The Plastic Nightmare

After a successful career as an advertising executive, Richard Neely (1916-1999) left it all behind to become a full-time writer. He authored 15 novels in the 1960s and 1970s, including The Plastic Nightmare from 1969. The book was the basis of the 1999 film Shattered and has been re-released by Stark House Press in a double - packaged with Neely’s While Love Lay Sleeping.

Our narrator Dan Marriott awakens in an Santa Barbara hospital room with his head wrapped in gauze and all memories completely erased. Months of hospitalization and plastic surgeries restore his face to something resembling his original self before the car accident decimated his body and sense of personal history. None of what people tell him about himself sounds the least bit familiar. His name, his wife Judith, and even his own reflection all seem foreign to him.

With no remembered experiences to give him insight into his own character, Dan is a blank slate free to follow his instincts, and his gut is telling him that something is seriously wrong here. With the bandages off, Dan and Judith leave the clinic and go to a beachfront cottage together to transition amnesiac Dan back into society before returning home to San Francisco. Meanwhile, Dan is having visions - words and images flashing through his consciousness - tied to who he used to be.

As Dan’s face and body heal at home with Judith, it becomes clear that she is hiding something about him and the accident that took his memory. He begins to piece together that before his accident, his marriage wasn’t all that hot. As the evidence mounts, Dan begins to suspect that his car crash may not have been an accident at all. But why would Judith attempt to murder Dan, when a simple divorce would have sufficed?

As an avid reader of vintage paperbacks, I saw where this one was headed from a mile away, but that didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the book. A mystery concerning a narrator’s past makes for fascinating reading. At times, the plot reminded me of the brilliant Christopher Nolan movie Memento. Neely sprinkles in some rich and colorful characters, including a private detective hired to get to the bottom of things.

I loved this book. It was so clever and well thought-out that it makes me want to explore more of Neely’s fiction. Fans of awesome suspense novels owe a debt of gratitude to Stark House for resurrecting The Plastic Nightmare. This is don’t-miss, essential reading. Highest recommendation.

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Paperback Warrior Unmasking - The Repulsive Horror of Russell Gray

In the late 1930s, an enigmatic author named “Russell Gray” began churning out ultra-violent and repulsive horror stories for pulp magazines including Terror Tales, Sinister Stories, and Dime Mystery Magazine. These stories were like nothing America had ever seen before, and a modern reprint publisher called Ramble House has compiled two volumes of Gray’s stories for modern readers to experience.

The first volume is titled Hostesses in Hell and the second is My Touch Brings Death. The stories in both collections were chosen by genre expert John Pelan who also provides introductions to both volumes bringing valuable context to the stories and the author.

First thing’s first: Who was Russell Gray?

Russell Gray and Harrison Storm were pseudonyms utilized by Bruno Fischer for his specific brand of graphic horror stories. Fischer went on to become a successful author of paperback original crime and suspense novels in the 1950s, but those skills were honed as a pulp magazine author who cranked out a million words per year at his peak production.

In a modern world filled with graphic “extreme” horror, I was interested in putting the Russell Gray stories to the test. Do they hold up after 80 years? Can they be shocking to a jaded modern reviewer who has seen it all? I sampled a set of stories from the Hostesses in Hell volume to see what all the fuss is about.

“Hostesses in Hell”

The opening story originally appeared in Terror Tales March-April 1939 issue. The narrator is an inexperienced recreational sailor named Jay who takes seven women on his boat for a ride up and down the ocean shoreline. A spontaneous storm disorients Captain Jay and by the time visibility is restored, the small boat and its passengers are far from the mainland with the only safety being a nearby island. Jay’s boat is paralyzed, so they head for the island in search of help and shelter.

On the island, the group is greeted by a man claiming to be a medical doctor who looks more like a wild-eyed muscleman. He claims to run a hotel of sorts on the island where Jay and the ladies can stay until they can arrange for transport back to the mainland. Upon arrival at the large colonial house, the doctor confesses that the building is actually a sanitarium for the incurably insane.

