TARZAN of the Big Little Books
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Altus Gallery: Fredrick Nebel's COMPLETE CASEBOOK OF CARDIGAN
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Encore FFB: DECOY by Cleve F. Adams (1941)
NOTE: I was tempted to blame this rerun post (from 2010) on last weekend's Willamette Writers Conference. It's true I'm still tired in body and brain and didn't read much this week, but the real truth is that I was planning on reviewing another book and chickened out. Not for my own sake, but for the author's. That other novel presented an unflattering portrait of a certain Middle Eastern Icon, and with all the crazy shit going on right now, it occurred to me that calling attention to it could be bad for the author's health. Ain't that a sorry state of affairs?
Decoy picks up shortly after the events in And Sudden Death, in which McBride foiled a pre-war plot by Japanese agents. Rex is throwing an extravagant party at a fancy hotel to spend some of dough he made on the previous job. That’s when his usual employers, the execs of an insurance company, come begging him to take on a new case.
Three commercial airliners have crashed (one burning with all passengers) and the insurance companies are taking it in the shorts. When a fourth plane vanishes completely, they come begging McBride to save them. McBride tells them to go to hell until he learns that another insurance investigator - a man he likes - has also gone missing. His takes the case to find out what happened to his friend.
Rex McBride is never quite comfortable in his skin. He wear expensive clothes and drinks good liquor (or any other kind), but never forgets his roots. He came from the gutter, and is more at home with cab drivers, bellhops, barflies and petty grifters than with folks in his own income bracket. He has nothing but contempt for the insurance execs and captains of industry who employ him. They're phonies who pretend to have clean hands, but hire McBride to do their dirty work for them.A stock element of Adams’ books is a temporary sidekick/drinking partner for the hero. In this one, that role goes to a down-on-his-luck pilot who’s lost his license to fly. He helps McBride in some tasks, but more often just helps him get into trouble. Every Adams novel also features at least one deadly dame who tries to cozy up to the detective, usually for nefarious purposes. Somehow, the hero’s inamorata (in McBride’s case that’s Miss Kay Ford, secretary to an insurance exec) always manages to walk in on one of the cozier moments and get her nose out of joint.
This evil babe factor was all the excuse a British publisher needed to issue a 1956 reprint under the title Decoy Doll. In the U.S., the 1944 Books Inc hardcover reprint isn't too hard to come by, but as far as I know the only paperback edition was an early Handi-books abridgment. Too bad. This is a good read. Don’t believe me? Maybe you’ll believe a youngster named James M. Reasoner, from a 1982 issue of The Not So Private Eye:
Adams' distinct prose style is tough to describe, but I find it infectious. It's what keeps me coming back for more. If you haven't tried him, click HERE for a complete 1938 novelette from Detective Fiction Weekly called "Jigsaw."
And after that, be sure to check out the latest slew of Forgotten Books at pattinase.
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DOC SAVAGE COMICS 16, 17 & 18 (1943)
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Moments in Paperback History: LanceCon '82
From the archives of ace photographer Arthur Scott, we present these rare images from the 1982 edition of the late Lance Casebeer's annual paperback party. Above: The King of Paperbacks himself.
Brian Trainer, Bill Trojan and Cap'n Bob Napier.
The Emperor of the Universe in Lance's Sanctum
Dale Goble
Barry Bernard, Dick Wald and Bill Blackbeard
Dale Gobe and Larry Paschelke
I was there too, apparently having a good time
Tom Lesser and Brian Trainer
Bruce Taylor and Dick Wald
Lance and friend
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Coming soon from Altus Press: The COMPLETE Adventures of Race Williams
Yes, it's finally happening - and Volume 1 is now available for pre-order. The write-up from Amazon follows. Sign me up!
Collected for the first time: the stories of hard-boiled detective Race Williams. Originally appearing in the pages of Black Mask Magazine, author Carroll John Daly pioneered the hard-boiled P.I. story and perfected the genre with his classic character Race Williams. Apart from the novel-length Race Williams stories, these classic hard-boiled thrillers have rarely been reprinted, if ever.
