Although dying at the early age of 37, William Ard (1922-1960) penned over 30 novels under his own name as well as pseudonyms like Mike Moran, Jonas Ward, Ken Hamlin and Ben Kerr. As Thomas Wills, Ard wrote two novels starring private investigator Barney Glines, “You'll Get Yours” (1952) and “Mine to Avenge” (1955). Stark House Press imprint Black Gat has re-printed “You'll Get Yours” at an affordable price to attract new generations to this talented writer.
Press agent Archie St. George has summoned Glines to his office to meet aspiring actress Kyle Shannon. St. George has encouraged Shannon to explain her dire situation to Glines in hopes she will hire him to investigate. Shannon has her debut film on the cusp of theatrical release after years of modeling leggings. Shannon doesn't want the public to realize she has inherited a fortune from her dead father. Apparently women in the 1950s can't become legitimate film stars if they come from wealthy stock. So, the secret of her fortune, as well as the $100,000 in diamonds she carries in a suitcase, is being suppressed from the public until she reaches widespread appeal. Then her personal fortune will simply blend into her robust box-office earnings with none the wiser.
Glines becomes involved because someone has stolen her diamonds. Shannon, hoping the thief won't reveal the diamond's owner to the public, wants Glines to recover the jewelry. This is an elementary plot and Wiliam Ard thankfully knows it. That's why he throws a box of wrenches in the gears to surprise the characters and reader. This isn't just an average jewel heist.
The thief contacts Glines and advises he will ransom back the jewels for a meager $20K. Suspicious of the offer, Glines accepts the deal and offers Shannon's money for the box of diamonds. After looking through the box, Shannon wants to know where the real fortune is. Puzzled, Glines points out that the diamonds are indeed there. However, Shannon's real treasure were a series of nude photos that she kept secure with the diamonds...in her missing suitcase. Suspending belief, I'm buying it I suppose. Now, Glines next job is to locate the stolen pictures before the thief can ransom them to the press.
Glines’ role as investigator inevitably leads to him falling in love with Shannon. But she's in love with St. George, who alone seems to have more interest in Shannon's wealth and potential than her sultry red hair. As Glines digs deeper into the heist, he finds himself tangled in a heroin ring that leads to his own false arrest. Attempting to prove his innocence, he teams with a homicide detective to track Shannon's extortionist through New York.
For a 1952 paperback, Ard pulls no punches. There's a number of deaths, detailed drug abuse and a somewhat critical inspection of police procedure. In terms of violence...let's say 1970s and 80s men's action-adventure might be a close comparison. In one shocking scene, thugs hold Glines down while absolutely obliterating a drugged out hooker in a hail of bullets. That's bold. But what's really interesting about Ard's position is his candid look at the price of popularity. Even in today's modern times, we still see this same situation: celebrities' privacy auctioned off to the highest bidder. Then it was calendars and magazines, today it's social networks, leaked sex tapes and TMZ.
With “You'll Get Yours,” Ard proves to be a cunning architect of plotting as he scripts the perfect storm of bribery, jealousy, extortion and intrigue. The book's fiery finale asks if there is more for Barney Glines. Let's hope Stark House has the affordable answer. This novel's sequel, “Mine to Avenge,” demands a hefty price tag as an out of print used paperback online.
This book was discussed on the fourth episode of the Paperback Warrior Podcast: Link
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‘The Gunsmith’ series of adult Westerns by Robert Randisi (writing as J.R. Roberts) is the most enduring - and the last man standing - of the mega-successful adult western titles. It’s also the most consistently good, thanks to having one author and visionary at the helm rather than a rotating cast of hired guns writing under a house name. The series started in 1982 and new installments are still released on a regular schedule, so I decided to check in with a 2019 episode, “Gunsmith #446: Deadville.”
Clint Adams is The Gunsmith, a drifter hero and gunfighter who rides from town to town finding adventures and getting laid in the Old West. Over the years, Randisi has played with the idea that Adams has achieved a kind of folk hero celebrity status in the untamed American West. This has made for a fun premise in several different novels, and provides the motivation for the villains of “Deadville.”
