The Commandos

Elliott Arnold (1912-1980) is best known for his 1947 novel Blood Brother, a western that was adapted into a 1950 film titled Broken Arrow and a subsequent 1956 television series of the same name. The Brooklyn-born author, who was once married to actress Glynis Johns, authored 25 novels from 1934 through 1977. My first experience with Arnold is his 1942 novel Commandos, which was adapted into the 1943 Columbia Pictures film First Comes Courage. The book has been published repeatedly by different companies. My copy is the Belmont Tower paperback with artwork by Ken Barr capturing Clint Eastwood's likeness.  

In this 300-page book, Alan is an American soldier serving in World War II as a member of a British-led international team of Commandos. This team operates covertly in Norway, a country held in a vice-grip by Nazi Germany. In the novel's first half, Alan is working solo on missions to capture German leaders, destroy a fish-processing factory, and to hop in and out of long-range reconnaissance missions. In the first few chapters, Alan is teaching a middle-aged Polish man English, as well as training him on stealthy operations to stalk and kill targets. 

Alternating in and out of these chapters are two major characters, Nicole and Dichter. In these chapters, readers learn of Nicole's faithful service as a spy for the Allies. After her husband was killed in the war, she's now a vengeful widow working behind the scenes to feed the Commandos valuable intel. However, by day, she hosts extravagant parties for Nazi soldiers and affluent Norwegians that are sympathetic to Germany – a job she finds distasteful. Years ago, she met and fell in love with Alan and consistently worries about him on perilous missions. 

Dichter is a Nazi Major in charge of tormenting and terrorizing the Norwegian citizens. He has a romance with Nicole and often tells her details about German operations, details she uses to further the Commandos' resistance efforts. There are some chapters that delve into Dichter's personal life, key childhood moments, and a crescendo of violent occasions that have propelled his sadistic behavior. 

The book's second-half concerns Alan being captured behind enemy lines. These scenes aren't for the squeamish as Alan suffers an infectious bullet wound in his leg that complicates his survival efforts in the hands of Dichter and his Nazi torturers. However, his most agonizing moments center around his thoughts about Nicole lying in bed with Dichter while serving the Allies. He fears for her safety while also pining for her in his darkest hours.

Arnold's prose borders on literary, reminding me of a British author named Cecil Day Lewis. They both have a poetic nature to their work that involves difficult romances put to the sword over loyalty and allegiance. The Commandos carefully walks a balance beam of engaging romance and death-defying action-adventure. Thankfully, there's enough here to please both types of readers. Alan is a very human hero, often crying over some despicable act he's forced to endure or simply reminiscing about a better time in human history. Nicole's strong feminine leadership is a captivating part of the book and an endearing look at the sacrifices women made during the war. 

If you love a slow-burn action novel, The Commandos is a winner. Highly recommended. Get the book HERE.

Pack Animals Exclusive Cover Reveal

Prolific horror and crime-fiction author Greg F. Gifune, recently announced a thrilling four-book partnership with Crossroad Press. The deal features brand new editions of two of the author's out-of-print works, Dreams the Ragman and Samsara, plus two exclusive originals, The Standing Dead and Pack Animals.

Gifune, the recipient of multiple Bram Stoker Award and International Horror Guild Award nominations, sits down with Eric Compton of Paperback Warrior to reveal the details of his new books, including an exclusive reveal of the wrap-around cover art for Pack Animals. It was illustrated by Zach McCain, an internationally published artist who also created the striking artwork for Gifune's 2022 horror novella Savages, published by Cemetery Dance. 

“Zack, he's such a nice guy and he's a very talented guy and he's an absolute joy to work with. He's got the whole retro cover thing. When we got this deal, they asked do you have any preference? We all kind of agreed that the covers are always important, but with these kinds of books, the pulp kind of books, they're really important. They asked me if there was anyone I wanted, and I said if you can get Zach McCain. He'll nail it...and he did”, Gifune said. 

When asked to elaborate on the concept of Pack Animals, Gifune explained the atmospheric nature of the story and the impact it has on the characters.

