Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Crack Detective Stories, November 1945

This issue of CRACK DETECTIVE STORIES has a nice cover by Irene Endris, one of several female pulp cover artists I know of. Inside are stories by T.W. Ford (probably best remembered as a Western author although he wrote a little bit of everything in the pulps), Talmage Powell, Emil Petaja (best known as a science fiction author), Rex Whitechurch, Marcus Lyons (who was really James Blish, definitely well-known as a science fiction author), and house-names Cliff Campbell and Grant Lane. As usual with a pulp produced on a very small budget by editor Robert W. Lowndes, this is probably better than it has any right to be. I haven't read it, but if you want to check it out, the whole issue can be found here.  

Where Is Bianca? - Ellery Queen (Talmage Powell)

I wouldn’t be surprised if every one of you reading this knows that cousins Frederic Danny and Manfred B. Lee created the pseudonym and the character Ellery Queen. And most, if not all, of you are also aware that during the Sixties, Dannay and Lee contracted with several ghostwriters to turn out a number of novels published under the Ellery Queen name, mostly stand-alones but including a couple of series, one of them six books published by Popular Library featuring one-eyed New York City police detective Captain Tim Corrigan.

I owned all six of those paperbacks at one time or another, but I know you won’t be surprised to hear that I never got around to reading any of them. However, on a whim, I recently picked up the e-book edition of the first novel in the series, WHERE IS BIANCA?, and figured it was time I finally read a Tim Corrigan novel.

The eyepatch-wearing Corrigan lost his left eye while serving in the Korean War, then worked with the OSS, and then became a cop despite the patch not being regulation. His old army buddy Chuck Baer is a private detective in New York, and rather than being at odds with each other, as many fictional cops and private eyes are, they frequently work so closely together on cases that Baer almost might as well be a cop himself.

In WHERE IS BIANCA?, the body of a young woman is found in the sewers and is in such bad shape that identifying her is a challenge. Baer has been hired to locate wealthy Bianca Lessard, who owns a number of theaters around the country, including several in New York. She had a fight with her husband and walked out of their swanky apartment. When she never came back, her worried husband hired Baer to locate her. The corpse in the sewer is wearing a distinctive ring that belonged to Bianca Lessard, but then Corrigan and Baer turn up two more missing women who might be the victim, and that starts them on a hunt through a circle of Broadway actors, producers, and playwrights, all of whom seem to have shady pasts and/or secrets they want to keep hidden. It’s a classic setup for a murder mystery in which the identity of the victim is just as much a puzzle as that of the killer.

The ghostwriter behind the EQ byline on this novel is Talmage Powell, a well-regarded hardboiled mystery author under his own name. Years ago I read and enjoyed some of his novels featuring Florida private eye Ed Rivers. I’ve always found him to be a dependable author, but I thought WHERE IS BIANCA? was a bit of a disappointment. The plot is solid, but the characterization is pretty flat. We don’t really get to know much about anybody except Tim Corrigan, and to be honest, he’s just not that likable or interesting. The book is lacking in humor, and Powell tells the story in bland, “Just the facts, ma’am” prose that falls flat as well. It’s certainly not terrible—it read quickly and I was never tempted to not finish it—but I was expecting more.

The next two books in the series were ghosted by Richard Deming, who I generally consider a better writer than Powell although they’re certainly similar, so I’ll give them a try as well. If nothing else, the books are short and punchy and often that’s just what I want.

One more note: I don’t know who did the cover artwork on the Popular Library edition from 1966, which you can see at the top of this post, but when I looked at it I immediately thought of Nick Fury and Countess Valentina Allega de Fontaine. I don’t have any way of knowing if Jim Steranko ever saw the Tim Corrigan paperbacks, but that cover sure reminds me of Nick and Val hanging around Fury’s apartment in NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. #1, the classic story “Who Is Scorpio?” that appeared in 1968, two years after WHERE IS BIANCA? I’d like to think that paperback influenced one of my all-time favorite comic book stories, but who knows?

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, Second July Number, 1955

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. I don’t know the artist. I’ve said before that RANCH ROMANCES was a good Western pulp during the Fifties, and this issue is no exception. It leads off with “Stampede Valley”, a novella by J.L. Bouma, a prolific author of Western pulp stories and novels. Bouma used very traditional plots but handled them well. This one has a powerful rancher trying to crowd out the smaller outfits in the valley. The protagonist is a young cowboy who works for the cattle baron but comes to realize he’s on the wrong side. This is a well-written, enjoyable tale that seems a little rushed at the end, its only real drawback.

Bill Burchardt’s stories and novels are often set in Indian Territory. “The Deputy’s Daughter” finds one of Judge Parker’s deputy marshals using his own daughter as bait to catch an owlhoot. It’s not a terrible story, but the writing never really caught my interest and there’s not much of a payoff. I’ve enjoyed other Burchardt stories more in the past.

