Harry Whittington's talent for storytelling was unmatched even among prolific contemporaries including Gil Brewer and Day Keene. Whether it was a fierce love triangle, bank heist or white knuckle suspense, the Floridian author engaged readers with his masterful literary prose. While his crime-noir is often discussed, Whittington's contribution to the western genre is sometimes overlooked. I thoroughly enjoyed his western titles like “A Trap for Sam Dodge”, “Drytown Gulch”, “Wild Sky” and “Desert Stake-Out”. Therefore, I was excited to acquire a 1961 Ace double featuring both “Hangman's Territory” by Jack Bickham and Whittington's “The Searching Rider”.
Like many Whittington novels, “The Searching Rider” features a scorned lover, despicable villains and murder. It's a winning trifecta that the author injects with a more psychological edge to the classic frontier revenge formula. In fact, in the opening chapters the pursuit of three villains is a precursor to the real story – main character Matt Logan's quest to find the lone farmer pursuing the three villains. It's an odd reworking of the “owlhoot trail”, but the author keeps it a mystery until Logan's horse is shot out from under him. That's the cue to roll the flashback sequence.
We learn that a farm family living on a scorched trail to Tucson experience a horrific tragedy. Grief stricken, the farmer Kaylor sets out in pursuit of three bitter killers. His wife, in a state of shock, walks to town and asks her scorned lover Logan for help. Logan initially rejects her requests for help, but once he realizes the dire circumstances, Logan races to catch up with Kaylor before it is too late.
While this simple revenge tale could have easily been a toss-off dime western, Whittington makes it a unique and enjoyable read. Never settling for the ordinary prose, the Logan character is developed as the anti-hero, trading the proverbial white hat for a greedy poker hand. Kaylor's situation is compelling, a riveting blend of hot-headed anger combined with a stubborn tenacity. By placing the pursuit and subsequent gun play in a scorching desert, the author traps these characters into the inevitable confrontation. How readers arrive at the finale is the ultimate enjoyment.
“The Searching Rider” is another top-notch western from an author that rarely misfires. In a perfect world, this novel would receive a new publishing run by Stark House Press. Thus far, its just another tattered old paperback waiting to be found at a rummage sale.
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This episode: What's all the fuss over James D. Lawrence's 1975 series "Dark Angel" and why are collectors spending top-dollar to grab copies? Also, Tom reviews "Savage Love", a Harry Whittington paperback from 1952, and Eric covers 'Traveler: Road War' by John Shirley. Finally, we discuss some contemporary projects produced by friend-of-the-show Paul Bishop. Stream below, anywhere that is streaming great podcasts or download directly HERE.
Listen to "Episode 22 - Dark Angel" on Spreaker.
“Web of Murder” was a Fawcett Gold Medal crime novel written by Harry Whittington at the top of his game in 1958. The 128-page paperback found new life in 1987 as one of a handful of Whittington’s works reprinted by Black Lizard Books with a great introduction by Whittington himself. For reasons unclear to me, “Web of Murder” was not part of the recent slew of Whittington novels digitized for Kindle consumption, so you’ll need to seek out a paperback to enjoy this one.
And you should! It’s a fast-moving femme fatale noir story about a guy who wants to kill his wife, so he and his mistress can enjoy the dead wife’s money. Charley Brower is a criminal defense attorney, and his secretary is a strawberry blonde looker named Laura. Cora, his frigid fatty wife, is a bit of a pill and sexually uninteresting to our narrator. However, she’s the one with the money in the marriage - inherited from her miser of a father after his death. Charley fantasizes of Cora dying, so he can begin enjoying life with her money instead of having it doled out to him a couple bucks at a time like a kid getting an allowance.
Charley keeps thinking that if only he could get sexy Laura alone for a weekend, he could screw her, get it out of his system, and resume some normalcy. He also knows that’s not how it works, and so does the reader. One day alone at the office, he makes his move on Laura, and it’s received warmly. The next thing we know, Charley and His secretary are banging like a broken screen door with great regularity while tubby, rich Cora stays at home knitting and preparing dinner while Charley “works late.”
Of course, you can see where this is heading. But with Harry Whittington, that’s not the point. It’s the flawless execution of these standard plot outlines that made the guy the King of Paperbacks. So, the idea of killing Cora becomes a topic of conversation between the illicit couple. How would they do it? How could they get away with it? Could they really be together thereafter?
Charley’s foolproof plan to make himself a rich widower is plenty elaborate, and the idea of having 24/7 access to a naked and willing Laura makes the extensive planning seem worthwhile. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback original if there weren’t some twists, turns, and bumps in the road. Whittington handles the narrative smoothly like a pro who’s done this a million times before.
You may see the twists and turns coming, but it’s impossible to deny that this is top-notch Whittington and a fantastic quick read. In fact, if you haven’t read any of Whittington’s classic paperbacks, I think “Web of Murder” would be an excellent place to start. It’s expertly-plotted with some gruesome violence, an erotic edge, and the quality of the writing is unparalleled. What more can you ask for? Highest recommendation.
