FFB: The Friendless One – Ray Hogan

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Forgotten Books, Ray Hogan, western

THE FRIENDLESS ONE is the other half of an Ace Double. The other is WEAR A FAST GUN by John Jakes which I covered last week. The pair came out in 1957.

Jim Ryan is the man of the title, a new fellow in the area, buying a small ranch only six months before, intent on raising/selling cattle and living down a violent past. He had made a few friends, but it only took one incident to make him realize how tenuous a relationship that turned out. Attending a dinner invitation by Tom Strickland of the S-Bar and his daughter, he once more broached the subject of buying the S-Bar. Strickland had once been the big dog in the Cuchillo Plains, but age and an accident that left him stove up had loosened his hold. Ryan’s ranch bordered one side of him, another rancher, Hugh Baldwin, the other. Baldwin wanted the S-Bar also.

Ryan watched the old man lose his temper at the offer, used to such tantrums, but it escalated and old Strickland ordered him off the property. He went and was riding away when a shot rang out.

Ryan spun, pulling his gun to see the old man twisting down on the porch, his daughter and the ranch foreman coming out, and hearing hoof beats racing away. He pursued, a long chase happening, shots exchanged, the trail ending up in town. Ryan stalked through looking for the shooter and a hot horse.

Nothing.

Then the Sheriff comes in and, just as Ryan was about to tell what he knew, tells him he’s under arrest for murder. Baldwin is with him and his foreman, who says he was riding near the ranch when he saw Ryan shoot Strickland, then pursue him to shut him up.

Ryan shoots out a lantern and beats a retreat amidst a hail of gun shots, one catching him in the leg. He escapes, but now is being hunted for murder. It had to be Baldwin and no one believes him innocent except his foreman, old Frank Sears.

The two of them knew of a cave along a hidden trail on the rim wall of the canyon and Ryan waits for him there. Sears tells him, as he patches the wound, that the countryside is being scoured for him, and the things being said. Even Strickland’s daughter, Ann, believes he did it.

Ryan is planning to just leave. He’d come here to escape violence and didn’t intend to get pulled into it. At his ranch, sneaking around the gun men waiting for him, he tells Sears all this and admits he wants to try to convince Ann of his innocence before he goes. He visits the S-Bar, finds Ann, and halfway convinces her of the truth. He says he will ask Sears to check on her on the way out.

When he returns to his ranch, he finds the old man face down in the mud, two bullets in his back.

That’s when things changed.

The showdown has a driving thunderstorm as a backdrop, a posse still believing Ryan guilty, and a man hellbent on burning everything down if he couldn’t take it. Ryan seems to be the only one standing in his way.

Nothing new here, the plot was probably old in 1957, but I like the way Hogan put it all together. he tells a nice story and I enjoyed the journey.

For more forgotten books, go to PATTINASE.

June 2011 Book Round-Up

110: MY: The House On The Point – Benjamin Hoff

111: WE: On Dangerous Ground: Stories of Western Noir – edited by Ed Gorman, Dave Zeltserman, and Martin H. Greenburg

112: MY: Bye Bye, Baby – Max Allan Collins

113: CR: The Case of The Howling Dog – Erle Stanley Gardner

114: Sidewinders: Deadwood Gulch – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

115: MY: Mr. Monk On The Couch – Lee Goldberg

116: WE: Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles(e-book) – Edward A. Grainger

117: CR: Spanish Eye(e-book) – Nik Morton

118: SF: Full Share – Nathan Lowell

119: AD: The Doomsday Affair – Harry Whittington

120: AD: The Dead Man: The Blood Mesa – James Reasoner

121: TH: You’re Next – Gregg Hurwitz

122: TH: Carte Blanche – Jeffery Deaver

123: AD: Heart of Darkness(e-book) – Joseph Conrad

124: WE: Wear A Fast Gun – John Jakes

125: CR: Getting Off – Lawrence Block

126: CR: The Delta Factor – Mickey Spillane

127: TH: Die, Lover, Die!(e-book) – Top Suspense Group

128: CR: The Consummata – Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

129: WE: The Friendless One – Ray Hogan

June 2011 Movie Round-Up

The Case of The Howling Dog(1934)

Destination Moon(1950)

Red Planet Mars(1952)

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms(1953)

The Lone Gun(1954)

Drums Across The River(1954)

The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues(1955)

Fort Yuma(1955)

It Came From Beneath The Sea(1955)

Gun The Man Down(1956)

The Incredible Shrinking Man(1957)

