SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE CASE OF THE MURDERER'S BRIDE

 "The Case of the Murderer's Bride" by Erle Stanley Gardner (first published in Look, October 15, 1957; reprinted in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 1960; in EQMM #155 (Australia), May 1960; in EQMM #90 (UK), July 1960; in Ellery Queen's Anthology #16, 1969; and in Gardner's collection The Case of the Murderer's Bride and Other Stories, edited by Ellery Queen, 1969.)

Lawrence B. Ives had an interesting and profitable occuation:  murdering his wives.  Of course, Ives would be sure that his wives were heavily insured (in smallish amounts but from a number of different insurance agencies) and that they each died accidentally.  We can assume that Ives was not his real name, for he has had a number of names in the past, most likely one name per wife.  We have no idea how many women he married and then murdered but, by the time of this story, he was 36, pretending to be a 48-year-old widower of independent means; it's safe to assume that it took a goodly number of uxorious corpses to allow him to reach him to reach those independent means.  In his defense he was, at least, not a bigamist;  each wife was good and dead before he moved on to the next one.

His latest wife was the former Nan Palmer, a quiet,unassuming woman who was supporting her mother, sister, and brother by the time she was sixteen.  Her sister had left home when she was 18, wen t through at least two marriages, and eventually stopped communicating with her family.  Nan put her brother through two years of college before he was killed in Korea.  Her mother had numerous medical,problams and, between the doctors bills and nurssng fees, Nan had little money to her name.  Her days, while not at work, were spent in drudgery -- caring for her mother, shopping for food, cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, sewing...

After her mother's death, Nan did not know what to do with herself.  She was a likable person but never had time to cultivate friends or to take much care in her personal appearance.  Ssecretly she harbored the romantic dreams she found in novels featuring an innocent heroine who was swept off her feet by a romantic and dashing Prince Charming.  But those were just dreams and had no bearing on her boring reality.  Until she met Larry Ives through a couple of chance meetings at the local library.  Amazingly, Ives began to appear interested in Nan.

It was not long before the two married -- all according to Ives's plans.  He planned to take her out of her drab past, cutting her off from what few friends she had.  She fell for it as he lavished her with gifts:  expensive clothes and makeovers, as well as exciting new experiences.   Nan blossomed.  Beneath her plain, unattended appearance, there was a surprising beauty and a hidden sophistication -- so much so that Ives briefly considered forgoing his occupation, letting Nan live, and spending the rest of his days with her.

But no.  Work was work, and Ives had invested his capital heavily in his bride.  He needed a return on his investment.  But how to kill her without raising suspicions?   Ives's modus operandi was to read newspapers, searching for unique method of accidental deaths.  Over a period of a few months, there had been three or four cases -- widely spread throughout the country -- of person drowning while swimming out of sight of others.  These all took place on large lakes where the boat the people had ridden in drifted away unnoticed from where they were swimming; by the time they realized that the boat had drifted, it had gotten too far for them to reach.  Perfect!

Enter Corporal Ed Courtland, whose kjob it was to read all the crank mail that came into the police department.  (What kind of police department and where it was located were minor details that are never explained.)  One "crank" letter expressed concern for a former co-worker, Nan Palmer, who had married in a whirlwind courtship, moved away, and never contacted her friends.  The writer, while cleaning out some papers in her attic, came across a picture in an illustrated magazine about a man who had tragically lost his wife in an airplane accident (she had fallen out of a plane because her seat belt was not porpoerly connected).  The picture was of Nan's husband Lawrence Ives.  But the man's name wa Corvallis Fletcher.  The writer as concerned for Nan's safety.

Courtland brought the letter to his friend, Dr. Herbert Dixon, a medico-legal epert in forensic pathology and homicide investigation.  Dixon, like Courtland, became interested.  A they investigted, each became convinced that Ives planned to murder his wife, but they had not a shred of proof.  Learning that Ives had taken his wife to a large Nevada lake formed from a part of the Colorado River, the pair headed out in a desperate attempt to save Nan's life.  It was a very large lake, with lots of inlets, and the chances of them locating Ives were slim...

An interesting set-up, weakened by an unrealistic pair of heroes and a deux ex machina denouement.  The pacing is good and the tale harks back to Gardner's pulp roots and the characters of both Ives and his wife are well-drawn.  It's a fast read so you won't feel cheated taking the time to quickly turn the pages. 