This being a short-story, things go from creepy to violent and scary rather quickly. The women are naked, lunatics have escaped, and freakishly-deformed creatures begin menacing the island’s guests. It’s legitimately scary stuff and, as promised, extremely violent and disturbing. Overall, an outstanding pulp horror story.

“The Gargoyles of Madness”

This story originally ran in the August 1939 issue of Uncanny Tales. It opens with a police patrolman shooting a purse snatcher dead in the street. Newspaper reporter Glen Kane is covering the shooting when things get weird. The mugger was a prominent local banker who apparently lost his mind and attempted to rob the lady on the street while his face was contorted like a gargoyle. Even weirder: The intended victim had a gargoyle figurine in her purse. Readers of horror fiction can connect the dots faster than the cops or Newsman Gil.

Violent crimes by upscale citizens spread through the city. All the crimes involve tiny gargoyle statues and perps driven to madness. It’s almost as if getting your hands on a gargoyle figure makes you take on the features of the creature and go nuts in the process. When Gil tries to report on this odd phenomena, his editor spikes the story.

Things escalate as Gil investigates. The story’s climax is an orgy of naked breasts, whips. saliva and blood. The punchline recalls stories from The Spider or The Shadow in which an evil villain devises a scheme to inflict madness upon a populace unless he can be stopped by the pulp hero. Bottom line: an unnerving pulp story with some good gore, but not particularly terrifying.

“School Mistress of the Mad”

This one first saw print in the January-February 1939 issue of Terror Tales. “Doom” is the name of a town nestled in the mountains populated by an inferior race of idiots looked down upon by the good people of nearby Amton. Chet is on sabbatical from his city job chilling out in sleepy Amton when he meets a beautiful woman named Linda driving through town headed into Doom. Stopping to ask directions, she discloses that she’s been hired as the new schoolteacher for the Town of Doom. As she drives deeper into the mountains, Chet can’t get her off his mind.

Chet learns that Doom was settled during the American Revolutionary War by a family named Gring who have reproduced and lived there ever since with no contact from the outside world. Generations of inbreeding have made the Gring clan into beast-like idiots.

The idea of the Grings hiring a beautiful schoolteacher in an illiterate town without a school defies logic. Meanwhile, several young women from the town of Amton have become missing lately. Could the Grings be taking some illegal measures to increase Doom’s genetic diversity? Chet sets off to Doom to investigate and maybe save Linda from the hillbillies fifteen miles away.

The author does a great job of building the dread and suspense for the reader who’s left wondering how bad it could be in Doom. I’m happy to report that the Grings clan is worse than you could imagine. This story is chilling and frightening if you enjoy satanic hillbilly stories in the vein of Deliverance or The Hills Have Eyes. It’s hard to believe that the story 82 years-old and still packs such a visceral punch.

Overall Assessment:

For fans of suspenseful horror not afraid of some bloody exploitive violence, Russell Gray is the real deal. Hostesses in Hell may be the most consistently solid single-author horror anthologies I’ve read since Stephen King’s Night Shift. It’s so good that I’ve ordered Volume 2 (My Touch Brings Death) and can’t wait for the paperback to arrive. I’m a huge fan of Bruno Fischer’s crime-fiction novels, but his extreme pulp horror may be the best stuff he ever wrote. Highest recommendation.

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 78

Episode 78 of the Paperback Warrior Podcast explores the life and work of Norman Daniels. Also covered: Tokey Wedge, Jack Lynn, Bradford Scott, Walt Slade, Jim Hatfield, Bill S. Ballinger and more! Listen on any podcast app or www.paperbackwarrior.com or download directly HERE.   

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Listen to "Episode 78: Norman Daniels" on Spreaker.

