Covers like this always remind me of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, although this issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES came out long before that movie, of course. I don't know the artist. The painting might have been inspired by the story "The Desert Legion", by the only house-name in the issue, Jackson Cole, or maybe it was one that Standard Magazines had in inventory. Doesn't matter, since it does its job either way and makes me want to read this issue. I just might, if I actually owned a copy, which I don't. There's a strong line-up of authors in its pages, too: Johnston McCulley, Arthur J. Burks, Ward Haw ..read more

This issue of QUICK TRIGGER WESTERN NOVELS MAGAZINE sports an evocative cover by H.W. Scott and contains only two stories, a novella by Charles M. "Chuck" Martin that's long enough it probably ought to be considered an actual novel, as the magazine's title suggests, and a short story by James P. Olsen, as well as a poem by Raymond S. Spears. All three of those authors were top-notch pulpsters, so I'm sure this is a fine issue and I wouldn't hesitate to read it if I owned a copy.  ..read more

The older I get, the more I seem to turn back to the authors and series I loved when I was a kid. I read a bunch of Ellery Queen novels in junior high and high school, and one occasionally since then, but I’ll bet it’s been thirty years or more since I last checked in with Ellery and Inspector Queen. Being in the mood to do that, I picked up one I’d never read back in the old days, 1948’s CAT OF MANY TAILS. I’ve seen this book referred to as the first great American serial killer novel. It’s probably the earliest serial killer novel I’ve ever read, and it’s one of the rare occasions when a t ..read more

THE LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT PEACEMAKER John Legg     14th Annual Peacemaker Awards Finalists For Western Novels and Stories Published in 2023       BEST NOVEL   GRAY’S LAKE, John Hansen (Summit Creek Press) THE GOLD CHIP, Douglas Hirt (Wolfpack Publishing) CHANGING WOMAN, Venetia Hobson Lewis (Bison Books) RIDE A FAST HORSE, Kevin Warren (Kensington) THE BOOT HEEL, Kevin Wolf (Thorndike)   BEST FIRST WESTERN NOVEL   THE GOOD TIME GIRLS, K.T. Blakemore (Sycamore Creek Press) CHANGING WOMAN, Venetia Hobson Lewis (Bison Books) . . . BY THE WAY THEY TREAT T ..read more

Ben Haas, best known for his Westerns under the names John Benteen, Thorne Douglas, and Richard Meade, as well as thrillers and sword and sorcery novels under the Meade name, also wrote a number of soft-core sex novels in the early Sixties for William Hamling’s publishing empire, all of them under the name William Kane. I’ve read a couple of those William Kane books, and they were well-written, entertaining books. But the William Kane novel LUST TREASURES is something different, and it’s very much a precursor to the work that Haas would soon be doing. The narrator/protagonist of this novel i ..read more

You never know what you're going to find in a sarcophagus, as Rafael DeSoto illustrates on this cover. Over the years I've read quite a few stories that first appeared in TEN DETECTIVE ACES, but I've never read or even owned an actual issue of the pulp. Plenty of fine fiction appeared there. Authors in this issue include Frederick C. Davis (with a Moon Man story), Paul Chadwick (with a Wade Hammond story), Emile C. Tepperman (with a Marty Quade story), Tepperman again as Anthony Clemens (with a Val Easton story), Joe Archibald (with a Dizzy Duo story), and non-series yarns by Harry Widmer, M ..read more

This issue of GIANT WESTERN sports a slightly cartoonish cover by Ed DeLavy, but it's yet another example of just how dangerous it was to go to the barber shop in the Old West. I kept telling my mother I didn't want to get my hair cut when I was a kid. I guess I sensed somehow that some ranny might start burnin' powder. Anyway, this issue (which I don't own) features stories by some fine writers including William MacLeod Raine, A. Leslie Scott, Leslie Ernenwein, Louis L'Amour (as Jim Mayo), T.C. McClary, and B.M. Bower (probably a reprint since Bower died in 1940 although it's not listed as ..read more

Although he was a prolific author, Davis Dresser wrote only a few books under his own name, and I believe all of them were Westerns. Best known as Brett Halliday, the creator and principal author of the Mike Shayne series, Dresser wrote quite a few Westerns as well, some under the house-name Peter Field (the Powder Valley series), some as Don Davis (the Rio Kid books, reprinted by Pocket Books in the Sixties – but these are not about the pulp character known as the Rio Kid, whose adventures were chronicled by Tom Curry, Walker Tompkins, and others), and three under his own name, two of which ..read more

I’m a little bit leery of any book where the protagonist is compared to Jack Reacher. That seems to have been an overdone trend in recent years. On the other hand, how many paperbacks did I buy back in the Sixties and Seventies with “In the Tradition of CONAN!” emblazoned across the front cover? (The answer: a lot.) So I didn’t worry too much about the blurb on THE LAST LINE, the debut novel from Stephen Ronson, and just plunged into the book. I’m glad that I did, because it’s a terrific thriller. The title is a reference to the phrase “the last line of defense”, and that’s what narrator/pro ..read more

A tough bounty hunter haunted by a tragic past … a beautiful woman with demons of her own … a brutal outlaw with a history of killing … a ruthless swindler determined to grasp a fortune no matter who gets in his way … These and more find themselves delivered by fate to the mining boomtown of Plata in the silver-rich Superstition Mountains of Arizona Territory. As their destinies play out, the settlement is rocked by death and fiery destruction, and bounty hunter Reid Dawson will need all the deadly skills his violent life has given him to survive and protect those he cares about. Now availab ..read more