December 2010 Book Round-Up

224: WE: Outlaw – Frank Gruber

225: AD: The Green Hornet: The Case of The Disappearing Doctor – Brandon Keith

226: SF: Lallia – E. C. Tubb

227: CR: Paperbag – Richard Russell

228: SF: Tom Swift and The Visitor From Planet X(ebook) – Victor Appleton II

229: WE: The Book of Murdock – Loren D. Estleman

230: SC: A Girl Called Honey – Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake

231: WE: Shootout of The Mountain Man – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

232: SC: So Willing – Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake

233: AD: Jake Strait, Bogeyman: Avenging Angel – Frank Rich

234: SC: Sin Hellcat – Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake

235: WE: Ride The High Range – Charles G. West

236: WE: Rancho Diablo: Hangrope Law(ebook) – Colby Jackson(James Reasoner)

237: TH: Home Invasion – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

238: CR: Passage To Samoa – Day Keene

239: SF: Falling Bakward(ebook) – Henry Melton

240: SF: Technos – E. C. Ball

241: WE: Sundown At Crazy Horse – Vechel Howard

242: SF: Starfleet Academy: The Edge – Rudy Josephs

243: TH: Cross Fire – James Patterson

It was a pretty good year for me. I read some very long books and some short ones, but the bulk ran in the two to three hundred page range. Some good stuff, some great stuff, and a few clinkers(I have my guilty pleasures, thank you).

December 2010 Movie Round-Up

The Lone Wolf: False Faces(1919)

The Return of The Lone Wolf(1936)

Dodge City(1939)

Virginia City(1940)

Honky Tonk(1941)

They Died With Their Boots On(1941)

The Naked Spur(1953)

The Tall Men(1955)

The Indian Fighter(1955)

White Feather(1955)

Man From Del Rio(1956)

Man of The West(1958)

Sergeant Rutledge(1960)

The Last Sunset(1961)

Major Dundee(1965)

Fahrenheit 451(1966)

The Friends of Eddie Coyle(1973)

FFB: Sundown At Crazy Horse – Vechel Howard

Tags

Forgotten Books, Vechel Howard, western

The four principles in this novel were as different as could be.

Cassidy was a gunman, a reluctant one, but still… He was also a happy go lucky fellow with an eternal smile, always ready with a song, a joke, a kind word. Not a bad man, but circumstances made him a constant roamer. He had a reputation that was forever being challenged by any fast “young” gun that crossed his path.

So far he had always been faster.

And not a hard man to find. His gun hand was missing the trigger finger, the forefinger, and he made up for it with a pistol with no trigger. The spring in the hammer had been loosened and the sear filed so that the hammer couldn’t be cocked. Just thumb it back and let go.

Belle Breckenridge was still a beautiful woman despite a hard life and two children. Her husband, known simply as Mr B was an old Southern gentleman running from his past, continually moving the family. He was a drunkard and a bombastic talker to cover his cowardice.

Dana Stribling was the man in black, a man with a badge, a man on a mission.

Cassidy knew someone was hunting him and had been for about six months. He’d spotted him once ot twice before losing him or had someone mention, when seeing his missing finger, that a man in black on a gray horse had been asking for such a man as himself.

When he rode up to the Breckenridge ranch in southwestern Texas, he was immediately entranced by Belle Breckenridge and her two children, eight year old Susan and ten year old Oliver. They seemed to be alone, but he wasn’t the sort of man to assume.

Then Mr B returns home with a new plan. Southwestern Texas had very little rain under the best of circumstances. This season had been especially dry. Mr B had sold the ranch, very cheap, and intended to gather up a thousand head of cattle and drive them up to Crazy Horse Creek in Wyoming where the army purchasers were headquartered. Eastern buyers wouldn’t buy tick infested Texas beef, but the army and the Indian agents weren’t so particular.

How Mr. B was going to do all this he hadn’t considered. He only had a few Mexican hands and no one in the local town took him serious, so he was unable to sign anyone. “We’ll find some on the way.” Cassidy signs on for a dollar a day and a twenty-five bonus on sale of the herd, immediately starting to gather the herd with the other men.

Then one day, he sees a man in black on a gray horse sitting on a hill watching.

Dana Stribling rides down and introduces himself, saying he has a warrant for Cassidy. It seems one of the men that had tried Cassidy was Stribling’s kid brother. Drunk at the time, Stribling didn’t really believe it was a fair fight and had obtained a murder warrant, intending to enforce it right now. One way or the other.

Ready to have it out, Belle Breckenridge stepped in and Stribling was taken as fast as Cassidy had been. The two men make an agreement, each giving their word, that they would work together and have their showdown at Crazy Horse.

The drive begins.

A long, dusty drive, they encounter outlaws, Arapahos, Mother Nature in all her fury, and here’s one for Bill, quicksand. Deaths happen, each man saves the other’s life, and they steadfastly stand together to protect Belle and the children. They recognize Mr B for what he is, each man wishing circumstances were different, but know how things are in the real world.

And neither forget what’s waiting at the end of the trail.

