In a Small Motel

Even after he became a a marquee writer of paperback original novels, John D. MacDonald continued to write and sell short stories - his chosen profession during the 1940s. The July 1955 issue of Justice magazine featured a JDM novella called “In a Small Motel” that clocks in at about 39 modern pages. The story has been compiled in various anthologies through the years and is currently available as a 99 cent ebook.

It’s a busy evening for proprietor Ginny Mallory at Southern Georgia’s Belle View Courts motel with needy customers checking in while others are demanding ice and roll-away beds. Ginny is a hard-working widow from Jacksonville, Florida whose husband bought the motel and then died in a car accident seven months ago. She’s been trying to keep the business afloat all alone ever since.

A mystery man arrives wanting a single room and insisting that he hide his car behind the building where it can’t be seen from the highway. Rather suspicious, no? A romantic suitor from Jacksonville swings by the motel to visit Ginny, and the mystery man gets the mistaken impression that the visitor is following him and then...

Stop, stop, stop!

I shouldn’t say any more or else I’m liable to ruin this excellent story for you. “In a Small Motel” is really something twisty and cool. The novella will make you want to dive deeper into MacDonald’s vast short fiction library. Read this one. It’ll be the best 99 cents you spend this year.

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 62

On Episode 62 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast, Eric and Tom discuss the life and work of Charles Willeford. Also: Tom’s Dallas Book Tour, Richard Stark, Ron Goulart, Warrant for a Wanton, Nick Quarry, Hoke Moseley, William Fuller and more! Listen on your favorite podcast app, stream below or download directly HERE.

Listen to "Episode 62: Charles Willeford" on Spreaker.

The Venetian Blonde

Brooklyn native A.S. Fleischman (Avron Zalmon Fleischman, 1920-2010), authored his first book in 1939 at the age of 19. In 1941, Fleischman joined the U.S. Navy Reserve and served near the Phillippines and China during WW2. After graduating from San Diego State, the author began writing children's books as Sid Fleischman. During his literary career, Fleischman wrote over 40 children's books, a feat that earned him critical praise with industry peers. However, what brings the author to Paperback Warrior is his short career as a crime-fiction and adventure writer.

Between 1948-1963, Fleischman wrote 10 genre fiction books that saw publication with the likes of Fawcett Gold Medal, Phoenix Press and Ace. His 1955 novel Blood Alley was adapted for cinema starring John Wayne and Lauren Bacall. My first experience with Fleischman is his last full novel, The Venetian Blonde, published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1963.

The book stars Skelly, a former card-sharp who made a fortune dealing loaded hands to a Boston money man named Braque. After years of swift hands, Skelly's fingers fail Braque to the tune of $125,000. Unable to repay the error, Skelly begins to dodge Braque and his hired guns, a runaway trail that leads him to Venice Beach, California in hopes of a new start. But after trying a small hand of backroom poker, Skelly realizes his hands just aren't fast enough any longer. He needs a brand new con. Enter Evangeline.

Skelly, using the name Appleby, attempts to reconnect with an old friend. His wife, Evangeline, advises that her husband is out of the country on business. After learning of Skelly's financial woes, Evangeline throws him the perfect pitch. You see, she's a fake witch. A spiritualist. A medium. She dupes people out of money by faking the old smoke and mirrors séance trick. She's a cunning, greedy woman who runs the con game at the professional sounding Institute of Spirit Research. Here's the swindle: Evangeline has located an old millionaire who recently lost her nephew in a drowning accident. Evangeline proposes to Skelly that they collaborate on an unusual scheme. They can bring the millionaire's nephew back to life for a cool million. Skelly laughs at the proposal...until Evangeline shows him a mysterious young man she has locked away upstairs. Could this really be the drowned nephew?!?

My first experience with A.S. Fleischman was an absolute blast. Think of the heist formula perfected by the likes of Dan J. Marlowe or Lionel White and saturate it in Carter Brown's comedic seasoning. It's clear that the author emulates some of the writing style he used with his children's books, but adding all of the coarse characteristics one would find in a crime-noir novel of the 1960s – sex, murder and fraud. I also really enjoyed the nod to the western's hero's flaws. Skelly is essentially the fast gun who isn't quick enough anymore to compete with the buck-wild up and comers.