The Case of the Murderer's Bride and Other Stories was an early digest-sized paperback collection edited by "Ellery Queen" during the days when EQMM was published by Davis Publications; it was also the very first collection of Gardner's short stories.  The collection has been reprinted at least three times so copies should be readily available.  All seven stories in the book had been reprinted in EQMM from their original appearances.  Other single author collections from writers like Michael Gilbet and Edward D. Hoch followed.  This followed a more successsful, earlier series of single-author collections edited by Ellery Queen from Mercrury Press, beginning in the Forties, most notably significnt collections of Dashiell Hammett's piulp stories.

SOME BITS & MAYBE A FEW PIECES

[I finished my radiation treatments this week and have been told that the fatigue they have caused should dissipate over the next few weeks.  If true, I should get back to regular blogging soon.  Recently my life has consisted of take a nap, read a few pages, take another nap, read a few more pages, lather, rinse, repeat...

[In the meantime, here's a few Incoming.]

Incoming:

• Clifton Adams,  Tragg's Choice.  Western, a winner of the Spur Award for Best Western Novel in 1969.  "For ten years, Owen Tragg lived on his reputation as a hero -- exploited by a slick showman who dressed him up in fringed and beaded buckskin, and billed him as 'the man who killed Jody Barker.'   When the act finally folded, Tragg was relieved.  But before he could head to El Paso to apply for a deputy's job, he had some unpleasant business to take care of at Boser's Creek.  There, Jody Barker's widow waited for him; and there, by a stange twist of fate that had sent a half-starved sodbuster on a killing spree, Tragg, the man, was forced to separate himself from Tragg, the legend.  He was all that stood between two people and death."  Adams published fifty full-length novels and 125 short stories, concentrating mainly on westerns.  His series of seven western novels about Amos Flagg were published as by "Clay Randal."  He wrote crime fiction under his own name and as "Jonathan Gant."  He also published one book as "Nick Hudson" and six westerns as "Matt Kincaid."  Adams was a reliable and entertaining author.  He won one other Spur Award for Best Novel in 1970 for  The Last Days of Wolf Garnett.  His first novel, The Desperado, was filmed twice, in 1954 and in 1958.  Two other films were based on his works.
• "Luke Adams," Apache Law #2:  Hellfire and Apache Law #4:  Showdown.  Westerns about half-breed lawman Mitch Frye.  In Hellfire, "Mitch Frye had seen a lot of killing in his time.  Back when he was one of the Apache scouts with the 6th Cavalry, he'd seen what an Apache could do to an enemy.  But he'd never seen anything like the body he found in the alley that night.  And it wasn't long before there were more.  It looked like somebody was out to sweep the prostitutes off the streets of Paxton.  Somebody who wasn't using the law to do the job -- but a knife.  But cleaning up the town was Frye's job, and now he had a madman to deal with, a butcher who seemed devoted to his bloody work.  Mitch knew in his gut that the killing wouldn't stop until he and the killer met face to face -- a meeting only one of the would survive."  In Showdown, "Trace Beaumont once saved Mitch Frye from drowning.  Now Trace has shown up in Paxton and wants to renew the friendship.  Trouble is, Trace is now a gunslinger wanted for a string of murders, and Mitch is a lawman.  But Mitch doesn't have a lot of time to worry about his old friend -- he's got other things on his mind.  A cutthroat gang that he threw out of town is coming back to tear the place up and get their revenge on Mitch.  And there aren't a whole lot of folks willing to stand by him and help him face the gunmen down.  It looks like Mitch has no choice but to accept Trace's help.  But he'll always be wondering why Trace came to town in the first place.  And whether he's more likely to get shot by the gang...or by his friend.":  I know that Bill Crider wrote at least one, and perhaps all four, in this series -- can anyone provide more information?
