So, I'm a Heel

Journalist, soldier, author, and baseball fanatic Arnold Hano wrote a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback titled So I’m a Heel that was published in 1957 under the pseudonym Mike Heller. The short crime novel has been compiled into a three-book volume of Hano’s work called 3 Steps to Hell published by Stark House.

Our narrator is a Southern California tow-truck driver named Ed Hawkins who suffered an injury to during WW2 resulting in an artificial plastic jaw holding his contorted face together. Somehow he landed a nice wife and a beautiful son despite his disfigured face. When Hawkins learns that a local big-shot lawyer with political connections was caught a few towns away molesting a high-schooler whose parents opted not to press charges, his mind turns to blackmail.

While contemplating the shakedown, Hawkins spends time rationalizing the morality of his actions. In doing so, he breaks down the fourth wall and challenges the reader’s own assumptions about right and wrong. It’s an interesting literary gambit employed by Hano, who’s an excellent conversational writer with a distinct literary voice.

As you might expect, Hawkins’ scheme meets some serious bumps in the road. The blackmail story was compelling, and I couldn’t figure out where it was going. Suffice to say, there’s a hot-to-trot dame involved and plenty of rather dark twists along the way. Be forewarned: The final act got rather weird and uncomfortable. I won’t give it away here, but I’m still trying to decide if the conclusion worked for me or not. There was also a local politics subplot that was hard to follow, but didn’t take up much space.

Overall, I enjoyed So, I’m a Heel. Hano is a solid author, and you’ll never be bored with his plotting. Despite some unusual turns, he wrote an effective story with a memorable lead character that’s certainly worth your time. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

The DaVinci Rose

Jim Henaghan (1919-1984) was a well-known columnist for The Hollywood Reporter with a reputation for bluntness and candor that often rustled the feathers of the showbiz industry’s establishment. He also worked as a rewrite man for Paramount and was an executive for John Wayne’s production company. Under the pseudonym of Archie O’Neill, he authored a five-book adventure series starring Jeff Pride that earned the admiration of Mickey Spillane. The first novel in the series was 1973’s The DaVinci Rose.

Jeff Pride is a former international private investigator turned travel agent (back when that was a thing) who bounces around the world with his sexy Asian-American secretary-sidekick Cherry. Cherry wants to get romantic with Jeff, but he thinks that would be unwise for a number of valid reasons that I’ll let Jeff explain to you when you read the book. Cherry’s flirtation with her boss is a running gag in the novel and presumably the series. In any case, she’s a perfect sidekick character for a novel like this.

As the paperback opens, Jeff is in his Israeli hotel room when he awakens to find the corpse of a guy in a suit lying on the ground next to his bed. An altercation in the room brings Israeli police into the picture. The cops take Jeff’s passport pending further investigation. For his part, Jeff figures that the situation arose from his heroic past rather than his benign current job as a travel consultant.

The killing, violence and skullduggery all concerns a missing art piece - a ceramic rose hand-crafted by Leonardo da Vinci. Dangerous people think that the dead guy in the hotel delivered it to Jeff who actually knows nothing about the damn thing. One thing leads to another and Jeff agrees to get back into the investigation game and find the ceramic rose.

I really enjoyed The DaVinci Rose primarily because Jeff Pride is such a great narrator. The action took the character all over Israel balancing a treasure hunt adventure with a hardboiled mystery. I’m looking forward to reading the next installment. Recommended.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Invasion from 2500

Norman Edwards was a pseudonym utilized by science-fiction authors Ted White and Terry Carr for their collaboration on a 125-page paperback titled Invasion from 2500 released in August 1964 by Monarch Books. The novel is also available as a $4 ebook under the authors’ own names. 

Invasion from 2500 takes place in contemporary 1964 America. While Korean War veteran Jack Eskridge is driving through the desolate rolling hills of South Dakota, the night sky illuminates with a flash. Jack witnesses the formation of an illuminated arch from which armored men and war machines begin emerging. The author’s description matches the paperback’s cover art by illustrator Ralph Brillhart perfectly. A good cover brings the author’s vision to life, and anything else is just generic packaging - a wrapper thrown on a product with no thought or care. In this case, the artist clearly read the book and understood his role. 

It doesn’t take long - only a couple pages - before this invading force of high-tech soldiers wearing gas masks functionally take over large U.S. cities while most Americans are cowering in their homes. The invaders’ airships spray a gas on populations to overcome resistance while Jack and a hitchhiker attempt to outrun the invaders.

