Paperback Warrior Primer - Bill Gulick

Grover C. Gulick (1916-2013), known as Bill Gulick, wrote a ton of western stories in the pulp magazines in the 1940s and 1950s. His career is laced with both fiction and non-fiction, marked by winning two coveted Spur Awards, earning him a two-year presidency of Western Writers of America, and receiving accolades from the Cowboy Hall of Fame. I covered Gulick's life and career in a podcast HERE, but wanted to provide a visual text outlining his life and literary work.

Gulick was born in 1916 in Kansas City, Missouri. As a child, Gulick was an avid reader with weekly trips to the library. By the age of five he was reading Zane Grey and pulp western magazines. In high school he wrote a story modernizing Julius Caesar with a gritty underworld of Chicago gangsters. He graduated high school in 1934, a time when America had been thrust into the Great Depression. Gulick delivered newspapers, did collections on delinquent utility bills, and worked at a drug store to help the family make ends meet. 

Gulick enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, played baseball, and as a sophomore he entered a writing competition and saw his poem win top prize. During college, Gulick worked as a power line installer and also took a job selling appliances for Montgomery Ward. Both of these jobs expanded Gulick's world and allowed him to see a good portion of the Midwest. Hoping to achieve a career in writing, Gulick entered a Professional Writing School in 1940 and he sold his first story for $10 to a law officer magazine titled The Peace Officer. He then reached out to Popular Publications in New York about a western story he wrote. They published the short, “The Kid That Rode with Death”, in New Western Magazine and paid him $30. At this point Gulick considered himself to be a full-fledged professional writer. 

Gulick moved to Brownwood, Texas to be a caretaker for a couple's cabin on Lake Brownwood. It was here that he had the opportunity for solitude, a time he used to polish up on his writing and to get completely devoted to his style. He wanted to write for the slick magazines. He later spent a lot of time with pulp writer Foster Harris. It was Harris that encouraged Gulick to use his experiences installing power lines to write stories about hardened blue-collar working men. Harris explained that he used his own work experience in the oil fields to pen stories in Argosy, Blue Book, and Adventure. Gulick took the advice to heart and wrote a story titled “You Gotta Be Hard” about a lineman who saves a fellow worker from being electrocuted. He sold it to Adventure for $75 and it was published in their August 1942 issue. These stories are what Gulick refers to as his "high-line stories" about the dangerous industry and hardened men that worked on the power lines. That same year he had his story “The Saga of Mike Shannon” published in Liberty Magazine. The publisher paid him $350 for the story, which was his biggest payout to date. 

Gulick was classified as 4-F during World War 2 due to his bout with Polio years before the war started. In 1943, Gulick moved to New York City so he could be closer to the editors and publishers he was dealing with. By this point Gulick had sold stories to Big-Book Western, .44 Western, Ace-High Western, Texas Rangers, 10 Story Western, Liberty, and Adventure.  

Gulick became acquainted with Rogers Terrill who was working as an editor for Henry and Harry Steeger, the owners of Popular Publications. At the height of the pulp boom the Steegers had 33 magazines circulating. Each magazine sold on average 200,000 newsstand copies for a dime each, so the difference between showing a profit and incurring a loss was small. According to Gulick's autobiography, the Steegers were earning about $300 net profit per month on each magazine. Their top western writer was Walt Coburn. He had a story in just about every western magazine - either a 25,000 word novel, a 12,000 word novelette, or a 5,000 word short story. 

Rogers Terrill once sent Gulick a letter stating that his stories were good and that they would continue fetching on average of $280. He explained they were competent but not terribly original. He encouraged Gulick to stop writing run of the mill pot-boilers and to use his talent to write better work. Gulick went back to thinking of himself as more of a slick writer and found more stories being published in Liberty and Saturday Evening Post through the 1940s and 1950s. He was also published in Esquire, Blue Book, Collier's, and Nation's Business. By 1944, Gulick found that he had enough of New York and had met and introduced himself to enough publishers and editors. He first moved to Oklahoma before relocating to Tacoma, Washington. From there he continued to sell to Liberty magazine making $750 per story. The rejects from Liberty funneled down to the pulp magazines at less money. 

In 1946, Gulick discovered something really interesting about a Lone Ranger comic strip that was running in Seattle's Post-Intelligencer paper. The Lone Ranger story was plagiarized from a Gulick short published in 10 Story Western Magazine. He cut out the strips each day until he had the whole story and then mailed it to Popular Publications who agreed that it was plagiarism. Eventually, the Lone Ranger's legal firm settled with Gulick paying $250 both to him and Popular Publications. In a funny send off to the settlement, Gulick volunteered to write Lone Ranger stories but his request was ignored. 

Gulick met his wife while working as a house manager for a Tacoma Theater Company and the two moved to New York. After meeting with the editor of Saturday Evening Post, Erd Brandt, Gulick was pitched the idea of writing his first serial. Gulick knew that was huge money as Ernest Haycox and Luke Short had both earned upwards to $50,000 for a serial. Brandt wanted a historical Pacific Northwest setting for the serial. In his research, Gulick became fascinated with the history of the emigrants into the Washington and Idaho Territories from the Oregon Trail Days. Gulick used the concept to write an 80,000 word novel titled Bend of the Snake. It was Gulick's first full-length novel, however when he pitched it to the Post as a serial they rejected it for being too long. He submitted the novel to Doubleday but it was rejected for a lack of violence. Houghton Mifflin published the book in 1950 and Gulick received a $5,000 movie option. Universal-International bought the film rights, changed the title to Bend of the River, and cast James Stewart in the lead role. 

Gulick settled into writing more full-length novels including A Drum Calls West and A Thousand for the Cariboo. Around this same time an anthology of Gulick's mountain man western short stories was collected into an omnibus paperback titled The Mountain Men. 

