter. And now you’re asking about McLeane. This is fascinating to me.”
The second 'Casca' novel finds the Eternal Warrior slipping out of the Roman Empire into the Barbarian lands, then north to the realm of the Vikings. Ultimately becoming a leader, he and his men sail across the Atlantic. Casca thus discovers America, but the book barely touches on this before the warriors continue south to what is now Mexico, where they become involved with the people there at the time of the Olmec civilization.
I thought this was a very solid book, but it was lacking a certain something. Maybe I’m just too Eurocentric to get a charge out of ancient Mexico (and two-thirds of the book is spent there), but there was also a lull of fifty pages or so in which Casca gets accustomed to his new home and nothing much happens until the climactic battle that closes out the story. In any case, second-tier Casca is still better than the average action-adventure novel, and this will be worth reading again, but it would have benefited from some tighter editing.
'Apache' was a gritty 1970s western series created by the U.K.'s Piccadilly Cowboy group. Mainly, the series was written by Terry Harknett and Laurence James, with both authors alternating entries. Later, Harknett departed and John Harvey took over his place. Overall, there were 27 novels total and all credited to house name William M. James. “Knife in the Night” was released by Pinnacle in 1974, penned by Laurence James, and appealed to fans of the more modern violent westerns like 'Edge'. It's packed to the gills with brutality, rape and bloodshed, yet none of it is over utilized to be a hindrance to the story.
“Knife in the Night” picks right up with the closing of the series debut, “The First Death”. Our hero, Cuchillo, has fled from Fort Davidson after his wife and baby are killed by the US Army, led by the despicable Captain Pinner. Those events were prefaced by Cuchillo being accused of stealing an ornamental dagger from Pinner. After torturing Cuchillo and removing some fingers, the violence escalated with more attacks and the fiery finale that found Pinner and the group repelling and killing the Apache raid and leaving Cuchillo on the run at the Arizona and Mexican border.
Cuchillo watches helplessly as a Mexican raiding party wipes out most of Fort Buchanan, leaving the women raped and killed and most of the soldiers dismembered and scalped. The Army will believe it was the Apaches that committed the atrocities, continuing the hunt and massacre of the few remaining braves that Cuchillo considers his tribe. In one atmospheric chapter, Cuchillo hunts and kills all 14 Mexicans on a rainy night in the mountains. This smooth, calculated effort is masterfully penned by Harknett, increasing the tension to the breaking point without committing to an onslaught. It's one of the best scenes I've read in a long time.
The remainder of the book has the Apaches raiding Fort Davidson (again) while Pinner is off buying steer. They systematically torture and kill (bordering on sadism) while Cuchillo attempts to free his life-long friend, white man John Hedges. The book sets up another confrontation between Cuchillo and Pinner, but in an effort to continue the series mythos, it will need to spill over into the next book (and maybe the next 24?). Overall, another quality U.K. western from those talented Piccadilly Cowboys. Next is “Duel to the Death”.
Before he was “King of the Paperbacks,” Harry Whittington worked as a copywriter in his home state of Florida (home of Paperback Warrior Headquarters). In 1943, he sold his first short story followed by his first novel, a western titled “Vengeance Valley,” in 1946. It wasn’t until 1950 that his first contemporary novel, “Slay Ride For A Lady” was published, kicking off a crime (fiction) spree that lasted decades and made him a favorite among fans of the genre, even if it inexplicably failed to make him a household name.
“Slay Ride For A Lady” begins in Honolulu where an ex-cop with a checkered past named Dan Henderson has successfully tracked down estranged wife Connice Nelson and her baby on behalf of her powerful mobster husband back in Tampa. Henderson is a fun narrator to take us on this ride as he is appropriately cynical about life. After Connice tells Henderson that he’s a nice guy, he explains, “I hate God’s world, and everybody in it.” Henderson has a great backstory that Whittington gives us piecemeal throughout the paperback.
Whittington was age 35 when this paperback was first published, and you can tell that he had a deep reservoir of cool ideas, scenes, and lines to draw upon for his inaugural crime novel, but it never really comes together as a compelling and readable novel. The plot is nothing revelatory: falsely accused of murder, Henderson needs to clear his own name and seek revenge on the man who framed him. With Whittington, it’s the execution that matters, and he has the raw makings of a master storyteller even at this early stage in his career. Had he written his novel in 1957, it would have likely been much better.
Is this one of Whittington’s best novels? Not by a long shot. You won’t necessarily feel cheated, but your time is better spent reading his 1959 masterpiece, “A Ticket to Hell.”
Jerry Ahern penned a number of action-adventure series' including 'Track', 'Takers' and the post-apocalyptic 'The Survivalist' run. 'The Defender' ran 12 volumes from 1982-1990. Some readers had complained about a right-wing bias in this debut, “The Battle Begins”, so I was looking for one but never really found it. I had no problem with the premise of this book (the co-hero is a black guy, by the way), since heavily-armed vigilante crime-fighting is pretty much what men's action-adventure fiction is all about.
In this one, Soviet agents use American street gangs to slowly strangle lawful authority in America, gradually taking over the country with shock massacres and terrorist attacks. Military veterans and other law-and-order devotees band together to resist, even though the law sees them as armed criminals who are just as dangerous as the terrorists! There’s plenty of dramatic potential here, but somehow it never really worked for me (although the book does conclude with a pretty good action sequence, a counter-attack at a nuclear reactor). It’s not the fault of the plot or the characters. I’m not sure Ahern’s style is well-suited for what should be a breathless, fast-paced action tale. Maybe he’s just laying a lot of ground work for future installments of this saga. I hope so. The book isn’t bad. But I wasn’t as engaged in it as I wanted to be.
Fresh off destroying New York's Gambella family, Mack Bolan heads to the mid-west for The Executioner #08: Chicago Wipe-Out. Pendleton could have titled this “Chicago Whiteout” with all of the action blanketed in a heavy snowstorm that's paralyzing the city. With the usual blend of mobsters, cold steel and a beauty on the run, the author creates another stellar entry in what has become the defining series of the vigilante genre.
