Pistol-Packing Polaroid Pulp

I read a short piece in today's NYT Style section about Neil Krug's pulpy photo series featuring model Joni Harbeck. They were taken with old Polaroid film stock, and look like stills from the bloodiest grainiest grittiest sun-drenched 1970s grindhouse crime flick you never saw. You can buy prints this Friday, wait for the book in the fall, or check out samples from the series right here. (Or here, in Krug's Flickr album.) I love these photos.

The Feel-Good Noir Collection of the Summer

I'm calling it now.

Today I received an advance copy of Stark House Press's latest Harry Whittington collection, which includes three insanely rare short novels: To Find Cora, Like Mink Like Murder and Body and Passion. Whittington, of course, was the King of the Paperback during the 1950s and the author of the paperback suspense classics Web of Murder, The Devil Wears Wings and A Moment to Prey. All three were reprinted by Black Lizard in the late 1980s; all three are definitely worth hunting down and savoring. (This Harry Whittington, it's worth noting, was not the dude Dick Cheney shot in the face.)

Now I haven't read a single word of these short novels—I only received this ARC today—but the introduction alone is worth the price of the book. In it, mystery expert David Laurence Wilson talks about how he tracked down these rare finds, and it's like a pulp-nerd detective story. Sam Spade had his Maltese Falcon; Wilson has his "39 Unknowns"—namely, the 39 novels Whittington wrote under house names starting in 1960. Each were required to be 60,000 words long, and Whittington later wrote that he cranked out 39 of these suckers, month after month. Yet, he never revealed their titles. Wilson writes that it was "the beginning of a literary legend."

I won't ruin the surprise for you, but you'll be amazed how many of these Wilson pins down. Wilson's my new hero. And the three short Whittington novels, one of which has never been available in English? I consider them a bonus.

The new collection will be available this coming July. I'd pre-order this one from Stark House directly, or through your favorite indie mystery shop.

Backflash #1

Can you guess the author/title of this vintage paperback just from the back cover copy? Leave your guesses in the comments section. (Hurry before Bill Crider nails it.)

A Book I Want to Read Right Now, Damnit

Yesterday Bookseller.com (and the Rap Sheet) reported that UK publishing house Quercus picked up the rights to a long-lost Mario Puzo novel: Six Graves to Munich. It was published under a pen name ("Mario Cleri") just a year before The Godfather. Not only do I love the sound of this, but I'm a fan of those late 1960s Banner paperbacks, which include David Goodis's last novel, Somebody's Done For, a cool reprint of David Karp's Hardman, as well as Gil Brewer's The Tease and Sin For Me. And Puzo/Cleri novel looks just as cheesy/cool. But can a used copy be found anywhere online? Nope. Looks like I'm going to have to wait until next June to check this out... and even then, I'm sure it'll feature some sleek, perfect bestseller-y kind of cover, a far cry from the pulpy glory of the original Banner cover.

Paperbacked

Yesterday, Philly Poe Guy and I made our second annual trip to Gary Lovisi's NYC Vintage Paperback & Collectable Book Expo to get our hardcore book nerdin' on. (For the record: Sunday morning is the best time to drive from Philly to NYC. It takes something like 90 minutes, from turnpike to tunnel. The rest of the week? Take the train.) We shopped for about an hour and a half, and I walked away with...

The Philadelphia Murder Story (Leslie Ford). Hands down, the find of the day. Only $1, with a cool Philly map on the back! (I bought nine others on this list for a buck each, too.) BTW, if you click on the map above, I used to live near #6: the Warwick Hotel.

The Pitfall (Jay J. Dratler) Just read about this one in Kevin Johnson's The Dark Page. Looks cool. Never heard of Dratler before.

Winter Kill and Giveaway (Steve Fisher). I've been looking for more Fisher after enjoying the Hard Case reprint of No House Limit. He was buddies with Cornell Woolrich, back in the day.

The Name of the Game Is Death (Dan J. Marlowe). I own the Black Lizard edition; this is the original Gold Medal edition, which is allegedly different. We'll see...

One Endless Hour (Marlowe). I have a later Gold Medal edition, but this is an earlier one, with cooler cover art. Me: sucker for cover art.

