Bones Will Tell

Before transitioning into full-length paperback novels in the 1950s, Bruno Fischer wrote for the pulps. Always a workhorse, the author contributed to a number of dime-magazines and pulps in the 1930s and 1940s. In 2017, Oregon publishing house Armchair Fiction chose to reprint Fischer's novella Bones Will Tell. The story was first published in the February 1945 edition of Mammoth Mystery. As a shorter work, the publisher packaged it as a two-in-one with Day Keene's 1959 full-length paperback Dead in Bed.

Bones Will Tell is a good example of the shudder-pulp writing style of the early 20th Century. Fischer cut his teeth on this sub-genre and masterfully weaves together elements of horror, mystery and intrigue. The story is about two 12-year old kids who dare to climb over the wall bordering what many consider to be the town's “old dark house.” Rumors are abound that the owner herself is a mysterious widow who lost her husband decades ago. Whether he is dead, missing or still alive somewhere in the house enhances the lore of the property. With this seemingly haunted house bordering a dreary swamp, the author's imagination runs wild when the two kids discover a dead body laying in a damp flower bed.

Like any old-fashioned horror tale, the kids report their findings to the police who fail to find any evidence of a corpse. When the kids' testimony becomes questioned, the criticism shifts to the kids' unwarranted trespassing. In order to prove their innocence, the kids jump over the wall again the next night. This second-half of the story escalates the narrative into a more frightful, murder mystery as the body count increases.

In today's more desensitized views of horror, homicide and grizzly details, Bones Will Tell will pale in comparison. In many ways this is like a Scooby-Doo or Hardy Boys installment where the murderer can be anyone under the sheet. The pretense that the old house is haunted is quickly dismissed as the true culprits are revealed. Anyone familiar with the formula won't find many surprises here. It's an early work by Fischer and his writing style reads like a juvenile mystery. It's hard to judge his true talents based on these types of stories, but there's enough meat on the bone to witness his early potential. As a bonus to Keene's Dead in Bed, this is a winning combination warranting the $12.95 sticker price.

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Tokey Wedge #01 - Nympho Lodge

Jack Lynn was a pen name for a writer named Max Van DerVeer who authored 22 books starring a diminutive private eye named Tokey Wedge between the years 1959 and 1965. A new reprint house called Grizzly Pulp is reprinting the Tokey Wedge books as mass-market paperbacks printed on wood pulp paper beginning with the first installment, Nympho Lodge - originally published in 1959 by Novel Books.

The Tokey Wedge paperbacks are light-hearted - yet hardboiled - private detective stories that don’t take themselves too seriously. Tokey himself is 5’6” and 140 pounds. His narration and the plotting reminds me of Richard Prather’s Shell Scott books. In this case, Tokey is hired as a bodyguard for a wealthy woman named Janice going through an ugly divorce and receiving cryptic threatening letters. The splitting couple both live at a resort they co-own called The Wagon Wheel. Tokey moves into the resort, so he can be closer to his client and determine who, if anyone, is trying to kill her.

At the lodge, we quickly meet the Nymphos. To be fair, it not clear that any of them have been clinically diagnosed with nymphomania, but every woman Tokey encounters at the lodge is beautiful, stacked, and hot to trot. By 2020 standards, the novel has some retrograde attitudes toward women as sex objects. However, the book is pure escapist fiction from 1959, so no actual women were objectified in it’s creation. You should know by now if this is your thing or not. The paperback is sexier than most 1959 crime novels but nowhere close to graphic or explicit by today’s standards.

Amid the flirty hijinks and sexual innuendos, there is a decent mystery to be solved at Nympho Lodge, and Tokey proves himself to be a competent, funny, and tough private detective. At times, it felt like a dirty Agatha Christie book with a finite number of people in a lodge getting killed off one by one while our intrepid investigator gets laid and solves the mystery. For comparison purposes, I enjoyed spending 174 big-font pages with Tokey Wedge far more than I’ve ever liked a Shell Scott paperback. Nympho Lodge isn’t a mystery masterpiece, but it’s definitely a lot of sexy fun.

Grizzly Pulp did a marvelous job packaging the physical product of this paperback. The pulp paper is soft and readable. The novel comes with a removable black cover masking the lusty sleaze art, so you can read on a crowded city bus without inviting the side-eye from squares. My only criticism is that there were lots of line-break errors in the text and several other typos. It was nothing that stopped me from enjoying the story, but the Grizzly Pulp proofreader shouldn’t rely on optical character recognition programs to do all the work.

Mostly, I’m thrilled that an enterprising, grassroots publisher has brought Tokey Wedge back to life. This is a fun series that deserves a second chance at building a readership. Recommended.