Liked this one. It was made into a film in 1961, THE LAST SUNSET, that starred Rock Hudson as Stribling, Kirk Douglas as Cassidy(called Bren O’Malley in the movie), Dorothy Malone as Belle, and Joseph Cotten as Mr B. Considerably different from the movie, the basic plot is there. But here O’Malley knew Belle in the distant past and had, in fact, deliberately headed for the ranch to see her. Only one child, a daughter(played by eighteen year old Carol Lynley), who develops an infatuation with O’Malley. The director was Robert Aldrich from a script by Dalton Trumbo.

Finally, I have an extra copy of this one. Anyone interested, email your address and I’ll send it to you. In case of multiple requests, I’ll draw names out of a hat. So to speak.

Forgotten Music: Surfing With The Alien

Tags

Joe Satriani

SURFING WITH THE ALIEN was Joe Satriani’s second release back in 1987, was his first success, and cemented his reputation as one of the supreme rock guitarists in the music business. I had no idea about any of that the day I walked into the local music store and spotted the cover on an audio cassette.

Who was Joe Satriani?

No idea, but that was The Silver Surfer staring back at me so, on impulse, I picked it up. I had no idea what I had in my hands until I slipped it in the car player on the way home and was blown away! Very little lyrics on the album(Satriani lets his guitar do the singing), he averages about one song each release with words, it was an overwhelming parade of guitar pieces without self-indulgent long solos.

The man is a genius and each succeeding album only shows that. The clips below, just click on the title, are some of my favorites and illustrate his power with the ole axe.

SATCH BOOGIE

ECHO

SURFING WITH THE ALIEN

CRUSHING DAY

LORDS OF KHARMA

ICE 9

CIRCLES

and I’m including this one off the TIME MACHINE album just because I like it:

DWELLER ON THE THRESHOLD

Falling Bakward – Henry Melton

Tags

Henry Melton, Science Fiction

When young Jerry Ingram began digging in the field on the family’s South Dakota sunflower seed farm, he was hoping to find an Indian burial mound. There was a large circle there that was always warmer than the surrounding land, a fact noted by several generations of Ingrams. His dad had given him a spear point he’d received from his grandfather, dug up around 1900 from the circle. It was an odd design and made of an unusual metal that looked an aluminum color. Jerry had visions of finding evidence of a new people, what with the odd spear point design.

Until he found the two skeletons.

Superficially resembling human, the skulls were narrower and the hands had three fingers and a thumb. It soon crossed his mind that he’d found a flying saucer.

Further digging found a flat surface, eventually uncovering a port clogged with mud. Jerry gradually cleared out the mud and dropped into a chamber, finding a second port with a rachet which he proceeded to work back and forth. There was an air of decay to the mechanism and he had a lot of trouble getting it open. When he slipped through, he found a sloping corridor winding around a huge central tube going deep into the earth.

Returning home to arm himself with a few supplies(flashlight and rope), and not telling his parents, he returns to begin exploring(the digging had gone on for weeks, with his father’s permission, in every spare moment he could get from school and farm work, and every one he could sneak). Ladders were built into the walls of the cylinder going far deeper than his five-cell flash could reach.

Jerry didn’t intend to go further at this time. Then a cave in blocked his way out, also blocking air from coming in. He seemed to have no choice but to go down. He HAD felt a slight breeze coming up before the cave-in. Immediately he noticed something odd, his stomach fluttering as he climbed down. He seemed to be getting lighter, more pronounced the deeper he went. Until it was suddenly zero gravity. The ladder continued down so he continued working along, only now he seemed to be climbing, the weight returning.

Eventually he seemed to be right where he started. Returning to the port, it was no longer blocked, though the door was closed. He worke the rachet enough to climb out and the first thing he saw was the red sun.

He was no longer on Earth.

The surrounding area was desert-like.

He goes exploring, eventually meeting the zebramen, as he dubbed them, huge(seven feet and four hundred odd pounds) and covered in dark stripes. Not to mention the Kree, a large flying, intelligent predator named for the sound they make.

Back on Earth, Jerry is missed(he never made school0 and the family starts looking, including the neighboring uncle and his family. They know Jerry is still alive(the Ingram family, the blood members, are partial telepaths; no mind reading but they can sense each other) and the trail leads them to the pit and what lays in it’s depths.

Melton uses the nifty device of a short paragraph under each chapter title to acquaint us with the back story. At first titled The History of The Ancient Bak Empire, it soon turns to The Kree Invasion. And now that the portal to Earth has been reopened, those Kree intend to claim a new food source so that they can expand.

There’s all sorts of secrets here that we gradually learn. Why is Jerry’s father’s portion of the family estate so much smaller than his brother’s? Why don’t they have more to do with each other? Why is Jerry’s dad’s right hand missing the four fingers? Why does Sheriff Musgrave hate Jerry’s father? Jerry had seen the hate-filled looks shot at both him and his dad.

I really enjoyed this one. It was part of a deal Henry Melton offered where you got free downloads of a book of time travel short stories and the novel of your choice as a Christmas promotion. All his books seem available as ebooks or regular books. He has a nice sight HERE. There’s lots of free stuff to read as well as information on ordering his books.