The Cyclops(1957)

Queen of Outer Space(1958)

Attack of The 50 Foot Woman(1958)

Attack of The Puppet People(1958)

It! The Terror From Beyond Space(1958)

Fort Massacre(1958)

Bell, Book, and Candle(1958)

The Fly(1958)

The Giant Behemoth(1959)

The Killer Shrews(1959)

The Return of The Fly(1959)

Master of The World(1961)

Creature From The Haunted Sea(1961)

The Pit and The Pendulum(1961)

The Quick Gun(1964)

Village of The Giants(1965)

The Last Challenge(1967)

Salt And Pepper(1968)

Mosquito Squadron(1969)

Cahill, United States Marshall(1973)

At The Earth’s Core(1976)

Maverick(1994)

Forgotten Music: Lookout! – Rick “l.a. Holmes” Holmstrom

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Forgotten Music, Rick Holmstrom

I first read about this album and artist in some music magazine or other many years back. The review said one thing that struck me and made me seek it out. “Influences? Holmstrom sounds like like he hid in a cave about 1955 and didn’t come out until recently.

The music has a fifties rock/blues feel, The little guarantee sticker placed on it by the Sound Shop when I purchased it says I bought this little gem on June 7, 1996. It quickly became a favorite at the time, but, strangely enough, it’s the only CD by Holmstrom I have. A little research shows me he has a thriving career with the requisite web site with everything one wants to know about Mr. Holmstrom. Even a blog.

Youtube doesn’t seem to carry clips of any of his songs. There are a few and some concert things with other folks, plus what looks like a whole concert broke down into seven chunks.

The song titles, all by Rick Holmstrom, are as follows:

Hit It

Tacos de Pescado

Fooled Ya

A Good One

The Floater

Lookout Holmes

Jungle Ball

Holmes Hop

North of Montana

Goin’ Up River

She’s My Baby

Lucky You

Rub It

On Your Rocker

Maria Cecile

Guitar Boogie Shuffle Twist

Here’s what I could find:

and a cut from the CD:

A live version of a song on the CD:

at the Lillehammer Blues festival:

With Janiva Magness:

The Consummata

Tags

Hard Case crime, Max Allan Collins, Mickey Spillane

Morgan The Raider returns in THE CONSUMMATA, a novel begun by Mickey Spillane in the late sixties, then set aside after a disappointing experience while working on the film of the first novel, THE DELTA FACTOR. He gave the unfinished manuscript to Max Allan Collins some twenty-five years later, saying maybe we’ll do something with this some day.

In preparation for reading this one, I dug out that original Morgan adventure to re-read. It wasn’t necessary as the authors did a brief summary that explained it all. It’s just the way I like to do things.

The novel opens about a year after THE DELTA FACTOR and Morgan is in Miami with the authorities closing in once more. They’re still after him for that forty million dollar heist of Federal money, which he didn’t take, and, as expected, they hadn’t believed his wife’s story of hearing the real thief’s confession shortly before he died. Morgan has only the vaguest idea of where it might be hidden, “where the first Morgan The Raider had hid his treasures,” a spot no one had found, except maybe the thief.

Morgan is bailed out by a group of Cuban exiles, and a pack of children, spirited away and hid for a day until the cops had moved on. He’s grateful and when they asked for some advice, he listens. The exiles in Miami had saved every spare nickel and dime they could to pool resources to be spirited into Cuba to help family members left behind, feed them, get them out, foment some sort of rebellion to the Castro government. Now they had been betrayed by a trusted Cuban official they thought was on their side and the seventy-five thousand dollars so carefully hoarded was gone.

Morgan knew they could never get it back. Two that had tried were already dead and they weren’t sure where the man was now. He decides to help them. A small favor for helping him.

But he quickly comes to realize there is more going on. Dead bodies start to pop up.

And, of course, there’s the mysterious Consummata. Who or what is it? And what does it all have to do with the traitorous Cuban?

One of the entries in the second month of Hard Case Crime’s return, October 4th, it can be pre-ordered here. I’m not sure what Mr. Collins’ plans are, but there is an opening for a third, and final, novel. I wouldn’t mind seeing it.

Movies That Need To Be Overlooked

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Overlooked Movies

Something a little bit different this week.

Turner Classic Movies has been running drive-in double features this month, those monster movies from the fifties that were packaged together so one had to book both of them or neither in order to wring as much money from the movie going public as possible. They were mostly low budget affairs quickly produced to fill their niche and usually involved nature gone wild as a result of nuclear weapon experiments(we’re talking fifties when that type of weapon was still relatively new).

