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.