DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY (1938)
↧
↧
THE JUKEBOX KINGS: A Tough New Thriller by Doug Allyn
If you’re a reader of Ellery Queen and/or Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, you’re well acquainted with Mr. Doug Allyn. He’s had well over a hundred stories published in those two magazines over the past thirty years, along with at least seven novels and several collections of short stories.
This guy is one hell of a writer, and he proves it once again in The Jukebox Kings, a tale of crime, love, redemption and music on the meanest streets of Detroit.
The book starts with a punch—literally, in the middle of a prize fight—and takes us on a ten-year adrenaline rush through the dark underbelly of Motown. Our guide for the ride is Mick Shannon, fresh from Jackson Prison, and facing the hard truth that he’s just a shade too slow for the fight game. Against his will, he’s thrust into the jukebox racket, collecting from vicious bar owners and paying off to even more vicious mob bosses. It’s not the life he wants, but he wades into it, fists flying and pistol cocked, without complaint.
Things look mighty bleak for Mick until chance drops a run-down music studio into his lap, and a second career—running parallel with his life of crime—leads him in wholly unexpected directions. We’re on the inside as he learns the ropes of recording, the nightclub business and touring, in a world peopled by such icons as Jackie Wilson, John Lee Hooker, The Supremes, the Righteous Brothers and Aretha Franklin.
Most of the action takes place in the early sixties, and the author paints a vibrant picture of the times, from mohair suits and wingtips to pompadour hairdos. The dialogue—and the prose—is tough and tight. It starts on page 1, when Mick faces a fighter who “looked like he ate lions for lunch,” and never lets up.
The supporting cast includes Moishe Abrams, an old-time gangster as “square and gray as a cement block, and just as hard,” who cut his teeth working with the Purple Gang; Martika Daniels, a business-savvy soul singer who rocks Ben’s world both in and out of bed; and Albert Luca, a bat-shit crazy racketeer who’s “mean as a snake with a backache.”
The story charges forward to 1967, giving us a front-row seat to the five-day riot that was one of the bloodiest in U.S. history, prompting Gov. George Romney to send in the National Guard and LBJ to send the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, and rolls on to 1973, when Mick’s old demons come roaring back to bite him.
The Jukebox Kings is brand spanking new from Stark House Press, and raring to burst into your mailbox. You can get it direct from Stark House (HERE), or just about anywhere else that sells damn fine thrillers.
My brush with greatness: That's me with the author and his Edgar
for Best Short Story. He even let me hold it for a minute.
↧
FRANK FRAZETTA Covers
↧
BILL CRIDER'S WORST NIGHTMARES!
↧
NORMAN SAUNDERS Out West
↧
↧
The H. Bedford-Jones Library from Altus Press
↧
STARTLING STORIES!
1945
1939
1942
↧
RAFAEL DeSOTO Paperback Covers
As you may have noticed, Mr. Rafael DeSoto is one of my favorite pulp cover artists. He did tons of great work on The Spider, Black Mask, and many Popular and Thrilling mags. But he also toiled on into the paperback age, altering his style as needed. Here are are three examples. We'll be seeing more.
↧
Spicy Adventure Stories
1935
1936
1939
↧
↧
Weird paintings by Margaret Brundage
Weird Tales January 1935
Weird Tales August 1934
Weird Tales September 1933
↧
Forgotten Books: ANGEL'S FLIGHT by Lou Cameron
This book was doubly hard to put down. Not only is the story compelling, but the language is so lively you’re anxious to see what surprises the next paragraph will bring. It’s sort of like Dashiell Hammett on steroids, except the focus is not on crime, but on the jazz scene of the '40s and '50s.
A Gold Medal original back in 1960, it's been out of print ever since. Until now. The book I read was a cool new edition from Black Gat Books, a new line of mass market paperbacks from Stark House Press. (And be advised--this ain't your father's mass market pb. The premium paper is bright white, and the book feels mighty substantial in your hand.)
Our hero for this one is Ben Parker, a bass player striving to make his way in the music business without selling his soul to the devil or the mob. On the flip side is one of the most purely evil dudes you’ll meet anywhere in fiction—a psychopath who calls himself Johnny Angel. Near the end of the book, Angel boasts that the only crimes he has yet to commit are incest and treason. And he’s not finished yet.
Parker and Angel represent the two extremes of the music business. Parker is a true talent, scrupulously honest and in it for the love of music. Angel is a blood-sucker, leeching off the talent of others and using every dirty trick imaginable to get rich and rise to the top.
The title of the book comes from a fictional song (stolen by Johnny Angel, natch) and named after the two-block-long railway that ran up and down L.A.’s Bunker Hill. While reading the book, I saw a news report that the railway, closed for safety reasons in 2013, would soon be back in service. Cool.
