At the tail end of a previous posting on pulp writer Carl Buchanan, aka James Robert Peery, including a long bibliography, I closed with the following:

    “In addition, James Robert Peery had a letter published in the July 1939 issue of Clues, which neither Victor nor I have seen. If anyone has a copy of the magazine, we’d love to know what he had to say.”

   Thanks to the assistance of pulp collector Paul Herman, I now have a copy of that issue. Not only did Peery have a letter quoted, but some of the others who write in had interesting things to say as well.

H. L. Melleney:

    “I got a kick out of ‘The Drums Drone Death,’ by J. Allan Dunn, in the last issue of Clues. This fellow Dunn certainly knows his locale, and the character, John Carter, is swell. I would like to read some more John Carter yarns, with the New Hebrides background.”

Editor: “Mr. Dunn is now writing a John Carter complete novel for Clues.”

Ray Robinson:

    “Your all-star authors for Clues are a splendid choice. I want to compliment you especially on J. Allan Dunn.

    “His ‘The Drums Drone Death’ makes the New Hebrides really there for us. His character is alive and human. Let us have more of these interesting stories.

Editor: “Mr. Peery, whose new book is a sensation, used to be our ‘Carl Buchanan.'”

James Robert Peery:

    “Heap long time I have been a reader of Clues — from ’way back when I sold the former editors an occasional short or novelette under my Carl Buchanan pseudonym. The Donald Wandrei yarn [“The Painted Nudes”] in the current issue is good. Also liked the short story [“ Murder Is a Pipe”] by [Otis Adelbert] Kline — but the best yarn in the April issue was by J. Allan Dunn. Note that you asked for reader comment on this one. I believe a John Carter series would go over in a big way. Of course, I read from the point of view of a writer — can’t quite relax and enjoy a story for admiring or criticizing technique of the author.

    “I think your readers appreciate authenticity. Personally I’d like to see John Carter in action again. I get bored with these super-detectives. The change to a human, red-headed young fellow feeling his way is quite a relief. The locale should provide Dunn with plenty good ideas for plots.

    “You’re doing a swell job of editing. Keep up the good work!”

   Unfortunately, in spite of this groundswell of support from readers for another story about John Carter, about whom I know nothing more than this, it never happened. I could have missed it in my search through the Cook index, true, but “The Drums Drone Death” appears to have been the only story that J. Allan Dunn ever had published in Clues. If the novel was ever written, it was published elsewhere.

DEFENSELESS. 1991, New Visions Pictures. Barbara Hershey, Sam Shepard, Mary Beth Hurt, K. T. Walsh, Kellie Overbey, Sheree North. Director: Martin Campbell.

   Billed as a thriller, it is every inch that, with lots of dark night suspense and a bloody scene or two. But Defenseless is also a noir film – neo-noir, if you will – with the just the right combination of lighting (which for a color film is quite remarkable) – and a detective movie, too, with just the right amount of legal pyrotechnics.

   Martin Campbell later directed both GoldenEye and Casino Royale, plus both recent Zorro movies (the ones with Catherine Zeta-Jones), which is quite a resume in itself. Working behind the cameras, Campbell knows how to grab viewers quickly (and smoothly) into the story and keep them there.

   But this is Barbara Hershey’s film all the way. As attorney Thelma “T. K.” Knudsen Katwuller, she’s in (at an estimate) 90% of the movie’s footage, and if she weren’t watchable (but she is) there’d be no reason to watch at all. Her most striking feature in this movie is a large mane of unruly and terminally curly jet black hair, but as a character, it’s her disorganized and unlucky-in-love life that makes her sympathetic and vulnerable.

   Brief story summary: She’s having an affair with her client (K. T. Walsh), a rich businessman who’s in trouble because a warehouse he owns has been used to make pornographic films. When she learns that he knows all about it, she goes ballistic. She’s also the one who calls the police when almost immediately after she finds him dead. As it happens, the dead man’s wife (Mary Beth Hurt, so blonde and southern it makes your teeth ache) was her college roommate 20 years earlier, and somewhat unaccountably she wants T. K. to represent her when she’s arrested for the crime.