Skelly and Evangeline are both looking for that one big payoff so they can escape the con game business. They both want to walk the righteous path, but to do so they must put one fraud in front of the other. It's a deceitful path allowing the characters to really shine in their element. Fleischman also includes a homely but attractive beachnik. Think of the Times Square beatniks and their soundtrack of Jack Kerouac over groovy jazz. Replace it with a beach of your choice to the tunes of Jan & Dean. That's really the setting of The Venetian Blonde, a unique location and historical time period that just adds more originality and imagination to Fleischman's impressive adult-fiction send-off. In his last noir act, Fleischman delivered a memorable and masterful performance.

In 2016, Stark House Press reprinted this novel as a double with the author's 1952 crime-noir Look Behind You, Lady. You can buy a copy of that book HERE.

The Fog

British author James Herbert (1953-2013) was the director of an advertising agency before striking it big as a horror author around the time Stephen King was doing the same thing accross the Atlantic. Herbert’s first novel, 1974's The Rats, began a successful 23-novel career with worldwide sales exceeding 50 million copies. I’ve heard great things about Herbert and decided to start with his second book, 1975’s The Fog.

The novel begins in the quiet English village of Wiltshire where nothing much ever seems to change. Our hero is John Holman, a government environmental crimes investigator. While investigating misuse of defense department land, he stumbles upon Wiltshire as an earthquake strikes. The rumbling opens a giant fissure in Main Street swallowing shops and several citizens along with it. This is followed by some exciting disaster-movie sequences where Holman rescues a child before she plunges to her death into the earthly abyss.

Herbert doesn’t waste any time with drawn-out character development. Immediately following the earthquake, a thick yellow cloud of fog begins to rise from the new crack in the earth. The menacing vapor appears to be sentient with tendrils reaching toward intended victims who are driven insane as they are enveloped by the fog.

Like the Coronavirus, the fog infects different people in different ways. Some become axe murderers while others urinate all over their neighbors. There’s also a good bit of genital trauma for the reader’s enjoyment, if not always the characters. These varied effects are presented in several action-packed, violent vignettes resembling individual short stories throughout the novel. The big question: Are the effects of the gas permanent or will the afflicted return to normal? Secondary question: Is the fog somehow related to experiments taking place on the nearby military base?

For a horror novel, The Fog isn’t particularly scary, but it’s an excellent action novel with plenty of violent surprises. It reminded me of an environmental disaster story, a medical thriller, and a high-adventure rescue mission. Other sections recalled a modern zombie adventure or even my favorite Able Team installment, Army of Devils by G.H. Frost. There were also several gratuitous and graphic sex scenes, if that’s your bag.

Overall, The Fog was an outstanding page-turner. The plotting was fast-moving and never dull, and the dilemmas encountered by the heroes were approached rationally. There was plenty of violence and gore to please any action-minded reader. Highly recommended.

Fun Fact:

The 1980 John Carpenter movie, The Fog, was unrelated to the James Herbert novel. Many of Herbert’s novels were adapted into films, but The Fog exists only on the written page and your beloved Kindle device. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Nails Fenian #02 - Assassins’ Hide-Away

Hal D. Steward was a U.S. Army public relations superstar and later a successful newspaper reporter for for the Los Angeles Examiner and the San Diego Union who eventually became the executive editor of The Daily Chronicle in Centralia, Washington. He made some extra bucks writing graphic stories for True Detective magazine, including "Fatal Shootout for the Arizona Bank Robbers" in the July 1968 issue. His book output is all over the place with titles including Money Making Secrets of the Millionaires. With an interesting resume like that, I wanted to tackle Nails Fenian’s Case #388: Assassins’ Hide-Away from 1967 published by an obscure adult paperback imprint called Publishers Export Company.

First thing’s first: There weren’t 388 Nails Fenian books. There were only two. The other one was The Spy and the Pirate Queen also published in 1967. Our hero’s real name is Nailan Blackford Fenian, and he’s a CIA operative and part-time philosophy professor (trust me, just roll with it).

Here’s the set-up: The South American nation of Columbia has turned to the U.S. for help in thwarting Red China’s plan to spark a communist revolution with the help of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. The agency turns to Nails to smash the Reds’ operation and liquidate the bad guys off the face of the earth.

