December 2014 Book Round-Up

282: WE: Ghost Town Belles(ebook) – Chap O’Keefe

283: MY: Death in Eden: A Mystery – Paul J. Heald

284: MY: As Dark as Christmas Gets(ebook) – Lawrence Block

285: WE: By Blood Bound(Smith & Sons Saga)(ebook) – Wayne D. Dundee

286: TH: Wake Up and Die: A Bragg Thriller – Jack Lynch

287: CR: Music For The Dead(ebook) – Luis Gutiérrez Maluenda, translator Nick Caistor

288: SF: Shades of Love (The Survivalist Short Story Collection Book 1)(ebook) – Jerry Ahern, Sharon Ahern, & Bob Anderson

289: CR: Firecracker Kill(ebook) – Max Allan Collins

290: TH: Loot – Jude Watson

291: SF: Light Dreams (The Survivalist Short Story Collection Book 3)(ebook) – Jerry Ahern, Sharon Ahern, & Bob Anderson

292: CB: The Adventures of Abra and His Magic Carpet – Liz Winstanley

293: CB: Chilly Goes to Hong Kong and China: Another Chilly the Toy Polar Bear Adventure – Michael Rosenberg

294: CR: It’s in the Book(ebook) – Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

295: AC: Once Upon a Time (The Survivalist Short Story Collection Book 2)(ebook) – Jerry Ahern, Sharon Ahern, & Bob Anderson

296: SF: Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project – Daniel P. Douglas

297: CR: Calypso – Ed McBain

298: TH: Blood Line: A Thriller (Granger Spy Novel Series – Book 1) – John J. Davis

299: SF: The Society of Orion: Book One: Weapons(ebook) – Gerald J. Kubicki & Kristopher Kubicki

300: WE: Angel in the Badlands(ebook) – Chuck Tyrell

301: TH: Skynoise(ebook) – Ernie Lindsey

302: TH: THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E: The Spider’s Web Affair(ebook) – Cassandra Nightengale

303: WE: Devil’s Run John Coburn The Peregrine 2(ebook) – Richard Prosch

304: HR: Christmas with the Dead(ebook) – Joe R. Lansdale

305: HR: A Chick, A Dick and a Witch Walk Into a Barn… (Jake Istenhegyi, the Accidental Detective Book 1)(ebook) – Nikki Nelson-Hicks

306: HR: Golems, Goons and Cold Stone Bitches (Jake Istenhegyi, the Accidental Detective Book 2)(ebook) – Nikki Nelson-Hicks

307: TH: The Cause – Roderick Vincent

308: TH: The Stolen Ones (A Stevens and Windermere Novel) – Owen Laukkanen

309: MY: Die Again: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel – Tess Gerritsen

310: CR: The Cost of Doing Business(ebook) – Jonathan Ashley

Another good year with a mix of paper and ebooks(everything from long novels to shorter pieces).

December 2014 Movie Round-Up

Panama Lady(1939)

Island of Lost Women(1959)

Rio Bravo(19590

A Stranger In Town(1967)

The Ballad of Django(1971)

The Streets of San Francisco(1972)

Two Brothers In Trinity(1972)

Cahill, U.S. Marshal(1973)

Charge!(1973)

2Cellos: Purple Haze

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2Cellos

Rio Bravo(1959)

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Angie Dickinson, Dean Martin, John Wayne, Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan

AMC ran a John Wayne marathon, mostly westerns, over the holidays and I caught RIO BRAVO Christmas Eve. It is one of my favorites and I think the best of the trio of films Howard Hawkes made with the same basic plot, with John Wayne the only consistent star in all three. It was based on a short story, Rio Bravo by B. H. McCampbell, with the script written by Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett. Brackett also wrote the scripts for the remakes, El Dorado and Rio Lobo.

The plot is Wayne as a sheriff holding a rich cattleman’s brother in jail awaiting a Marshal to pick him up on a murder charge. Claude Akin plays the reprobate brother. Wayne’s only help is an ex-, now alcoholic deputy, who let a woman turn him into a drunk, played by Dean Martin and a crippled old man played by Walter Brennan. He’s later joined by an able young gunman played by teen heartthrob Ricky Nelson when his boss, Ward Bond, a friend of Wayne’s, is shot in the back.

A good portion of the film takes place within the walls of the jail as they take refuge to guard the prisoner. Brennan’s character rarely leaves the place and they eventually all hold up there as the cattleman’s men apply the pressure, and guns, to free the frankly no account brother.

Angie Dickinson plays a young gambling woman who falls for the burly sheriif and tries to help. Not to mention giving him a reason to survive. It ranks among

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 39,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 14 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

New In The House

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1: Day of Mourning – Don Pendleton: I read these first two years ago and my copies are long gone. Evan Lewis recommended them on Facebook as two of the better post-Don Pendleton books. Stephen Mertz is the actual author and I’ve recently grown to appreciate his work more recently.

2: Dead Man Running – Don Pendleton: Sequel to the first book.

and the ebooks:

3: Devil’s Run – Richard Prosch: Richard’s latest Peregrine story.

4: Christmas With The Dead – Joe R. Lansdale: great zombie story.