In 1953. Gulick joined the Western Writers of America, the brainchild of author Nelson Nye. In 1955 Gulick ran for President of the organization, a position he held in 1956 and 1957. 

Up until the late mid-1950s, Gulick's novels were being published as hardcovers. But, Popular Library offered Gulick the opportunity to write paperback originals. The author wrote Showdown in the Sun, a paperback purchased by Famous Artists, a Hollywood Film company that paid $13,500 for the book. Gulick also began selling rights to his short stories to television shows. In 1961, Gulick sold his story "Where the Wind Blows Free" to Saturday Evening Post for $2500. Gulick wrote novels for Doubleday including They Came to a Valley, which won the Cowboy Hall of Fame Western Heritage Award as Best Western Historical Novel of the Year and Hallelujah Trail, which the Mirisch Brothers bought film rights for $85,000. The movie was released in 1964 and starred Burt Lancaster, Donald Pleasance, and Brian Keith. 

Gulick also flourished in the non-fiction realm as well. He wrote the books Snake River Country and Chief Joseph Country as non-fiction historical accounts. Gulick also wrote a western for Doubleday titled Trails West about a gold mine in Hells Canyon and anti-Chinese riots in the 1880s. The book, which was published in 1979, did well but hinted to Gulick that the western book market had dwindled significantly. 

In 1988, Gulilck's western trilogy was caught up in a publishing feud between Doubleday and Gulick. The publisher wanted each book to be trimmed from 100,000 words to 85,000. The publisher also disagreed with Gulick's overall title for the trilogy as Northwest Destiny. Doubleday published each of the books in 1988 - the first in May titled Distant Trails, the second in June titled Gathering Storm, and the third in July titled Lost Wallowa. The publisher sold 5,000 copies of each book to libraries without any promotion and then let the books go out of print. Gulick was able to have the rights reverted back to him from Doubleday. With permission, Berkley published the books in paperback format.

Bill Gulick died at the age of 97 in 2013 in Walla Walla, Washington. In his autobiography, his final conclusion stated this:

"What the world of writing will be in time to come, I cannot predict, other than to say it will change, as it has in my lifetime. Despite the proliferation in the methods of communication that has taken place during the last sixty-four years, the nation as a whole is no more literate now than it was then, when almost everybody who had gone to school at all could read at the fourth-grade level, whereas now we have students in college who cannot do as well. Back in the 1950s, when I complained to Carl Brandt, Sr. about the way the TV monster that had invaded our living rooms was threatening to replace my beloved Saturday Evening Post, he said, 'Don’t worry about it, Bill. What you should understand is that the American public has a great capacity for accepting a new medium of entertainment without forsaking the old.' In any event, it is time for a new generation of writers to replace mine. All I can say is, 'I wish you well'."

Gulick's last published short story was in 1982 and his last book was published in 2008.

You can obtain many of Bill Gulick's vintage books HERE.

Paperback Warrior Primer - Norman Daniels

Norman Daniels (Norman Arthur Danberg, 1905-1995) was a prolific author that experienced tremendous success in the pulp market before creating a second career writing numerous paperback originals, novelizations, and television tie-ins in a variety of genres. He used a multitude of pseudonyms and even collaborated with his wife Dorothy, a sensational paperback writer that specialized in gothic-romance titles. I presented the author's life and literary work on a podcast episode HERE, but wanted to provide a text on this workaholic writer that has seemingly vanished from the reader radar.

Here's a Paperback Warrior Primer on Norman Daniels. 

Norman Arthur Danberg was born in 1905 in Connecticut. He attended both Columbia and Northwestern University. Daniels' first published story was "The Death House Murder", which appeared in Detective-Dragnet magazine in 1932. That same year he saw his stories in magazines like The Shadow Detective Monthly, All-Detective Magazine and Gangster Stories. The December 1933 issue of Thrilling Detective featured a story called “Cold Steel”. This was an important moment for Daniels because it secured a relationship with the pulp powerhouse Standard, which was owned by Ned Pines. They produced a ton of titles in the 30s and 40s and competed with the equally productive publisher Street & Smith. 

Daniels was asked by Standard to pen stories starring their pulp hero The Phantom Detective. From my research it shows that he wrote over 30 installments of the series. After a little bit of a downward curve in pulp sales, the publisher began to think of new ways to gain readers. The idea was to create new heroes. Norman Daniels came up with the idea of The Black Bat character and placed him in Black Book Detective magazine in July 1939. I have a review for the first Black Bat story HERE.

Daniels not only created The Black Bat, he also had a hand in writing, and if not outright creating, a slew of other titles like Dan Fowler G-Man, The Crimson Mask, The Eagle, The Candid Camera Kid, Captain Danger, The Masked Rider, Range Riders as well as also writing for the rival Street and Smith publisher with their pulps like The Avenger, Crime Busters, Doc Savage, The Feds and the popular The Shadow Magazine. 

The author's Masked Detective character debuted in Masked Detective in 1940. It ran for 12 total issues with a 13th story appearing in Thrilling Mystery. Daniels wrote the first few issues of the series before handing the project off to the other work-horse authors of that era like Sam Merwin Jr. and W.T. Ballard. I reviewed the first appearance of the character HERE.

The author proved to be extremely busy in the 1940s writing shorts for the likes of Romantic Range, Army-Navy Flying Stories, Popular Detective, G-Men Detective, Sky Fighters, Clues Detective Stories, Crack Detective Stories, Thrilling Detective, and Exciting Navy Stories.

The birth of the paperback in the 1950s would be a welcome mat for Daniels to increase his productivity. Using a variety of pseudonyms, Daniels went to work on creating a number of full-length novels that appeared in paperback format. While he was writing for this new format, he continued to write shorts for the magazines and pulps like Western Romance and Mystery Detective. But his paperback output really flourished at this time.

