Specialist 5: Zombie by Errol Lecale

Specialist 5
Zombie
by Errol Lecale (Wilfred McNeilly)

1974, New English Library

Eli Podgram is The Specialist, a wealthy occult investigator who was once a vampire for a couple hours. That fact isn't relevant to the story but takes up a big chunk of the prologue. He's joined by mute virgin psychic Mara and his French servant Hugo. The Chill series also had a woman psychic assistant/potential love interest, don't know how often that comes up in occult investigators of the era.

They go to Haiti to assist a man whose wife had been resurrected as a zombie. Not much plot wise, but things turn real nasty. The wife is gang raped by voodoo cult members in a ceremony to return her soul to her corpse so that she may suffer more for it. Packs of zombies roam the countryside cannibalizing everyone they come across.

Podgram spends a good chunk of the book in astral form snooping around. In a particularly chilling sequence he comes across a man being roasted alive and helps guides the terrified spirit to the afterlife.

Lecale is a pseudonym for Wilfred McNeilly, one of the most common users of the Peter Saxon house name.

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The Lone Wolf 3: Boston Avenger by Mike Barry

The Lone Wolf 3
Boston Avenger
by Mike Barry (Barry N. Malzberg)
1973, Berkley Medallion

Ex-cop on the run Wulff heads to Boston with twenty pounds of heroin he scored in the last book. He survives an assassination attempt at a toll booth but loses the heroin to two thugs who run off with it. Wulff tosses a grenade at a memorial at a mob mansion, while the two thugs try to sell the heroin to a Harvard associate professor who sidelines as a dealer.

Wulff is captured by the local mafia who agree to let him live if he recovers the heroin. Wulff goes after the prof, who had turned himself in to the cops. Wulff chases the police and recovers the heroin, but finds himself in a dragnet closing in. His master plan to evade the police involves crashing his car in the woods, walking thirty feet into the forest, and taking a nap. Not sure why he didn't just pull over if it was that easy.

The prof goes home, Wulff follows, the mob shows up, people are shot, the end.

Goes hard into characterizations, which might have worked if the story did. None of the motivations checked out - Wulff, anti-heroin crusader, wanted to recover the junk, to the point of shooting cops over it, for ill defined reasons other that using it for bait, somehow. The mafia don wanted the junk gone, something about avoiding flooding the market and lowering prices, as if storing it or moving it to a different territory wasn't an option. Both of them seem to change their minds.

Wulff's man on the run bit didn't play well with the fact that the mafia knows where he is at all times, even knowing what route he's driving. Four different times the mob just shows up, only twice to try and kill him - if the mob's informant network is that comprehensive, they need better reasons why Wulff is still alive. For part of the story they want Wulff to take care of the Prof, which they can't do themselves for undisclosed reasons.

I liked the tone, the most nihilistic of the Mack Bolan clones, but the actual prose is atrocious. Not quite at Lionel Fanthorpe levels, there is constant repetition, with characters repeating things back to each other and repeating that they don't need to repeat things. Wulff himself is Jimmy Two Times. Probably wouldn't have crossed a hundred pages without the filler

There's a line of opinion that this is subversive satire, or that it's building up to a climax in book 14 that will make it all worthwhile but you have to read the whole series to get the whole effect. I think this is based on Malzberg's positive reputation as a science fiction writer. Whether there's a master plan that pays off at the end or Malzberg's phoning it in at a genre he doesn't respect, there's too much pulp and not enough juice.

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Mr. Confidential by Samuel Bernstein

Mr. Confidential: The Man, His Magazine & The Movieland Massacre That Changed Hollywood Forever
by Samuel Bernstein
2006,  Walford Press

Biography of Robert Harrison, publisher of scandal magazine Confidential, as played by Danny DeVito in LA Confidential. Not much to it, and if you came for the gossip there's a running theme that the scandals were mundane. The only piece new to me was Orson Welles allegedly being a biter.

A lot of page length went towards redeeming Confidential for breaking through taboos and social barriers, and minimizing Harrison being a scumbag. Enough here for a decent article, but not enough meat on the bone for 300+ pages.

From Amazon https://amzn.to/3YRZl7h

The Guvnor by G.F. Newman

The Guvnor
by G.F. Newman
1977, Hart-Davis, MacGibbon
1978 Panther edition

Detective Chief Superintendent John Fordham tracks a gang of robbers in hopes of implicating the high society figures that back them. His plans go sideways when a Scottish cop is killed and the police crack down hard on the London underworld.

Cynical and miserable without getting particularly sleazy. Fordham is the closest to a white hat in the book, but the premise behind his crusade doesn't ring true. If you're a royal connected corporate head making millions off crooked contracts, why would you deal with multiple cutouts to involve yourself in a mail train robbery? There was little sense to how the proceeds of the robbery would trickle up.

Also dubious is the idea of a criminal occupation of the draftsman, someone who puts the team together and plans robberies, but works for a flat fee on a contract basis for a third party. Someone in that position can just plan robberies on their own with less risk and more reward.

This was originally a screenplay, and it could have made a decent episode of the Sweeny or Target, but not enough to sustain 334 pages.

