Paperback Warrior Podcast - Episode 106

In this episode, Eric delves into the career of author Jack Finney. He wrote science-fiction and crime-fiction novels that included time-travel, heists, and prison breaks. Eric reviews Finney's most famous novel, The Body Snatchers, which was the basis for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers film franchise. In addition, Eric discusses his antique mall paperback shopping and reviews a horror story titled Nightmare on Ice from the newest issue of Bold Venture Press's Pulp Adventures. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Facebook, X, and YouTube. Check the Paperback Warrior blog daily for new reviews and articles. A companion video is available HERE that ties into this episode.

Listen to "Episode 106: Jack Finney" on Spreaker.

Simon Ark #04 - The Man from Nowhere

The fourth Simon Ark appearance was in the June 1956 issue of Famous Detective Stories. It was also reprinted in Startling Mystery Stories' Summer 1967 issue. The story, written by Edward D. Hoch, is titled “The Man from Nowhere” and features an enticing premise of “...the story of Douglas Zadig's last day on Earth and the people who were with him when he died.”

The story begins with occult detective (who may be 2,000 years of age) Simon Ark telephoning the unnamed narrator in November 1940ish. Ark asks if the narrator would like to join him on a weekend trip to Maine. In first-person narrative, the narrator explains that any trip with Simon Ark is never as casual as it sounds. He's delighted to unearth some criminal activity with the bizarre detective. 

Ark, who is presented in the series as searching for “Ultimate Evil”, is in Maine to interview an overnight sensation named Douglas Zadig. The 20-yr old man appeared out of the mist one day claiming to have no memory of his past life. He spoke English very poorly, wore clothes that were rags, and possessed a copy of Voltaire's novel Zadig, thus his name was created. However, since the man appeared he has managed to write a book titled “On the Eternal War Between the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil” that contains word-for-word teachings from a religious leader named Zoroaster – a man that lived seven centuries before Christ. 

When Ark and the narrator arrive to visit Zadig they discover that he has been attacked twice by an unknown entity while sitting alone in his room. There's talk that Zadig may be a target for the Devil himself. Through an investgation both Ark and the narrator learn about a similar man named Kaspar Hauser that also appeared “out of thin air” in 1829. He also remembered nothing of his past and was dressed like a peasant. What is the correlation between these two bizarre men and their outwardly appearance of being from another century? Needless to say the story escalates with a murder mystery. 

“The Man from Nowhere” is an excellent representation of what this series is all about – the perfect cocktail of traditional detective-fiction mixed with a dose of Victorian horror and draped in the hints of a supernatural explanation. Like other weird-menace stories in the pulps there is always a logical explanation. But, what I love about Hoch's resolution to these cases is that he leaves it subjective. There is always a brief possibility that the abnormal things happening are really supernatural. That is evident with Ark's last spoken words in this story: “...there are some things better left unexplained, at least in this world.” 

In this world, you can get a copy of the Simon Ark stories HERE.

Hammer of the Dogs

Jarret Keene has recently basked in the western spotlight, spurred into action with his Kid Crimson series of wild-west adventures. Those books – Gunpowder Mountain, The Guns of Goblin Valley, Stagecoach to Oblivion – are available from WolfpackPublishing. My first experience with Keene was the debut Crimson novel, an entertaining fast-paced hero tale laced with colorful characters and creative violence. I was excited to observe Keene's craft outside of the western genre. I was delighted to receive his 2023 novel Hammer of the Dogs. It was published by University of Nevada Press and is described as a post-apocalyptic adventure set in war-torn Las Vegas.

The novel's heroine is iron-headed Lash, an intelligent Dystopian warrior that attends a makeshift educational facility aptly titled Academy. With her mother dead and her father missing, Lash relies on the strict behavioral teachings of Professor, a brilliant tech-head that may be a festering warmonger with a penchant for religious fanaticism (think Cyber-Christ). Lash's skillset is an advanced high-level awareness of droids, a technology that is draped over the bombed and revamped Las Vegas strip. There are colorful varieties of drones (and droids) that can cook, heal, interact, screw, and dive-bomb humanity with a plethora of deadly killing devices that would give terrorists nightmares. The victor must control the drones and successfully operate jammer devices to stop the enemy drones.

The book's premise is partly enriched by a feud between the Academy and a warlord named Richter. His mission is to seemingly kill Academy students and continue the downfall and decline of Las Vegas. Needless to say, Lash's mentor and friends all buy into the propaganda that Richter is the real enemy. However, after a terrifying conflict with Richter's forces, Lash becomes a prisoner and learns the real and awful truth that has been withheld from her for years. Additionally, she learns the whereabouts of her enslaved father.

First, from an action-adventure perspective, this is a doomsday feast of energized firefights, drone battles, fisticuffs, and heroic missions that are equally mind-boggling and entertaining. While I didn't always know what a “VAMPIR-launched TBG-29V thermobaric antipersonnel round” was, it never spoiled the fun when that same round splattered a drone's intestinal optical fibers into stringy sparklers. The book was reminiscent of Robert Tine's outrageous 1980s paperback series Outrider, complete with hero Bonner facing a sworn enemy in Leatherman – just replace drones with armed-to-the-teeth dune buggies and inferior prose. But, Keene's nightmarish post-apocalypse is more advanced and contains characters that should appeal to every age group. There's gun porn, but that all plays into Keene's social message.