The novel's prologue wisely outlines the prior seven novels with one paragraph dedicated to each book. This was a pleasant surprise that showcases Pendleton's vision of the character and Bolan's experience in the fight. The cosmically poetic closing lines of the prologue sets the tone for Chicago:
“It's going to be a wipe-out...them or me. I have lost the ability to judge the value of all this. But I'm convinced that it matters, somewhere, which side wins. It matters to the universe. I consign my fate to the needs of the universe.”
The opening chapter is a violent exercise as Bolan sets up shop near a large house owned and operated by the Mob. As each bolt rams home the Weatherby .460, Pendleton is sure to describe the end result. One by one the bullets penetrate the Mafia's defenses before Bolan is forced to crawl from the house and move to face to face action with a Beretta. This is an intense, exhilarating opening chapter that finds Bolan rescuing the evening's entertainment, a young and beautiful girl named Jimi. The hunt is on for a safe spot to place her, but first there's an obligatory shower scene where Jimi thanks Bolan for the save.
One of the best scenes of the first eight books is here, with Bolan and Jimi surrounded by thick snow and the Mob's gunners outside their motel room. Bolan provides quick instructions for Jimi and the two quietly creep through the darkness to escape. The action is from Jimi's point of view, blinded by darkness and fear while she hears Bolan's suppressed shots in the night. As the bodies fall, the two flee to a nearby attorney named Leopold Stein. Stein has been put out of business by crooked Chicago politicians and Mob heads despite his outpouring of testimony and evidence citing the Mob's influence on the city. Bolan deposits Jimi here as he prepares for the final battle with Chi-Town's evil.
While the first half was all-out war, built on an incredible pace and the proverbial “all-guns-blazing”, the second half is a cat-and-mouse effort penned perfectly. Bolan dons a disguise and cleverly walks into the lion's den. Once he sets the Mob and police against each other, it's a race to the finish with Bolan's firepower in the front seat of the Warwagon.
This is an effective, well-written finale that finds Bolan finishing his mission while still moving the chess pieces for his own gain. While not as fulfilling as the book's opening half, the finale left nothing on the table in its annihilation principles. This is seriously one of the best books of the genre and is just another testimony to Don Pendleton's staggering talent. This one is a mandatory read.
Buy a copy of this book HERE
The Travis McGee series defined John D. MacDonald as a master of the crime and mystery genre, but he wrote a ton of excellent stand-alone novels as well. His 1958 Fawcett Gold Medal paperback original mystery, “Deadly Welcome”, is among his best.
The book follows U.S. State Department special operative Alex Doyle who is pulled away from an overseas assignment and loaned to the Pentagon for a special mission involving a talented military scientist on medical retirement in Ramona Beach, Florida. The Pentagon wants to get the scientist back to Washington, so he can return to the weapons science game. However, the scientist isn’t inclined to leave his beachfront bungalow where his is mourning the loss of his recently murdered wife, Jenna. Alex is asked to use his manipulative people skills to convince the scientist to leave Florida when others have tried and recently failed.
Alex is uniquely qualified for this assignment because he was born and raised in the redneck, dead-end town of Ramona. The hope is that if Alex can solve Jenna’s murder, the scientist will snap out of his depression and get back to work. For his part, Alex has a complicated relationship with the town of Ramona and the deceased Jenna. Alex’s family was swamp trash, and he left in a cloud of scandal that still haunts him. The idea of going back to the land of his painful childhood is too awful for Alex to contemplate.
As you may have guessed, the Pentagon isn’t concerned with Alex’s psychic scars from 15 years ago, and he’s ordered to Florida to do his job. Upon arrival, he finds the gossipy pettiness and police corruption of the small town working against him every step of the way as he tries to uncover the truth about Jenna’s death as a lever to coax the scientist out of his stupor. Alex treats this as a quasi-undercover assignment where he is playing the role of a less-accomplished version of himself.
MacDonald’s work is always a notch higher on the literary writing scale than most of his paperback original contemporaries, and “Deadly Welcome” is no exception. There are many poignant passages of excellent introspection about the strong emotions that go along with returning to one’s hometown years after maturity has done its job. It’s refreshing to find an exciting mystery novel with so much to say about the human condition.
There’s violence and intrigue and romance and humor - everything you’ve come to expect from a JDM novel. There’s also a genuinely loathsome and violent villain that will have the reader invested in his comeuppance. The romantic interest is sufficiently lovable and the scenes of violence are bone-cracking good.
“Deadly Welcome” is an incredibly satisfying read and should be placed at the top of your JDM to-read stack. Highly recommended.
Walter B. Gibson's (as Maxwell Grant) “The Eyes of the Shadow”(1931) is the second of 'The Shadow' books and I guess my expectations were too high. It’s unnecessarily long for a pulp novel, there are too many characters, and Gibson’s tendency toward padding really made this one drag.
As with the earlier book, debut “The Living Shadow”, what we have is a routine old-timey mystery story which suddenly becomes dynamic and fascinating whenever the Shadow appears. It lurches back into tedium as soon as he’s gone, and his absences are frequent and lengthy. There are some interesting things here and there, though, including the first appearance of “Lamont Cranston,” laid up with a serious injury. One of the villains has an “ape-man” assistant whom I kept expecting would be revealed to be human, but he never was! The reader is left to wonder just what species this assistant belongs to.
The action climax is pretty good, with the Shadow’s long-suffering agent Harry Vincent nearly stretched to death on a medieval torture rack. But it’s a long slog to get there, and Gibson’s stodgy prose is a liability. It’s not an awful book, but it’s probably not worth reading again.
After reading Norman Winski's debut 'The Hitman' novel, “Chicago Deathwinds”, I decided this series wasn't worth a wooden nickel. So, like many completely disposable pieces of literature, I'm right back to Winski and 'The (S)Hitman' all over again. Why? I wish I had an answer for this and other perplexing questions like, “Daddy, what's wind really?” Sometimes, Paperback Warriors can't provide all of the answers.