“There's a couple of werewolf novels that are kind of fun, but I essentially just said, you know what...I'm going to write a book that I would want to read about this kind of thing. And it's essentially about a group of guys who have been friends since high school, and they're middle-aged now and have families. One of them gets divorced in a kind of really messy divorce, and he decides to leave. He moves up to this town in the mountains in New Hampshire. There's this property that's kind of a steal, and he buys it. But not long after moving there, he realizes there's something wrong. There's something moving around out there that shouldn't be. And his friends all sort of coordinate to take vacations and go up and see him because they're worried about him. So they go up, and then it kind of goes from there. There's a blizzard, and they're kind of in the middle of nowhere. There's this pack of animals that are stalking them.”

Gifune, who has a love for survival horror, explained some of the elements that influenced his take on the sub-genre. 

“It's kind of a homage to the survival horror novels of the seventies and eighties. And, you know, the drive-in movies and the exploitation movies of the seventies. It's just like “Savages”. One of the best compliments I had was when somebody said to me, when they were reading “Savages” it was like watching a drive-in movie back in the day, you know, which was just what I was going for.” 

Watch the full Paperback Warrior interview with the author HERE. 

Preorder the book HERE.

Decoy in Diamonds

Natalie Gates (1895-1980) was the daughter of John Brush, an entrepreneur that became the first owner of Major League Baseball's iconic Cincinnati Reds. Natalie attended the Baldwin School, then Columbia University before becoming active in the Junior League of Indianapolis in the 1920s. In 1967, her first novel, Hush Hush Johnson, was published by Holt. It was a spy-romance that garnered unfavorable reviews. She tried her had a second time with her only other book, Decoy in Diamonds. It was originally published in hardcover by Putnam in 1971 and then by Dell in paperback in 1972. What drew me to the book was Dell's deceitful marketing that promised this was a gothic.

The book stars Elsa White, a doctor that has spend a great deal of time caring for her sick mother. As a reward for her unwavering dedication, Elsa's sister buys her a 12-month cruise. Readers pick up the action as Elsa is aboard a cruise ship that has docked on the South African coast. On an excursion, Elsa acquires a large diamond. There's a prologue in the book of a miner smuggling operation and Elsa, in the right place at the right time, now has herself this big 'ole shiny rock as a product of this smuggling ring.

On the cruise ship, Elsa meets a New York attorney who has been hired by the African diamond mine to weed out the smugglers. Together, Elsa and the attorney lose the diamond and spend chapters attempting to retrieve it aboard the ship. That's the plot of this terrible 200-page paperback.

Decoy in Diamonds suffers from a boring protagonist, a silly plot, contrived “and then...” progressions, and flimsy character development. It isn't a gothic, Dell just dressed it that way hoping someone would buy this lousy romance novel. That's the real smuggling crime. Decoy in Diamonds is horrendous, making it an inductee into the Paperback Warrior Hall of Shame.

I talk about this book with Nick at The Book Graveyard HERE.

Conversations - Bad Taste Books

Bryan from Bad Taste Books joins to discuss 90s young adult horror paperbacks, focusing on imprints like Point Horror and Avon Flare. The chat includes mentions of Goosebumps, The Final Cruise, Christopher Pike, and reviews of two books by Nicole Davidson, along with a showcase of nostalgic book covers. View below or on YouTube HERE.

Matt Helm #27 - The Damagers

By 1993, the Matt Helm series by Donald Hamilton had lost its steam and readers after 33 years and 27 installments. The final adventure was The Damagers, and it was a commercial flop that exists today as a reprint. Did the government assassin series end with a bang or a whimper?

The book begins with Matt Helm living undercover on a luxury 38-foot yacht on Long Island Sound. He meets up with his first partner for the assignment, a beautiful Swedish-American spy named Ziggy from a different agency, who actually knows how to pilot and operate the vessel.

The mission? Well, it’s more of a mystery. The last three people responsible for sailing the boat - named The Lorelei III - died under mysterious circumstances while on the ship. The dead yacht enthusiasts were undercover operatives for a sister U.S. intel agency, and their bosses are very interested in the reasons the last three people on this yacht were clipped. Matt’s little agency is tasked with learning that motive.

