Pay Any Price

British espionage fiction author and former intel officer Ted Allbeury (1917-2005) left behind over 40 spy novels of varying quality. Sometimes his dose of realism is welcome, and other times, it makes for a slow read. Pay Any Price is a stand-alone thriller from 1983.

It’s 1960 (or so), and Tony Symons is an expert at the psychology of human manipulation. When we meet him, he’s finishing up his post-graduate work at Harvard. His thesis was on hypnosis and mind control, and his published papers were so impressive and groundbreaking that he was recruited by the CIA. His assignment? An experimental program called MKULTRA was used to learn about what drugs and psychological prompts could turn subjects into human slaves.

Meanwhile, a 21-year-old U.S. Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald is acting like an idiot in Japan - partying and getting laid. When his unit was about to leave for the Philippines, Oswald shoots himself in the arm and fakes a sick mother to separate from the USMC. Soon thereafter, he turns up in Moscow at the U.S. Embassy wanting to renounce his U.S. Citizenship before marrying a Russian girl.

Like James Ellroy, Allbeury leverages real historical figures and events to invent a conspiratorial alternate history within the whirlwind surrounding the JFK assassination, its planning and aftermath. Oswald is not the only historical character in the mix. A pissed-off and mobbed-up Jimmy Hoffa also wants to see both Kennedy brothers dead and gone. JFK’s election to the presidency doesn’t exactly chill out his enemies as organized crime convictions accelerate.

The CIA and the mafia share an equal disdain for the Kennedy brothers, and their unholy alliance begins with planning to take out JFK. I guess it’s not too much of a spoiler to disclose that fairly early in the novel, JFK is shot and killed in Dallas by a mind-controlled Oswald. It’s this point that the novel veers off into pure fiction. You see, the Brits have some IRA leaders they want quietly assassinated, and Symons’ ability to hypnotize normal people into murderous zombies sounds like a good solution.

The second half of the paperback is a hypnotized assassin adventure. It’s not as fun as the first half, but it still makes for a solid British espionage thriller. Allbeury is a good writer and keeps the action moving, albeit with way too many characters. The British Intel officer James Boyd, piecing the scheme together, is a great second-half protagonist determined to uncover the truth.

Overall, Pay Any Price was a blast to read. The first half was way better than the second half, but the realistic and grim ending departs from the usual hero’s narrative of action-adventure fiction. I’ve started and left several Allbeury books unfinished, but this one is a winner.

Get the book HERE.

A Time to Kill...A Time to Die

I've covered Jack Pearl quite a bit here at PW, with a primer, podcast episode, and reviews. He authored movie and television novelizations like Garrison's Gorrillas and Ambush Bay, but really shone by penning his own novels in the crime-fiction and action-adventure genres. Interestingly enough, Pearl placed two of his books on Christmas Day. I read one of these in 2023, Victims, and it's easily one of my favorite Pearl novels. I wanted to read his second Christmas-themed novel, A Time to Kill...A Time to Die. It was first published in hardcover in 1971 by W.W. Norton & Company. It was published in paperback in 1972 by Manor. 

The novel begins on Christmas Eve in the isolated, winter resort of Snowmass-at-Aspen. An unknown assailant uses a high-powered rifle to shoot skiers from a luxury room on Mt. Baldy. He then turns to the chairlifts and begins a terrifying, maniacal “shooting gallery” as victims plunge hundreds of feet to their death from gunshots or sheer panic. Needless to say, A Time to Kill...A Time to Die kicks off with one of the most frightening opening chapters I've experienced.

Pearl's narrative comes alive as readers are plunged into the room where this sniper has barricaded himself. Inside are two bound women and an unconscious man. However, the identity of the sniper is the key mystery. Who is he, and how does he know these captives? 

Through flashback scenes, readers are thrust into a post-WW2 small town where a handful of lifelong friends experience love and loss. It's a portrait of everyday America as these characters interact with each other, talk about love and life, and grow older through the decades. These are men who have had combat experience and are adjusting to civilian life after the war. Through these scenes, the characters evolve and seek fortunes through various endeavors like startup firms, advertising, journalism, etc. But it's slowly revealed that one of these friends is the sniper. Only the author doesn't reveal the identity until the book's final act. It's clever, suspenseful, and kept me glued to every page. I was totally invested.

While these flashback scenes are interesting, they are short and to the point. The sniper's cozy bedroom doesn't offer much diversion, so the narrative enjoys a wonderful investigative angle as a police Captain named Dorn orchestrates a siege on the sniper's chalet while sending various lawmen into the files of residents staying at the resort. Slowly, the details are revealed that tie back to the handful of friends. The novel has a stirring, action-packed climax as lawmen use tunnels and a basement to penetrate the chalet and have the inevitable shootout with the sniper. 

A Time to Kill...A Time to Die shows Pearl's strengths as a suspenseful, action-packed storyteller. He's one of my favorite authors for a reason. Based on my experiences with Victims, The Cops, Ambush Bay, and Garrison's Gorillas, I'm not sure why I don't just drop everything and read all of Jack Pearl's books. I guess I just need to save the treasures. Do yourself a favor and track down this novel. You can get the book HERE.

Velvet Jackpot

I've enjoyed Charles Boeckman's sleaze paperbacks written under the pseudonym Alex Carter. Boeckman, a celebrated jazz musician, authored crime-fiction, westerns, and pulp stories, but made a splash on the sexy fiction market with his contributions to Beacon in the mid-20th century. After reading a handful of enjoyable Carter works, I decided I needed another riveting romance jolt. I dived into Velvet Jackpot, a 1965 paperback published by Beacon with a flipped version of Victor Olson's 7 Days to Love cover from 1963. 

Reb Baker is a young man from a troubled, lower-class background. Years ago, he went to work for Jim Mason, a ruthless businessman who controls the small town of Camrock. Along with running errands and detailing the family's exotic cars, Reb indulged in an affair with Jim's wife, Beverly. Reb was run out of town, which is where the book begins. Reb is on the west coast playing guitar in dive bars when he receives a letter from a friend urging him to return to Camrock. The reason? Reb's younger sister, Linda, has turned to prostitution.

