Line of Sight

In 2000, American historian Jack Kelly set aside his non-fiction writing to author a femme fatale noir novel in the tradition of James M. Cain. The book is called Line of Sight, and it’s quite a wild ride.

Our narrator is a cop named Ray Dolan. He’s a patrol officer in a fictional washed-up, decaying, former industrial town called Mansfield, New York. I’m guessing the author drew inspiration from the brick-strewn lots and burned-out factories in New York’s Hudson Valley where he resides.

Ray is a good cop. Honest and hardworking. 35 and single. In the opening scene, he intervenes when a fellow officer tries to beat a suspect with a blackjack. Later that night, he spies the family who just moved into the house behind him. Especially the wife, Sheila. Her husband is an asshole, and Ray quickly becomes infatuated.

We also get to see a lot of great policework from Ray, who is an outstanding and heroic cop. There’s an interesting sub-plot about a racially-tinged incident of excessive force by a fellow officer and the pressure Ray is feeling to engage in a cover-up for the greater good of the force.

As the secret romance between Ray and Sheila intensifies, Ray learns things about Sheila’s husband that would make any right-thinking man wish the guy was gone. It’s a crime-fiction novel, so you kinda see where things are headed. Or do you?

It takes awhile, but a murder does occur. The aftermath is completely bonkers — in a good way. Mark it in your mind. On Page 145, the paperback goes from a good-enough novel about a cop to something totally wild. You want jaw-dropping plot twists? Double-crosses? Patsies? Stool-Pigeons? This fantastic paperback has it all.

The author combines a twisty modern thriller with the femme fatale noir template created by James M. Cain (later honed by Gil Brewer, Harry Whittington, and Orrie Hitt) to create a crime fiction masterpiece. The book seems to be out of print at the moment, and that’s also a crime. Do what you need to do, but find a copy and read this book. Highest recommendation. Get a copy HERE.

A Taste of Terror

Martha Albrand (1914-1981, b. Heidi Huberta Freybe Loewengard) was a German-American novelist that earned France's highest crime-fiction award, Police Literature Grand Prize, for her 1948 novel After Midnight. The novel was adapted into film in 1950 as Captain Carey, U.S.A. starring Alan Ladd. Albrand's novels are critically-acclaimed high-tension novels that incorporated WW2 espionage themes. My only experience with the author is her late career effort A Taste of Terror, originally published in hardcover in 1976 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The book introduces readers to Kent, a commercial airline pilot living with his wife Kitty and their teenage daughter Kate in the American Northeast. Around three months prior Kent was forced to belly-flop his airplane due to icy conditions and runway gear that refused to descend on the approach to the landing strip. The landing created a fireball that fatally engulfed over 100 passengers and left many more crippled and hospitalized. As the book begins Kent himself is nursing a broken left hip and ankle. But the real pain is about to start. 

Kent receives a threatening letter in the mail. The anonymous sender states that Kent must commit suicide to atone for his errors in landing the plane. Further, if he doesn't commit suicide, the letter's sender will kill Kate. He's left with the choice of saving his daughter by killing himself or simply ignoring the threat and potentially risking his daughter's life. 

The plot of the book lured me right in. Unfortunately, that's the only thing Albrand could really cook up this late in her career. The plot is simply wasted as readers spend 200 pages succumbing to endless dialogue between Kent and Kitty over their marriage. Kitty has an affair, Kent pines over a female family friend, and Kate is semi-dating the 17-year old neighbor. Eventually, Kent hires a bodyguard that is completely out of her element and lets Kate become captured. The inept FBI (sure sure) doesn't follow up with leads, a private-eye is murdered, and all of these “highlights” of a tension-filled thriller are just one to two-page nods that should be important but aren't.

Overall, my first sampling of Albrand was a dreadful experience. However, this was a late career entry and should be a small sample size in the grand body of work. Her 1940s and 1950s novels are heralded as fine espionage thrillers and worth the price of admission. Let's call A Taste of Terror an experimental first bite that begs for a better meal.  

Conversations - Greg Shepard

Over the last seven years, Paperback Warrior has discussed, reviewed, promoted, and contributed to amazing Stark House Press publications. In this exclusive interview, Greg Shepard, Stark House's founder and editor, sits down with Eric to discuss his career in publishing, including Zebra's mass-market paperbacks in the 1980s and early 1990s, the humble beginnings of the Stark House name, working with the estates of heavyweight crime-fiction icons like Harry Whittington, Carter Brown, Lionel White, and the multiple series titles that he published and continues to publish. This insightful interview peers into the paperback publishing process from start to finish and offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the book business. Stream the audio only portion HERE. Stream the video below or on YouTube HERE.