From Amazon

Diamondback: It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time by Derrick Ferguson

Diamondback: It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time
by Derrick Ferguson
2021, Pro Se Productions

Believed dead, gunman Diamondback Vogel returns to the gang run city of Denbrook and inserts himself into a war of organized crime and corrupt police. It has a near future setting, just enough to account for societal decay and the occasional technological advancement. Solid action, but too many pages of gangsters telling each other what happened in other scenes.

There's a subplot involving a wife looking for her missing husband and whether Vogel is who he thinks he is, but that will sadly be left dangling.

From Amazon

The Fatty Arbuckle Case by Leo Guild

The Fatty Arbuckle Case
by Leo Guild
1962, Paperback Library

Despite the bottle on the cover, this is a fairly straightforward account of the legal case against Fatty Arbuckle in his three trials, concentrating on the testimony provided and less on the yellow journalism surrounding it as more modern accounts have.

A short summary: Fatty Arbuckle was one of the biggest comics of the silent era. A young actress, Virginia Rappe, took ill at a party at his hotel and died shortly after, possibly from a perforated bladder. Arbuckle was accused of rape and murder, but cleared in court on his third trial after two mistrials.

From the contents of this book, it's clear there was not enough evidence presented in trial to make the case, there is no basis for the more salacious rumors that Fatty killed her with a shard of ice or bottle, but outside of the court the accounts were such a mess that we'll never know if Fatty took advantage of an incapacitated Rappe.

There's a zealous prosecutor whose whole case seemed to hinge on "doesn't he look like a pervert" on one side, and the power of the studio system on the other. While the studios weren't afraid to throw Fatty under the bus, they were notorious for "fixing" criminal issues. Witnesses didn't show up, everyone changed their story, people were threatened to say they were bribed or bribed to say they were threatened.

The star witness, who claimed to hear an ambiguous outcry from Rappe, was either a convicted blackmailer according to one account, or Fatty's lawyers reported her for bigamy according to another. It's interesting to see the defense work, bringing witnesses to counter arguments that never actually got presented.

For instance, they brought a half dozen witnesses to claim that Rappe was an hysteric who would spontaneously rip clothing off and scream in pain. This was to counter testimony that her clothes were found ripped and people heard her screaming, testimony that didn't make it to court. The prosecutor hinted that he would have witnesses who said Fatty stabbed her with a shard of ice that never came up, and the defense had a closing witness they claimed was poisoned in the courtroom with a piece of candy given to her by a mysterious man.

According to this account, 27 doctors disagreed on 100 points of medical opinion. No wonder modern armchair true crime buffs can pick and choose to make whatever case they want. One thing that's outlasted the trial was the defaming of the victim. The defense entered that she got medicine for vaginal inflammation eight years previously, which was meant to be damning. Later accounts claim she was a sex worker, stds contributed to her illness, or a botched abortion, or she was on her way to an abortion, all kinds of misogynistic and irrelevant claims. For instance, the dubious claim that she spread pubic lice around the Max Sennett studio years before doesn't have anything to do with her bladder health or if Fatty attacked her.

Even his supporters seem to have a backup position that there might have been consensual sex (with an almost unconscious drunk women in medical distress) and it was just bad timing for her bladder to go out, the assaults on Rappe's character being in service to that notion.

From Amazon

Dismembered by Jonathan Janz

The Dismembered
by Jonathan Janz
2022, Cemetery Dance Publications

In 1912, a divorced American author travels to England and meets a woman seeking help for her younger sister, who has been seduced by a depraved older Count. After a great deal of talking and atmosphere things ramp up, with the Count and his minions taking prisoners and lopping off body parts.

Less of a short novel and more of a long short story, with only a handful of scenes. Interesting as a genre exercise. The cover evokes 60s gothic romance, he keeps the narration in character throughout, with references to Poe and Shelley, though the story is more shudder pulp than Daphne du Maurier, and the ending is more adventure than horror. Taken on it's own merits as just a story,  the long-winded narrative style went on long enough for me to forget what was happening in the scene, and the lengthy epilogue didn't help with the pace.

From Amazon

Pool of Radiance by Jane Cooper Hong and Jim Ward

Forgotten Realms
Pool of Radiance
by Jane Cooper Hong and Jim Ward
1989, TSR

A novelization of the 1988 video game, and the most D&D feeling D&D novel I've read yet. Our party meets in a tavern (a spellcaster/warrior, cleric of Tyr, and ranger/thief) and are blackmailed into a series of missions by a crooked councilman to clear out the uncivilized parts of the city.

Our party faces orcs, the undead, and a possessed dragon. In a highlight for me, they clear out a gnoll temple, a human temple defiled like Leatherface redecorated. This is probably the goriest and most violent D&D novel I've read - severed body parts, spurting blood, fat sizzling from lightning spells - which was especially incongruent as the audiobook was read like a children's story.

From Amazon

Between Two Worlds by Nandor Fodor

Between Two Worlds
by Nandor Fodor
1964, Paperback Library

Fodor has a psychoanalytical approach to the supernatural so we get a lot of gestalt/collective unconscious/Jungian kind of digressions, with very few actual claims of the paranormal. He actually had the reputation as a skeptic at the time, in that he thought hoaxes were a possibility in some cases.

A hairband disappears. Only a ghost could have taken it, one doesn't simply lose a hairband, you buy one for life.