Through several flashbacks, readers learn that Reb and Linda had an incestuous relationship. Reb now feels protective of Linda and fears that his sexual exploits with her are the main reason she's turned to prostitution now. When he arrives in Camrock, he learns that Linda is now a widow and is struggling to finance a tree nursery that her late husband left her. Due to Reb's affair with Jim Mason’s wife, her efforts to obtain financing have been cut off. So, tramping is the ticket. 

Slowly, Reb succumbs to his old ways. He resumes his affair with Beverly despite being nearly beaten to death by Mason and his enforcers. But the main plot premise is Reb meeting a 17-year old girl named Sherri. He begins to obsess over her, leading to you know what. Here's the catch: Sherri is Beverly's daughter! Imagine Jim Mason's anger learning that Reb is now porking both his wife and daughter. This book is nuts!

Velvet Jackpot has several enticing twists and turns. First, you have Linda suffering the sins of her brother – emotionally, physically, financially. There's Reb's inner turmoil to protect Linda and earn legal money to support her business, yet fracturing with his sexual urges. The Mason family dynamic is explored, including the escalating danger posed by Jim. Retribution, guilt, defiance. These are the staples.

Boeckman was a master of unraveling the nuclear family in his paperbacks, and this one is a prime example of his storytelling. The story, a cycle of moral decay, is a real guilty pleasure for me. I love the author's intertwining characters and his ability to invest so much emotion and trepidation. You just know the car wreck is happening – it's the tension that builds as the cars careen off course. I love it. I just wish a reprint house out there would consider reprinting these Beacon classics. These vintage paperbacks command top dollar. 

Frisco Dougherty #02 - Jungle She

Dan Cushman (1909-2001) is a respected mid 20th-century writer who is synonymous with the western pulp market. He routinely contributed to North West Romances, Ace-High Western Stories, and Dime Western Magazine. However, Cushman had a soft spot for jungle adventure, evident in his pulp series title Armless O' Neil, his contributions to Ki-Gor, and his shorts found in Jungle Stories and Action Stories. 

Like A.S. Fleischman, Cushman had a solid Fawcett Gold Medal run of jungle-themed paperbacks featuring sweeping exotic locales and heart-thumping adventure. Some of these novels featured a troublesome character named Frisco Dougherty, an American thrust into these scorching lands searching for a diamond treasure that will allow him a lucrative living in San Francisco. The character first appeared in the novel Jewel of the Java Sea, originally published in the October 1948 issue of Adventure. Dougherty appeared again in Jungle She, a 1953 Fawcett paperback with cover art by John Floherty. 

In many ways, Jungle She reads like a spy novel, perhaps something more akin to the Monty Nash series by Richard Telfair. The dense plodding, hyperbole, and emphasis on mini-adventures all combine on the obligatory gauntlet of superimposed villains and mistrusting damsels. It's sheer pulp fun, but it seems to stay a bit too long. 

Frisco arrives in Tengah to confront a plantation owner known as Van Hoog. Frisco, again looking for some sort of diamond treasure, wants to inquire about how Van Hoog created his lush lifestyle. The man – obviously a criminal of some sort – lives on a vast plantation with a seemingly endless supply of wealth. Hoping to learn Van Hoog's secret, Frisco learns some insightful information at a local dive bar. Van Hoog's wife has escaped him. Hoping to use this as leverage, Frisco approaches Van Hoog with the idea that he can provide information on the runaway bride – information he doesn't have. Van Hoog sees right through the charade, beats the pulp out of Frisco, and imprisons him.

With malaria and a lack of weapons, Frisco escapes the compound only to be captured again. This kicks off a series of catch-and-release as Frisco is forced to locate Van Hoog's wife. Based on the title, you can guess that he eventually locates the Jungle She, only it's a distrustful partnership as both of them hope to escape the clutches of Van Hoog while stealing pieces of his empire along the way. This means a run-in with the Chinese criminal organization Wuch'ang and dips into some crazy smuggling adventures in Singapore. 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Jungle She. It has a lovable loser in Frisco, a romantic buzz with Van Hoog's wife, and a formidable foe that must be upended. Yet, despite all of the upside, I never could quite get into the novel as much as I wanted to. I felt that the book moved a bit too fast and overstayed its welcome with the relentless pacing. There's a great reward at the end with Frisco and Van Hoog duking it out with machetes on a bridge, but by that point, I was exhausted from the robust travel schedule these characters endure. 

You can get Jungle She HERE.

The Caves of Night

John Christopher was a popular pseudonym used by British writer Sam Youd (1922-2012). Under the Christopher name, Youd authored successful science-fiction, fantasy, and young-adult fiction titles like The Tripods, The Lotus Caves, Sword of the Spirits, and The Fireball. He also authored numerous books using a variety of other names like William Godfrey, William Vine, Peter Graaf, Hilary Ford, and Stanley Winchester. Having owned several of his novels, I opted to escape the summer heat with Christopher's cavern disaster book, The Caves of Night. It was originally serialized in John Bull Magazine in 1958 and published in hardcover the same year. The most popular edition is the 1968 Avon with cover art by Don Crowley. My version is the 1984 Sphere paperback with art by Chris Achilleos.

Married couple Henry and Cynthia routinely take vacations to a rural inn in the Austrian wilds. Henry is a spelunker with a passion for a unique, complex cave structure that is completely off the grid when it comes to tourists and other hobbyists. During their stay, they meet an eccentric Russian named Albrecht, a WWII veteran and former prisoner-of-war. He invites the couple to wine and dine with him. As these things go, Henry is climbing in caves and turning up stones while Cynthia and Albrecht secretly develop a romantic groove. Thrown into the mix is a young, newlywed couple that also enjoys Albrecht's company. 