Winterkill

Kathryn Johnson is a bestselling author of over 40 published novels. She was nominated for the Agatha Award and earned the Heart of Excellence and Bookseller's Best Awards. Her most well known work is The Gentlemen Poet, a novel that has Shakespeare escape to the New World. What drew me to her writing was the young-adult novels she wrote in the 1990s using the pseudonym Nicole Davidson. These were published by Avon under their young-adult imprint Avon Flare. I wanted to read her first novel, Winterkill. It was published in 1991.

Winterkill was written for young adults, however, after reading it, I can honestly say this is no different than any mystery from the early to mid 20th century. The narrative would also please horror readers - which is probably the young audience the cover catered to. I would imagine if you enjoy the childhood perspectives in books by the likes of John Saul, Dan Simmons, or even Stephen King, then that element is strongly used by Johnson - a vulnerable teen placed into extreme situations. 

The book stars Karen, a high school student that is forced to move with her parents to a small town in Vermont. This little town, which features a ski resort, is far different than Karen's New York City roots. There's a fish-out-of-water scenario with Karen initially becoming shy, self-sheltered, and protective in terms of negotiating her emotions at a new school with new people. Thankfully, Karen loosens up and befriends a fellow student named Matt and his popular friends. Matt and Karen begin dating.

Karen also befriends a less popular girl and develops a little rivalry with a local girl named Jerrie. One night at a party Matt tells Karen he has to leave for just a little bit but he will return. Karen gets worried and follows Matt only to see him run over in a hit and run. She can't make out the car through the snow and fog. Later, she discovers that her own car was used in the hit and run. But who would want to kill Matt? Why use her car to do it? Karen then sets out to solve the mystery by eliminating her fellow students as suspects. The finale of the book takes place on the ski slopes as Karen tries to outfox the killer. 

This book was a lot of fun and contained an absorbing mystery. In terms of young-adult novels, this one has some profanity, talk about sex, and of course at least one murder. Again, in comparison to early 20th century mystery fiction, there isn't anything too far out of bounds from just a straight up traditional mystery novel. There is a hint of the supernatural, but it is subjective. Karen's necklace was handed down to her from her grandmother. The necklace has opals that change color depending on how much danger Karen is in. Now, it could just be the lighting or some type of scientific explanation of the weather affecting the stones. There's no clear answer on this, so it is up to the reader to determine if there was something supernatural involved. Personally, I don't think so.

Winterkill was a lot of fun and I have a few other books by this same author I'm willing to read now. If they are as good as this then I'd be very pleased. Recommended. Get the book HERE.

The Butcher #26 - The Terror Truckers

Along with a couple of contributions from Lee Floren, The Butcher series was authored by James Dockery until October 1977. This 26th installment, The Terror Truckers, proved to be the last Butcher novel to be published for over two years. The publishing hiccup by Pinnacle was due to Dockery leaving the series (or being dismissed?) and the title finding a suitable author. By December 1979 literary journeyman Michael Avallone was brought in for the remaining nine books. 

The Terror Truckers is an unusual men's action-adventure novel. Aside from the obligatory graphic sex-scene, which is pretty darn dirty, this book could work as a juvenile fiction novel. It features a young boy and his dog assisting Bucher in his case to disrupt criminals gassing the heartland of America. It is literally Lassie meets The Butcher. If I'm lying' I'm dyin'. 

The book begins, like all Butcher installments, with the entire first chapter consisting of Bucher's abandonment by his parents, his childhood at the orphanage, and his later recruitment into the Mob as a a hitman. The author then goes into Bucher's reversal to back out of nefarious activities, the bounty on his head offered by the Syndicate, and his involvement now with the shadowy good-guy organization White Hat. Par for the course, two Mob gunners (always named something like Mazulli or Lorenzo), try to kill Bucher in the first chapter and he gives them the 'ole KOOSH! That's Batman for the sound of a silenced Walther P38 spouting a 9mm dumdum. 

The Terror Truckers plot consists of a group of domestic terrorists unleashing mysterious gas on the farming community of Dayton, Ohio (official home of The Book Graveyard booktuber). The gas spews from tanker trucks (“thermos bottles” in trucker jargon) and it is up to Bucher to delve into the mystery. Bucher's journey to Dayton from New York is met with an incident on the road from the truckers. It turns out there is a leak within White Hat and the terror truckers know Bucher is on the case! The next logical step is for Bucher to eat at a truckstop and then ravish and horizontal bop a beautiful waitress later that night. 