The novel follows Ben Parker’s career as a player, a band leader and record producer. At almost every turn, Johnny Angel rears his ugly head, performing new acts of infamy. Along the way, we meet torch singers, composers, drug addicts, mob thugs, movie producers, dirty deejays and an artists’ model who can’t her clothes on. We also get inside looks at the evils of payola, the birth and death of bop and the difference between hipsters and beatniks.
Like me, Cameron is a fan of pop culture, and the book is peppered with references to such icons as Dick Tracy, Tom Mix, Jimmy Durante, Raymond Chandler, G-8 and his Battle Aces, Hopalong Cassidy, Lon Chaney, Tinker Bell, Elvis the Pelvis, Buck Jones, Jack Benny, Little Orphan Annie and the Wizard of Oz. It's a blast, in more ways than one.
In the background, sort of on the edge of consciousness, World War II begins and ends and things heat up in Korea. Ben Parker does his part, and sums it up in four paragraphs:
I don’t know if it’s fair to blame my joining up on the girl with the lavender eyes. I guess I’d have gone into the war sooner or later anyways. Just about everybody did.
If you were around at that time you know about the war. If you weren’t, you might look through about two hundred issues of Life, or read Tolstoy. He said everything there is to say about war and this is a story about the music field.
So smoke a cigarette or something while you picture the time lapse and join me along about the spring of ’46 in the rest room that used to be under Duffy Square.
The world was once more safe for democracy, the American way of life, the girl next door and Mom’s blueberry pie. I’d changed my ODs for a new set of blue threads and the only way you could tell Benny Parker had been away was that I’d traded my left knee cap for a brand new silver plate, and three or four gray hairs were sprouting over each ear.
Angel’s Flight was Lou Cameron's first novel, and I was pleased to learn he wrote many more – some thrillers, some westerns and some movie tie-ins. Among those I look forward to checking out are the first in the Longarm series (he went on to pen about fifty of them), the Stringer western series, and all thirty-six books of the Renegade western series (as by Ramsay Thorne). I have a lot of reading to do.
↧
DETECTIVE TALES
1941
1942
1947
↧
Frank McCarthy's 007 Art
Casino Royale
Doctor No
From Russia with Love
Goldfinger
↧
↧
SPEED WESTERN (1943-44)
1943
1944
1944
↧
The Adventures of Sam Spade: The Davis Murder
↧
AMAZING! ASTONISHING! WEIRD! The Complete Pulp Magazine Covers Vol. 2
Todd Frye, author of four earlier picture-packed books (Fantastic Planets: The Complete Pulp Magazine Covers Vol. 1, Passion and Peril: The Complete Men's Magazine Covers Vol. 1, I Was a Teenage Monster Magazine Fiend, and Collecting Vintage Men's Magazines) has released this new one, presenting complete runs of cover images from Amazing Stories, Astonishing Stories and Weird Tales, with bonus pages devoted to the short-lived Marvel sci-fi mags, and even shorter-lived South Sea Stories.
The 8 1/2 x 11" book features over 600 cover pics, all in color, on good quality matte white paper. Most are four to a page, while many of special interest or beauty get the full-page treatment. Todd has also provided brief histories of each magazine, plus notes on the history and collecting of pulps. Here are two actual photos of the book in action in the hands of an actual pulp collector (me):
86 of the book's 197 pages are devoted to Amazing Stories, and another 86 to Weird Tales, a tribute to the long life of those two titles. Astonishing lasted only fifteen issues, but they're all here, along with all of the various Marvel titles and the five issues of South Sea Stories. Following are some sample scans for your viewing pleasure. You can snare your own copy at http://www.toddfrye.org.
Amazing! Astonishing! Weird! (and Todd's other books) are available HERE!
↧
Forgotten Books: WAR AGAINST THE MAFIA by Don Pendleton
When Gold Eagle took over the series with new authors in 1980, I read the first, judged it far below par, and gave it up. Only years later did I discover Steve Mertz had written a handful for the Gold Eagle line, and done Pendleton proud.
On this reading, I was struck once again by Mack Bolan’s strength of conviction. I can’t think of another character, fictional or not, who is so damn sure of his role in life. It isn’t cockiness, or even self-confidence. He’s always well aware his next mission could be his last. He just knows what needs doing, and if he doesn’t do it, no one will. So off he goes. No doubts, and damn sure no fear.
At this point, just beginning his long paperback career, Bolan is a little like Don Quixote. The Mafia is a mighty big windmill, and he has no expectation of winning this war. He’s simply determined to fight it, and keep on fighting it for as long as he can.