“Nevada Nightmare” is the third and final book in the 1984 series 'The Hitman'. It's not to be confused with Kirby Carr's 1970s series of the same name. I assume poor sales for Pinnacle combined with the decline of the genre in the 80s lead to the killshot for our protagonist Dirk Spencer. While I critically dissected, bashed and wiped the filth from “Chicago Deathwinds”, in retrospect I'd have to ask myself if it was really that bad.
“Nevada Nightmare” is an improvement on the series debut, staying more in the pocket with action and plot instead of wasting pages and pages on guns, clothing and location. Winski jerks the curtain with a stage consisting of “Cult Leader Psychopath”, “Damsel in Distress” and “Dirk!” and writes the script with “bang goes cult member 1, 2, 3, etc.”. Look, I'm not buying 'The Hitman' for the photos. Like Ralph Hayes, Dan Schmidt, whoever is writing William W. Johnstone and Jerry Bruckheimer...I just want a lot of man-boom. It's here.
Book number two, “L.A. Massacre”, is still MIA from my libraries, but apparently it wasn't anything special. In “Nevada Nightmare”, Dirk reflects on the events of “Chicago Deathwinds” and says nothing about his excursion to Hollywood. Key characters from the series like Tad (Chicago Tribune journalist) and Valerie (reporter, moist hole) are featured in this installment set in the mountains of Nevada. A religious cult psycho named Zarathustra has rose to prominence, built a mountain fortress (called Shangri-la) and recruited 900 clergy men and women to follow his radical extremist footsteps. This lunatic uses cassette tapes to lure his people into trance-like states where he can deem them “Moonchild” before bedding them in his posh penthouse. Dirk gets involved when Zarathustra kidnaps his friend Tad and his daughter Melody. The mission: bang Valerie on autopilot above the Sierras, infiltrate the cult, rescue Tad and Melody, flea to to flea-market obscurity.
Oddly, pages 81-83 are step by step instructions on creating napalm. We become curious protegees while watching Dirk make a bomb with aluminum foil, a hairspray bottle and some soap flakes (and more ingredients that I won't provide here). Today's publishing world would never permit this bomb-making tutorial to make print (and probably report the author to authorities), but in 1984 I guess we were all just busy hoping the Cubs would get there. While Winski provides the step-by-step on something like this, I cringed reading, “The .357 Magnum spit 9mm slugs”. Amazing. Equally baffling is Dirk's ability to drive at high-speed on an icy road with a bimbo straddling the driver's seat because she just can't live without Dirk's junk.
At the end of the day, Dirk is The Hitman. The guy with all the money, tail and a three-book series dedicated to his “wetwork”.
Richard Prather built a career on his 'Shell Scott' character with around 35 novels spanning from 1950 to 1987. Countless short stories appeared in the pages of 'Manhunt' and 'Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine', and there was even a short-lived 'Shell Scott Mystery Magazine' that existed for a bit in the 1960s.
The 'Shell Scott' paperbacks have gone through multiple printings over the past half century with some beautiful cover art by Robert McGinnis as well as some weird photo covers featuring an odd-looking model in a silver wig. I’m told that the best 'Shell Scott' stories were the early ones published by Fawcett Gold Medal. Later editions either suffered from too much madcap comedy or injections of Prather’s own conservative politics into the stories. My informal polling - and an article by the late Ed Gorman - told me that 1955’s Shell Scott #9: “Strip For Murder” was among his best.
The setup in “Strip For Murder” is fairly proforma: After a young heiress impulsively marries a man she hardly knows, her wealthy mother hires Los Angeles private detective Shell Scott to investigative his background. Is this a case of true love or is the new husband a conniving gold digger? The danger of this assignment lies in the fact that Scott isn’t the first investigator on the case. His predecessor was found murdered on a rural road during the course of his investigation, so our hero also has at least one murder to solve along the way.
Scott is the stereotypical, wise-cracking, skirt-chasing private eye. He’s hard-boiled but funny.
Because this is a 'Shell Scott' novel, the action quickly moves to a nudist camp where Scott is called upon to go undercover as the naked fitness director. It should come as no surprise to the reader that every woman (or tomato, as he often calls them) at the camp is beautiful, luscious, and willing. Comedy set pieces throughout the book pad the paperback’s length without compromising the plot.
Other than some wacky situations, this is a pretty standard private eye novel. Scott follows logical leads, gets laid, and has his life repeatedly threatened as he gets closer to the truth. There are red herrings, bar brawls, and sunbathing contests adding to the fun, but the core mystery is nothing you haven’t seen before if you’ve ever read 'Milo March', 'Mike Shayne', or the works of Carter Brown. This genre is comfort food, and this execution of the craft in “Strip for Murder” was good reading - just don’t expect a masterpiece.
Writing good vigilante fiction isn’t just about telling an interesting story. The author has to make the reader identify with the vigilante. He also has to sell us on the need for vigilante action. Lee Goldberg understood those requirements when he wrote the second book in his .357 Vigilante series, “Make Them Pay”. And though he was still a college student at the time, he did a fine job with this.
In fact, I liked it better than the debut book, “.357 Vigilante”, which went overboard on superhuman action exploits in its final chapters. This time around, our hero is more down to Earth, a little more vulnerable, and prone to making a mistake now and then. In fact, he’s dangerously close to being mellow.
A kiddie porn racket is operating in Los Angeles, using kidnapped children who are put before the cameras, raped to death and then discarded around town. The mayor has so little faith in his own criminal justice system that he puts a discreet call out to “Mr. Jury,” the vigilante who took down a bunch of bad guys in the previous book. Our vigilante hero agrees to take on the case, and you pretty much know how things will go from there. But the journey is satisfying, partly because he’s also got to keep a sexy but suspicious reporter from finding out about his hobby. After all, even in the world of men’s action/adventure fiction, a vigilante can go to prison for killing low-life shitbags if he’s not careful.
As in the first book, “Make Them Pay” is dotted with welcome 1980s cultural references, and while there’s less suspense and general intensity than before, I appreciated its more relaxed tone. The emotional anguish of the first book is pretty much over with now.