A dog barks at something he can't see, proof positive of ghosts.

A 70 pound table slides around during a séance in the dark. This was impossible to move by corporeal means - it was on a carpet.

His wife has a dream Hitler shaves off his moustache. The next day he sees an ad in the paper for the Great Dictator. Nobody has previously connected Charlie Chaplin and Hitler's moustaches. Coincidence?

He goes over the deeply stupid case of Gef, the magical talking mongoose, which was made into a movie with Simon Pegg as Fodor and a serial sexual predator as the voice of Gef.

One of the dumber aspects of Spiritualism is the use of spirit guides, the ghosts of dead racial stereotypes which aid in seances. Fodor marvels of the case of a reader who transfigures herself into a "Chinaman" and wonders if she had the skills and facial elasticity to make the change herself, when you know she just squinted and stuck her front teeth out.

A woman claims to be molested by a ghost. It stops for a while when she stuffs a giant iron cross in her undies, but it gets too uncomfortable. For a while she was able to guess where the ghost was and grab and yank off his ghost dick, but that lost effectiveness. The ghost starts coming around the backdoor until she shouted "abnormal!" enough that he swings around to the front. They seek the assistance of a medium and her spirit guide Minnehaha, the fictional woman from the Longfellow poem, and her spirit tribe, which presumably includes Tonto and Billy Jack.

From Amazon https://amzn.to/3WwH8L8

Chain Letter by Ruby Jean Jensen

Chain Letter
by Ruby Jean Jensen
1987, Zebra

Little kid Brian loses his dog in the spooky abandoned nursing home which was also an asylum for the criminally insane. He and his friends find half of a chain letter, see a spooky derelict, and one of them, Shelly, vanishes. The other friend, Abby, sends the chain letter to an older boy she likes. He throws the letter away and ends up driving over a cliff. Abby and Brian make a half assed effort to figure out the chain letter's curse while members of the town are haunted by visions of the missing dog and child. Abby pushes another girl off a cliff and lures Brian to the nursing home. Something happens off-page and Abby drowns in a deep pool of water, the end.

In an epilogue it's explained that Shelly and the dog drowned in the pool, one that search parties somehow missed. Brian's older brother finds the other half of the chain letter, which reveals that sending the chain letter sells your soul to Satan.

I usually don't like to get hung up over the rules, but here being around the letter may or may not result in you mysteriously drowning, sending the letter turns you into a homicidal maniac, throwing the letter away gets you killed, burning it summons a mysterious figure, and holding on to the letter indefinitely has no discernable effect.

The ghosts, spooky bearded man, and haunted asylum don't figure into anything. The chain letter barely does, claiming exactly one victim. While Jensen didn't follow the expected cliché of the chain letter claiming a series of victims, she only replaced it with an ounce of evil child towards the end, spending more time on Brian's dad having an affair with Shelly's mom.

From Amazon

Swag 1: Swag Town by L.S. Riker

Swag 1
Swag Town
by L.S. Riker
1992, St. Martin

Near future America in decline - a new scenario to me, a combination of targeted assassinations of economic figures and financial terrorism decimates America's economy, with foreign companies buying up everything and turning the States into a third world country.

Swag (nickname from the phrase Scientific Wild Ass Guess) is a former cop turned hired gun who has a bodyguard client killed in front of him, dragging him into a plot to control New York's criminal underworld. Swag's role in the plot is a little cloudy, and you could tell the author had some background into finance and economics that they didn't mind sharing at length.

Like a lot of detective novels, Swag mainly just stumbles around with people either dumping exposition or trying to kill him, but the action scenes are some of the best I've read.

From Amazon https://amzn.to/4elKF6d

The Enforcer: The Story of "Happy Jack" Burbridge

The Enforcer: The Story of "Happy Jack" Burbridge
By Jack Burbridge as told to Victoria Chandler
1980, Acclaimed Books

Grabbed this on the strength of the cover in the Men's Adventure section and was surprised to find it was inspirational fiction. Jack Burbridge was a remorseless psychopathic petty criminal who, after a religious conversion in prison, became a remorseless psychopathic public speaker.

Jack went from stealing hubcaps as a kid, graduated to pimping and black marketeering in the Army, moved on to protection and pimping in rural Indiana, before being busted for bank robbery and going to prison, where he became born again, got early release, and started a prison and biker ministry.

Works surprisingly well as a true crime memoir outlining the life of a mob connected minor dirtbag in 1960s Indiana. And if you're worried he gets too preachy at the end, he's far too focused on talking about himself to get around to God much.

Taken at face value (and if you can't trust a pimp turned religious zealot, who can you trust), he at least stopped the assaults, killings, and sexual slavery after he got out. But his account is completely consistent with someone playing up his religious redemption to get out of prison early and stuck with it as a career - he even jokes about how he never had to get a real job.

Happy Jack's story checks almost every box for what those in the biz call Criminal Attitudes. Nothing was his fault, he was the real victim, the corrupt system is out to get him, he wasn't really that bad of a guy, and it's not fair that he faced any consequences at all. Clearly still proud at what a tough guy he was, says that he was a compassionate pimp and only beat women if they acted like a man, whatever that's supposed to mean. Minimizes the harm he did, even to the point of passive voice admitting to a self-defense killing - the other guy "got shot down".