Volume 1 contains the first 17 Race Williams stories, all from 1923-26 issues of Black Mask: ''Knights of the Open Palm,''''Personal But Not Confidential,''''$3,000 to the Good,''''The Red Peril,''''Them That Lives By Their Guns,''''Devil Cat,''''The Face Behind the Mask,''''Conceited, Maybe,''''Say It With Lead!,''''I ll Tell the World,''''Alias Buttercup,''''Under Cover,''''South Sea Steel,''''The False Clara Burkhart,''''The Super-Devil,''''Half-Breed,'' and ''Blind Alleys.''
Three additional, early, first-person hard-boiled stories by Daly which laid the groundwork for the Race Williams are included as well: ''Dolly,''''Paying an Old Debt,'' and ''The False Burton Combs,'' as well as editorial pieces by Daly himself on his inspirations, writing style, and advice to prospective writers. And it's prefaced by an all-new, scholarly introduction by Professor Brooks Hefner of James Madison University.
Them That Lives By Their Guns: The Collected Hard-Boiled Stories of Race Williams Volume 1 is the most important release in years on the history of the Hard-Boiled Detective story.
Them That Lives By Their Guns: The Collected Hard-Boiled Stories of Race Williams Volume 1
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Overlooked Films: DASHIELL HAMMETT IN SAN FRANCISCO
A Multi-Media presentation from March, 2014. Was Don Herron in the audience?
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Pulp Galley: THRILLING ADVENTURES
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Comic Gallery: THE LONE RANGER (1954)
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FFB: WESTERN TOY GUNS by Jim Schleyer -and- CAP GUNS by James L. Dundas
Cap Guns (with values) is sort of a coffee table book, with three to five large color photos to a page. In all, it features somewhere between two and three hundred guns. That may sound like a lot, until you examine Backyard Buckaroo's Collecting Western Toy Guns. The photos are mostly black and white (with a 24-page color section), but feature more than 1300 guns, plus another thousand or so accessories like holsters, boxes, belt buckles, caps, and knives & tomahawks. Both books list suggested ranges of values, now out of date, but useful in determinating relative rarity.
Another difference is that about half of Cap Guns is devoted to cast iron pistols made between 1880 and 1940. This conveys the impression that half the guns in existence were cast iron. Western Toy Guns presents a much truer picture. Cast iron pistols are mixed in with the later diecast (aka pot metal) guns and shown to be an extreme minority. The cowboy shows dominating televison in the '50s and early '60s brought a tidal wave of cap guns to market. And that brings up Western Toy Guns one drawback - it features exclusively western stuff. Though the vast majority of pistols and rifles were western style, there were also military, detective, spy and space weapons, and a few of each make the cut in Cap Guns.
If all this puts you in the mood to see some guns, I invite you to start right here. Over the past year or so I've posted pics of more than fifty guns from my own collection, and there are a lot more on the way. You'll find those photos HERE. You should also pay a visit to nicholscapguns.com, the single greatest source of photos and info on the web.
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Toy Soldier Saturday: Barzso Pioneers
All of the toy soldiers I've featured to date have been "vintage" plastics, from the 1950s and early '60s. These guys are relatively new. Sometime in the '90s, I believe, an outfit called Barzso Playsets, Inc. started manufacturing all-new playsets and figures in the Marx tradition - aimed not at kids but at collectors. One of those collectors was Cap'n Bob Napier, who gifted me, way back when, with this set of pioneers. Barzso is still making this stuff, and their latest release appears to be a Roman Colosseum, complete with gladiators. You can see that HERE.
The Toy Soldier parade is HERE.
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Most Embarrassing Minor League Baseball Caps (Part 1)
Chatanooga Lookouts
Lake Elsinore Storm
Orem Owls
Hudson Valley Renegades
Lexington Legends
Mahoning Valley Scrappers
Yeah, these are all for real. Many more (and even more embarassing) caps to come.
