The Dean #01 - Stranger's Kill

Ohio native Merle Constiner (1901-1979) was a successful author of westerns and crime fiction who began his career in the pulp magazines and transitioned successfully to paperback novels in the 1950s. One of his most enduring characters was con-man/private eye Wardlow “The Dean” Rock who appeared in a series of novellas in Dime Detective Magazine between 1940 and 1945. Altus Press has compiled several of these stories into one volume as The Complete Cases of The Dean, including his first adventure, “Stranger’s Kill”, originally from August 1940.

The Dean stories are narrated by his sidekick, Ben Matthews in the same manner that Watson narrates the Sherlock Holmes stories or Archie Goodwin tells the Nero Wolfe tales. For his part, everyone’s first impression of The Dean is that he’s a screwball and a crank living with Ben in a slum while pretending to be a fortune teller who can divine your future from the bottoms of your feet. He’s also an amateur detective maintaining a good working relationship with the police chief.

As we join The Dean and Ben in “Stranger’s Kill,” an arsonist has been plaguing the city for six months targeting grocers, delis, and other retail stores. The Dean offers his services to the fire insurance company to catch the arsonist within six days for a $20,000 fee. The body of the insurance company’s CEO was found strangled in one of the fires, so this is more than a normal firebug.

The Dean’s detecting methods are mostly the same kind of deduction utilized by Sherlock Holmes, but he’s willing to run down leads in the street with Ben and get his hands dirty. He’s also a funny guy with A+ wisecracks along the way. By 1940, Constiner was a solid writer and his prose is smooth, never choppy, with logical, well-paced plotting. Unlike Carroll John Daly’s Race Williams stories of violence and vengeance, The Dean is a more gentlemanly mystery solver who puts together intricate puzzles over the course of 60 pages per story.

Like many pre-1950s mysteries, “Stranger’s Kill” has far too many characters and far too little action. It’s a well-crafted mystery, but it was a bit dull and ultimately failed to grab me. I’ll probably read another novella sometime in the future because I enjoyed both the character and Constiner’s writing style, but the story mostly left me cold.

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The Lover

Using the pseudonym Carter Brown, Alan Geoffrey Yates (1923-1985) authored 215 novels and 75 novellas and counted U.S. President John F. Kennedy among his fans. His most enduring character was California-based police detective Al Wheeler, and Stark House Press has just released another three-pack of Wheeler mysteries anchored by The Lover from 1958.

In this case, Detective Wheeler is dispatched by the Sheriff to investigate a loony cult in the mountains run by a dude calling himself The Prophet. His followers allegedly engage in sun worship, group sex, drugs and fertility ceremonies. The Sheriff is concerned that this screwball religion may break bad in some unforeseen manner and orders Wheeler to investigate and provide his assessment.

Wheeler heads to the mountain to watch The Prophet in action. The cult leader is tanned and muscular wearing only a loin cloth and appears to worship the sun without metaphor or irony. The Prophet’s spiel is pretty pro-forma until he starts preaching that the Sun God demands a sacrifice.

This wouldn’t be much of a murder mystery if no one got killed. As such, after meeting a cadre of the Prophet’s devotees, we finally get a murder for Wheeler to solve. The author introduces a lot of characters (probably too many) who are all regarded as suspects. For his part, Wheeler is more full of wisecracks than I recall from other installments I’ve read. I’m betting that the upswing in Shell Scott’s popularity around 1958 influenced Yates to ratchet up an the pithy quips for Detective Wheeler to deliver.

Beyond that, this is a pretty standard whodunnit mystery with colorful characters and a logical, satisfying conclusion. Carter Brown mysteries have always served as pulp mystery comfort food - a palette cleanser between more substantial novels. You always know what you’re getting, and the thin paperbacks always deliver the goods. The Lover was no exception - you know exactly what you’re getting, and it’s always a good time. Recommended.

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Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 79

Paperback Warrior Podcast Episode 79 delved into the life and work of Edward S. Aarons. Also discussed: Richard Neely, Harry Whittington, Reprints, Men of Violence, Men’s Adventure Quarterly, and more! Listen on any podcast app or download directly HERE 

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Listen to "Episode 79: Edward S. Aarons" on Spreaker.