The reality concerning the identity of the invading force is pretty much given away in the paperback’s title - a tactical mistake since their origin was a big second-half revelation. The oppressors from the future have some insidious plans for the good people of 1964 that I won’t give away here. Fortunately, an underground resistance similar to what arose in France during WW2 forms to oppose the invaders. If you’re into cool time-travel paradoxes, there’s more than a few in this short paperback. 

Overall, Invaders from 2500 is a simple, but very exciting, work of vintage fun. It’s a great gateway drug into the world of science fiction for readers approaching the genre from a background of action-adventure pulp fiction. With breakneck action from start to finish merged with cool time travel ideas, this old book is a real winner. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode Special #02

In this encore episode of the Paperback Warrior Podcast, we discuss how to build a vintage paperback collection without breaking the bank. Listen on your favorite podcast app or paperbackwarrior.com or download directly HERE: 

         

Listen to "Episode Special #02" on Spreaker.

One for the Road

Conventional wisdom says that the best books by former CIA operative and Watergate burglar Howard Hunt were the ones he wrote under the pseudonym Robert Dietrich. One for the Road is a 1954 stand-alone crime-noir novel that has been re-released by Cutting Edge in trade paperback and ebook formats.

One for the Road begins in the Florida gulf coast town of De Soto, populated by mosquitoes, sea turtles, and rich widows. The old dames are the draw for our narrator, a con-artist and Korean War vet named Larry Roberts, who grew up a poor orphan and has decided to spend his adult life remedying that by latching onto a rich sugar mama and then disappearing with her money. He meets a 40 year-old wealthy woman named Sophie with a smoking hot body and a decent face. Even better: her husband has been dead for a year.

So Larry is a bit of a heel and a misogynist. He’s also charming, clever, funny and unrepentant. You hate yourself for liking him as much as you do - especially when he’s conning money out of an otherwise nice and loving lady. Getting rich quick and dishonestly isn’t a noble pursuit, but it definitely makes for compelling reading. As the paperback progresses, a cool gambling subplot becomes a major source of tension and anxiety for both Larry and the reader before settling into a rather typical femme fatale story.

The coolest things about this thin paperback were the innovative story arcs and vivid settings. Larry covers a lot of ground in the novel, which basically weaves three separate plots into an overarching narrative. I read a lot of these books, and I had no idea where this one was heading. The plotting was just masterful.

Of the Howard Hunt books I’ve read, One for the Road is the best of the bunch by a country mile. There’s sex, violence, duplicity and intrigue. I’m thrilled to see this paperback has made a comeback for modern audiences. This is the vintage novel you deserve. Highly recommended. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

The Captive

Between 1969 and 1973, John J. Flannery (1934-1987) served as the Chief Secretary to Massachusetts Governor Francis W. Sargent. Before that, he quietly wrote erotic thrillers for Midwood Books under the pseudonym of John Turner including the kinky 1963 abduction thriller, The Captive.

The paperback doesn’t waste any time getting into the action. It’s Friday evening in Suburban Boston, and Josephine is abducted by a strange man with a gun in a restaurant parking lot. He forces himself into her car and tells her to drive home. We quickly learn that his name is Arthur Dawson, and he escaped from a New Hampshire prison two days earlier.

The dynamic between Josephine and Arthur is interesting. She’s more concerned about her reputation in the community than she is for her own safety. As such, her initial plan is to comply with her captor in hopes that he doesn’t harm her, gets a meal, and moves onward without her. Of course, it doesn’t work out that way.

Because it’s a Midwood book, there’s lots of sexual tension that arises between Josephine and Arthur. She’s a virgin with a big rack. He hasn’t been with a woman in nine years. You get the picture. Eventually, he takes her on the road to evade the cops, and a romantic interest develops. In fact, The Captive is more of a well-written romance than a violent thriller or a sex-drenched sleaze paperback.

The Captive was compelling, but there wasn’t much meat on the bones. It’s a quick read and never dull - just insubstantial. If you can find it cheap, you may like it, but certainly don’t spend too much on this lightweight distraction of a novel. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Corpus Earthling

Louis Charbonneau (1924-2017) was a highly-regarded author of horror, western, crime and science fiction with a knack for propulsive plotting and claustrophobic settings. My first exposure to his science fiction work is his 1960 novel, Corpus Earthling, which was adapted into an episode of The Outer Limits in 1963 starring Robert Culp. The novel has been reprinted by Oregon publisher Armchair Fiction.