Under the pseudonym of Mark Reed he wrote sleazy books for publishers like Falcon and Rainbow. Books like Street of Dark Desires, The Nude Stranger, Sins of the Flesh, House of 1000 Desires. As David Wade, Daniels wrote at least six books - Come Night, Come Desire, Raise the Devil, She Walks by Night, Bedroom with a View, Only Human and Walk the Evil Street (review HERE). Under the name Norma Dunn he wrote Lida Lynn, Shack Girl, The Twist and Another Man in your Life. Under his real name of Norman Daniels, he produced novels like Mistress on a Deathbed, Sweet Savage and Bedroom in Hell.

While writing a lot of 1950s paperbacks, Daniels also wrote television scripts. According to IMDB, Daniels penned scripts for shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Sugarfoot, Colt. 45, Zane Grey Theater, Ford Theater and General Electric Theater among others. In the 1960s, Daniels incorporated television novelizations and tie-ins into his repertoire with books based on shows like Arrest and Trial, Sam Benedict, The Smith Family, Chase, The Detectives, Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, The Avengers, etc.

Also in the 1960s, Daniels created an eight-book spy series called The Man from A.P.E. starring a secret agent named John Keith. That series ran from 1964-1971. I read and reviewed the debut HERE. Daniels also wrote a two book series of spy novels starring a CIA agent named Bruce Baron. These were The Baron of Hong Kong from 1967 and Baron's Mission to Peking from 1968. He also wrote a stand-alone spy novel called Spy Hunt in 1960 (reviewed HERE). 

He wrote for a number of other publishers in the 1960s including several WW2 novels like Moments of Glory, Battalion, and Strike Force (aka Killer Tank, reviewed HERE). 

Daniels also wrote another short series starring a California police chief named Kelly Carvel. These books were The Rape of a Town in 1970 followed by One Angry Man in 1971 and concluding with License to Kill in 1972. I reviewed the series debut HERE.

Daniels also submerged himself into the marketable medical thriller and hospital trend. He authored titles like The Surgeon, Savage Heart, Jennifer James RN, Stanton Bishop MD and The Tarnished Scalpel.

In the 1970s, Norman Daniels began delving into the gothics genre. Daniels wrote many of them under the name Angela Gray. Some title names were The Ashes of Falconwyk, Ravenswood Hall, Watcher in the Dark and The Warlock's Daughter. He also wrote them under the name Suzanne Somers. These had titles like Mists of Mourning, Until Death, The House on Thunder Hill and House of Eve. He also used the name Cynthia Kavanaugh to pen gothic romances like The Deception and Bride of Lenore. He also wrote at least one under the name Geraldine Thayer, a novel titled The Dark Rider.  Daniels even wrote some gothic-romance novels under his wife's name to leverage her market value and name.

Norman Daniels was very prolific because he knew the paperback trends and pop-culture. He wrote what was popular at the time and hinged much of his success on what was selling at the cinema. If spy films were popular then he wrote espionage thrillers. Once the gothic market took off he was quick to jump into that concept. When WW2 and high-adventure became a trend, Daniels was quick to place his efforts in that niche. 

Norman Daniels died in Camarillo California in 1995. Much of his literary work, journals, notes and manuscripts were donated to Bowling Green University where they remain available for anyone wishing to browse the author's work. His wife Dorothy, who sold over 10 million copies and wrote over 150 novels, passed away in 2001.

Paperback Warrior Primer - George Harmon Coxe

New York native George Harmon Coxe (1901-1984) was a journalist, prolific pulp writer, and novelist. He served as the president of the Mystery Writers of America and he won the Grand Master Award. Unfortunately, his name and literary work have drifted into the passages of time and remains largely forgotten. I chronicled his life on a podcast feature HERE. But, I wanted to provide a Paperback Warrior Primer for those of you wanting a text profile. So, let's take a look at George Harmon Coxe.

Coxe (pronounced like “cokes”) was born in New York in 1901. He graduated high school at Elmire Free Academy. He attended Purdue for one year following his graduation and shifted his curriculum from engineering to literature. He also changed schools to Cornell University. For five years, beginning in 1922, he was a journalist for the Los Angeles Express, the Utica Observer Dispatch, and Santa Monica Outlook among others. 

Coxe was an admirer of pulp fiction. While performing his day job in 1922 - at the age of 21 - Coxe authored two stories for Detective Story Magazine. In the 1930s, Coxe began writing for Street & Smith's Top-Notch before contributing to even more pulps like Clues All Star Detective Stories, Dime Mystery Book Magazine, Detective Fiction Weekly, Street & Smith's Complete Stories, Thrilling Detective, and Argosy. He wrote hundreds of stories from 1922 through 1972. 

In 1934, Coxe creates a newspaper photographer named Jack Flashgun Casey. There had been previous pulp appearances of newspaper reporters that worked as amateur detectives to solve crimes. But not a photographer in the role as an amateur detective. The March 1934 issue of Black Mask featured the first Jack Flashgun Casey story, "Return Engagement". Initially, Black Mask editor Joe Shaw had discouraged Coxe from creating a recurring character, but he later admitted that the character was so well constructed that the series soon became a reader favorite. 

There were 24 Flashgun Casey stories that appeared in Black Mask from 1934-1943. The only exception was a story in Star Weekly in 1962. The Black Mask stories were all collected in Flash Casey, Detective published in 1946 as an Avon paperback. In addition to the short stories, there were five novels starring Flashgun Casey between 1942 through 1964. Those were Silent for the Dead, Murder for Two, Error of Judgment, The Man Who Died Too Soon, and Deadly Image. Three of the Casey novels are available as reprints through Mysterious Press in both digital and physical copies HERE.

Additionally, a Here's Flash Casey film was released in 1938 and was adapted from the series of short stories. A well-respected, much-loved radio show was broadcast for years starring the character. Also, between 1951 through 1952 the series was adapted to a TV show titled Crime Photographer and starred Darren McGavin. 