Many of them I remembered fondly from my youth and a late Saturday show called Shock Theater hosted by Dr. Paul Bearer. They weren’t great films, but I loved them nonetheless.

In keeping with the theme, I’m featuring two movies, the old double bill, that I’d somehow missed from those long ago years. And after watching them this time, I almost wish that I’d missed them this time around! No, not really. They fit into that pantheon of films so bad you have to like them. They rank right down there, and I mean down there, with anything Ed Wood ever did.

First up is CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA, a Roger Corman classic filmed in five days back in 1959. The story goes is that he was in Puerto Rico with a small cast to film THE LAST WOMAN ON EARTH and produce a WWII film called BATTLE OF BLOOD ISLAND. He was there to make use of tax incentives and cheap labor. Having footage left over from the first film, he asked Charles B. Griffith to rewrite a script previously filmed twice as NAKED PARADISE and BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE for his new classic.

The effort was really bad. supposedly a horror comedy(though ultimately billed as a straight thriller), it was funny in ways I don’t think were intended. The plot was a Cuban general beats it off the island ahead of Castro with the government treasury, a large strong box full of gold. He’s accompanied by a half dozen men. Also along were an American mobster and his moll, the moll’s brother, a former tennis player, and a second gangster that specialized in doing animal impressions. Another along was the radio man, a spy for the American government sticking close to the gangster(‘Sparks Moran is my code name, secret agent XK-150 my real name!”).

The mobster wants the gold and concocts a plan to take advantage of old legends of a sea monster in the area, getting his men to kill off one of the Cubans late one night, the one furnishing the animal sounds, then screaming about a monster. The idea was to get everyone scared of the monster and change course, eventually scuttling the yacht on reefs, overturning the boat and sinking the gold chest. One of the men would go rent another boat and diving gear, they’d find the chest and hide it, returning at a later date to retrieve it. Little did they know the monster was real, adding another victim to the late night effort, and they don’t think a great deal about the extra body.

All goes as planned otherwise and Happy Jack, the ex-tennis player, goes off in their small skiff to rent the boat and diving equipment. Not a bright fellow, he returns with a woman, a new love, who “lives in a kind of sorority house down by the docks.” I think she was along to take advantage of the left over footage. His buddy, the animal impressionist, finds an Hispanic native woman that also does animal noises, who introduces her daughter to Happy Jack after he’s dumped by his sorority girl for the secret agent. We see the four of them frolicking in the jungles and swimming in the lagoon(more fodder for the monster).

The diving begins, complete with the General wearing a tee shirt with his medals pinned on.

The monster suit was made of a wet suit, sea weed, moss, Brillo pads, pipe cleaners for the claws, tennis balls for eyes, with ping pong balls for the iris, and an oil cloth over all to make it slimy. A really ridiculous looking thing. The film score, by Fred Katz, was originally written for A Bucket of Blood, recycled for seven films altogether. The movie was finally released in 1961.

The most notable thing about this movie was the actor playing Secret Agent XK-150. Screenwriter/director Robert Towne, the author some years later of the Oscar winning screenplay for Roman Polanski’s Chinatown.

Click to watch the film trailer and get a load of the completely “frightening” monster:

Creature From The Haunted Sea

The next little gem(cough) in our double feature is a film called THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES. The budget on this one must have been about a dollar and a half.

We have people being killed by the second goofiest looking monster in this post, government agents and scientists that persist in walking on the beach in suits and has a mad scientist. Released in 1955, this movie had several shower scenes with the mad scientist’s daughter(fifties style so don’t expect much), Lois. She of course falls for the dashing scientist turned Federal investigator, Ted Baxter(who later didn’t go on to be a news anchor).

The really low budget aspect of this one comes from the boat. Early in the film, a fisherman is on the ocean in a row boat-who goes out on the ocean in a row boat?- and is attacked by the monster overturning the boat, the body found later on the beach covered with radiation burns. Later, Baxter goes out on the same row boat to dive, sees a glowing rock protected by the monster and manages to escape with his life. Then a young couple goes out on the- wait for it- SAME row boat, to be overturned by the monster and killed.

The monster is the unholy creation of the mad scientist who finally realizes his error and goes out with dynamite to kill the thing and destroy that glowing rock. He gets a suitable comeuppance and Baxter and Lois ride off into the sunset together.

A real stinker.

Click for a brief review of the film:

The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues

Next week I may be back with another pair of films. I already have one good candidate. Another might turn up.