Mayor Tom Simon of Wentworth, Nebraska has cooked up a scheme to make his crappy, dying village into an 1800s boomtown. He’s studied the success of towns like Deadwood and Tombstone and believes he’s cracked the code of their success. These towns have benefited from the violent deaths of famous gunfighters - such as Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood. His plan is to entice the famous Clint Adams into town, have The Gunsmith killed in a dramatic fashion, change Wentworth’s name to Deadville, and a tourist Mecca is born!
A few months later, The Gunsmith is lured to Wentworth under false pretenses - stopping to get laid along the way. Now, Mayor Simon’s toadies can’t just shoot Adams in the back and expect Deadville to be the next OK Corral. The killing of Clint Adams requires some drama and theatricality to make the story go viral, so he enlists the help of a gunfighting local outlaw named Bad Tony Bacon to lay the groundwork for a staged killing within city limits.
There’s a cool vibe in “Deadville” that reminds me a bit of the movie “The Truman Show.” Many of the citizens and leaders of Wentworth understand that they are creating theater to set up the sequence of events leading to The Gunsmith’s murder. The only one without any knowledge of the gag seems to be Clint Adams himself. Randisi’s writing is forward-moving and breezy with lots of dialogue and short chapters making the pages fly by. The sex scenes are graphic and very explicit, but they can be skipped or skimmed if you’re the type to blush easily.
What we really have here is a mystery where The Gunsmith attempts to understand what Mayor Simon is planning before Adams starts catching bullets with his body. Randisi is a seasoned writer of both mysteries and Westerns, so he’s on familiar ground here - particularly after authoring over 500 adult western novels. The story was very compelling but there wasn’t a lot of action outside of the bedroom until deep into the paperback. Overall, “Deadville” is formulaic as hell and probably not a great selection for your wife’s book club, but the story is a lot of fun with tons of sex and a likable stalwart hero. What’s not to like?
This book was discussed on the fifth episode of the Paperback Warrior Podcast: Link
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In this episode, we discuss the massive Mack Bolan universe, including the origin, spin-offs and legacy of "The Executioner". Additionally, Eric reviews the 88th "Executioner" novel, "Baltimore Trackdown", by Chet Cunningham. Tom reviews the newest adult western novel, "Gunsmith: Deadville", by Robert Randisi. Listen below or on streaming services like Apple, Google, Spreaker, YouTube, Stitcher, etc.
Listen to "Episode 05: The Executioner Mack Bolan" on Spreaker.
Arnold Hano is an esteemed sportswriter, winning numerous accolades including 1963's Sportswriter of the Year. His 1955 non-fiction account of the 1954 World Series, “A Day in the Bleachers”, placed him in the annals of baseball history. Along with freelance work, including The Saturday Evening Post and The New York Times, Hano wrote many paperback originals under the pseudonyms of Gil Dodge, Matthew Gant, Ad Gordon and Mike Heller. Using his managing editor experience with Bantam, Hano became editor-in-chief of Lion Books from 1949-1954, developing crime-noir legends like Jim Thompson and David Goodis.
While working at Lion Books, Hano wrote a classic western tale entitled “The Last Notch”. This 1958 novel was released under the name Matthew Gant to avoid the optics of publishing himself in his authoritative role as editor-in-chief. The book was reprinted in 2017 by Stark House Press under imprint Black Gat Books. It features an introduction by David Laurence Wilson, including insights from Hano on his career and literary body of work. As of the time of this review, Hano is still writing at the age of 97.
“The Last Notch” is a western. The genre tropes are clearly evident – cattle rustlers, six-guns and fast-draws...of both iron and whiskey. However, it is written to exclude one of the centerpieces of the frontier story. There's no clear hero. No white hats to be seen. It is devoid of any strict boundaries between right and wrong, and lacks any social conventions for the characters. It's as if Hano's goal was the non-traditional definition of a hero. It's not until the book's closing pages that the moral courage is unveiled, finally allowing readers the satisfaction of some semblance of a heroic figure...as little as that may be. But I think that is where “The Last Notch” excels as an abstract western tale that defies the mandatory genre attributes.
