Timothy Dane #03 - The Diary

William Ard (1922-1960) was a popular author of mystery and western fiction during the 1950s whose nine-book series starring Timothy Dane remains highly regarded today. The series can be read in any order and Fiction Hunter Press recently re-released the third installment, 1953’s The Diary, as a $3 ebook.

Dane is a fairly typical 1950s Manhattan private-eye who is summoned to the home of a wealthy industrialist seeking to engage his services. The client has an attractive 18 year-old daughter named Diane whose diary was stolen. The old man isn’t particularly worried about this, but his daughter is freaking out and wants a PI on the job — so here we are. The suspect is a Spanish Harlem Mexican hood, who apparently stole the journal while doing some work at the estate.

When Dane makes his jaunt into Spanish Harlem, he quickly learns that the gig isn’t going to be as easy as he thought. Lurking in the background of the mystery is the specter of big-city politics and a race between two candidates to recover the diary and its secrets. There’s also a murder, and that’s the real mystery to be solved. Could the contents of a teenage girl’s diary be worth committing a homicide?

Dane’s engagement evolves into a bodyguard duty looking after the horny Diane, and there’s some sexy seduction within the pages of this 69 year-old paperback. Overall, this was a rather enjoyable, if insubstantial, private-eye mystery. While the Timothy Dane series isn’t the high point of Ard’s body of work, The Diary is a solid installment from a prolific young author whose life was cut short way too soon. It’s good to see publishers keeping his body of work alive. 

Buy a copy of the eBook HERE.

Visual Feature - David Goodis

Major announcement from the Paperback Warrior camp. After nine years of hard work, dedication, and consistency, we are making some changes. First, Episode 100 is broadcasting this Monday, August 29th. To celebrate this milestone, and to mark our next evolution, the episode will be offered in our normal audio version, available on multiple platforms. However, we've entered the film making business.

Episode 100, and hopefully future episodes, will simultaneously launch as videos available on YouTube and our blog at paperbackwarrior.com. Think of these as interactive, documentary styled films that accompany our audio. You wouldn't want to see us just talking into a microphone, so instead, we've created films showcasing books, pulp magazines, MAMs, author photographs, connected places, and tons of vivid artwork. The video matches the audio, offering you a more interactive experience. In other words...we are conquering vintage paperbacks in a whole new way.

In addition to our new episodes, we are creating and offering Visual Features on some of our favorite authors. These short films highlight our prior podcast features in a brand new way, complete with a visualized experience. 

Seeing is believing, so we have our very first Visual Feature online now! It's on respected crime-noir superstar David Goodis. You can watch below on YouTube, or at paperbackwarrior.com. Direct link is HERE.

World's Scariest Places #05 - Mountain of the Dead

We've covered books by horror author Jeremy Bates, most notably his World's Scariest Places series of stand-alone novels. Each book in this series is based on a particular place that is closely associated with a tragedy, haunting, or unexplained event. Case in point is the Dyatlov Pass Incident, one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20th century. Bates uses this incident and location to place his horror-adventure novel Mountain of the Dead, originally published in 2018 via Ghillinnein Books. 

The book is partially presented in first-person narrative by Corey, a bestselling author of non-fiction. He recounts his harrowing expedition to Russia's frosty Northern Ural mountains, one of the most inhabitable regions on Earth. Corey, and his filmmaker buddy “Disco”, journeyed to the region to research the Dyatlov Pass Incident, a 1959 mystery involving nine Russian hikers that experienced gruesome deaths that can't be explained even within the scopes of modern science and forensics. 

In between Corey's portions of the novel, Bates weaves in events from 1959 concerning the actual hikers that were killed in the incident. Bates takes liberties with the incident and victims to create his own version of the murders, complete with Cryptozoology, actual photos, and a rather doomy title for these chapters counting down the amount of days left to live. It's quite fascinating. 

