FFB: Amos Flagg: High Gun – Clay Randall

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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.

FFB: Black Is The Color – John Brunner

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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

Reading Forgotten Books: The Burnt Orange Heresy

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Charles Willeford, Forgotten Books

In preparing the post for this book, I discovered that Pretty Sinister Books had beat me to it by a considerable margin. Read the revie. Much better than I could do.

This was my first exposure to Charles Willeford’s work and what I read is not exactly a crime novel. Oh, there’s a murder victim here, arson, theft. What it is is a take on the art world: critics, artists, collectors, and their sphere of existence.

Jacques Figueras is the art critic pushed into stealing from a reclusive painter. A self made man who’s a bit vain about his work.

First Willeford, but not likely my last.

FFB: 2 Guns For Hire

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Forgotten Books, Todhunter Ballard(Neil Macneil)

Like many working writers, Todhunter Ballard used different pseudonyms on his prose. Neil Macneil was one of many that he used on his Costa in and McCall novels.

Tony Costaine and Bert McCall were partners, PIs that billed themselves as business detectives. They didn’t get paid by the hour, but received a fee of 20,000 dollars. Plus expenses of course.

Which is to say criminal activities might not slip into their lives.

Like their current case. The Climax Car Company, high end models, was on the verge of bankruptcy, no longer able to compete with the big three, and the founder, Magnus Paddock, had recently committed suicide. The family called them in because they’d done work for the old man before. And they didn’t believe it was suicide.

In the course of the case they deal with a corporate raider that’s offering more than the it’s worth, shots fired at them, hot women, another murder, a half brother to the family with criminal tendencies, and cops that keep arresting them even though they are usually on the receiving end of the violence.

A lot of fun.

FFB: The Blaster: The Girl With The Dynamite Bangs – Lou Cameron

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Forgotten Books, Lou Cameron

Boomer Green is a war hero and a soldier of fortune. He’s in Brazil, hired to clear a logjam at the mouth of a tributary of the Amazon river. It’s a huge pile of trees reaching kilometers. And growing. Not mention that the rainy season was at hand.

His employer was the von Lindenhoff family, a former Nazi and his two children. Lolo was full German, born before the move, and Kurt had a Brazilian mother. The jam would flood their crop fields if something wasn’t done.

Someone, Boomer quickly learned, was lieing. Lolo and the old man claimed no Indians lived in the lower valley. Kurt and others said there were natives in there. Worse, while examining the jam looking for key logs, Boomer finds a large number cut with a chain saw. Everyone swears there’s no logging companies upstream.

The jam was deliberate and our hero wades through the lies, attempts on his life, several, and two women hitting on him as he tries to find out what’s behind it all.

Though numbered 1, it was the only novel featuring The Blaster. Maybe it didn’t sell well or Cameron decided not to continue. The publisher was Lancer,long since folded, from 1973.

FFB: Touchfeather, Too – Jimmy Sangster

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Forgotten Books, Jimmy Sangster

Last week, I covered TOUCHFEATHER, the first book. This week, I’m posting on the second, and only other as far as I know, Katy Touchfeather adventure.

Katy Touchfeather is back in action. Based in London, she works for a man named Blaser. Fluent in six languages, passable in a few more, her cover job is as an airline stewardess. That had been her job before she was recruited as part of an investigation in her husband’s death. Ruled accidental, it had in fact been murder and Katy had helped bring down the killers.

Trained as an agent, she can kill with just her hands in six different methods. But mosy often she uses her feminine side to complete her assignments.

This time around, she’s on the trail of illegal gold. Gold in the world is heavily monitored as to much on the market can bring the price down. Someone is getting gold from unknown mines and introducing it in market.

A handsome young bullfighter smuggling some in is one target. Another is a rich Greek named Constantin Galipolodopolo that may be the head man.

Katy survives murder attempts, several kidnappings, and her irascible boss as she investigates.

FFB: Touchfeather – Jimmy Sangster

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Forgotten Books, Jimmy Sangster

Katy Touchfeather is an air hostess-sort of. No permanent airline, just whatever her current assignment had the need. She’s an agent for a British agency, her boss a gentleman known only as Mr. Blaser.