Worth checking out. He’s hooked me.

Virginia City

Tags

Errol Flynn, humphrey bogart, Randolph Scott

A 1940 release, VIRGINIA CITY starred Errol Flynn as a Union spy, Randolph Scott as his nemesis, Miriam Hopkins as the third angle of the love triangle, a Southern sympathizer who worked as a spy, and Humphrey Bogart as an outlaw leader(almost unrecognizable with a pencil thin mustache and a smooth, unlined face). Although I knew he was in the film, I didn’t recognize him at first, not until he spoke. This film was the year before High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon.

As the film opens, Union Officer Kerry Bradford(Flynn) and a couple of his men break out of a Confederate prison and escape. The warden is Vance Irby(Scott). Before he breaks out, Bradford learns of a desperate plan to bring $5,000,000 in gold to pump up the South’s failing war effort. It’s 1864 and things aren’t going well.

Julia Hayne(Hopkins) has brought word to Richmond of Southern sympathizers in Virginia City who’ve pooled their assets to help the South. Irby is an old childhood friend who is placed in charge of spiriting the gold out of Union stronghold Virginia City. Julia, once looking forward to a career as a singer until the war broke out, now works as a dance hall girl who plays up to Union officers from the nearby fort for information.

Irby goes on ahead to begin arrangements and Bradford sets up with Union forces his own plan, knowing that a large amount of gold like that could only come from Virginia City. On the long stage coach ride out west, both Bradford and Julia are aboard, neither aware of who the other really is or their missions. Also aboard is a gun salesman(Bogart), who is really infamous John Morrell, leader of a band of outlaws, who holds up the stage, is jumped by Bradford and his two men, and what follows is a furious gun battle aboard a runaway stage. Lots of action and derring do by Flynn with Bogart jumping off into a river as they cross a bridge.

The film is loaded with all sorts of stunts, gun play, all featuring Flynn, the main star in the film. Randolph Scott was third lead and Bogart had not yet reached leading man status, playing mostly heavies.

The Union army, under Bradford’s direction, was searching every building in Virginia City for the gold. He’d already ran into Irby, confirming his suspicions about the gold. Irby was getting antsy and a chance meeting with Morrell in the doctor’s office, another Southern man, gives him the idea to hire the bandit leader to use his outlaws, fifty strong, to attack the fort and draw off the soldiers, allowing him to escape with the ten wagons of gold with the Southern families. $10,000 in gold was a mistake, though, as it arouses Morrell’s suspicions.

Then begins the long trek across 1,200 miles of desert with the Union army, with Bradford, after them, and Morrell and his band lurking around for the big finale.

A word about some of the other players I recognized. A very young Paul Fix(Micah Torrance of The Rifleman) had a small part as one of Morrell’s outlaws. And one of Flynn’s partners was Alan Hale, a former leading man in the silents, and the father of Alan Hale, Jr., the “Skipper” on Gilligan’s Island. The resemblance between father and son was amazing, the elder could have been the junior with fifteen more years on him.

Enjoyed this one.

New In The House

Tags

New In The House

1: Gun Work – J. Lee Butts: a novel in the series of the exploits of Deputy U. S. Marshall Hayden Tilton. Here he’s tracking down the Coltrane brothers who butchered the Cassidy family and made off with their daughter.

2: Bad Blood – J. Lee Butts: a novel of Texas Ranger Lucius “By God” Dodge who totes a twelve gauge shotgun, three pistols, a derringer, and a knife. He’s looking for Ruby Black, the missing niece of his commander. The trail leads him to Iron Bluff and the feud between the Tingwell and Pitt clans.

3: Sundown At Crazy Horse – Vechel Howard: one man chasing another. A Marshall and an outlaw. The trail leads into Texas where the Marshall has no authority. The outlaw finds the old girl friend he’s looking for and, finally, the two men forge an uneasy alliance to move the family and their cattle herd to Wyoming, promising to settle their feud at the end of the line in Crazy Horse.

4: Before She Kills – Fredric Brown: a collection of mystery stories by the noted author of numerous works of mystery and science fiction in the forties and fifties.

2010 NFL Week 16

Tags

Jets, Panthers, Redskins

The Jets lost today, yet still made the playoffs courtesy of one of my other teams. The ‘Skins defeated the Jaguars 20-17 in overtime after Garrard threw a bad pick deep in their own territory in the overtime period. The ‘Skins ran a couple of plays then kicked a thirty-one yard field goal. The Jets had lost when Sanchez threw a pick late in the game that stalled their comeback attempt at 38-34 against the Bears.

The Panthers, of course, lost Thursday night 27-3 in a stinker against the Steelers.

All three of my teams are running soap operas here at the end of the season and who knows how any of them will end.

White Christmas…

It started snowing about noon today and hasn’t let up, not very much anyway, yet. The forecast calls for it to continue on til late in the night. We could be without power sometime during the night and who knows how long it might last. It usually happens at least once a winter.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everybody out there.