Soon, Bucher is thrust into the chaos and fights the truckers on the highway, at a local farmhouse, and then at a covert meeting in Pittsburgh. But his unlikely ally isn't the partner White Hat sends in for a rare assist. Instead, it's a young farm kid named Lem and his Lassie-imitating canine hero Old Ben. Lem is sporting a .22 rifle and has enough spunk and determination to save Bucher's bacon a time or two.

The Terror Truckers is a fun pulpfest that never takes itself seriously. My early readings of this series was met with disappointment due to my lofty Mack Bolan-esque expectations. The Butcher is modern pulp with zany villains, outrageous fighting sequences, impossible heroic saves, and a colorful character that is on the same pages as any Black Mask superhero from the early 20th century. Butcher is Black Bat...not Bolan. Once you figure that out then the series makes way more sense and can be enjoyed for what it is – senseless fun with predictability. Get The Terror Truckers HERE. 

Paperback Warrior Primer - Kendell Foster Crossen

Kendell Foster Crossen (1910-1981) wrote crime-fiction novels under the name of M.E. Chaber, a pseudonym he used to construct the wildly successful Milo March series from the mid-1950s through the 1970s. He also contributed to the pulps using names like Richard Foster, Bennett Barlay, Ken Crossen, and Clay Richards. Paperback Warrior has covered a lot of the author's work, archived under the appropriate tag HERE. We also presented a podcast episode on the author HERE. To go one step further, we decided the author deserved a Primer article as well.

Kendell Foster Crossen was born in Albany, Ohio in 1910. He excelled athletically as a football player, a talent that earned him a scholarship at Rio Grande College in Ohio. After college, Crossen was employed as an insurance investigator, a tumbling clown and huckster for the Tom Mix Circus, and an amateur boxer. Tiring of the grind, Crossen bought a typewriter and hitchhiked to New York City.

In the 1930s, Crossen was employed as a writer for the Works Project Administration. There he contributed to the New York City Guidebook and was assigned to write about cricket in Greater New York. In 1936, Crossed answered an ad in the New York Times seeking an associate editor for the pulp magazine Detective Fiction Weekly. He gets the job and begins his ascension into the realm of pulp-fiction writers.

Crossen's first published story may have been “The Killer Fate Forgot”, a western story written with Harry Levin that appeared in 10 Story Western Magazine in January 1938. Sometime in the late 1930s Crossen quit his editing job and moved to Florida. In 1939, he wrote three crime-fiction stories that appeared in Detective Fiction Weekly, one of which used the byline of Bennett Barlay. Crossen continued using the Barlay name in 1940 with four more stories in Detective Fiction Weekly. That same year Crossen used the name Richard Foster to create a pulp-fiction hero known as The Green Lama. In Paperback Confidential, writer Brian Ritt describes the character:

“The Green Lama was the only Buddhist superhero to grace the pages of a pulp magazine”.

The creation of the character and stories originated when the editor of Detective Fiction Weekly, which was owned by the company Munsey's, called Crossen and requested the writer create a series character to compete with The Shadow, a pulp sensation at the time. Crossen had read a newspaper article about a New Yorker who flew to Tibet and studied Lamaism and was lecturing about the Buddhist practices. Crossen was intrigued by the exotic nature and conceived a character called the Grey Lama. Unfortunately, the color grey looks terrible on magazine covers – it doesn’t pop. Crossen changed the character into the Green Lama for a better look.

The character of the Green Lama’s real name is Jethro Dumont. He achieved super-powers through a combination of Buddhist studies and radioactive salts. His main power is the ability to shock by touch. There were 14 Green Lama stories in Double Detective. The character was adapted into comic book format in 1944 with contributions by Crossen. Those stories were reprinted in trade paperbacks by Dark Horse in 2007 and 2008 (HERE). A Green Lama radio show was broadcast on CBS in 1949. The Green Lama pulp stories are available in compilation trade paperbacks (HERE) and digital versions (HERE) by Steeger Press.

In October 1951, Crossen delved into the science-fiction detective scene with the pulp character Manning Draco. Draco is a 35-year old insurance investigator working for the Greater Solarian Insurance Company in a revamped New York, a place called Nuyork, in the 35^th century. The first Draco story was “The Merakian Miracle”, published in Thrilling Wonder Stories. There were five more stories featuring Draco published through 1954 and an early omnibus of stories titled A Man in the Middle. There was also a later collection of these stories published by Steeger (formerly Altus Press) in 2014.

By 1952, Crossen had contributed to pulps like Stirring Detective and Western Stories, Detective Fiction Weekly, Double Detective, All Star Detective, Keyhole Detective Cases, and even glossy magazines like Argosy. However, his most successful creation was just unfolding. By using his experiences as an insurance investigator, and the writing efforts on the Manning Draco stories, Crossen created the insurance investigator “private-eye” Milo March.