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Breakdown

Author Ed Naha, born in 1950, wrote for magazines like Rolling Stone, Playboy, Heavy Metal, Fangoria and The Twilight Zone. Along with John Shirley, Naha contributed to the 1980's post-apocalyptic series Traveler as well as penning novelizations for films including Robocop, Dead-Bang and Ghostbusters II. With over twenty-five novels on the menu, I ventured into the horror realm with Naha's 1988 Dell paperback Breakdown.

The book introduces readers to Jeff McQueen, a best-selling horror author who writes a series of heroic werewolf stories. In the opening pages, McQueen experiences a fiery car wreck in California that results in the death of his young son. Later, McQueen's literary agent Oliver reveals to him that his last two mystery novels didn't sell well and the publisher wants him to return to his horror roots. McQueen, mourning with his wife and young daughter, understands that he's in debt to the publisher and needs to rebound from the tragedy quickly. To fast-track the next novel's conception, Oliver books the McQueen family in a century old Gothic mansion called Elmwood Estate in rural Massachusetts.

Once the McQueen family settles into the new locale, Jeff begins to experience childish laughter in the hallways, bizarre hallucinations and a multitude of visions stemming from his son's death. In the estate's sprawling garden lies a number of statues and monuments that his daughter “befriends”, only Jeff fears that these monuments are sinister in nature. In the small town, the McQueens discover that there are no children present. All of these eerie elements combine to make Naha's Breakdown a haunted house thriller with a core mystery – what's the secret behind Elmwood Estate?

At  just over 200-pages, Breakdown is a quick page-turner that falls into the cozy “move into the haunted house in New England” sub-genre. While not particularly violent or gory, the book has a thick and foreboding atmosphere that suggests death is merely a chapter away. As the book progresses, Jeff's descent into madness is parallel to his heavy alcohol abuse. This plays havoc for the skeptics who ponder whether Jeff is really seeing things or is it just the booze?

As a serviceable haunted house entry, Breakdown is sure to please. I found some of the aspects scary, but overall I was more enamored with Jeff's relationship with his young daughter and the fight for his sanity and soul. Overall, this is an easy read with plenty of reward. If you can locate an affordable copy, don't hesitate to loosen the purse strings. It's a smart purchase.

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Decoy #01 - Hunting Lure

Beginning in 1989, veteran mystery and horror writer Robert W. Walker used the pseudonym Stephen Robertson for the four-book Decoy series of action-crime paperbacks released by Pinnacle Books. The novels are police thrillers about an actor turned Chicago undercover cop solving violent sex murders while dealing with his own personal demons. The author has re-released the series under his own name while re-titling the first installment as Hunting Lure.

Ryne Lanark is a Chicago cop with a hidden agenda. Before joining the force, he was an acclaimed actor until his family was slaughtered by street punks during a New Years Eve thrill-kill session. The murderers were never caught, and Ryne made revenge his life’s mission. Rather than going full-on vigilante, Ryne joined the police and worked his way up to Lieutenant where he regularly goes undercover as a “decoy” to catch and abuse violent criminals.

Ryne doesn’t play well with other cops. Attempts to foist a partner upon him generally end in fistfights or worse. After being sent to Precinct 13 - the last-chance stop for screw-up cops - he is assigned his first female partner, a young looker named Shannon. Over time, the relationship takes the exact story arc you’d expect in a 1980s police procedural.

Meanwhile, the White Glove Murderer is menacing Chicago by raping, surgically disfiguring, and murdering victims. The crimes are particularly gruesome and graphic - even by fictional serial killer standards. As you’d expect, Ryne wants a piece of the investigation. Again, the case follows precisely the story arc you’d expect. It’s not bad, but it also lacks the fun, over-the-top pulpiness that Pinnacle Books delivered to readers a decade earlier.

Mostly, I liked Decoy. It was a well-crafted police procedural mystery with two interesting lead characters. Walker was a fine, if workmanlike, writer 30 years ago capable of delivering a paperback consistent with late-1980s cop-action standards. If that sounds like your thing, you’ll dig this book. I’m probably more at home in the world of 1950s and 1960s crime fiction, but I enjoyed this detour to 1989 well enough. Recommended.

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 73

On Episode 73 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast, the guys discuss the life and legacy of Day Keene. Also covered: Arnold Hano, Hammond Innes, Howard Schoenfeld and Max Allan Collins. Listen on your favorite podcast app or paperbackwarrior.com or download directly HERE

Listen to "Episode 73: Day Keene" on Spreaker.