At 420 pages, approximately 15 characters, and two different timelines, Mountain of the Dead may seem intimidating. Oddly enough, it all blends together seamlessly to create one of the better horror novels I've read in some time. Corey's account of what happened to him in Siberia, the underground laboratory, hideous experiments, and ultimate encounter with the horrors of the Dyatlov Pass Incident were simply awe-inspiring. There's a real sense of adventure that envelopes the story as Corey is partnered with a female scientist, a hunter, and a remote guide to explore and locate the history of the events deep in the rural, icy mountain range. Likewise, Bates presents this same snowy adventure with the original nine hikers in 1959's trek through the high-mountain wilderness. 

As if Bates needed any further elements to propel the plot, there is a through-story arc regarding Corey's girlfriend and the tragedy that affected her years ago. Through life fragments and story pieces, readers learn about her life and, by the book's final chapters, her fate. So, there's an embedded mystery within the mystery. It's wildly clever, unique, and entrancing. 

Jeremy Bates is extremely successful and remains one of the bestselling, self-published authors of his genre. Books like Mountain of the Dead are testimonies to his success as an original, believable, and tremendously entertaining author. I love this guy. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Traded Wives

Celebrated jazz musician and author Charles Boeckman authored crime-fiction short stories and novels using his own name through the mid 20th century. However, using the pseudonym of Alex Carter, he authored racy, sexually-charged romance paperbacks for publishing houses like Beacon. I've enjoyed his writing, especially his Alex Carter novel Boy-Lover (1963). I recently purchased another Carter novel, Traded Wives. The book was published in both the US and Canada simultaneously in 1964. The American version was published through Beacon (8711X, cover artist unknown). The Canadian version by Softcover Library (S95157) recycled Clement Micarelli's painting from Orrie Hitt's 1962 novel Love Thief.

The novel presents three couples and a single woman living in a new housing community called Garden Acres. Each of the couples is struggling in various ways that revolve around intimacy. Boeckman depicts each marriage through revolving chapters that explain each character's backstory, the evolution into marriage, and the physical wants, desires, and jealous rage within this sexual suburbia. 

Debbie and Bobby have just moved into Garden Acres after graduating from high school and becoming pregnant. Their parents are wealthy, respectable contributors to the community that can't afford any negative influences. They immediately force the two kids to become married and quickly convert the couple into expecting, stereotypical middle-class suburbanites. The problem is that Bobby is still running around with the town's young hotties and Debbie isn't thrilled to be settling down after bedding down the senior class's male students. That's a real problem.

Charles is an alcohol distributor and sales rep that travels the back roads of America selling booze. He smokes cigars, drives a Cadillac, and has a loud-mouth that mostly spews dirty jokes. After meeting backwoods country girl (and virgin) Barbara Lee, he talks her into marriage and they quickly move into  the thriving sexual landscape of Garden Acres. Barbara Lee wants to pursue a college education and learn more about the modern world. After conquering Barbara Lee, Charles sets his eyes on his neighbor Cheryl. 

Tony is a white-collar guy living the American dream – playing golf on the weekends, mowing green grass, and relaxing in the shade with his newlywed wife Cheryl. The problem is that Cheryl isn't into sex, thus creating a physical barrier between the two. Tony is sexually frustrated with Cheryl and she is equally angered with his insistence on intimacy. 

Boeckman was just such a great storyteller of these noir novels. Despite the titles and covers, these novels aren't any different from a Nora Roberts novel today. There are no graphic sex scenes or much (if any) profanity. In cinematic ratings, these are probably PG-13. But, that doesn't make them any less intriguing or enjoyable. 