He's not too heavy on the excuses because he's completely devoid of remorse. Mentions that one time, once, for a few minutes, he felt bad about the things he did, but then remembered that he was born again, so he didn't actually do those things, it was the other guy, get off my back, man. An ounce of recognition that he hurt his wife, but even with his kids he's more worried about his self image as a good dad.

The thing that really burned my hide is when a couple times somebody dies instead of him, it was because his mama was praying for him. The other poor schmuck, including someone he kills while driving under the influence, were just out of luck. Maybe their mamas should have been praying.

 Available at https://archive.org/details/enforcerstory000burb - don't keep it in your locker!

From Amazon https://amzn.to/3YPMbI5

Street & Smith's Mystery Magazine Feb 1940

Street & Smith's Mystery Magazine
Feb 1940, vol 5 no 4

Street & Smith ran a bunch of series characters in Mystery Magazine - a full look here https://thepulp.net/pulpsuperfan/2017/04/24/a-look-at-street-smiths-crime-busters/

The Death Lady by William G. Bogart

Townspeople drop dead when the bell tower strikes 13 and the mysterious Miss Death appears. The Scooby-Doo conclusion involves by hypnosis and undetectable poison gas.

Jobs of Jeopardy by Frank Gruber

Jim Strong breaks up an employment agency racket. He gets knocked out twice, and is unconscious as the baddies are dispatched off page.

Double Trouble by Theodore Tinsley

A Carrie Cashin story - kind of a Remington Steele set up with Cashin running the PI business with a male front. Cashin runs across actor impersonators and leads to a dubious treasure in a mansion plot. Way too many exclamation points.

You Can't Figure Women by Ned O'Doherty

A customs agent finds a severed head in a case of scotch and uncovers a French dress smuggling ring.

Death on Silvery Wings by Norman A. Daniels

Neil Morrison of the New York Aerial Police busts up a gang using airplanes as getaway vehicles.

Murders Aren't Nice by W.T. Ballard

Red Drake is a wanted man who gets mixed up in a kidnapping.

WWX World Title - Warlock vs Gila!

 

No lizard is big enough to stand up to the champion. Ray Garton retains the belt.

Warlock by Ray Garton

Warlock
by Ray Garton
1989 Avon

A 17th century warlock is propelled through time and space, followed by a witch-hunter, both landing in late 80s LA. The warlock seeks to put together three hidden pieces of a grimoire which reveals the true name of God, in order that he may read it backwards and undo creation. The witch-hunter teams up with a young woman on a road trip to stop him.

Goes way harder than the movie. The warlock is endowed with "Satan's member" which is his main murder weapon. Haven't seen the movie in a while, but I don't remember the yawning anuses and sagging vaginas of his victims. And I doubt there's a deleted scene of Julian Sands sucking eyeballs out of Mary Woronov's nipples.

Weakest with the banter in the dialogue, which I'm guessing comes straight from the script. Came out two years before the movie was released in America.

From Amazon

Gila! by Les Simons

Gila!
by Les Simons (Kathryn Ptacek)
Signet, 1981

Nuclear tests in New Mexico have mutated gila monsters to monstrous size and they're on a human eating rampage. Similar to 1959's The Giant Gila Monster, only with multiple reptiles and not as good. The violence fell flat for me, with more pages devoted to a herpetologist's romance with an old flame.

In places it fell into a broad, MAD Magazine level satire of government, military, and environmentalists, though the giant monster attacks were played straight.

The 2012 Jim Wynorski film Gila! appears to be a remake of the film rather than based on the book, going by the character's names.

Available from Amazon

WWX World Title - Warlock vs Gila!

 

Can a Ray Garton novelization stand up to the power of Gila!

World War X - Ring 2, Round 1

 

Rockford Files, Man's Book, Alan Partridge, The Shadow, Ken Bulmer, Daniel Mannix, Don Pendleton, John Cleve, and Shaun Hutson stay in the ring for round two.

CADS 2: Tech Battleground by John Sievert

CADS 2
Tech Battleground
by John Sievert

1986, Zebra

The CADS are Computerized Attack/Defense System, troops in eight foot tall battlesuits who are trying to take back America from the Russians after a nuclear attack. The first installment was jam packed; this one has a lot of milling around at their underground base. They fight cannibal hordes, a weapons contractor and his gang, a Russian submarine base, and Florida swamp gangs, mending the Hatfield/McCoy feud along the way.

From Amazon https://amzn.to/3XJDBtN

WWX US Title: Dillon vs D&D

 

The ref has declared a double count out! Neither competitor claims the belt, which remains vacant.

The Vril Agenda by Derrick Ferguson and Joshua Reynolds

The Vril Agenda
By Derrick Ferguson and Joshua Reynolds
2014, Airship 27

Young Dillon seeks out Jim Anthony, Super Detective, to train him on the ways of Pulp Heroing. Anthony's headquarters are attacked, we get a lengthy flashback, then Anthony and Dillon face off against Sun Koh's quest to reinstate the glory of Atlantis.

The highlight here is the presence of various public domain pulp figures - Dan Fowler is the head of the FBI, Anthony's daughter leads Louis Feuillade's Vampires. Sun Koh was the Nazi Doc Savage, and his team are all German pulp figures.