For example, one day Mr. Jury is boinking his girlfriend (using chocolate ice cream as an innovative lubricant). The next day she gets obliterated in a car bomb, and three days later he’s boinking the sexy reporter. Whether this sort of thing is a step in the right or wrong direction is up to the reader. Personally, I didn’t mind. (Full disclosure: I read this while dealing with the flu, so I was glad for the lightweight approach.)
Eric Allen (Eric Allen-Ballard) wrote a number of westerns including a five book series entitled 'Whiskey Smith'. Some of the books list the author as Gene Tuttle, but this could have been a pseudonym used by Allen as he also wrote under the name Jonathan Busby. These 'Whiskey Smith' books were all released as part of the Ace western line between 1968 and 1979. Are they worth a wooden nickel? Based on my experience of “Rampage in Whiskey Smith”...absolutely not.
Whiskey Smith is a powder keg town sitting between westward Cherokee Nation and Arkansas. The general consensus is that anyone wanting to commit acts of atrocity can jump over to the opposite territory when fingers are pointed. Criminals, land barons, Indian killers and back shooters gravitate to Whiskey Smith like moths to a flame. US Marshals keep tabs on their side of the fence, hanging and jailing most of the hardmen. The Cherokee council keeps tight reins on their own territory, delving out regulation duties to guys like Breen Drager.
Drager is the chief protagonist, a dull character that is a half-breed. He's serving the Cherokee Nation as a property manager, carving out plots of land and providing it to settlers, farmers, ranchers and “good white folk”. The narrative explores Drager's feud with former best friend Hawk Folsom, an equally dull character that made a smooch and grab on Drager's fiance. Drager breaks off the friendship and evicts Folsom from his rental of Cherokee land. Folsom teams with another dull and lifeless character named Tucker Bowden, and the two harass and disrupt Drager's everyday routine. There's another love interest thrown in for Drager, but by that point no one cares. I hated this book and found myself lacking sympathy for the dying as I routinely checked page numbers every two-minutes.
Avoid at all costs. This is the poster child of "play it safe" fiction.
A Swell-Looking Babe was a mid-career paperback original from hard-boiled king Jim Thompson that was originally released in 1954 by Lion Books. It has a heist, a femme fatale, double-crosses, incest, rape, mobsters, cops, and it’s a bit of a mess.
Bill “Dusty” Rhodes is our wide-eyed and innocent hero who works as the overnight bellhop in the fancy, 400-room Manton Hotel. He dropped out of college to care for his infirmed father who suffered a breakdown after being accused of having communist sympathies during a local Red Scare. At the book’s beginning, Dusty is a blameless young saint of a man - a non-drinking, hard-working boy so handsome that the high-end, female hotel guests just can’t stop hitting on him. However, Dusty never takes the bait because it’s against the rules, and he’s the bellhop with the heart of gold.
The hotel is filled with colorful characters including an ex-mobster named Tug who plays a big-brother role in Dusty’s life and a night desk clerk with a mysterious past. Because The Manton caters to a high-end clientele who can afford the steep $15 per night room rate, they also have a secure safe deposit system in the lobby that every reader will immediately assume to be the target of an attempted heist later in the story.
The Swell-Looking Babe of the title is a new guest named Marcia whose mere presence at The Manton makes Dusty rethink his policy of rejecting the advances of the comely, female patrons. Things go rapidly sideways one night when Dusty goes to her room, and he needs to call upon the services of his resourceful ex-mobster friend to bail him out of a jam. This leads to a convoluted heist plot, which is the best part of this book.
Crime novels of this era usually forgo a lot of character development, but the author doesn’t skimp here. We get pages and pages of background and flashbacks that explain Dusty’s character, family, and upbringing. Because it’s a Jim Thompson book, this background is filled with dysfunction and twisted infrafamilial sexuality. We also are forced to endure the interminable side-plot involving Dusty’s father and the circumstances surrounding the alleged communist sympathies that lead to his unemployment. These flashbacks and side-plots slow down the novel considerably making the reader hungry to get back to the swell looking babe, the heist, and its twisty aftermath.
For his part, Thompson was probably excited to write a novel from the perspective of a hotel bellhop as he worked in that field himself as a teen. I can only imagine that by this point in his writing career, Jim Thompson wasn’t at the mercy of editors telling him to clean up his convoluted plots. There’s certainly a good crime novel in this short book, but you need to tune out a bunch of static to hear the noise. Read this one only if you’re a Jim Thompson completest. Otherwise, you can safely take a pass.
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Peter Brandvold's eponymous debut, “Rogue Lawman” was a very fine adult western. It’s not adult in the sense that there’s a sex scene every fifty pages (there isn’t). It’s adult in the sense that the characters are fleshed out enough to seem like real people rather than pulp archetypes. Much of the book’s action is prompted by a tragedy which is conveyed with a lot of depth and sensitivity. That’s a mark of fine writing, but the tragedy is *so* sad that the ensuing drama and action are somewhat less entertaining to read, although the trade-off is that I was rooting for the protagonist all the more.
I was hoping the title character would be sort of an Old West vigilante, and that’s essentially what I got. Pacing and plotting were very good, and the book ends pretty much the way I wanted it to. I visualized John Russell (of the early '60s show 'Lawman') in the leading role, and I think he fits. I’ve already begun buying up the other five books in this series. Sometimes all I want from a western is lightweight Jim Hatfield shoot-‘em-up pulp material, but when I do want a western with more meat on its bones, this will be the series to turn to.
At the close of Rich Rainey's series debut, “Venus Underground”, the reader was left wondering how Alex Dartanian and his team would continue. In that novel, ICE (Inner Court Executions) nailed a sex slavery ring involving Senator Barrington's daughter. In the final pages I assumed that The Protector would concentrate on hunting more of the slavers and possibly utilizing Barrington as a conductor in this symphony of destruction. The second book is titled “The Porn Tapes” (1983) and from the surface it looks like a continuation of the debut's rather effective, albeit disturbing, content. While equally as good (if not totally surpassing) “Venus Underground”, the concept behind “The Porn Tapes” isn't what I had in mind. Instead we have a porn star being hunted by a criminal preacher. Huh?