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Pulp Gallery: Belarski on DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY
1937
1938
1939
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Overlooked Films: THE LADY IN THE LAKE (1947)
Story by Raymond Chandler. Screenplay by Steve Fisher. Deadly dame by Audrey Totter. Together, they make my all-time favorite mystery film. What's Robert Mitchum doing in the YouTube shot below? Beats me. He wouldn't play Marlowe for another 28 years. But never fear, the film is the real thing, and Robert Montgomery makes a better Marlowe, even though we only see him when he looks in the mirror.
Because this movie has a lot of Christmasy stuff, I was tempted to wait until December to post it. But because many films get yanked from YouTube without warning, I didn't want to take the chance. So Merry Christmas to you, four months early.
Your weekly Overlooked HQ is Sweet Freedom.
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HOLLYWOOD COWBOY DETECTIVES - New Pulp Fiction by Darryle Purcell
I'm a long-time fan of B Westerns. For me, the stand-outs from the 1930s - judged on personality and humor - were Ken Maynard and my father's favorite, Hoot Gibson. So I was pleased to receive a press release from author/artist Darryle Purcell, announcing this series of pulp-style adventures featuring the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives. That press release is jam-packed with information, so I'm going to let you read it yourself. Here goes:
Classic B-western stars ride again
Several almost-forgotten B-western stars of the past have found work in a new series of historical fiction westerns.
Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson, Crash Corrigan, William S. Hart and other film-cowboy heroes from the 20s through the 50s have returned to battle Nazis, saboteurs and old-fashioned bad guys in the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives (HCD) series published by Page Turner’s Buckskin Editions in both Kindle and paperback versions.
Darryle Purcell, a long-time Mohave County, Ariz., resident known for his topical newspaper columns and political cartoons, has reset his editorial sights on historical western fiction.
“I grew up enjoying the B-western movies and serials made during the 1930s through the ’50s,” the former Mohave Valley Daily News managing editor said. “Many of those films were contemporary to the years they were produced. Western heroes such as Col. Tim McCoy would board a train in the metropolitan east of, say, 1936 and arrive in the old west (quite often Arizona) to battle evil doers. We all remember films where the Three Mesquiteers fought the Nazis in the early 1940s.”
Purcell is writing and illustrating the 1930s-contemporary western series, which embraces the adventurous world of pulp publishing while also saluting the great western movie serials of that era. The first publication, Mystery at Movie Ranch, is comprised of 12 cliffhanger chapters set in the San Fernando Valley area of southern California during the filming of the 1934 Mascot Pictures serial, Mystery Mountain, starring Ken Maynard.
“I do a lot of research on what was being filmed, where, by which studio within a specific time frame,” he said. “I then carve a window in the time period where certain people could have come together to deal with an adventure.”
Sean “Curly” Woods, former Los Angeles Examiner crime beat reporter and current studio flack, is Purcell’s main fictional character who appears in all HCD publications. In Movie Ranch, Woods’ assignment is to write fluff public relations articles about the serial and its stars and keep Maynard out of trouble while looking into the possible sabotage of the Mascot production.
“From a variety of sources, Ken Maynard was a temperamental alcoholic,” Purcell said. “Nobody’s perfect. He was still a skilled rodeo, circus and film cowboy idolized by youth from the 1920s through the ’50s.”
While helping Maynard battle his personal demons, Woods discovers real enemies are not only targeting the western production, but the American way of life. Joined by western movie star and World Champion Rodeo Cowboy Hoot Gibson, Maynard and Woods engage in a series of deadly encounters with an army of anti-American terrorists ruled by a sinister mastermind known only as the Viper. The Hollywood Cowboy Detectives deal with organized crime, a sniper attack, aerial combat against an experimental German flying machine, interrogation by a sadistic enemy scientist in an underground stronghold, an ungodly creature who is the product of evil experiments, and a variety of battles with those who would eliminate all who believe in freedom and justice.
The Kindle version of the Mystery at Movie Ranch can be purchased on Amazon for $1.99. But for those who still like books printed in ink on paper, a paperback version of Mystery at Movie Ranch can be purchased at Amazon.com for $8.99, which includes the bonus HCD short story, "Mystery of the Murdered Badman." In that short story, Woods works to save Maynard from being charged with the murder of a western-movie villain and abduction and possible murder of a former silent-screen vamp. All HCD publications have color covers and black and white internal illustrations in the style of pulps and adventure novels of the 1930s.