   As a homicide detective named Beutel, Sam Shepard is the only low-key player in the ensemble, so lanky and laconic you could picture him splitting rails in his spare time. There is a lot more I could tell you, but I’ve already told you more than I usually would, figuring some of the twists already mentioned should remain just that, twists. On the other hand, as I’ve already said, this is the barest bones of a rather complicated plot, and I’m holding back on all of the choicest parts.

   I don’t know if I’ve got you leaning toward watching the movie or not, if by chance a copy happens along your way, but if you do – decide to watch, that is – you’re better off with the video rather the DVD version. There’s no warning on the label, but about 14 minutes are missing. The cuts remove the nude scenes, not surprisingly, but several other scenes are clipped as well, and others are completely eliminated. Also missing are crucial pieces of the plot, nicked to death here and there.

JOHN FARRIS – Sacrifice. Tor; paperback reprint, June 1995. Hardcover edition: Tor, September 1994.

   It has just occurred to me that John Farris has one of the longest careers of any mystery writer still active. His first novel, The Corpse Next Door, was published by Graphic Books, a small but solid line of mostly paperback originals, in 1956. Farris was born in 1936, so if the book wasn’t published until he was 20, the odds are the most of it was written when he was still nineteen.

   He switched to the pen name of Steve Brackeen for his next few books, typical Gold Medal thrillers, except that Gold Medal didn’t do them. One of them, Baby Moll (Crest, 1958), will be reprinted by Hard Case Crime later this year under his own name, a mere 50 years later.

   Farris eventually became the author of the “Harrison High” books, which sold in the millions, and he became an even bigger seller once he started writing horror fiction that was invariably tinged with the supernatural. Books like The Fury (1976) and All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes (1977) are as close to classics in the field as you’re going to get, and yet … even though Farris has averaged close to a book a year since those two books, unlike Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz and mystery-wise, Ed McBain, who came along about the same time he did, it is as if no one’s ever heard of him. Nobody knows his name.

   (As a special note, back when Mystery*File was a print magazine, Bill Crider did a column on John Farris’s early career for me, and you can find it online here. You should go read it.)

   Even though his later books veered convincingly away from standard mystery fare, there’s enough criminous element in them that most of them are included in Crime Fiction IV, Al Hubin’s bibliography of the field. Sacrifice is listed marginally, for example, but in Part 24 of the online Addenda to the Revised CFIV, the dash before the title has been removed.

   Rightfully so. One of the characters is C. G. Butterbaugh, a detective on the trail of the mysterious Greg Walker, who tells the first part of the story, and whose miraculous recovery from a gunshot wound to the head simply amazes the doctors on his case. When Walker and his daughter Sharissa then disappear into the mysterious interior of Guatemala from their sleepy town in Georgia, Butterbaugh needs all of his reading of Sherlock Holmes not to be shaken from the case.

   Nor to be overwhelmed from what he discovers. Take the title of the story, Sacrifice; the fact that Sharissa, although a high school senior, is still a virgin; and the Guatemalan jungle – and what does that add up to you?

   I won’t say, but every reviewer on Amazon will tell you, and as a matter of fact, so does Farris, long before this 379 page novel is halfway over. The question really is, how to we get to the ending from where we are, and who among the sizable cast of characters will survive?

   I doubt that anyone could call this great literature, but once picked up, this is a book not easily put down. There might be something deeper going on, if you were analyze the all of the various relationships, many of them sexual in nature, that develop and entangle each other in this tale – the ending being particularly observant and poignant –

   I’ll take that back. There’s no “might” about it. What this book demonstrates is why Farris has survived as a writer, and those who wrote most of the novels published during the horror boomlet in the 1980s and early 1990s have not. There’s some food for the mind in his fiction, at least this particular example, not just a slug to the gut.

   The artist for this nifty paperback cover isn’t identified, so I won’t hazard either a guess or an opinion, but if you believe you know, I’d surely like to hear from you.

   That the girl looks something like Betty Grable, for those of us old enough to remember her, is not too surprising, as she starred in the 1941 film version with Victor Mature, Carole Landis, and Laird Cregar. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the film, and now I’m itching to.

   Frank Loose sent me the following publication data for the book, supplemented by my own records:

Hardcover:

   Dodd, Mead & Co., 1941.
   Robert Hale, UK, 1943.