Just like the prior entry, Rich Rainey absolutely excels in this team-based violence extravaganza. Similar to stellar heavyweights like Stephen Mertz, Len Levinson and Dan Schmidt, Rainey incorporates multiple members of ICE into a supreme fighting force. While team-based concepts are a dime a dozen, these authors orchestrate the violence on multiple levels, carving out meaty slabs of destructiveness to match the various traits and characteristics of the team's members. It works well for 'The Protector', enhancing this crime novel and making it an enjoyable genre read.
In surprising fashion, the novel opens with Dartanian taking on a hired gun assignment. The mission? Protect a high-profile porn actress named Melonie Grand from killers. This is a different direction from what I envisioned, but nevertheless it is a neatly trimmed opening for a somewhat elementary plot. But, things prove to be a bit more complex for Dartanian and his ICE mainstays Sin Simara, Val Wagner and Mick Porter.
As the mystery thickens on who is attempting to snuff Grand, other porn stars are getting murdered. The first half delivery is like a good hard-boiled mystery with Dartanian trying to figure it all out. The reader doesn't know who the killer is until the second half, although it's somewhat mentioned in the book's synopsis splashed across the back cover. Reverend Luke Revere is a religious hack preying on the praying, designing a multi-million dollar empire built on sex, drugs and lies. It's clear that the author finds the reality of this industry appalling and holds nothing back. Revere made an early skin flick with Grand and the movie is about to be re-issued due to Grand's new super-stardom. Revere wants to kill her and the movie distributors.
While all of this is more entertaining than it ever has the right to be, the author incorporates a lot of information about the porn industry of the 70s and early 80s. In some ways I couldn't help but place Grand in the same scenario as Traci Lords, young, exploited but going straight without porn's backing. It's a gripping and intriguing portrait of smut, laced with sex throughout it's 200-pages and brimming over with action and mystery. Dartanian is written well while never being too cavalier or overly admirable (these guys admit enjoyment watching live sex scenes and reviewing the details of porn videos). They exhibit normalcy while stalking the bad guys. There's a little gun porn among the porn, some hard-boiled staging and a high-octane firefight for the finish.
Next up is “Hit Parade”. I'm marching to it.
Author Wade Miller was the pen name for the writing partnership of Robert Wade and H. Bill Miller, who collaborated on over 30 novels, also writing under the name Whit Masterson. “Kitten with a Whip” was their 1959 novel that was packaged as a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback designed to titillate male readers. “She had a child’s mind in a lush woman’s body and she reached for evil with both hands,” the blurb promises. This must be the hottest S&M crime book of all times, right?
Not really, but it’s a decent suspense novel in the Gold Medal tradition. Our protagonist is paunchy, 33 year-old, San Diego suburbanite David Patton. As the book opens, he is giddy with excitement at the possibilities of the adventures that await him while his wife and daughter are out of town on a trip. He knows in reality that a weekend home alone is usually just a lonelier version of a weekend with the family, but a working man is entitled to dream.
His dream of an adventure begins to take focus when he awakens to find a hot 17 year-old chick wearing a nightgown prowling inside his house. We quickly learn that her name is Jody, and she is a runaway from the local girl’s reformatory who broke into David’s place looking for a change of clothes and somewhere to sleep. Instead of turning the young, sexy fugitive into the authorities, David decides to show her some hospitality. The central tension of the book’s opening act is David playing chicken with his desire to have sex with this troubled teen.
The interpersonal dynamic between these two characters - the suburban shlub and the manipulative sex kitten - provides the novel’s central tension, and their relationship evolves over the course of the weekend as David ties his life into knots to avoid his neighbors and family from finding out about his uninvited guest. The psychological manipulation of one character over the other makes for some compelling suspense along the way, and watching David thread the needle on a volatile and delicate situation keeps the pages turning despite minimal action in the story until the explosively violent conclusion.
The authors play with two central ideas: fear of women and fear of adolescents. The premise is that neither group are entirely rational and that one’s use of logic and reason is an inadequate response to their innate impulsiveness. These aren’t themes that would play as well in today’s world, but they make for a satisfying glimpse into the mindset of 1950s America in this compelling novel.
“Kitten with a Whip” was adapted into a cheesy 1964 film starring John Forsythe and Ann Margaret. However, a more fun way to to enjoy the film would be the comedic Mystery Science Theater 3000 edit which, as of this writing, is available free on You Tube. In any case, read the book first. Stark House has reprinted it as a double packaged with Miller’s 1966 novel “Kiss Her Goodbye.” Recommended.
In 1972, Chet Cunningham was a young, struggling novelist collecting a pile of unwanted rejection slips. Hearing that westerns paid less than other genres, he figured there would be less competition in that field, so he began writing a western. He saw there were quite a few paperback series built around a particular character, so he conceived a hero who could go from one adventure to the next.
He sent the finished novel around, and got an acceptance letter from Pinnacle: “While this is not the best western I’ve ever read, we have decided to publish it.” “Gold Wagon” did get published that year, a story about a fortune in gold which may or may not be hidden in the wreckage of an old convoy of wagons. I’d have to agree that it’s not a world-beater. But it does have some excellent sequences, and I liked it overall.
The best thing about it is its hero, Jim Steel. Originally conceived as a secret agent out west, he’s actually more of an independent operator who goes around looking for lost or hidden caches of gold. He hops from one side of the law to the other, but for the most part he’s a reasonably good guy who just really loves gold, sort of a James Garner character with a relaxed charm and a fast draw.
Oddly, the Jim Steel series only ran for six books, published irregularly over a span of nine years. Yet they were successful enough to be reprinted; I’ve had three different editions of “Gold Wagon”, each under different imprints. Originally published under Cunningham’s name, at least a couple of the novels were also re-issued under the name Jess Cody.
Luckily for me, the first 'Jim Steel' I read was the outstanding ”Bloody Gold”, third in the series and first published in 1975. A highly suspenseful search for a fabled wall of pure gold, located somewhere deep in the homeland of extremely hostile Chiricahua Apaches, it’s a rollicking adventure story worthy of 'Indiana Jones'. I loved it.