Shake Him Till He Rattles (Malcom Braly). Ed Gorman recommends Braly. Ed speaks, I listen.

The Lurking Man (Gerald Butler). I loved Butler's Kiss the Blood off My Hands. This was originally published under the title Mad With Much Heart. And no, this is not the dude who starred in 300.

The Hoodlum, a.k.a. Kiss of Death (Eleazar Lipsky). Picked this up because of the film noir connection, but also because it's a Lion paperback, and my collection has far to few Lions.

The Case of the Violent Virgin/The Case of the Bouncing Betty (Michael Avallone). An Ace Double Novel from the "Fastest Typewriter in the East." I've hawked books from Avallone's old desk at Port Richmond Books.

Stop This Man! (Peter Rabe). Early Rabe. Ridiculous yet awesome title. ("Wait, which man? Ohhhh... this man.")

Lady in Peril/Wired for Scandal (Lester Dent/Floyd Wallace). Another Ace Double. Dent wrote the Doc Savage novels, and far too few hardboiled stories under his own name.

I Should Have Stayed Home (Horace McCoy). Passed up this paperback last year, regretted it. Found it again this year.

The Bedroom Bolero (Avallone). More Avallone. Way sleazy-looking.

Creeps by Night (edited by Dashiell Hammett). A collection of horror stories introduced by Hammett, who probably cranked out his essay in 10 minutes between gin gimlets. But still... it's Hammett.

Bring Him Back Dead/There Was a Crooked Man (Day Keene). Al "Sunshine" Guthrie's favorite paperback writer. And it's a rare Lancer Books "2 for 1" edition, which was probably Lancer trying to eat Avon's lunch and gagging.

The Scarf and Terror (Robert Bloch). Joe Lansdale's favorite paperback suspense writer. I've been looking for the former for a while; never heard of the latter. I wonder if it was reprinted under a different title.

Duel and Other Horror Stories of the Road (edited by William Pattrick). Impulse buy, with contributions from Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Roald Dahl, Jack Finney, and... Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? A road story? Really?

Do Not Murder Before Christmas (Jack Iams). Me: sucker for holiday mystery novels. And you know what? I read half of this last night, and it's flat-out fantastic. The action is set in an unnamed city, but I swear it reads an awful lot like Philadelphia. I did some internet digging this morning (when I should have been writing) and learned that Iams was a lifelong journalist, and his son, David Iams, was the longtime Philadelphia Inquirer society columnist. Need to do more research on this. We might have another forgotten Philly mystery writer on our hands... stay tuned.

Chicago Confidential (Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer). I have the New York and Washington D.C. editions of this non-fiction series; now the trinity is compelte!

Murder on Delivery (Spencer Dean). I read about this series somewhere. Can't remember where. Picked it up anyway. It was a buck!

Obit Delayed (Helen Nielsen). Nielsen's great. I have some of her Black Lizard reprints.

Scratch a Thief/My Pal, the Killer (John Trinian/Chester Warwick). The second title is flat-out awesome.

The Mourner (Richard Stark). Own it... but not in this Pocket edition!

Color Him Dead (Charles Runyon). Went through a Runyon kick a year ago; this is one I haven't read.

Shoot the Works, What Really Happened, Murder by Proxy, The Uncomplaining Corpses (Brett Halliday). I'll never pass up a Mike Shayne for a buck a piece.

I also picked up some Gryphon Books (Lovisi's own publishing house):

Paperback Parade #69
Paperback Parade #70
Antique Trader Collectible Paperback Price Guide (by Gary Lovisi)
Hardboiled #38
If You Have Tears, by Howard Browne

Anybody out there read any of the above? Anybody know more about Jack Iams?

Savage Lagoon

What would happen if 1930s-style hero pulps collided with 1940s/50s-era horror/SF flicks? Find out here. (Courtesy the diabolical David J. Schow, and by extension, the Monsterverse Blog.)