Our narrator is UCLA college professor Paul Cameron, and he’s hearing voices in his head. He first assumes it’s a form of madness, but it sounds like his mind is somehow intercepting a transmission not intended for Paul’s inner ear. It’s nothing particularly coherent - mostly just sentence fragments and phrases without much context. However, things get scary for Paul when he overhears the voice in his head declare, “Someone is listening.” Is Paul the someone? If so, who is the speaker? The bits and pieces Paul catches over the next few weeks make it clear that whoever is speaking is desperate to find and eliminate Paul for listening to a conversation he was never intended to hear.

It’s the not-too-distant future, and America is gearing up for its second manned mission to Mars. Both cover art variations of the paperback give away that the Martians are the hostile menace that Paul is intercepting. Science fiction has always had a bias towards alien invasions using gleaming spaceships, but the author of Corpus Earthling has a different vision of hostile invaders - one arising from the tropes of demonic horror fiction - invasion through possession.

When Paul’s mind isn’t occupied by interstellar eavesdropping, it’s focused on his sexy new neighbor, Erika and his seductive student Laurie. For a guy trying to save the world from a Martian invasion, he spends a lot of time also trying to get laid. I’ve never been in his position, so I probably shouldn’t judge.

If you’re familiar with the story structure of a typical 1960 crime noir novel, you’ll feel right at home with Corpus Earthling. The paperback has mystery, melodrama, non-graphic sex, action, a femme fatale, a religious cult and a manipulative foe. It definitely draws from a pulp fiction tradition as opposed to the overly-smart SF epics of Robert Heinlein or Frank Herbert. Overall, the short paperback was a lot of fun to read, and further cemented Louis Charbonneau as one of my favorite new discoveries of 2020.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Adam Steele #05 - Gun Run

I've really enjoyed nearly everything I've read by British author Terry Harknett. His penchant for bloody, ultra-violent westerns can be found in long-running series titles including Edge, Apache and Adam Steele. I've been on a western kick lately with the Edge titles so I wanted to revisit Harknett's Adam Steele series. I thoroughly enjoyed the character's debut in Rebels and Assassins Die Hard from 1974. I randomly grabbed another series installment from my shelf and ended up with Gun Run, the fifth installment of the series.

The paperback begins with Steele riding shotgun on a stagecoach headed through the perilous Guadalupe Mountains. With a location between American Arizona, New Mexico and Mexican Sonora, the dusty trail is ripe with thieving bandits and savage Native Americans. Within the opening pages, the stagecoach is attacked by a woman and a band of gun-slinging outlaws. They've caught wind that a cache of money is hidden on the coach and want it all for themselves. Steele, who isn't aware the coach was carrying this vast fortune, is robbed along with the passengers, dragged into the desert and left to watch as the bandits ride off with the loot and his signature weapon, the lever-action rifle given to his father by Abraham Lincoln.

Like a blockbuster Hollywood action flick, nearly every chapter of this novel is another over-the-top, rip-roaring adventure with Steele holding his hat on tight while dodging bullets, knives and despicable killers. Determined to retrieve his rifle, Steele heads through the desert with a knife hoping to locate and ambush the gang. Along the way he's captured by Mexican guerrillas, fights Apache warriors, tangles with the Mexican Army before eventually finding himself jailed by a small-town sheriff hellbent on hanging our hero.

I can't help but think that each of these adventure segments in this narrative could have been entire books on their own. Harknett has so many ideas to explore and he seamlessly weaves them all together to make for one highly engrossing and entertaining story. Like his other literary work, the author pulls no punches or knife-thrusts. Gun Run is filled with men, and plenty of women, being tortured, gutted and shot in a rather macabre and grizzly style. No one does westerns quite like Harknett and this book is another exhibit of his crowd-pleasing roughshod style. Highly recommended!

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode Special #01

This week’s Paperback Warrior Podcast is a special episode without Tom and Eric! Instead, we turn the show over to our friend Paul Bishop of the Six-Gun Justice Podcast to tell you all about the vintage paperbacks of John Whitlatch. Thanks to Paul for keeping us rolling during our holiday hiatus. Listen on your favorite podcast app or PaperbackWarrior.com or download directly HERE

Listen to "Episode Special 01" on Spreaker.