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In 1956, Harry Whittington wrote a manuscript called “The Crooked Window” that went unsold for a decade until March 1966 when it was adapted into a Nightstand Book called “Blood Lust Orgy.” The original 30,000 word novella was later published in Shell Scott Mystery Magazine’s November 1966 issue under the original title. I found a copy of the Shell Scott magazine containing the novella at a nice price on eBay whereas the lusty paperback tends to fetch insanely-high collector prices.
Readers expecting an actual orgy of blood and lust will probably be pretty disappointed, but “The Crooked Window” is a compelling mystery story typical of the digests of the late 1960s. It opens with Bill dropping off Marge at a local department store while he waits in the car for her. She needs to do some shopping before they return to their motel to resume daytime boning. Oddly, Marge never emerges, and Bill wonders why his girlfriend is taking so long.
Through a flashback montage, we learn that the relationship between Bill and Marge is a forbidden love. Marge is a married woman in an unhappy and abusive relationship. Her heel of a husband won’t give her a divorce, so her romance with Bill is driven underground. They meet periodically in secret to enjoy a few stolen hours together, and that’s exactly what they were doing when Marge inconveniently disappears inside the department store.
After verifying that Marge is nowhere inside the store, Bill is forced to make some tough decisions. Should he get the police involved? After all, he really as no legitimate standing in her life in his capacity as secret boyfriend. As day turns to night, Marge’s husband eventually calls the cops. Her disappearance becomes big local news, yet Bill remains paralyzed with fear - not wanting to step forward to reveal what he knows to police for fear of exposing Marge’s extra-curricular romance. The moral dilemmas and mysterious happenings unfold from there.
Again, this is a decent mystery but nothing particularly special. It’s not much better or worse than the stories you’d find in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine around that same era. Most importantly, “The Crooked Window” just isn’t up to the caliber of Harry Whittington’s greatest hits, and it’s certainly not worth the price bonehead collectors have been paying for rare copies of “Blood Lust Orgy.” If you can find a copy of the digest cheap, you should certainly buy the magazine and read the story. Just control your expectations and don’t expect a masterpiece.
In 1959, Harry Whittington submitted for publication a crime noir novel titled “Never Find Sanctuary” that Fawcett Gold Medal published as “Backwoods Tramp” with a salacious cover indicative of the soft-core sleaze of the era. When Black Lizard republished the paperback in 1988, it was given the title “A Moment to Prey” with an insightful introduction from Whittington detailing his highs and lows of his writing career.
Due to an unusual series of events I won’t spoil here, former Major League Baseball pitcher Jake Richards is hot on the trail of an armed payroll robber named Marv Pooser who just scored $100,000 in a daring heist. A promising clue brings Jake to Pooser’s hometown in rural Florida - nearby the author’s own hometown of Ocala. The locals in the mosquito-infested town are suspicious of strangers and don’t take kindly to an outsider asking questions about Pooser, so Jake is greeted with a backwoods-style ass whooping.
Meanwhile, Lilly is a hot little swamp chick selling fried fish at her family’s restaurant in the same part of rural Florida. She’s got issues of her own and has always wanted more than the constant sexual harassment she must endure from the restaurant’s clientele. Referring to Lilly as a “Backwoods Tramp” is wholly inaccurate after the reader bears witness to what happens to a local man who tries to manhandle the girl. Circumstances thrust Jake and Lilly together - figuratively at first - but you can see where that’s headed. After all, she’s the kind of girl men get obsessed over.
Jake enlists Lilly’s help in finding Pooser, and that’s when things go bonkers. Pooser is one of the most vile, devious and reprehensible villains in crime fiction. In fact, this whole paperback is pretty crazy. Crazy sexual. Crazy tense. Crazy violent. Because it’s Florida, deadly snakes and man-eating gators play a key supporting role in the mayhem leading up to the beat-the-clock climax.
Fawcett Gold Medal was selling consumers a bit of swampland of their own by packaging “Backwoods Tramp” as a sexy seduce-the-swamp-girl paperback. What readers inevitably found was a menacing rural noir filled with violence, darkness and double-crosses. Or, in other words, top-notch Harry Whittington at his most twisted. Highly recommended.
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The king of the paperbacks, Harry Whittington, released “A Trap for Sam Dodge” as part of an ACE double in 1961. It was packaged with Lee Floren's “High Thunder”, but the book was later reprinted by ACE with Whittington's “Valley of Savage Men”. It's another rock-solid western entry from a master of the genre.
The book begins as Sam Dodge returns to the small town of Bent River. Dodge had originally ran for sheriff in the town, opposing his friend Miles Ringo. Ringo eventually won the election and Dodge left town. Now, Dodge has returned for Ringo's funeral, and to find some answers to his mysterious murder.
Dodge learns that Ringo was shot in the chest by an unknown assailant behind the horse corral. Dodge feels that Ringo was smart and deadly fast with a gun. No one could have shot Ringo face to face. There has to be more to the murder than what Marshall Sid Kane explains. Heaping even more intrigue onto the crime is the fact that Kane is now dating Ringo's widow Mae. So soon? Dodge feels that Kane, Judge Wilkes and land baron Kurt Duvall all had a hand in Ringo's murder.
