The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre

Paperback Warrior reviewed Philip Fracassi's 2023 horror novel Boys in the Valley and praised the author's skillful use of an isolated orphanage to build unease in his violent narrative. Fracassi has authored seven total novels and an additional eight novellas/shorts. His literary work has earned numerous awards including a Bram Stoker for his collection Beneath a Pale Sky (2021). Despite the wordy title, I was looking forward to reading his slasher novel The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre, published by Tor in a hardcover in 2025.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home is an upstate New York dwelling focused on seniors living their best life. The complex contains an apartment building, a dining hall, gym, sports area, a pond, medical center and a creepy abandoned mental asylum. Intersecting the home and surrounding grounds are colored paths leading to certain areas. Surrounding the complex is dense forest, a fire tower, and a railroad. There's no doubt Fracassi knew how to isolate these characters and reader. Atmosphere is everything in horror.

The book's protagonist is Rose, a former high school teacher now retired and comfortably living her late 70s at Autumn Springs. She has a semi-boyfriend named Miller, a retired professor that adores her. She spends her time watching mystery and crime dramas with Miller while engaging with a handful of close friends. But her peaceful tranquility is about to become shattered.

Readers are periodically removed from Rose's life and thrust into various rooms with a masked killer. This masked killer commits acts of ruthless violence on the home's residents, but stages each murder to appear self-inflicted or an accident. A man is thrown from a fire tower after a lifetime of searching for alien life in the skies (accident?), a man cuts his wrist in the bathtub after his lover is killed (suicide?), another man drowns in the local pond (accident?). As the body count rises, Rose is forced into action as the obligatory amateur detective. While the real detective, a nice but useless character named Hastings, spins his wheels searching for answers, Rose is on the offensive tracking down clues to learn the identity of the killer and his/her motive.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre could have easily been authored by an early 20th century mystery writer like Mary Collins, Elizabeth Fenwick, or Charlotte Armstrong. Sure, the novel works just as good as a Scream slasher, but I found the narrative brimming over with a thick mystery, a claustrophobic tightening of suspects, and an admirable amateur detective Hellbent on destroying her opponent. But, like a formulaic 80s slasher, plausibility is thrown away. How the killer can move effortlessly around so many people – security guards, doctors, nurses, residents - while creating this much chaos is unresolved. While the killer's identity makes it seem possible, one must still suspend disbelief. I nabbed the killer in the opening act. 

Aside from the horror and mystery aspect, I felt like Fracassi's telling of these seniors and their lifestyles was very touching. Rose is an endearing character, one of the best I've come across in ages. Her intimacy struggles with Miller, her familial relationship with her daughter, and her history with an ex-husband are all very real and very meaningful. Rose's life story, revealed in the book's final act, proves she's a viable fighter worthy of being deemed “the final girl”. 

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre is an exhilarating whodunit that possesses a uniqueness – the murder of an aging population already braced for death. This peek into the world of our elders was a surreal glimpse at mortality. No one is getting out of this life alive. 

Get the book HERE.

Bloody Beaches

The name Delano Stagg appears on two fictional paperbacks published by Monarch in the 1960s, Bloody Beaches and The Glory Jumpers. Stagg was a pseudonym used by Mel R. Sabre and Paul Eiden, two highly decorated paratroop non-coms that jointly earned Silver Stars, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart for their valiant participation in World War II. These two military-fiction novels are now available in new editions thanks to Cutting Edge Books. I chose to read and review Bloody Beaches. 

Bloody Beaches is presented as a non-linear journey into the Pacific theater, focusing on two U.S. Marines, Second Lieutenant Donald Avery and his friend, mentor, and commanding officer, Captain Calvin Hobbes. Cal and Avery's relationship is central to the narrative and changes over the course of two years of ground 'n pound strikes against Japanese forces. It is this gripping plot point that elevates this men's action-adventure novel into a gripping, charismatic character study punctuated by occurrences both on and off the battlefield.

In the book's opening trilogy of chapters (February 1945), Avery and Cal are deeply entrenched in a beachhead assaulting an enormous ridge in Iwo Jima, a historical key moment in the Asiatic-Pacific victory. There's an obvious disgruntlement among the troops regarding Cal's leadership. The platoon's orders are to destroy the gun nests in a heavily guarded region. However, Cal fears the worst and orders the men to dig in and wait for reinforcements. This decision is met with worry, anxiety, and bitterness as the men fear they are sitting ducks within interlocking Japanese gunfire. Just as the tipping point is met, the authors cleverly pause the action.