Many Rivers to Cross

Colorado native Steve Frazee (1908-1992) authored a number of crime-fiction, pulp and western novels before becoming president of the Western Writers of America. I read two of his novels over the last year, Running Target and High Hell. As a fan of early pioneer westerns, I was excited to find Frazee's Many Rivers to Cross. It was originally published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1959 and was later adapted to cinema by MGM.

In the book's opening pages, Frazee states that the book's narrative is taking place in 1890. However, this was either a ploy by Fawcett to make this sound like a traditional western novel or simply an error on the author's part. I believe the year is actually 1790. Many of the book's characters discuss their fight against the British and most of America's midwest and western regions remain unsettled throughout the narrative. Further, the book's cover (always the best resource) clearly shows the main character, Bushrod Gentry, carrying a flintlock musket.

Gentry, a white man who was raised by the Shawnee, is a lone-wolf vagabond who has journeyed all over the east and mid-west sections of untamed America. With his musket, tomahawk and knife, Gentry tries to make peace when he can, but doesn’t hesitate to scrap with ruthless settlers and the savage Mingo tribe. When the book begins, Gentry is in the backwoods of Kentucky fighting three Mingo warriors. After being cut on the arm, Gentry finds himself aided by a young woman named Mary Stuart. And this is when his real trouble starts.

Gentry is taken back to Mary's hillbilly clan, which is really just a group of Irish drinkers that share a log cabin with an old Native American named Oykywha. At first, Gentry is happy to meet the group, share a meal and then bed down alone in the clan's shed. The next morning, Gentry is ready to hit the wooded trail again hoping to make it to “the Shining Mountains” one day. Gentry has no use for a woman and explains this to Mary. However, Mary can't shake her desire for Gentry, and she attempts numerous stalling techniques and eventually attempts to propose to him. Gentry, fearing for his very life, finds himself foolishly hogtied to the clan and dealing with a rambunctious, sexually-charged girl. With that plot, Frazee cleverly converts this pioneer western into a traditional femme fatale story. Think of Orrie Hitt meets Zane Grey.

Many Rivers to Cross had me chuckling throughout the 170-page book. Gentry is a hilarious character and I couldn't help but sympathize with his situation. After being thrust into a shotgun wedding, Gentry's life becomes complicated and highly-stressful. Marriage, obsessive impulse, sexual energy and a frenzied escape are just some of the ingredients that make Frazee's narrative so riveting and enjoyable. This one is a real classic and one of the funniest western novels I've read in a long time. Hunt a copy of this one down. It's worth the time and money.

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South Pacific Fury

Australian born novelist James Edmond Macdonnell (1917-2002) utilized pseudonyms including Kerry Mitchell, Michael Owen and variations of his own name to construct a robust catalog of literary work. Fans of spy-fiction may recognize the name James Dark, a pseudonym that Macdonnell used to write the 14-book Mark Hood series from 1965-1970. My first experience with Macdonnell is South Pacific Fury, one of nearly 150 naval mens-action adventure novels authored by Macdonnell for Australian publisher Horwitz (the same international publisher that printed Carter Brown). South Pacific Fury was originally published by Horwitz in 1968 and subsequently published in the US by Signet with cover art featuring model Steve Holland (Doc Savage).

Like the name suggests, the novel's premise is about a U.S. PT44 torpedo boat in action in World War 2's Pacific Theater. The main character is Captain Walt Kenyon, an admirable hero who commands his small crew to perform at their peak despite the overwhelming odds. In the book's exciting opening pages, Kenyon's crew shoot down a Japanese “Zeke”, a common Japanese fighter craft formally called the A6M Zero. After discussing the plane's placement and mission, the crew then intercepts a Japanese Destroyer in a harrowing firefight.

While these early hit-and-run exercises are a pleasurable reading experience, South Pacific Fury thankfully settles into a central plot. A Coastwatcher named Cook has become trapped on Golo Island, now completely occupied by enemy forces. After months of relaying strategic codes and instructions, the Navy doesn't want to abandon him. Orders are given to Kenyon's crew to circumvent a large Japanese fleet in an effort to successfully rescue Cook from behind enemy lines.

In some ways this reminded me of the excellent novel Skylark Mission, written by Marvin Albert under the British-sounding pseudonym Ian MacAlister. Like that adventure, the exploits of Cook surviving on the island and avoiding detection are carefully inserted into alternating chapters that really helped me escape the small confines of Kenyon's boat. This novel of “land and sea” ratcheted up the suspense and action through the use of both perspectives.

South Pacific Fury is an outstanding work of war-fiction and, to the detriment of my wallet, has led me down the rabbit hole of Macdonnell's body of work. Highly recommended!

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