James Reasoner's Blog, page 457

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Max Brand's Western Magazine, June 1950

Since this pulp didn't come out until several years after Frederick Faust's death in Italy during World War II, I assume Popular Publications worked out a deal with his heirs for the use of Faust's most famous pseudonym.  MAX BRAND'S WESTERN MAGAZINE was an all-reprint title, but plenty of good stories were published there that readers might not have seen in their original appearances.  This particular issue features stories by J.E. Grinstead, who was an actual cowboy when he turned to writing, well-known Western pulp author Bennett Foster, and a guy from Cross Plains, Texas, named Robert E. Howard, who is represented in this issue with the story "Vulture's Sanctuary".  MAX BRAND'S WESTERN MAGAZINE always featured a reprint by, who else, Max Brand, and the one in this issue is "Crazy Rhythm", a title that doesn't exactly sound very Western to me.  But I haven't read the story, so I could easily be wrong about that.  MBWM may be all reprint, but there's still a lot of good reading to be found in it.

Forgotten Books: My Bride for Yours - Curt Aldrich

When I try to figure out which books I'm going to write about for this series, one thing that comes into consideration is whether or not a particular book is actually, you know, any good. I think quality does have something to do with it, and I'm not going to do a Forgotten Books post about a book that I think is a real stinker.


However, some books do have a certain historical or nostalgic value that's separate from their actual quality. And so it is with this week's selection, MY BRIDE FOR YOURS, by Curt Aldrich.


You see, nearly forty years ago when I was a freshman in college, we had a circulating library of several dozen porn novels of this vintage in the dorm where I lived. In those pre-Internet days, in Texas anyway, pornography wasn't that easy to find, although being 18-year-old guys, mostly living away from home for the first time, we did our dead-level best to find it anyway. (Some of us, of course, spent more time looking for the real thing, rather than a printed facsimile, but that's another story.) Anytime somebody bought a new porn novel, after reading it went into the large cardboard box in Scooter's dorm room (Scooter may have been the name on his birth certificate, for all I know; I never heard anybody call him anything else) so that the rest of the guys on the third floor could enjoy it, too. Over the course of the year I spent there, I read several dozen of these books, and I came across others here and there over the next few years.


We know now that just like ten or a dozen years earlier than that, when authors such as Lawrence Block, Robert Silverberg, and Donald E. Westlake were turning out Nightstand Books, in the late 60s and early 70s some other authors who went on to have significant careers in more respectable genres were producing epics like RAJAH and LITTLE DONNIE'S MOTHER for Liverpool Library Press, Greenleaf, and other porn publishers.


The house-name Curt Aldrich originated as part of William Hamling's porn enterprise and appeared on Nightstand, Leisure, Pillar, etc. Books. An early Curt Aldrich, maybe the original one for all I know, was Richard Curtis, who went on to become a well-known literary agent, which I believe he still is. By the time MY BRIDE FOR YOURS appeared, Curtis probably wasn't Aldrich anymore, but who knows, maybe he was.


To finally get around to saying a few words about the book itself . . . well, it's a sex novel, pretty plain and simple. Several young couples go on a honeymoon cruise to a secluded Florida resort. On the yacht taking them there, and once they reach the resort itself, much graphic swapping of newlywed spouses goes on. That's it for the plot.


But the book does have a few things to recommend it. The writing in the non-sex scenes is consistently good. Admittedly, there aren't many of them and they don't last very long, but they're there. And the prose in the sex scenes has a considerable amount of goofy humor to it, as if the author wasn't taking things very seriously and wasn't expecting the reader to, either. Whoever wrote MY BRIDE FOR YOURS was talented enough that he or she might well have published fiction in other genres, too. I wouldn't be a bit surprised.


So why have I written a lengthy Forgotten Books post about an obscure (no copies listed on ABE), forty-year-old sex novel? So I could wallow in nostalgia about my freshman year of college, of course, but also because these books, like other sex books before them, served as a training ground for a number of talented authors who went on to do other things. Looking at it now from the perspective of a bibliophile and all-around nosy guy, I find that interesting. But here's the real reason I picked this particular book.


You can get a Kindle edition of it on Amazon for a buck.

