With VOODOO, we’re really talking forgotten books here. It was Deaver’s second published novel in 1988. It, along with his first novel, ALWAYS A THIEF, Deaver doesn’t even list with his other works on his web site. Not sure why. It’s not a bad book, though it treads on territory not normally associated with him. It’s a horror novel plain and simple and a rather bloody one at that.
Tourist Eleanor Bowers survives a brush with evil in Martinique when the cop shoots the big man assaulting her. She forgot it as she returned home to New York.
But she carried a savage and ancient power back with her.
The first body turned up in a bathroom, a young woman savaged with strange markings carved into her body. The second was found on a subway landing, gutted, castrated, and the police found an old bum cowering in the shadows. He snatches one’s gun and puts it to his head, his last words before he pulls the trigger, “I saw the Errand Boy.
Eleanor is a different person from the one that went on vacation. Not as careful about her personal appearance or cleaning her apartment, she is dreaming of the Errand Boy. It’s affecting her job as well. She believes it’s something physical, a tumor or something, not psychological like the doctor believes.
He wants to help her.
The bodies start piling up, some in the hospital, and the city. A voodoo priestess sees trouble coming. Secret rites, rituals, and sacrifices seem to be happening all over the city.
As I said, not a bad novel. He’s a much better writer now, but this was a good effort.
For more forgotten books, check out Patti Abbott over at her place, Pattinase.
A novel of the Indian wars featuring a character named Nevada Jones. He legs it into the town of Red Rock just ahead of a large group of Indians. A small town under siege, with walls built around it, there were two hundred people, including fifty women and children and ninety soldiers.
The Captain is an officious man sure of his troop’s superiority against the “savages.” He would come to learn better in the coming days.
Just as he learned Nevada was more than just a Reb.
The book details the defense of the town against overwhelming forces as they await coming reinforcements. A large command being harassed as they headed toward the town.
Nevada meets an Englishman and shares a brief time in a cell with him as they get pushed in for daring to want a drink during a lull in the battle. There they meet an old man who seems awfully anxious to get out of town, even though it’s surrounded by some two thousand Indians.
They learn the reason and make plans if they survive.
Doesn’t seem likely though.
A nice look at one of the author’s early books, not published until now. I like his style, makes for smooth reading that keeps me flipping those metaphorical pages until I hit the end of this tale.
The little fellow in the picture is me. It was taken a few years ago. It’s four generations on my mother’s side and the photo was shot in early 1950 or late 1949.
From right to left is Barbara Elizabeth Stallings, Lucy Inez Stallings Radford, Myra Elaine Radford Johnson(Burchett these days), and me, George Randall Johnson. One of Mama’s sisters is a Barbara. My generation has me named after an uncle, another George(Jr.). The next generation has an Elizabeth, a Lucy, a Myra, and a Randall. The newest line has a Gabriel after my Grandfather.
DCI Robert Jericho is handed an assignment he loathes: working on a reality show. Britain’s Got Justice. Not as a consultant, but a participant, a leader of the young people trying to win the prize. As usual on such, they are all young and beautiful with no more thought in their heads than winning the popular vote. They cry on cue for one thing.
Jericho had once been a top notch policeman that worked more than his share of unusual cases. Got a lot of press. Then ten years before, his wife had disappeared without trace and the life had gone out of him. He’d transferred away from London to a small village, intent on retiring there away from the limelight.
His boss didn’t like him, which was why he’d gotten the assignment. She knew he’d hate it.
He was uncooperative. This was television. Despite the title of the show, they didn’t want real police work. To dull. They wanted car chases, hard interrogations, guns drawn at the slightest excuse.
At the same time, Jericho began receiving tarot cards through the mail. All of the hanged man, each one more grotesque than the first. He took it as someone’s sick idea of a joke until one was found on the pillow in his apartment bedroom. The cards were kept between him and his assistant.
Also, a serial killer he’d helped put away thirty years before is quietly released from prison and resumed his killing activities. They spill over into the reality show when the man takes one of the contestants.
Was that an accident? Jericho didn’t know about the serial killer’s release. We do though as we watch him do his thing.
Is it tied in with the tarot cards? That we aren’t sure of.
Jericho gets more and more in trouble as the TV show producer uses his influence to circumvent regular police procedure, taking him from his regular beat, all in the name of ratings of course, as he tries to figure what’s going on and how it all involves him. It doesn’t make the cops on the areas he intrudes happy, believing it’s him wanting that return to glory of the old days.