In chapters four and five, readers step back two years to May 1943 as Avery and Cal first meet in the jungles of the Solomons. Cal rescues Avery twice in combat, which creates an uneven ebb and flow in the men's relationship outside of rank – Avery's allegiance to Cal affects the duo's friendship. Through the novel's next three chapters, a love triangle is introduced that shows the men's lovers crisscrossing. This creates a heightened tension that affects the two in combat later.

A year later, in 1944, there is a dark moment when Cal is accused of leaving one of his men to die on Miichi Island. Despite evidence, Avery defends Cal and encourages the men to follow Cal's disciplined leadership. Avery's suspicion plagues his every conscious thought, a mental unhinging that comes back full circle to the events that shaped the first three chapters, the platoon's violent exercises on Iwo Jima.

The novel's last four chapters detail the savagery of battle and the results of mistrust in Cal, both as a friend, confidant, fellow soldier, and Captain. These fiery events transpire as the men survive waves of incoming fire, charging enemy battalions, and the group's ineffectiveness in fighting as a cohesive unit. These pages are blood-soaked, action-packed, and explosive, but laced with gritty realism. The authors keep the narrative strictly anti-pulp, but descend into some really dark places with vivid scenes of gore and brutality.

While I don't have information on writer Mel R. Sabre, Paul Eiden became a literary journeyman in the realms of men's action-adventure. He wrote installments of John Eagle: Expeditor for Pyramid  Books using the house name Paul Edwards, and he wrote two of the three installments of the same publisher's Mafia books. Eiden, who was often selected by paperback creator Lyle Kenyon Engel, wrote additional novels like Assignment to Bahrein, The Strangler, and Crooked Cop. I conclude, that based on Eiden's rather violent subject matter, he constructed the Iwo Jima portions of the book. Sabre's more sexually charged emotional matters probably make up the book's middle chapters. 

Bloody Beaches is a spirited men's action-adventure novel that showcases war's two-fronted assault on a soldier's psyche – the possibility of death and a lack of faith in their commanding officer. If you love high-octane military fiction like Sgt. Hawk, The Rat Bastards, or The Sergeant, then look no further than Bloody Beaches. Highest recommendation. Get the book HERE. 

Murder Money

Edward S. Aarons' first published work appeared in 1938 with the novels Death in a Lighthouse (aka The Cowl of Doom) and Murder Money (aka $1,000,000 in Corpses), both published in paperback by Phoenix Press under Aarons' typical pseudonym, Edward Ronns. The books have been combined into an excellent twofer by Stark House Press with an introduction by the always enjoyable Nicholas Litchfield. In this review, I'm handling Murder Money.

In this mystery, Aarons introduces readers to Leo Storm, an eccentric man who tells Valerie, the female lead, that he does three things as an occupation: 1) Nothing, meaning vacationing, swimming, and fishing. 2) Archaeologist, dabbling in things like mummies. 3) He's a private-detective, messing around with missing persons, murder, and theft, all factors that contribute to the novel's plot. He travels with a Greek gun enthusiast named Poppo who handles Storm's light work.

As the book opens, Storm is on a vacation visiting a resort town in Maine. There, he finds a suitcase containing a quarter-mil in a tree. But, his attachment to the attache case is only temporary when he is held up by a man with a gun claiming the loot as his own. Storm later confronts an alcoholic Native American, deemed “the sheriff”, although he's not really any lawman, just a laborer that is working for a wealthy vacationer named Coulter. In this exchange of unpleasantness, Storm then runs into Valerie, Coulter's secretary. She wants to hire him to tail a guy she claims is tailing her. Storm, a quirky individual with a penchant for loaded dice, doesn't take the job and rudely sends her on her way. But, a moment later, the quirky detective tells Poppo that the woman is telling the truth – someone is, in fact, following her. 