Whittington spins this western entry into the proverbial “whodunit” and why. While there's a great deal of crime mystery in the presentation, the author still injects a surprising amount of action into the narrative. While Dodge discovers the truth, he's forced to outgun Duvall's hired hands while also protecting two Mexican farmer's from Duvall's aggressive land grab.
While firmly entrenched in the “land baron bullies the town” formula, Whittington adds enough surprising elements to make this a delight to read. It's short, fast-paced, engaging and ultimately a one-sit read.
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During the 1950s, Harry Whittington was so prolific that he employed a cadre of pseudonyms to keep his sales flowing to a variety of paperback publishing houses. His 1952 novel “Savage Love” was published under the pen name Whit Harrison and was later reprinted in 1956 under Whittington’s own name as “Native Girl.” It remains available today as a cheap ebook (free with Kindle Unlimited) under the original title and the pseudonym.
“Savage Love” takes place on the pre-statehood Hawaiian Island of Maui where Coles has just relocated at the urging of his friend Victor who is married to a “native girl” named Lani. From the first page, the reader can smell trouble ahead for these three when Coles, our narrator, describes Lani as a “goddess molded out of fiery golden flesh.” When he accidentally walks in on Lani undressed in front of a full-length mirror, the poor bastard becomes smitten and obsessed with his best buddy’s wife.
Victor owns a pineapple and sugar cane plantation and hires Cole as an overseer of the business operations. When Victor is attacked by a hostile employee, he is waylaid and consigned to rest and recovery under the care of the plantation’s domestic help. However, you’d hardly know the difference between Victor at work and Victor at rest as he is an advocate of the laid back island lifestyle. This enables Cole and Lani to spend some quality time together as Cole learns the ins-and-outs of the business.
As the narrative progresses, we learn more about Cole’s background and the real reason he was willing to leave his girlfriend and accounting career behind on the U.S mainland to start a new life on Maui. The temptation Cole feels for Lani is a white-hot lust coupled with the appropriate guilt and reservations that eventually lead to an explosion of violence and murder. Nobody writes a femme fatale story like Harry Whittington except for maybe James M. Cain. And “Savage Love” probably owes more than a little to Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice” from 1934.
“Savage Love” is seldom cited as among Whittington’s best work, and that’s a shame. This book is a familiar fatal attraction story transplanted into an exotic setting with a Hawaiian temptress, but it’s also a satisfying piece of noir melodrama from a master of the genre. I’d put it up there with Cain’s “Postman” and Gil Brewer’s “The Vengeful Virgin” as among the best of this type. The fact that it remains available as an eBook costing you next to nothing should push smart readers over the edge to pick up this underrated classic. Highly recommended.
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Harry Whittington’s “Drawn to Evil” first appeared in 1952 as half of an Ace Double packaged with “The Scarlet Spade” by Eaton K. Goldthwaite. The Whittington half has been reprinted as an eBook from Simon & Schuster’s Prologue Books imprint and is free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.
“Drawn to Evil” is narrated by a Tampa Police homicide detective named Marty Carter who was passed up for the position of division chief because he was just too brutal. A beloved and respected state senator is murdered in cold blood, and Marty vows to catch the killer. In the aftermath of the senator’s murder, Marty meets Liza, the deceased’s grieving wife, and immediately becomes infatuated with her. Because this is a Harry Whittington novel, Liza’s a sultry, young looker. And because this is 1952, Marty has to slap her around a bit to get her attention after they first meet. Times do change.
Marty’s plan is that he’ll be the detective who solves the murder, and the Liza will be his prize. The problem is that Marty’s boss wants his help on the investigative team but has banned Marty from using his usual rubber hose tactics. So the cop who is normally a powder keg of violence races to solve the murder using pretty standard police procedures. Of course, a promise of restraint like that only can last so long. Marty is a fun character to ride along with because he is so filled with menace while trying (and failing) to do the right thing. He is pure id - fueled by lust and ambition.
The mystery takes Marty into the details of the senator’s personal life and into the bowels of Tampa’s crime syndicate. The action moves fast, and there are plenty of dysfunctional and twisted characters to gawk at along the way. More so than Whittington’s later crime novels, “Drawn to Evil” is a pretty conventional mystery - with a murder, clues, suspects, motives and a solution. However, things take a very dark and Whittington turn with about 30 pages left in the paperback when we leave Mike Shayne territory and go to a perverse and violent place at last.
As I wind my way through Harry Whittington’s body of work, I’d put “Drawn to Evil” in the top-tier of his crime fiction writing. It had the requisite amount of sex, violence, amorality and darkness to declare this one a true noir fiction classic. The fact that it’s basically free as an eBook makes this a no-brainer must-read for fans of this type of thing. Highly recommended.
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In 1963, Harry Whittington sold a book titled “To Find Cora” to a sleaze publishing house after the novel had been rejected by Fawcett Gold Medal. The book was later released under the salacious title - “Cora Is A Nympho.” Three years later, the plot was slightly revised and re-sold as “Flesh Snare” by J.X. Williams published with a tawdry - and misleading -S&M cover.