The first half of this book explores infidelity, marriage struggles, and the daily grind of domestic life – work vs play. Henry is a really nice guy, but seeks these solo ventures into the cave's infrastructure. It's a real bore for Cynthia, but she supports his enthusiasm. There's a definitive rut in the marriage, and the author capitalizes on it with the affair angle. However, based on the cover art and premise, I needed some caves to crash and characters to slowly suffocate. It's how I roll. 

Thankfully, the second half of the book plunges all five of these characters into the bowels of the Earth. When the newlywed couple attempts to pick flowers – a symbol of their budding love – all Hell breaks loose. Trapped in the cave for days, this quintet logically turns to desperation. With dwindling light, food, and general survival supplies, the hours turn frantic as the group treks into the darkest recesses, hoping to find daylight. It was this aspect of the novel that appealed to me, a gripping survival yarn that conjured some of the moments I loved so much in the post-apocalyptic novel The Rest Must Die by Kendell Foster Crossen. Youd's use of darkness, despair, and loneliness in one particular scene really etched a place in my mind. 

If you want a straight-up cave adventure, then The Caves of Night might partially disappoint you. Ultimately, this is a story of marriage and the weight of relationships. So much so that the final scenes of the book utter a Shakespearean echo of Romeo & Juliet – only with people perilously dangling from fraying ropes above a dark mouth of some wet and bottomless chasm. Yeah, the book is definitely about marriage. 

Pick up a copy of the novel HERE.

Scary Bastard

Have you ever watched backyard wrestling? You know, the one where normal, ordinary people – some malnourished – throw themselves through fluorescent light tubes, tables, boards, windows? These “wrestlers” tend to become five-second stars to the neighborhood crowds of ten to twenty spectators with a plethora of blood, guts, and senseless violence. It's pedestrian. It's crass. But, don't get me wrong, there's an entire televised enterprise called AEW, backed by corporate advertising and Time Warner, that competes with WWE by using paid pro-wrestling professionals to perform backyard wrestling barbarism. There's a crowd for it, no doubt.

Aron Beauregard is like a backyard wrestler. But, not really a wrestler. He's a horror writer. He writes extremely violent novels and shorts that feature disposable characters being tortured, raped, and killed. He's authored over 20 novels, including Horsefly (2026), Cemetery Camp (2023), and Playground (2022). His short story collection, Came with the Frame (2023), features a few characters that appear in his 2019 novel Ugly Bastard. I've enjoyed some – not all - of the novels by splatter-horror experts like Brian Berry and Bryan Smith. I decided to borrow a friend's trade paperback of Scary Bastard and give it a go. It was published by Maggot Press with artwork by both Anton Rosovsky and Andrly Dankovych. 

While there isn't really a protagonist, the main content of the novel features scenes involving a super-slasher Hulk thing named Edmon. In the book's beginning, Edmon is a serial killer imprisoned at a sanitarium. He doesn't speak, and reminds me of Rob Zombie's version of adult Michael Myers in the Halloween re-imagining. With the help of a serial rapist and killer, Herschel, Edmon escapes the facility and goes on a killing spree on Halloween night. That's pretty much it.

Beauregard adds copious amounts of ridiculous graphic sex, limb-tearing, skinning, decapitating, rape, animal abuse, kid deaths, and other literary atrocities that make you wonder why this guy is freely walking among civilization. It is disgusting, completely unnecessary, and thinly constructed. An author once said that if you’ve ever had sex, you can pretty much write p*** novels. I think the same thing goes here. If you've watched one flesh-tearing horror movie, you can write the torture p-word stuff just fine. The question is how depraved the reader must be to really enjoy this kind of thing. I read it, skipped quite a bit of the gore, and was left...with very little else. In my opinion, pass on this one.

Mike Shayne #54 - Armed...Dangerous

Mike Shayne debuted in 1939 with Davis Dresser writing under the pen name Brett Halliday. After Dresser stepped back from the series in 1958, the Brett Halliday name became a house pseudonym shared by several authors, with Robert Terrall eventually emerging as its principal steward. By the time Armed…Dangerous was published in 1966 as the 54th Mike Shayne novel, Terrall had firmly taken control of the series.

This is a weird installment in the series because Mike Shayne’s name doesn’t appear in the novel for the first 40 pages. Instead, it follows a NYC diamond thief named Jake who kills a cop during a heist and takes a hot, French babe named Michele hostage during his getaway.

While hiding out in Michele’s apartment, Jake learns that Michele is a more complicated character than he originally thought, and Jake gets roped into a second, way more lucrative heist as part of a full crew. It feels like a Lionel White or Richard Stark novel at times, with a plunder squad filled with volatile and colorful characters, and there are some amazing twists and turns in the plot that you probably won’t see coming.

By the time Shayne is brought into the case down in Miami, the stakes of Jake’s crime spree become clearer, and the reader is taken on a wild ride best not spoiled here. Just remember, this one is a hardboiled crime novel, not a whodunnit mystery.

As heist novels go, this is pretty good. Having a PI in the mix is also an interesting twist. Shayne does his best to do right by his client while also getting laid (off page) as much as possible. It’s also very much a novel of 1966 with raw racial tension and overt homophobia. These glimpses into America’s unfiltered past are much of the joy of vintage paperbacks. Embrace history.

The novel ends in such a manner that the door is open to a sequel or a continuation story. The author clearly did this deliberately. I don’t know if any of the subsequent novels followed up on this. My impression is that the Mike Shayne books each stood alone. In any case, Armed…Dangerous is one of the good ones. Unfortunately, it’s not one of the installments that has been digitized and reprinted for 21st-century readers. You’ll need to find an old copy HERE.

Shabby Street

Orrie Hitt (1916-1975) was an Upstate New York author of sleaze paperbacks who made a living writing a lot of books very quickly. The upshot is that he became a very good author and often incorporated crime and noir into his PG-13 sex scenes. Shabby Street was a 1954 Beacon paperback (cvr Walter Popp) that has been reprinted by Prologue Books.

