Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 77

On Episode 77 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast, we delve into some hardboiled history with a discussion of Race Williams. Also: Archie O’Neill, Day Keene, Carroll John Daly, Ralph Hayes and more. Listen on your favorite podcast app, at paperbackwarrior.com or download directly HERE

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Race Williams #01 - Knights of the Open Palm

Carroll John Daly (1889-1958) invented the hardboiled detective genre in Black Mask Magazine with his May 1923 story “Three Gun Terry.” He followed it up the next month with “Knights of the Open Palm,” launching the Race Williams series of stories and novels that continued for over 20 years. The character later inspired the creation of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and thousands of other imitators.

As the debut story opens, narrator Race Williams explains that he’s a private investigator who splits the difference between cops and crooks. A client named Thompson comes to Race’s office seeking to engage him to rescue his kidnapped 17 year-old son from the Ku Klux Klan. The kid may have information about a recent Klan murder which prompted the alleged abduction. The KKK must have been rather powerful in 1923 because Thompson is surprised that Race accepts the assignment to defy the Klan and rescue the boy.

After an informant in a tavern teaches Race the secret handshake as well as Klan buzzwords, Race decides that the best way to find the missing kid is to infiltrate the fraternal order in full regalia. So, it’s off to the small farming town of Clinton, a rural hamlet firmly in the grip of the shadowy, hooded menace. It doesn’t take long at all for things to come to a series of confrontations between Race and the local KKK muscle.

For a story written nearly 100 years-ago, Daly’s writing is still pretty fresh. Race’s hardboiled and colloquial patois must have been groundbreaking at the time and recalls the bragging tough-guy patter later imitated by Mike Hammer, Shell Scott and many others. Race is a fantastic character - funny, fearless and confident. There were scenes where I found myself nodding along and muttering, “Hell, yeah!” along the way.

After reading “Knights of the Open Palm,” it’s easy to see why Race Williams captured the public’s imagination a century ago. The character - at least in this story - lives at the intersection of The Continental Op and Mack Bolan. And that’s a very good place to be.

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Able Team #02 - The Hostaged Island

It's no secret that I really disliked Tower of Terror, the 1982 debut of the long-running Able Team series. I discussed it on the podcast and you can also read my review here. After reading the far superior Phoenix Force debut, I was interested in reading another Able Team installment in hopes for a triumphant rebound. I chose the series second installment, The Hostaged Island, published in 1982 by Gold Eagle. It was authored by L.R. Payne and Norman Winski.

The book's opening chapters are reminiscent of the old 80s action-flick Invasion USA. Hundreds of psychotic, horny and heavily armed bikers “invade” Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles. The deal is that they will start raping and dismembering the island’s residents if they don't receive a nuclear submarine loaded with twenty-million in gold. Of course the government doesn't negotiate with bikers, so fearless Stony Farm director Hal Brognola assigns Able Team to locate and destroy the marauders.

Like many of the Mack Bolan Universe books, The Hostaged Island doesn't concentrate solely on the heroic trio. Thankfully, the authors create civilian heroes who work behind the scenes attempting to fight the enemy or simply survive. This was the best element of the series debut and one that allows readers to experience first-hand atrocities. Much of the book follows Catalina Island resident Greg and his pregnant wife Ann as they move from house to house hoping to avoid the bikers. Since most of the island is being held hostage in a local gym, Greg and Ann's story was enhanced by a “ghost town” or post-apocalyptic vibe.

Of course Lyons, Blancanales and Schwarz are the stars and they really make the most of their stage work. Unlike the debut, I really liked that all three heroes worked together through pages and pages of high-octane action. From a precarious raft landing on the beach to sniping off the bad guys from a tower, the authors spared no bullets in the good versus evil traditional concept. I felt the characters really worked as a team and finally were able to strut their stuff without all of the interviews and planning that bogged down the debut installment.

If you want balls to the wall, over-the-top zany action, The Hostaged Island delivers it in spades. This was just a real pleasure to read and rejuvenated me on the potential for more and greater gems within this long-running series. Highly recommended! 

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Masquerade Into Madness

Between 1929 and 1940, H. Russell Meservey wrote dozens of adventure stories about fighter pilots for the airplane pulp magazines. Then a Wisconsin native named Russell Clare Meservey (died 1994) came out of nowhere in May 1953 as the author of a sole Fawcett Gold Medal crime novel, Masquerade Into Madness. Same guy? Father-son? Coincidence? No clue.

Our narrator is a Manhattan tough-guy tavern-brawler named Barney Nash. A skid row bar fight with two off-duty cops lands him in jail overnight, and he meets a crooked attorney at his arraignment. The lawyer offers to bail out Barney, if he’s willing to do an acting job in exchange for his freedom. Specifically, the attorney needs Barney to masquerade as someone else in exchange for his freedom.

Here’s the set-up: Ten years ago, a 20 year-old man named Chadwick Graham disappeared. His widowed mother is now 70 and has spent a fortune trying to locate her missing son, engaging her lawyer to manage the project. The attorney has come to the conclusion that Chadwick is dead but wants to honor Mrs. Graham’s dying wish to see her son one last time. He wants Barney to pretend that he’s the missing Chadwick for a single command performance beside Mrs. Graham’s deathbed.

After some hand-wringing and blackmail, Barney agrees to help. As you’d expect, things get complicated upon his return “home” to see “mom.” The old lady lives in a mansion on a remote island three miles off the coast of Maine where things quickly begin feeling less hardboiled and more Agatha Christie. It also becomes clear that the subterfuge has nothing to do with giving Mrs. Graham comfort in her waning years and is actually about the expected inheritance.