All of these characters are largely lifeless and interchangeable. Alaska Jim acts like an old prospector, and this is the closest we get to a distinct personality. Other than background details, you could have swapped out Operator #5 or Thunder Jim Wade and barely noticed. Even Dillon felt generic. Some of this may be inherent in genre, given that this is the story of two Doc Savage pastiches facing off. Mostly just led me to wonder how there were so many guys over a century old running around.

I didn't care for the audiobook narration, half the characters had a goofy affectation that I found distracting.

From Amazon https://amzn.to/4dRl7hB

Forgotten Realms: Crypt of the Shadowking by Mark Anthony

Forgotten Realms
Crypt of the Shadowking
by Mark Anthony
1993, TSR

A former Harper, a kind of benevolent bard secret society, Caledan Caldorien is brought back into action to stop an evil takeover of a city. Little action and lines so cliché I wondered if this was supposed to be postmodern. To be fair almost none of the story managed to lodge itself in my memory - the only thing I remember from the story is it involved people who can control shadows. There is a monster - a shadevar - which is barely described. I looked it up online, assuming that it wasn't fleshed out because it would already be familiar to D&D players, but they originated with this book.

Available from Amazon

WWX US Title: Dillon vs D&D

Dungeons and Dragons has defended the TV Tile. Derrick Ferguson has faced off challengers to the Young Guns title. Now both move up the ranks to fight for the vacant US Title!

Blood and Honour by Wolf Kruger

Blood and Honour
by Wolf Kruger (Shaun Hutson)
1981, Robert Hale Limited

Sergeant Herzog is a German soldier court martialed and sent to the Eastern Front for refusing to wear his Iron Cross. He received the cross for massacring helpless civilians and refuses to wear it until he thinks he earns it. Herzog is a man of principle - not principled enough to not massacre civilians or stop fighting for Hitler, but principled enough to grumble about it.

The book alternates between frontline battles and officials yelling at each other. It takes over half the book to settle into a typical squad based war novel. The most notable characters are a katana swinging Japanese soldier speaking broken English and a chronic masturbator.

Hutson saves up for the final battle, a massacre in a Russian churchyard, which plays out like a Peckinpah film. It's listed as part of a series, but this first installment is set after the others with different characters.

Available from Amazon https://amzn.to/3MM2sYG

The Crusader 2: The Passionate Princess by John Cleve

The Crusader 2
The Passionate Princess
by John Cleve (Andrew J. Offutt)
1974, Dell

Set after the Battle of Acres in the Third Crusades, Crusaders are harassed by skirmishing forces as King Richard and Saladin negotiate. Knight and archer Guy Kingsaver faces off with the Butcher, the mysterious figure slaughtering knights. But mostly boffing.

Less an historical adventure piece and more a full blown porno novel, which happens to historical detail and excellent action sequences.

Available from Amazon

The Shadow 2: Eyes of the Shadow by Grant Maxwell

The Shadow 2
Eyes of the Shadow
by Grant Maxwell
1931

Gangsters with a pet man-ape try to steal a hidden czarist treasure. Mostly it's Shadow operative Harry Vincent hanging around a cabin receiving orders over the radio. There's a squishing room death trap and an excellent shootout between the Shadow and a bar full of thugs shoehorned in to liven things up.

The first appearance of the Shadow as Lamont Cranston - I believe later it's revealed he took over the real Cranston's identity. His ability to melt into the shadows is unexplained, and he appears to have supernatural strength. He's not invulnerable - he takes a few bullets and is bed ridden for a couple scenes.

Check AbeBooks

Floater by Gary Brandner

Floater
by Gary Brandner
1988 Fawcett

Twenty years after a high school tragedy, three people are sent mysterious messages about a class reunion they're compelled to attend. One of the more shameless It knockoffs, down to a clown theme.

The titular floater is the astral spirit of their classmate who is able to possess bodies, control car engines, and check credit records from beyond the grave. A good chunk of the book is supposed to be the terror of their inability to leave their hometown, but came across as just frustration with rural shops being closed on weekends.

A hint of creepiness with flashbacks of the floater learning to possess bodies, and I like Brandner's writing, but not much of anything going on here. At least it wasn't 1100 pages.

Available from Amazon

Seductions by Ray Garton

Seductions
by Ray Garton
1984, Pinnacle

An alcoholic teacher with the power of precognition stumble across a series of disappearances where the victim only leaves behind a pile of blood. Shapeshifting succubi/incubi that take the form of their victim's desire. Shades of Dead Zone meets The Thing and prefiguring Yuzna's Society with erotic body horror. Garton's first, lean and mean.

Available from Amazon

Cade 1: Darksiders by Mike Linaker

Cade 1
Darksiders
by Mike Linaker
1992, Gold Eagle

Cade is a Justice Marshal of the faraway future where hardcore pornography is transmitted by satellite. Cade and his cyborg (really an android) partner Janek uncover a scheme to kidnap homeless people living underground and force them to work in off-world mining colonies. The story alternated between lifeless shootouts, cop who plays by his own rules clichés, and android schtick.

