The Spider 113: Secret City of Crime by Grant Stockbridge

The Spider 113
February 1943; v29 #1
Secret City of Crime
by Grant Stockbridge (Norvell Page)

The Spider infiltrates the underground city of Easy Street, run by Perfect Crimes, Inc, where hoods can learn new skills while they hide out on the lam. The mastermind, The Brain, stages disasters like train accidents to cover up for bloody bank robberies. Nita, Jackson, and Ram Singh are captured and held hostage.

At one point, The Spider instantly hypnotizes a hood to let him into a secure area, reveal secret information, and stand guard to shoot any other criminals who come in the room. Completely lets the air out of the rest of the story - why doesn't he just keep doing that through the whole story?

Ebook available from Radio Archives 

Bedeviled by Wenzell Brown

Bedeviled
by Wenzell Brown
1961, Monarch

Part true crime, part psychological case studies, all clearly made up from whole cloth. These five cases center around the concept of the death wish: people seeking to be punished to satisfy their guilt over sexual impulses. For Brown, this means that the victims were quire literally asking for it.

A starlet forces a migrant worker to tie her up and whip her. Things go to far and she is strangled to death. For Brown, not only is the woman responsible, she is responsible for her murderers execution. Couldn't find any real cases of a young Hollywood star married to a famous producer being tied down and murdered, figured that would have shown up on Mysteries and Scandals.

An American working in Cuba cross-dresses as a woman to lure men, with the explicit purpose of being beating up by them, before being murdered by an African sect.

A lesbian, feeling guilty about it, taunts a gang hoodlum and is gang raped, cause serious injury and brain damage that left her nearly blind. She's later run over by a drunk driver who flees the scene, who is the last victim of her death wish rampage. Brown complains that the jury in his trial was not made aware that the victim was a lesbian, which was somehow a mitigating factor.

A teacher with an incredibly specific kink. She slowly seduces her students, takes them to a NYC hotel on New Year's Eve, taunts them into raping her (again, according to Brown), then yells at them to leave her alone. She is eventually murdered, the poor man.

A woman has sex with her son and is murdered by him. You know this is fake because it's an adopted son, the same cop out that lives on in dryers across the internet. He ends this section complaining that Americans are too uptight when it comes to incest.

Modern readers will get whiplash with this one. The vibe is very much that of a progressive,  sociological, compassionate look at the roots of behavior, then spits out victim blaming homophobia that would make Anita Bryant blush.

Included in Wildside's True Crime Megapack, from Amazon

Nick Carter: Killmaster 188 Death Island by Nick Carter

Nick Carter: Killmaster 188
Death Island
by Nick Carter (David Hagberg)
1984, Ace Books

The Chinese are riling up natives on a Pacific Island to interfere with a radar installation. Still had the feel of a 60s espionage novel, but a bit darker in parts. The natives are shown projections of actors killing and raping children, and Carter gets strapped to a chair with a hole in the seat and a fondue chafing dish underneath. Otherwise a bit tepid.

From Amazon

True Confessions August, 1974

True Confessions
August, 1974
Vol 82 Iss 625

Why I Kidnapped My Own Baby

Tired of his wife leaving the baby in the car while shopping, husband of the year kidnaps the kid to teach her a lesson, only for her to disappear. Kept waiting for the ironic gotcha back at the husband, but no, it just keeps getting more horrible.

The Newspapers Call Me His Black Sweetheart

A judge helps out a waitress while having an affair at a motel, resulting in him helping her getting jobs and paying for her school. A newspaper takes a picture of an indiscrete moment, there's a secret father, and a political scandal which just kind of fizzles out.

I Became a Street Beggar to Support My Baby Girl

Overlong bit about a poor lady. The begging didn't enter into it as much as her older married sugar daddy.

Jenny's Last Ride

A teenage girl's father commits suicide, she blames Mom, runs away, meets another girl at the bus station, gets her bag stolen, goes hitchhiking, the other girl gets raped and killed by a truck driver with the author escaping.

The Cat That Saved My Daughter's Sanity

Narrated by an overbearing mother: a rebellious kid gets pregnant, attempts suicide, is institutionalized, and has the baby taken away from her. She gets a kitten, which is nice, I suppose.

My Wife's Crazy Fear of Bugs Nearly Killed Our Baby

A neurotic mom  leaves her baby outside because she's afraid of a hornet, causing second degree sunburns. Her shrink finds the cause, which instantly cures her.

Tonight You'll Know Who a Real Man Is!

A woman in Alaska carpools with an abusive POS who tries to rape her after she beats him in a shooting contest. She threatens to stab him, earning his respect.

My 10-Year Engagement to a Total Stranger

Door to door salesman jokes that he'll be back to marry a customer ten years later and comes back to stalk/romance her.

