Daddy's Little Girl by Daniel Ransom

Daddy's Little Girl
by Daniel Ransom (Ed Gorman)
1985, Zebra

A man travelling through a small town has his teenage daughter disappear. He fiddles around town with the local widowed journalist and they, despite the lack of any evidence, assume a conspiracy. We look in on the various townfolk and occasionally pop in on the captured teen to remind us this is supposed to be horror.

Spins it's wheels pretty much the whole length before exposing the baddies which we already know about. I saw a review that described this as a watered down Richard Laymon tribute, and that kind of tracks.

Tame and aimless. One of Gorman's first books, and presumably improved later in his career.

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Phoenix 2: Ground Zero by David Alexander

Phoenix 2
Ground Zero
by David Alexander
1987, Leisure

With this second installment of Phoenix, David Alexander adds a vital component to post-apocalyptical men's adventure: hard core pornography.

Magnus Trench makes his way through Las Vegas, where he's forced by the town boss The Sheik to fight in the Murder Marathon and ends up with a hippie mutant sex cult in the desert.

Fights, car battles, exploding heads, gun porn, porn porn, a gladiatrix with a strap-on pistol. One of the most excessive novels of the 80s.

The whole series from Amazon

The Bartender 1: Highballs and High Kicks by R.J. Calder

The Bartender 1
Highballs and Highkicks
by R.J. Calder
2023, Point of Impact Publishing

Tough gal Brodie goes undercover as a bartender at a cover for an underground fight club to avenge a dead friend. Quick and brutal action, more good stuff from Point of Impact.

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Black Brute 3: Slave's Revenge by Robert Tralins

Black Brute 3

Slave's Revenge
by Robert Tralins
1974, New English Library

Escaped slave Brutus is on the run, comes across bandits and bounty hunters, and meets up with an escaped slave community hiding in the swamp. He tries to build them into an army with a plan of marching to the coast, seizing a ship, and returning to Africa, but his plans are thwarted and he's captured.

His former slaver ties him down and tries to have a sexing contest, which Brutus of course wins. Not much subtlety with the inferiority complexes in this genre.

Included in Black Roots

WWX: European Title Hardman vs Robert Silverberg

 

Monsters beat mobsters, and Robert Silverberg claims the gold.

Monsters and Things by Robert Silverberg

Monsters and Things
by Robert Silverberg
2023, PS Publishing

Before turning to respectable science fiction, Robert Silberberg cut his teeth writing monsters and aliens for magazines like Monster Parade and Super-Science Fiction. Many had the feel of sub-EC horror comics of the 50s. Some highlights:

An undertaker who brings his products to the next town where he's a butcher.

A spaceship lands on a planet where a ship had crashed a decades ago. A leaky reactor produced a generation of cannibalistic mutants.

After repelling endless waves of unstoppable giant monsters who just wanted to lay their eggs, the human survivors break open the giant eggs and stop on the embryos.

Solipsistic horror as a returning vet finds that most people aren't real.

Fun stuff, probably more my style than his classier stuff.

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Hardman 2: The Charleston Knife is Back in Town by Ralph Dennis

Hardman 2
The Charleston Knife is Back in Town
by Ralph Dennis
1974, Popular Library

Hardman and Hump (who should have gotten equal billing) are hired by the family of a kid who participated in a robbery at a mobbed up party, trying to find him before the mob assassin The Charleston Knife does. The characters and sleazy setting of 1970s Atlanta carry a lot of the weight, and for me it seems as time goes on it won't cover for the plotting as effectively.

Available from Amazon

WWX: European Title Hardman vs Robert Silverberg

 Can Hardman survive the cumulative assault of Robert Silberberg's short fiction?

Bunco Brawl: Hand Five

 

Truth outdraws fiction - True West scoops up the pot.

Apache 1: The First Death by William M. James

Apache 1
The First Death
by William M. James (Terry Harknett)
1974, Pinnacle

Apache warrior Cuchillo is discovered with a stolen knife, which he had traded for some horses. He refuses to defend himself, preferring to get his own revenge, and has two fingers removed by the corrupt military. Cuchillo gets vengeance on the man who traded the knife, and the military captures his wife and newborn child to force his surrender.

His wife is forced to serve a hundred drunken men in the saloon after a wake and things get predictably uglier from there in a sequence that felt like a third of the book. Cuchillo leads an attack on the military, though he is hesitant to kill and is mocked by his more bloodthirsty tribesmen.

The ending felt rushed, and we don't get the Cuchillo of later installments. I've felt the first issues of Men's Adventure series are often the weakest, focused on the origin story.

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True West April 1955

True West
April, 1955

Children of the Raven by Norman B. Wiltsey

Part of a series about Crow leader Plenty Coups. During a ceremony he cuts off a finger so that his tribe can find him by the smell of blood, the first of multiple defingerings in this magazine.

Bob Ford, The Man Who Killed Jesse James by Stephen Balcomb

Ford's post-James gang life as a dirtbag saloon owner. He spend some time in Creede Colorado, a mining boomtown that could be a substitute for Deadwood. Creede also turns up multiple times.

I Still Dig for Buried Treasure by Josh Drake, Jr.

Man with a vague sense of where buried loot might be in Oklahoma spends most of his time digging false holes to throw other treasure hunters off the trail.

The Lost Fingers of Mack Hughes by Fred Gipson

Quickie about a cowhand getting his fingers yanked off from a rope tied to a horse, then eaten by various pets.

Devil's Grin by John T. Lynch

The story of Soapy Smith, petty conman turned criminal kingpin who ran the town of Creed before making his way to Alaska, where he was shot while trying to storm a town meeting.

Tombstone, Arizona by Kent Christy

Good overview of the town, from this history of mining operations to the OK Corral.

Outlaws Never Die by J. Charles Davis

A review of various claims of wild west figures faking their deaths and living well into the 20th century.

"Heap Good Medicine" by Bill Huntington

A bit about a native tribe thinking a reused mustard plaster could cure all ailments.

Gentleman Jackass by A.M. Hartung

A tribute to the noble burro.

Wash Barker and the Rock Pens by J. Frank Dobie

More never recovered buried loot.

Buffalo Roundup at Sea by Douglas Nelson Rhodes

In 1934, gum tycoon William Wrigley, Jr. brought a breeding population of buffalo to Santa Catalina Island, which proceed to wreak havoc. 

They Stole the Parson's Pants! by Stan Zamo

Back to Creede, CO, a travelling priest rounds up donations, having his pants stolen so donators could count his earnings and double it.

Creede, CO, current claim to fame is having the world's largest fork at 40 feet. It was built to beat the fork at Springfield, Missouri, which now specifies they have the World's Largest Fork By Mass.

Crow 4: The Black Trail by James W. Marvin

Crow 4
The Black Trail
by James W. Marvin (Laurence James)

Crow becomes the guide and bodyguard of Zulu Prince Mavulamanzi, who is touring America with his entourage of slaves, which includes a White woman who Crow, of course, has sex with. They run afoul of the local Apaches, and the two make a move to rescue their captive servants.

A step down in the action and sleaze, replaced with casual racism. I didn't get the sense that Crow hates Black people any more than he hates everyone else, but that doesn't stop him from using slurs just to be a dick.

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