Another pulp character that Coxe created is Paul Baron, a hard-boiled private detective that was assisted by a scrappy side kick named Buck O' Shea. Baron appeared in four stories in Black Mask in 1936. 

The next pulp character that Coxe created was Dr. Paul Standish. This character appeared in ten stories and one novel from 1942 to 1966. The stories appeared in glossy magazines like Cosmopolitan, Liberty, and the American Book Magazine. Standish is described as a medical examiner that delves into mysterious deaths. He is aided by a police lieutenant and a nurse secretary. In July, 1948, CBS ran a short-lived radio broadcast starring the character.  

The Kent Murdoch series is Coxe's most well-known title. Murdoch appeared in two stories in The American Magazine, but flourished in the full-length novels - both hardcover and paperback. The first Murdoch novel was Murder with Pictures, appearing in 1935. 22 more installments of the series followed through 1965. You can get most of these books, if not all, through Mysterious Press as reprints HERE.

In Paperback Confidential, Brian Ritt describes Kent Murdoch as being a smarter version of the Flashgun Casey series. Murdoch has a formal education, he's sophisticated and well-mannered. He's married to a woman named Joyce and they work as a team solving crimes in Boston's upper crust. In the Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes, Jess Nevins summarizes the character as a photographer for the Boston Courier-Herald. Because he is more intelligent than the police he can solve the crimes. However, many times he has to clear his own name after being accused of being a participant in the crime. Murdoch's wife Joyce plays a prominent role in the first six books and then disappears for the rest of the series. Murdoch also teams up with a hardboiled private-eye in this series named Jack Fenner. This Fenner sidekick would star in his own novels as well. 

Coxe, while succeeding with amateur detective characters, also had an official detective in Sam Crombie. Crombie appeared in two novels, The Frightened Fiancé and The Impetuous Mistress. Coxe's other official detective was Max Hale. He appeared in Murder for the Asking and The Lady is Afraid. Hale is a wealthy New Yorker who attended the State Police Academy and then just doesn't have any motivation to solve crimes. He is sort of roped into crime-solving by his secretary Sue Marshall. 

Coxe also wrote a number of stand-alone crime-fiction novels that were published by a variety of publishers in both hardcover and paperback. In the 1930s, Cox's writing had become so popular that MGM took notice. They employed Coxe between 1936 until 1938 to write screenplays. However, Coxe preferred writing books and stories. Three of Coxe's stories were adapted into films - Women are Trouble, Murder with Pictures, and Here's Flash Casey.

Coxe was elected to the President of the Mystery Writers of America in 1952 and won the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1964. 

In the March 11, 1971 issue of The Island Packet, Eugene Able interviewed Coxe and he had this to say about his literary work and career:

“When you get my age and have written as many book and stories as I have, you have to be careful not to be repetitive. I like to write a book that has a good story with believable characters. If a reader figures out the mystery halfway through the book, I want the story to be good enough and the characters real enough to make them want to finish it. The trickier you get with your ending, the more you sacrifice the story.”

Coxe married Elizabeth Fowler in 1929 and was married to her until his death on January 31, 1984 in Old Lyme, Connecticut. They had two children. 

You can obtain vintage copies of his books HERE.

Paperback Warrior Primer - William P. McGivern

William P. McGivern was a successful pulp writer that specialized in crime-fiction, mystery, and science-fiction. He was also an accomplished novelist that found his fortune in the early 1950s as the original paperback novel concept became a marketing triumph. He also wrote screenplays for Hollywood and partnered with his wife to write a number of novels and non-fiction travel logs. We've covered his life and literary work on Episode 59 of the podcast (HERE) but wanted to offer an easy-to-read primer on his life and literary work.

William was born in Chicago in 1922 but at a young age, his family moved to Mobile, Alabama where he was raised. His father was a farmer and his mother was employed as a dress-maker. Despite dropping out of high school, William loved to read as a teenager. His favorite authors were Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner. 

Like a lot of the authors we cover here at PW, William joined the U.S. Army in 1943 and rose to the rank of Line Sergeant. At one point he was aboard a tanker that was being bombed. Exercising quick thinking, William opened the valves and released the explosive gas from the tanker saving the crew who were trapped aboard. For that courageous feat, William received the prestigious Soldier’s Medal and honorably left the Army in 1946. At some point after his military career he enrolled in studies at the University of Birmingham in England. 

Returning to the U.S., William was employed for the Pullman Company, a manufacture of locomotive rail cars. Later, he earned a position as a police reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer, which touched off his fascination with police work and police culture – a theme that ran through his 23 mystery novels. He worked as a police reporter for two years and then jumped ship to become a reporter and reviewer for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. 

He sold his first short story, “John Brown's Body”, to the pulp magazine Amazing Stories in 1940, and continued to sell short stories throughout his career to magazines including the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, and Cosmopolitan. During the pulp magazine era, his early 1940s emphasis was on science-fiction short stories for pulps like Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. Wildside Press has compiled 25 of these stories into an ebook volume (HERE). William's pulp career can be identified through a variety of pseudonyms he employed – P.F. Costello, Gerald Vance, Clee Garson, and Bill Peters.  

While William was working as a reporter he also wrote his first novel, But Death Runs Faster, published by Dodd Mead & Co. as a hardcover in 1948. When paperbacks took off in 1950, the novel was reprinted as The Whispering Corpse by Pocket. 

In 1947, McGivern married Maureen Daly, a journalist and published author. She enjoyed success with her 1942 bestseller Seventh Summer. Margaret and William collaborated on a handful of non-genre books throughout their lives, including a non-fiction book about their world travels.