Keene is never preachy or one-sided, but he delivers some stark social awareness through these downtrodden desperate kids with advanced technology. If that statement alone isn't the real message, then he spells it out quite clearly. Too much technology alienates humanity and feeds the combat quota of Americans versus Americans in fruitless endeavors to outrace, overbuy, overeat, overreach, and overtake each other to prove one side is better than the other – "better than, different than, less than" played out with bone-chilling drones and their insta-killer devices. It rips the population of post-nuke Earth apart in the same ways that it shreds the pre-nuke Earth today. It's by design and we're fools for buying into it. Keene's message concerns too many weapons touted by youth. It also showcases the horror of cold-blooded remote murder that happens today across endless battlefields – mourning and human compassion disappears through a touch screen arsenal of ballistic catastrophe. Keene totally gets it and I applaud him for combining modern fears (and education) with an entertaining action-adventure novel.

Hammer of the Dogs wins across all fronts and I'm hoping I see more of Lash in the future. Highly recommended. Get your copy HERE.

Sam Durell #13 - Assignment-Lowlands

The 13th adventure starring CIA troubleshooter Sam Durell was Assignment-Lowlands from 1961. By this point in the series, author Edward S. Aarons had fully embraced the character that would carry him to his death in 1975 after authoring 42 installments starring the Cajun spy.

A romantic weekend with his girlfriend on the Chesapeake Bay is cut short by a phone call summoning Sam to a meeting in a London pub to accept his next assignment. Two days earlier, every CIA operative around the world was put on high alert and told to be ready for something big. That time is now.

After a brief stop in London that provides the reader no insight into the crisis, Sam continues to Amsterdam. Upon meeting his CIA safehouse host, Sam finds the man dying of a rare virus. Before he expires, he sends Sam to the Northern Holland island of Scheersplaat (not on Google Maps - possibly fictional?) to meet a man who unleashed this virus upon the world from a bunker. Naturally, the CIA’s man in Amsterdam dies before providing any pertinent details - just a map to the target location in the Frisian Islands in Northern Holland.

"Operation Cassandra” was an undeployed Nazi bioweapons program during WW2 that has been unearthed and somehow released from an underground lab on a remote island in Holland. This is the kind of thing that would make the Bubonic Plague look like a head cold, and Sam needs to contain it without becoming infected along the way.

Neither Sam nor his CIA colleagues knows who unearthed this buried laboratory of the Nazi virologists, but whoever is behind this is trying to blackmail the USA for money to keep the disease from spreading worldwide. This creates a mystery for Sam to solve while on the ground in Holland. Think Jack Bauer meets Sam Spade.

Sam finds himself face-to-face with the terrorist behind this plot fairly early in the paperback, and he’s one of the best villains I can recall in ages. Menacing and unhinged - but not cartoonish. There are further layers of adversaries baked into the plot - each one better than the last.

I’ve read a handful of Aaron’s Sam Durell Assignment adventures, and this one is by far the best thus far. The plot moves at a great pace akin to an episode of 24 and Sam shows way more personality than usual. The setting was great, and the aspirations of the characters were always logical.

The paperback had elements of a maritime adventure, a hardboiled mystery, and a treasure hunt - all the wrapping of a 1960s spy adventure. If these types of stories broadly appeal to you, you’re gonna love this Assignment. You can get Edward S. Aarons books HERE.

Antique Store Crime-Fiction

In this video, Eric journeys north to St. Mary's Georgia to locate a lone bookshelf buried in an old antique store. This video shows the vintage crime-fiction hardbacks stored there by authors Richard and Frances Lockridge. Eric presents a brief overview of the Mr. & Mrs. North, Lieutenant Heimrich, and Detective Nathan Shapiro crime-fiction titles. Stream on the YouTube app HERE or watch below:

Unboxing Operation Hang Ten

In today's video, Eric unboxes the entire Operation Hang Ten series. This was a title created by Lyle Keynon Engel and published between 1969 and 1973. Eric has a brief history of the title and author and examines each paperback in the collection. Stream the video HERE or watch below. Be sure to subscribe for weekly videos.

Simon Ark #03 - The Witch is Dead

“The Witch is Dead” was the third Simon Ark story, and it appeared in Famous Detective Stories' April 1956 issue. It was reprinted in the Fall 1966 issue of Startling Mystery Stories. There were a total of at least 45 Ark stories, and they are all penned by Edward D. Hoch. The concept is that Ark travels the globe searching for Satan while also solving crimes that possess a weird menace. Most of the stories include an unnamed narrator presenting the story in first-person. 

The story begins with the narrator describing a woman named Marie Carrio and her career as a fortune-teller named Mother Fortune (how original). She operates her mammoth crystal ball in Westchester County, New York. The narrator states that Mother Fortune died in a burst of flames and that her death proved even more fantastic than her life. 

The narrator then describes the events leading up to Mother Fortune's fiery demise, which is the story. He says it was October in 1950 and he was now working for Neptune Books, a paperback publisher (great nod to the era). He is now married to a woman named Shelly. He meets Simon Ark unexpectedly at a train station. Ark catches up with the narrator on the last couple of years since they had worked together. He says, “There is evil everywhere these days, and it is most difficult to separate the man-made evil from the more ancient type.” This statement pretty much sums up the Simon Ark series – deciphering supernatural or simple logic. 

Ark explains to the narrator that he is in Westchester County to investigate weird happenings at the Hudsonville College for Women. The narrator laughs when Ark advises that the college has somehow become cursed by Mother Fortune. Three students are near death and another forty are critically ill. Ark is there to determine the real cause of the outbreak and if it is somehow linked to an unfortunate event that occurred between Mother Fortune and the school years ago.

This was probably my least favorite of the Simon Ark stories thus far. The plot development was a bit murky and the final solution to the school's epidemic was hard to believe. I enjoyed the exchanges between Ark and the narrator and appreciated the PI-esque investigation. The story just moved a little too slow with such a limp payoff. With this many stories across four decades the output is certainly going to vary. You could skip this one.