Phoenix Force #01 - Argentine Deadline

In 1981, Don Pendleton's The Executioner was redefined by publisher Gold Eagle as a new series of international espionage thrillers. Mack Bolan's vigilante characteristics remained, but with the 39th installment, The New War, the series shifted to Bolan working as a government operative named John Phoenix. This seismic change in the series led to Gold Eagle introducing two new series in 1982 – Able Team and Phoenix Force. I tackled the debut Able Team book recently and wanted to give the same treatment to Phoenix Force. This time, I was hoping for a much more enjoyable reading experience.

Phoenix Force's debut novel, Argentine Deadline, was authored by science-fiction writer Robert Hoskins using the house-name tandem of Don Pendleton & Gar Wilson. The novel is the quintessential origin tale centered around Mack Bolan's recruitment of five super-soldiers:

David McCarter – British commando expert with a background as an SAS officer.

Gary Manning – Canadian explosives expert.

Rafael Encizo – Cuban-American expert with a penchant for underwater warfare.

Yakov “Katz” or “Yak” Katzenelenbogen – French-Israeli battle-scarred warrrior.

Kelo Ohara – Japanese martial arts expert.

The introductions to the characters is summarized in the narrative as a round-table first-time meeting with Bolan to discuss the team, long-term goals and the group's first mission. These five commandos are tasked with locating and liberating seven members of a joint peace-keeping think-tank. These men, and one woman, were invited to romantic Argentina by the country's over-taxed government. But instead of a warm welcome and an open exchange of ideas, the scholars are abducted by the terrorist group Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) and taken into captivity as bargaining chips in a robust ransom scheme.

What I really enjoyed about this series debut is the central idea that Phoenix Force is fully backed by the government and utilizes a number of weapons caches and military offshoots to accomplish their mission (or die trying). The book's main stars are McCarter and Manning, a fighting duo who does much of the heavy lifting throughout the narrative. Nearly all of the characters star in solo missions that incur heavy firefights in the quest for information. These solo missions are really effective in displaying each character's strengths combined with their background.

While I felt that the villains were a little weak (but much stronger than something like S-Com), the narrative and plot-points were a real pleasure to consume. Argentine Deadline is a far more superior series debut than Able Team's Tower of Terror, which was released in the same month. I'm sure I will have plenty to like and dislike about both series titles as I navigate further into the expansive Bolan universe. But with a firm opening foothold, Argentine Deadline is a solid step in the right direction.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

The Girl in the Trunk

Bruce Cassiday (1920-2005) wrote books in nearly every genre, but it’s his crime and mystery fiction that have stood the test of time and inspired reprints from modern publishers. Case in point: the Bold Venture Press re-release of his 1973 police procedural, The Girl in the Trunk.

The entire paperback takes place over about 12 hours in Honolulu, Hawaii. Jim Egan is a brutal but effective white Honolulu Police detective who’s always ready to bruise his knuckles on a mugger’s jaw. For Egan, it’s less about his professional duty and more about revenge. Years ago, his wife was raped and knifed in front of his house in Waikiki. Since then, the detective has never been the same and finds himself in a perpetual Dirty Harry mode.

Meanwhile, Ki Auna is a young and handsome undercover Hawaiian cop with a personal charm, high IQ, and ability to build rapport that makes him successful. He’s also terrified of the ocean, which presents a real life obstacle when you live on an island surrounded by the churning sea. When Egan and Ki are paired up to investigate a major embezzlement from a local import-export company, we find ourselves in a typical buddy-cop story where two opposite personalities work towards a logical solution with plenty of cultural tension in the mix.

At the paperback’s outset, an undersea earthquake in Chile triggers a set of tsunami waves working their way west across the Pacific Ocean headed for Hawaii (Reviewer Note: This happens frequently in real life. Most of the time, it’s a false alarm. In 1960, it was deadly). The killer tidal wave headed for Hawaii gives Cassiday the opportunity to ratchet up the tension with an impending doomsday scenario humming in the background among the police procedural stuff.

But what about the girl in the trunk? The cover promised a naked blonde corpse in the back of a sedan. What gives? Well, that happens as well, but it takes a few chapters for the financial crime caper to evolve into a dead naked lady story. Is the embezzler also a lady killer? Or is something more sinister afoot? It’s up to Egan and Ki to solve the crime and catch the bad guy before Oahu is washed away by a tidal wave.

The author throws a variety of subplots including one involving the chief of detectives whose daughter embraces the counter-culture of Hawaiian sovereignty and the hippie grifters fronting the movement. Meanwhile, Egan’s brutal treatment of Waikiki muggers is stirring up controversy with the local newspaper that the department doesn’t need. The ensemble cast assembled reminded me of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct meets Hawaii Five-O.

