Monday, March 18, 2024

Last Ranger 2: The Savage Stronghold by Craig Sargent

Last Ranger 2
The Savage Stronghold
by Craig Sargent (Jan Stacy)


Martin Stone is a post-apocalyptical survivor wandering the wastelands of America on his bike with his dog Excalibur, looking for his kidnapped sister. He encounters fat cannibals, bikers, cultists with stun guns, and his nemesis The Dwarf.

The Church of the New Darkness rules Pueblo, which Stone infiltrates to rescue his sister. He meets up with local resistance and takes on the church with an old stash of dynamite.

Over the top, like the rest of Stacy's work, maybe a touch more juvenile with the tough guy talk.

Available from Amazon

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Shell Scott: Blood Ballot by Richard Prather

Shell Scott
Blood Ballot by Richard Prather
Menace, Nov 1954




Scott assists a political candidate against his mob connected opponent. More action than mystery, and slightly less horny than Mike Shayne as far as dames with their legs.

Dead Giveaway
Shell is hired by a mousey newlywed to find her missing husband, and who has been poisoning their milk. Shell hooks up with a mermaid act along the way.

Hot-Rock Rumble
Shell's hired to recover jewels from a mistress and gets framed for hit and run for his troubles.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Unsolved Mysteries ed Rose G. Mandelsberg

Unsolved Mysteries
ed Rose G. Mandelsberg
From the Files of True Detective Magazine
1992, Pinnacle


Twenty five articles from True Detective and associated true crime magazines. Ranges from well know serial killers like the Cleveland Torso Murderer and the Green River Killer to local cases. One of the traits of the unsolved reports is that they spend more time on dead end leads and the messy nature of investigation, while solved cases tend to report more of a straight line.

Mostly solid, though it slips briefly into tabloid territory - one British article refers to urban myths of widespread sex trafficking from Europe to the Middle East as well as child snuff film rackets. Another has an undercover vice detective navigating the Portland lesbian scene.

A handful have been solved in the subsequent thirty years, notably the Green River Killer Gary Ridgway and serial killer Patrick Baxter. The Green River article has an anonymous psychic who claims to have directly discovered skeletal remains in the woods, but I couldn't readily find another claim for this outside the book.

Available from Amazon

Friday, March 15, 2024

Rage on the Page in a Cage

Time for the main event - a Rage in a Cage match between four teams. The rules are as follows: one author of each team fights it out in a four-author cage match. Defeated authors are handcuffed to the outside of the cage, while the survivor moves to the next round, joined by the next four authors (including one from their team). The team still standing at the end is declared the winner.

Let's meet our four teams:

Stranger Than Truth: True crime and the unexplained

Private Eyes: Series detective fiction

Karate Kids: Martial arts series

Road Warriors: Vehicle centered post-apocalyptical series.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

RPC US Title Match: Startling Detective vs Derrick Ferguson

 


Ferguson lost the Young Guns title, but makes up for it by defeating True Crime titan Startling Detective and becoming the new US Champion.



Sunday, March 3, 2024

Startling Detective Yearbook 1966

Startling Detective Yearbook 1966, Vol 1, No 4

Blood Bath for a Baby-Sitter by Stanley Churchill - a babysitter is brutally stabbed with a bayonet

Rape and Murder Ends a Pep Pill Binge - A hairdresser on bennies kidnaps a couple teenagers in Dallas, raping and killing one, tormenting the other until he passed out and she escaped. Sentenced to death, but was commuted when the Supreme Court temporarily overturned the death penalty in 1972. The killer was alive as of at least 2019 and is still registered as a sex offender at his nursing home.

Bluebeard's Wife - Historical quickie of a career criminal who buried several people under cement

Cold Corpse in a Hot Car by Lawrence Gardner - capri pant wearing wife and her ex-con lover kill her doting husband

Love Had a Bitter Taste by Andre Connor

Heavily padded tale of an elderly arsenic wielding black widow.

Blue-Eyed Blonde Under the Bridge by Hal White

Multiple killings of women in Montana, though only one conviction is mentioned. An internet check shows the rest were unsolved as of a few years later.

Riddle of the Twisted Love Triangle by Keith Ramsey

A woman steps out, separates from her husband who promptly moves in with her lover. Hubby disappears while her boyfriend is shot to death by cops after a robbery.

When it Snows, It's Murder by Harold Edwards

A killer hires a teenage girl as a babysitter, posing as a client.

I Had To Kill by Ace Bushnell

Door to door salesman turned killer. Creepy detailed confession.

Murdered Teacher at Battle Mountain by D.L. Champion

A woman is killed after her car runs out of gas. The killer had a failed appeal, had his last parole hearing in 2009 and is now deceased.

None of the cases are particularly compelling, many of them invented narrative devices like internal monologues or details only known to the dead, and each story is compelled to describe the victims as attractive, or at least shapely, at every opportunity.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Dillon and the Alchemist's Morning Coffee by Derrick Ferguson

Dillon and the Alchemist's Morning Coffee
by Derrick Ferguson
2013, Pro Se Press

Dillon witnesses the theft of the mysterious Alchemist's Morning Coffee at an auction and goes on the hunt to recover it. Excellent bike on jeep chase scene through the interior of a massive palace riddled with explosions. Ferguson excels at cinematic action, and for me this one had almost a Lupin III feel.

Available from Amazon