• Ben Bova, Maxwell's Demons.  Science fiction collection containing a baker's dozen of SF stories, plus two essays from various sources.  Five of the stories are reprinted from Roger Elwood anthologies, two are from Analog, the ramainder are fro individual sources or are original to this book.  Bova's character chet Kinsman makes two appearances and Orion one.  Several of the stories inspired later novels such as The Multiple Man and City of Darkness.  A pretty good overview of Bova's work in the 1970s.
• Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois, editors, Dangerous Games.  Science fiction collection with eleven stories about high-tech games and the dangers therein.  The Dann/Dozois themed anthologies always provide thought-provoking tales from both the usual and unusual sources.  Authors here are Cory Doctorow, Terry Dowling, Gwyneth Jones, Jonathan Letham, Alastair Reynolds, Robert Sheckley, William Browning Spencer, Allen Steele, Jason Stoddard, Vernor Vinge, and Kate Wilhelm -- a pretty impressive lineup.
• Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Murderer's Bride and Other Stories.  Mystery collection, one of the first single author collections edited by Ellery Queen during EQMM's Davis Publications years.  Seven stories, including one featuring Lester Leith, crook extraordinaire.  Also included is "Death Rides a Boxcar," which had been reprinted in a single volume in paperback in the U.K. in 1945 under the title Over the Hump, making the paperback one of the rarest ESG collectibles.
• J. F. Gonzalez, Shapeshifter.  Horror novel.  "Mark Wiseman thought he had his curse under control.  He thought he had kept it a secret.  He was wrong.  Bernard Roberts is a very wealthy, powerful man, and he knows all about the curse that flows through Mark's veins.  He knows how Mark's parents were killed.  If Mark wants Bernard to keep this knowledge to himself, he'll have to do what Bernard tells him.  He'll have to use his curse to kill.  But if Mark begins to loosen his grip over the wolf within him, will he lose control of it completely?'   Gonzales was one of the bright lights in horror fiction who wrote 18 novels and published five colletions before his untimely death from cancer at age 50. 
• Charlie Huston, The Shotgun Rule.  Thriller.  "Blood spilled on the asphalt of this town long years gone has left a stain, and it's spreading.  Not that a thing like that matters to teenagers like George, Hector, Paul, and Andy.  It's summer 1983 in a northern California suburb, and these working-class kids have been killing time in the usual ways:  ducking their parents, tinkering with their bikes, and racing around town getting high and boosting their neighbors' meds.  Just another typical summer break in the burbs.  Till Andy's bike is stolen by the town's legendary petty hoods, the Arroyo brothers.  When the boys break into the Arroyos' place in search of the bike, they stumble across the brothers' private industry:  a crank lab.  Being the kind of kids who rarely know better, they do what comes naturally:  they take a stash of crank to sell for quick cash. But in doing so they unleash hidden rivalries and crimes, and the dark and secret past of their town and families."  I've read a couple of Huston's books and they are damned good.  This one should be no different.
• J. A. Konrath, Origin.  Thriller.  "In 1906, a crew of workers at the Panama Canal unearthed something that could not be identified or explained.  Something sinister.  And very much alive...One hundred years later, a team of scientists gather at underground facility in New Mexico to determine what this being is -- the most amazing discovery in the history of mankind -- and how it  has managed to survive.  A biologist will analyze its structure.  A veterinarian will study its behavior.  A linguist will translate its language.  But even the greatest minds in the world can not answer one inescapable question:  Could this ancient creature, this mockery of God and nature, actually be the ancient demon known as...the Beast?"  Konrath knows how to spin a story and keep the pages turning.