She’s part of a team assigned to bird dog a man named William Partman, a professor headed to India, ostensibly to read a couple of his papers, but suspected of selling his work to-maybe a foreign government. Part of a team, she’s told to get close to him. Others would watch him as well.

Young and attractive, and the professor big and handsome, it’s not hard for Katy. What is unanticipated is that Katy falls for Partman. In his three days at the conference, she’s relieved that he’s found to be innocent. No attempt to pass off anything, nothing in his room(she searched while he was out).

But flying home, the plane is hijacked, landed in Egypt, and Partman taken off. The last Katy sees of him is a smash in the face and blood flowing down as he’s hustled off.

A kidnapping and a bit of torture later, when they want to know what Partman told her in their bed sessions convinces her the Professor is dead. She escapes, killing one, and heads back to London.

It doesn’t end there. The information seems to have gotten out and the trail leads her across Europe and America as she tracks the one responsible.

Not a bad bit of action.

FFB: The Voodoo Murders – Michael Avallone

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Ed Noon, Forgotten Books, Michael Avallone

Somebody was trying to tell ed Noon something and he was trying hard to listen. First, the telegram asking hin to come to the Calypso Room that night. Ten words: CALYPSO ROOM TONIGHT OR YOUR DOLL WILL DIE WITH PINS. It was signed Calypso.

Then the redheaded doll named Evelyn Hart wanted an escort to the same joint and was offering five hundred dollar bills for the job. Pick him up at nine-thirty.

Three other things were the clincher though. The knifing pain that suddenly struck his gut as he was leaving was the first. The giant black man with three machetes he handled very well warning him away from the club was second. The third was the department store mannequin tossed through the window of his favorite bar. Dressed like Noon, it had a knife through the throat with a message attached: TONIGHT YOU DIE CALYPSO ROOM. BLACK DOLL WILL BRING YOU DOOM. and it was signed count Calypso.

Oh, I forgot to mention the blond named Peg Temple, publicist for the Calypso Room telling him to stay away.

The Voodoo in question is the hottest dancer on the circuit, the six foot six giant is her jealous boyfriend, Then Evelyn Hart tries to run him down, not remembering it, she claims.

The whole mess gets Noon’s hackles, not to mention curiosity, up and a whiz-bang finale in Trinidad gives us an interesting read.

FFB: Hark!: A Novel of the 87th Precinct – Ed McBain

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87th Precinct, Ed McBain, Forgotten Books

I found the 87Th Precinct books early on and started reading them as I come across, making use of the local library system for a great many of them. I’m down to a half dozen to finish the fifty odd titles. HUSH! was one I found there and it featured the final appearance of The Deaf Man, a criminal that bedeviled the detectives in six novels. He never had a name other than The Deaf Man and planned meticulous crimes that Steve Carella and company had to decipher.

Here he sends a series of anagrams taunting the detectives. He may be behind a revenge shooting. Hints are dropped that he may not even be deaf. Using Shakespeare’s works to taunt them with riddles indicating his next crime, they test their literary skills as they interpret them.

By the end, The Deaf Man is still on the loose. He may or may not have planned to reurn to the character somewhere down the road.

FFB: Blind Justice At Wedlock – Ross Morton

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Forgotten Books, Nik Morton

BLIND JUSTICE AT WEDLOCK is not an old book, a Black Horse Western from 2011. Ross Morton is of course author Nik Morton.

Clint Brennan was shot and left for dead, along with his dog Mutt, the last thing he saw were the two men dragging his wife Belle from their home. It was a third person that shot him.

Clint was blind when he came to, one shot having hit him in the head.

A little thing like blindness wasn’t going to stop him from saving Belle though. Mutt wasn’t badly wounded either and after a bit of bandaging, feeling around for supplies and one of Belle’s nightgowns, the pair leaves with Mutt trailing the scent.

Meanwhile, Belle gets rescued by a gentleman and taken to his home in a nearby town, he promising to help her get back to Bethesda Falls to see to her husband’s body. But there was always a reason why it couldn’t be done immediately.

A believably done story of a determined blind man to find and rescue his wife. And find out what was going on.

Really enjoyed this one.