Bunco Brawl: Hand Four

 

Crow shoots Renegade and Lassiter under the table and scoops up the pot.

Lassiter 6: High Lonesome by Jack Slade

Lassiter 6
High Lonesome
by Jack Slade (Peter McCurtin)
1969, Leisure Books

Lassiter comes in to a town to find his bounty already dead and the saloon full of hired guns. Two factions are in war over the town and Lassiter is recruited as Sheriff by one side. Lassiter sets up a meeting with the other side to get a Yojimbo thing going, but the book isn't long enough to support that so it gets cut short by all out war so Lassiter sneaks back into town to steal some money.

From Amazon

Renegade 5: Macumba Killer by Ramsey Thorne

Renegade/Captain Gringo 5
Macumba Killer
by Ramsay Thorne (Lou Cameron)

Captain Gringo is hired to deal with zombie revolts on a British sugar plantation. The previous installments have a great sense of movement, with Gringo constantly on the run, but this one felt quite stationary. There's a few mild Scooby Doo reveals and not much else.

The last installment had Gringo having sex with an underage girl, and this one has him raping a woman who pissed him off. The scene was out of character and felt like it was shoehorned in. I almost get the feel Cameron is being revolting on purpose.

From Amazon

Crow 3: Tears of Blood by James W. Marvin

Crow 3
Tears of Blood
by James W. Marvin

Full blown psychopath Crow is looking to make some money and is town when a prominent citizen and his poorly reputed young wife are kidnapped. Crow agrees to a bounty to rescue them with a bonus for each kidnapper he kills. Crow tracks them down, killing a few folks along the way, is captured, sleaziness ensues, he escapes, then resolves in mass violence.

Continues the pattern of well staged tactics performed by a remorseless monster with no redeeming qualities, so of course the series is a favorite of mine.

There's a weird framing device of someone telling this story years later and a few references to the Apache series shoehorned in at the beginning, neither of which have anything to do with the story.

From Amazon

Bunco Brawl: Hand Four

 

Three new players ante up. Sociopathic Crow joins the buttstuff bandit Renegade and new-comer Lassiter.

The Executioner 10: Caribbean Kill by Don Pendleton

The Executioner 10
Caribbean Kill
by Don Pendleton

Mack Bolan flies straight from Las Vegas to Puerto Rico, smashes his plane into a mafia compound and hits the ground running. After some jungle combat he rescues a sex worker who ends up being a federal agent, rescues a hostage, and raids a mansion to take out the local head. Along the way he recruits a mafia pilot 'Nam veteran.

Bolan learns of a Federal Government effort to have him snuffed out. The perceived enemy also expands, to include governments and corporation who profit from organized crime.

Available at Amazon 

WWX: Tag Team Championship - Spicy Western Stories vs Rocket Stories

 

The ref declares a double count out and the belt is vacated. No winner!

WWX Tag Title: Rocket Stories v01n01

Rocket Stories v01n01
April 1953

v01n01

The Quest of Quaa by H.A. De Rosso

A man stranded on Venus after getting space sickness as a teen is recruited in a mission to discover who's been putting mind destroying Quaa in the Venusian cure-all Panaceum. With a different McGuffin this could have been a western with detective elements, riding animals in a hunt and facing savage aborigines. Without much reading to back it up, I've had a low opinion of 50s scifi fiction as being formulaic and juvenile, and stories like this haven't changed my mind.

Welcome Voyagers by Hubert J. Bernhard

Future year 1970, Americans attack a Martian envoy with missiles, but they cure a general's cancer and we all become friends.

This World is Condemned by Ward Botsford

A low-tech planet joins an interplanetary confederation by exporting stamps to philatelists. That world was not condemned.

From achive.org

WWX Tag Title: Spicy Western Stories v02n03

Spicy Western Stories v02n03
July, 1937

v02n03

Sheep Hater by Clint Morgan

Dirtbag cowboy is in love with a woman who won't marry him because she's ashamed of her father. He bangs her, bangs her sister, gets caught, and is forced into marrying sis, who turns out to be a shrew. He becomes a drunkard, is framed for murder, cleared, the marriage is invalidated, and his first love evidently didn't have other options.

Rodeo Rats by Rex Norman

Contemporary crime story. A rodeo star bangs the suspect in his boss' murder, a bubble dancer used by the New York syndicates as bait in a gambling scam.

Hell in Hidden Valley by King Saxon

A wandering cowpoke stumbles across a rancher under attack.

Available from archive.org

WWX: Tag Team Championship - Spicy Western Stories vs Rocket Stories

 

Surprise winner Spicy Western Stories slaps leather against Rocket Stories.

Bunco Brawl: Hand Three

 

All three authors fold, clearing the table for the next hand.

