July 2015 Book Round-Up

This is Tracy again working from Randy’s computer, as we’re sorting through anything that needs to be taken care of.  This is a list of books for this month he added to as he finished them, so I’m posting it on his behalf.

204: TH: Black Is The Color – John Brunner

205: WE: To Swallow the Earth – Ransom A. Wilcox

206: TH: Killing Maine – Mike Bond

207: TH: The Templar Succession: A Novel(ebook) – K. R. Eckert

208: WE: I Am A Roving Gambler(ebook) – Bill Crider

209: HR: The Swiss Family RobinZOM (Book 2)(ebook) – Perrin Briar

210: TH: Death of A Guru – Doug Greenall

211: WE: Freed Men (West of the Dead Line Book 2)(ebook) – Phil Truman

212: WE: Amos Flagg: High Gun – Clay Randall

213: TH: Murdering Lawyers – Larry Fine

For Your Amusement

Tags

Humor

Drummer of Vengeance (Il giorno del giudizio)1971

Tags

Craig Hill, Gordon Mitchell, Rosalba Neri, Rossano Brazzi, spaghetti western, Ty Hardin

The title character is a small mechanical toy, the only thing our hero finds in the ruins of his home when he comes home from the war, a Union officer(Ty Hardin who we know only as the Stranger), finding the home burned to the ground. His wife and son had been murdered. A lot of the film is flashbacks, from The Stranger’s point of view as well as some of the villains.

The glaring plot hole is The Stranger says he knows all of the men who did this but the laeder. How did he know this? The ashes were cold. And if he knew the participants, how did he not know the leader.

The drummer toy is used to terrorize his targets, he winding it up, setting it on the ground, and saying “When it stops, make your move!”

He uses a multitude of disguise. mostly a doomsayer predicting dire consequences as the men are shot down. Also, an undertaker.

This film has a checkered history. As was common back then, the English language release was heavily cut. The version I saw had most of those scenes restored, mostly add-ons to longer ones. You’d be watching and they would break into Italian for a few senrences. Especially noticeable in the wild west sequence. Spaghetti vet Craig Hill has a small role as O’Connor, the owner of the wild west show. During his spiel, he went back and forth from English and Italian. An Indian girl from the show, Rising Sun(Rossano Brazzi), aids The Stranger.

Two other vets had parts as well. Gordon Mitchell was the thinnest as a deputy and Rossano Brazzi was more prominent as the Sheriff.

The music score was mostly borrowed from The Hellbenders.

Not a great film. I have seen worse though.

FFB: Amos Flagg: High Gun – Clay Randall

Tags

Clay Randall(clifton Adams), Forgotten Books, western

I’ve written about Amos Flagg before He’s sheriff of Sangaree County in the Texas panhandle. Based in the town of Academy, he had only one deputy. The pair were the only law in the whole county.

Gunner Flagg, father of Amos, was a former outlaw that had come to live in Academy after his last stint in Huntsville Prison. Amos hadn’t seen him in twenty years when that happened. He’d decided to go straight, mostly, when a scheme blew up in his face.

Straight, but still a bit of a con man at heart, he’s got another scheme secretly going. Having written newspapers back east, he’d sold them on a series of articles on bad men of the west. Jesse James wasn’t long murdered and readers were hot on these Robin Hoods. Gunner’s idea was to secretly get word out that there was a place to hide in a valley of Sangaree and plenty of good food and liquor available. A photographer/news reporter was part of the plan.

The outlaws would get good provisions and a place to rest. All ythat would be required was an interview and a few pictures.

But, as with all Gunner’s scams, things go awry and Amos is left to smooth it out and rescue the hostages.

Another terrific entry in Clifton Adams’s western series.

To Swallow The Earth – Ransom A. Wilcox

Tags

Ransom A. Wilcox, western

The plot is not new, but I like what the author has done with it. A lot of action, hair breadth escapes as our heroes attempt to avoid the villains plans.

Wade Forester comes home to Nevada, in the silver rush years, after three years of wandering. His father is missing, his sister seems to have lost her mind after losing her child, and brother-in-law seems to want him dead. So he must stay in the shadows as he searches for the reasons. A beautiful Young woman named Patricia Laughlin is also looking for her family. She has trouble trusting anyone. Bridger Calhoun, the brother-in-law, just might be the man to do it.
?
The pair end up opposing each other after a crossing and Wade has a decision to make. Should he risk his life to help her? You know how things must go. Calhoun and Wade end up competing for her. She’s a key piece to what’s really going on in the little valley.