Available from Amazon https://amzn.to/4dOBJGC

Sam Durell 27 - Assignment: Nuclear Nude by Edward J. Aarons

Sam Durell 27
Assignment: Nuclear Nude
by Edward J. Aarons

1970, Fawcett Gold Medal

Sam Durell is after a painting that conceals a neutrino formula written on the canvas. The four richest men in the world have formed a consortium around the formula, and their hippie daughters have decided to follow Sam around and not have sex with him. Sam just kind of goes to a place, acts tough, and is told where to go for the next scene. Got halfway through - not much had happened at this point and the book had pivoted almost completely to cheap anti-Chinese racism.

For me, Aarons' stuff is like if you took a low budget Bond knockoff, removed all the sex, action, and style, and maybe dumbed down the plot a little. No camp value, but also not serious or complex enough to go the le Carré direction.

Available from Amazon https://amzn.to/3AqLyMc

Nazi Degenerate by Jack Madden

Nazi Degenerate
by Jack Madden
~1976, Prison Camp Books (Stag)

Julia Schmidt is an artist pacifist who is rounded up with her friends and sent to Dachau. She's defiled and tortured by Nazis, but it turns out that's her jam. She's put in a cell with her captured fiancé, Hans, who brings a German shepherd into the mix for some reason, before being handed back to Nazi soldiers. Julia and Hans go back to their cell and are gassed, the end.

Repetitive and anatomically implausible, the only innovation being cunnilingus by rat.

The History of Torture by Daniel P. Mannix

The History of Torture
by Daniel P. Mannix
1964, Dell

I got turned on to Mannix by a interview with Laurence James - https://www.stewarthomesociety.org/interviews/james.htm This and other titles of Mannix informed James' exploitation novels.

A little bit of pop psychology and criminology, but mostly just accounts of torture and execution from ancient Rome to present. I would have liked to see more outside of the western canon, but we get a little bit of Native America, Asian, and African torture methods.

Some highlights - sliding victims back and forth straddling a greased rope until they're sawed through. Peeling off the soles of the victim's feet, filling the pocket with corn kernels, sewing the skin back on, and making them run the gauntlet. Sliding hollow bamboo up the keister, followed by a red hot needle for executions without a trace.

From Amazon https://amzn.to/3WecRC5

Dray Prescot 1: Transit to Scorpio by Alan Burt Akers

Dray Prescot 1
Transit to Scorpio
by Alan Burt Akers (Kenneth Bulmer)
1972, DAW

English sailor Dray Prescot is zapped back and forth between Earth and the planet Kregan by mysterious means, where he goes through cycles of being enslaved and escaping, and rescuing and losing his beloved, the princess Delia. One of the most self-conscious of the Barsoom pastiches. We've got a an often nude Dejah Thoris stand in, an oversexed evil princess in love with a heroic swashbuckler ala Aura and Barin from Flash Gordon, and there's even a throwaway reference to Gor.

Takes a bit to get warmed up, and feels like a fix up novel of short story fragments, but some good adventure here and there. More Douglas Fairbanks than Conan.

Available from Amazon

Hardman: Atlanta Deathwatch by Ralph Dennis

Hardman 1
Atlanta Deathwatch
by Ralph Dennis
Popular Library 1974

Jim Hardman is a disgraced former cop who operates as an unlicensed private detective, along with other minor criminal hustles. He's teamed up with former NFL player Hump Evans, more than a sidekick but doesn't get full co-billing.

Hardman is hired by The Man, a godfather in the Black gangs of Atlanta, to find the killer of his secret white collage-aged girlfriend. This leads Hardman and Evans from the Black bars of Atlanta to rural redneck drinking holes to high priced lawyers and politicians.

The vibe sits nicely between Parker and Hap & Leonard, and the ride along the way works better than the plot, which for me kind of went off the rails a bit towards the end.

The language won't work for some modern audiences. Some of it falls in the category of "reflecting the gritty realities of 1970s Atlanta criminal underworld" while some is just outdated language. When half your characters are African American, using "the black" as a generic pronoun isn't very helpful. Mostly has its heart in the right place, but definitely from a White perspective.

Available from Amazon

TNT: The Devil's Claw by Doug Masters

TNT: The Devil's Claw
by Doug Masters
1985, Charter

A Middle Eastern power has a weather control device that he's using to destroy the Western world and turn the Middle East into a paradise. Our Irish journalist with mildly superhuman powers is on the case.

We get a teams of eight little people eunuch acrobatics murdering people with razors and fisting their mistress, a massive underground base, and technical genius who calls himself Charlie Brown and surrounds himself with nude models named after Peanuts characters. Despite these elements the story drags and only picks up at the end.

This is made worse, so much worse, by his mission in the first half of the book - to seduce a lesbian. And by seduce, well, this was originally French. The scene itself is completely lifeless, devoid of any salacious value, and didn't really affect the story much.

After this, TNT has to satisfy a 69 woman harem to keep the guards from being alerted. This is done in about a page, and I think I timed it at a minute 20 seconds per woman within the story, which would barely cover the logistics.

From Amazon https://amzn.to/3V27Fkf

Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests

Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests
by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
2014, Little, Brown and Company

An oral history of the show, updated to before the Trump era. One interesting aspect is how show business has changed over these 40 years, going from petty, paranoid backstabbing to supportive collaboration. However, the less toxic the show got, the less compelling the book.