The story-lines are detailed with plot and character development that's simply superb. The narrative thrusts these unhappy couples into a wild mix of sex, fantasy, and appeasement. Debbie with Tony and Bobby, Cheryl with Tony, Charles with Cheryl, and Bobby with a divorced, sexually starved woman named April. It's a mingling of affairs and it's fantastic. I also enjoyed the “crime-noir” aspect of Tony, Charles, and Cheryl's love-triangle. It becomes violent and engaging and is probably the real highlight of the novel. The end result is that Traded Wives is highly, highly recommended. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE

Resident Evil #01 - The Umbrella Conspiracy

Resident Evil is arguably the greatest survival horror media franchise of all time. The Capcom video game, known as Biohazard in Japan, began its life in 1996 on the very first Sony Playstation. Countless sequels were created across multiple generations of gaming systems. Six live-action films were produced, a television show, animated films, comic books, and novels. With novels as our primary focus, I picked up a Pocket Books paperback called The Umbrella Conspiracy, the first of a seven-book Resident Evil series published between 1998-2004 and authored by S.D. Perry, daughter of Steve Perry (Conan, Star Wars, Matador).

The first thing you need to know about The Umbrella Conspiracy, and this book series, is that you don't need a Resident Evil education to read and enjoy this. This series starts at the very beginning and mostly consists of novelizations of the video games. This first book is a novelization of the very first game, so those of you unfamiliar with the franchise can start right here. Don't be intimidated.

Raccoon City is a small town with an urban area, lots of dense forest, and rural fields. But, this quiet little community is experiencing an unusual number of vicious homicides. People are found dead in the Victory Lake area, mutilated as if mauled by a savage animal. Rumors run rampant, the police have no solid leads, so a special force is brought in to help solve the case - S.T.A.R.S. (Special Tactics and Rescue). This division is made up of highly trained, paramilitary specialists that are privately funded.

The S.T.A.R.S. unit is divided into two teams, Alpha and Bravo. While there are a lot of members in the unit, the ones that really matter to this series are Alpha's Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Rebecca Chambers, Barry Burton, and Albert Wesker. If you enjoy all of those 70s and 80s team-commando paperbacks, then this group should be easily likable. The members realize that everything has been searched at Victory Lake, but there is a large abandoned mansion, the Spencer Estate, at the foothills of The Arklay Mountains that may hold some answers.

Wesker sends the Bravo team in by chopper, but soon they radio back that the helicopter has crashed in a secluded area. Alpha team is sent in by chopper and immediately discover that some of Bravo have been attacked and mutilated. Soon, the team is attacked by ravenous, skinless dogs. In an effort to stay alive, Chris and others flee through the forest to the Spencer Estate. Inside, they find that it isn't abandoned at all. Instead, the mansion is filled with research equipment, labs, and evidence of hideous experiments. When Chris is attacked by a zombie, the proverbial sh#t hits the fan.

I absolutely loved this book. I immediately finished the last page and hopped online to order the second installment, Caliban Cove. From an action-adventure stance, this book is loaded with firefights in all parts of the mansion. There's the undead to contend with, a traitor in the group, and monsters galore as the team navigates the cavernous house in search of clues. As a horror novel, it works on a violent, gory level as the survival horror introduces puzzles and traps for the squad to solve. 

While there isn't much to really complain about, I did get confused often as the point of view changes to different squad members throughout the house. Rarely are they all together in the same room. Instead, the book feels slightly “epic” at 260 pages due to the constant change in characters. I really enjoyed both Rebecca and Jill, and from what I understand they make a big impact in future books. In researching the series, it appears that Wikipedia has the series listed as:

1 The Umbrella Conspiracy (1998) Novelization of Resident Evil (1996) video game

2 Caliban Cove Original novel (1998)

3 City of the Dead (1999) Novelization of Resident Evil 2 (1998) video game

4 Underworld (1999) Original novel

5 Nemesis (2000) Novelization of Resident Evil 3 (1999) video game

6 Code: Veronica (2001) Novelization of Code: Veronica (2000) video game

0 Zero Hour (2004) Novelization of Resident Evil: Zero Hour video game 

Buy a copy of the book HERE.

Dark the Summer Dies

Walter Untermeyer Jr. (1915-2009) was a New York lawyer and a WW2 Navy veteran who only authored two books in his life. His first paperback, Dark the Summer Dies, from 1953 has been reprinted by Stark House as part of a trio of vintage femme fatale noir novels from Lion Books. 