In 2009, Stark House reprinted “To Find Cora” in a three-book compilation along with two other Whittington rarities and a fascinating introduction by David Laurence Wilson detailing Whittington’s foray in the 1960s porno book market. By today’s standards, the sex in “To Find Cora” is extremely tame, but it remains a damn fine noir novel that modern readers will no doubt enjoy.
“To Find Cora” is narrated by Joe who is searching for his estranged wife after she left him following a domestic dispute. We quickly learn that fights between Joe and Cora were not unusual occurrences, so nobody takes Joe seriously as he’s trying to find his bride following her disappearing act. The other issue is that Cora is quite a looker, and the working theory is that she’s found another man. This doesn’t dissuade Joe who is certain he can win Cora back if he can just speak to her for a few minutes.
Joe’s obsessive hunt for Cora brings him to a desolate Oklahoma farmhouse on a hot tip. Instead of Cora, Joe finds a young couple named Hall and Vy who are hiding out from the law. Vy is a lusty vixen fully disillusioned by her man while turning her eyes on Joe. Meanwhile, Hall is a savage paranoiac who won’t let Joe leave for fear that he’ll notify the police. As such, Joe finds himself taken prisoner in the couple’s farmhouse hideaway.
I can only imagine that readers looking for a cheap porno novel after purchasing “Cora Is A Nympho” or “Flesh Snare” were super confused as they were thrust into this suspenseful noir - almost horror - novel. Overall, “To Find Cora” is in the upper echelon of Whittington’s paperbacks. There’s a central mystery, a duplicitous and alluring femme fatale, a psychotic adversary, and an unstable tinderbox of violence waiting to explode. It’s both a hard novel to put down and an easy recommendation for you.
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“Drygulch Town” was originally released in 1963 by Ace as a double with “Prairie Raiders”. Both were written by the king of paperbacks, Harry Whittington. It was later re-released by Ace in 1972 with alternate artwork. In 1980, Tempo Books reprinted the novel again with alternative cover art. Does the book warrant three printings? Sadly, no.
The novel begins with an exciting intro as attorney Steve Garrison rides into the small town of Carmack. He's warned to steer clear of the town with a few cautionary rifle shots. Garrison, determined to accept his position as defense attorney, ignores the shots and goes in the local bar to share his story with a local named Hawgans.
Garrison is a lawyer from Cheyenne who's been hired to defend Kiner, a young man accused of killing Bryce Carmack's son Junior. It's a tough position to defend considering Bryce owns the town and all of the oil leases. In fact, Bryce had already taken it upon himself to lead a lynch mob to hang Kiner but it was disrupted by sheriff Waggner. The murder occurred after Kiner won a legit game of poker and left with the winnings. He claims Junior and another man attacked him in an alley and Kiner's fatal shot was in self-defense. The town, fearing backlash from Bryce, is in favor of hanging Kiner regardless of any evidence.
Whittington has a great opportunity here to leverage “Drygulch Town” into a stirring mystery regarding this unknown second assailant. I was envisioning a captivating narrative that explored Garrison's probing as an attorney/detective while receiving the obligatory death threats and attempts on his life. That would have been interesting and altogether a much more satisfying direction to take. Instead, Whittington waters this down with a recycled chain of events that finds the town just beating up Garrison, leaving him for dead, and then Garrison rehabilitating only to have it recycle two more times. There's very little investigation or defense here. Sheriff Waggner is the complacent white hat that serves no real purpose other than nursing wounds. Frustrating.
Overall, it's a short read that isn't cumbersome or painful to get through. It's an okay western that had a lot more potential. If you love Whittington then this may be something you feel obligated to read. If it is just a great western you are reaching for...just go right or left on the shelf but leave this alone.
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The problem with Harry Whittington is that he wrote so many books that it’s hard to differentiate his crime fiction masterpieces from the so-so paperbacks he authored for a quick paycheck. While I consider him one of my favorite authors, I find myself repeatedly acquiring and reviewing novels that just aren’t his best work.
Whittington’s “So Dead My Love” was released in 1953 as half of an Ace Double paired with Stephen Ransome’s “I, The Executioner.” At some point, “So Dead My Love” was also released in Australia under the title “Let’s Count Our Dead,” and it was also included in the 2001 “Pulp Masters” anthology edited by Ed Gorman and Martin Greenberg.
Jim Talbot is a New York private eye returning to his hometown of Duval, Florida (population 35,000) after a ten-year absence. He’s come at the request of Mike, an attorney and politician who functions as the benevolent political king of Duval. Mike needs Talbot’s help to find Mike’s missing law partner, and Talbot owes Mike a big favor from a decade earlier. Because this is a Harry Whittington novel, Talbot quickly learns that Mike is now married to Talbot’s old flame, Nita. Did I mention that she is beautiful and stacked?