To his credit, Cassiday gets Honolulu culture and topography pretty accurate with all the right landmarks in all the right places. He also does a commendable job of profiling the mixed-plate of various ethnicities comprising Hawaii’s local populous. Honolulu’s real urban problems - muggings, poverty and racial unrest - were spot-on, and the paperback never falls into the trap of overplaying the focus on beach culture with cartoonish Hawaiian characters. Somehow, Cassiday grasped local culture with great accuracy.

A few years ago, I read and reviewed a 1957 Bruce Cassiday paperback called The Buried Motive that I felt was sub-par. I’m glad I gave the author another shot as The Girl in the Trunk is a far superior novel in every way. It’s a well-written murder mystery, police procedural, tropical island adventure, and disaster novel rolled into 189 pages. What’s not to like?

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Escape from Mindanao

Author Lawrence Cortesi (real name Lawrence Cerri) authored a number of war novels in the 1970s and 1980s. Based on his own military experience in WW2, most of Cortesi's novels are geared towards aerial and nautical campaigns in the South Pacific Theater. My only experience with the author was his 1979 paperback Rogue Sergeant. I wasn't impressed with it but felt the author deserved a second chance. That opportunity came when I acquired his 1978 paperback Escape from Mindanao.

The novel's action is set in 1942 in the highly contested Philippines. Historically, three years later the U.S. would commit to Operation Victor V to fully liberate the country from Japanese occupation. In the book's opening pages, the American battered 7th Bomb Group are packing up to fly out 200 airmen from the northern area of the country. Afterwards, they will destroy the runway and remaining supplies, so the enemy forces can't offensively utilize them.

Cortesi's narrative begins to unfold when the bombing is are just set to depart. Through radio chatter, they learn that 600 American and Philippines guerrilla fighters have somehow miraculously escaped from the heavily fortified northern country of Luzon (Manila) and are headed their way for reinforcements, supplies and much needed rest. Faced with an extreme decision, the group can't wait for the large force to arrive and they can't obtain aerial support large enough to recover 600 servicemen. Forced to abandon the group, they radio to the servicemen that if the soldiers can somehow make it another 100 miles to the southern coast, they will find gunships that can safely carry them to Australia.

Escape from Mindanao is only 190-pages but is epic in design and presentation. The book works from four different perspectives – the airmen forced to leave the advancing group, the ground forces that make up the 600 determined travelers, Japanese commanders and the wife of one of the guerrilla fighters. Together, the story is weaved together through these various segments. Cortesi's strength as an aerial and nautical storyteller helps to navigate what otherwise would be a rather complicated narration. The novel's various plot elements became a smooth, easily entertaining read.

Escape from Mindanao should be well received by military fiction fans but can also work as a stylish jungle adventure. It's dynamic, rather unique and action-soaked both on the ground and in the air. After the rather dull Rogue Sergeant experience, I'm glad I have found favor with Lawrence Cortesi. He has a robust body of work, and I'm now anxious to explore it further.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Gil Vine #04 - Alibi Baby

Between 1947 and 1960, Stewart Sterling (a pseudonym of Prentice Winchell) authored an eight-book series starring Manhattan hotel detective Gil Vine, the security man and troubleshooter at the high-end Plaza Royale. Since the series order doesn’t matter, I’m starting with the fourth installment, Alibi Baby from 1955.

The novel opens with Gil being summoned to a suite on the hotel’s expensive 32nd floor. The suite was rented by two twentysomething sisters. While one sister was out nightclubbing, the sister who stayed behind claims to have been sexually assaulted by a strange intruder in her hotel room. She provides Gil with a description of her rapist before she is sedated and taken to the hospital.

This presents a professional and ethical dilemma for Gil. He understands that rape is serious business, and the right thing to do is call the police. However, with no signs of forced entry, the hysterical girl’s story doesn’t make much sense. Moreover, Gil’s job is to protect the guests as well as the reputation of the Plaza Royale. Another wrinkle is that the girl’s description of the rapist matches the guest across the hall, a multi-millionaire French oil magnate. Inconveniently, the Frenchman is nowhere to be found when Gil knocks on his door.