“Bloody Gold” set the bar pretty high, and unfortunately the fifth book, “Gold Train” (1981) doesn’t quite get there. A mine owner hires Jim to protect a delivery of 152 gold bars from California to the U.S. Mint in Denver. You might be wondering why he’s hiring the gold-hungry Jim Steel of all people, but this time around Jim is more reformer than rogue. Besides, the paycheck is pretty good and he’s got his eye on the mine owner’s daughter, who’s headstrong enough to accompany him on the dangerous mission whether he likes it or not.
Inevitably, ambitious crooks will try to grab all that gold, even if it means destroying the train it’s traveling on. What follows is one peril after another, each on a bigger scale than the last. This was a satisfying story, but I think it would have played even better as an action movie than as a novel. There was just something lacking. A more colorful master villain, maybe? Better dialogue? I don’t know. These factors kept this good story from being a great one. Even so, I wish there were a lot more of these 'Jim Steel' adventures left to discover.
Author Rich Rainey contributed to Mack's universe, penning three Super Bolans and nine 'The Executioner' titles through the 90s and 00s. Before those, he created a six-book series entitled 'The Protector'. It was released between 1982-1985 through the action oriented Pinnacle line. The idea was rather clever. Alex Dartanian, The Protector, is an ex-CIA agent that creates a “clearing house” called DSS (Dartanian Security Services). This agency allows over one-hundred government operatives to conduct private excursions and affairs outside of their normal government roles. He gives them an operation front and they provide him much-needed intel on his own missions, which are all conducted under a team called ICE (Inner Court Executions). All of this is conveniently outlined on the first book's second page, and kudos to Rainey for quickly explaining the idea behind the series. The plausibility of all this is just bonkers, but it allows our paperback hero the ability to hunt criminals and save humanity. That's the goods.
The series debut, “Venus Underground”, has a four-man team of sex-slavers kidnapping a young girl named Cindy Brooks. Led by the completely competent main man Jerry, the foursome make the cabbage by peddling wholesale butt to wealthy sickos who either utilize the girls for their own entertainment or re-sell them for profit. Cindy is snatched, but later they realize that the girl was using Brooks as her last name to disguise the fact she is a senator's daughter – Cindy Barrington. The four sell her to a vile creep named Storm in the Catskill Mountains. Soon, a ransom call is made to Senator Barrington who then contacts our guy Alex “The Protector” Dartanian. Ready. Set. Go!
I like the way Rainey writes. He's the meat and potatoes writer that I typically rave about (Dan Schmidt, Ralph Hayes) and his pacing is Formula-1. By page 30 we have the complete plot (rescue the girl!), who The Protector is and what his ICE team actually does. Further more, we get two characters that Alex chooses for the mission (it reminds me of that 80s cartoon M.A.S.K where they pick the characters best suited for the mission). Alex chooses the strongman of the team, Mick Porter, and a Japanese martial artist named Sin Simara. Make no bones about it, this trio of bad-asses rivals even Mark Stone and his MIA Hunters. Whether this is always the same trio remains to be seen, but the book introduces about a half-dozen members of ICE in an all-guns-blazing assault on a Montreal stronghold.
“Venus Underground” is an invigorating genre entry that is fast-paced, gritty and provides just enough curiosity to warrant an additional look at the series. The final pages suggest that this series will remain firmly in the “stop sex-slavers” theme and the second book is entitled “The Porn Tapes”. Whether the team remains its own independent agency will be a question as readers journey further into the series. I'm theorizing that this Senator Barrington may commission the team to pursue the sex ring based on his personal vendetta. Regardless of direction, “Venus Underground” is a rock-solid debut for what looks to be a promising short-lived series. Cheers to artist George Wilson's cover art. He's best known for his "jungle art" with titles like 'Turok: Dinosaur Hunter' and 'Tarzan'.
Five people with complex and intertwined sexual histories find themselves forced together in a New York apartment for several hours before a Sunday sunrise. The catch: one of them just escaped from an insane asylum and is bent on murderous revenge.
That’s the setup for Richard Matheson’s second novel, “Fury on Sunday” (1953). This was released long before Hollywood made Matheson famous by adapting novels such as “The Incredible Shrinking Man” and “I Am Legend” for the screen. At the time, Matheson was cranking out noir crime stories and honing his craft as a novelist. “Fury on Sunday” began its life as a Lion Books release, but has been reprinted and compiled in various formats over the past 65 years. You should have no trouble finding an affordable copy.
In the novel’s opening we meet former classical piano prodigy Vincent Radin as he’s locked up in an insane asylum following a murderous rampage. He is plotting his escape because he has a score to settle on the outside. The escape sequence is well-told and bodes well for an exciting ride.
Vincent’s obsession involves a happily married couple named Bob and Ruth, who are expecting their first child. We quickly learn that Ruth and Vincent used to be an item, and Vincent isn’t thrilled with the fact that she’s now with Bob. As such, Bob is a marked man if Vincent ever sees the light of day - or dark of night - again as a free man.
The other two pieces of this love pentagon are Stan and Jane, who are close friends with Bob and Ruth. They also knew Vincent before he went into the loony bin. Conveniently, Jane is a nymphomaniac, a disorder that apparently was rather common in 1950s men’s fiction and has been eradicated like polio over the past half-century. Were there telethons? I’m too young to remember.
Despite the fact that there are murders, suspense, and a lovesick lunatic with a gun, “Fury on Sunday” is essentially a relationship drama involving five characters that unfolds over a four hour period. The backgrounds and histories of this group of current and ex-lovers are told through flashbacks as the third-person perspectives change with each chapter.
“Fury on Sunday” has some decent violence, and the short novel never failed to hold my attention. However, it’s not Matheson’s best work, and there are certainly better ways for you to kill a few hours with a paperback. You can safely skip this one unless you are trying to be a Richard Matheson completist or planning an escape from an asylum.