Anyway, Mike seems to be a pretty honest politician, but his rival is a corrupt sheriff who controls the rackets in Duval. Could the sheriff have anything to do with the missing lawyer? Perhaps Nita knows more than she’s saying? Can Talbot navigate the corruption of Duval to learn the truth? Throw a spicy young stripper into the plot to further confuse Talbot’s loyalties, and we have a pretty traditional hardboiled mystery.
I’d describe “So Dead My Love” as a middle-of-the-road Whittington novel. It’s nowhere near as brilliant as “A Ticket to Hell” but it’s way better than “Saturday Night Town,” for example. The mystery was legit, and Talbot was a compelling main character to follow through the twists and turns thus making this paperback a fairly easy recommendation. Don’t move heaven and earth to buy a copy, but if you can read it on the cheap, it’s worth your time.
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The 1962 Ace Double featured Tom West's (Fred East) “Dead Man's Double Cross” and Harry Whittington's “Wild Sky”. Whittington, the king of the paperbacks, wrote about 30 westerns in his impressive career and proved he had a knack for the genre with another stellar outing in “Wild Sky”.
The beginning of the novel introduces readers to Josh, his pregnant wife Fran and four-year old daughter Joanie. It's the young family's 33rd day of travel from the East coast, a long and perilous journey to Wyoming. Whittington paints this rather basic introduction with heightened tension, an impending doom that is evident with Josh's frequent glances over his shoulder. Soon, a young Native-American rides towards the wagon, non-pleasantries are exchanged and soon Josh and the family are riding away as the brave lies defeated with a broken arm. This brief exchange proves the validity of our protagonist – Josh is a fighter.
The family settles on a beautiful stretch of valley with Josh building a cabin and planting crops. I really enjoyed the author's descriptive narrative on hunting deer and tracking through the mountains. It's these scenes that are often ignored by western writers, something that L'Amour excelled at with his early Sackett frontier stories. Once settled, Josh reflects on why his family has retreated to the wilderness.
Back east, Josh ran a mercantile store with Fran and the two had a picturesque life together. One night while leaving work both Josh and Fran are attacked by a belligerent man named Can Kirby. It's a brief encounter, but Kirby strongly advises Josh that he will kill him soon and encourages him to start wearing a gun. Josh, at this point a pacifist, doesn't accept violence as the answer. But, this is the 1800s wild-west and Josh has a family to protect. Why has he sworn off violence? Why does he keep his pistol in a bag under the bed?
Ultimately, Whittington creates an interesting story that uses the “past catching up” theme to place Josh and his family in dire straits. We know that he can't run from his past, but it is interesting to see how it creeps up from behind. While only 103-pages, the author writes a propulsive narrative that incorporates another wilderness family to pad out the dialogue (and create alliances for the impending doom). Overall, a solid western tale worth pursuing.
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Harry Whittington (1915-1989) is the king of the paperbacks. He wrote over 200 novels and utilized nearly 20 pseudonyms throughout his career. While immersing himself in the crime genre, the author also penned around 20 westerns including this 1961 Fawcett Gold Medal novel, “Desert State-Out”. It was reprinted in May of 1989 with alternate artwork for Avon Books.
Whittington introduces readers to Blade Merrick, a former Confederate soldier who's contracting with the U.S. Army to haul valuable medical supplies to the town of San Carlos. Beginning at Fort Ambush, Blade must venture through the hot California desert amidst the dreaded Apache...solo. Why Blade has been chosen for this mission remains a mystery until the closing chapters. The mystery, intrigue and suspense is a solid wind-up through the middle portions of the narrative.
After a few days on the journey, Blade stops at a rocky watering hole called Patchee Wells. It's there that he stumbles on three outlaws – elderly Charley Clinton, his son Billy and the gunfighter Perch Fisher. They in turn have stumbled up on the gutshot Jeff Butler and his wife Valerie. When Blade joins the group to assist, he learns they were attacked by the Apache with a second round of attacks coming. While Blade digs the bullet out of Butler, the table is densely set for alliances and betrayals.
The outlaws want to steal Blade's horses and supplies to head north away from the Army and Apache. Blade thinks they are the three guys that robbed a bank in Tucson. Butler's wife wants Blade's help to return to Fort Ambush where her husband can receive proper care. She fears that the outlaws will kill Blade, rape her and make off with all of the supplies. Blade is stuck in a hard place knowing that San Carlos is experiencing a plague that desperately needs his supplies. But ultimately none of them will survive another Apache assault outnumbered and outgunned.
First, if you are looking for the rip-roaring “Cowboys and Indians” western shootout I'm here to tell you “Desert Stake-Out” isn't it. Instead, this is a balance beam of thriller and suspense with the reader navigating the emotional states of these desperate characters. It increases tension and dread in all the right places, emphasizing how precarious the situation is for these six individuals. Just when you think you've figured it out, Whittington throws in a wild card; a grave that's been dug right there in Patchee Wells by Blade himself. Who's buried? Did Blade know these outlaws prior to meeting them at the watering hole? Little puzzle pieces are revealed as the reader sits in the rocks and dust waiting for everything to come full circle. The ending was extremely satisfying and painted a detailed portrait of this mysterious protagonist. I can't say enough good things about this one.