Our narrator is an affable, wet-behind-the-ears, 18 year-old kid named Tony who is working at a swanky country club pool as a swim and dive instructor for the summer. The poolside babes are always wearing next-to-nothing and it’s making the poor boy horny as Hell. Sadly, his sweet high school girlfriend doesn’t put out. 

At the club, Tony meets a super-hot flirtatious married woman named Vicky, whose husband is frequently away on business trips. You see what’s coming? Of course you do. She invites Tony over to enjoy a porterhouse on the grill, and you know the steak isn’t the only meat getting tenderized that night. 

When writing in Tony’s voice, Untermeyer mimics the colloquial tone of Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger’s A Catcher in the Rye, a successful novel released two years earlier. His plotting, however, needs some serious help. The paperback is a relationship drama about pushing the limits of social norms and sexual taboos, but not much happens for most of the book. It’s certainly not a crime novel, and the “shocking” ending will land with a thud to anyone accustomed to reading actual shocking paperbacks from the era. 

I wanted to like this novel with every fiber of my being, but it was pretty lousy — despite some well-written prose. The Stark House collection containing this book also includes Sin Pit by Paul S. Meskil, an absolute masterpiece of the femme fatale noir genre, so it’s probably still worth your $20. 

Buy a copy of the book HERE.

Island of the Pit

According to Goodreads, Irish author James Gribben (1915-1986) authored plays, short stories and novels under his own name and also under the pseudonyms Kingsley West and Vincent James. There isn't much information online, but I did locate a paperback he wrote under the James name called Island of the Pit. It was originally published in England by Ernest Benn, Ltd in 1955 as a hardcover, later published by Messner in the US in 1956. My version is the 1957 Popular Library (800) paperback, although it was reprinted a second time in paperback by Digit Books (R379) in 1960. 

Joe Trasker and his wife Helen have been casually sailing the Pacific Islands the last two years. On their return trip to the US, they stop by an inhabited island to buy supplies for the voyage. It's here that Joe is reunited with an old war buddy named Kane Hadley. In the brief backstory, readers learn that Joe is disabled due to mortar-shell fragments in his leg. Kane was the guy that carried Joe to safety while under fire.  

After a night of drunkenness, Joe and Helen start their return trip, but unfortunately make an invite to Kane to join them. Kane accepts, and then things grow chaotic over time.

Kane has an affection for Helen, and she becomes uncomfortable in his presence. Joe notices that Kane hasn't gotten over the war, as if he still misses the action. The three of them discover an abandoned island, and upon further inspection, learn there is gold laced throughout the rocky terrain. Kane, who has experience as both a smuggler and gold miner, insists that they stop for a few weeks and get as much gold as they can carry. Joe and Helen are simple people, and don't have a deep desire for wealth. Kane is the opposite, lusting for gold so he can buy another boat to capture more gold.

Island of the Pit is a character study of two very different people and their conflicts with insecurity, greed, jealousy, and other weak conditions of the human spirit. Kane's discovery of the gold, combined with his own restless demeanor, is a negative combination that's further hampered by his attraction to Helen. This greedy darkness envelopes Kane's thoughts and actions, eventually transforming him into a lethal aggressor. 

Gribben's writing is so descriptive and I really enjoyed his use of lighting to depict the story's mood. There are a number of passages where light is used to foreshadow coming events. It's a really unique presentation that helped broaden the limited setting of these three characters on a deserted island. I also enjoyed the commentary on marriage and the “less is more” message that reinforced Joe and Helen's position as the wiser, level-headed supporters. They truly want to rehabilitate Kane, but realize that his self-interest is too prevalent. 

Island of the Pit was just a real pleasure to read. It's a smart, emotional journey that's compelling despite the predictability. The descriptive writing style, dynamic characters, and social commentary were well worth the price of admission. You owe it to yourself to track down this lost gem. 

Buy a copy of this book HERE