The author provides fascinating insights into the hotel business and the legalities surrounding the hotel detective role. In fact, Sterling co-authored a non-fiction tell-all book about the career titled, I Was a House Detective. Without question, much of his research for that book worked its way into his Gil Vine novels. You learn about the hierarchy of hotel waiters with room service at the top and temporary banquet servers at the bottom. The hotel’s telephone switchboard operator is a nosy but fantastic source of information for Gil as he tries to get to the bottom of the alleged sexual assault.

Alibi Baby is a competent whodunnit mystery novel where nothing is as it initially seems. Gil Vine is an affable narrator, and it’s fun to have a guy working to solve a violent crime who is neither a private eye or a cop. The book has been reprinted on Kindle and Audible, and fans of intricate hardboiled mysteries will certainly enjoy this one. Recommended. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 71

It’s time for the Paperback Warrior Podcast Holiday Shopping Guide Episode! We discuss the dilemma of giving and receiving vintage paperbacks along with many suggestions to get you through the season.  Also: reviews of novels by Bruce Cassiday and George Gillman. Download on your favorite podcast app or paperbackwarrior.com or download directly HERE

Listen to "Episode 71: Holiday Buyer's Guide" on Spreaker.

The Hottest Fourth of July in the History of Hangtree County

I’ve always regarded Clifton Adams (1919-1971) as a hardboiled author who happened to set most of his novels in the historic American West. Western fiction practitioners like Louis L’Amour mastered the setting and adventure of the Old West, but Adams focused on the malfeasance and skullduggery of the inhabitants. Case in point: The Hottest Fourth of July in the History of Hangtree County from 1964.

The novel begins early in the morning of July 4, 1892 in the town of Elbow, Oklahoma with excited children lighting off firecrackers in the town’s wagon yard driving the townsfolk’s dogs bananas. Marshal Ott Gilman awakens to face the long, hot day ahead. Despite the heat and drought making life difficult for ranchers in booming Oklahoma territory, everyone is excited for a day and night of patriotic rowdy merriment following the afternoon parade. The territory has been growing faster than the municipality can handle, and it’s clear that one Marshal and an aging deputy aren’t enough to police the entire town swelling with drunken cowhands and ranchers.

Early in the day, two gun-toting hardcase brothers named Pete and Willy Prince ride into town in anticipation of the celebration. After menacing the town’s barber, the outlaws learn that their family’s old nemesis, Marshal Gilman, is the law in Elbow, and the brothers have an axe to grind. The dispute goes back a few years to Texas, and it has more to do with the older Prince brother, Nick. The younger brothers send word to Nick that they’ve located Marshal Gilman, and Nick is taking a train from Oklahoma City with another family member to settle the score. For his part, the Marshal seems determined to avoid an altercation with the Prince boys - a passive stance that can only last so long in a violent western paperback.

The backstory about why the Prince brothers are hell-bent on seeing Marshal Gilman dead by nightfall is a revealed little by little throughout the short novel. As the day gets hotter and the brothers get drunker, the violence - both threatened and real - reaches a boiling point. The steps the Marshal takes to ensure he’s not the one greeting July 5 in a pine box also serve to ratchet up the paperback’s tension to a wailing siren.

The arrival of the train carrying Nick and the violent confrontation thereafter are pure gold. The cast of vivid supporting characters is also top-notch. Overall, The Hottest Fourth of July in the History of Hangtree County is a perfect winner, if you like your westerns told through the prism of a hardboiled vendetta story. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

John Easy #01 - If Dying Was All

Pop-culture historian and multi-genre author Ron Goulart wrote four novels and three short stories starring a swinging Hollywood private eye named John Easy in the 1970s. Thanks to Mysterious Press, the novels remain in print today, so I’m starting the series with the first installment, If Dying Was All, from 1971.

An Oscar-winning screenwriter named Mr. McCleary hires Easy to solve a family mystery. The client’s daughter Jackie committed suicide by jumping into the Pacific Ocean five years ago, yet Mr. McCleary just received a letter from the girl. Fortunately for the plot, Jackie’s body was never recovered. In the letter, Jackie says she’s in trouble, but she can’t come into the open just yet. Jackie drops a lot of inside info, and the handwriting looks right. Convinced that his twentysomething daughter is alive and in trouble, the old man hires Easy to find Jackie.

Easy isn’t convinced Jackie is alive, but he follows logical leads - gossipy news clippings, the post-office, her friend-group, etc. This brings him in the orbit of many quirky California types, but Easy is himself is rather generic. In fact, he makes fictional detectives like Mike Shayne and Johnny Liddell seem downright charismatic in comparison. Instead of imbuing Easy with personality, Goulart chooses to make him a competent professional among scads of California stereotypes (“The classical string quartet at the cafe is nude!”).