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“Saturday Night Town” was Harry Whittington’s 1956 release with Fawcett World Library’s imprint, Crest Books, featuring an attractive cover art by Barye Philips. It’s an anomaly in the vast library of Whittington in that it’s a highly-regarded novel that has never been reprinted since it’s debut 62 years ago. It’s been reported that the short book was Kathryn Whittington’s favorite of her husband’s work.
The action in “Saturday Night Town” takes place over a single April evening in rural and rainy Cottonseed, Florida. For a small town, Saturday nights in Cottonseed are generally hopping social events sandwiched between Friday’s farming and Sunday’s church services.
Bill Beckmon is a good doctor who cares deeply about the well-being of his patients. Despite this, he is passed up for a promotion in the local hospital much to his own disappointment and his wife’s frustration. This has got him thinking about leaving town and the people who need his services. Most of Dr. Bill’s practice is made up of poor crackers who can’t afford to pay their medical bills. A rundown of Dr. Bill’s patients - rich and poor - is the means by which Whittington introduces the reader to the first wave of the ensemble cast of characters in this book.
And there sure are a lot of characters in “Saturday Night Town.” I needed a cheat sheet to keep track of them all. The book is only 144 pages but the army of named characters moving the plot - or plots - forward made it feel a bit like “Game of Thrones.” Within the first 30 pages, we meet 20 characters of varying significance. It was like a soap opera with throngs of protagonists.
And it was all too much for me. Things happen. Storylines cross. Conflicts escalate and erupt. Couples form and others break it off. But it was all a bit of a jumbled mess and a slog to read. I love Harry Whittington, but this isn’t one of his best despite what you may have heard. There’s a good reason it was never reprinted - it’s just no good.
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I’ll never live long enough to read the approximately 170 books that Harry Whittington wrote during his prolific career. Instead, I rely on others to identify his Greatest Hits, so I can use my limited reading time wisely. His 1954 paperback, “You’ll Die Next!”, was first published as half of an Ace Double (paired with “Drag the Dark” by Frederick C. Davis), and was recommended to me as being one of Whittington’s better noir novels.
Henry and Lila are a normal, suburban couple. One morning while Henry is enjoying Lila’s famous popovers for breakfast, the doorbell rings. When Henry opens the door, an unknown thug on his front stoop pulls him outside and beats the stuffing out of him. As the muscle leaves, he delivers Henry an ominous and threatening message from “Sammy.”
But who the hell is Sammy?
Henry quickly begins to suspect that it’s Lila with the secret in her past that inspired the beating. You see, Lila used to be a lounge singer, and she married Henry six months ago in a whirlwind romance. This always puzzled Henry because his sexy wife is way out of his league looks-wise. In any case, Lila denies knowing anyone named Sammy who would arrange for a savage beating like this.
More weirdness follows Henry that day including a mysterious letter, an attempt on his life, and an unjust suspension from work. Someone is trying to turn Henry’s life upside-down but why? Henry’s only play is to become his own investigator and locate the elusive Sammy. As the hunt unfolds, Henry’s problems escalate until he finds himself a man on the run - wanted for a crime he didn’t commit with police on his tail.
Whittington sets up the story nicely as a noir mystery, and, for the most part, the novel holds the reader’s attention quite nicely. But the worthiness of a book like this can be judged by the quality of the payoff at the end. Either the solution to the novel’s central mystery is reasonable and clever or you’ve just wasted your time on a pleasant flight without a smooth landing.
Unfortunately, Whittington fails the “clever solution” test in this particular mystery, and “You’ll Die Next!” left me feeling like I got a bum steer from whomever recommended it to me. The bad guys orchestrating Henry’s torment are wooden, and their motivation is rather silly. There are some decent scenes in this short book, but the payoff lands with a thud. As such, I need to file this one in the “don’t bother” pile. Your time is better spent elsewhere.
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Harry Whittington’s “A Night for Screaming” is a 1960 fugitive-on-the-run story told by Mitch Walker - an innocent man accused of murder - who is dodging the law and finds himself broke and hungry in a small Kansas town after being booted from a freight train the night before.
The local redneck fuzz is less of a concern to Mitch than psychotic Police Detective Fred Palmer who has been pursuing Mitch for the murder. Palmer is a fantastic character - a brilliant and brutal cop who can adeptly quarterback the pursuit, arrest, torturous interrogation, and conviction of any fugitive. When Detective Palmer arrives in Kansas to join the hunt, it’s Mitch’s worst nightmare.
Mitch takes refuge as a migrant worker on the mega-farm outside of town. The farm is staffed by hourly workers as well as forced labor consisting of local prisoners from the county. The owner of the farm is an enigmatic and fascinating character with a lusty and unstable wife who is always looking for a romp with the help.
The less you know about what goes on at the Great Plains Empire Farm, the better. This is a helluva story, and I’m not going to ruin it for you here. Suffice it to say that this one will keep you turning the pages long after you should be attending to your other human needs. Whittington wrote compelling books, and this is among his best. Today’s authors could learn a lot from Whittington’s knack for plotting a tightly-wound, fat-free story. The action in this novel is propulsive and starts from page one, and the unfolding events are never predictable. I read a lot of this stuff, and I never knew exactly where things were headed in this one.