The novelette “Renegade’s Girl” finds two lawmen transporting a convicted killer by train over a snowy Montana landscape to the town here he’ll be hanged. The outlaw’s victim was the twin brother of one of the lawmen. This is an excellent set-up, and since the author is Walker A. Tompkins, one of my favorites, it’s no surprise that this is a taut, suspenseful yarn. Tompkins is always good, and he’s at the top of his game in this one.

There are three more short stories in this issue. “Sinner Man” by Talmage Powell is about a traveling preacher, his beautiful daughter, and a vengeance-seeking gunfighter. “Woman for a Hoeman” is a terrible title for a cattlemen-vs.-sodbusters story by Ed La Vanway. “To Brand a Maverick” is a rare Western by Milton Lesser/Stephen Marlowe under his Adam Chase pseudonym that’s about the son of an outlaw deciding whether to go straight or follow in his father’s footsteps. All are well-written, and all have rather limp endings that really dilute their effectiveness. But they’re all readable.

There are also some assorted features and short fact articles I didn’t read, as usual, as well as the third of four serial installments of THE VENGEANCE RIDERS, a novel by Joseph Chadwick under his pseudonym Jack Barton. I didn’t read the serial, either, but I have the Popular Library edition of the novel and I might get around to reading it one of these days. Chadwick is usually good. And this is a good issue of RANCH ROMANCES based on the stories by Tompkins and Bouma, even though the rest of the fiction is pretty forgettable. It also has some nice interior art by Everett Raymond Kinstler.

UPDATE: Here's the paperback edition of THE VENGEANCE RIDERS.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, April 1948

There's a lot going on in this cover by Sam Cherry, more than you might realize at first glance. We have our stalwart hero in a red shirt . . . or is he a hero? He's clearly been wearing the mask that just fell down around his neck, and there's a bag of stolen bank loot lying beside him. He's been lassoed, his horse is running away in the background, and there's a guy on the porch behind him probably shooting at him. He must have been trying to make his getaway after robbing the bank when somebody dabbed a loop on him. But that's a Lone Ranger/Masked Rider type of mask, not a bank robber mask. So I don't really know what's going on, but it's a good cover anyway, as you'd expect from Sam Cherry. Inside this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES are stories by Wayne D. Overholser, Clifton Adams, Barry Cord (Peter Germano), Talmage Powell, Joe Archibald, Thomas Calvert McClary, Kenneth Fowler, Wallace Umphrey, and the obscure Ruland Waltner. FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES included features and articles in that count, so there are actually only nine pieces of fiction in this issue, but they look like pretty good stories.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective, August 1952

Even this late in its run, DIME DETECTIVE looks like a pretty darned good pulp. This issue has a Norman Saunders cover, and the line-up of authors inside is really strong: John D. MacDonald, Richard Deming, Talmage Powell, Philip Ketchum, Larry Holden (Frederick Lorenz), Harry Widmer, Dane Gregory, and Albert Simmons. Some of those aren't as well-known as the top guys, of course, but with a Popular Publications pulp, chances are their stories are pretty entertaining.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Fifteen Western Tales, September 1948

We have what looks like a Deliberate Injury to a Hat cover on this issue of FIFTEEN WESTERN TALES. And a really strong line-up of authors inside, too: Peter Dawson, Steve Frazee, Tom W. Blackburn, Talmage Powell, Rolland Lynch, Joe Archibald, and Rod Patterson. Some well-respected pulpsters and paperbackers there.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Mystery Magazine, March 1947

DIME MYSTERY was long past its Weird Menace phase by the time this issue came out in 1947, but that cover almost looks like it could have been from that earlier era, especially if it had been a little more lurid. And "Death Dance of the Broken Dolls" certainly sounds like a Weird Menace title. It's even by Arthur Leo Zagat, one of the masters of the genre. I believe I have a copy of that story somewhere. I'll have to read it. The rest of this issue's contents appear to be typical late Forties semi-hardboiled detective pulp, although by authors who were good at that: Talmage Powell, Robert Turner, Dale Clark, Cyril Plunkett, and Wilbur S. Peacock.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, October 1947

Okay, that's got to be one of the weirdest pulp covers I've ever seen, but man, it's hard to take your eyes off it, isn't it? The authors inside are great, as well: Day Keene, Robert Turner, William R. Cox, Talmage Powell, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, and W.T. Ballard writing as Parker Bonner. I would have grabbed this one off the newsstand in a second.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: 10-Story Detective Magazine, February 1946