Man, this was a by-the-numbers tedious and boring book. It’s possible that Goulart was trying to lampoon the private eye genre, but he forgot to actually make it funny. Characters do wacky California things like grab Easy’s crotch while he’s interviewing them, but these attempts at promiscuous edginess fell flat to me. The entire novel is just a series of interviews Easy conducts with witnesses and possible suspects who may have knowledge of Jackie’s death or disappearance. By the time we arrive at a solution to the central mystery, I was way past caring.

If any of this sounds like your thing, please just read any of the Carter Brown mysteries. He did the same thing so much better. If Dying Was All isn’t even bad enough to be noteworthy. The novel is blessedly short, so you won’t need to suffer through much tedium to reach the ending. Better idea: just skip it altogether.

Buy a copy of this book (if you must) HERE

This Crowded Earth

Although he is best known for horror fiction including Psycho, Robert Bloch (1917-1994) was a multi-genre talent with several crime, suspense and science fiction paperbacks as well. This Crowded Earth was a short novel from 1958 that originally appeared in Amazing Stories Magazine exploring the repercussions of rampant overpopulation in the dystopian future of 1997.

As a single man, Harry Collins is only allotted a one-room apartment in a smothering futuristic Chicago with a population of 38 million. Every sidewalk and elevator ride is a crushing mob of humanity. A simple commute to the office for a few miles is a two-hour ordeal. The overpopulation itself is caused by a lack of war and disease that has pushed human life expectancy well into the 90s. A public policy decision that economically rewards couples for having children as well as a lack of meaningful immigration restrictions further exacerbates the population explosion. Basically, everything sucks.

Bloch does a great job of world-building in the opening chapters while giving the reader the same sense of claustrophobia experienced by every character in the novel. A nervous breakdown lands Harry in a government sanitarium with plenty of living space, tons of green land and woodsy trails to stroll. There’s also a flirtatious nurse who seems to really dig our boy. It all seems too good to be true.

Harry’s bubble is burst when he is visited on the asylum grounds by a mysterious stranger who shares the truth about his current living situation. I’m not going to give it away here, but nothing at the facility is what it seems. Suffice it to say that Harry’s mental well-being is the last thing on anybody’s mind on the campus.

There’s a fantastically paranoid early-novel twist that leads to a larger public policy prescription that is both bonkers and offensive to modern sensibilities. The politically-incorrect “solution” to the overpopulation problem is so nuts that even if I spoiled it for you, you wouldn’t believe me. I wish Bloch were still alive, so I could ask him if he meant it to be funny. It’s certainly creative and audacious.

It’s clear that Bloch was a man of ideas, and boy-o-boy does he shoehorn a lot of ideas into this short novel. Many are harebrained, but others are interesting. The plot fascinated me, but there wasn’t a ton of action. If you’re looking for a science fiction shoot-em-up, this isn’t the story for you. I have no particular expertise in speculative fiction, but I genuinely enjoyed the heck out of this one. I’m glad that it remains available from paperback reprint publisher Armchair Fiction.

It’s interesting to read a science fiction novel from 60 years ago predicting how awful the world would be 20 years ago. We have our own unique problems today, but none are as dire as the fiction of This Crowded Earth, and that’s a relief. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Malay Woman

A.S. Fleischman (Avron Zalmon Fleischman, 1920-2010) was a notable children's book writer whose fiction concentrated on the art of magic. From 1948-1963, Fleischman also wrote crime-fiction for leading paperback publishers like Fawcett Gold Medal and Ace. I adored his 1963 novel The Venetian Blonde and was anxious to try one of his earlier books. Flieschman had a penchant for setting his adventure and crime-noir novels in exotic Asian locales so I decided to try the Far East novel Malay Woman originally published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1954.

The book begins in a Singapore airport and introduces Jock Hamilton, a once thriving rubber plantation manager who is desperately attempting to catch an outbound flight to Melbourne. In his first-person narration, Hamilton explains to readers that he's a fugitive wanted for allegedly killing his wife. Of course, he's innocent but his circle of friends and allies have shrunk since the killing. After the police begin searching the airport, Hamilton escapes onto the street and eventually sneaks onto a steamship headed to Malaysia. But Hamilton doesn't realize he's jumped from the pan into the fire.