The illustrated Mystery of the Arizona Dragon is also currently available as a Kindle download from Amazon. In that adventure, Woods is sent to a dude ranch, not far from where California, Nevada and Arizona meet, to investigate problems while the cast and crew of Charlie Chan Goes West prepare for filming. Hoot Gibson, Warner Oland and Keye Luke join the HCD hero as he attempts to track down the source of a variety of deadly incidents. It is also available as a paperback with the bonus HCD short story, "Mystery of the Stuntman’s Ghost."
The recently published HCD adventure, Mystery of the Matinee Murders is also available in paperback and on Kindle. In Matinee Murders, Woods, Gibson and Crash Corrigan are joined by Orson Welles and a radio-theater group on a studio-funded road trip to entertain children in hospitals and at Saturday matinee presentations. A mysterious assassin hounds the entertainers, leaving a trail of victims killed with cobra venom. Following a full-scale military assault, the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives are captured and taken to an underground fortress where an enemy power keeps an army of the dead. Cowboy star Ken Maynard joins the action in a final showdown with a Nazi terrorist who is about to unleash death and worse upon a theater full of young Saturday matinee western fans. In the paperback, Matinee Murders is joined by a bonus pulp-style mystery about a radio detective known as "The Man of the Mist."
The newest HCD adventure, Mystery of the Alien Banshee is currently available in Kindle format. When it is published in paperback, it will be accompanied by the bonus short story, "Mystery of the Kidnapped Cowboy." All short stories are also available individually on Kindle.
“My publisher at Page Turner’s Buckskin Edition Westerns is a real fan of old-time western and science fiction pulp publications as well as the B-movies of the same era,” Purcell said. “Buckskin is a perfect fit for my writing and illustration efforts.”
Purcell, who was public information director for Mohave County, Ariz., from May 2005 until January 2013, had been managing editor of the Mohave Valley Daily News in Bullhead City, Ariz., for 12 years. The former editorial cartoonist spent a total of 23 years in daily newspapers as well as a few years illustrating and art directing educational comic books and young reader books, drawing gag cartoons for rock and roll and motorcycle enthusiast publications and working in layout and character design on some Saturday morning animated cartoons.
“I reached into my work experiences as well as my time in the military, having served in the First Cavalry in Vietnam and the 101st and 82ndAirborne Divisions stateside, to create the characters and attitudes that appear in the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives series,” Purcell said. “The HCD series embodies the lessons of the classic B-westerns: Life is hard but good will triumph over evil.”
Some may believe that philosophy is out of date. But, according to Purcell, many of the B-western stars of the 1920s and ’30s not only portrayed the just hero, they lived by the Code of the West. Most were Great War veterans. Some, like Tim McCoy served in both world wars. James Stewart, Clark Gable and many other western stars of later years left their film careers to serve in World War II.
“With this series, I hope to revive the lessons of the straight shooters while introducing a new generation to some of the great cowboy heroes of the past. Besides having served in the First World War, most of them had been working cowboys on ranches, rodeos and wild-west shows before joining the motion picture studio system. Often, their movie careers began as stuntmen for other, less-talented, film stars. The HCD series honors the hard work, amazing action talents and ethical lessons of the B-western film stars of the past,” Purcell said.
The illustrated book series can be found at Amazon.comby searching Books for Hollywood Cowboy Detectives.
That's it. End of press release. Yippi-Yi-Yo-Ki-Yay.
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Comic Gallery: THE PHANTOM
1938
1938
1943
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FFB: Seven Books Reviewed by DASHIELL HAMMETT
(This column appeared in the April 26, 1930 edition of the New York Evening Post.)
THE WYCHFORD POISONING CASE. By Anthony Berkeley. Crime Club. $2.
DEATH TRAPS. By Kay Cleaver Strahan. Crime Club. $2.
THROUGH THE EYES OF THE JUDGE. By Bruce Graeme. Lippincott. $2.
WHY MURDER THE JUDGE? By Claude Stuart Hammock. Macmillan. $2.
