June 2013 Book Round-Up

157: TH: Eye For An Eye – Ben Coes

158: WE: The Bounty Killer – Marvin H. Albert

159: CR: Colt(ebook) – Jude Hardin

160: SF: Star Trek: The Folded World – Jeff Mariotte

161: HR: Joyland – Stephen King

162: WE: The Brother O’Brien: The Killing Season – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

163: WE: Sidewinders: The Butcher of Bear Creek – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

164: WE: The Best Western Stories of Elmore Leonard(ebook)

165: CR: Fool Me Twice – Michael Brandman

166: WE: MacCallister: The Eagles Legacy: Dry Gulch Ambush – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

167: TH: Phoenix Rising: Day of Judgment – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

168: CR: Father And Son(ebook) – John Barlow

169: CR: Swing Low, Swing Dead – Frank Gruber

170: HR: Dark Woods – Jay Kumar

171: CR: What Doesn’t Kill Her – Max Allan Collins

172: CR: Harmless(ebook) – Ernie Lindsey

173: WE: Shootout At Hellyer’s Creek(ebook) – Chap O’Keefe

174: PU: The Spider Strikes! – R. T. M. Scott

175: PU: The Spider: The Wheel of Death – R. T. M. Scott

176: WE: West of The Big River: The Avenging Angel(ebook) – Mike Newton

177: HR: The Dead Man: Streets of Blood(ebook) – Barry Napier

178: SF: Kill Factor(ebook) – Roger Vallon

179: SF: Doctor Who: I Am A Dalek(ebook) – Gareth Roberts

180: SF: Collected Sci-Fi Stories: Pack 1(ebook) – Marco Guarda

181: AD: Doc Savage: Skull Island – Will Murray

182: WE: Bodie Kendrick-Bounty Hunter: Diamond In The Rough(ebook) – Wayne D. Dundee

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June 2013 Movie Round-Up

Two Against The World(1936)

Gun Law(1938)

Five Came Back(1939)

Tall In The Saddle(1944)

Comanche(1956)

The Beast of Hollow Mountain(1956)

Beast From Haunted Cave(1960)

The Unforgiven(1960)

Django The Last Killer(1967)

A Hole In The Forehead(1968)

May God Forgive You…I Won’t(1968)

Twice A Judas(1969)

Deathwork(1971)

Diamond In The Rough – Wayne D. Dundee

Tags

Bodie Kendrick, Wayne D. Dundee, western

One thing I liked about DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH is the incorporation of real history that forces me to do a little research. I’d vaguely heard about the U.S. Cavalry’s experiment with Camel Corps. Mr. Dundee uses that knowledge with a bit of fiction in the third adventure of Bodie Kendrick, bounty hunter by profession.

Heading into the small town of Lowdown looking for a bounty reported in the area, Bodie breaks up a stage hold-up, killing two in the process and driving the other pair off, he’s introduced to Amelia Gailwood and her party, two other men and a second woman.

The shotgun guard is dead, one of the passengers dying, and the driver wounded.

Bodie has to stick around while the bounties on the pair are authorized and Amelia hires him to fulfill the duties of the dead passenger, a private eye hired as a sort of bodyguard. Amelia is a writer working on the story of a lifetime.

She admits to being on the trail of a fabulous gem from the time of Caeser and Cleopatra and it’s secret hiding place. The trail leads them across the desert, into the mountains where a group of Apache cause problems. Not to mention the gang of gunmen hired by a competitor after the same prize.

A bit of speculation mixed with history spins out an action packed novel of the old west.

Had quite a lot of fun with this. Just released, it can be ordered HERE.

Deathwork(Captain Apache)1971

Tags

Carroll Baker, Lee Van Cleef, spaghetti western, Stuart Whitman

A run of the mill western starring Lee Van Cleef as an Apache army officer investigating the murder of an Indian agent revered by his charges. His dying words to the Sheriff with him were “April morning!”

Van Cleef looks decidedly odd with hair and his darkened skin, wearing a military uniform(pants and a leather jacket with trim and epaulets on the shoulders). It’s never explained, though mentioned, how an Indian got into and graduated from West Point. He gets called Red Ass a number of times throughout the film.

Stuart Whitman is a rich landowner/gunrunner who swings a big stick. When he brings a hundred rifles and ammunition to a self-styled Mexican general that wants the weapons without paying for them, and Whitman killed, the general learns the folly of his ways when there is a regime change suddenly and one of his own men turns on him. Whitman wants to know what April Morning means.

Carroll Baker is the blond temptress that we never quite understand.

