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Monthly Archives: April 2009

FFB: True Detective – Max Allan Collins

30 Thursday Apr 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

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Forgotten Friday Book, Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins’ series about Nathan Heller mixes his fictional detective with real people, skillfully weaving him into historical mysteries with the author’s own explanation for what REALLY happened. Heller has been involved in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, had a relationship with Amelia Earhart before her disappearance, knew “fan dancer” Sally Rand, among other cases.
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I’ve read seven of the novels and have three more in my TBR pile(a couple and the short story collections I’ve never come across). I decided to feature the first Heller title, TRUE DETECTIVE, in this week’s Forgotten Books post. It won the 1984 Shamus for best PI hardcover(he also won in 1992 for STOLEN AWAY, the Heller about the Lindbergh kidnapping).

Early in this one, Heller is still a detective with the Chicago PD when he gets pulled into an attempt on Mafia boss Frank Nitti’s life. While not averse to a little graft(this is Chicago in the depression, Heller draws the line when forced to kill a young hood in the raid and then told he would have to back the other cops’ story.

He then quits to do what he’d always wanted: to be a private eye.

All the real life people he meets would be too numerous to mention, but we’ll go with the main few. Elliot Ness is his best friend. He rents an office from boxer Barney Ross. His first client is Al Capone, hired to body guard Chicago mayor Cermak while he’s in Florida from a hit by Nitti(Capone doesn’t think the publicity would be good for his organization).

There, he’s peripherally involved in the assassination attempt on President-elect Roosevelt and the wounding of Cermak by the killer. Not to mention all the attendant rumors about what really went on that day.

It’s all seamlessly melded into a story by Collins that gives one a slice of life during those times. Heller meets actor George Raft while looking for his girl friend’s missing brother in a subplot that eventually ties in with it all. One meeting brought a smile as, during that hunt, he goes on a tour of speakeasies with a young radio sportscaster that would someday become President himself. The girl friend, while never named, goes on to become a well-known actress I thought I recognized.

The book is full of photographs of the people involved, as well as snaps of the Chicago World’s Fair being planned at the time. I had a grand time reading this one and recommend it, as well as the whole Heller series.

April 2009 Book Round-up

30 Thursday Apr 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

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MY: 48: Mr Monk Is Miserable – Lee Goldberg

AD: 49: Fargo: Death Valley Gold – John Benteen(Ben Haas)

AD: 50: Fargo: Killer’s Moon – John Benteen(Ben Haas)

SF: 51: Maximum Ride: Max – James Patterson

MY: 52: One Of Us Is Wrong – Samuel Holt(Donald E, Westlake)

TH: 53: Cross Country – James Patterson

FA: 54: Conan and The Songs of The Dead – Joe R. Lansdale and Timothy Truman

SF: 55: Cap Kennedy: Jewel of Jarhen – Gregory Kern(E.C. Tubb)

MY: 56: In The Heat of The Night – John Ball

MY: 57: What I Tell You Three Times Is False – Samuel Holt(Donald E. Westlake)

MY: 58: True Detective – Max Allan Collins

AD: 59: Hunt At The Well of Eternity – Gabriel Hunt(James Reasoner)

AD: 60: Fargo: Dakota Badlands – John Benteen(Ben Haas)

AD: 61: Fargo and The Texas Rangers – John Benteen(Ben Haas)

HR: 62: Desperadoes – Jeff Mariotte art by John Cassaday, John Severin, John Lucas, Jeremy Haun, and Alberto Dose

April 2009 Movie Round-up

30 Thursday Apr 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in movies

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Navajo Joe(1966)

Run, Man, Run(1968)

Death Rides A Horse(1968)

White Comanche(1968)

A Man Called Sledge(1970)

Sabata(1970)

Adios, Sabata(1971)

Return Of Sabata(1971)

Captain Apache(1971)

Duck, You Sucker(1971)

The Grand Duel(1973)

God’s Gun(1975)

The Quick and The Dead(1987)

Jumper(2008)

Quantum of Solace(2008)

What every Star Trek Fan Needs

30 Thursday Apr 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Humor

≈ 2 Comments

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Star Trek

0005p15a

Thanks to Dayton Ward for the heads-up.

Tom Deitz, R.I.P.

29 Wednesday Apr 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in authors

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Just learned about THIS!. It’s been a few years, but I remember enjoying his Soulsmith trilogy. I don’t think I read anything else by the man, though.