Pendleton’s prose here is good, tight and tough, but stylistically, Pendleton is just getting warmed up. By the time he really gets going - later in the series - he gives the “poetry of violence” ascribed to Raymond Chandler a whole new meaning.
At one point, in discussing Bolan, a couple of mobsters make reference to the Phantom and The Shadow. And whenever Bolan stages a hit, he leaves a calling card in the form of a marksman's medal, hugely reminiscent of The Spider. Makes me wonder: Was Pendleton a pulp fan?
Last time I read the series, I felt the first three books (this one, along with Death Squad and Battle Mask) formed a sort of trilogy, setting the stage for the series proper. Once those three housekeeping books were out of the way, Bolan was off on his rampage around the country, and that’s when Pendleton’s style really began to pop.
At this stage, had someone told Mack Bolan he’d need only thirty-eight books to cripple the mob and divert his attentions to terrorists instead, he’d have scoffed at the notion. And Don Pendleton, no doubt, would have been astounded to hear there would be well over six hundred Mack Bolan novels, plus the spin-off series Able Team, Phoenix Force and Stony Man. The series was officially cancelled last year, after 47 years of continuous publication, but I’ll be mighty surprised if it doesn’t charge back from the dead. Especially if we finally get a movie.
Over the years, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone and Vin Diesel have all been slated to play Bolan on screen, but all four projects fell through. In 2014, Warner Brothers got the rights, planning to star Bradley Cooper, but I’ve heard nothing about it since. Will it happen before I croak? Jeez, I hope so.
First published by Pinnacle in 1969, War Against the Mafia has been given new life by Open Road Media. They have now reissued the first three volumes in trade paperback, and the all 37 Pendleton volumes as eBooks. I found those first three books recently at the public library. The Executioner in the library. Who'd a thunk it?
P.S. Last week, Ben Boulden posted a piece by Steve Mertz discussing Don Pendleton's pre-Bolan work - a series of sleaze books featuring private eye Stewart Mann, written as by "Stephan Gregory." Those books (minus the sleaze) need reprinting! That post is HERE, and is extremely worthy of your attention.
↧
↧
THE SHADOW vs. SHIWAN KHAN
↧
SECRETS of the STEVE MERTZ LIBRARY (Part 1)
Steve Mertz posted this pic of his bookshelves on Facebook the other day (taken, I suspect by Paul Bishop, who paid him a recent visit). So, in the tradition of my 2015 post "Secret's of Bill Crider's Bookshelf (that's HERE), I did a little literary detective work to give you a closer look at some of Steve's reading matter.
Unlike Bill's photo, in which almost every title was legible, this one required more guesswork and familiarity with Steve's tastes. It also helped that he shelved the books alphabetically by author, making the guesswork easier. Today, we'll be taking a closer look at that first row, marching off to the right of Steve's forehead.
Of the first twenty books, the only author I can decipher is Edward S. Aarons, and I can't make out titles. But the Cleve F. Adams section is easy to spot. The orange hardcover is the second Rex McBride adventure, And Sudden Death, and the tall trade pb with the white & blue spine is the first, the new reprint of Sabotage from Altus Press.
Can't make out the black hardcover next to Sabotage, but next in line are these first two of three novels featuring Bill Rye, who was Adams' take on political operative Ned Beaumont of The Glass Key. I'm jealous of Steve's Dig Me a Grave dust jacket. (More about Dig Me HERE.)
Next up is Murder All Over, a retitling of the Rex McBride novel Up Jumped the Devil, recognizable because of it's distinctive brown spine.
And next to Murder All Over is a spineless paperback I'm pretty dang sure is a Handi-book, meaning it's one of the two above. My money is on Up Jumped the Devil, discussed HERE.
After several undecipherable titles by William Ard, and at least a couple by Philip Atlee, we come to hefty collection of paperbacks by Michael Avallone. That's no surprise, as Steve is a long time admirer of his.
I could read only two of those Avallone titles, and they're shown above.
But I also see an Ace Double tucked in there. Could this be it?
I don't recognize the first ten books in this section, but the eleventh is Dealing Out Death, an early novel featuring W.T. Ballard's Hollywood troubleshooter Bill Lennox.
Steve's copy has to be one of the editions above (probably the one on the left). More about that book HERE.
Next to Dealing Out Death is Ballard's last Bill Lennox novel, published for some inane reason as by "John Shepherd. This one appeared in 1960, twenty-seven years after Lennox's debut in Black Mask. Then, after a couple more mystery books, we come to the Robert Leslie Bellem section...
No bookshelf should be without a Dan Turner collection, and Steve has at least two. Roscoes in the Night was published by Adventure House in 2003, and the John Wooley book below (more HERE), came out in 1983. You'll find the title story from the Black Dog's Spicy Western collection Lust of the Lawless HERE.
