On April 23, 1999, I posted the first message on the WesternPulps email group, which I created that day on a platform called OneList. A couple of years before that, while attending a mystery convention in Dallas called Cluefest, I heard Bill Crider and Steve Brewer talking about something called Rara-Avis. That was my introduction to the concept of email groups, and shortly after that, I subscribed to Rara-Avis. Eventually, I got the idea that there ought to be a group devoted to the Western pulps, and so I started one. That first message seems to have been lost in the group's migration fro ..read more

It’s been too long since I read a Carter Brown novel, so I decided to pick up where I left off in Stark House’s reprinting of the original versions of the Al Wheeler novels published in Australia. DELILAH WAS DEADLY is the third book in the series and was never reprinted in the United States until this collection from several years ago. In this one, Al is still developing into the character known so well to those of us who grew up reading the Signet paperback versions of the novels in the Sixties and Seventies. He still works for the police department of the unnamed city where the story take ..read more

I don't think I've ever run across an issue of SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY. This looks like a pretty good one. I like the dramatic cover by Kelly Freas, and there are some good writers inside: C.M. Kornbluth, Frank Belknap Long, L. Sprague de Camp, and a couple whose names are only vaguely familiar to me, Charles V. De Vet and Winston Marks. I don't own this issue, but if you want to check it out, it's available on the Internet Archive here. There are a lot of other issues of SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY posted there as well. I might have time to read some of them if anybody ever comes up with a ..read more

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan, featuring the usual excellent cover by Sam Cherry. That guy must have been tireless. He turned out a ton of pulp and paperback covers, all of them fine work. The Jim Hatfield novel in this issue of TEXAS RANGERS has been attributed to Joseph Chadwick. It begins with Hatfield receiving a mysterious assignment from not only his regular Ranger boss, Cap’n Bill McDowell, but also from the governor of Texas his own self. In a clandestine meeting at the Capitol in Austin, the governor tells Hatfield to go to Fort Worth, check ..read more

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on March 27, 2009.) PUSHOVER is the story of Danny Fulton, a small-time con man who, along with a couple of partners, specializes in a scam involving community histories and the Federal Writers Project of the WPA (the first time I’ve encountered that particular angle in a novel about grifters). Most of this yarn centers around Danny, who narrates the novel, putting his usual scheme into action in a small city in upstate New York. Now, PUSHOVER is not without its flaws. There’s not much action, and in fact, not a lot happens in the e ..read more

Having read and enjoyed IT RHYMES WITH LUST, I decided to try this other early graphic novel with a crime plot, MANSION OF EVIL, published by Gold Medal in 1950. It was written by veteran pulp and paperback author Joseph. Millard, who years later as Joe Millard wrote the Man With No Name paperbacks for Award Books, novelizations and original novels based on the Clint Eastwood movies. Those were my introduction to his work. I don’t think the art on MANSION OF EVIL has ever been credited officially to anyone, but the consensus of opinion seems to be that it’s by George Evans. A newspaperman pl ..read more

I don't believe I've ever run across a mention of PIRATE STORIES before. It was a short-lived adventure pulp edited and published by Hugo Gernsback of AMAZING STORIES fame. This is the third of six issues. I like the cover by Joseph Sokoli. The idea of airborne pirates preying on ships at sea is an interesting one. The feature story in this issue is by Captain Dingle, an author I've been meaning to read for a long time now but still haven't. Backing it up are yarns by the always dependable J. Allan Dunn, George Allan Moffatt, and an author I'm unfamiliar with, J. Winchcombe-Taylor, who certa ..read more

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. My guess as to the cover artist is Robert Stanley, but I’m not certain about that. There are a couple of things about this one I don’t like—the guy’s hands and arms don’t look quite right to me, and neither does his holster—but overall it’s an effective cover. I’ve said this many times before and probably will again, but Walt Coburn was really inconsistent in his work, especially in the second half of the Forties onwards. But he’s still one of my favorite Western authors because when he’s on his game, he’s really, reall ..read more

Instead of one of the Westerns for which Max Brand (Frederick Faust) is most famous, I’m writing about one of Faust’s espionage novels. THE PHANTOM SPY is set in Europe in the mid-Thirties, the era during which it was written. This isn’t a Ruritanian, Graustarkian, comic opera Europe, either. It’s the real thing, with the grim threat of Hitler’s growing power in Germany looming over everything. In Faust’s novel, however, Hitler isn’t even the real menace. The true villains are an international cabal of warmongers who think that Hitler isn’t moving fast enough and want him to go ahead an ..read more

Last week after I reviewed Arnold Drake’s novel THE STEEL NOOSE, a friend reminded me that Drake also co-authored what is considered by some the first graphic novel, IT RHYMES WITH LUST, published in 1950 as a digest-sized paperback by the comic book publisher Archer St. John. Drake co-wrote the script with Leslie Waller under the pseudonym Drake Waller. The black-and-white art is by Matt Baker (pencils) and Ray Osrin (inks). This book has been reprinted in both paperback and e-book editions, so I picked up a copy of the e-book to check it out. IT RHYMES WITH LUST is set in Copper City, some ..read more