Paperback:

   Handi-Book #27, 1944.
   Popular Library #129. No date stated. Frank says 1948; Graham Holroyd says 1947. Dealers on ABE seem to be 50-50 either way.
   Bestseller Mystery B204, digest-sized, 1957.
   Bantam Books A2145, 1960.
   Black Lizard, 1988.
   Vintage, 1991.

   Frank also adds, “I have a copy of the Black Lizard, but I want to read the original. If I understand correctly, the revised version starts with the Bantam book in 1960. Everything before that date should be the original unedited, unrevised version.”

   I’m sure Frank is right about this. I’m not sure, but I believe the reason for the revision is that Fisher himself wanted to “modernize” the book. If so, it’s the same thing John D. MacDonald did toward the end of his career when he published two collections of short stories taken from the 1940s pulp magazines. He rewrote some of the stories to make them seem as though they were taking place in the 1980s.

   It was a really bad idea, as far as I was concerned — something like “colorizing” black-and-white movies.

   But I don’t know for sure if that’s what Fisher did, nor why Black Lizard didn’t go back to the original novel for their edition. Once again, if you have more information, I hope you’ll pass it along.

      From the back cover:

Once there was a girl named Vicky Lynn. She met Pegasus, a screen writer, and they fell in love. Then Pegasus and three friends pooled their resources to sponsor Vicky. They built her into a glamorous personality, and she won a screen contract. And the next day she was murdered.

For Pegasus, Vicky’s death was the end of the world, until he became aware of Vicky’s lovely sister Jill, who believed in him when everyone branded him killer.

To escape the police, Peg and Jill ran away, but their flight turned into a cycle of terror, of hiding and running from the ever-approaching shadow of a relentless, obsessed pursuer!

   What turned out to be unusual in this grouping of “A” authors taken from Part 23 of the online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV, is two incidental pairings of authors with the same name, two with the same year of birth.

ALFRED, WILLIAM. 1922-1999. Add as a new author entry. Longtime professor in medieval studies at Harvard University, specializing in early English literature.
      -Hogan’s Goat. New York City: French, 1965. [Play.] Setting: New York City, 1890. TV movie: PBS, 1971 (scw: William Alfred; dir: Glenn Jordan). “A play in blank verse about the bitter political maneuvering among Irish-Americans in Brooklyn in the late 19th century.”

ALLINGTON, MAYNARD. 1931- . Career US Air Force officer, 1951-76, when he became a writer. Author of three wartime thrillers included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      The Court of Blue Shadows. Washington: Brassey’s, hc, 1995. Updated setting: Europe, past. “A survivor of the Dachau concentration camp is haunted by his experiences […] as he searches for retribution.” [Reviewed in the New York Times.]

      The Fox in the Field. Washington: Brassey’s, hc, 1994. Setting: India, World War II. “Derek Carr, a gambler and former arms smuggler blackmailed into working for British intelligence.”
      The Grey Wolf. Warner, pb, 1986. [Corrected date.] Setting: Russia, World War II. “A thrilling tale of a British agent and his involvement in a military coup against Stalin, based on actual events in the USSR in 1942.”

ANDERSON, DON. 1931- . Add as a new author entry. BBC national and international television news reporter; left to form his own media, communications and web company in the 1990s.
      Heatshield. Pan, UK, pb, 1990. Setting: Ireland, future. “On a secret mission in the Russian space shuttle, a cosmonaut is forced into a crash landing off the coast of Ireland.”

ANDERSON, DON. 1931- . [Note that though they share the same name and year of birth, this is not the same author as the one above.] Author of one novel included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      The Price We Pay… Washington: Ye Galleon Press, hc, 1998. [Corrected spelling of publisher.] Setting: Seattle WA.

ANDERSON, LINDA. 1949- . Add as a new author entry. Member of the English Department of The Open University as Reader in Creative Writing, previously at Lancaster University.
      -To Stay Alive. Bodley Head, UK, hc, 1984. Setting: Belfast, Northern Ireland. “Set in the bleak months before the 1979 Republican hunger strike in Long Kesh prison.” Short listed for the Higham and Sinclair Prizes.