Killer Tank (aka Strike Force)

Norman Daniels found enormous success authoring various pulp characters like The Masked Detective, The Black Bat, Phantom Detective and even Doc Savage. After the pulps gave way to paperback originals, Daniels transitioned into a prolific author of crime-noir, romance, television novelizations and military-fiction. In 1965, Daniels wrote the WWII novel Strike Force for low-end publisher Lancer. In 1969, the equally low-brow publisher Magnum reprinted the novel as Killer Tank with the sales tag of “In the blazing tradition of Guns of Navarone.” Loving most of Daniels' literary work, as well as military-fiction, was enough motivation to spend a few bucks on this old paperback.

The book is set in Germany during WWII. The U.S. military formulates an idea that they can create a huge, powerhouse diversion on the German border. Using a number of planes, tanks and troops, they will fake an impending invasion and engage the enemy just long enough for a team of 30 tanks to slip in over the border and become a mobile task force. This task force, led by Colonel Hagen and Sergeant Dixon, will orchestrate hit-and-run attacks on German forces, towns, bases and airstrips. By disguising the tanks as German, and using old, overgrown roads, the force plans on creating as much undetected destruction as possible. The problem with that strategy? Hagen and Dixon despise each other.

The adventures of a WWII tank battalion operating in Germany can be an entertaining read with enough attention to the action. What makes Killer Tank different is that Daniels creates this really interesting back story between Hagen and Dixon. Through the first 100-pages the readers can easily determine that the two have history with each other. But, when Hagen begins to romance a beautiful French woman, Dixon becomes Hell-bent on destroying any hopes for Hagen's happiness. What is the history between these two American commanders? How could anything warrant this much hatred and animosity? I won't ruin the story for you, but the tension and suspense eventually percolates to a hot, boiling inferno. Just when I thought I had it figured out, the last few pages came out of left field with a right hook. I was dumbfounded.

With the focus on character development and a thick tension between Dixon and Hagen, Killer Tank serves as a hybrid of WWII and crime-noir storytelling. While I wasn't necessarily bored with the plotting and pace, I will say that Daniels never fully commits to either genre. When I wanted a more serious action novel the story slowed to a conversational tone. When I needed the characters to come to blows, the military action consumed the story. I couldn't quite walk the high beam that Norman Daniels built for me. The balancing act didn't work as well as I had hoped for. But, nevertheless Killer Tank is an entertaining read that probably could have been improved with a few precise touch-ups to the storytelling. You won't hate it, but I'm not sure how necessary this paperback really is. There are far better crime-noir and WW2 books out there.

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Later

Since 2004, Hard Case Crime has been the nation’s most successful publisher of new and reprint crime fiction. In 2005, the upstart paperback house struck literary gold with the publication rights to Stephen King’s The Colorado Kid. It happened again in 2013 with Joyland, and now again in 2021 with his new book Later.

Our narrator is a 22 year-old young man named Jamie Conklin telling the reader the story of things that happened when he was a kid. Jamie is the only son of a single, literary agent mother in Manhattan. Jamie also sees dead people - pretty much just like the kid in The Sixth Sense. He warns the reader in his intro, “I think this is a horror story.” It’s the truth, but the story takes awhile to heat up before things get truly scary.

Jamie explains that dead people always tell the truth when they talk to him. Sometimes they say something funny and blunt like telling the boy that his school art project sucks. Other times it’s a useful tip like where the old lady hid her jewels before she passed away. His access to the dead is limited to the few days after passing before the deceased fade away into the great beyond. Jamie is candid with his mom about his ability, and she warns him to never tell anybody that he sees dead people.

Later jumps around quite a bit while focusing on Jamie’s upbringing and a variety of incidences where his ability to see and illicit information from dead people proves useful. Mom’s best friend is an NYPD detective named Liz. She’s the stacked brunette on the book’s cover. Over time, Liz comes to believe and accept Jamie’s sixth-sense and figures out some uses for it in the realm of her police work. As such, Jamie gets pressed into service by Liz using his unusual ability.

King writes Later in a breezy first-person style with super-short chapters that are easy to follow despite the often non-linear timeline. It takes forever for an actual plot to develop, but you don’t really mind because Jamie is a likable kid who makes the reader invested in his well-being. As advertised, the paperback eventually becomes a horror story with some honest-to-goodness creepy and unsettling set-pieces reminding the reader that Stephen King still has chops.

Beyond that, there’s not much to tell that won’t spoil the fun for you. Later is a quick and fulfilling read - arguably the strongest and most on-brand of his Hard Case Crime offerings. King excels at this kind of of coming-of-age horror story with vivid characters and chilling situations with a good hero confronting supernatural evil. King has a large back catalogue of epic works, so Later is unlikely to be your favorite among them. However, I can’t imagine any of his fans walking away dissatisfied from this superb little novel. 

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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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