During the second half of the 1940s, it is evident that William's passion for storytelling transformed into crime-fiction and mysteries. His pulp output transitioned from galaxies far, far way to that of inner-city racketeering and the hardboiled detectives destined to stop them. He wrote over 20 crime-fiction stories for pulps like Mammoth Detective, Mammoth Mystery, F.B.I. Detective Stories, and Dime Detective. He also sprinkled in some western stories as well for Mammoth Western. 

As the paperback original became the biggest publishing enterprise, William was there to cash in. Beginning in 1950, he wrote at least one novel every year through 1963. Five of those novels, Shield for Murder, The Big Heat, Rogue Cop, The Darkest Hour, and Odds Against Tomorrow, were all adapted to film. Over the course of his career, William saw 14 of his 23 novels adapted to screen. 

As I alluded to earlier, we have covered a great deal of William's literary work. Here are some of our descriptions of the books we've sampled:

Rogue Cop (1954) - More than just a kick-ass tale of cops and crooks. It’s also a story of a man fighting for his own redemption - both professionally and spiritually. There’s a lot going on in this short novel, and it’s way smarter than most genre paperbacks.

Odds Against Tomorrow (1957) - Fans of heist paperbacks would rightly cite Lionel White and Donald Westlake as the high-water marks in the genre. The book doesn’t quite reach those heights, but it’s a worthwhile effort and a fun ride. Recommended.

Killer on the Turnpike (1961) - A fun way to kill some time with an old, crumbling paperback. Don’t spend a fortune on it, and you won’t be let down. Recommended.

Night Extra (1957) - It doesn’t reinvent the hardboiled formula, but the author certainly showcases his talents and strengths in perfecting it. This was a fast-paced narrative with some touching characters in which readers will invest.

In the early 1960s, William moved to Los Angeles to write for film and television. His credits include the TV series Ben Casey, Adam-12, and Kojak. While it was a cinematic disappointment, William is also credited for writing the screenplay for The Wrecking Crew, a film loosely based on the Matt Helm installment by Donald Hamilton.  

William continued writing novels throughout the 1960s. His books began to take on international settings as the author and his wife became seasoned travelers. His last crime novel was Night of the Juggler, published in 1975.  

After finding a robust career in California, the couple stayed there until William died from cancer in 1982 in Palm Desert. 

You can get William's books HERE.

Paperback Warrior Primer - Sydney Horler

Depending who you talk with Sydney Horler (1888-1954) was historically good, average, or just a plain 'ole hack. He wrote 150 novels - at least - and countless stories and columns. He's known for a variety of spy and crime-fiction series titles like The Ace, Sir Mark Bellamy, Brett Carstairs, Bunny Chipstead, Sir Brian Fordinghame, Gerald Lissendale, Chief Constable Meatyard, Nighthawk, Sebastian Quin, Peter Scarlett, Tiger Standish, Baron Veseloffsky, Paul Vivanti, and Robert Wynnton. He also wrote horror and non-fiction books over the course of his prolific writing career. We offered a podcast episode about his life and literature HERE.

Sydney Horler was born in England in 1888. He was educated at Redcliffe and Colston Schools in Bristol and began professional writing in Fleet Street, first on the the Western Daily Press and on Daily Mail chronicling junior reporting assignments like police courts, inquests, and chapel meetings. He served in Air Intelligence in the propaganda section during World War I. After the war he was hired as sub-editor for John 'O London's Weekly before his employment was terminated in 1919. 

He became a novelist around 1915 with his first book being a western titled Standish of the Rangeland (1916). He didn't find success with the western and left that genre behind. It was during this time that Horler went to the short story market, used a pseudonym of J.O. Standish, and wrote a serial starring a character named Rex Harley called The Lightning Left. It ran from November 1919 through February 1920 in the pages of The Boys Realm. I wasn't able to obtain any info on this serial or character. I find it interesting that he used the pseudonym of Standish which was his western hero in his first book. He will use that name again with a future spy series. Before the year 1920 Holter had penned an additional 24 short stories for British magazines like Short Stories Illustrated, Chums, and The Grand Magazine. 

In the novel market, Horler followed Standish of the Rangeland with sports books like Goal! A Romance of the English Cup Ties, originally published in magazine form first. He wrote a crime novel called The Breed of the Beverleys in 1921. In a nonfiction book called London's Underworld, there is a newspaper article written by A.E Wilson from The Star serving as an introduction. In it, Wilson, who was friends with Horler from an early age, said, quote, "He progressed from boy's fiction to football fiction and from football fiction to the thriller." He also goes on to say, "It was only a few years ago that Edgar Wallace said to me very seriously: That fellow Horler is going to be a dangerous rival." Wilson continues and states that if Wallace lived it would have been interesting to watch the race in output and popularity.

Throughout Horler's career he is often described as being similar to Edgar Wallace. 

His writing career caught fire in 1925 with the crime novel book The Mystery of No. 1. It was published in the US as The Order of the Octopus and ran in the pages of Top-Notch Magazine in 1926. It is the first novel in a series that Horler launched launched starring a British Evil Genius named Paul Vinanti. In The Mystery of No. 1 Vivanti creates a villain supergroup called The Order of the Octopus with contains a Chinese man, a Count of Central Europe, and a woman described as extremely dangers and desired. Vivanti does all of the things that traditional villains do while attempting to build a criminal enterprise. Through the course of the series a British intelligence agent named Peter Foyle, who is also a statesman's nephew, is there to nix Vivanti's plans. The six Vivanti books were published from 1925 through 1945 and were the aforementioned The Mystery of No. 1, then Vivanti, The Worst Man in the World, Vivanti Returns, Lord of Terror, and Virux X. The series gets rave reviews while others seem to think it is just an average pulpy series of novels with cheap thrills. According to my sources the character also appears in at least one of three stories published as The Man Who Shook the Earth in 1933, an anthology of three stories. He also appeared in another of Horler's short story collections called The Screaming Skull, and Other Stories. The series can be described as a mixture of occult and super-science. 