ANDERSON, LINDA (née KIRCHMAN). [Noted here to distinguish her entry from that of the author above.] Add maiden name. Author of two romantic suspense novels included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      The Secrets of Sadie Maynard. Pocket, pb, 1999. Setting: West Virginia. [Photojournalist Memphis Maynard returns to her West Virginia hometown to solve the 1936 murder of her grandmother, Sadie Maynard.]

      When Night Falls. Pocket, pb, 2000. Setting: North Carolina. [Former prosecutor Lannie Sullivan in reclusion is stalked by a rapist recently released from jail.]

   The latest batch of covers uploaded to Bill Deeck’s Murder at 3 Cents a Day website are those for the Mystery House. The page is still under construction, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to make an announcement like this, even premature as it is. The years 1940 to 1943 are done, with three covers so far to begin 1944.

   Here’s the introduction to the page containing the publisher’s line of mystery titles:

   From the August 31, 1940, issue of Publisher’s Weekly: “Arcadia House, Inc., has announced the establishment of two new imprints, one for the publication of detective fiction and one for religious books. Detective novels will be published under the imprint of Mystery House, with Sally Frances as editor in charge. The following titles inaugurate the series: Clue in Two Flats, by R.L.F. McCombs, August 26th; The Corpse with the Listening Ear, by Laurence Dwight Smith, September 20th; Death in the Wheelbarrow, by Jan Gordon, October 10th; Abandon Hope, by Isabel Garland, October 22nd; Homicide Johnny, by Stephen Gould, November 12th. Each book is priced at $2.00.”

   Things didn’t go as planned. Not all of the books came out as scheduled, as you will be able to see for yourself, and I hope you will. Follow the link above.

LES SAVAGE, JR. – The Shadow in Renegade Basin. Leisure Books; paperback reprint, July 2001. Hardcover edition: Five Star, March 2000.

   For those of you who may have come in late, yes, I do do reviews of westerns on this blog. I know I don’t have to explain myself, but it has been a while since one has appeared here, so what I’m going to do is to repeat the following paragraph from the last one I did, which was of Edge of the Desert by Matt Stuart (L. P. Holmes):

    “… and whether or not they’re included in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV – Al generally says no unless there’s a leading character who’s actually a detective and involved in solving a case – I have no compunction about reviewing them [westerns] here. Almost every western has a crime component of some kind, and if they don’t, I probably don’t read them. Rustling, gunfighting, horse thievery, burning out homesteaders, it’s all against the law, and therefore – when written up in book form – crime fiction.”

   But no more self-indulgent justification! Let me begin by giving you the titles of the three short novels (or long novelettes) included in this particular group of western tales, and the issues of the pulp magazines they first appeared in:

       “Plunder Trail.” Frontier Stories, Summer 1944. Savage’s original title: “Oregon Traitor Trail.”
       “Brand of Penasco.” Action Stories, Winter 1945, as “Brand of the Gallows Ghost.”
       “The Shadow in Renegade Basin.” Frontier Stories, Summer 1950, as “Tombstones for Gringos.”

   Savage had a short but prolific career as a western writer. He died in 1958 only 35 years old, but in the short time he had to live, he wrote 25 novels, the last one, Gun Shy, finished by Dudley Dean McGaughey after his death. This does not include a long list of short stories which Jon Tuska has been packaging into collections like this. (Savage’s first published short story was written when he was a mere 17.)

   Enough facts. If I’ve read anything by Savage besides this one, it would have been over 50 years ago, and opinions when one is 15 old, plus or minus a couple of years, simply do not count. Which assumes that I’d remember, which I don’t, but I’m sure I did – read one, that is.

   Let’s take the two earliest ones first. I appreciate the fact the three stories were published in chronological order. It does help in putting a writer’s career in perspective. Of the first two, I’d say that at time, when Savage would have been in his early 20s, he was absolutely terrific in describing western landscapes and capturing moods, but only so-so in connecting with connecting with his characters and convincing them to come to life.

   Something else he was very good at was writing action scenes, the parts of the stories where violence kicks in, delineated blow by blow, and….

    … in “Plunder Trail,” that is exactly where the story stops dead in its tracks, at least it did for me. It’s the story of a gambler at loose ends who finds himself part of a wagon train full of homesteaders headed west. Ed Manton also finds himself getting caught up in their hopes and new lives. And when Georges Arvada and his gang strike, as is totally anticipated, it is Manton whose abilities as a leader and with a gun are needed the most.