Milo March is an investigator for Denver-based Intercontinental Insurance. He used to be an OSS operative (that’s the precursor to the CIA) during WW2. Some of the Milo March books are traditional mysteries involving property crimes or stolen diamonds. However, some are spy stories that feature Army Intelligence pressing March back into service for a covert mission.

These Milo March stories were published in glossy magazines like Bluebook and the pulp Popular Detective. However, the majority of Milo March works was in the format of original novels first published in hardcover by Henry Holt and Company between 1952 through 1973. These were all published under the name M.E. Chaber, a pun on the Hebrew word “mechaber” meaning “writer”. The books have been reprinted several times with the most familiar being the Paperback Library reprints from the 1970s featuring covers by Robert McGinnis. One Milo March movie was created, The Man Inside, starring Jack Palance.

Using the name Christopher Monig, Crossen wrote another series of insurance investigator novels starring Brian Brett. He also created a series, under his own name, starring a U.S. Army Intelligence agent named Kim Locke. There were also two stories written by Crossen starring a futuristic advertisement agent named Jerry Ransom.

Crossen's papers and works are collected at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. He died at the age of 71 in Los Angeles in 1981.

Paperback Warrior spoke with the literary curator for Crossen's estate. Her name, Kendra, suggested the best Milo March books...

#2 No Grave for March

#3 The Man Inside
#6 A Lonely Walk
#9 So Dead the Rose
#17 Wild Midnight Falls

#5 The Splintered Man

You can purchase the Milo March paperbacks with McGinnis covers HERE. The reprinted editions in digital and physical are HERE.

The Doomsday Planet

New York author Harold Vincent Schoepflin (1893-1968) used the pseudonym Harl Vincent to write shorts for Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories of Super-Science, Fantastic Adventures, as well as the detective pulps of the early to mid 20th century. He managed to write one full-length novel in his career, The Doomsday Planet, published in two paperback editions beginning in 1966. 

An astronaut named Jack Donley has joined a space flight on a freighter called Meteoric. The reason he joined the voyage is in hopes that he can somehow learn more about his lover, Mera, and her strange disappearance on an earlier flight using this same trajectory. The Meteoric is on a customary trading flight but suddenly finds itself being vacuumed into another orbit and headed to a planet called Ormin. Donley is excited that the voyage is now reflecting the same incident that led to Mera's disappearance.

As the Meteoric makes a slow gravitational orbit onto Ormin the crew becomes frightened and experiences high levels of panic. However, an odd pulsating sound is introduced from the planet that seems to make the ship's passengers slip into a catatonic state. Donley, an admirable co-hero named Randle, and a Martian are three of a dozen or so passengers and crewmen that aren't affected by the sounds. They coordinate a proper and safe landing on Ormin.

On Ormin, the crew and passengers of the Meteoric travel into a domed city. There they are introduced to Apdar, an Ormin being that explains the planet was divided eons ago into two warring factions. The two factions annihilated the planet with nuclear weapons and half the planet now lives in an underground network of tunnels. The other half remains topside under the safety of the domed enclosure. Apdar's pulsating signal is putting this area of the cosmos into a deep sleep. The reason is that he telepathically can see that the immediate future features a large asteroid or planet colliding with Ormin and killing everyone. To prevent physical and mental pain Apdar is taking it upon himself to end everyone's suffering. Is it a mad power grab? A doomsday cult?

Donley and the crew get a different story from the leader of the underground beings. They see that none of this is actually happening and that Apdar is incorrect. Donley finds his lover as one of the hibernating sleepy people that Apdar has put down. Thankfully, with the help of the underground leaders, Donley has a chance of getting everyone awake again. The different portions of the narrative include Apdar's mission to keep everyone asleep, three rogue crewmen that have committed a heist, Donley's quest to find his lover, and a various chain of events that does rock the planet – just not an apocalyptic one. 

The Doomsday Planet was like an original Star Trek episode. It was presented as if Donley was Captain Kirk trapped on this wacky planet where people submit to an ideology. The book was written during the heights of the Cold War as well as America's segregation based on race. Vincent injects a cautionary warning of big government, nuclear build-up, and the inevitable violence that occurs between classes and races of people. The finale of the book features a “Watcher” type of being that addresses the planet's history and warring factions. This watcher being praises the efforts of both parties to reach an agreement of co-existence by the book's end. It isn't necessarily preachy, but the message is on the nose – get along to get along. 

If you enjoy vintage science-fiction that is breezy, with little mental taxation, then this book should do the trick. It isn't amazing. It isn't abysmal. It's an average read with a page-count of 148. You could do a lot worse. Get it HERE.