Book Alert: The Imposter #0: Suiting Up - Richard Lee Byers

Matt Brown is just an ordinary guy...until alien invaders attack the Earth, and humanity's superheroes go down fighting. By chance, Matt falls heir to their powers, but how can a fake hero save the world when the real ones have already failed? To find out, join him on a quest through a post-apocalyptic world where alien horrors and human supervillains battle for dominion. The Impostor is the new superhero series by veteran fantasy and horror writer Richard Lee Byers, a frequent contributor to the Forgotten Realms universe.


(This short story preview is a lot of fun, and you can't beat the price.  It's free, and you can find it right here.  Byers is a fine writer, and I look forward to the rest of the entries in this series.)

Review of Witch Got Your Tongue

Bill Crider has nice things to say about Livia's new novel WITCH GOT YOUR TONGUE.  Check it out.

Captain America: First Vengeance - Fred Van Lente

This trade paperback reprints a recent mini-series that serves as a prequel to the upcoming movie. As a result, there are some differences between this version of Cap and the established comics version. Purists, consider yourself warned.


And speaking as a purist myself . . . some of the changes are okay, the sort of thing you can expect when Hollywood gets its hands on something, and some are less so. Right off the bat, Cap's costume is different, since he's drawn to look like the movie version of the character. That's actually all right with me. The look works. In the half-okay version, the Howling Commandos are only partially there. Dum-Dum, Gabe, and Percy show up and are portrayed pretty close to their comics versions, but where are the rest of the Howlers? And who's that French guy running around with them? And Bucky Barnes is a Howling Commando? No way!


Which brings me to my biggest complaint, the fact that the movie continuity makes Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes roughly the same age. I realize that the current incarnation of these characters takes the view that Bucky was a teen-ager during World War II, instead of the adolescent "kid sidekick" he was in the original Simon & Kirby stories, but that's not nearly the same stretch as making him and Steve contemporaries. That doesn't work at all for me.


All that said, the story is fairly entertaining and the artwork is good for the most part. Viewed as an alternate universe Captain America story (which is usually how you have to view movie adaptations anyway), CAPTAIN AMERICA: FIRST VENGEANCE isn't bad. It's not really necessary unless you're a completist or really enjoy the movie, though.

Update From New Pulp Press

New Pulp Press is proud to announce that all of our books (save Jesus Angel Garcia's recent release badbadbad) are now available as ebooks. Get 'em where you want (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords etc. etc.). If you've been wanting to buy one of these books but already spent most of your money on a Justin Bieber signed fanzine, now is your chance to read a great crime novel for $3.00-$5.00. Not bad, eh?


Our books and authors have been praised by publications such as The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and New York Magazine, as well as superstar authors such as Megan Abbott, Michael Connelly, Allan Guthrie, Roger Smith, Vicki Hendricks, Tom Piccirilli, Duane Swierczynski, Christa Faust, Jason Starr, Sara Gran, and Ken Bruen. Don't be the last one on the New Pulp Press train! Go to New Pulp Press and click on the links, or head directly to Smashwords and buy the ebooks there.


Speaking of Jesus Angel Garcia, he's in the midst of an unprecedented (for a small press author) 32 city tour. You read that right: 32 damn cities. Check out the filthy details here. Go see him if he comes to your city, or simply buy his book, badbadbad . It's a hell of a read.


Also, keep your eyes out for our upcoming release, Crime Factory: The First Shift. It's a book of short stories including works by Ken Bruen, Dave Zeltserman, Roger Smith, Adrian McKinty, Dennis Tafoya, Craig McDonald, Leigh Redhead, and many, many more.


Thanks as always for your support of indy publishing. We couldn't do it without you. Well, we could, but it would involve embezzling money, and I don't want to go there unless absolutely necessary.


Best,
Jon Bassoff
New Pulp Press


(I don't know about you, but I'm grabbin' e-books of the ones I haven't read.)

Tuesday's Overlooked TV: The Brothers Brannagan

This is another one where I'm going by memory and IMDB, since I haven't seen any episodes of this series in 50 years. It ran in syndication in 1960 and '61, which means I was in the second grade when I watched it. That just goes to show that my fondness for private eye fiction goes 'way back. Although to be fair, I loved any show that featured gun battles and fist fights. I was a bloodthirsty little tyke.


Anyway, THE BROTHERS BRANNAGAN were Mike and Bob Brannagan, private eyes who operated out of a resort hotel in Phoenix, where the series was filmed. One season, 39 episodes of wearing narrow ties, tooling around in cars with fins, and fighting crooks. And I still remember the theme song, which means I must have watched the series regularly.