   The last 15 pages need only be skimmed. The fight seems to go on forever, and the last page, in which Manton and Leah are finally reunited, comes both as a relief and as no surprise at all.

   Story number two, “Brand of Penasco,” is one of seven short novels Les Savage wrote about Elgera Douglas, familiarly known as Senorita Scorpion, one of the most popular characters to appear in Action Stories, says Jon Tuska in his introduction.

   Elgera is blonde and quite a pistol-packing lady, just the right combination to win the hearts of every adolescent boy and young man who might have read the magazine back in 1945. More of her background than this, however, is not given in the story itself.

   Truth in advertising. The cover shown to the right is from the Winter 1949 issue, not the one in which the story in this book appeared. Nor is the lady masked in this tale, as she is in most (if not all) of the covers she was featured on. (I just happen to think that she’s shown to her best advantage on this one.)

   I think a mistake has been made in terms of not putting all of her adventures into two volumes, say, instead of of scattering them around one at a time in other collections. The impact that she made would have been far greater, I’m sure, with her exploits being able to be read in the order they occurred, as well as the romances she had.

   It’s still a good story, but after her friend Chisos is shot and left for dead, the story seems to sag a little, caught up in too much action without enough motivation. The capture of a fellow named Penasco, an outlaw known to have been hanged many years ago but rumored to still be alive and on the loose again, is the primary focus, but the tale, populated by people named Tequila, Bighead and El Cojo, seems to go off in too many directions from there.

   It is the title story, “The Shadow in Renegade Basin,” that Jon Tuska, in his introduction to it, seems the proudest of to present. He compares it to Greek tragedy, and describes it as filled with “fratricide and incest.” No kidding. The story had to be rewritten considerably before it could be published in a pulp magazine in 1950. The restored text is supplied.

   Unfortunately I do not relate to Greek drama very well, a failure that no teacher of great literature was able to cure. The shadow in the title is that which is supplied by a sinister-looking mountain called El Renegado, and the legends that are told about it. In the rich, fertile valley at its foot, there are no farms, no ranches, no people, until the arrival of two brothers and their mother, hoping there to settle down and prosper.

   Enter Christina Velasco, who is beautiful, of course, lives alone somewhere in the area, and equally of course both brothers fall in love with her. There is also a Mexican peddler of rare birds named Pajarero and an hombre named Nacho, both of whom are also, in their differing ways, under Christina’s spell.

   As was mentioned earlier, it is no surprise that the ending was changed. And as it was originally written, the story is filled with tantalizing wisps of beautifully described countryside and fragmentary glimpses of fascinating characters who seem to have no control over the events they are in.

   It is like no pulp story I have read before, and I have no way of explaining exactly why, other than I’ve done so far.

   I also apologize for allowing this review to go on so long. Paraphrasing what I remember someone else much more famous than I having once said, I have not taken the time to make it shorter.

THE BIG COMBO. Allied Artists, 1955. Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Jean Wallace, Lee Van Cleef, Earl Holliman, Helen Walker, Helene Stanton. Director: Joseph H. Lewis. Original music by David Raksin.

   This one’s the real deal. In the last week or so I’ve been telling you about bits and pieces of various movies that were noirish in nature, but by 1955 directors and cinematographers (John Alton, in this case, of Raw Deal and I, the Jury fame) who worked with noir films knew exactly what they were doing, and they did it well.

   Mike Grost has done a superbly in-depth online analysis of the films of Joseph H. Lewis (no relation), and you should go read it. The Big Combo is one of his films that comes in for a lot of attention, including a good many things that didn’t register for me on my first time through. (Mike admits that he has watched many of Lewis’s films more than once.)

   I’ll not repeat any of Mike’s thoughts and facts about the film. I don’t mind repeating myself by saying that you should go read it for yourself. I’ll be content to relay to you my impressions and not rely on any of his.

   And impression number one is the reason I included David Raksin’s musical score in the credits. The loud jazzy opening scene, with a good-looking blonde running frantically from two thugs in the shadowy depths of a boxing arena is one of the finest in recent memory. Made me think the movie was about a jazz band (The Big Combo), in fact, but no, not so.