Second Laugh of The Day *

29 Wednesday Apr 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Humor

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living will

THE BEST LIVING WILL

I, , being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means.

Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of pinhead politicians who couldn’t pass ninth grade biology if their lives depended upon it, or lawyers/doctors interested in simply running up the bills.

If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to ask for at least one of the following:

glass of wine
chocolate
margarita
sex
martini
cold beer
chocolate
chicken fried steak
Mexican food
chocolate
french fries
chocolate
pizza
ice cream
cup of tea
chocolate
chocolate
CHOCOLATE

it should be presumed that I won’t ever get better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct the appointed person and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes, let the “fat lady” sing, and call it a day!

*another email

Laugh of The Day *

29 Wednesday Apr 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Humor

≈ 1 Comment

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Blonde jokes

Two blond girls were working for the city works department.

One would dig a hole, with the other following behind filling it in. They worked up one side of the street and down the other, furiously digging and filling in all day.

An onlooker, amazed at their hard work, couldn’t understand what they were up to and asked them about it.

The hole digger, wiping her face, sighed. “I suppose it looks odd, but we’re normally a three person team. But the girl who plants trees called in sick today.”

*disclaimer: I make no claims about blonds. It came in an email.

A New Milestone Reached

28 Tuesday Apr 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Personal

≈ 6 Comments

This is my three hundredth post since I started my blog. I’ve enjoyed myself and hope to continue to do so for awhile. I like to think I’ve made a few friends along the way. Even though none of us have ever met. Such is the nature of the internet, reaching out to other folks you might not otherwise ever encounter.

To those people who occasionally read my posts, thanks. I hope I haven’t bored you too much.

DESPERADOES omnibus – Jeff Mariotte

27 Monday Apr 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books, Comics

≈ 2 Comments

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gothic western, graphic novel, Jeff Mariotte

The Desperados omnibus brings together all the stories that have been published since the first issue came out in 1997. IDW is the third publisher(Image Comics first, then DC)to carry the stories, all written by Jeff Mariotte and illustrated by a variety of artists(John Cassaday, John Severin, John Lucas, and Alberto Dose). They are of that genre that mixes westerns with gothic horror, nearly five hundred pages of story and art.
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Gideon Brood, a man in his fifties, Jerome Alexander Betts, a former slave, and Abby DeGrazia, former teacher, former prostitute, are trailing a monster, who murders Indian women who’ve married white men and kills and skins the products of that union. Brood’s wife and five year old son were the latest victims. He derives a power from tanning the hides and rubbing the blood over himself.

Along the way, Brood rescued Betts from a lynch mob and hooked up with DeGrazia, herself almost a victim of that same monster.

Also on the case is a young Pinkerton from Chicago, Race Kennedy. When the trio keeps showing up, he, at first believes they may be the killers until he learns the truth.

Once that case is resolved, Kennedy joins the group as they travel together, running into all sorts of odd stuff. A spiritualist hires them to get her group to a railroad in a far town. They run into a “zombie” raised from the dead, by an old Indian, after Brood kills him. Geronimo asks them to find a legendary cave in the Dakotas from which all the buffalo on Earth came. It’s apparently blocked so no more can emerge and must be cleared before those on Earth are slaughtered by the white man.

Throw in a grieving sheriff, whose wife was accidentally killed by Brood in a shoot-out when a bullet hit his gun barrel just as he pulled the trigger, and a financier who lost a lot of money because Brood and company solved that first case, and who keeps hiring people to kill them, one a sadist who derives pleasure from the act of murder, it keeps the gang busy and makes for a fun few hours of reading.

I’d never encountered any of the individual books before reading this omnibus. With five stories in four miniseries, nineteen issues, there is plenty of bang for your buck and highly recommended if you like this sort of thing.

The Fargo Series – John Benteen

25 Saturday Apr 2009

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

adventure, John Benteen, Neal Fargo

Since November, I’ve been engaged in reading Ben Haas’ Fargo series, reding three or four a month. I have twenty-two novels, nineteen written under the name John Benteen, and three by another author, a John W. Hardin.
fargo
Neal Fargo is a fighting man, having been a member of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War and later serving a hitch in the Philippines conflict. Tall and weather beaten, his prematurely white hair kept close-cropped, he still wears much the same outfit he wore in the service: cavalry boots, campaign hat, jodhpurs, or khaki pants, comfortable shirt.
the-wildcatters
His weapons of war include a .38 with either a hip or shoulder holster, depending on his need at the time. Loading with hollow points for greater stopping power, he prefers it to the .45 automatic, which tends to jam, the army uses. His knife, a Batangas, made by Philippine artisans, has a ten inch blade that folds back into the handle except for a few inches, popping out with a flick of the wrist. it’s razor sharp and said to be able to pierce a silver dollar without breaking or dulling. Fargo is quite expert with it and is ambidextrous, a little known fact, to his enemies, that has saved his life more than once in fights.