Johnny Reagan is our narrator, and he’s a cynical front desk clerk at a sleazy urban hotel with faded rugs and saggy furniture. The only thing he likes about his job is that he gets to ogle sexy Janet, the in-house phone operator. “The only difference between the Hotel Shelly and the city dump was that the hotel had a roof over it,” Johnny explains.

One night after work, Johnny finally beds down with Janet, and she’s already planning a future with our hero, the cad. Meanwhile, Johnny was just looking to get laid, as guys do. Johnny also gets intimately reacquainted with a gal named Julie, whom he’s known forever growing up on skid row.

Johnny is seeking to leave the hotel and go to work as a life insurance salesman - this was done door-to-door back then. The insurance agency owner’s jailbait doctor is a real dish, so now Johnny has three babes to juggle.

It takes forever to get there, but eventually Johnny implements a criminal insurance scheme to make some money behind his boss’s back. Can Johnny adeptly rip off his boss and keep three unsuspecting women satisfied? Fat chance.

I have a theory - and hear me out on this - I think that when Hitt wrote this novel in 1953-1954, he was seeking to mimic the skid row novels of David Goodis, whose Philadelphia is a decaying, hopeless environment that traps people emotionally. Shabby Street does the same thing with Clarke Street and the Hotel Shelly. The neighborhood feels diseased rather than merely poor.

The distinction is that Goodis was a master plotter, whereas Shabby Street is all over the place with Hitt trying to pad the story, apparently to hit a Beacon Books word count. Also, Goodis’ protagonists tend to be redeemable people in awful environments, whereas Hitt’s Shabby Street hero is just a heel who deserves his comeuppance.

Shabby Street is often cited as a high watermark in Hitt’s vast catalog of novels, but I beg to differ. There are so many better books he authored - many of which were reviewed here at Paperback Warrior. Start there. You’ll have a lot of reading ahead of you before you descend to Shabby Street.

Get the book HERE.

Carnival of Terror

William Joseph is a New Jersey native who has authored 14 novels of horror, young-adult fantasy, and romance. I read his crime-fiction novella The Hangman's Forest in 2023 and found it enjoyable. A friend lent me her copy of Carnival of Terror, the author's 2019 independently published horror novel. Since the novel's release, Joseph has written and published two sequels, Jug's Revenge and Shilo's Curtain Call. I've always enjoyed carnival-themed novels, so I was anxious to read Carnival of Terror.

Isabella and Victor are introduced as a newly married couple enjoying a honeymoon somewhere in America's Midwest. For fun, they visit a local carnival, and Isabella has her fortune read by a mysterious old woman. After leaving the woman's tent, Isabella finds that her wedding ring has been snatched. After being refused re-entry, the two sneak into the carnival after hours. They are captured, briefly tortured, and then interviewed by the Carnival's ringleader, a man named Jug. He explains that the carnival travels around and preys on innocent people. Ultimately, they are sliced and diced for food. All of this happens in the first five chapters, consisting of Part One.

Part Two is a long history lesson as readers learn how Jug, the carnival's ringleader, rose to power from his humble beginnings as a lowly laborer. These five chapters are brutally sadistic, chronicling years of suffering and indulgence as the carnival devours its audience and hides its tracks. During this time, Jug is trained to become the new ringleader, dethroning his mentor in heinous fashion. 

Part Three is the shortest section, featuring a turn as the elderly fortune-teller attempts to escape her predicament of baiting and trapping innocent people. This spills into the book's second half, and Part Four, as Jug and his clown minions track down his estranged sister, a teen girl named Shilo. There's an excellent cat-and-mouse chase through a suburban house as three clowns attempt to kidnap Shilo. It is in these pages that Shilo's fierce determination and fighting skill prevails. But, despite her best efforts, she is captured and taken to the carnival. It is here that the book morphs from a horror-torture into a prison escape narrative as Shilo, the old woman, and a few survivors attempt to fight their jailers and escape Jug's wrath. 

Carnival of Terror isn't anything particularly new or innovative, but Joseph is a fantastic storyteller, and he adds a lot of depth and personality to his prose. By creating the various storylines, Isabella/Victor, Jug's climb, and Shilo's fight, Joseph can keep the fast pace while never sacrificing characterization. There aren't any wasted pages or chapters, and unlike a lot of modern authors, Joseph is sure to say something in every chapter. He is always moving the story along in new and exciting ways. Sure, Shilo and Jug's confrontation was inevitable, but the moving parts to get there were just so entertaining. 

I'm curious where Shilo and Jug go from here. I'll be sure to find out in the next two installments. In the meantime, get a copy of Carnival of Terror HERE.

Conversations - Bad Taste Books & The Book Graveyard

Paperback Warrior joins forces with Bryan from Bad Taste Books and Nick from The Book Graveyard for a lively discussion of Shark Fighter, Len Levinson's outrageous 1976 cult paperback from Belmont Tower. The trio explores the explosion of shark-themed fiction inspired by the blockbuster success of Jaws, the stunt-driven marketing craze of the 1970s, and why books like Shark Fighter became unforgettable pieces of pop culture. Along the way, the conversation also touches on books by Jim Thompson, Clark Howard, and Dan Streib, making this a fun deep dive into vintage paperbacks, pulp fiction, and the era that produced them. Listen to the audio version HERE or watch the video collaboration below.

Code Blue

Oddly, I think I prefer vintage nurse fiction over medical suspense. Somehow, the relationships and inner-workings of a medical group or hospital appeal to me. I've read and enjoyed a few vintage nurse books over the years from the likes of Peggy Gaddis, Alice Brennan, and Steve Fisher. Yet medical suspense continues to dull my reading experience. 

Hoping for a change, I recently found a paperback copy of Code Blue. This was authored by Charlotte White, an 80s/90s writer who specialized in the romance genre (Deadly Medicine, Head Over Heels). On a recent book haul video, Bryan at Bad Taste Books displayed Code Blue and read the synopsis – basically like Die Hard at a hospital. The novel was published by Pinnacle in 1992 and has a rather fiery cover. Why not roll the dice? 