Even though this issue of 10-STORY DETECTIVE MAGAZINE is cover-dated February 1946, that's the off-sale date, and since it was a bi-monthly, that means this issue actually hit the stands early in December 1945. And the cover by Ernest Chiriacka makes it clear this is a Christmas issue. The biggest names among the authors are Talmage Powell and Joe Archibald. Victor White is also on hand, writing under his Ralph Berard pseudonym, and Glenn Low has two stories in this issue, one under his name and one as Davisson Lough ("A Slay for Santa Claus", judging by the titles, the only Christmas story in the issue). Larry Sternig, who is best remembered as a literary agent, wrote a number of stories for the pulps as well, and one of them is in this issue. The other authors are all folks I've never heard of. Not that impressive sounding an issue, but that's the thing about the pulps: you never know. It might have been great.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Private Detective Stories, February 1946

This is a pulp I own and read recently. The upper image is a scan of my copy, front cover damage and all, the lower a better image from the Fictionmags Index. PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES was published by Trojan Publishing Corporation, the publishers of the notorious Spicy line of pulps that eventually became the slightly toned-down Speed line. PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES ran from June 1937 to December 1950. Most issues featured at least one story by Robert Leslie Bellem and often more than one under his various pseudonyms. Other regulars from the Spicy/Speed stable showed up frequently, too, such as E. Hoffmann Price, Victor Rousseau (as Lew Merrill), Hugh B. Cave (as Justin Case), and Edwin Truett Long (as Cary Moran).

The author of the lead story in this issue, the novelette “Killer Wanted—First Class”, sold several stories to various Trojan pulps but wasn’t exactly a regular. Geoffrey North wrote many stories for the gang pulps, starting in the early Thirties, and also appeared in a number of other detective pulps from various publishers before his career petered out in the mid-Fifties. That’s all I know about him. His story is a mostly good yarn about a Louisville, Kentucky private detective named Lackland who travels to a small town in Ohio to take on a case involving the murder of the local sheriff. There’s a bizarre will and a big inheritance involved, along with a live dog, a rumored ghost dog, and several instances where Lackland gets hit on the head and knocked out. The terse third-person prose is very good, but the plot winds up being kind of a mess, with things being explained pretty poorly or not at all and an ending that’s not very satisfying. If North had been able to follow through from the good beginning, this would have been a fine story. As is, it reads like he kind of confused himself in the telling of it, along with the reader. Still, there’s enough good stuff in it that I’d be interested to read more by him.

The second story, “No Blood is Bad Blood” by Henry Norton, isn’t a private detective story at all, despite the magazine’s name. The protagonist is a twelve-year-old girl whose father comes home from the war and is immediately arrested for murder. The girl is convinced he couldn’t possibly be guilty and has to find a way to expose the real killer and clear his name. It’s a little on the mild side but well-written and entertaining. Henry Norton wrote a lot for the detective pulps starting in the early Forties, with occasional ventures into science fiction, before selling a few stories to the slicks late in his career.

Talmage Powell’s name is misspelled as Talmadge Powell on both the table of contents and the first page of his story “Tab Me for the Kill”. It’s set in the Ybor City area of Tampa, as much of Powell’s later work would be, and a returning war vet plays a major part in this one, too. In fact, Les Brennan is the narrator. He was a cop in Tampa before the war and often clashed with nightclub owner and crooked gambler Dolph Amick. Now, Amick has married the girl Brennan intended to marry, and Brennan has come back to square accounts. Instead he finds himself framed for murder and has to scramble to uncover the truth. It’s a good yarn, well-written with quite a bit of plot packed into it. I nearly always enjoy Powell’s work.

There’s no private detective in Lew Merrill’s “Nailed”, either. It’s a small town domestic drama set in Vermont with a murder thrown in, and it’s up to the local sheriff to solve it. Merrill was really long-time pulpster Victor Rousseau, and I usually enjoy his stories. This one’s pretty bland, though.

“Lethal Lady” by Walton Grey continues the no private eye streak. Instead, the protagonists in this one are lawyer Timothy Keene and his beautiful blond wife Violet. This reads very much like a series entry, with numerous references to other cases solved by the Keenes, but I don’t know if it is. Nor do I know who wrote it, since Walton Grey is a house-name. Keene’s current case involves a bizarre will (much like the first story in this issue, “Killer Wanted—First Class”) and of course there’s a murder, but Keene and Vi don’t do much actual detective work. However, they’re pretty good characters, with a bit of a Mr. and Mrs. North feel to them, and I enjoyed the story even though there’s not much to it.

David Carver was a pseudonym for an author named David Redstone, who wrote for the pulps under both those names as well as the pseudonym Paul Sherwood from the Twenties through the Forties. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered his work before. His story in this issue, “The Man in the Crowd”, features insurance investigator Tom Cooper, and insurance investigators are close enough to private detectives that we can consider Cooper one. He’s also a returning vet, which seems to be something of a theme in detective pulps from this era. In this yarn, Cooper is on the trail of an arsonist, and while the plot is really predictable, the story has a nice rhythm and flow to it, and I wound up liking it anyway.