A feature on Richard Matheson aired on the seventh episode of the Paperback Warrior Podcast: Link
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Writing as Jess Cody, Chet Cunningham's series debut, "Gold Wagon" (1972) has Jim Steel searching the back trails of Arizona for a disguised Army wagon loaded with a fortune in gold. This first novel in the series isn’t a bad book at all, but it isn’t nearly as good as the third book, "Bloody Gold", so I was still a bit disappointed. The plot is a little skimpy, so Cunningham throws in a lot of red herrings and sends Steel scurrying hither and yon to pad out the length. The first and final few chapters are quite strong, though, and the book always held my interest. While it isn’t an “adult western” in the steamy tradition of 'Longarm' and friends, it’s still got a modern flavor, with a reasonably likable anti-hero who spends the entire novel doing his best to steal a lot of gold from the government. It’s worth reading again, but there are plenty of better books out there.
A superb Luis Dominguez wrap-around cover and the promise of an exciting gold-hunting story prompted me to start reading Chet Cunningham's third 'Jim Steel' novel “Bloody Gold” almost as soon as the mailman delivered it.
Jim Steel isn’t much different from the typical western series hero, except that he’s in the business of hunting for gold (which explains why the word “gold” is in the title of every novel in this series). This is a terrific, suspenseful tale about infiltrating Chiricahua country in search of a fabled wall of pure gold, and along the way Steel tries to find a young woman who’s been recently kidnapped by the Indians. Every time I thought I knew what was about to happen, I was completely and happily wrong.
There are a couple of standout sequences, one involving a character being tortured and killed by the Indians, and the other being the book’s climax in which Jim Steel himself faces a seemingly certain death. There’s a great deal of material about Steel’s wariness and stealth as he slowly penetrates Chiricahua territory, and that creates an atmosphere of dread, although it occasionally drags the pacing just a tad. That’s a minor quibble, though. Considering how obscure the series is, this is a surprisingly excellent western, well worth reading again.
Dan Schmidt's eponymous series debut introduced us to the bike riding, resilient bounty hunter Jesse Heller. His plight mirrors that of a hundred paperback heroes of the 70s and 80s – avenging the death of a family by vile henchmen. In this case, Heller was two weeks from leaving Vietnam when his family was murdered in the California mountains. Acquiring guns, a 1200cc Harley and a thirst for vengeance, Heller now travels the barren southwest hunting the killers.
Fresh off of his explosive execution of the bikers in Satan's Avengers, Heller is biking through the Davis Mountains in a rural stretch of California desert. It's there that he stumbles on a hitch-hiking beauty named Lisa Stevens. Lisa is on the run from a biker gang called The Sinners (although the book's back cover synopsis says Grim Reapers) after witnessing her husband, a higher member in the gang, murder college kids over bad cocaine. It seems like a super stretch that Heller just happens to run across this girl, who can now connect him to another criminal biker gang to fight. Oddly, this club and its members had nothing to do with the murder of Heller's family, but our protagonist answers the call to duty and vows to protect Lisa. Our plot seems so simple. But behold...the plot thickens.
In what can only be considered a cautionary warning shot, every single character in “Blood Run” is suffering from bouts of PTSD related to Vietnam. We have state troopers, county police, detectives and Heller himself reliving nightmarish scenes of their time in the bush. Early on it feels like an important addition to explain the bikers behavior. But, more and more of this PTSD is evident with every male. In fact, nearly every chapter begins with some sort of flashback experience where a major or minor character is mowing down Cong or narrowly avoiding some nighttime jungle assault. It's interesting, then becomes over-utilized to the point of being irritating. This whole mess could have been saved with some free help at the VA. However, as much as the bikers are running around doing vile things, they profess their love of country and countrymen and have the flag patches to prove it. How about paying taxes to fix the roads you roam? Or, joining society in a positive way? It's a catch-22 with the author playing off of the war to build these criminals, but paints vets in a compromising light.
While our hero is running away with Stevens, the Sinners are forging alliances with other bikers and bad cops to hunt and kill Heller. These bad cops take up a majority of the network, intermittently inserted between pages and pages of uninteresting biker dialogue. Thrown in for good measure are the two Texas detectives from the last book. They want Heller to clear the black marks on their career path. With all of these characters vying for ad space, Heller doesn't get much air time. When he does...it's nonstop gore.
Heller rides, shoots straight and speaks the truth. In violent episodes we see Heller racing bikers, sawing off helmets and heads with a shotgun while throwing dynamite over his shoulder. In an effective scene, Heller chainwhips the Hell out of a small band of bikers after they attempt to rape Stevens. As the book marches to a fiery finale, Heller begins to think of his life as a re-start, possibly incorporating a new wife in Stevens. In a shocking scene, all of that is blown to Hades and “Blood Run” seemingly just thrusts the hero into another fight by book's end. Here's where it gets perplexing.
“Blood Run” was published by Pinnacle in September of 1985. The last page of the book is a splash advertising, “Watch for The Guns of Hell, next in the Hell Rider series of books coming in December!” That leads me to believe the book was written and ready for release just 90 days after “Blood Run” hit shelves. Could it be possible that Schmidt hadn't written it, thus the series caved after only these two books? Or did he write the novel, and due to Pinnacle's financial ailing, the book and series was just scrapped? Regardless of the catalyst, “The Guns of Hell” never saw the light of day.
And with that tragedy, 'Hell Rider' comes to an incomplete end. It had enormous potential, and with Schmidt's “no bones about it” writing and pace, this series could have went into double-digits in a different environment. Sadly, “Blood Run” was Hell Rider's last run.
Between the years 1968 and 1978, Don Smith wrote 21 books in his 'Secret Mission' series for Award Books (the original publishing home of Nick Carter: Killmaster). These are espionage books narrated by an American international businessman named Phil Sherman. Phil isn’t a spy, but he occasionally takes freelance assignments for the CIA who enjoys his globetrotting day job as a ready-made cover.
“Secret Mission: North Korea” was released in 1970 as Assignment Number 8 in the series, and it’s the first one I’ve sampled. Other than Phil, the only other character you need to know is CIA supervisor Ross McCullough. Ross is the one who needs to hire, cajole, or blackmail Phil into taking these assignments at the beginning of each book. Their relationship is pretty hilarious because Phil is the ultimate reluctant spy. He never intended this to be his life’s work, and he’d be just as happy dealing with benign, international import-export deals.