The action takes place at fictional St. Paul's Hospital in Bainbridge, New York. The facility is nearing its life cycle and is about an hour from New York City. A couple is rushed into the hospital after assaulting each other in a domestic dispute. The wife, a woman named Marianne, is kept under care, and her children are placed into foster care. The husband, psycho Chet, is stabbed a half-dozen times superficially and is released. 

Psycho Chet goes home, partners up with his lunatic brother Mick, and prepares to lay siege to St. Paul's Hospital. He wants to destroy his wife and the entire medical staff, using a variety of firearms and bombs (all ordered from an ad in Soldier of Fortune magazine). Casually, Chet and Mick enter the hospital one evening and place bombs in strategic places. They then announce on the intercom that if anyone comes or goes, the building goes boom. Needless to say, the paperback police are left helpless to counter this insane workplace invasion.

The author focuses on a dozen characters within the hospital who are simply performing business as usual. With her romance resume, White focuses on budding flirtation between some of these coworkers, mostly centered around widower Dr. Neil Dvorak. My misconception that this was some sort of high-intensity action yarn rivaling Die Hard was foolhardy. 

This was a boring, infuriating 300-hundred-pager that goes absolutely nowhere. Further, readers know from the first chapter that both invaders were killed in the book's finale. So any mystery or reveal is completely void throughout the entirety of the narrative. While White could have focused on an exciting cat-and-mouse game (similar to Dean Koontz's Face of Fear) or some type of survivalist intensity, she spends her time waddling around the halls with dull, lifeless dialogue and a lethargic sense of pacing. 

Code Blue is a miserable reading experience, and I can't recommend it. If you just have to own this book, get it HERE so I can gain a few cents.

California Passage

Cliff Farrell (1899-1977) began his writing career in the newspapers and pulps. By the early 1920s, he could be found routinely in the pages of Sport Story Magazine and Cowboy Stories. Over his career, he penned over 600 short stories for pulps, magazines, and anthologies using his own name and house names like Dean McKinley, Frank Litchfield, and Franklin B. Holt. He also wrote nearly 30 western novels. I decided to read his mid-career work, California Passage, originally published as a serial in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post in 1957. 

In the opening pages, readers are introduced to a rugged mountain man named Luke. He's a skilled hero who was orphaned as a child and forced to survive in the wilderness. He's in a small midwestern town when he's approached by Ellen, a desperate woman with a very shady past. It's clear she's being pursued by a man, so she asks for Luke's help. She offers to pay him to help lead her on a risky trek toward California, hoping to outrun the coming winter. At first Luke rejects her proposal, but after a few skirmishes and a murder attempt, he agrees to help. Ellen and Luke will be traveling on a wagon train consisting of other settlers, vagabonds, and troubadours, hoping to get rich quick in the California mountains. 

Luke and Ellen run afoul of a team of shysters traveling with the wagons. Menafee is a wealthy businessman possessing all of the despicable criminal elements. He has a few henchmen, including a hired gunman deemed The Missouri Kid. Luke is also forced into an intense situation with two husky fellows hired as Menafee's enforcers. There's a method to the madness, which is the center of Farrell's road trip survival yarn.

Central to the story is the backstory on Ellen. Luke discovers paperwork on a dead man that suggests Ellen is actually a wanted fugitive. Her father was a banker who may have run off with over $100,000 in cash. Mixed into the heist is Ellen and her lover Gilmore, a man later found dead. Is Ellen this same woman? Is she meeting up with her father in California? Is Luke in love with her? These are all important elements fueling this smooth, calculated western.

Farrell is a terrific storyteller who uses a familiar crime fiction trope to enhance this western. Like Clifton Adams and Harry Whittington, Farrell is telling us a compelling crime-noir, only dressing it in boots and spurs. I loved the Luke Storm character and his inner conflict of being an educated man living the life of a mountain warrior. He's torn with an inner ache for Ellen and a domesticated life, but pulled into barbaric acts by personal demons and the predators around him. California Passage exhibits conflict and redemption in a truly entertaining way. Highly recommended!

Get the book HERE.

Harrigan

I really enjoy nautical fiction novels that feature ruthless sea captains. There are dozens of them, mostly inspired by Rudyard Kipling's 1897 masterpiece Captain Courageous. Jack London's 1904 thriller The Sea-Wolf is one of my favorites alongside Frank De Felitta's contemporary gem Sea Trial (1980). Another one that I really enjoyed was Max Brand's (real name Frederick Schiller Faust) Luck of the Spindrift (1941), albeit the straight-laced comparison to The Sea-Wolf is valid.

Max Brand is an author who mostly stayed on the western trails of paperback and pulp fiction. He dipped into medical dramas (Dr. Kildare) and swashbuckling historical fiction, but wrote the aforementioned Luck of the Spindrift, capturing that perfect blend of refreshing sea air and tumultuous, grimy ship labor. But, I didn't realize until last week that Brand also wrote nautical fiction much earlier, evident with his novel Harrigan. It first set sail in Railroad Man's Magazine over five issues in November 1918. My version is the 1973 Pocket Books paperback with cover art by Carl Hantman.

A red-headed, impulsive Irish drifter named Harrigan is introduced to readers during a Honolulu brawl outside of a bar. A Scottish man comes to Harrigan's aid, and the two men eventually escape a mob of soldiers and police. Later, Harrigan is looking for a free sea passage and spots a nearby ship. On board is the man who helped him earlier, although this time his help isn't offered. The man is Captain McTee, and he immediately wants Harrigan thrown off the ship. But, Harrigan unfortunately maintains passage on the ship and is discovered as a stowaway. Big mistake. 

McTee tells Harrigan that he will break him down – spiritually and physically. This involves a torturous series of hard labor in which Harrigan must scrub the ship's floors by day and then shovel coal all night. The idea is that Harrigan's hands will be soft from the water and then ripped to pieces by the shovel handle. As the ruthless labor intensifies, Harrigan's hands nearly fall to pieces. In an effort to free himself, Harrigan challenges McTee to a physical fight, a fight that Harrigan wins. However, in a wild sequence, the ship sinks, and Harrigan escapes a quick retaliation for his actions. He washes up on an island alongside McTee and a beautiful female passenger named Kate. 