Warrant for a Wanton

Between 1946 and 1953, Leslie John Edgley (1912-2002) authored nine books using his own name as well as the pseudonym of Robert Bloomfield. In 1953, he utilized the pen name Michael Gillian for a single novel titled Warrant for a Wanton.

Leith Hadley has just been sentenced to death in the electric chair for the murder of his business partner at the travel agency they jointly owned. Immediately following the imposition of his sentence, Leith bum-rushes the courtroom guards and flees the municipal building onto the Chicago city streets - handcuffed but free for now.

Seeking refuge, Leith breaks into an apartment and stumbles upon an unconscious woman overdosing from barbiturates - a likely suicide attempt - whose life he quickly saves. Her name is Christine, and she will be joining Leith on his “man on the run establishing his own innocence” adventure. The catch is that Leith isn’t even 100% certain that he’s not guilty. After discovering an embezzlement by his partner, Leith got blackout drunk and was seen boarding his partner’s yacht where his brutalized body was later found. Leith awoke the next morning in a cabin with no memory of what he did or didn’t do the night before.

Circumstantially, this all looks rather bad for Leith. That’s why the State’s Attorney had no problem securing his murder conviction in front of a jury. The quest to establish his innocence takes Leith all over Chicago revisiting witnesses who may have perjured themselves as the trial. This initially bears no fruit and makes Leith look like an escaped maniac.

The first half of the book was pretty dull. The plot was going nowhere, and Leith was getting no closer to the truth. Then something happens at the halfway point that changed the pace of the paperback. I generally hate to spoil that plot point, but suffice it to say that the author devises a unique literary scheme for Leith to establish his own innocence while packing on some action scenes as the hero gets closer to the truth.

The clandestine re-investigation brings them into the criminal underworld where Leith’s murdered business partner had been losing a small fortune gambling in back-room mob casinos. The conclusion to the whodunnit mystery was a bit convoluted and contrived for me. Overall, I didn’t hate Warrant for a Wanton, but I’m unlikely to strongly recommend it to anyone either. It’s not an awful book but really nothing special. Just file this paperback in the “why bother?” stack and move on with your life and better books.

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The Big Kiss-Off

Day Keene (real name Gunard Hjerstedt) cut his teeth on short-stories and pulp writing in the 1930s and 1940s. Like so many pulpsters, Keene successfully transitioned into paperback originals and authored 50 novels until his death in 1969. Stark House Press is one of the reprint houses that keeps Keene's top literary work alive and thriving. The publisher reprinted three of the author's novels as one volume – Dead Man's Tide (1953), The Dangling Carrot (1955) and The Big Kiss-Off (1954). I chose The Big Kiss-Off to read and review.

Cade Cain grew up barefoot and free in the swamps and canals of Bay Parish, a small town nestled just south of hot-footed New Orleans. After joining the Air Force and becoming a Captain in the Korean War, Cain was shot down by the enemy and remained a prisoner-of-war. After a long military career and two harsh years of eating fish heads and rice, Cain has finally returned to his childhood home after a 12-year absence. But not everyone is happy to see him.

In the book's first part, Cain finds himself ordered out of Bay Parish by the local sheriff. Not understanding this threatening situation, Cain later finds a beautiful Spanish woman named Mimi stealing food from his boat. After scolding her, he learns that Mimi is an illegal alien in the U.S. searching for her husband, an American soldier named Moran. After attempting to find Moran in Bay Parish, Mimi and Cain return to the boat and find that someone has shot the sheriff. In an effort to frame Cain, the bloody corpse has been placed on his bunk with the murder weapon. High-tailing it out of town, Cain and Mimi now must dispose of the body and find the answer to this wild and riveting murder mystery.