In this case, Ross pretty much has Phil by the balls after Phil was peripherally involved in a Tokyo whorehouse brawl and finds himself in police custody on the eve of signing a large and profitable Japanese business deal. Ross magically appears at the interrogation room offering Phil a way out of his predicament by signing a temporary employment contract with the CIA.
The mission is a reprisal action to strike a blow at an increasingly hostile North Korean regime (Editor’s Note: This was 1970. The more things change...). The plan is for Phil to captain a large ship near North Korea in hopes that it will be seized by NoKo’s government. Phil and the crew are instructed to flee the ship right before the seizure takes place leaving the enemy with an abandoned boat secretly loaded with TNT. At port, the ship will explode destroying the pier and anyone nearby. Phil’s crew consists of seven ex-cons sprung from federal prison with the promise of a cash reward and a reduced sentence if they can make this work. Because Phil is in a tough spot himself, he accepts the gig.
The first third of the book involves roping Phil into this mission, meeting the crew of convicts chosen for the trip, and prepping the boat into a secret, floating bomb. There’s a great chapter where Phil and his boys hit a Japanese port-side bar looking for lady action, and our hero hooks up with a sexy, Japanese babe followed by some fully-realized sex scenes. Readers of a lot of classic spy fiction will find themselves asking if the girl is just a throw-away sex partner or is she somehow part of the intrigue?
Smith’s writing is smooth and easy to follow. He certainly understands Phil’s character by the time this economical 150-page paperback hit the shelves. However, his development of the secondary characters was pretty non-existent. Blame it on the economical writing style needed to keep the paperback thin and lean. However, my biggest ax to grind is with Award Books who spoils a key mid-novel plot development on the back cover description and the inside-the-front-cover teaser. This was a shameful marketing choice in a genre that relies on creative plot twists to keep the reader engaged. Ignore those spoilers if you can.
Once the boat sets sail, the paperback becomes a straightforward maritime and escape adventure - a cold-war clandestine mission on the water and under the watchful eye of a deadly enemy. Sherman’s confrontation with the North Koreans and the ultra-violent aftermath displays awesome adventure writing, and the book delivers plenty of action over the course of the final hundred pages. The story twists and turns in ways you’ll never expect with an abrupt but climactic ending. Fans of Donald Hamilton, Edward Aarons, and Ian Fleming will find a lot to enjoy here, and this mid-series entry-point will make you want to explore further into this largely forgotten series. Highly recommended.
Odd Postscript:
In 1959 - nearly a decade before Secret Mission #1 was released - it appears that Don Smith wrote a paperback called “Red Curtain” that was released under the pseudonym of Duncan Tyler. The novel featured a businessman named Phil Sherman thrust into a spy adventure. The answer to why Smith and Award Books decided to resurrect this obscure one-off character for a 21-Book series many years later is a mystery lost to the ages.
What if I told you that there was a four-book series that put many of the greatest Adult Western heroes into one universe working together to vanquish evil foes? Anybody interested in an Adult Western Avengers?
Imagine a world where the following stars teamed up, interacted with one another, killed bad guys and got laid in a series of interrelated novels:
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-Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long from the 'Longarm' series by Tabor Evans
-Jessie Starbuck and Ki from the 'Lone Star' series by Wesley Ellis
-The U.S. Cavalry soldiers from the 'Easy Company' series by John Wesley Howard
-Pinkerton agents 'Raider and Doc' from the series by J.D. Hardin
-Gunfighter John Fury from the 'Fury' series by Jim Austin
It’s true. It happened in four books published in serial form between the years 2006 and 2009, and we have Stan Lee wannabe James Reasoner to thank for the creation of this audacious literary project.
There’s no great roadmap anywhere explaining how to enjoy this historic confluence of horny violence, so let us be your guide.
You need to acquire the following novels all written by James Reasoner under the Tabor Evans house name. The reading order is important, so please pay attention as the books aren’t numbered on their covers:
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-Longarm Giant 25: Longarm and the Outlaw Empress” (2006)
-Longarm Giant 26: Longarm and the Golden Eagle Shoot-Out” (2007)
-Longarm Giant 27. Longarm and the Valley of Skulls” (2008)
-Longarm Giant 28: Longarm and the Lone Star Trackdown” (2009)
Also bear in mind that 'Longarm' Giants were different than the standard 400+ book 'Longarm' adult western series. They were released annually, and each novel clocked in at about 300 pages whereas a normal 'Longarm' usually ran 185 pages. The Giants allowed the authors to write longer - and sometimes more complex - stories while allowing Jove Books to charge more for an Adult Western series paperback.
Each of the books listed above stars Custis Long, and the action generally ping-pongs between chapters told from the perspectives of the other adult western heroes participating in the books’ adventures along with Longarm.
By way of background, it’s important to know a little bit about the 'Lone Star' series before embarking on this 1200 page, multi-novel odyssey. The continuing story thread of the 'Lone Star' books dealt with a shadowy European crime cartel who killed Jessie Starbuck’s father at the beginning of the series. Jessie and her King-Fu sidekick Ki have a bunch of mostly inessential adventures with bad guys being tangentially related to the cartel. Eventually, Jessie and Ki - with the help of Longarm - vanquish the cartel once and for all. But is the cartel really gone for good? As long as you understand the European cartel was bad and now is gone, you can now begin Longarm and the Outlaw Empress. The novels all do a nice job of reintroducing the co-stars, so you don’t need to be intimately familiar with every series to enjoy this one.
There were other team-ups in the history of Adult Westerns. 'Edge' and 'Steele' met and joined forces. “Gunsmith #300” saw Clint Adams teaming up with Longarm with a cameo from Slocum (Fun Fact: All three heroes got laid, just not with one another). I believe 'The Trailsman' met up with Canyon O’Grady in at least one paperback.
However, nothing in the Adult Western genre has ever been as ambitious as Reasoner’s project in these four 'Longarm' Giants. He did an amazing job with this story arc, and the books are individually and collectively fantastic. Seeing these characters interact with one another was a real pleasure and worth the investment of time and money to track these down. Highest recommendation.
“Guilty as charged,” he replied. “You’re the first to ever notice that they even existed.”