Murder Money has a rather contrived plot device that propels a handful of characters into a monetary rat race. First, the wealthy investor Coulter is selling $250K in jewelry to a con artist who specializes in blackmailing paranormal professionals, people that describe themselves as psychics, ghost whisperers, etc. Coulter's investment will be paid back with interest after the con artist blackmails these professionals into giving him money to avoid being outed as a fake. It's a high concept. But the blackmailer is soon found dead, and the $250K is stolen. But is it? Because another $250K appears in the mix from a different source. So, there are two $250K loots floating around. Who's behind this crazy caper, and how is Valerie involved? That's the payoff in Murder Money.

Edward S. Aarons often used foggy seaside towns in New England to position his crime-noir elements. Murder  Money makes great use of the rural Maine countryside, complete with views of the ocean, dense forest, and the obligatory mist to seemingly isolate this small resort and its guests. The story is pure pulp, with shady characters like mobsters, their gunmen, bullheaded cops, sarcastic private-eyes, beautiful lounge singers, and, of course, the damsel in distress. There's no denying the plot is a bit stuffy and convoluted, and Storm is a prude. But it all works out if you love a pulpy crime caper with cartoonish heroes and villains. There's a seriousness that emerges with a gunshot as Aarons tips into some violent storytelling at the mid-point of the novel. 

Overall, Stark House Press is doing God's work by reprinting Aarons' crime-fiction work. Be sure to get this twofer HERE and the excellent juvenile delinquent book Gang Rumble HERE.

Port Angelique

Richard Jessup authored over 60 novels over his three decades as a published novelist. His most popular literary contribution is the five-book spy-fiction series Monty Nash and his western novel The Cincinnati Kid, which was adapted to a film starring Steve McQueen. Stark House Press published the author's Night Boat to Paris as a Black Gat Book in 2025, and they followed with this twofer containing two of Jessup's 1961 novels, Wolf Cop and Port Angelique. I reviewed the former already (here), so this review addresses Port Angelique. 

Jessup's Port Angelique is an ambitious effort that features a variety of plots and over a dozen characters that fight for the reader's attention. Unlike Wolf Cop, or many of Jessup's fast-paced plot-propelled narratives, there isn't a main character or protagonist. Instead, this is an ensemble cast of islanders that each have their own life obstacles, challenges, and goals that share in the responsibility of maintaining the island and village.

The character I felt a closeness with is Stanley Fowler, the police commissioner of Port Angelique, a small fictitious Caribbean island in possession of the United States. Fowler's nemesis is a career criminal named Sabo de Chine, an islander that Fowler ran off years ago. However, Sabo has been spotted once again in Port Angelique and rumors abound that he's back with a new gang of criminals Hellbent on retrieving millions that Sabo left behind on his earlier departure. 

I'm convinced Jessup's goal was to make Port Angelique a sweeping epic, yet was bound by Fawcett's limitation on a thinner page count. If Jessup were to attempt the novel 15 years later, I can foresee a brick book swelling at 350+ pages. When Hemingway was awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 (The Old Man and the Sea), his contemporary style affected a number of writers. He defined a new, unique place in adventure fiction that focused on the subtle nuances of foreign locales and a careful character study of the inhabitants. 

Jessup's conjuring of Hemingway, albeit with lesser poetic synergy, is a valiant effort to present this exotic culture rich with traditions, rituals, and customs. The author creates a fictional history of an Aztec adventurer named Xochimilco (named after the Aztec canal system) that battled Cortes in the early 1500s. Providing cultural texture to the region, Jessup includes narration on the island's fishing development, laborers, barkeeps, prostitutes, dime-store criminals, drug running, and political strife dominating the region. 

Port Angelique is a challenging narrative with many moving parts. There's a bit of dedication involved in remembering the alliances and characters involved in the crafty development. While it doesn't require a Game of Thrones org chart, you do need to read this in one or two sittings for full effect. As a character study, the novel simply wins. It doesn't pretend to be a high-octane treasure-hunting adventure novel, but part of me was still hopeful it would transition into that for the third act. 

Get the book HERE.

Embrace the Wind

Embrace the Wind is a 1985 paperback by Harry Whittington (1915–1989), published in the United Kingdom under the pseudonym Ashley Carter and in the United States as Blaine Stevens. Both editions were packaged with generic romance-style cover art, even though the novel is actually a historical adventure centered on a covert mission into Spanish-controlled Florida ordered by U.S. President James Monroe in 1817.