The book's central character is an old gun-slinger named Slattery, an bi-racial killer-for-hire who has accepted his final contract - $5,000 to kill a “target to be named later”. Faces and names mean very little to men like Slattery, so he accepts the job and does what killers do - hangs out at the bar with similar men. One of them is a cold-blooded youth named The Kid, essentially Slattery's heir apparent. The arrogant young man wants to knock off Slattery and assume his position as the King of the Killers. Slattery isn't buying it and refuses to face The Kid in a gun-duel.
The territory has a newly-elected governor who is issuing amnesty to men like Slattery. In retribution for his sins, the tired gun-hand wants to kill one more time, accept “forgiveness” from the elected official and turn in his guns for a pardon. In a way, Slattery feels this act is a cleansing of the sins, a way to simply ride off into the sunset and die. The book's exciting dilemma is revealed when Slattery learns his $5,000 target is the governor himself.
Hano employs a back-story inspired by the mega-success of 1957's “Mandingo” by Kyle Onstott to paint Slattery's past as a plantation slave and his subsequent birth out of wedlock following the coupling of a white master and a black slave. The author uses the opportunity to provide adversity for Slattery, essentially shaping him into a grim-faced killer, a sweeping hand of death that just does the job and coldly forgets about the last one. Mixed into the narrative is a riveting side-story of amnesty for cattle rustlers, which cleverly crosses into Slattery's goals of killing the governor.
There are basic westerns, and then there are special westerns like “The Last Notch”. Genre authors and hopefuls would do very well to improve their plotting by simply reading the book's 14th chapter, if nothing else. While the action heats up in the finale, it's a slower, more methodical approach bordering on psychological suspense that sets this apart from rudimentary western storytelling. Kudos to Stark House Press and Black Gat for bringing this fantastic novel back into circulation.
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Leonard Zinberg (1911-1968) was an accomplished author of crime and noir fiction during the dawn of paperback original novels as a popular form of entertainment. His first published book was “The Woman Aroused” originally released in 1951 by Avon under the pen name “Ed Lacey,” a pseudonym later streamlined into “Ed Lacy” for the majority of his published works. His debut has been reprinted several times and remains available as a 99 cent Kindle eBook.
When we meet our narrator, George Jackson, he is separated from his fashionista wife. They still get together once a month to watch a movie, screw, and fight, but the functional marriage is basically over. George works as a writer for an oil company’s internal newsletter and shares his backstory with the reader about growing up as a child in Manhattan with a successful plumber as a father. His personal history is fascinating and broadcasts to the reader that this won’t be your typical helping of noir fiction.
One morning George is surprised by a visit from an old friend named Hank Conley who has just returned to New York after nearly a decade in the Army - a period that encompassed World War 2 and its aftermath. Hank gives George an envelope containing $7,000 in cash and asks George to stash the loot until Hank’s divorce is final, so he can begin enjoying his savings. It helps to bear in mind that in 1951, $7,000 was enough money to base an entire novel around.
Of course, Hank dies under suspicious circumstances while George remains in possession of the $7,000 - creating a moral dilemma for our hero. While still deciding that to do, George travels across Manhattan to meet Hank’s widow, and you can see exactly where this is going. Then things turn in a very different - and much, much darker - direction than I was anticipating. I don’t want to give it away, but this was way more twisted and perverse than the femme fatale story I was expecting. Instead, the author wrote a novel about survivors coping with the traumas of war that echo long after the final shots are fired. “The Woman Aroused” is not really a crime novel, an action story, a mystery, or a noir drama. The book isn’t easy to classify, but it’s unquestionably the kind of fiction that will stay with you long after it’s over.
This being the first novel for Zinberg/Lacey/Lacy, it’s clear that the author had a lifetime of thoughts and ideas in his mind to play with in his narrative. As such, this short work is peppered with Big Ideas about war, peace, love, marriage, economics, atrocities, and more. Just because a paperback is essentially pulp fiction doesn’t mean it can’t be thoughtful - and deeply unsettling - in the process. If you’re looking for something completely different, “The Woman Aroused” is a well-executed literary oddity. Recommended.