On the island, McTee and Harrigan build upon their feud, this time in a quest to not only be the leader of the small trio but also to be Kate's lover. The contest is short-lived when they are rescued by another boat. This is where the majority of the story lies, on board the Heron, commanded by a mysterious and wealthy tyrant named Captain White Henshaw. His treatment of Harrigan is similar to McTee's, only this time fueled by McTee's hostility and anger to punish the Irishman for his actions on the prior ship and the island. Harrigan's only saving grace is a planned mutiny to overthrow Henshaw. But, Harrigan finds himself as a man hated by both the ship's leadership and the very men planning the uprising. 

Harrigan is simply a masterpiece. The psychological and physical struggle between Harrigan and McTee is so compelling. The two are mirror images of strength and conditioning, and have a matched, unwielding love for Kate. Max Brand builds this rivalry, fanning the flames with injections of deep-seated hatred, jealousy, and the corrupting influences of power. Ultimately, this is a novel of human endurance and rivalry, complete with a myriad of outstanding characters and intense action. Some torturous scenes shape Henshaw as a genuine scoundrel – a villain you just love to hate. I was a roller-coaster of emotions concerning McTee and his nefarious intentions. I grew to respect the character nearly as much as Harrigan, a respect that pays huge dividends in the closing pages. Max Brand sets the reader up for a fitting conclusion to this human endurance test. 

Harrigan is a public domain work and available in both physical and digital editions. There are also free audio editions of the novel as well. There's no excuse not to read this one.

Beachhead Planet

Robert Moore Williams (1907-1977) was a Missouri native who wrote adventure, fantasy, and science-fiction novels and stories for a variety of publishers. He wrote using his own name and pseudonyms like Russell Storm, H.H. Harmon, and John S. Browning. I enjoyed his 1961 Ace paperback The Day They H-Bombed Lost Angeles, but he's one of those guys that I just haven't kept track of. I decided to tackle another of his paperbacks, Beachhead Planet. It was published by Dell in 1970 with a cover by Jack Gaughan. 

First off, this novel kicks off with one of the most insane scenes I've ever read. The year is 2150, and a large ship has just landed in Golden Fleece, Colorado. These are tourists from large metropolitan cities hoping to gawk at the old mining town for a perspective on the nation's history and manufacturing. A naked man is seen running frantically from one of the abandoned mine shafts. Above the man, from the concealment of a cliff, a series of incendiary rounds rings out. The naked man is burned alive from the inside out. As the ship immediately jockeys back into the air to escape the nightmare, a small child passenger is hit with a bullet and literally burns to death seconds before the ship plunges to the ground in a fiery explosion of death and destruction. What could top this? The shooter is revealed as a 10-foot-tall two-headed creature!

Scientist John Valthor is working in his lab in California when he's approached by Major Smith, an internal security officer working for the mysterious Brocknor Corporation. Valthor knows that Brocknor is working on a simulated brain substance that may have sinister intentions. In a wacky, wild biography, readers learn that Valthor is an expert in psychic phenomena  and knows that alien forces are at our universe's doorway, clamoring to break the veil for a full-on invasion. Can you say “high concept”?

Valthor and his two quirky assistants, Greer and Evan, journey to Golden Fleece to assist Brocknor in discovering who or what this strange 10-foot-tall creature is, and if it is the first of an army of alien assassins using Earth as a beachhead for the invasion. During the investigative adventure, the trio of heroes discovers that the town itself is populated by “pod people” - humans dipped in a vat of green oily radioactive substances. These brainwashed, transformed people are called Narks – mindless, alien-controlled puppets. Needless to say, the heroic trio is captured, prodded, and nearly dipped in the human-to-alien chemistry. But, they team up with an unlikely ally to escape the bizarre predicament and...um...save Earth. 

Beachhead Planet reads like a stoned-out version of a Lin Carter romp – and that's saying something. The heroes are fun, mostly due to Greer and Evan's bouncy, comedic personalities. It reminded me of Ham and Monk's friendly rivalry in the Doc Savage novels. But there's no denying the over-the-top silliness of the whole thing. It's a dense, overly complicated science-fiction story featuring the overused invasion formula. You can expect lots of dialogue about psychic mumbo-jumbo, the consequences of human devolution, and biological speculation on what the aliens are made of. If that's your jam, grab some sunscreen and hit the Beachhead Planet. 

Get this book HERE. 

Brenda

Samuel S. Taylor (1903-1994) joined the U.S. Coast Guard in 1943 and later joined the Army Signal Corps as a consultant on training films. During his military experience, Taylor began writing his first scripts. After serving, Taylor became the main speech writer for Warner Bros. president and film executive Jack Warner. In 1949, Taylor's first novel, Sleep No More, was published by E.P. Dutton in hardcover. The book featured a hard-nosed detective named Neal Cotton, a character that Taylor would utilize in two more novels, No Head for Her Pillow (1952) and So Cold, My Bed (1953), and a short story, “The General Slept Here” in Manhunt (Apr 1955). 

My first experience with the author is Brenda, a 1952 Fawcett Gold Medal paperback that Taylor wrote using the pseudonym Lehi Zane. Stark House Press imprint Black Gat reprinted the book this year.

A man named Conrad returns home after the Korean War and finds himself embroiled in a love triangle. Taylor expertly uses the pressure of these three individuals – Conrad, his uncle, and his uncle's new wife – to build an effective, heated potboiler that recalls James M. Cain. The location of this rural California farm is the perfect setting for the characters to become isolated and entrapped, each wanting physical comfort but requiring emotional blankets. It's the Southern Gothic snare that was used to great effect in the mid-20th century.