There's so much to like about Day Keene's swampy crime-noir. While it still fits the author's over-utilized formula of “wanted man on the run to prove his innocence”, there's more emphasis on a backstory between Cain and his ex-wife Janice as well as Mimi's immigration troubles and her speculative marriage. The author combines this deep-seated mystery with a nautical nuance and places it on a fast-paced narrative just brimming over with interesting characters. The sexual tension between Cain and Mimi is intense and hot. I couldn't help but imagine Mimi as a young Eva Longoria flaunting her wares on the sun-drenched deck. Keene's use of her innocence and inability to adapt to America to add even more vivid flirtation to the narrative.

I think Ed Lacy may have borrowed Keene's premise for his 1959 novel Blonde Bait. The idea of a fugitive on the run in his boat with a busty babe was probably a popular literary trend of the 1940s and 1950s, but nevertheless Day Keene executes it flawlessly inspiring further imitation. Aside from Joyhouse, The Big-Kiss Off might be my favorite novel of Keene's exceptional career. Highly recommended.

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They All Ran Away

Before focusing his efforts on his bestselling series of Assignment books starring CIA operative Sam Durell, Edward S. Aarons authored a number of good, stand-alone crime-noir novels. I've reviewed a lot of these including Gift of Death (1948), The Net (1953) and Terror in the Town (1947). There are still so many of the author's pulp stories and crime novels to explore. I decided to try another one with 1955's They All Ran Away. It was originally published by Graphic Mystery and then reprinted in 1970 by Macfadden-Bartell.

Using the private-eye formula, Aarons introduces readers to Barney Forbes, the book's hard-charging protagonist. Forbes was an MP in the Army before becoming a New York detective. After his wife's tragic and sudden death, Forbes left law-enforcement to pursue a career as an attorney. With his new profession, Forbes is struggling to pay the bills and second-guessing his career change. Thankfully, a successful law firm that specializes in estates hires Forbes to utilize his detective skills to service one of their own clients.

A wealthy man named Malcolm Hunter has come up missing in the small, mountain lake community of Omega. The firm's client is Malcolm Hunter's brother Jan, a rather abstract young man who is fed money by the Hunter trust. This missing person case brings Forbes to upstate New York to find where Malcolm is.

With the book weighing in at just under 150-pages, Aarons surprisingly packs the narrative with a rich blend of mystery and full-barreled action. Like Gift of Death and Terror in the Town, this author excels when setting the story within a small waterside community. Instead of the northeastern Atlantic, the author utilizes rural lake houses to create a thick atmosphere that works as the perfect backdrop for the mystery to unwind. I think Aarons was one of the best authors in the business in describing the locales and making them seemingly come alive as just another character.

Forbes is an easily likable character, and I loved his alliances with the troubled town sheriff and an eccentric Native American. Like any good crime-noir, Forbes also has his share of beauty queens to contend with. The backstory of Forbes losing his wife plays a key element in his fixation on Malcolm Hunter's abused wife. With just a dose of romance and tension, They All Ran Away fires on all cylinders and proves once again that Edward S. Aarons was a great storyteller. Highly recommended.

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Damnation Alley

Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) was a Hugo/Nebula award-winning science-fiction and fantasy author. His most noteworthy achievements are the first ten novels of his acclaimed Chronicles of Amber series, published between 1970-1991 and his 1968 post-apocalyptic novel Damnation Alley. The book has been reprinted numerous times and was loosely adapted to film in 1977 starring George Peppard and Jan-Michael Vincent.

In Damnation Alley, the Earth as we know it no longer exists. Decades before, a nuclear war decimated the planet and what's remains is a mere shell of what life originally resembled. In the skies, hurricane-strength winds prevent any form of air travel. The atmosphere is a swirling belt of dust and garbage set into eternal propulsion by the howling winds. The radiation has mutated animals and insects and what remains of America is a fractured ruling class divided into regions.