The issue wraps up with “The Hot Rock” by Robert Leslie Bellem. This isn’t a Dan Turner story; in fact, it’s Bellem in a whole different mode. The protagonist is a private eye named Ben Medwick who answers a call for help from his ne’er-do-well brother and winds up on a bloody quest for vengeance almost worthy of Mike Hammer. There’s a death by gruesome torture, a beautiful blonde babe, a blind man, a fortune in missing diamonds, and some really tough action that reminded me of Mickey Spillane. Bellem really packs a lot into this one despite its relatively short length. Easily the best story in this issue.

So only three stories out of the seven actually feature private detectives, but one of them is a novelette and the other two are fairly long, so I guess the wordage is about equal between PI and non-PI stories. None of the stories are particularly outstanding except the one by Bellem, but I didn’t skip any of them and found them reasonably entertaining. That makes this issue of PRIVATE DETECTIVE STORIES about average, I suppose.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Star Western, January 1950

The last few years of its existence, STAR WESTERN rather blatantly went after the RANCH ROMANCES readers. Not only do all the covers prominently feature female characters, most of the story titles do, too, such as this issue from January 1950. You've got "The Strip's Too Hot for Blondes!" by Leslie Ernenwein, "Girl Strike in Jubilee" by Joseph Chadwick, "Bride of the Killer Legion" by Talmage Powell, "The Queen, the Wench, and the Devil" by Ray Townsend, "Two Roses for Dead Man's Range" by Dean Owen (Dudley Dean McGaughey), "Girl for a Fighting Man" by Everett M. Webber, and "Brand Her Señorita Killer!" by John Jo Carpenter (John Reese). With those authors, I'll bet most of those stories are pretty good!

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Big-Book Western, November 1952

BIG-BOOK WESTERN wasn't the iconic pulp that DIME WESTERN and STAR WESTERN, its Popular Publications stablemates, were, but it was a good solid magazine for a long time. By 1952 many of the big names were gone. I've never heard of the author of this issue's lead novel, William Bender Jr. In fact, the only one of the authors I'm really familiar with is Talmage Powell, who's best known for his hardboiled mysteries. One of the other authors, Richard H. Nelson, was really William L. Hamling, who was on the verge of a successful career as a magazine and book publisher. There's also a reprint from the August 1940 issue of DIME WESTERN of a story by Stone Cody, who was really Thomas Mount.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: New Detective, May 1945

That's a pretty good-looking blonde if you go for dames a little on the slinky side. (I'm sorry. I can't help it.) This issue of NEW DETECTIVE also features plenty of good authors, including Day Keene, Frederick C. Davis, Talmage Powell, and G.T. Fleming-Roberts. There's also a David Crewe story, but I don't know if it's one of the yarns David Goodis wrote under that house-name. Probably not.This looks like a good issue to me, anyway.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: New Western, November 1948

That is a tough-lookin' hombre. And with stories inside by Peter Dawson, Talmage Powell, William R. Cox, and Tom W. Blackburn, among others, I'll bet this is a pretty good issue of NEW WESTERN, too.

Forgotten Books: The Cage - Talmage Powell

I don't usually think of Talmage Powell as a Western writer. I know him better as the author of a hardboiled mystery series featuring Florida private eye Ed Rivers, as well as other mystery stories and novels. But he contributed a number of stories to the Western pulps in the Forties and Fifties and also wrote this 1969 novel, which turns out to be an excellent Western.

THE CAGE starts out as a standard revenge Western. Former Confederate officer Webb Cameron and his wife Temple start a small ranch in West Texas after the Civil War. While Cameron is away from home his wife is attacked by someone. Though beaten and raped, she isn't killed (Powell's first deviation from the standard formula). The ordeal does cause her to lose her mind, however, and retreat from reality. When Cameron finds her, he vows to track down her attackers and make them pay.

This is when Powell throws another twist at the reader. Instead of leaving his wife with friends, relatives, or just about anybody else to care for, Cameron builds a cage for her in the back of a wagon (so she can't wander off and hurt herself) and takes her with him on his vengeance quest. From there things get weirder as Cameron picks up some unlikely allies (all of whom have interesting back stories, which Powell explores with as much depth as possible in a 127-page paperback), runs into a band of renegade Seminole Indians who have escaped from a reservation (the idea of putting swamp Indians in the desert instead of the usual Comanches or Apaches is a very nice touch), and finally tracks down the men he's after in a small Mexican village run by a typical Mexican bandido who turns out not to be so typical after all.

This is a bit of a kitchen sink book, with a lot of Western cliches thrown in, but Powell turns nearly all of them on their head and does so in a crisp, fast-moving style. I highly recommend this one to anybody who likes an offbeat Western.