His favorite weapon, though, is the Fox Sterlingworth ten-gauge shotgun, sawed-off, and engraved along the inlay with the words, To Neal Fargo, gratefully, from T. Roosevelt. The former President and he are the only ones who who know what he did to get the weapon. It’s a deadly piece, loaded with shells of nine buckshot each. He’s the only man Fargo will drop everything and come running when called.

When he’s ready for trouble, Fargo wears two bandoliers of shells, crisscrossed on his chest, one for the shotgun and one for his Winchester ’93.
the-sharpshooters
The man has been everywhere and done most anything to survive. His family was wiped out by Geronimo’s band when he was a child, he being missed. A neighbor took him in, not out of love, but knowing he would grow into a free hand, a slave. At twelve, he ran off and had been on his own ever since.

Oil rigs, gold in Alaska, logging in the great Northwest, cattle drover, professional boxing, even a stint as a bouncer in a New Orleans whore house, whatever he needed to do to survive. During his military service, he came into his own, learning the trade that would sustain him form that point.

He takes the biggest jobs and commands the highest prices. Then he goes on an orgy of drinking, gambling, women, until he needs to take another job. No desire to grow old and doddering(he’s met Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson), he saves no money, knowing that sooner or later he will stop a bullet. That doesn’t bother him.

Fargo has fought wars in South and Central America, been all up and down the North American continent. He fought to save the Panama Canal construction as well. In one book, he fought side-by-side with a Billy The Kid that hadn’t really been killed by Pat Garrett and was tempted to test his speed on the draw against the legendary gunman.
He’s run guns across the border to Pancho Villa, having to dodge Texas Rangers doing it after Wilson turns against the Mexican Revolutionary.

He has one fear: heights. That’s never stopped from doing what needs to be done, though.

The series began in 1969 and went on into 1977 with new additions. The handling of the books has been documented by others as slipshod, to say the least. Sometimes marketed as traditional westerns, other times as adventure novels, they weren’t really classical westerns. The time period was the early 1900s up until 1918, going back and forth during those years. Fargo is in his late twenties to around forty.

Belmont started, then Belmont Tower was the publisher. My set also has a few with the publisher shown as Unibook. Not familiar with them.

I’m breaking the title down into three groups.
Fargo
Panama Goldphantom-gunman2
Alaska Steel
Massacre River
The Wildcatters
Apache Raiders
Valley of Skulls
Wolf’s Head
The Sharpshooters
The Black Bulls
Phantom Gunman
Killing Spree
Shotgun Man
Bandolero

These fourteen were all written by John Benteen(Haas).

The next three were by someone using the peudonym John W. Hardin(a lengendary gunman himself). The first had Hardin’s name on both cover and title page, the second Benteen on the cover, Hardin on the title page. The third one doesn’t mention Hardin anywhere.

Sierra Silver
Dynamite Fever
Gringo Guns

The style is all wrong for Haas, though, and is the same as the first two titles. Also, the Hardins are less personal when talking about Fargo’s weapons than the Benteens. In the two Hardins, the Fox Sterlingworth is simply “the sawed-off” and he loads the twin barrels with a buckshot shell and a “pumpkin ball” shell. It has no sling as in the Benteens. The third has the same descriptions.

That’s why I believe it was a Hardin novel.

The last group are by Haas.

fargo-and-the-texas-rangersThe Border Jumpers
Death Valley Gold
Killer’s Moon
Dakota Badlands
Fargo and The Texas Rangers

The last four of these titles were no longer copyrighted by the publisher, but were either Benteen or Haas.

When I was trying to fill out my set with the missing volumes, I could find no single listing of titles. From several sources, I came up with twenty-two novels. I think that’s the right number, although the last book I have that’s numbered is Gringo Guns and that has #18 on it. There were five titles published after that.

The explanation that explains it, I believe, are the two copies I have of Wolf’s Head. By copyright date, it should be number nine in the series. the oldest copy has no number and the other has #15 on it. As I remarked earlier, the publishers were a little inconsistent in their handling of these books.

If anyone who reads this knows of any other entries, please let me know. I’d like to add them.

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