Slocum 1: Hanging Justice by Jake Logan

Slocum 1
Hanging Justice
by Jake Logan
1977, Playboy Press

Slocum is forced into jury duty for a trial of a notorious criminal gang. There's a subplot or maybe a flashback of Slocum being captured and turned in by a crooked bounty hunter. None of these really go anywhere, and the plot is confusing despite not much going on.

Slocum himself is hard on his luck schlub, which would have worked better with a less grim tone. I don't think there were any on-screen sex scenes, and there was little action. By the end it was just rambling.

Some literary flourishes in parts, but they just seemed to underline that the author would rather be writing a different book.

From Amazon

Six-Gun in Cheek: An Affectionate Guide to the "Worst" in Western Fiction by Bill Pronzini

Six-Gun in Cheek: An Affectionate Guide to the "Worst" in Western Fiction
by Bill Pronzini
1997, Crossover Press

There's a serviceable history of popular western fiction in the framing, but I've been so broken by pulp fiction that all of this sounds normal to me. There's a little bit of silliness with overdone slang, but there was nothing here to snicker at or appreciate the audacity, it's just western fiction.

From Amazon

Bunco Brawl: Hand Three

 

Last hand's winner Breed antes up against Slocum and Six Gun in Cheek

Garth Marenghi's Incarcerat

Garth Marenghi's Incarcerat
by Garth Marenghi 
2023, Coronet

Three more stories escaped from the mind of Nick Steen, the fictional author written by another fictional author, etc.

The first involves Steen being captured by a secretive corporation for psychic research. The second is a gothic/folk/evil doll combination, and the third is a Freddy parody with a dash of Candyman - the Randyman, a wrongfully accused toilet attendant getting vengeance from beyond the grave.

This one didn't do it for me. Trimmed down the underlying stories may have been better, and I know that it's half the schtick to have purposefully repetitive and overwrought exposition, but it wears a titch thin after 400 plus pages.

From Amazon

Pavement Princesses by Kathy Woods

Pavement Princesses
by Kathy Woods 
1977, Fawcett Gold Medal

A thin veneer of investigative journalism over Penthouse Forum style smut vignettes of the pavement princesses, also known as lot lizards, sex workers who frequent truck stops. A few accounts make some attempt at realism, but a lot of the narrative depends on the notion that truckers are incredibly desirable and women get on the game for the amazing sex. Too sleazy for a sociological text, a bit restrained for 70s smut, though some interest as a time capsule.

Available to borrow on archive.org 

Available for purchase on Amazon

Frenzi 3: Six Bullets Left by R.J. Calder

Frenzi 3
Six Bullets Left
by R.J. Calder
2022, Point of Impact Publishing

Former mafia hitman John Frenzi is on the run since his last encounter in Florida. He makes it as far as Belle Rivière, Louisiana before his car breaks down and he runs into mafia goons in town to smuggle in some dope. Wounded, under-armed, and outnumbered, he uses his wits to hide in the small town before dealing with the mob and corrupt sheriff.

Starts off small scale until things ramp up once mafia backup and the Black Panthers get involved, giving us the best action yet in the series.

From Amazon https://amzn.to/40vDYcX

Breed 2 The Silent Kill by James A. Muir

Breed 2
The Silent Kill
by James A. Muir (Angus Wells)
1977, Sphere

Breed continues his hunt for his family's killers. He comes across a wagon train stranded in the snow trying to cross the Sierras. He comes to the group five days away from Carson City, but instead of turning back they spend over a month facing the elements, and the bulk of the story is miserable winter survival.

A huge step down from the brutality of the first installment to standard western fare.

From Amazon

Joe Gall 10 - The Ill Wind Contract by Phillip Atlee

Joe Gall 10
The Ill Wind Contract
by Phillip Atlee

1969, Fawcett

Joe Gall is a former CIA agent and current rich a-hole who does contract work for the agency. A scientist is working on puromycin, which causes memory loss in mice. Gall hangs around Japan for half the novel in Japan waiting for orders. He runs into a half-Black, half-Japanese sumo wrestler a couple times in a subplot that goes nowhere, a running theme here.

The puromycin is forgotten about, Gall's real mission is to smuggle 10,000 pounds of precious metal out of Indonesia. Gall loads it in the back of his sedan (about 10 times the average carrying capacity, guess they build different in Indonesia) and drives it a couple miles, where someone else unloads, arranges transportation, moves it to Japan, and unloads. Not sure where Gall comes in, another running theme.

The smuggling portion is dealt with quickly to make room for the real plot - Gall is pulled in to the 30 September Movement's coup attempt and tasked to saving generals targeted for assassination. Which he fails at. He does assist in reclaiming a communication building in an unlikely sequence in which he sneaks in and doses the enemy's food with the puromycin, which makes them forget how to shoot their guns.