For much better Overlooked Movies, go to SWEET FREEDOM

New In The House

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New In The House

1: Getting Off(ARC) – Lawrence Block: Hard Case Crime gets back into gear in September with their first hardcover written especially for them by Block. I finished this one. Quite good. Due out in September.

2: The Consummata(ARC) – Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins: Begun by Spillane in the late sixties, it was to be the second novel in his new Morgan The Raider series. He got frustrated trying to get a movie going and set it aside. He told Max that maybe they could do something with it some time. Due out in October.

3: Choke Hold(ARC) – Christa Faust: Angel Dare returns in this sequel to Money Shot. Due out in October.

4:Very Bad Men(ARC) – Harry Dolan: Second book in the David Loogan series: Anthony Lark has a list of names. They glow, they breathe, they move. The only thing they have in common is a robbery seventeen years ago. Lark is hunting them down.

5: Die, Lover, Die!(ebook, review copy) – Top Suspense book: a round robin story by a dozen authors. Bill Crider kicks it off and other contributors include Ed Gorman, Lee Goldberg, Max Allan Collins, Vicki Hendricks, Harry Shannon, Paul Levine, Stephen Gallagher, Joel Goldman, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Naomi Hirahara, and Dave Zeltserman.

Die, Lover, Die!

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thriller

DIE, LOVER, DIE! began life as a round robin short story by the twelve authors of Top Suspense Group on their block. The idea was each would write 250 words and pass it to the next in line until it had been around twice. No planning, rewriting, or polishing allowed. The story is in two parts, the first by the original six who formed the Group, the second by the rest. The aim was to see if they could write a story that flowed and worked to a logical end, satisfying end. In the breif introduction that explained the parameters, they said it was up to the reader to decide if they succeeded.

I think they did.

The basic tale is a woman on the run from her husband with a suitcase full of his money. Accompanying her is the reason for the run: the man with which she’d had an affair. They are being chased by her husband’s men. That’s the set-up and from there we get twists galore as each author takes his/her turn.

Originally appearing on their blog, it’s now offered at a modest price for Kindle or for the Nook.

Well worth the price.

Getting Off – Lawrence Block

Tags

Hard Case crime, Lawrence Block, Titan Book Group

Hard Case Crime re-launches in September, in partnership with the Titan Publishing Group, and GETTING OFF, the new novel by Lawrence Block, written especially for HCC, kicks things off with the imprint’s first hardcover. For the occasion, Block revives an old pen name, Jill Emerson, that he used on seven novels in the sixties and seventies.

Katherine Ann Tolliver is the name she was born with, but hasn’t used in years. She moves around a lot and changes towns and names as often, as that old saying goes, other people change clothes. You see, she picks up men and screws them blind. She likes that part. Then she kills them and likes that just as much. She cleans them out of cash, not her prime motive, but why waste it, and blows town before the body is cold. She’s been doing it for years and is quite good by now.

A chance remark gets her thinking of the few men who’d spent the night with her and got away unscathed. Not a lot, and for various reasons, but they’d survived nonetheless.

And suddenly she’s a girl with a new mission. Hunt them down and cross them off her list. It won’t be easy though.

One thing you can trust with Lawrence Block. It won’t be as simple as finding and killing them. Nevertheless, she plunges in with a will. The people she meets along the way, the situations she finds herself in, and Block’s steady unwinding of all the reasons and the future for our -heroine?- make for an absorbing read.

Five stars may not be enough.

Remaindered – Lee Goldberg

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Lee Goldberg

The first time I read Lee Goldberg’s short story REMAINDERED was a few years back, pre-Kindle time, when Amazon was selling short stories by various writers. You could print them out or, the best, they maintained an electronic file on the site where you could read your purchases whenever you felt the notion. The second time was when Lee released the story with two others, THREE WAYS TO DIE(worth picking up for the other two stories). But this third one is the best. You not only get the excellent short story, but a link to the short film based on it written and directed by Lee. I thought the film was an excellent twenty minutes. Ever since I knew he was doing this film, I’d wondered if it was going to be made available anytime soon for us folks that couldn’t attend the Owensboro festival where it was filmed and the showings since.

An eminently satisfactory method here. For a modest price, you not only get the excellent short story but also the fine short film, the subject of both well known to most writers. I mean the remaindered part, the book signings. Won’t say any more, wouldn’t want to spoil it. It can be ordered for Kindle here. it’s also available for NOOK readers. Pick it up You won’t be disappointed in either the story or the film.