Since he had luck in 1925 with a series, Horler decided to immediately write another. This one only lasted two books, False-Face in 1926 and Miss Mystery in 1928. Once again, the series stars a villain, a Russian secret agent named Baron Veseloffsky and the obligatory British secret agent as his foe, a guy named Sir Brian Fordinghame in the series debut. 

Horler liked the hero Sir Brian Fordinghame so he spun off of this series another three books featuring the character - The Murder Mask, High Stakes, and The Prince of Plunder. The four-book Brian Fordinghame series altogether features those books plus False-Face. Technically, this series can be labeled as published between 1913 and 1932.

Another character debuted in 1927 - Bunny Chipstead. He's a freelance British Secret Service agent which means he can choose which assignments he wants plus he can work both British and American assignments. There were four of these books running from 1927 through 1940 - In the Dark, Chipstead of the Lone Hand, The Secret Agent, and The Enemy within the Gates. 

Next was the Sebastian Quin series (not to be confused with popular author Seabury Quinn). Now Sebastian Quin appeared in three stories in 1925-1930. He is described as an occult detective, an enthusiast of the bizarre who has devoted his life to the study of crime in its most exotic and weird manifestations. He can Speak Chinese and another 17 foreign languages. What is interesting about him is that he isn't necessarily looking to stop a crime. He wants to learn what prompted the outrage to commit the crime. His assistant is a man named Martin Huish. The three story appearances exist but this character was the star of his own two-book series. The first novel was The Evil Messenger from 1938, followed by Fear Walked Behind in 1942. There is also a short story collection called The House in Greek Street that has a Sebastian Quin story reprinted from the magazines.

We're still in the 1920s and Horler is creating characters and series titles, but still filling the void with stand alone sports novels. From my research I counted eight sports novels between 1920 to 1926. Continuing in 1926 was another mystery or crime fiction novel called House of Secrets concerning an inheritance. This is followed by more stand alone mystery novels like The Black Heart, The Fellow Hagan, The 13th Hour, Heart Cut Diamond, and Lady of the Night to finish out the 20s. He also used pseudonyms like Martin Heritage and Peter Cavendish this decade. Horler wrote 137 short stories in the 1920s for all kinds of magazines and pulps. There were also recurring characters in some of these stories like a sports team called Sportsman's Club. 

Switching to a different series, Horler did start one more series in 1928 that was a tremendous success that launched a small empire for him. 

Harker Bellamy is a British spymaster, a Secret Service Chief in an intelligence organization called Q One. This is important because Bellamy runs the place and has agents that directly work for him. He is introduced for the first time in 1928 in a book called The Curse of Doone. In this one, Bellamy is on the case of a kidnapped woman by an orphan. He assigns the case to a Q One agent named Ian Heath. There is a sense of supernatural, like many of Holter's novels, when the house the woman is held at may be haunted and may in fact contain a vampire. In the third book, Bellamy calls upon one of his best agents, a man named Tiger Standish. As of book three of the Bellamy series it is all Tiger Standish through book 10. The series ran 1928-1948. So, you can theoretically take all 11 books and call them the Harker Bellamy series just like you could take all the Matt Helm books and call them the Mac series - Mac being Helm's boss. However, the Tiger Standish character continues to show up in other books too from 1936 to 1951. Books like Exit the Disguiser, They Thought He Was Dead, The House of Jackals, and Tiger Standish Does His Stuff. He's also in some short stories as well. I find it strange that the author had such a fixture on the name Standish. His first book was a cowboy named Standish, then he used that same name as a pseudonym and now his most popular spy is the same name.

The Nighthawk series began in 1937 and consisted of the books They Called Him Nighthawk, The Return of Nighthawk, Nighthawk Strikes to Kill, Nighthawk Mops Up, Ring Up Nighthawk, Nap on Nighthawk, and Nighthawk Swears Vengeance. This character is named Gerald Frost and he is a professional burglar. He is described by characters in the books as having the law unto himself. He robs crooks, taking on cases which the police have been powerless to touch. For example, The Return of Nighthawk has him defending a friend of his - a doctor - from a crook named Marius who employs a network of crooks to help him swindle innocent people across London. The theme of the series is a thief of thieves. 

Also in 1931 was a two-book series starring Brett Carstairs. He was in The Man Who Walked with Death and The Spy. He's a British secret agent that portrays a wealthy upperclassman to disguise his secret missions against the Soviets. 

Again, just like the 1920s, Holter is filling holes between his series installments all through the 1930s. Stand-alone books in the 1930s add up to 35-38 books in addition to all of those series installments. By this point Horler has sold over 2 million books. Between the years 1925 and 1953 Horley never published fewer than three books of fiction in any year. Three books a year was actually a slow year for him, he only sank to that level in 1940 due to the Blitz in England during WWII. In 1931 he produced 7 novels, a book of short stories, and in 1951 he wrote 10 novels. 

He had been quoted as saying he dictated 25,000 words which is about 100 pages every single week. Horler was a prolific author and he sold well through the 1920s, 1930s, and even into the 1940s. His publishers would include "Horler for Excitement" on his books as the marketing slogan.

Beginning in 1941 there was The Ace series starring a British secret agent named Justin March working for an organization named Y.2. There were three books total with Enter the Ace in 1941, Hell's Brew in 1952, and The Dark Night in 1953. 

According to his 1934 autobiographical book London's Underworld, Holter says that in the prime of his career he received a phone call from The Star asking him to briefly switch from a full-time novelist to a part-time journalist. The assignment was to submerge himself into the underworld for a full month. Here is what they told him, according to Horler's book: 

"We want you to meet the people who live in, and practice their crafts through, the Underworld. We want you to talk to them and get their viewpoint, describe their habits, characteristics, their methods of working - in short - to deliver us a clear and composite picture of this section of humanity which we know actually does exist but of which 99 persons out of every hundred are in complete ignorance. This gentleman, indicating He Who Had Remained Nameless, will act as a guide to begin with. After that it will be up to you."