Everyone believes Wade a stone cold killer and wants him out of the way.

Well, not everyone. Wade has friends who fill him in on things happening in the valley and he doesn’t like it.

Well done western novel. The author lived in the area and knows it well. Can be ordered HERE.

New In The House

*************************************************************************

1: The Avenger: The Sun God – Matthew Baugh: the first new Avenger novel in forty years froom Moonstone. The “villain” is a variation og the Nazi Doc Savage.

2: Protocol Zero(review copy) – James Abel: When authorities in Alaska receive a disturbing call from a teenage girl, their investigation leads them to discover an entire family of researchers dead. Joe Rush is called to help examine the bodies. On the surface, it looks like a brutal murder/suicide. But the situation is nowhere near that simple—nor is it over. Upon closer investigation, Rush discovers the terrifying truth. The research team has fallen victim to something that seems impossible at first, yet the evidence looks undeniable in the lab. Now the danger may threaten thousands more.

3: Deceit and Other Conveniences(review copy) – Alex Adelson: A mystery surrounding a Wall Street deal and an unexpected attraction between two unlikely protagonists is the basis for this contemporary American drama. Garrett Carlssen is an entrepreneur from a small town in Pennsylvania, who with his difficult and brilliant partner, Jersey Smart, has built a growing technology business. They need big money to continue growing the company. Enter, a Wall Street Banker, Anne Mills, who grew up in the same town as Garrett Carlssen, but in a different social stratum. She, and her Company, can supply the funds the company requires. The goals of each of these three people are very different and therein lay the seeds of conflict. Wall Street culture, ethics, and methods, along with the psychology of human behavior are the fabric of “Deceit and other Conveniences.”

and the ebooks:

4: Wake Up, Time To Die(ebook) – Chris Rhatigan: a collection of crime stories from Beat To A Pulp/

5: West of The Dead Line: Fred Men(review copy) – Phil Truman: The young slave Bass Reeves is captured by a Yankee spy during the 1862 Civil War campaign in Arkansas culminating in at the Battle of Pea Ridge. Set free by his captor, Bass wanders into the encampment of the 2nd Cherokee Mounted Rifles of the Southern Army. Colonel Stand Watie, directs the lost slave to stand and fight with them, which he does, all the way to the Confederate retreat from Elkhorn Tavern. Battling shoulder-to-shoulder with the brave Cherokee warriors during the fierce combat, Bass’s life is forever changed in a way he never before dreamed.

6: Cryo: Rise of The Immortals(review copy) – Geoffrey Wakeling: Earth is dying, but John Carlody has the chance to escape. He wins the most anticipated lotto ever; the opportunity to become part of CRYO, be one of fifty people to enjoy the latest cryonics technology and journey forward half a century. However, a dream come true could be a making of a nightmare. CRYO isn’t what it pretends to be and John is about to discover their secrets. But will he be too late?

7: Death Row Apocalypse(review copy) – Darrick Mackey: This new author brings with him a fresh perspective on the Zombie Genre. This story is non-linear for the most part, the threads merge as the main players are brought together. The Anti-Hero, a dark and somewhat twisted serial killer that enjoys his profession to an extreme, (hold on to your stomachs!), is double-crossed by the CIA. He finds himself narrowly escaping death row only to wake up in a prison, crawling with zombies. Our dark hero exercises his talents as he tries to lead a small group of visitors to safety, while countless zombies hunt the group down like vermin. Tearing them apart one by…

Killing Maine – Mike Bond

I’ve posted about Pono Hawkins before HERE.He’s tilting at Wind mills again, literally. This time on the other side of the world. Maine. He’s there to help an old comrade who’s in jail for murder.

Buddy Franklin is his name and Pono doesn’t even like him. He once testified at a trial where Pono was accused of shot in an Afghani girl. He did, but the fifteen year old had been set on fire by her husband for daring to lay eyes on another man, an honor killing. Dying anyway and begging for someone to kill her, he’d ended her pain. The Bush government made him a scapegoat and Pono got twenty years, a sentence vindicated a few months later. Franklin had also married the woman Pono loved.

Why help him then?

A thing called honor. Franklin was Special Forces like Pono and the testimony was by rules of law. One didn’t desert a comrade in trouble. Oh, forgot to mention, Franklin had saved his life in a firefit as well.

The Wind Mafia was at it again in Maine. Pono had managed to beat them in Hawaii and they were now making billions, off the public dollar, building useless wind turbine towers, blotting the landscape, killing wildlife, ruining property values, and getting obscenely rich, along with the politicians, judges, and cops they paid off.