• Rob MacGregor, Peter Benchley's Amazon:  The Ghost Tribe.  Aventure novel based on "the acclaimed television phenomenon, Peter Benchley's Amazon," a show I had never heard of.  **sigh**  "A brutal gale battles the pilgrim ship Seaflower, driving the ill-fated vessel off-course toward the coast of South America, leaving it to the mercy of bloodthirsty pirates and murderous tempests,  The year is 1627.  And so begins a drameathat will ultimatley span centuries, as destiny strands a handful of luckless European voyagers in the most inhospitable jungle on Earth.  In a world unfathomed, they must bury their dead and push on deep into the dark and savage land explorers will one day call Amazon.  For them , there is no going back -- only treacherous miles of lush, inpenetrable beauty that camoflages sudden and terrible death.  And there are others waiting and watching, ready to destroy to preserve what no one may truly possess.  But there, in this strange and violent place of wondrous discovery, the small band of settlers is determined to endure at all costs, to buld a new life in a merciless wilderness -- and to forge a remarkable society that will be there to greet another group of the desperate lost more than three hundred years in the future."
• Walter Mosley, The Gift of Fire and On the Head of a Pin.  Science fantasy, two of the six short novels from Crosstown to Oblivion, printed dos-a-dos (like the old Ace double paperbacks).  In The Gift of Fire, the chains that had bound the mythical Prometheus to a rock "cease to be , and the great champion of man walks from that immortal prison into present-day South Central Los Angeles.  Disheveled and lost, he is thrown in jail, where he meets lifelong criminal Nosome Blane.  Shocked at what humanity has done with his gift, he looks for another way to empower lis long, almost lost, cause.  His only hope lies with Nosome's bedridden fourteen-year-old nephew, Chief Reddy, who is anointed with Prometheus's second gift of fire...but is it too late to ignite and enlighten Earth's dying soul?"  In On the Head of a Pin, Joshua Winterland and Ana Fried are working at Jennings-Tremont Enterprises when they make the most important discovery in the history of this world -- or possibly the next.  JTE is developing avanced animatronics editing technologies that will create high-end movies indistinguishable from live action.  Long-dead stars can now share the screen with today's A-list.  But one night, Joshus and Ana discover something lingering in the rendered footage...an entity that will eventually reveal itself as "the Sail" and lead Joshua and Ana into a new age...beyond the reality they have come to know and deep into the true nature of good and evil."
• David J. Schow, Bullets of Rain.  Suspense novel.  "Widowed architect Arthur Latimer has become a recluse in his own home:  a storm-proof fortress that doubles as a shrine to his dead wife.  But the outside world beckons in the form of a bizarre party downbeach.  Now, just as the biggest hurricane ever to hit the Pacific Northwest rolls in with deadly force, Art is subjected to intrusions from his past and invasions from the present.  And soon he begins to doubt everything he sees or thinks he already knows.  And soon you may too."  Schow is equally known  for his horror work (he is credited by some with coining the phrase "splatterpunk"), by script work (The Crow,  A Nightmare on Elm Street V, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, etc.), and his media commentary.  His work has an urgency that is rare in the field. 
• Stjepan Sejic, Harleen.  Graphic novel retelling of Harleen Quinzel's origin story -- how she became Harley Quinn, the Joker's girlfriend.  "A stunning tale of love and obsession" from a noted Serbian comic book writer and artist.
• Doug TenNapel, Ghostopolis.  YA graphic novel.  "When Garth Hale is accidentally zapped into the ghost world by Frank Gallows, a washed-up ghost wrangler, he discovers that he has special powers.  Soon he finds himself on the run from the evil ruler of Ghostopolis, who wants to use Garth's newfound abilities to tighten his grip on the spirit world.  After Garth meets Cecil, his grandfather's ghost, the two search for a way to get Garth back home, nearly losing hope until Frank Gallows shows up to fix his mistake."
• Per Wahloo, Murder on the Thirty-First Floor.  Science fictinal mystery novel.  "when the nation's publishing conglomerate recieves a mysterious bomb threat. Chief Inspector Jenson is ordered to fingd the culprit within a week -- or else.  As his investigtion begins to reveal theunsavory secrets of a growing list of suspects, Jenson realizes that he has unncovered a tragic story of betrayal and death in whihc he will play the central role."  This one -- also known as The Thirty-First Floor -- was published shortly after Wahllo and his wife Maj Sjowall began publishing their noted mystery series about Martin Beck. 