5: Jake Istenhegyi, The Accidental Detective: A Chick, A Dick and a Witch Walk Into a Barn…- Nikki Nelson-Hicks: good mash-up of the P.I. story and a bit of Lovecraft thrown in.

6: Jake Istenhegyi, The Accidental Detective: Golems, Goons and Cold Stone Bitches – Nikki Nelson-Hicks: same as above.

7: Going Shogun – Ernie Lindsey: Lovable loser Chris waits tables by day and dreams of making something better of himself by night. But, under the almighty, oppressive rule of The Board and their divisive caste system, it’s nearly impossible. That is until his super-geek pal and fellow waiter, Forklift, hits upon a foolproof scheme: steal their employer’s ultra-popular, top secret recipes and sell them on a black market internet site.

8: The Last of The Star Kings – Edmond Hamilton: The newly discovered finale to the Star Kings saga! Edmond Hamilton’s The Star Kings (Amazing Stories in 1949) is one of the jewels in the crown of early space opera, rivaled only by E. E. Smith’s Lensmen Series and Jack Williamson’s Legion of Space Saga. Then in 1957 Hamilton penned two additional novels in the Star Kings universe, that languished undiscovered in the pages of Imaginative Tales, until earlier this year when the editors of FuturesPast Editions found both stories, one (set millennia after the events of The Star Kings) the capstone to the entire saga.

Devil’s Run: John Coburn — The Peregrine #2 – Richard Prosch

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Richard Prosch, western

Richard Prosch brings us another adventure of John Coburn, The Peregrine, a man with a reputation in 1889.

He’s hired on to bring Tie-Down Sam Gustoffson to trial as a witness against his cousin Willy for the slaughter of a whole family. What Coburn doesn’t know is the sheriff of the small town they’s stopped off in for the night to get something to eat and Coburn to visit a lady friend was also another cousin of the same family. And he was incensed that one family member would rat out another.

Therefor Sam had to die.

Not to mention The Peregrine.

Another welcome addition to Richard’s growing body of work. Most excellent. Available HERE.

The Ballad of Django(Giù La Testa… Hombre)1971

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Hunt Powers, spaghetti western

This has nothing to do with Django. As was the usual thing back in those days, the spaghetti films tried to ride the coattails of the more successful entries in the genre. There were something like thirty, maybe more, films that had Django in the title. The only official sequel, with original star Franco Nero, came more than twenty years after the original. It also appeared under the title A FISTFUL OF DEATH and the world-wide English title was ADIOS COMPANEROS.

It was written and directed by Demofilo Fidani under his pseudonym Miles Deem. Fidani specialized in low budget movies and this one scraped the bottom of the barrel. Dirty and filled with a saloon brawl, a staple of the spaghetti western, bad fist fights in other places, and a lot of gun play.

Jeff Cameron plays Macho Callaghan, the lone survivor of an ambush by Butch Cassidy(Jack Betts), billed as Hunt Powers), the Sundance Kid(Giancarlo Prete, billed as Philip Garner), and their gang, who needed horses, food, and ammunition. Wounded by a bullet, he plays dead until they leave. He’s rescued and heals, then goes looking for revenge.

In that interim, Butch and the gang have had a falling out and split, half going with Ironhead(spaghetti vet Gordon Mitchell). Here’s where it gets weird. Ironhead has become respectable, planning the jobs and letting his gang pull them, take the risks, and gets the biggest cut. He doesn’t mind if some of them get killed, even helping out in that a bit. A bigger cut for him. At the same time, Butch and Sundance are posing as a veterinarian and his assistant.

Macho meets and befriends one of the outlaws, Buck O’Sullivan(Benito Pacifico, billed as Dennis Colt), in the above mentioned saloon brawl, the two mwn fighting to a standstill, then getting drunk together. It’s his in to Ironhead’s band and there he begins his plan against the two bands, helping pull a job, then playing the two off against each other. Ironhead hates Butch for beating him out of the proceeds in a crooked poker game.

We learn a secret at the end about Macho as he continues his hunt for Butch and Sundance, the only survivors, who escaped, minus a big pile of loot.

I’ve said before that the spaghettis had good, bad, and just plain ugly entries. This one falls closer to ugly than bad, For the spaghetti purist, as I am, only. The best thing about it was the presence of Klaus Kinski, a favorite, playing against type as a mild mannered, mostly, priest. Restrained for once, he’s always a joy to watch.

Skynoise – Ernie Lindsey

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Ernie Lindsey, Mystery/Science Fiction

I’ve really grown to love Ernie Lindsey’s over the last few years. He’s equally adept in any genre he takes on. in SKYNOISE, he combines several: history, action thriller, mystery, and science fiction.

Thus we get the mystery of the lost colonists of Roanoke Island, just off the coast of my native North Carolina, time travel, those ever popular Men In Black(not the movie men, but those of legend and conspiracy theory), and plenty of action.

It’s; the story of author and researcher Helen Weils and apparent consiracy freak Chip Sledd, who’s taken to showing up at Helen’s lectures and book signings spouting his ever increasing whacky theories about thos long disappeared colonists.

Had a lot of un with this one. Can be ordered here.

Merry Christmas To All

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Holidays