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Looking at the 1960s hierarchy of successful paperback publishers, Connecticut's Monarch Books is in the lower echelon. Despite my best shopping practices, I've yet to acquire a really good Monarch published novel. With a fantastic cover painting by American prolific artist Harry Schaare, the 1961 paperback “Tropic Fury” looks to change that. It was written by Jeff Sutton (1913-1979) under the pseudonym Christopher Gale. Wildside Press has reprinted the novel in e-book format for $2.51.
Set in 1941, the paperback introduces us to Commander Joe Stark, an operative for the Office of U.S. Naval Intelligence. His superiors have asked that he depart to the Pacific peninsula of Malaya. Fearing that the Japanese will invade and capture the region, Stark's mission is to oversee the destruction of the Malay's oil fields, an asset that the Allies can't gift to the enemy. Once Stark arrives at the mission's destination, the potential of this WW2 high-beam act quickly dissolves.
Stark's arrival on Mala partners him with a trio of potential bedmates:
- Selinda – the bold, sexually aggressive wife of oil superintendent Mike Hawker
- Yoshi – a beautiful, doll-like nurse who plays hard to get
- Suzanne – sultry daughter of the local doctor that may be a celestial nymph
Obviously, the title “Tropic Fury” quickly changes it's meaning from what would be perceived as a rousing war novel. Stark asks some questions, interviews the oil field laborers and learns that he has a fifty-million dollar decision on his hands – when to actually press the detonator. With the Japanese on the outskirts, the bulk of the book is just Stark's decision making, which also includes which babe to bed down before destruction ensues. Yawn.
“Tropic Fury” is simply terrible. Make the right decision now and refuse to be mesmerized by the book's flashy cover. You deserve better than this.
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Bruce Cassiday was one of those authors who transitioned nicely from the pulp magazines to paperback original novels in the 1950s. He wrote a few Flash Gordon books in the 1970s and a host of other genre novels under an army of pseudonyms. He also wrote a biographies of Dinah Shore and Betty Ford, if that’s your bag. For awhile, he served as the fiction editor for Argosy Magazine and the brains behind many of their “book bonus” features.
Cassiday also authored two crime novels in the “Cash Madigan” series (if two books can even be called a series) - both released in 1957. One was half of an Ace Double titled “The Buried Motive” and the other was “While Murder Waits,” published by Graphic Books. The intended series order probably doesn’t matter, so I am hereby declaring “The Buried Motive” as Cash Madigan #1.
Cash is a Manhattan “bonding investigator,” a career that surprisingly doesn’t require a leather vest or a ball gag. Instead, he investigates employee embezzlements for a big company that insures employers against such losses. Cash’s job is to chase down the embezzler and recover enough stolen money to make his employer whole after the claim is paid. He’s basically a collection agent for an insurance company.
“The Buried Motive” assignment brings him to the small farming town of Gotham, Missouri to meet with an informant. The stool pigeon has info to provide Cash regarding the whereabouts of an embezzler who disappeared with $200,000 in payroll funds from a New York manufacturing company insured by Cash’s employer.
Upon Cash’s arrival in town, he reports to the trailer of his informant only to find that someone has butchered him with a carving knife. Although the logical suspect is the missing embezzler, Cash is quickly arrested for the stoolie’s murder. A baloney alibi from the town cutie springs him from police custody, but Cash remains in town to solve the murder, find the embezzler, and recover the missing dough.
Cash is a stereotypical wisecracking, tough-guy private eye in the mold of Shell Scott or Mike Hammer. The first-person narration is easy to read and follow, and Cassiday’s plotting is solid, if unremarkable. The mystery was pretty basic and nothing you haven’t read before. There’s murder and blackmail and deceit and missing money and if you haven’t read a warehouse of private eye paperbacks already, “The Buried Motive” will seem fresh and interesting. However, if you read a lot of these types of books, you’ll probably find this one to be just an average outing.
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