I haven't read this book but I looked at the chapter list at the beginning of the book and you can kind of see where the author spent time at. He wined, dined, interviewed, traveled with, and entertained thieves, prostitutes, white slavers, blackmailers, the real soho, dope traffickers, and police on the take. In flipping through the book it is all done in a humorous way.

Horler also wrote screenplays as well. There are four films listed on IMDB with his name attached to them. 

Horler's political views have often come under fire. He often expressed contempt in his writing of non-British peoples. Malcolm Turnbull noted that Horler's novels regularly depict Jews as criminals. Horler's book Nighthawk Mops Up has a Jewish villain who collaborates with the Nazis. Odd. Horler was outspoken and said Americans were absurd, Italians smelly, French dishonest, and the Swiss had wooden faces. 

Horler had an ongoing feud or squabble with British crime-fiction writer Dorothy L. Sayers, who immensely disliked his work. The same can be said for Scottish writer Compton MacKenzie. 

Horler suffered a stroke in August of 1954. He then entered Bournemouth nursing home and would pass away on October 27th  at age 66.

To give you an idea how abrasive Horler was, when he died the Daily Express announced his death by stating "HORLER KILLED EVERY WAY THERE IS!" 

You can get Sydney Horler books HERE.

Paperback Warrior Primer - Harry Whittington

Back in 2022, Tom Simon, an alumni of Paperback Warrior, was asked to write an introduction for the Stark House Press twofer A Ticket to Hell and Hell Can Wait, both by the iconic crime-noir writer Harry Whittington. I wanted to share this write-up with the Paperback Warrior fans and readers that didn't have the opportunity to purchase the book. I hope you enjoy it. 

"Investigating Harry" 

“Have you ever heard of an author named Harry Whittington?” I asked the used bookstore lady.

I was in Ocala, Florida trying to dig up information that might be helpful for the introduction to this Harry Whittington twofer. Smarter guys than me have written introductions for previous Harry Whittington reprints. I needed an angle, so I was sniffing around Harry’s childhood hometown looking for leads.

I should probably explain that I’m a recently-retired FBI Special Agent who spent the last five years of the job investigating federal crimes in Northern Florida. I worked a handful of cases in Ocala, but this was my first time back since I retired and opened my own private eye firm. However, it wasn’t my sleuthing that landed me this writing gig. Stark House hit me up because of my side-hustle, a blog and podcast called Paperback Warrior where I cover pulp fiction with my buddy Eric. We host the largest collection of Harry Whittington book reviews on the internet, so Stark House figured I might have something to say about Harry’s work that hadn’t already been said - a tall order.

Facing the problem of what to write that hadn’t already been covered, I recalled a saying: “When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” I’m an investigator, so I drove down to Ocala to knock on some doors.

A Ticket to Hell was the first of Harry’s books I read and remains my favorite. I reviewed Hell Can Wait much later and enjoyed it quite a bit. I could go on and on about the stuff I liked about each paperback, but I don’t want to spoil either novel for you. I hate it when introductions do that, and I don’t want to be that guy. You should read both, and I promise you’ll like them. If you only have one week to live and must choose, go with A Ticket to Hell. It’s the stronger of the pair.

Ocala is pretty far inland, so erase from your mind images of the sandy beaches of Miami or Daytona. This is non-coastal Florida marshland. Harry clearly drew upon this lush and humid ecosystem for many of his swamp-noir novels - Cracker Girl, Swamp Kill, Backwoods Hussy, and Backwoods Shack among them. If that sub-genre is your jam, the best is Backwoods Tramp, also released as A Moment To Prey. Driving through the sand pines and magnolia trees of the Ocala National Forest, I understood why this setting was so alluring for many of Harry’s early paperbacks. It’s a vivid and earthy place thick with Spanish moss dripping from the branches - a perfect setting for a rural noir tale.

When Harry was growing up, Ocala was a one-horse town. Nowadays, there are thousands of horses. In fact, breeding and training horses is Ocala’s main industry. The city leaders call it “The Horse Capital of the World,” and Marion County hosts more than 600 thoroughbred farms. Back in Harry’s day, Ocala farmers were mostly raising citrus, cotton and tobacco.  

Fun Fact: The town’s only real celebrity today is John Travolta, who owns a giant compound in a subdivision with its own airfield. I wanted to ask him if he’s heard of Harry Whittington, so I drove out to his gated neighborhood to snoop. I made it through a haphazardly-opened gate and toured for about ten minutes marveling at the mansions - each with their own airplane hanger. There was no sign of Mr. Travolta when I was pulled over by neighborhood security and swiftly shown the exit gate.

I continued my field investigation at Ocala’s best used bookstore. There are only two remaining, and the other one is a lousy firetrap. The good one is called A Novel Idea, and it’s in a strip mall near a movie theater. I always made it a point to swing by the place whenever I was working a case in the area. I had long since bought all their vintage crime paperbacks, but I still liked visiting  - mostly to see the store’s two in-house cats: Lord Byron and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In my absence, Fitzy had died. Now there’s only Lord Byron on the lookout for paperback shoplifters.

The store’s proprietor is Lori. Her daughter is the owner, but Lori runs the joint. She’s from Ocala but admitted that she’d never heard of Harry Whittington.

“He was born and raised here as a kid,” I told her. “He later moved to St. Petersburg and authored over 170 novels during the mid-20th century. They called him The King of Paperbacks because he was so prolific. He wrote books in a bunch of different genres under his own name and a giant list of pseudonyms.”

She listened politely to my Wikipedia speech and acted about as interested as retail politeness would dictate. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Excitement? Tears? A discount?