A pretty good combo police/thriller/serial killer/ mystery here that surprised me at the end.
The script for JESSE JAMES was developed from a series of newspaper articles from the 1870s that portrayed the James Brothers as sort of Robin Hood types. Darryl F. Zanuck, executive producer, wanted this approach. Nunnally Johnson is credited with the script, although three other writers worked on it. Henry King directed with a one day assist by Irving Cummings(uncredited) when a brief illness slowed him.
Tyrone Powers and Henry Fonda played Jesse and Frank, respectively. Nancy Kelly plays Zerelda, “Zee,” Jesse’s lover and eventually his wife. Randolph Scott is Will Wright, a Marshall friendly to Jesse mainly because he loved Zee as well. John Carradine has the role of Bob Ford, the man who shot killed Jesse James after working out a deal for the reward money, $25,000 in the film and a pardon. Lon Chaney has a small role as one of the James Gang(in one chase scene, he fell off his horse and was trampled, though not hurt badly. He finished his scenes, but director King claimed he was drunk and fired him. He was eventually dropped by the studio.
One note before I get into the film. Two horses died when run off a cliff in one scene. They’d been blindfolded before being driven off the cliff. It led to the American Humane Society getting involved in Hollywood film making and the familiar AHS certification that now appear on all films with animals used. The film was shot on location in Missouri, a small town named Pineville, still rustic enough to functon as a western town.
While there seemingly have been innumerable versions of the James story filmed, such that what is true or not can hardly be known. But this film is notorious for straying from the truth quite often. All the elements we are familiar with are here, though rearranged and twisted a bit.
The boys get into the outlaw business because of the railroads in the movie. An agent for the railroad, Barshee(Brian Donlevy), was using thuggery to get folks to sell their farms at giveaway prices, a dollar an acre, not above beating children to get reluctant farmers to sign away their rights. He tries that with the James family, just farmers here(no mention is made of their past with Quantrill during and after the Civil War), and runs into a buzz saw. A sucker punch on Frank fails and Jesse happens along to hold his thugs off with a gun while Frank administers a beating to Bartell. When Bartell tries to attack with a scythe, Jesse shoots him in the hand. Bartell immediately accuse Jesse of backshooting him in town and gets his thugs sworn in as lawmen to arrest him.
The brothers take to the hills until something can be worked out. When they arrive at the farm, a bomb kills their mother and they swear to get Bartell, Jesse shooting him to death in a saloon. Of course in real life, Mrs. James, though badly wounded and losing an arm, survived to bury her son. It was a younger brother that was killed in the bombing.
They go on a campaign to rob the train line that sent the thuggish Bartell.
Marshall Wright(Scott) works out a deal after a couple of years that will get Jesse a minimum sentence if he turns himself in. Five years max. A friendly judge is brought in and Wright is to serve as defense lawyer for Jesse. He marries Zee, who’s promised to wait for him while he’s in prison. It’s all a set-up, though, and as soon as he’s locked up, the judge is shoved out the door for one sympathetic to the railroad owner and a hanging is promised. Wright is outraged and the railroad owner tells him to go tend to his Marshalling business. Frank sends word that if Jesse isn’t released by midnight, he’ll come get him. The army declares martial law and surrounds the jail.
It doesn’t help. One continuity goof here: the escape is midnight, but when they race outsie, shooting into the ir to disperse the crowds, it’s broad daylight.
The years go by and the James family never stay anywhere long, Jesse suspicious of any incident off kilter. Zee grows weary of the constant moving, the robberies. Not what she’d signed up for. When their son, Jesse, Jr(only one child in the film, though they had two in real life), is born and he’s not able to get there because of pursuit by a posse, she breaks and has Wright, who’s there, take her back home. A negro servant named Pinkie(played surprisingly straight for the times, stays long enough to give Jesse a letter telling him not come after her.
The Northfield robbery that was the end of the gang is handled a bit differently. Bob Ford was already a member of the gang, had been from the beginning, and negotiating a deal with the governor(the reward plus a pardon for all activities). The law in Northfield is alerted to the coming robbery and prepares accordingly. In real life, that it went bad, was helped by some of the gang being drunk. The Younger brothers weren’t there, at least not mentioned. Frank is the only one who escapes unscathed, with Jesse getting a bad chest wound. Two were killed and the rest arrested, one being Bob Ford. He was riding a gray horse and everyone had instructions not to shoot him.
he conclusion goes about like all of them do with the exception here having Jesse retiring and the family, reunited and Jesse healed from the Northfield wounds, heading out to California. Bob and Charlie Ford arrive ostensibly to deliver a message from Frank about an easy bank waiting to be hit. When he steps up onto a chair to remove a sampler made by Zee for packing for the trip, Bob shoots him from behind.