By the last third we're down to repetitions of "I was so excited when I got to audition" and "I was so sad when it was time to go." I haven't watched in the 21st century, so lengthy monologues on digital shorts and Stefon didn't do me much good.

The book seemed to push back on any criticism that SNL was a boy's club or far behind the curve on casting demographics. They spend a great deal of time talking about an opening where a Black actor runs back and forth to play multiple parts because there was only one in the cast. On the one hand it seems like they're acknowledging the issue, but given that the same gimmick was used by SNL and even Fridays in  decades past, it's more of an indictment.

Skip if you idolize the early cast members, I think Jane Curtin and Garrett Morris are the only ones that come out unscathed. I'm surprised Chevy Chase can still talk, his jawbone should be powdered the number of punches to the face he's earned.

My favorite story is from Harry Shearer. Garrett Morris had a regular bit as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Shearer also did Sadat and lobbied Loren Michaels to switch for that week's show. Loren seemed to agree, but didn't make the change and didn't tell Shearer, who only found out from the call sheet. Seconds before the sketch starts, Morris leans over to Shearer and says "Hey, you do a pretty good Sadat. What's he sound like again?"

A few interesting anecdotes sprinkled around, but a lot of the same ground covered at length. I think there was a solid hour of the audiobook dedicated to how Michaels manipulated insecure actors with daddy issues, which seems to be most of them.

From Amazon

Nightlife by Brian Hodge

Nightlife
by Brian Hodge
1991, Dell

A Tampa drug dealer gets his hands on a supply of Skullflush, a snortable green powder from South America that turns you into a were version of your spirit animal. He's opposed by our heroes: a dirtbag, his new girlfriend, and a warrior from an Amazon tribe trying to destroy the drug. Possibly the most Tampa any novel has ever been, the way Cloak and Dagger was with San Antonio.

Easily twice as long as it needed to be and doesn't get going until the last quarter, but fun once it gets started. Some wasted potential - it teases having a were-piranha mowing down DEA agents with a BAR and Uzi which doesn't come to pass and commits the unforgiveable sin of having an action sequence at an amusement park (Busch Gardens) without a sequence on an operating ride.

As with a lot of stuff of it's time it's more action than horror and had some cutesy one-liners, though not quite at Freddy levels. Something else about that period was the exaggerated efficacy of homemade weapons. A plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol will not explode like a grenade when lit on fire - believe me, I've tried.

From Amazon

Alan Partridge: Nomad by Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons, and Steve Coogan

Alan Partridge: Nomad
by Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons, and Steve Coogan
2016, Orion

Petty media failure Alan Partridge discovers a stack of letters and receipts that suggest his deceased abusive father took a trip to apply for his dream job at a nuclear power plant, only to no-show the interview. Partridge takes an ill-planned walking trip "in the footsteps of my father" to come to terms with his relationship with his dad, but mainly to commission it as a book and TV series.

I've enjoyed most of the Alan Partridge productions, and aside from the live shows all of them have something to offer, but I think the books are my favorite, as they consist almost solely of bitter ramblings. Minor quibble of it getting a titch cartoonish in places and being tied in with the mediocre movie.

Available from Amazon, the audiobook version is highly recommended

The Funhouse by Dean Koontz

The Funhouse
by Dean Koontz
1980, Jove Books

A teenage girl gets pregnant by her irresponsible boyfriend and she's afraid to ask her religious parents for money for an abortion. There might be a minor subplot about a deformed man killing teens at a carnival but there's no way I'm sitting through another couple hundred pages to see if that goes anywhere.

Novelizations work best when they're slim and there's just not enough movie for over 300 pages. The bloat is from the worst kind of padding - characters arguing and repeating lines back and forth to each other five or six time, followed by an internal monologue of how the conversation went, followed by characters reporting the conversation to someone else.

I've never seen The Funhouse and never read Dean Koontz, and this doesn't do favors for either. From what I've seen it's a dark ride, not a funhouse.

From Amazon

WWX Tag Team Title Final Fall

Startling Detective July 1936

Love Secrets of California's Rattlesnake Romeo by Deputy Sheriff Virgil P. Gray as told to Mark Gibbons

A philandering husband with a habit of seeing his wives drowned is investigated by LAPD. A two-parter, but I'll go ahead and guess they got him.

Spicy Western Stories July 1937

Polly of the Plains - The Devil is a Woman

We step into this serialized cartoon with a couple ladies escaping from quicksand only to be held up by Senorita Diablo.

Spicy Western Stories takes the final fall and claims the Tag Team Title!

WWX Tag Team Title Fourth Fall

Startling Detective July 1936

The Public Enemy and Night Club Suppression by Matt Leach

Editorial by a police captain taking the bold position that we should do something about crime.

Spicy Western Stories July 1937

Feud's End by E. Hoffman Price

Something something cattle rustling something. Had problems following this one, but there was a shootout during a stampede, with piles of writhing wounded cattle providing cover, that could have been something.

Spicy Western takes the fall, bringing each title to two falls each.