THANKSGIVING

 2022 has not been the greatest year for me.

I am selfish.  Fifty-two years, five months, and eleven days is just not long enough.  I wanted more.

And yet...

There are still many things to be thankful for.

Chief among these, I am thankful for memories.  Her smile which could light up the darkest room.  The sparkle in her eye.  Her grace.  Her worldliness and intelligence, as well as the incredible innocence and naivity that would often balance it.  Her compassion and empathy.  Her anger at injustice and the stupidity of her fellow creatures.  Her forgiveness.  The shared joys and sorrows.  The quiet moments.  The gentle touch.  The enthusiastic hugs.  The laughter.  The tears.  The countles ways she made me into the man I am today.  Her help and support.  The many and feeble ways I tried to let her know what she meant to me.  The birth of our children and the sheer joy she had when told that our first was a girl., as well as the fact that we were able to dance around her hospital room an hour after pour second, Christina, was born.  The grandchildren.  The ups and the downs.  The quiet walks along the beach.  The events we attended together.  Our feeble attempts at tennis and at bowling.  All of these memories are available at my beck and call and I am forever thankful for that.

I am thankful for my family.  I could ask for none better.

I am thankful for my friends, both in person and on-line, many of whom I have never met but thier kindness, wisdom, and support are without bounds.

I am thankful for science, not only because that may allow me to beat the cancer that is in my body but because it can lead us all to a brighter future.  Science has allowed us to begin to explore the depths of the universe and the beginning of time.  It has brought us a greater undertanding of nature, the world around us, and ourselves.  It may yet get us through climate change, the destruction of our environment, and overpopulation.  Science has always been a two-edged sword but our challenges and their solutions should not have to come easy.  Thus, I am also thankful for risk.  It can moderate our actions and our thinking for the benefit of all.

I am thankful for animals.  They add a beauty and a grace and a complexity to the world that it sorely needed.  From the dolphins that romp in the sea to the venomous reptiles that my grandson studies, they are a constant reminder that their world is also our world.  their place in existance is jst as important as ours.  I would add one caveat:  I am not thankful for spiders.  I know they have an important place in the ecosystem  but I hate 'em. hate 'em, hate 'em -- I would take a flamethrower to all of them if I could.

I am thankful for tacos.

And pie.  Whoever came up with idea of pie should be lionized through all of history.

I am thankful for water, and feel we should do all in our power to protect our oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, and wetlands.

I am thankful for music.  I am thankful for words.  Both music and words allow us to express ourselves as mucih as possible.  I am thankful for the paintings of Marc Chagall.  I am thankful for the dancing genius of the Nicholas Brothers.  I am thankful for the songs of Tom Paxton.  I am even (begrudgedly) thankful for the earworm of Sheena Easton's "Morning Train" that has been plaguing me constantly for the last month or so.

I am thankful for God, even though my perception of God may differ widely from anyone else's.  I am thankful for everyone's idea of God, whether through organized religion or through personal experience.   Any possible distortion of God into a hateful, bigoted, or evil engine of destruction I lay to human failure and arrogance and not to any deity.  No one can convince me that God is anything but love.

I am thankful for nature.  It is wild, wonderful, beautiful and capricious.  It not only keeps us in awe but also on our toes.

It may sound cruel, but I am also thankful for the losses you have suffered.  Somehow through the pain, I hope that you are able to come to terms with what your loved ones meant for you and for those around you.  No one is put on this earth to remain here forever and the job of each human being is to help bring meaning and joy to others; if that job is well done, it is reflected in the memories and lives left behind.

So, yes.  I am most thankful for memories.

Fifty-two years, five months, eleven days.  Still not enough time, but the time I will hold onto joyfully and thankfully until my dying day.

FORGOTTEN BOOK: YOU'VE BET YOUR LIFE

 You've Bet Your Life by "Gordon Ashe" (John Creasey), 1957

This was the fourth and final stand-alone novel that Creasey published under his "Gordon Ashe" pseudonym; the remaining fifty novels under this pseudonym featured Patrick Dawlish and his Crime Haters organization.  I've found the Dawlish novels to be eminently readable.  This one...meh.

Creasey's novels usually feature a British hero coping against long odds.  Even Mark kilby, the hero of six books by Creasey under his Robert Caine Fraser pen name, although based in America, was a Britisher through and through.  For some reason, Creasey made the hero in this book, Johnny Elmes, an American in New York City.  It just did not work for me.  At one point, Johnny gets a phone call from a stranger, who ends the call with the words, "You bet."  From this Johnny knew that the caller had to be from the American west, but not from Texas.  Say what???

Johnny had recently returned from an unsuccessful business to England.  He had patented a new type of box and had hoped to sell the British rights to the Willeson Folding Box Company in London but was unable to meet with the company's head, Clare Willison, who flat out refused to see him.  Now he has received a message that she is in New York and wishes to meet withbim at his office. raising the inventor's hopes.  She never shows.  She has vanished from the hotel where she was staying.  Later, he gets a call from Alice Byrne, Clare's best friend and business associate.  She wants to know if Johnny has seen Clare and is worried because he has not.  Before she can meet with Johnny, she is kidnapped but managed to escape.