The novel opens strongly. Our hero, Jeremiah Locke, rides from his Virginia plantation to the White House to meet with President Monroe. It’s three years after the War of 1812, and General Andrew Jackson is agitating for war against Spain, which still controls Florida as part of its sovereign territory. Monroe distrusts Jackson and sends Locke south to befriend him and uncover his intentions. Is Jackson plotting to seize Florida for himself and declare it his own nation? Whittington presents Monroe’s suspicions as entirely reasonable and ominous.

Let me pause the review here: This first chapter is fantastic. There is not a single other review of Embrace the Wind anywhere that I can find, and it has never been reprinted. Frankly, I’d be shocked if many 1985 reader lured in by the Harlequin knock-off cover made it past Chapter One. There’s virtually no overlap between the audience for dense geopolitical intrigue and the audience for bodice-ripper romance art. Whittington never stood a chance.

Back to the story: Locke accepts Monroe’s assignment in part because of troubles at home. He is accompanied by his clever enslaved servant, Cato, implied to be the mixed-race, unacknowledged son of Thomas Jefferson. Cato is a smart-mouthed, quick-thinking sidekick who often sees situations more clearly than Locke.

It takes Locke an exasperatingly long time to reach Florida, and when he finally arrives, he is immediately pulled into a power struggle on Amelia Island off Florida’s northeast coast. There he meets the beautiful Yolanda, daughter of the Spanish governor. She persuades him to escort her to Pensacola, the second center of Spanish authority in Florida. Together they essentially a horseback journey through the Florida panhandle along what would one day become Interstate 10.

A romance develops between Locke and Yolanda, including sex scenes that are slightly less explicit than those in a typical Longarm western. Along their route, they encounter detachments of Jackson’s troops operating deep inside Spanish territory. Whittington portrays these soldiers as brutal, redneck thugs who must be kept in check by Locke and his party.

The Spanish, by contrast, particularly their governor, are depicted as pragmatic and reasonable. After the British withdrew from Florida in 1815, they abandoned a fort on the Apalachicola River along with an enormous stockpile of weapons and ammunition. The fort quickly became a sanctuary for escaped slaves who, now fully armed, had no intention of returning to bondage in Georgia or elsewhere. Jackson demands that the Spanish dismantle the fort and force the refugees back into slavery. Or Jackson will invade and do it himself, international borders be damned.

From there, Jackson continues his consolidation of personal power into Spanish Pensacola. By the time Locke reaches the American camp, Jackson commands a force of 3,000 men. Whittington paints Jackson as a maniacal racist bent on crushing both Native Americans and escaped slaves with maximum cruelty while driving the Spanish out of Florida altogether.

Locke’s journey to confront Jackson carries shades of Apocalypse Now (1979), with Jackson as a rogue military leader who may have slipped the leash entirely. The scenes in which Locke and Jackson verbally spar are among the best dialogue Whittington ever wrote, and Locke’s undercover maneuvering within Jackson’s ranks provides genuine tension and excitement.

In the end, Embrace the Wind is a sweeping, often gripping, piece of historical fiction that deserved a better chance in the paperback fiction marketplace. The book does drag in places and would have been stronger at 244 pages instead of 344, but I still finished it feeling smarter and thoroughly entertained by this flawed but fascinating lost novel. Get the book HERE or HERE

Wolf Cop

I enjoyed my experience with Richard Jessup's Monty Nash series of hard-hitting spy-fiction novels, a five-book run he published under the pseudonym Richard Telfair for Fawcett Gold Medal. In reading up on Jessup, he had a remarkable literary career that spanned three decades and more than 60 books. The Savannah, Georgia native spent his early years as a merchant seaman before transitioning into a career as a full-time novelist. Jessup wrote across many genres, including western, espionage, action-adventure, young adult, and crime-fiction.

Jessup has gained the attention of Stark House Press recently, with the stellar publishing company reprinting his 1956 novel Night Boat to Paris (Dell) as a Black Gat Book in 2025, and they followed a few months later with a beautiful twofer containing the author's 1961 offerings Wolf Cop and Port Angelique (Fawcett Gold Medal). This review focuses on Wolf Cop.