MARKED "CANCELLED." By Natalie Sumner Lincoln. Appleton. $2.
WHO MOVED THE STONE? By Frank Morison. Century. $2.50.
MURDER IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT. By "Diplomat." Cape & Smith. $2.
OF ALL the facetious amateurs—count them yourself—engaged in solving mysteries that are too much for the police Roger Sheringham is the most amusing—well, anyhow, the least annoying—to me. His Job in "The Wychford Poisoning Case" is to learn who gave arsenic to the late John Bentley There are several people who could, and perhaps would, have done it. You are not likely to guess the right one, but you can blame the author and not yourself, for his book runs a brisk, entertaining race to a flabby and unsporting end.
“DEATH TRAPS” would have been a pretty good short story. It attains book length by dint of a tedious opening, many irrelevancies and the rambling volubility of the retired Yakima grocer through whom it is told. The mystery it gets around to after five or six chapters has to do with an attempt to murder Gerald Dexter in his suburban home and the subsequent deaths of the Justin Veernegs next door. Familiarity with one of the established technical devises for leading suspicion away from the guilty person will lead you straight to him, her or it fairly early in the story. Ever since "The Desert Moon Mystery" there have been rumors that Mrs. Strahan writes what is sometimes called graceful English. I have not yet been able to verify these rumors. The outstanding characteristics of her style seem to be an assortment of rather acrobatic synonyms for "said" and a waiving of the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs.
“THROUGH THE EYES OF THE JUDGE" follows the now familiar court room method of solving a mystery. Patrick Terence Spencer is being tried for the murder of his cousin George, a murder by which he gained fifty thousand pounds. The evidence against him is overwhelming, but into Mr. Justice Raymond's mind certain doubts begin to come, and so. . . . It is difficult to say why this should not be a better story than it is. Perhaps the trouble is that the judge lacks reality.
IN "Why Murder the Judge?" his Honor is poisoned in his library while showing a rare book to a group of friends. Then the book disappears, there is a lot of bocuspocus in a bookshop, people refuse to account for their actions, there is more hocuspocus in a law office and much activity only slightly related to the murder. Probus Thorne, another gifted amateur, is the detective, though his Japanese valet seems to do most of the work. There is nothing here to excite you.
THE most exciting thing shout "Marked Cancelled" was the excellent publicity put over for it. The morning before the hook appeared in bookshops a New York morning paper—by no means the least prominent—gave space on its front page to an alleged Washington dispatch in which Miss Lincoln was said to have unearthed, while examining some family relics, an old envelope bearing a stamp reputed to be worth some $10,000. Now, ladies and gentlemen, when you consider that she was about to publish a book bearing the present title and that one of the clues in the book was an out-of-date postage stamp, well, it is a shame the book was— But here is a sample: "With me, it was love at first sight. Ah, Claire, dare I hope?"
THE author of "Who Moved the Stone?" applies detective-story methods to the question of what actually happened to the body of Jesus Christ between the time it was laid in the tomb after the crucifixion and the discovery of the empty tomb on Sunday morning. The result bears the same relation to history that the average detective story bears to criminology
“MURDER IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT," written by a man known on two continents as diplomat and author, so the blurb says, starts off with the murder of Harrison Howard, Under Secretary of State, in his office, then becomes what the jacket calls a "satirical expose of the workings of the Department of State" and, with the help of much dirty work on the part of pacifists and bootleggers, lisps its way to an inane end. By "Diplomat"? By Jove!
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Toy Soldier Saturday: MARX GIs (Part 4)
Yeah, three sets of these have gone before, and we ain't done yet. Marx did some humungous battleground sets, and needed soldiers to fill them.
Way more Toy Soldiers HERE.
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Most Embarassing Minor League Baseball Caps (Part 2 - Fruit, Nuts and Vegetables)
Fort Wayne TinCaps
Jamestown Jammers
Modesto Nuts
Cedar Rapids Kernals
Hillsboro Hops
Many more to come. Stay tuned.
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Pulp Gallery: MYSTERY ADVENTURES (1935)
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More Pages to Explore .....