It turns out that clare was given complete ownership of her compnay by her father, who had passed over her older step-brother because he was a drunk and a crook.  The brother apparently has conceocted a scheme to force Clare to sign over half the company, as well as complete control, to him.  If threats to Clare did not work, kidnapping her best friend and threatening her life might.

Add to the mix a mysterious Wyoming visitor (yeah, the "You bet" guy) who shows up out of nowhere to help rescue Alice and inserts hinself in efforts to find Clare.  For her part, Alice is leery of Johnny and suspects he might be part of the plot against Clare.

Then the seven-year-old daughter of Johnny's lawyer and best friend is kidnapped to be used as a wedge to against Clare.  There have been a spate of chikld kidnappings and murders recently and this could be the work of the same people.

I don't think there was a single plot hole in this book that Creasey did not feel fit to drive a truck straight though it.  Creasey tries to wrap things up neatly in a pell-mell rush in the final pages of the book, but his explanations just did not gel --  a bad habit that Creasey usually reserves for his more outlandish plots of world destruction in his Dr. Palfrey thrillers, and a habit that he seldom gets intoin his straight detective novels.

Three positive things about the book:  1) it's a fast-paced, albeit ridiculous, read,  2) Johnny gets the girl, and  3) there are no flying coyotes overhead.

This one was an Ace Double paperback (perhaps original -- I could not tell) and was bound with Terror Package by Robert Chavis.

WANDA BYRD -- AN EARLY AVIATION ADVENTURE COMIC STRIP

• Adventure in the Skies
• Romanceau contraire
• Humor
• Mystery
• Drama
• Thrills

All the above was promised in the new air adventure newpaper comic strip Wanda Byrd and Chesty Cabot!  

(Chesty was included in some of the trip's prepublication advertising but never actually made into the strip's title.  Potential readers might have conjured up a pneumotic female sidekick with a name like "Chesty," but au contraire, it turn out that Chesty was Wanda's boyfriend, a fighter ace from the War to End All Wars.  Quel dommage!)

For the record, here are the main players:

• Wanda Byrd - She wanted to be in the talkies; her philosophy was if you wanted a thing long enough, you'll get it.  Yes, our Wanda is a miss with pluck and determination.
• Chesty Cabot - The famous war ace and gypsy pilot.
• Wally Racket - "Beer baron who would rather marry Wanda than smuggle a plane filled with narcotics or champagne, but says he'll do both even if he has to have our hero Chesty Cabot bumped off."
• Runtus, alias The Fox -- Wally Racket's flying racketeer, "jealous of Chesty Cabot's flying record.  He has smuggled so much liquor, narcotics and aliens over the Mexican border for Wally Racket that Wally could send hin to prison for life."

Wand is not only a pretty face and a talented actress, she is also a daring pilot and soon she and Chesty are planning to make a historic around-the-world flight.  You really don't need to know much more than that.

Comics expert Art Lortie wrote:  "It's not a great strip by any means, full of racial stereotypes, a plot ripped off from AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS, and bad art -- but it's historically important"

It appeared in a few newspapers with promos and advertising beginning on June 30, 1930 and ran (maybe, the record's not clear) until June 13, 1931.

The strip was written by Evan J. David, a former editor of Flying magazine and an experience pilot.  Supposedly he wrote a lot of aviation short stories and articles and "was considered the go-to guy for info on the fledgling air industry," but I could only find refence to five pieces of fiction and seven articles by him on the Fiction Mags Index.  (Not that this has anything to do with the comic strip, but David was once charged with causing a motor vehicle accident in Massachusetts which killed two persons; he got out of the charges by marrying a witness so she could not testify against him.)

The artwork was done by John M. Grippo, who, as Jan Grippo later became a Hollywood agent

and producer, working with Leo Gorcey to transform the Dead End Kids into the lucrative Bowery Boys film franchise.

Comic Book Plus offers this compilation of Wanda Byrd:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=83077&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN (?) BOOK: PAPERBACKS FROM HELL

 Paperback from Hell:  The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix, with Will Errickson (2017)

I hope that this book has not been forgotten because it sings out to me and to anyone else who love the old horror paperbacks of forty to fifty years ago, and it does it in the most loving and snarkiest ways possible.