Pono was only there for a few days before the harassment started, shots were fired at him, and the cops were trying to pin murders, arson, and destruction of property on him.

A wonderfully write novel that wouldn’t let me stop until I finished it. Read the whole thing in less than a day.

Recommended. Can be ordered here.

FFB: Black Is The Color – John Brunner

Tags

Forgotten Books, John Brunner

As a young boy discovering a love of reading even as I was learning, John Brunner was an early find, third I believe, behind Heinlein and Norton. The early stuff was mostly from the Ace Doubles. Black Is The Color is a little bit different. From 1969, part spy novel, it has a plot line that would fit in in things happening today.

Mark Hanwell, a disillusioned young man returns home to London after six months in Spain where he’d met and worked for The Big Famous Writer he only ever refers to as Hairy Harry. It didn’t take long for him to realize his hero had feet of clay, making the bulk of his money selling pornography and weed. In fact, the last four pieces of writing under his name had been written by Mark.

Home, he goes looking for a woman who’d sent him a few letters early on, then stopped. A singer, he traced the bank d she’d been with falling into as different a world as he’d ever run into.

Sadism was part of it, voodoo, a plan to start a race war in England, Mark finds his work an and the man she’d taken up with, a South Africaner.

I’d never heard of this book before I came across it. Good stuff

Kill The Poker Player(Hai sbagliato… dovevi uccidermi subito!)1972

Tags

Robert Woods, spaghetti western

KILL THE POKER PLAYER is the title of the American release of this 1972 spaghetti western, a fairly innocuous one as spaghettis go. The print I watched on Youtube, low quality by the way, had it labeled with this title. But within the film credits, it had a title I thought much better: Creeping Death. That comes from the killer’s use of poisonous snakes.

The movie opens with a bank robbery, one million dollars. The stick-up man uses a six gun with a silencer attached (don’t explain them). After relieving them of the cash, he shoots the president and two clerks. As it’s a windy day, the little sound he makes with his silenced gun is covered. In the saloon, a confederate decked out as a union officer is on hand. The bank president, not dead, staggers out with a gun. We learn there’s a third man, unseen, who shoots the bank man. The Union officer guns down those in the bar when they react and the two men beat it out of town.

Shortly they are joined by the third man while eating. The camera angle, the big hat, and never showing him from the front, guarantee we will not know the man. The first two man wake up later to find poisonous snakes sitting on their chests.

That’s the mystery of this film. Who is the third man that cold-blood murdered his partners?

Robert Wood rides into town and identifies himself as Jonathan Pinkerton, an agent for Lloyd’s of London who’d insured the bank money. It’s his job to find thaat third man and the money. a two hundred thousand dollar reward is on the line.

A number of suspects are offered. The sheriff Lewis Burton(Frank Braña), who Pinkerton witnesses shooting down an outlaw he’d induced to surrender, Doctor Norton( Ernesto Colli), a zoologist who specializes in snakes would seem the obvious suspect. Third on the list is a saloon owner(Carlo Gaddi) and his girl friend(Nieves Navarro, billed as Susan Scott), and a local rancher, Clinton( Ivano Staccioli ), who claims to be broke from rustling, horse thievery, and bad poker playing.

Halfway through we learn Pinkerton is really Alan Fields, a Federal agent brought in on the case.

Someone wants him off the case though as he’s constantly challenged by groups of men. Forynately he’s handy with his fists and gun, whatever’s needed.

Then the suspects start getting knocked off and Fields is framed for them. But he keeps pushing until the third man reveals himself.

FFB: Trap For Buchanan – Jonas Ward

Tags

William Ard

Jonas Ward was a pseudonym used by mystery writer William Ard for his  Buchanan series, some twenty-five titles, though he may not have written some of the latter entries.

Tom Buchanan came looking to help his friend old Mousetrap Mulligan, a man he’d grubs take without any thought of getting repaid.

But the old man had made the big strike. Unfortunately he liked to drink and when he did, he talked. Oh he never gave out the location, but folks were already scheming to get it.

Then the old man was killed and Buchanan was stuck with only two kids on his side: seventeen year old Nora, old Mousetrap’s granddaughter and eighteen year old Billy Budd. Twould kids to young to even figure out they were in love.

Opposing them were three groups: a bunch from town, old Desiderate and his Apaches, and the bandit mana zo and his gang.

It didn’t look good.

A pretty good western