Unlike most mid-20th-century police procedurals, Jessup places Wolf Cop in an unnamed midwestern town, probably Cleveland, based on places featured in the narrative. The protagonist is Tony Serella, a police sergeant who has recently transitioned from robberies to homicide. This promotion opens up new cases for Serella, but also requires that he complete the remaining 14 robbery cases. It's a lot of work, but Serella prefers it that way. He's a career cop, focused on nothing more than the next case. He's single, void of any social pipelines, and has few aspirations for anything beyond the badge. 

Jessup's narrative is a winding plethora of unrelated cases, propelled by three rigorous crimes that compete for Serella's time. There's a case of three homicides that may feature the same killer, a narcotics bust that may stop an impending bank vault heist, and a large turf showdown of prime-time players that may bathe the city in blood. With the enormous pressure of working these investigations comes a complex judicial hearing regarding Serella's physical confrontation with a young assailant. Serella's emotional defense ties into his relationships with department heads – those supporting his decorated servitude and the bullheaded powerhouses wanting failure. The sprinkling of Serella's relationship with a young woman provides a unique look at a career investment plagued by loneliness.

While I haven't read many of Jessup's novels, I can't imagine any of his novels dethroning Wolf Cop as his best work. This is a powerhouse police procedural that presents so many facets of the job, some that are somewhat ignored by other notable authors dedicated to the procedural craft. The transition from departments is an elementary yet pivotal plot device that thrives under Jessup's clever imagination. With these cases comes an ensemble cast of pushers, users, tramps, and nefarious wiseguys all looking for deals to either bypass the law or simply upend it. Through these tense scenes, the bullets start to fly, elevating the narrative's most dramatic moments into a frenzy of violence. 

Wolf Cop is a stirring police novel that easily competes with the best of the business, Ed McBain's 87th Precinct and Frank E. Smith's Pete Selby. Highest possible recommendation. Get it HERE.

Sinister House of Secret Love #4

I've been on a run every weekend reviewing the DC Comics' title The Sinister House of Secret Love. After reading, and enjoying, the first three issues, I'm saddened to tackle the fourth and last installment of the title, the May 1972 issue. Of course, the title would continue for a couple more years, but it transformed with issue five to Secrets of Sinister House with an enjoyable, yet campy traditional horror flavoring. The gothic tropes are mostly removed from the series going forward.

“Kiss of the Serpent” is the lead story for this fourth issue and the artwork is by Tony De Zuniga, the artist that also contributed to the title's second issue. The plot was created by Tony's wife Mary, and the story written by Mike Fleisher, a creator that worked on Spider-Woman, Ghost Rider, and properties for Fleetwood Publications.

In the story's beginning, Michelle Harlinson is experiencing a rough patch in her life. Her parents are both killed in a car accident, and weeks after the funeral she accepts a job opportunity in India presented to her by uncle. Weeks into the new job, her position is eliminated. Thankfully, she receives an invitation to meet a wealthy man named Rabin Singh. He offers her the job of governess for his two children. She accepts the position, and the lodging offered to stay in Rabin's enormous house. But, as these things go, the Kool-Aid is never stirred quite right. 

There's a central mystery on Rabin's brother being fatally bitten by a viper, and another of Rabin's brothers hints that Rabin himself is the murderer. Michelle falls in love with Rabin, but does voice concerns that he may have sinister motives. There's also a weird element where Rabin's mother believes that her dead son is living in a viper that she keeps in a basket. Like any good gothic fling, Michelle is nearly killed in “accidents” and eventually suspects Rabin's brother may be trying to kill her.

As a finale to The Sinister House of Secret Love run, I felt this issue is the weakest of the four. Atmosphere is key to these stories and the bright sun, intense heat, and desert setting just made the story feel misplaced. I'm a sucker for stormy nights and shore-front castles nestled in cliffs. This also seemed very modern with some frames of airplanes, corporate settings, and cars. I liked the idea of the story taking place in India, compared to Maine, France, or England, but with that comes a different look and feel for a gothic. The only other gothic tale that I know of with an India location is the paperback 1975 novel The Song of India, written by Mozelle Richardson. The other obvious issue is that the story just lacked any real depth. There's emotional highs and lows experienced through the protagonist, but it just didn't have much of an impact. 

Overall, all four of these issues are worth pursuing if you love gothic suspense. Recommended.