In the beginning of the Stark House Noir Classics re-release of “A Night for Screaming,” there is a helpful bibliography of Whittington’s novels and the numbers are staggering. The Florida native wrote over 170 books between the years 1946 and 1988 making him the “King of the Paperbacks” during an important era of American literature. Stark House’s re-packaging of this classic also includes Whittington’s “Any Woman He Wanted” and an informative introduction by David Wilson. Highly recommended. Purchase a copy here.
The 'Man From U.N.C.L.E. Magazine' was published from February 1966 through January 1968 as an effort to capitalize on and cross-promote the popular TV show. Instead of merely adapting screenplays into prose, the publishers made the decision to have each issue anchored by an original 60-page novella taking place in the U.N.C.L.E. universe written under the house name of Robert Hart Davis. Presumably, the authors of these stories had free reign to have fun with the characters as long as no one essential to the franchise gets killed in the action. The magazine enlisted some talented ghostwriters to pen these novellas, including John Jakes, Dennis Lynds, Talmage Powell, Bill Pronzini, and Harry Whittington. Each issue of the digest also contained short stories unrelated to U.N.C.L.E. but consistent with the genre’s themes.
My first foray into U.N.C.L.E. fiction was the first of the 16 successful stand-alone paperbacks for the series. “Man from U.N.C.L.E. Paperback #1” was written by Michael Avallone (Interestingly, the paperbacks were all published under the authors’ real names, but the digest novellas all adopt the Davis pseudonym), and the book was fantastic - even for a reader who had never watched the TV show or movie. Harry Whittington wrote the second paperback, “The Doomsday Affair,” and it was also a monster seller that put a ton of cash in the pockets of MGM, if not the author himself. Whittington also penned four of the magazine’s U.N.C.L.E. novellas, including “The Ghost Riders Affair” from the July 1966 issue of the digest.
For the uninitiated (myself included), all you need to know before walking into a 'Man From U.N.C.L.E.' novel or story is that there is a secret International spy agency called U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) that employs a suave American spy named Napoleon Solo and a skilled Soviet spy named Illya Kuryakin to handle missions important enough for both sides of the Cold War to collaborate for the greater good. There is an enemy organization of villains, miscreants, and subversives called THRUSH (Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity) who often oppose U.N.C.L.E.’s efforts at law and order.
The central mystery of “The Ghost Riders Affair” involves the mysterious disappearance of a 15-car passenger train en route from Pittsburgh to Chicago. Meanwhile, a Wyoming rancher’s 1000 cattle apparently vanished into thin air without leaving a hoofprint behind. Soon thousands of others - famous and nobodies - also disappear without a trace. For jurisdictional reasons left unexplained, the investigation of these mysterious disappearances falls to U.N.C.L.E. who puts Solo and Kuryakin on the case.
At first glance, the investigative plan makes good sense: a duplicate train containing only Kuryakin and an engineer ride the same route on the same tracks at the same time in search of anomalies that might explain the disappearance. Meanwhile, Solo remains at the United Network Command monitoring the train’s progress on his super-advanced computer screen. When the train transporting Kuryakin also disappears, the tension deepens and the mystery intensifies. Was this a supernatural act? Could this have anything to do with THRUSH?
Unlike the full paperback novels, none of the characters get laid and the violence isn’t particularly graphic in the digest. However, you don’t really notice the PG nature of this story because Whittington’s plotting is absolutely superb. The story moves along at a great clip as Solo uncovers clues that bring him closer to discovering the truth about the mass vanishing act. Solo even gets to ride a horse through the untamed West - literary territory Whittington knows well. The story combines the spy world of James Bond with the fantastical pulp of Doc Savage in a novella that never has time to drag.
The good news is that this story is an easy recommendation. The downside is that it might be hard to acquire. MGM owns the U.N.C.L.E. intellectual property and has been disinterested in seeing the stories reprinted, digitized, or preserved for future generations. The full U.N.C.L.E. paperbacks sold well and used copies remain available at affordable prices. However, the digests containing the 60-page novellas can be hard to find and may cost you quite a bit on eBay or other outlets for vintage magazines. Happy hunting!
Before he was “King of the Paperbacks,” Harry Whittington worked as a copywriter in his home state of Florida (home of Paperback Warrior Headquarters). In 1943, he sold his first short story followed by his first novel, a western titled “Vengeance Valley,” in 1946. It wasn’t until 1950 that his first contemporary novel, “Slay Ride For A Lady” was published, kicking off a crime (fiction) spree that lasted decades and made him a favorite among fans of the genre, even if it inexplicably failed to make him a household name.