For those who think 2020 was bad, let me remind you of the '70s and '80s.  The Vietnam War.  Remember that?  A wave of political assassinations that had started a few years before continued.  Race riots left citie burning and police departments acting more thuggish.  Churches were bombed.  Civil rights workers were murdered.  Birth control pills liberalized our sexual attitudes just as a strange disease called AIDS put a crimp on them.  Homosexuality was a disease -- and an illegal one at that.  The country was awash with conspiracty theories, beliefs in aliens and satanism, and a whole pile of pseudoscientific nonsense.  We began to realize that we were destroying our planet but didn't want to do anything about it.  Nixon.  reagon.  Son of Sam. Mass shootings.  Serial killers.  High inflation.  High unenployment.  White flight.  Therapy.  Even more therapy.  Disfunctional families.  Fear.  Fear.  Fear. Dissatisfaction.

Good times.

What to do about it?  Well, if you are a publisher you capitalize on it.  You realize there's a market somewhere in all this chaos.  And the market is horror novels.  Mr. and Mrs. America and all ships at sea can disassociate themselves from the real world by embracing one of fantasy.  Not just any fantsy world, mind you, but one that is completely over the top.  And sometimes it's comforting to know that the current state of affairs is just not your fault -- it's the fault of pesky demons, aliens, monsters, the Old Ones, hapless and oft-times evil scientists and experimenting doctors, genetically tainted madmen and mad women, and the fault of Nature who just got pushed to the tipping point.  You are innocent.  It's not your fault.  It's the other guys'.

Paperbacks from Hell covers all these fear and more, providing hundreds of glorious examples of some of the most striking horror paperbacks.  Here are evil and satanic children, haunted building, not-so-hidden gateways to hell, animals intent on destroyng (and eating) mankind, uncaring entities from other dimenions, religious fanatics both possessed or just plain bad, horrifying holidays, medical monter and sadistic scientists, high-tech murders, motorcycle monsters, unkindly grandparents, vampire, werewolves, living mummies, zombies, evil clowns (is there really any other kind?), inhuman pregancies, inhuman sex (graphically portrayed, thank you very much), disease, plague, madness, disfunctional families. backwoods yahoos, evil mixed with astological signs, and much, much more.  Hendrix pulls few punches as he takes us down this particular damnable Memory Lane.  Here's a few examples:

On Thomas Tryon's The Other:  "For his part Tryon underplays the horror so that it sneaks up on the reader, emerging from a thicket of epic-poetic descriptions of nature.  By the time you're ambushed by Tryon's severed fingers, pitchforks hidden in haylofts, and dead babies floating in jars, it's too late."

On Robert Marasco, author of Burnt Offerings:  "Marasco was a high school english tacher, so his illusions about human nature had long ago been stomped to death."

On Robert Lory's Horrorscope Series, which lasted only five books out of a planned twelve (with the fifth book being published only in England:  "If a series did well, they'd [referring to book packager Lyle Kenyon engel's Book Creations] milk it dry (John Jakes' Kent Family chronicle sold 35 million books!).  If not, they took it out behind the bard and shot it.  Whichis exactly what happened to Robert Lory's Horrorscope series...[A]ccording to Horrorscope, a Turus is more likely to be abducted to a Greek island by a demented movie producer, locked in a labyrinth fullof acid baths,and dismembered by a robot Minotaur.  Aries, you're trpped inside a hollow volcano full of missing luxury yachts, where fiddling with gold gets you burned to death by unquenchable green fire.  Leo?  You're a were-lion."

On the trend toward inhumanoids:  "There are two inds of creatures in this worlkd:  Americans and inhumanoids.  Whether it's alien super-predatorss possessing little girlss, hyperaccelarating them through puberty, and sending them out to kill (Soulmate [by Charles W. Runyon]), or Yetis riding icebergs to ca;;ifornia so they can decapitate our Miss snow Queen 1977 (Snowman [by Norman Bogner]), it's simply a fact:  foreign monsters want to get into our country and mess up our stuff."

On Michael Avallone's Satan Sleuth in Fallen Angel:  taking on cultists who are " '[h]ippies, drop outs, draft dodgers, left-wing radicals, right-wing militants, Jesus freaks, Devil worshippers, generation gappers, motorcycle weirdoes --the whole shebang.'  He balances the scales with these cultists (one of whom is 'as gay as a green goose when the asses were down') using LSD and hand grenades."