The plot is quite incoherent from the saloon Apache goes to early in the film where everyone is dead but the “blind” guitar player, though not really blind, until he tries to kill the Captain to the episode where a couple of lightweights force him to take a concoction that makes him hallucinatory, showing him who killed the agent. Now how he could produce the identities of killers, see the actual murder, he sought through the use of mind altering drugs makes no sense at all. And the final solution of April morning.

Lee Van Cleef was a giant in the spaghetti genre and made a lot of films. This was a distinctly minor effort that didn’t really seem like a spaghetti to me. Van C;eef even sings a couple of songs, though in the background, during the film. The trailer below makes it look much better than it actually was,

The Best Western Stories of Elmore Leonard

Tags

Elmore Leonard, Forgotten Books

Today is Elmore Leonard day on Forgotten Books. Though justly famed as a crime writer, I decided to go with the early part of his career as a western writer In the introduction to this collection, Leonard states that when he decided he wanted to be a writer, after college, he chose a genre in which he could learn to write while getting paid at the same time. It was on westerns he decided to start.

Of course it wasn’t that easy.

His firs effort was rejected and he decided a little research might be handy. His aim was for the higher paying magazines, Saturday Evening Post and Colliers. There were also a half dozen pulp magazines still in existence. There his early success was found.

Leonard expressed a liking for the American southwest and the Apache, not caring much for the high plains tribes. His first half dozen or so tales mixed the Apache with Union soldiers, various situations which turned a number of stereotypes on their ears. One, the green officer fresh out of West Point sure if he went by the rules, he could defeat those “savages.” They are there to be sure, but a bit smarter in most cases.

Thirty stories in the collection, all but a few written and published in the early to mid-fifties. The last few spread out from the sixties to the nineties. 3:10 TO YUMA is here(made into two excellent movies with only minor changes to the story), The Captives(made into the film THE TALL T), and Only Good Ones which he later expanded into the novel Valdez is Coming!(made into the film starring Burt Lancaster).

Most early in his writing career, one can see the developing style and his way of putting the reader square into the story: the sweltering heat of the southwest desert country, the prejudices, and the valiant people of all stripe.

A most excellent collection.

For more posts on Leonard works, and perhaps others, check in at PATTINASE.

What Doesn’t Kill Her – Max Allan Collins

Tags

Max Allan Collins, thriller

Over the years since I first discovered his work, Max Allan Collins has become one of my favorite writers. He seems to do everything well: thrillers, straight crime, his tie-ins, non-fiction, the Nathan Heller and his disaster series, which mix real life people with fictional characters and situations. It doesn’t matter.

WHAT DOESN’T KILL HER deals with a serial killer, not a new subject to be sure. But even here, Mr. Collins throws a different twist. First off, he’s not even suspected by the police.

There is one though.

Jordan Rivera was sixteen when her parents and older brother were brutally murdered by a man who forces himself into their home. She’s forced to move the bodies of her family together for pictures, then the man rapes and says he wants her to tell his story.

For ten years Jordan lives in a hospital without speaking one word. Until that day she see a report on TV that a family had been brutally murdered and she knows he;s still out there.

She speaks up then and is soon out with plans to find him. Somehow. Part of her release is she attend a support group for people like her: those with whole families slain. She realizes, or intuits, something else. They are all victims of the same killer and they want her to help find this monster.

Also a young cop is working the case with the same thoughts. He knew Jordan, and liked her back in school, but like most young males was terrified to approach her. It’s what drove him to become a cop, what happened to her family.

Mr. Collins does a good job sprinkling clues throughout the novel as both the group and the young cop close in. Unknown to them, the killer was closing in on them as well.

Another winner from a fine writer.

Worth checking out and can be pre=ordered HERE.

The Horrible Truth About Batman’s Secret Identity

Overlooked Movies: Gun Law(1938)

Tags

George O'Brien, Overlooked Movies

George O’Brien Was an actor big in the silents and, though his popularity had waned made the transition to sound as a cowboy star. He was the son of the San Francisco Chief of Police and a college athlete. During the first world war, he was heavyweight boxing champ of the Pacific Fleet. In the early twenties, he worked as a stunt man in films and had a few bit parts. John Ford picked him to star in his first film, THE IRON HORSE, in 1924. He starred in four more Ford films. His western films ranked among the best, RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE in 1931, and a few dogs as well. He reenlisted to fight in World War II and came back to a dead career. John Ford gave him work in three films.

In GUN LAW, he plays Tom O’Malley, a U. S. Marshal sent in to clean up the town of Gun Sight. On the way, he spots a man staggering in the distance annd rushes over to help. The man collapses and as he goes for his canteen, he learns it’s all a ruse. The man is outlaw Raven, a man O’Malley had put away. Raven had broke jail and takes his horse and guns leaving him afoot, only to find his canteen empty miles along the desert. Then he finds water and the dead body of Raven lying beside water, Raven had missed the words Bad Water scratched on a rock. He finds a letter on the body asking him to come to Gunsight and look up Flash Arnold(Robert Gleckler). He takes the letter

O’Malley is saved when Parson Joshua Ross(Frank O’Connor) and his daughter, Ruth(Rita Oehman) come along in their wagon. They’re headed for Gunsight to start a church and he rides along with them.