“Slay Ride For A Lady” begins in Honolulu where an ex-cop with a checkered past named Dan Henderson has successfully tracked down estranged wife Connice Nelson and her baby on behalf of her powerful mobster husband back in Tampa. Henderson is a fun narrator to take us on this ride as he is appropriately cynical about life. After Connice tells Henderson that he’s a nice guy, he explains, “I hate God’s world, and everybody in it.” Henderson has a great backstory that Whittington gives us piecemeal throughout the paperback.
Whittington was age 35 when this paperback was first published, and you can tell that he had a deep reservoir of cool ideas, scenes, and lines to draw upon for his inaugural crime novel, but it never really comes together as a compelling and readable novel. The plot is nothing revelatory: falsely accused of murder, Henderson needs to clear his own name and seek revenge on the man who framed him. With Whittington, it’s the execution that matters, and he has the raw makings of a master storyteller even at this early stage in his career. Had he written his novel in 1957, it would have likely been much better.
Is this one of Whittington’s best novels? Not by a long shot. You won’t necessarily feel cheated, but your time is better spent reading his 1959 masterpiece, “A Ticket to Hell.”
The deeper and deeper I dive into 1950s paperback crime fiction, the more I’m convinced that Harry Whittington is the best among them. Better than Jim Thompson. Better than Charles Williams. Better than Cornell Woolrich. However, Whittington doesn’t receive the critical acclaim of his contemporaries, and my theory is that has everything to do with his tremendous output. After all, the man produced over 150 novels with a myriad of pseudonyms in a variety of genres. His legacy as a master is a victim of his profound work ethic. For my money, I will put the 20 best Harry Whittington novels against anyone else’s top 20 from that era.
The Naked Jungle was Whittington’s 1955 Ace Books release that survives today as an ebook from vintage crime reprinter Prologue Books. The plot is simple: a plane flying from Honolulu to Sydney crashes in the South Pacific and strands three survivors on a life raft and then a deserted tropical island.
The cast of this very special episode of Lost is:
Krayer is a brilliant know-it-all fueled by logic and a will to survive. It’s his skill that guides his two companions to survive when lost at sea and later stranded on the island. He’s also a loathsome jackass and dangerous control freak.
Fran is his sexy wife. She had finally made her decision to leave Krayer right before the plane went down into the ocean. How will her reliance on her husband to remain alive impact her decision to be rid of him?
And there’s Webb, our enigmatic protagonist running away from his past. He becomes instantly beguiled by Fran from the first time he saw her on the plane. Now he’s marooned with the woman of his dreams and a cunning sociopath who won’t let her go.
The threesome must join together to survive their hostile environment and the growing dysfunction between them. The original cover art of this paperback looks like a cheap-o romance novel, but it’s way more than that. It’s a novel of survival - on the inflatable raft and the inhospitable island. It’s also a psychological suspense novel as Krayer and Webb jockey for position to be the Alpha Male between them with luscious Fran as the prize.
Make no mistake about it, this book is sexy as hell. Because it was 1955, there are no graphic descriptions of coupling, but Whittington knew what he was doing when devising a plot with a high-voltage, erotic charge. There are scenes in this book that you’ll replay in your mind long after you read them because of the palpable sexual energy they emit. You’ll totally understand why Webb wants Fran bad enough to risk his life to have her.
Whittington’s three-person take on Lord of the Flies is a total blast to read. The tension and power dynamics among the three characters was a completely suspenseful reading experience. The man against nature story alone would have been plenty exciting, but the chess game, cruelty, and graphic violence among these three castaways makes this paperback a next-level pleasure.
Highly recommended. Essential reading.
After the commercially successful 1966 “Man From Uncle” novel generated practically no money in his pocket, Harry Whittington went to work as an editor in the US Department of Agriculture, working for the Rural Electrification Administration. "I'd reached the low place where writing lost its delight.” (quote from author Ben Bridges blog).
In 1974, at age 59, Whittington quit his government job and went back to writing full-time. From his small but elegant house overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, he wrote his comeback novel, “Master of Blackoaks” (1976), a Deep-South 'slave gothic' written as Ashley Carter (Whittington's own name appears on the copyright page).
“Master of Blackoaks” was a hit. It's also an awesome book. Family drama, intrigue, violence, mucho sex and social commentary abound as the drama unfolds among members of the Baynard Family and their slaves on the struggling Alabama plantation known as Blackoaks.
The book reminded me of Ken Follett's “Pillars of the Earth” with all the characters jockeying for position to achieve divergent goals. The plantation violence is raw and in-your-face. The sex scenes are well executed. The slaves, masters and interlopers are vivid characters.
The book tackles difficult questions about race and culture without ever being racist or showing a lack of compassion for those swept up in the morally repugnant culture of slavery. The economic realities of the plantation life were explained well in the story as the masters of Blackoaks struggled to survive.
The book spawned three sequels that I can't wait to read.
Whittington learned propulsive plotting from his Gold Medal crime and western novels. Although this isn't an action novel, he brings the same discipline to this lost masterpiece. Despite the cover, it's not a romance novel. It's a literary novel with crazy family drama swirling for nearly 500 hard-to-put-down pages.
Hat tip to Ben Bridges on the background regarding the creation of this book and Pete Brandvold for alerting me to its existence.