A communist paper claims responsibility. Gall stops the army from suppressing the paper and has them force the press to print more, in order to whip up a backlash that in real life resulted in around a million deaths. Yay.

Quickly back to the smuggling, which Gall is just along for the ride. There's a "love" interest, but the sex scene involves him calling her a whore for a couple pages and a quick two sentence sex scene:

"She was in her natural position, on her back, when I took her first. Then I flipped her over expertly, because a lot of those lonely journeys of mine had been to seaport towns." Which I'm assuming is butt stuff. I'm not sure why he's being coy - this is right after he tells her he can tell she sleeps around a lot by the smell of her vaginal musk.

Gall is a miserable prick without the charm of a Bond or a Hammer, and is a passive character in what's basically a combination travelogue and historical novel.

The name Phillip Atlee sounded familiar - he's the brother of CIA officer David Atlee Phillips, who's been accused of involvement in various political assassinations.

From Amazon

Encyclopedia of Abnormal Sex by Roger Blake

Encyclopedia of Abnormal Sex
by Roger Blake
1965, Brandon House

One of a flood of fake sexology texts that came in the wake of the Kinsey Report, the fake scholarship used as a cover for hard core vignettes.

Highlights include a family straight out of the Aristocrats, a bike seat sniffing high school janitor, and a man who would gather up a crowd of homeless people to watch him be buggered by his chauffer, which I think was a line in Soft Cell's Sex Dwarf.

The only move new to me was 69 bagpiping, and the claim that Europeans and gay Americans are way more into armpits than American straights are.

An interesting aspect is how much is invested in the male/sadist/dominant and female/masochist/submissive binary. 

From Amazon

War Dogs by by Nik-Uhernik

War Dogs
by Nik-Uhernik (Nicholas Cain)
1984, General Paperbacks/Panda

Set in the early 60s, the War Dogs are a team of brutal soldiers recruited Dirty Dozen style: a soldier of fortune, a soldier who beat his CO to death, a cop who beat a mentally ill prisoner to death for mouthing off, a drug smuggling pilot, and the only sympathetic figure, a sex worker turned vigilante. They're recruited Nick Fury style and trained in an underground bunker before being used in assassination missions around the globe.

The book breezes by the 450 pages and is strongest in the origin stories of the various members. It later struggles as a lot of team books do - the lieutenant who recruits goes from being a shadowy figure to the main character, with the rest of the team pulling back as support. The sex worker gets the most characterization, or she might just stand out as the others are distinguished by various levels of dirtbaggery.

The story oddly insisted on moral certainty while carrying the theme of moral ambiguity. The concept of the team was that American needed a dirty team to carry out dirty jobs, and that the War Dogs should kill without question. Then the team are shown ironclad evidence that what they're doing was right, kind of undercutting the theme.

After slaughtering a seemingly innocent South American village, the team are shown film of their victims' horrid crimes, presumably taken with hidden 16mm cameras all over town. And when the Lt. struggles with the morality of a decision, he happens across a detailed diary which answers all of his questions.

I had some issues with the realism in places. The lieutenant swoops in, sometimes minutes after a recruit is caught by the police - even with an intelligence network that broad there's still travel time. And the War Dogs MO involves hovering a helicopter over the target's building, letting the crew jump off onto the roof or balcony, without anyone hearing it. Started off strong, but some of the convolutions turned me off by the end.

From Amazon

Dusty Ayres: The Green Thunderbolt

Dusty Ayres: The Green Thunderbolt
November, 1934

Dusty Ayres is a future war pulp, combining air war with yellow peril. Asian warlord Fire Eyes leads the Black Invaders on a quest for world domination. Humble pilot Dusty uncovers an enemy base in Mexico that plans on launching a proto-atomic bomb guided missile. The series is running out of steam at this point - some good action, but mostly capture/escape cycles.

Dusty Ayres was unusual in having supporting short stories set in the same universe, but with none of the main characters, both involving a wrongfully accused pilot clearing his name.

Reprint from Amazon 

Traveler 1: First You Fight by D.B. Drumm

Traveler 1
First You Fight
by D.B. Drumm (Ed Naha)
1984, Dell

The series is set 15 years after a 1989 apocalypse. The Traveler was a special forces op who was exposed to an experimental neurotoxin which allows him to sense fear and pain in others, but makes him oversensitive to world around him, combined with good old fashioned PTSD.

Drumm travels the country looking for other members of his unit. He comes to a town run by two warring factions, and plays against them Yojumbo style as they look for a stash of weapons.

Good action and manages a great balance of elements: deeply grim while keeping a sense of humor, realistic characters in cartoonish situations.

Available from Amazon https://amzn.to/3BX67Bb