The problem with Masquerade Into Madness is that after a strong start, it’s boring, boring, boring. Not much happens on the island other than relationships forming and alliances shifting. Some minor mysteries are solved towards the end, but they’re nothing surprising or worth pursuing. Meservey was a good writer, but his plotting needed some desperate work. He should have written more novels during his life because no one should be remembered by this one. 

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Jamie

Earlier this year I discovered South African author Jack Bennett (1934-2000). Of the eight literary works that I can identify, it seems that most were hardcovers published in Europe with poor or misleading covers. The comparisons to Ernest Hemingway are abundant in the writer's use of primitive simplism. After reading and reviewing his 1967 novel The Hawk Alone, I was ecstatic to locate another of his Bantam paperback reprints. Jamie was originally published in Europe in 1963 and later reprinted by Bantam as a Pathfinder Edition paperback in 1965.

Like The Hawk Alone, Jamie is set in the late 1950s and early 1960s in South Africa. Parallel to the book's title, the narrative focuses on a young white boy name Jamie Carson and his coming-of-age transition on the western flats of Buffelsvlakte. In the book's beginning, readers learn that Jamie had an older brother that died. His father Edward loves Jamie, but was grooming his brother to be a farmer and hunter – not Jamie. While convinced Jamie wasn't destined to be a farmer, Edward must contend with the fact that he now has one child to carry this labor intensive burden.

Through the book's early pages Jamie's life from age eight to ten is outlined through his father's wisdom and guidance. Slowly, Jamie begins working the family's 1,800-acre cattle farm and assuming more responsibility with guns and hunting. With Jamie's farm bordering a sprawling government game preserve, the likelihood of stray bulls, lions and tigers wandering onto the property is high. Complicating matters is that a long-lasting drought descends on the region, making water sparse upon the dusty plains. With the wildlife parched from thirst, the book escalates the action into more of a safari and hunting expedition. This portion of the book was the marketing highlight chosen by Bantam, evident with the cover and its tagline - “A novel of a boy, his gun and his fearful mission.”

With this book published just two-years prior to The Hawk Alone, there's no doubt that Bennett connected these two novels as book ends. While The Hawk Alone tells the story of Gord, an aging man contemplating his own morality, Jamie is the opposite as readers learn about the boy's upbringing and the hardships that transition him to manhood. This novel has the emotional, and inevitable, “end of innocence” moment when Jamie realizes that life is precious yet exceedingly difficult. The Hawk Alone flips that sentiment to the fact that Gord's difficult life leads him to the point of suicide. Bennett writes these books well and showcases an amazing grasp on life even while crafting these stories in his early 30s.

As a more literary styling than high-adventure, Jamie excels as a masterful novel of youth and fortitude. Don't let the simplistic title or concept fool you. No matter what genre you enjoy reading, there's no doubt that Jamie will make you feel something. From laughter to tears, Bennett constructs the ultimate coming-of-age tale with Jamie. I loved this book as a stand-alone work but when packaged together with The Hawk Alone, it makes for an incredible masterpiece of epic literary fiction. It brings me so much joy having these two books as highlights in my paperback library.

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 76

On Episode 76 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast, we take a deep dive into the life and work of legendary author Ralph Hayes. Also discussed: Donald Hamilton, Edward S. Aarons, Steve Frazee, Russ Meservey and more. Listen on your favorite podcast app or paperbackwarrior.com or download directly HERE 

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Maddon's Rock (aka Gale Warning)

Ralph Hammond Innes (1913-1998) is considered one of the founders of the men's action-adventure genre. As a pioneer, Innes began constructing high-adventure yarns as early as 1937, often setting his novels in exotic and breathtaking locales to create harsh conditions for his heroes to overcome. After reading my first Innes novel, 1947's The Lonely Skier (aka Fire in the Snow), I was underwhelmed by the author's slower pace and long, drawn out dialogue sequences. Refusing to accept defeat, I attempted another of the author's works with 1948's Maddon's Rock, also known as Gale Warning in the US.

This suspenseful adventure is set during the last days of World War II. The novel introduces readers to a British Corporal named J.L. Varny and his brother-in-arms Bert Cook. In the opening chapter, these two soldiers are within a small company of troops in Murmansk, Russia awaiting departure on the Queen Mary. However, their arrival to the ship's departure is late so they are ordered to join the crew of a British freighter called the Trikkala. On board, the troops are assigned the tedious task of guarding a small cargo of crates day and night as the ship journeys through arctic cold fronts on its journey back to England.

Immediately Varny senses that something is strange about the ship's crew. Their captain is a notorious trader who’s experienced a number of mysterious casualties to his crew. The orders suggest Varny and his men to simply stay out of the way. But for what purpose? As the weather becomes more frigid, the boat and its crew are attacked by a German U-Boat. Within minutes, Varny suspects that something is amiss about the attack. Further, upon inspecting the lifeboats he finds that someone on board has disabled the boat's inner planking. Is this a heist, a surrender or simply the war's stress on Varny's exhausted mind? Thankfully, the author uses these options to propel the book's thrilling narrative.

At 220 small-font pages, Maddon's Rock resembles a more dynamic, epic-styled journey. The plot is filled with excitement as Innes injects war, nautical adventure, island peril and even prison into the exciting plot. Unlike The Lonely Skier's heavy dialogue, Gale Warning is brimming with suspense and tension that thrusts the reader into cold and exotic regions. This is truly a masterpiece of adventure storytelling and one that proves to me that Hammond Innes was truly impressive. With over 30 novels to his credit, there's sure to be a clunker or two. Maddon's Rock is absolutely not one of those. If you are new to this author, I highly recommend starting with this one. It's the perfect kick-starter into what surely will be a pleasurable reading journey through the author's robust catalog.

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