O’Malley already had a man sent ahead to look over the lay. Sam McGee(Ray Whitley) was posing as a singing waiter with a band backing him. Whitley was a country and western singer/actor who made fifty-nine films, twenty as the lead singing cowboy.

It doesn’t take him long to establish himself as the Raven and already done the job he was sent for: the murder of the Marshal being sent in. He sows his own badge and identity papers as proof. He’s installed as the town marshal, “pretending” to be himself.

The stage keeps getting held up, but only when mine payrolls wee being transported. It could only mean someone on the inside knew the schedule. With his inside man and four deputies camped outside of town, he goes about figuring out that behind the scenes individual and where the stolen payrolls were hid.

Not without a bit of trouble though.

A decent western. A young Ward “Wagon Train” Bond plays one of the outlaws.

Foe more overlooked movies, check out SWEET FREEDOM on Tuesdays.

Shootout At Hellyer’s Creek – Chap O’Keefe

Tags

Chap O'Keefe, western

SHOOTOUT AT HELLYER’S CREEK was Chap O’Keefe’s second sale to Black Horse, but the third published. It was the first Joshua Dillard novel(there are two more available, of nine total, as ebooks, one of which I’ve read). Ex-Pinkerton man, now a free agent, Dillard breaks up a stage hold-up by the Butch Simich gang after the $50,000 in bills and coin being transferred to the Hellyer’s Creek bank. The driver, shotgun guard, and Wells Fargo representative were already dead and the two passengers were about to be killed when he catches up to the coach.

A brief skirmish ends with the arrival of the young woman, Dorothy-may Pennydale, from the next stage station and her escape to bring help.

The two passengers were the wife of the town saloon keeper returning from a shopping trip and a young man from the East, a dime novelist seeking new inspiration here in the West. Clement P. Conway is his name, Nate Ironhorn his pen name.

When the posse from town arrives to take possession of the bank funds, Dillard sets off to follow the trail of the outlaw gang.

Chap O’Keefe gives us an action filled novel as Dillard sets out in a singleminded manner to find the outlaws. He has a hatred of lawbreakers, one had taken his wife from him. A lot goes on until the climax in town over the Wells Fargo cash, all the criminals unearthed, and a shootout on Main Street.

In the introduction to this first ebook release of the story, O;Keefe notes that Dorothy-May is likely a prototype for his Misfit Lil, heroine of a number of novels, a few of which I’ve read.

Had quite a good time with this one. reading it in one session during the early morning hours over coffee.

Recommended and can be found HERE.

New In The House

This first group comes from Barry Ergang, whose site is well worth checking out. He’s got them organized by type and the prices compete well with the used sites. The difference here is he doesn’t have jacked-up shipping and handling for each book, not having a broker to go through that must get his cut. I order from him often and he accepts payment through Paypal or check(though he will let you know that the check will have to clear before he ships them. I order regularly and always get swift action. This group I ordered on a Friday and got them the next Tuesday.

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1 & 2: The Spider Strikes! & The Wheel of Death – R. T. M. Scott: these two book originally came bundled together. It was quite a deal. Buy the first, the second was free. At $.60, it was hard to pass up. I have them, but they were damaged years ago and I took the opportunity to pick them up.

3: The Sunrise Riders – William Colt MacDonald: large pritn edition

4: The Singing Scorpion – William Colt MacDonald

5: Swing Low, Swing Dead – Frank Gruber: the last johnny Fletcher mystery. A review was posted Friday.

6: The Cold Dish – Craig Johnson: I like the A & E series so I thought it was time to try one of the books.

7: Take My Face – Peter Held: Bill Crider posted on this one, an early Jack Vance. I found one reasonably priced, half the price of the cheapest other copy, a quarter of the most expensive. And it’s in very good shape.

8: What Doesn’t Kill Her(review copy) – Max Allan Collins: the latest thriller from one of my favorites.

9: The Heist – Janet Evanovitch & Lee Goldberg: Lee is a long time favorite. Not read any of Evanovitch’s work prior to the prequel short story they did for this first book in a new series.

and the ebooks:

10: Collected Sci-Fi Stories: Pack 1(review copy): Marco Guarda; an Italian writer whose work I’ve reviewed before.

11; Shootout At Hellyer’s Creek(review copy) – Chap O’Keefe: the first Joshua Dillard western My review goes up in the morning.