So Matt is basically a decoy. He’s told to prevent his own death, capture the would-be killers, and relinquish them for interrogation until their agenda is known. For this assignment, he’s the bait for a counter-assassin operation.

Once Matt sets sail towards Florida on his ruse journey, the author (through Matt’s first-person narration) delves into way too much detail about the fixtures, equipment and operations of a large luxury yacht. Perhaps Donald Hamilton was trying to stretch the page count to 1993 levels when Tom Clancy imitators were dominating spy fiction. In any case, the voluminous maritime specificity throughout this book is a total snooze that can be safely skimmed.

But don’t skip the budding sexual tension between Matt and his sensuous co-pilot. There’s a rather sneaky early plot-twist that I should have seen coming, but didn’t. Even late in his career, Hamilton still had some tricks up his sleeve.

Once the mission and the adversary become clear, we learn that The Damagers is a sequel, of sorts, to the second Matt Helm installment, The Wrecking Crew. A Swedish assassin whose father was killed by Matt in that 1960 novel is out for revenge. There’s danger for Matt at every turn. Every sexy woman he encounters and lays is either a secret adversary or a secret ally.

The conventional wisdom is that the Matt Helm series lost its shine with the last handful of novels, but The Damagers was a lot of fun — like catching up with a dear, old (deadly) friend. Breeze past the yachting nonsense and enjoy the final adventure of a great series character. Get the book HERE.

When Michael Calls

Missouri native John Farris is an author, screenwriter, and movie director. His first novel was published when he was just 19 years of age. He has contributed to suspense, crime-fiction, and romance genres, but is mostly known for his horror and suspense novels. I read Farris' When Michael Calls, a 1967 novel that was made into a television film in 1972 starring Michael Douglas.

This is a suspense thriller, but the first half of it is steeped in the idea of a paranormal ghostly haunting. The reason is that the main character, a widow named Helen, is receiving phone calls from a little kid that claims to be her nephew Michael. The problem is that little Michael died in a blizzard years ago when he was a child. Helen, who now has a child of her own named Peggy, receives these calls and finds them disturbing because Michael frequently refers to her as Auntie Helen, an endearment that only Michael would have known. As the plaguing calls continue, they trend into more ominous warnings that people in town are going to die. 

The novel's murders all play out like a slasher horror film. Victims will hear noises or see shadows and, when investigating, meet their demise in some heinous fashion. Along with the murders is a robust list of suspects that could be Michael. The main suspect is Michael himself either as a ghostly demonic child or existing in a plausibility that he never really died as a child. The other is Michael's older brother Craig, who works in town as a psychiatrist and still has a great relationship with Helen. Other suspects are Craig's girlfriend Amy and also the idea of an out-of-town stranger.

The phone calls are creepy. The kills are satisfying. But, my favorite part of the book is a character named Doremus. He's a hardboiled retired homicide detective that is a widow himself. He comes to Helen's aid after the sheriff is killed, offering a charismatic approach to the investigation. He rides a scooter, plays chess, and provides a captivating backstory on how he lost his wife years ago.

Overall, When Michael Calls is an enjoyable book and I felt the pace was just right to allow the murders to happen in a way that keeps the investigation plot-propuslive. It was a chain reaction that worked really well. Amy, Helen, and Doremus are all excellent characters that have plenty of time to develop in the novel. If you haven't seen the movie, definitely steer clear of it until you read the book. This is a book that probably doesn't have as much impact once the culprit is revealed.

Get When Michael Calls HERE.

Conversations - The Book Graveyard

The Paperback Warrior collides with The Book Graveyard for another "Guide to Gothics" episode. On this show, Eric and Nick discuss a 1972 Dell Gothic paperback titled, "Decoy in Diamonds". The episode includes a review of the book, discussion of the author Natalie Gates, the Cincinnati Reds, the New York Giants, and a showcase of 10 Gothic paperbacks. Stream below or download the episode HERE. Also, Nick and I did the conversation on video and you can watch that HERE.

Listen to "Conversations - The Book Graveyard" on Spreaker.