The book stars a former Hell's Angel biker named Hell Tanner. He's a ruthless anti-hero who was abandoned by his father as an infant. His mother died in his early childhood and Tanner was passed around from home to home until he found a permanent residence within the ranks of the Hell's Angels. When readers first meet Tanner, he's racing his Harley Davidson through the twisting roads of San Diego. His pursuers, the Nation of California's law enforcement, have warrants for his arrest. After successfully outrunning the cops, his day ends with a roadblock and a busted bike.

While in police custody, Tanner is offered a unique proposition. His criminal record of killing three people and resisting arrest, will be wiped clean if he can successfully deliver an antivirus to the city of Boston. The trip across the country has rarely been completed due to the nearly insurmountable odds. With the journey consisting of raging storms, mutants, biker gangs, road bandits and plague, the pathway is referred to as Damnation Alley. Between prison or the road, Tanner chooses to suit up and drive a sophisticated vehicle across the country in hopes of delivering the much-needed medicine and winning his own freedom.

This book would have made more of a personal impact if I read it at the time of its original publication. While its unfair to Zelazny, his post-apocalyptic action tale was used as a blueprint by numerous authors to write better versions of this book. Damnation Alley isn't terrible, but it's a slow burn that never reaches the roaring blaze I had hoped for. Much of the book is simply Tanner driving, eating and sleeping. Every few pages he shoots a giant bat or kills some bikers, but these are just bumps along the road to what is otherwise an unexciting plot. Tanner isn't a likable character by any means, and often I asked myself if I really cared about his success. Other than a partner named Greg, who is quickly written out of the narrative, there aren't many admirable characters. The lack of action, character development or dynamic story were detrimental to the reading experience. However, high praise is still warranted due to what Zelazny created.

Damnation Alley, in both book and film form, are very influential to the post-apocalyptic genre of men's action-adventure novels. There's no question that it inspired a number of commercially successful titles.

- The vehicle that Tanner is driving is similar to what authors Ed Naha and John Shirley conceived with their 1984 series Traveler. Through Traveler's 13-book series, the protagonist drives a fortified van deemed “The Meat Wagon.” While it lacked the sophisticated wizardry showcased in Damnation Alley, the use of van portholes and machine guns to anonymously eliminate potential threats mirrors Zelazny's approach.

- Again, the idea of the “all-terrain fortified vehicle” can be found in the debut of Deathlands, a 138-book series of post-apocalyptic adventures. Series hero Ryan Cawdor is on board a trio of armored tractor-trailer trucks that are equipped with cameras, mounted cannons, numerous guns. Like Tanner, Cawdor and company use the safety of the vehicle as a sort of road residence.

- There is no doubt that Zelazny's conception of a fragmented America can be found within a number of series titles like The Last Ranger, Doomsday Warrior, Out of the Ashes and Endworld. But, perhaps the most similar is Robert Tine's 1984 five-book series Outrider. In it, the former United States is now divided into ruling class sections that surround a metropolis. Like Tanner, the series stars a lone-wolf named Bonner as he navigates the post-apocalypse in a jacked-up dune-buggy equipped with weapons.

- In 1977's post-apocalyptic novel The Lost Traveler, authored by Steve Wilson, a biker hero named Long Range roams a nuked-out wasteland. Like the aforementioned titles, this one also includes a fragmented America and disputes between warring clans. Where Damnation Alley sort of condemns the Hell's Angels, Wilson pulls no punches as he makes the famed biker gang a ruthless and criminal government body.

- In 1984's Angels, the third installment of the four-book series Wasteworld, hero Matthew Chance is pitted against a gang of post-apocalyptic Hell's Angels.

While Zelazny's concept of Damnation Alley is mostly an original, innovative take on doomsday, it does come with a borrowed idea. In 1959's We Who Survived, author Sterling Noel places his heroes in a fortified, all-terrain vehicle that is used for defense, housing and drilling through a post-apocalyptic America ravaged by an eternal ice-storm. Perhaps Zelazny was influenced by Noel's conception of “road warriors” surviving doomsday by using an advanced, nearly indestructible vehicle? I'd suspect so.

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