The middle section of Fleischman's narrative is a captivating crime-noir set within the ship's sleeping quarters. After hiding in a closet to avoid detection, Hamilton overhears two hired killers planning a hit on a wealthy woman named Kay. As a fugitive from justice and an illegal passenger, Hamilton isn't clammoring to report the conversation to the authorities. Instead, he seeks out the woman named Kay to warn her of the killers. Eventually the action relocates to the hot steamy jungles of Malaysia, but I won't connect the narrative's beacon points for you.

Within the hotblooded femme fatale plot, Hamilton reunites with an old friend at a rubber plantation. The problem is that Jock Hamilton may have fallen in love with Kay but his friend's girlfriend Monique is begging for Hamilton's Jock. She blackmails him into a sexual affair by threatening to notify the authorities and Kay of his fugitive status. The entire third act could have written by Orrie Hitt or Gil Brewer.

While I didn't like Malay Woman nearly as much as The Venetian Blonde, it was still a memorable crime-noir laced with adventure and intrigue. Fleischman is such a skillful storyteller and his words just flow accross the pages so easily. I couldn't put the book down in hopes of learning Monique's motives and Hamilton's ultimate fate as the burdened hero. In three acts, Fleischman manages to weave a number of crime-fiction tropes into an enjoyable and enthralling read. Highly recommended.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 70

Paperback Warrior Episode 70 features an overview of the Richard Blade series of sexy sword-and-planet adventures. Also: Phoenix Force! Howard Hunt! Clark Howard! Gor! Lyle Kenyon Engel! And more!  Listen on your favorite podcast app or at paperbackwarrior.com or download directly HERE

Listen to "Episode 70: Richard Blade" on Spreaker.

Hunter's Blood

Tennessee native Jere Cunningham co-wrote a number of made for television movies including Judgment Night (1993) starring Donald Sutherland. Before his move to Hollywood, he authored a handful of suspense and horror novels. Cunningham's first book, Hunter's Blood, was published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1977. It was adapted into a low-budget film in 1986. I disliked the movie but was anxious to find a copy of the original paperback.

Mason, David, Al and Ralph live successful, lucrative lives in the posh suburbs of Memphis. Each year the four men journey to a rural area to hunt deer, reminisce about the good ol’ days and complain about women. This year, Al informs the group that he has recently purchased a secluded, dense stretch of Arkansas timberland. The massive 400-acre spread has been closed to the public for decades.

Before arriving at the dirt paths and trails that lead into the deep forest, the group stop by a trashy roadside bar where they have a fight over ugly women and cheap beer with the local rednecks. The fight eventually spills into the parking lot as the parties hop into vehicles and attempt to outrace one another. Oddly, once the hunters descend into the forest, the beer-swilling hicks hit the brakes and do a U-turn back to town. The city boys condemn the locals as yellow-striped cowards. Little do they know that the act of cowardice was actually stark-white fear.

After camping overnight by the fire, Mason and David wake up and begin trailing a whitetail deer through the foliage. It's here they discover a pile of animal heads and entrails scattered on the forest bed. A short while later, both men stumble into a makeshift camp where Neanderthal men and women are gutting animals and playing with bones and skulls. The shocking scene evolves into Mason fighting to survive and eventually disarming one of the men. This leads to a clash as the hunters are eventually attacked and “hunted” by these violent and strange forest-dwellers.

Cunningham's novel is clearly influenced by the 1972 blockbuster film Deliverance (there's even a comparison to it on the book's cover). I'd also speculate that the author watched Tobe Hooper's 1974 cult-classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well. The idea of primitive people living in the backwoods of America's most rural areas was a pop-culture trend that was highlighted by Wes Craven's 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes. Hunter's Blood isn't as extreme or horrific as either of Craven or Hooper's nightmarish imagery, but it's close.

The author's use of the dark forest as a backdrop elevates the intensity and suspense. While the Neanderthals aren't cannibals, they are terrifying as macabre, savage hunters that hack and slash through their victims. In the book's opening chapters, there's an enticing promise that somewhere in the forest lies an abandoned mining town. This addition to the narrative really hammers home the book's climactic finale.

While the book's early dialogue scenes and bar-brawl action was presented as crude and immature, the novel's second half was wildly entertaining. The chase scenes were riveting and each of them seemingly ended in some sort of brutal, bloody mayhem that was consistently rewarding and satisfying. The author never takes things too seriously and the end result is a fun, shocking and memorable reading experience. I'll probably read this crazy book again and again.

Buy a copy of this book HERE