WWX Tag Team Title Third Fall

Startling Detective July 1936

Tragedy of the Night Club Beauty

Quick page on the brick beating murder of Florence Thompson Castle, the killer leaving the message "Black Legon [sp] Game" written in lipstick on the mirror. Unsolved at the time, they have since been attributed to serial killer "The Brick Moron" Robert Nixon.

Spicy Western Stories July 1937

The Waco Kid - A Murderer by Ross Putnam

A wanted murderer joins a rustling gang.

Startling Detective gets the third fall.

WWX Tag Team Title Second Fall

Startling Detective July 1936

The Chief's Chair

News briefs with commentary: Black Legion KKK splinter group in Detroit, advocacy for castration, harsher penalties for women murderers, studies from 88 years ago showing prison increases recidivism, KKK floggings in the South, takes credit for catching a wife killer, and the ramifications of executing a child killing minor.

Spicy Western Stories July 1937

Ace in the Hole by James A. Lawson

A hired gun of the "only shoots pistols out of people's hands" variety stumbles into a murder that is instantly resolved.

Startling Detective takes the second fall.

WWX Tag Team Title First Fall

Startling Detective October 1936

The Clue Club: The Mysterious Murder of Algernon Ashe

A bs solve it yourself mystery, which is solved by guessing which of the preselected suspects was the fattest. Not sure that would hold up in court

Spicy Western Stories July 1937

Hell's A-Poppin' by Carl Moore

Woman hating drunkard John Doe drinks himself blind in a saloon before getting involved in a range war or something between bouts of ripping off women's clothing. The shootouts felt more censored than the sex, to the point where I had to infer what was meant to happen.

Spicy Western takes the first fall.

WWX Tag Team Title: Startling Detective vs Spicy Western Stories

 

Long time champion Startling Detective faces off against Spicy Western Stories, three falls to a finish.

Near Dead by Stephen R. George

Near Dead
by Stephen R. George
1992, Zebra

Kind of a dark riff on Ghost. A workaholic man's wife and daughter were murdered by a satanic serial killer. He wants to get on with his life, but he's being haunted by his family's ghosts, who want him to stop their murderer. He teams up with a medium and works with the police and the world of the afterlife to catch him.

Went the thriller direction of a lot of post Silence of the Lambs horror. Tame, bloated, and way too much exposition about how the afterlife does or doesn't work.

Available from Amazon https://amzn.to/4cUKBtH

Man's Book, February 1973

Man's Book
February 1973
Vol 12 No 1

From the dying days of the Men's Adventure magazines before they went full porn. A couple of topless spreads and tons of ads. The texts were very short, maybe four pages worth each at most. Man's Book lasted five more issues.

Savagery in Action - They Prey on Homosexuals by Charles Beach

Broad overview of blackmail against gays.

The Incredible Raid of Italy's Kissing Daughters of Doom by Roy Harper

An Italian sex worker working with anti-fascists sneaks a bomb into a detention center to kill her beloved before he's tortured for information.

10 Weaknesses That Can Doom Your Love Life by L.O. Peterson

Pop sexology

The Monster Vampires Who Lived on Maidens' Blood by Chuck McCarthy

Quick story of Elisabeth Bathory. The torture deaths of her accomplices are a bit more embellished than I've seen elsewhere;

I Pay Off in Lust - Confessions of an Orgy Girl by Lola Bryan

The story of women hired by yacht salesmen to entertain potential clients.

Dance, My Darlings, to the Whip's Evil Song by Lotya Grez as told to Jim McDonald

A woman is forced to play the violin in a concentration camp orchestra while others are whipped.

The Truth About Aphrodisiac Foods 

They don't work and are dangerous. Gave a stat about heroin overdoses in NYC that works out to 800 a year - in 2021 there were 2668 overall overdose deaths, a 234% increase against just a 19% increase in population. Also mentions the "regulation" WWII era diet of 3000 calories a day. I looked up the study and it was more like 3600, but that may have been the baseline for soldiers in the field.

It's Raining Fire on Hell's Beach by Cpl. Ben Vetter

Brutal tale of rangers being decimated behind enemy lines in Italy. The highlight of the mag.

Night Hunter 6: The Labyrinth by Robert Faulcon

Night Hunter 6
The Labyrinth
by Robert Faulcon
1988, Charter Books

Dan Brady finds his kids. A good chunk of the book involves his son attempting to escape captivity from a country estate with not quite the terror and suspense of the Rescuers, the rest is Dan running around a small town and just bumping into things. Arachne started out as a massive occult conspiracy and by the end it's pretty much one guy, with more members of Arachne helping Brady than opposing him.

It's usually nice to have a series wrap up, but the ending was rushed and unsatisfying. Easily the weakest of the series.

From Amazon https://amzn.to/43HdHJC

The Rockford Files : The Green Bottle by Stuart M. Kaminsky

The Rockford Files
The Green Bottle
by Stuart M. Kaminsky
1996, Forge

Rockford is hired to find a missing aspiring actress, gets involved in the world of painted Chinese bottles and Hollywood wannabees, and is framed for murder. An engaging enough mystery with a little action, but like the series it coasts on charm, especially with Rockford's friend Angel trying to start a cat grooming business.

The book is nestled among the TV movies of the 90s, and a lot of it deals with Rockford grieving his dead father Rocky. We also get a little insight into his prison years.

Available from Amazon