In the novel, readers learn that Conrad was raised by his uncle Boyce. Boyce's wife had died while Conrad was serving in the war. Upon Conrad's return to the family farm, he discovers that Boyce is now dating a sensuous vixen named Brenda, a woman known to love'em and leave'em. Conrad feels that Boyce, a conservative salt-of-the-Earth guy, is being taken as a fool by this seductress. However, once Boyce and Brenda get married, things quickly spiral out of control. Conrad finds himself magnetically drawn to Brenda, a feeling that puts him at odds with the lovable man who raised him. Boyce's relationship with both Brenda and Conrad becomes strained and, as the first page suggests, a criminal element is introduced. 

Confessions from Death Row is a slippery slope when it comes to crime fiction. These “death house” testimonies were an influential way to hook readers from page one. Taylor uses it successfully to immediately inform readers that Boyce is in prison awaiting the death penalty. However, the carrot is purposely left dangling. Did he really kill Brenda, or is he taking the rap for someone he loves and protects? From the opening pages, readers already know there's inevitable murder, treachery, and violence to stir these up these characters and story. Whether you like that approach to storytelling or not, it does develop a morbid curiosity to see how things pan out.

Brenda is a phenomenal, convicting piece of storytelling. The chemistry, character development, storyline, and setting are superbly placed. But it is Taylor's central conflict that is the real prize here – the war on traditionalism from all of the likely sources: sex, alcohol, and money. Based on this small sample size, Taylor was a real craftsman who had a handle on this potboiler formula. It is a shame he only wrote a handful of novels and stories.

Get Brenda HERE.

The Worried Mother Job

Throughout around 40 novels spanning from 1971 to 2015, Bill Pronzini entertained mystery fans with his Nameless Detective series chronicling a San Francisco PI who is never given a name. He has a name (like Dashiell Hammet’s Continental Op), but it’s just never mentioned throughout the series. You can get away with that with first-person narration.

Over the years, Pronzini also wrote many short stories and novellas starring Nameless. A particularly great one was “The Worried Mother Job,” originally published in a 1996 short story collection called Spadework and then again in the July 1998 edition of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

The story begins with a worried mother coming into the private eye’s office because she’s concerned about her son. Nameless explains that he usually hates this kind of job because mothers are, by the very nature, hysterical and overprotective. Her son Brian is a grown man, but he has become withdrawn lately and chronically unemployed. She guilt-trips Nameless into taking the gig.

When Nameless visits the young man, he is shocked to meet the buxom and abusive Blonde living with the nice young guy. It’s clear that Brian is being manipulated by this foul-mouthed tart in some fashion, but Brian was unwilling to share candidly what was happening.

Like a dog with a bone, Nameless continues his search for truth, interviewing both friends and underworld characters. The structure of the story will be familiar to people who read a lot of private eye fiction, where our hero conducts a series of interviews that lead closer and closer to the truth.

The great thing about the story is the shocking twist ending when we find out what is actually happening to Brian. I sure didn’t see it coming, and I read a lot of these books and stories. It’s a fantastic twist. No spoilers here.

“The Worried Mother Job” cemented my desire to dive deeper into Pronzini’s vast catalog of books. The writing reminded me a lot of Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder series, which has sadly concluded. Maybe the Nameless Detective series will scratch that itch? Stay tuned.

Get the collection featuring this story HERE.

The Drifter

Richie Tankersley Cusick  (b. 1952) has authored over 30 novels, mostly of the young adult horror and thriller genre. She was nominated for an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Help Wanted (1993) and earned a Children's Choice Award from the International Reading Association for The Lifeguard (1989). I have several of her paperbacks, both as Point Horror and Archway. I decided to browse her bibliography for something similar to a gothic-suspense and found The Drifter, originally published as an Archway by Pocket in 1994 (cover by Mark and Stephanie Gerber). The book is now available in both digital and audio.

The traditional tropes found in gothic-suspense/romance consist of a stranger in a strange land, an inheritance, isolation, gaslighting, hints of the supernatural, and a love interest. Despite the book's cover, void of a vulnerable beauty running from the dark house, The Drifter possesses all of the classic tropes. 

Carolyn Baxter and her mother have recently inherited a spacious coastal house from a recently deceased relative. The idea is to renovate the home in an effort to create a cozy bed and breakfast. Their obstacles are money, a lack of employees, and the previous owner's stubborn housekeeper, a woman named Nora. As Carolyn begins settling into her new home, Nora reveals a sinister history about the house.

Decades ago, the home's original owner was a sea captain. He disappeared on a voyage, and his widowed wife found another lover. However, the captain eventually returned, only to be dashed to pieces on the shore's rocky coast. Days later, the lover is found murdered. Obviously, there is a campfire ghost story that the dead sea captain killed his lover in a quest for revenge. But, there may be some truth to the tale as Carolyn digs into the home's history. She teams up with several key characters that further the story's mystery.

First, Carolyn meets a local boy who seems to know a lot about the house, the prior owners, and Carolyn's inheritance. There's a love entanglement here as Carolyn fears the boy, but is swept away by his charm and good looks. Second, another man has appeared, a drifter looking for work. Carolyn is also attracted to this man as well, but he offers just as much mystery as the house itself. The old story is that the captain's wife fell in love with a drifter. Is this guy a ghost? Does he have some relation to the original owners? The third key character is a homeless woman named Molly, an eccentric townie who knows more about this strange set of circumstances and characters than anyone else. 

When Carolyn's mother is nearly killed in an “accident”, and Carolyn herself begins to discover guarded secrets within the house, she begins to suspect a murderer is prowling the hallways. Could it be one of the two guys in her life? The housekeeper? Molly? All of these suspects pile up as Carolyn learns more about the history of the captain and...of course...buried treasure.

The Drifter was engaging enough, but I became bored by the book's second half. Cusick's writing allows for the dialogue to propel the narrative, which often works if the characters have interesting backstories or life experiences. With this many young characters, there's not a great deal of life experience or memories that the author can share to add more depth and characterization. That's often my biggest issue with reading these young adult novels – the atmosphere, locales, and action scenes are written quite well, but lack a deep characterization or subtext. 