Upon arrival in Columbia, Nails promptly gets laid (this happens every 25 pages or so), and meets with his Columbian counterpart to get the lay of the land. It’s funny that the first few people he meets in Columbia insist on filling in Nails - and the reader - with fun facts regarding Columbia (elevations, average rainfall, geographical fun facts, etc.). I get the impression that the author wanted to ensure that his new set of World Book Encyclopedias would be fully tax-deductible as a business expense. The commie infiltration is in the city of Neiva (Population: 60,000, Altitude: 6,000 feet), so that’s where the bulk of the action transpires.

The enemy cell leader is Chinese Colonel Chow, and his sidekick is a German Nazi in exile famous for collecting the skulls of “Subhuman Jews.” There are also Columbian Communist Party operatives and Cubans as well. Adult spy fiction makes for strange bedfellows it seems, and this United Colors of Benetton ad is planning to amass a standing army to invade Bogota unless Nails can thwart their plans.

Upon arrival in Neiva, Nails liaisons with a female Columbian intel agent. And if by “liaisons” you think I mean “has sex with,” you’d be spot-on. Naturally, Colonel Chow learns that Nails is in Columbia to spoil the coup hootenanny, and sends a team of assassins to liquidate the CIA hero.

And so on. Assassins’ Hide-Away is a competent but by-the-numbers espionage adventure on-par with the lesser installments of the Nick Carter: Killmaster series. The sex scenes were clearly the product of a contractual obligation, much like the Longarm adult westerns. Steward’s writing was serviceable but never flashy. I’m not sorry at all that I read and reviewed the paperback. However, I’ve already forgotten most of the novel despite finishing it ten minutes ago. It’s a book not bad enough to hate but not good enough to leave a lasting impression.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

The Colorado Kid

Hard Case Crime began publishing original novels and reprints in September 2004. After releasing titles by literary kings including Lawrence Block, Max Allan Collins, Day Keene, Donald Westlake and Erle Stanley Gardner, the publisher's first year was remarkable. After just one year of publishing, Hard Case Crime struck gold by landing the publication rights to an original novel by horror megaseller Stephen King. The Colorado Kid was published in October 2005.

Like most of King's novels and short-stories, The Colorado Kid is set in a coastal Maine town, this one called Moose-Look. The author's narrative is fairly simple, three characters simply sit in a diner and talk about a mystery that has haunted the idyllic community for 25-years. The “Colorado Kid” is the nickname for a dead body that was found on the coast by two teens. The mysterious circumstances around his death is that the man seemingly appeared from parts unknown. No identity, no agenda, no murder. He simply died while eating.

While the narrative is rudimentary, King's signature storytelling makes it a compelling, pleasurable reading experience. In his conversational style, King makes you love these three characters with their witty charm and small-town mannerisms. Like any good crime-noir, there has to be an average character placed in extreme or unusual circumstances. That's the path the author takes only this character is dead. Learning how he arrived in this condition is a bit like the old locked-room puzzles. In fact, Stephen King's infatuation with Hard Case Crime comes from his love of crime-fiction, old mysteries and hardboiled novels. King name drops Rex Stout, Agatha Christie and even Murder She Wrote and dedicates the book to Dan J. Marlowe, an author King claims to be the “hardest of the hardboiled”.

The Colorado Kid is a quick, easy read but doesn't offer a traditional ending. Not to ruin it for you, but nothing is solved. It's the essence of the mystery, minus the mask being pulled from the killer's face. The novel would go on to loosely inspire the SyFy channel's television show Haven. Eight years later, Stephen King and Hard Case Crime collaborated again with Joyland, a superior novel that actually has an ending (although arguably not a very good one). At the time of this review, the publisher just announced a third King publication, an original novel called Later that is scheduled for March 2021.

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 61

Would you believe that there are series characters from Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, John D. MacDonald and others that you know nothing about? We drop some serious knowledge bombs on Episode 61 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast with reviews of The Best of Manhunt 2 and A Great Day for Dying plus a special bonus unmasking of T.C. Lewellen. Listen on your favorite podcast app, stream below or download HERE:

Listen to "Episode 61: Hidden Series Characters" on Spreaker.