Here’s a clip of the fight between Frank and Bartell:
1: Live By Night(ARC) – Dennis Lehane: novel set back in the 1920s. Bootlegging, underworld betrayal, police corruption, family dynamics, and a protagonist named Joe Coughlin. Due for release on October 2nd.
2: The Last Dragonslayer(ARC) – Jasper Fforde: first book in a new young adult series wioth a sixteen year old girl named Jennifer Strange running Shazam, an employment agency for magicians in a world where magic had slowly faded. The author’s Tuesday Next series is a personal favorite and this book has that same, slightly bent take on fantasy. October 2nd release date.
and the ebook:
3: We Are The Hanged Man(review copy) – Douglas Lindsay: a well known British cop gets stuck with an assignment on a reality show, Britain’s Got Justice, just as someone starts sending him tarot cards of The Hanged Man, each one more grotesque. The fourth one he finds on the pillow in his apartment. Also, a serial killer gets out of priosn after thirty years and resumes his activities. The two spill over into each other. Is that deliberate. Reading this one now. Just out.
When I sat down and started reading TARGET LANCER, it didn’t take me long to realize it was not the story I expected. Oh, there’s a plot to kill President Kennedy alright, just not the one I expected. In his research for this book, Max Collins discovered there had been another known assassination plan that would happen in Chicago. Not a lot is written about it, but enough to whet the author’s imagination.
Heller gets pulled in when a man who’d did some PR work for him years ago asks him to function as a bodyguard while he makes a delivery to a contact in a strip club. An envelope full of hundreds, the man had gotten roped in because of free tickets to a Bears game.
Heller recognizes the contact, a man he grew up with and who went under the name Jack Ruby these days. Ruby spots him as well and the pair end up shooting the breeze about the old days. Heller even meets a young man there named Lee Harvey Oswald.
All this taking place in late October, 1963.
As usual Max Collins has woven real history into his fictional account. Most of the people are real, their actions here a product of his imagination. Collins freely admits things have been altered a bit, not a lot, to get a coherent narrative. And some things are different because of conflicting accounts in the various books he researched.
I thought this was a much better novel than placing Heller directly in the middle of the events of Dallas later in November. It’s been done many times and this angle, a plot uncovered in Chicago was new to me. And most readers I would wager.
I never fail to be entertained with a Max Allan Collins novel.
Recommended.
TARGET LANCER will be released on November 27th. You will be reminded.
C. S. Boyles, Jr.. Will C. Brown’s real name, has become a favorite writer of mine. I’ve posted on him before. That post solicited a comment from his granddaughter explaining his name. it’s C. S. Boyles, Jr., but when he joined the army, they didn’t like initials. So he made it Clarence Scott for their purposes.
THE NAMELESS BREED won the Spur Award for best western novel in 1960.
Brazos McCloud watched in helpless fury as the Mexican army dragged his father off in chains. They had raided his samll town in the Republic of Texas and Seale McCloud had gone out to talk to them.
That had been three years ago. Word had come that the Mexicans had given his father, along with a number of white captives, to the Comanche Indians. It was common practice to buy captives back, but the McCloud family had no money.
Brazos’s brother were minding the home while he had taken a job by two men working for the English. Captain Spide, nicknamed The Spider, had offered him a thousand in gold to steal a pouch of Union papers concerning the future of the republic from a courier who was transporting them North.
Brazos had done so and, while fleeing, had taken a Cherokee arrow in the shoulder from a roving buck.
His next conscious memory was at a doctor’s home in San Antonio being attended by his daughter.
He slips out to visit The Spider and confirm the deal. While gone, agents for the Lone Star government had visited the Doctor’s home looking for him and in the ruckus, a fire was set.
The pouch of papers were not where he’d left them, but he had ideas of who had them now. Avoiding a double cross because an agent moved to soon, he escaped with his money and a promise to deliver the documents anyway. When he gave his word…
Now everyone is after him. Agents from England, Mexico, the Union, and even the Rangers were hunting him. He has to get the papers while avoiding a second double cross and, with his brothers, make the long trek north to find and buy his father’s freedom.