Years later when I was in high school, I ran across a used copy of the TV tie-in novel based on the series (it's amazing to think that a low-budget syndicated show could get a tie-in novel from a major paperback publisher like Signet, but it wasn't that uncommon back then), titled, appropriately enough, THE BROTHERS BRANNAGAN and written by one Henry E. Helseth. Helseth doesn't seem to have been very prolific. He has one other TV tie-in to his credit, a novel based on the series THIS MAN DAWSON (which I don't think I ever saw) and a mystery novel from the late Forties. I don't remember anything about his Brothers Brannagan book except that I read it and wasn't impressed by it.


If anyone has seen any episodes of THE BROTHERS BRANNAGAN recently, I'd love to hear about it. I'd like to think it was a good show, since I remember it fondly, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for confirmation of that.

The Hollywood Op - Terence Faherty

A couple of years ago I read a story in ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE called "Unruly Jade". The author was Terence Faherty, and the story, set in Hollywood in 1947, featured a private eye named Scott Elliott who worked for an outfit called Hollywood Security. I thought it was a great story, snappy and fast-paced and very pulpish, just the sort of thing that might have actually been published in BLACK MASK or DIME DETECTIVE alongside yarns by Day Keene and John D. McDonald and William Campbell Gault.


So I knew that I would probably like THE HOLLYWOOD OP, a collection of Scott Elliott stories from the great small press publisher Perfect Crime Books. For one thing, "Unruly Jade" was included in the collection, the first story, in fact, and for another, as a longtime fan of Robert Leslie Bellem's Dan Turner stories, as well as Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories, I loved that title. A cross between Dan Turner and the Op, maybe?


Well, no. The biggest influence on these stories seems to me to be Raymond Chandler, which I'll get back to in a minute. With one exception, Faherty has arranged the stories in this volume in chronological order according to his protagonist's life. Elliott, a former contract player at Paramount, returns to Hollywood after serving in World War II and becomes an operative for Hollywood Security when it becomes apparent that his acting career is over. Faherty follows him through the late Forties, the Fifties, and on up into the Sixties, painting a spectacularly vivid picture of Hollywood during that same stretch of years. The stories are evocative, complexly plotted, and very well-written. I'm a sucker for a private eye whose wisecracks cover up a sense of melancholy, and Elliott falls squarely into that category.


The book closes with the previously unpublished novella "Sleep Big", and there's that Chandler influence again. This story is set before World War II, when Elliott is still an actor instead of a private detective, but he becomes involved in a very complicated murder case anyway. This is a tribute to and pastiche of THE BIG SLEEP, and while even attempting such a thing is a pretty big task, Faherty pulls it off very successfully, even poking a little fun at himself along the way for his audacity.


If you're a fan of private eye fiction, I can't recommend THE HOLLYWOOD OP highly enough. You should go order a copy right now if you don't have the book already. This is one of the best books I've read so far this year.

Movie: Centurion

I've been a fan of stories about the Romans versus the Britons and the Picts ever since first reading Robert E. Howard's Bran Mak Morn stories many years ago. I've read a number of novels and watched several movies with this setting. CENTURION is a film I hadn't seen until recently. It's another one concerning the fate of the Ninth Legion, the famous Lost Legion that was the last Roman military force north of what came to known as Hadrian's Wall.


Michael Fassbender plays a young Roman centurion who finds himself cut off with a few companions far behind Pictish lines after the rest of their forces are either killed or taken prisoner in a trap sprung by the Picts. The rest of the movie concerns their attempt to survive and make it back to Roman lines. As you might expect, there's a lot of action with swords, pikes, battle axes, and the like. Blood flows (and splatters) copiously. Heads roll, as Joe Bob Briggs used to say. Much of the action is done in that quick-cut editing style that old geezers such as myself don't like, but some of it is pretty effective. The acting is okay, and the scenery, when it's not being obscured by gore, is beautiful.


What finally worked against the movie for me is its unrelenting grimness. I realize, given the subject matter, the story can't be all sweetness and light, and the ending is not without hope. I wouldn't say that CENTURION is a bad movie, but rather that it's just a bleak, bloody film that I never really warmed up to. It's worth watching, though, especially if you have an interest in that particular era.

Music: Mrs. Robinson - The Lemonheads

I heard this on the radio yesterday and really liked it.  It's a great song to start with, and I love the pace of this version.  It'll get your heart pumping.