Jerry Long #01 - Code Three (aka Dead Shot)

James M. Fox was actually Johannes Matthijs Willem Knipsheer, a Dutch author born in 1908. He moved to Los Angeles after WWII and started writing mystery novels. His best known work is the Johnny and Suzy Marshall series, published between 1943-1957. My first experience with Fox is his three book series of police procedural novels starring Detective Sergeant Jerry Long. To test the waters,  I tried the series debut, Code Three, originally published in hardcover by Little Brown in 1953. It was published as a paperback in 1955 by Bantam under their Pennant Mystery brand (P79). At some point the book was also published as Dead Shot. 

Jerry Long, and his partner Chuck Conley, are called to the scene when a dead body is found under a tree in the park. The dead guy's gruesome appearance suggests he had been given the boots by some tough guys and then dumped. The only identification is a tattoo, which prompts Long to call his buddy at the precinct's records department to inquire about it. 

The dead guy is identified as a local bookie, so Long pursues the guy's ex-wife, a fleeing woman named Jenny, to get some answers. When he drives up to her apartment, guns explode and the woman runs for safety. Later, Long connects the clues that lead to a powerhouse mobster named Manny. Where the book gets really interesting is that Long, who's a city detective, collides with the county sheriff's office. The tug-of-war is one of those “you're traipsing on our turf” territorial disputes. However, Long finds evidence that Manny is controlling the county cops, which forces him on the outside of the investigation. 

Code Three reminded me of a 1958 paperback called City Limits, the second installment of the Mike Macauley series written by Richard Deming using the pseudonym Nick Marino. The central plot of the city versus county law enforcement is similar, complete with the mobster and the hero colliding. Typically, these story elements are often found in crime-fiction detective novels. Adding to the gritty, hardboiled style, I found Fox's writing similar to Mickey Spillane – blood and guts, tough guy talk with fisticuffs, babes, and cold steel. 

My major drawback to Fox's Code Three is the story seems jumbled, fragmented, and often dense in the details. I had a very hard time understanding what was happening, and couldn't quite comprehend the flow of events. Even at a relatively short 120 pages, I struggled to finish this book. I found myself counting pages, which is a surefire signal that I'm completely lost. I love the main character, found his tactics compelling, but the plot development and presentation was jarring. I'm not giving up on Fox with just a small sample size. But, surely you can do better than Code Three if you want to sample the author's work. Buy a copy of this book HERE.

Jerry Long Series

1. Code Three (aka Dead Shot) 1953
2. Free Ride (1957)
3. Dead Pigeon (1967)

Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 100

It's the 100th episode of the Paperback Warrior Podcast! Tom and Eric discuss their favorite moments from the show's past three years as well as the life and literary work of pulp and crime-fiction author Cleve Adams. Reviews include a Matthew Scudder installment by Lawrence Block and a 1957 vintage paperback called Sin Pit. Listen on any podcast app, paperbackwarrior.com or download directly HERE. Additionally, you can watch the video version of this episode on YouTube HERE.

Listen to "Episode 100: Cleve Adams" on Spreaker.

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.