The most intriguing book on this top row is shelved between Roscoes and another mystery book, followed by Lust of the Lawless. It's sort of salmon colored, and appears to be an old hardcover in dust jacket. Could it be the Bellem mystery Blue Murder? Or maybe the Adams-Bellem collaboration The Vice Czar Murders? I've never seen a dj for either. Again, I'm jealous. I'm also mighty curious about the tall white book between the skinny little Lust and the Hollywood Detective book. What the heck is it?
You'll find scans of Handi and Harlequin Sleeping Nude covers (including Art Scott's Bellem autograph and a link to James Reasoner's erudite review HERE.)
Next to Sleeping Nude are these two sleaze books. I didn't think much of them, and Steve probably didn't either, but since they're by Bellem, I guess we had to have them. You'll find scans of the back covers HERE.
Next up: What wonders await on row Two? What books will you recognize that I can't? Come back tomorrow and see.
↧
SECRETS of the STEVE MERTZ LIBRARY (Part 2)
Yesterday we took a closer look at the top row of this small portion of the Stephen Mertz Unpublic Library of Tucson, AZ. Today we're moving on to row Two. What wonders will we find? Read on . . .
Way over there on the left, above Steve's shoulder, is a glimpse of the Mertz section. Unlike the others, these are not filed alphabetically by author, but I suppose they're entitled to a place of honor.
The first thing we see are these two Crossroad Press hardcovers. Devil Creek is a reissue, and The Castro Directive is an original.
After another hardcover with the title obscured is the first of the Blaze! books, an indecipherable trade paperback and at least a couple more Blazes! (More about Blaze! HERE, HERE, and HERE.) And that's it. I wish I wish we had a look at the whole Mertz section, because Steve has written at least a couple of bushels of books, but for purposes of this post, what we see is what we get.
Returning to the regular rotation, there are some books I should be able to identify, but can't. I've seen that fat white paperback that starts with a P many times in used bookstores, but can't put a name on it. Same for the salmon colored pb to the right of the Cussler book. Another Cussler? I just can't be sure.
These are the first two I can be sure of. I knew Steve was a Spillane reader, but didn't know about Cussler. (I enjoyed all the books Cussler wrote alone, but haven't delved into the collaborations.)
And now we come to the Dalys, with Snarl, the first Race Williams novel, and The Man in the Shadows, a third-person adventure of Daly's first-person pre-Race private investigator, Two-Gun Terry Mack.
The Hidden Hand is the second Race novel, and Vee Brown was Daly's Dime Detective guy, until Race himself jumped from Black Mask to Dime in 1935. More Vee Brown talk HERE.
Next to Vee Brown there's a black hardcover I don't recognize (what the heck is that, Steve?) followed by the extra-fun Mr. Strang (discussed HERE) and the first collection of unrelated Race novelettes, from 1989.
And right next to that is another of my favorite books, the first novel in the Doan & Carstairs series (described HERE.)
Here's another mystery. On the left here are four Gold Medals, who apparently fall between Davis and Dent. But I can't think of any Gold Medal authors in that range who wrote that many books. Can you?
The Dent books start with a couple of Doc Savages (can't read the titles), then stand tall with Genius Jones, the first book publication of an Argosy serial from 1937. (More about that HERE.) Next to that is a taller book with a white spine. All I can read on that one is DENT, and I want to know more. What is it, Steve?
Several more Savages follow, but the only ones I can name are these.
After that, Dent's first two Crime Club novels. Dead at the Take-Off is discussed HERE.
Lady Afraid was Dent's third and final Crime Club entry (more HERE), and Flight Into Fear was Will Murray's fifth Doc Savage novel, published way back in 1993. There are a couple of Doc Omnibuses nearby. I had hopes of naming those, but there were more than one in each of those colors.
Cry at Dusk (reviewed HERE) was Dent's sleaziest book, and Lady in Peril (HERE) a first edition Ace Double.
Finishing out the Dents is this Hard Case novel, unpublished until 2009. After Honey, there are a few Sherlock Holmes books (grist, no doubt, for Zombies Over London), followed by more titles I wish I could decipher.
The next things I can see, though, are two editions of this western I now want to read. Other Fieldhouse paperbacks follow, which I may be hunting too.
The end of this row brings still another mystery. I see what appear to be three or four Gunsmith books by "J.R. Roberts." If these had been penned by Gunsmith creator Robert Randisi, they'd be down on row four with the other Randisis. So who, with an F or G initial, wrote these babies?
Tomorrow: We move to row Three with more questions than answers. Come back and see which are which.
↧