I swung by the public library in Ocala and asked the same question with similar results. The lady at the information desk had never heard of Harry, and the library carried none of his books. I hadn’t struck out this much with women since I was dating. Small towns are supposed to lionize their native sons, but Harry had been seemingly wiped from everyone’s memory here.

I needed an informant with good intel, so I contacted the Marion County Genealogical Society and asked them to do some digging. A fellow named Arnold Davis turned up some good dirt using historical records.

Harry’s parents (Harry Sr. & Rosa Hardee) were married on June 12, 1912 at the home of Rosa’s parents on South Magnolia Street. The happy couple settled into a house on Pond Street, and Harry was born on February 4, 1915. His dad ran Staple & Fancy Groceries on Main Street, and the family was somewhat wealthy compared to the farmers residing in the area.

Arnold the Informant uncovered a mosaic of family stories from Harry’s childhood - family trips to the beach in Daytona and a wayward nail that almost blinded his mom. One foggy night in 1922, Harry Sr. crashed his truck into a “dummy cop” statue erected in the middle of Main Street. The city had strategically placed these dummies to slow traffic, and the accident resulted in a lofty fine of $11.10 to cover repairs to the inert lawman.  

I went by the locations of Harry’s three childhood homes in Ocala. I was pleased to find that there were many places in the Historical District remaining from Harry’s era, but none of his houses remained. I had lunch at an old fashioned diner that used to be Elliott’s Drive-In back in the day. The food was excellent, but the waitress never heard of Harry.

After World War I in 1918, Ocala was a hot spot for tourists from the north visiting by way of the Orange Blossom Trail, now Highway 27. This was before the development of America’s interstate highway system, and Model-T tourism sparked the golden age of roadside attractions. Ocala’s contribution to this culture was Silver Springs. It’s now a state park, and I paid two bucks to walk through the paths surrounding the waters. Signs warned me to beware of both alligators and monkeys (feed neither, please). When Harry was 14, a guy named Ross Allen used to wrestle alligators there to the delight of both locals and tourists. From 1958 to 1961, Lloyd Bridges filmed the underwater adventure scenes for Sea Hunt in the spring’s crystal clear waters. 

I hit up my friend Ben Boulden. He’s a great author living in Utah and a solid guy. I remembered his introduction to a Stark House double by Lionel White and how much I enjoyed it. Ben is a whiz at researching old census records, so I solicited his help.

Ben hooked me up with a good timeline of Harry’s life using census and other historical records that I overlaid with the intel from Arnold to create a coherent timeline. Sometime around 1924, the Whittington clan moved 100 miles away to Tampa on the Gulf of Mexico, and Harry’s dad landed a job as a salesman for C.B. Witt Company, a wholesale grocer. For unclear reasons, Harry returned to Ocala in September 1930 as a transfer student from St. Petersburg to complete his final two years of high school. I’m guessing he lived with grandparents or extended family until he graduated from Ocala High School on June 3, 1932. 

I wanted to head over to Harry’s alma mater to regale the students vaping in the parking lot with stories about “The King of Paperbacks.” It became Forest High School in 1969 and is now Marion Technical Institute, a place for kids looking to get into the trades. I went by the school but didn’t see the upside of hassling these future welders, cooks and first responders with dumb questions about a long-dead author.

Harry returned to the family home in St. Petersburg after graduating high school in Ocala. By 1935, Harry’s dad was employed as a driver for Florida Milk Company. I recalled that a milkman was the main character in Like Mink, Like Murder, a Whittington oddity also reprinted by Stark House. For his part, Harry landed a job as a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service.

On February 6, 1936, 21 year-old Harry married Kathryn Odom, and the couple settled down in Saint Petersburg with Harry continuing his mailman gig until he was drafted in 1940. This military service was followed by a voluntary enlistment in the U.S. Navy from April 1945 to March 1946. 

Shortly after his release from the Navy, Harry sold his first novel, a western titled Vengeance Valley. In 1947, he sold a hardcover called Her Sin about a pleasure-loving girl named Iris. Demand for paperback original novels exploded in 1950, and Harry met that demand becoming one of the most prolific writers of paperback potboilers in the world. By 1957, Harry had 50 novels published under his own name and a cadre of pseudonyms. That same year, he was identified as a professional author in a St. Petersburg citizen’s directory uncovered by Informant Ben. 

In 1979, Harry settled in Indian Rocks Beach, a bit south of Clearwater. I saw his house, a modest ranch-style home built in 1951 two blocks from the gulf. Harry paid $45,000 for the place the same year he sold a mainstream flop called Sicilian Woman - the last novel published under his own name. It was in this house that he wrote six entries in the Longarm adult western series as Tabor Evans and twelve plantation gothic titles as Ashley Carter. Evidently, the market for paperbacks in the king’s own name had dried up by that point.

My manhunt concluded at Royal Palm South Cemetery in St. Petersburg where Harry was laid to rest in 1989 - later to be joined by his wife and daughter. His tombstone reads, “Master of the Roman Noir: One Of The Greats Among American Novelists.” An internet search explained that “Roman Noir” is a French term for a mystery or thriller, literally a “Dark Novel.”

Indeed, Harry’s best work was noir fiction, and you are holding in your hands two excellent examples of an American author at the top of his dark novel game. Still, I found his epigraph a bit reductive. Harry excelled at so many different genres: Westerns, Espionage, TV Tie-Ins, Historical Gothics, Erotica, Nursing Dramas and on and on. Some were good and others were not - but the guy’s cross-genre productivity was staggering and unmatched among his peers.

I left his gravesite thinking that even on his own tombstone, Harry didn’t get the credit he deserves. In any case, I’m glad you cared enough about his writing to pick up this Whittington double-shot. 

After all, Harry is a guy who deserves to be remembered.