On the "splatterpunk" movement, influenced by heavy metal music:  "In the 1983 [nonfiction] book Backward Masking Unmasked. author Jacob Aranza warned that Queen's song 'We Are the Champions' was 'the unofficial anthem for gays in America.'  Larson listed all the satanic bands out to seduce our children, balancing the usual suspects -- Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Black Sabbath -- with Electric Light Orchestra, the Beatles, and the Eagles, as well as the Beach Boys (transcendental meditation), Bee Gees (believers in reincarnation), and John Denver (once tried akido)."  This eventually led to the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), which "issued  their 'Filthy 15' Blacklist of objectionable bands, and eventually to "Senate hearings on explicit lyrics and 'porn rock,' whihc accomplished little except to show America that dee Snide was more levelheaded and informed than Tipper Gore."  All this great publicitythat guided amwerica's youth to the music their parents did ot want them to listen to also helped birth the short-lived "splatterpunk" trend, a nebulous genre that had no real basis except to urge publishers to bring out so-called examples.

By the 90s the market was glutted and retrenching.  Thanks to a gentleman named Hannibal Lechter, supernatural horror was dying and serial killer horror was being born.  Suddenly, "Lechter was a household name.  This was a moment horror editors and agents had been eagerly awaiting for more than twenty years. This was the next Exorcist.  This was Rosemary's second baby.  And the first thing it did was strangle its older sibling."

Yet the books remain, hidden in attics and in used book stores.  Many atrociously written and over the top; others, genuine works of horror literature.  Books by Stephen King, Clive Barker, William peter Blatty, Ramsey Campbell, Fred Chappell, Susy McKee Charnas, Les Daniels, Dennis Etchison, John Farris, Ray Garton, Charles L. Grant, William H. Hallihan, Rick Hautala, James Herbert, Jack Ketchum, T. E. D. Klein, Kathy Koja, Dean Koontz, Richard Larmon, Bentley Little, Graham Masterton, Rihard Matheson, Rober McCammon, Michael McDowell,Thomas Monteleone, Kathryn Ptacek, Anne Rice, Ray Russell. Alan Ryan, John Saul, David J. Schow, Dan Simmons,  Michael Slade, Peter Straub, Whitley Strieber, Thomas Tessier, Lisa Tuttle, and Karl Edward Wagner will live on; somewhere a teenager is reading one of these with a flashlight under the bedcovers.  Even V. C. Andrews, who only published six novels, lives on under a registered trademark with over 70 additional novels ghost-written by Andrew Neiderman, all bestsellers.  Many other authors whose names may not desrve to be mentioned, will also live on, also under those selfsame bedcovers because -- good or bad --- because thos paperbacks from Hll will never truly die.

Grady Hendrix is the best-selling author of Horrorstor, My Best Friend's Exorcism, We Sold Our Souls, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, The Final Girl Support Group, and the forthcoming How to Sell a Haunted House.  He writes good books,  Will Errickon writes the popular blog Too Much Horror Fiction.  He knows many things.

The publisher Valancourt Books has initiated a special series of reprints of ome of the book covered in Paperbacks from Hell, each with the cover art from theoriginal paperback and each with an introduction by either Hendrix or Errickson. You can find out more at their website.

LUKE SLAUGHTER OF TOMBSTONE: DUEL ON THE TRAIL (FEBRUARY 23, 1958)

 Sam Buffington played the title character in this short-lived adult western series from CBS Radio, which ran from February 23 through June 15, 1958 for a total of sixteen episodes.  The quality of theshow was high but its timing was unfortunate -- the ever-rising popularity of television killed this and manyother radio programs.

Luke Slaughter is a Civil War calvery man turned Arzona cattleman, a hard-as-nails character who is determined to succeed in a very tough business.  A man to be respected or feared, depending on which side of the law you were on.   A man of vision.  A man of legend.  Junius Matthews plays Slaughter's sidekick, Wichita.

In this first episode, Slaughter agrees to drive a herd of cattle from Mexico to Tombstone despite banditos and rustlers and spies among Slaughter's own men.

Enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5LHTnoidFk&list=PLlUoyloCGlWwW46xj13IesFUWQmhakWlk