Despite those trappings, the book does offer an entertaining narrative laced with supernatural tinglings, an absorbing plot, and sparks in the dialogue that help propel the central mystery. Overall, this wasn't a regretful read. You could do much worse than The Drifter.

Get the book HERE.

Conversations - The Book Graveyard

In this new collaboration with Nick from The Book Graveyard, Paperback Warrior explores Mistress of Orion Hall, a haunting 1970 gothic-suspense paperback published by Fawcett Gold Medal. Along the way, the episode traces the remarkable career of John Messmann, examining his work across westerns, spy fiction, and action novels, as well as the gothic romances he wrote under the pseudonym Claudette Nicole. The discussion also highlights the recent revival of Messmann's fiction through new editions from Brash Books and Cutting Edge, making this an ideal introduction to one of paperback fiction's most versatile and overlooked authors. Listen to the audio version of this episode HERE and watch the video HERE.

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

The House of Whispers

Laura Purcell is a British author who has earned multiple awards for her gothic historical novels like The Silent Companions (2018), The Poison Thread (2019), and House of Splinters (2026). She's also contributed to successful anthologies like The Haunting Season and The Winter Spirits. I decided to read her 2020 horror novel, The House of Whispers, published by Penguin. It possesses all of the eerie charm I'm looking for in gothics. 

The book features multiple eras in the 19th century told through the perspectives of Hester, a servant, and Louise, the daughter of a wealthy doctor. Their experiences, separated by 40 years or more, center around a series of caves and subterranean chambers that envelop Morvoren House, an old seaside structure that conjures dark imagery of “The Old Dark House”. 

In the first segments, Hester is introduced as a troubled servant who is addicted to alcohol. She hides her secret addiction from her newest employer, a troubled old woman named Louise Pinecroft. As Hester settles into her new role as Louise's nurse, she discovers some weird rituals and safeguarding from the house's staff. Is Louise mentally insane, or is there some dark force prowling the hallways? Along with Hester's new hire orientation comes a dark secret she keeps in a trunk. Through this tucked-away treasure, readers begin learning about Hester's prior job caring for a wealthy family in a different part of England. Her firing from the role is mysterious, enhanced more by bloody clothes that Hester keeps in her trunk. This history is presented in the book's second segment.

In a somewhat confusing timeline, readers are then thrust back to Louise's experiences as a young woman living at Morvoren House. Here, her father is practicing some bizarre medical treatments on prisoners he's acquired from the local township. The prisoners, all doomed to die from various illnesses, are kept in moist caves awaiting the good doctor's medical treatments – as neanderthal as they may be. Here is when readers learn about evil pixies that live underground, waiting for the perfect time to perform an Invasion of the Body Snatchers act of creating a “pod person” to replace the captured victim. It's weird, scary, entertaining...trust me.

The House of Whispers does require a great deal of patience as the story twists and turns through these different eras. At one point, I felt very connected to Hester, and then by the book's second half, that intimacy evaporated, replaced by a newfound fascination with Louise. It blends well, albeit a bit jarring to lose that connection with the character. Overall, it's a well-developed plot rich with imagery, chills, and imagination. There aren't a lot of evil pixie stories in horror. There's magic in that.

Get The House of Whispers HERE.

Baby Dolly

Ruby Jean Jensen (1927-2010) began her writing career penning shorts in the confessional and romance pulps and magazines. Her first novels were gothics published by Paperback Library and Manor Books in the 1970s. Today, she is best remembered as a horror novelist synonymous with the 1980s and 1990s creepy kid and evil doll tropes. I read her “killer tree” book Night Thunder in 1995 and haven't revisited her work since. I decided to try a Paperbacks from Hell staple, Baby Dolly. It was published by Zebra in 1991.

Surprisingly, Baby Dolly is better than it ever has a right to be. It's a killer doll novel and does everything you want and don't want in a horror novel, mainly the deaths of a bunch of kids. Jensen doesn't hold back and keeps the body count stacked consistently through nearly 500 terrifying pages. 

The novel is presented in three books, each around 160-pages. Granted, many of the books I read and review here at PW weigh about 180-pages, so this was the equivalent of reading three novels. The first book is set in the 1910s, the second in the 1950s, and the third in the present-day of 1991. Each of these sections deals specifically with a portion of the Wilfred Family, a wealthy and esteemed establishment living in a mansion in rural Arkansas. 

In the first book, young Rose Marie and her baby are murdered by Rose's mother after becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Yet her mother doesn't use a traditional weapon or poison, but instead places an evil soul-sucking doll in the crib and bed. This doll, stored in the family's upstairs cabinet, crawls onto faces and steals...breath? Jensen never really explains the method of destruction. After Rose Marie and the baby are murdered, the family members left behind are Sybil, Rose's younger sister, and Gertrude. 

We reconnect with Sybil as an old woman in the 1950s, this time living with her son, his wife, and their two daughters. She dies, leaving Gertrude to continue keeping the doll in the family mansion. But again, crazy things happen, and the doll is dragged out to kill family members. In an evil recycle, the 1990s feature another family member, but this time incorporating neighbors and a police officer to investigate the strange happenings within the family tree and the eerie mansion.

I was fully invested in the opening book and loved learning the family history and dynamics, tying it all together. The second book began shaping up as a redo of the first, only with different family members being killed off in the same fashion. By book three, I needed a change of pace, and the author seemingly read my mind. There's a great thread here of two neighborhood girls stumbling onto the abandoned, dilapidated mansion and encountering the doll. This portion of the narrative was laced with so much atmosphere and attention to detail. The discovery of a skeleton in the upstairs bedroom introduced a separate plot involving a murder investigation and a trip down memory lane to see how these characters intertwine and change through the decades. It was a skillful, well-developed story that spread evenly throughout the novel.

Baby Dolly was just terrific. If you love spooky mansions, creepy dolls, bizarre children...you're in Heaven (or Hell?) in this old Zebra paperback? Get the vintage copy HERE or the reprint HERE.