Charlie on Charles

Charlie Huston wrote a great post the other day about Charles Bukowski. It's one that Ecco Books should reprint in the front of every Bukowski novel, because it makes you want to run out and buy a bunch of Bukowski novels. And that's pretty much what I did this evening. I picked up Factotum, Women and Pulp, based on Huston's post, but also the first lines of each book. Check out Women:

I was 50 years old and hadn't been to bed with a woman for four years. I had no women friends. I looked at them as I passed them on the streets or wherever I saw them, but I looked at them without yearning and with a sense of futility.

How can you not continue reading? And then there's Pulp:

I was sitting in my office, my lease had expired and McKelvery was starting eviction proceedings. It was a hellish hot day and the air conditioner was broken. A fly crawled across the top of my desk. I reached out with the open palm of my hand and sent him out of the game. I wiped my hand on my right pants leg as the phone rang.

Dude, sold. I'm ashamed to say I've read more about Bukowski than his actual work, but I plan on fixing that situation over the next few days.

Though, as Huston cautions: "Don't read them too soon. Make sure you read them all before you walk in front of a car someday."

What I Saw at the Pulp Fiction Expo

Today I hit the NYC Paperback & Pulp Fiction Expo -- Gary Lovisi's annual festival of all things good and holy in this world -- with Ed Pettit. We left Philly a little after 8 a.m. and made it to Manhattan by 9:44 a.m. (Gotta love the non-traffic on a Sunday morning.) By 10 we had slipped the front desk a pair of fins and made our way to the main room, which looked like this:


But wait. You really can't appreciate the lurid, yellowed, slightly-mildewed splendor of a pulp paperback show until you venture a little closer:


The trick is to know how many vintage paperbacks you can buy before your wife digs up the name of a good divorce lawyer, then subtract $50.

Nonetheless, Ed and I did some damage. He found the steal of the show: a $5 copy of Charles Williams's The Long Saturday Night (the only other copies I saw were $25 and $30). Fuckin' bastard. But I found some fairly sweet titles, too, including They Don't Dance Much by James Ross (which Joe Lansdale has recommended in a few places over the years); Prelude to a Certain Midnight, by Gerald Kersh; Very Cold For May, by William P. McGivern (Philly represent!); The Fifth Grave, by Jonathan Latimer (to make up for the copy I almost snagged at Chicago B'con two years ago but missed by two seconds); Go Home, Stranger, by Charles Williams; Everybody Does It, by James M. Cain (a paperback collecting "Career in C-Major" and "The Embezzler"); and the true prize of the day, Somebody's Done For, by David Goodis (the last novel he ever wrote).

And celebrities? Oh, yeah. There were celebrities. Such as these two familiar characters:


Jason Starr (right) was there to sign copies of Slide, his newest Hard Case Crime collaboration with Ken Bruen; Charles Ardai was there to point out some cool finds in the $1 boxes. (And okay, to promote Hard Case.) Charles was also giving away cover flats of two hot upcoming HCC titles: Money Shot, by Christa Faust, and the Robert Bloch double novel, Spiderweb and Shooting Star. At one point, I told Charles about an obscure British crime novel by Gerald Butler called Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (really worth checking out, if you can track it down). Charles thought I said Kiss the Blow Off My Hands. Which then morphed into Lick the Blow Off My Hands, and then finally, an hour later, Lick the Blow From My Septum, which I intend to pitch to Charles a few weeks from now, when he forgets this conversation.

But the celebrity I was really dying to meet was Jack Ketchum (a.k.a. Dallas Mayr). Huge fucking fan here. Off Season is on my Top 10 list of Favorite Novels Ever, and his name triggers an automatic purchase. So like a raving fanboy, I not only asked Dallas to autograph both Off Season and Offspring (the sequel), but to also pose with my large Polish self for a photograph:


I found that copy of Off Season, by the way, just 10 minutes before Dallas showed up to sign. It's the original Ballantine paperback from 1981, which I've wanted for years now. (I already own the Overlook Connection Press expanded edition, as well as the Leisure Horror reprint.) Yes, the Paperback Gods were smiling upon me today.

Meanwhile, the Elder Gods were smiling upon Mr. Pettit, as he lucked upon a copy of his favorite magazine:


That's Cthulhu Sex, for the uninitiated. In this photo, Ed has just turned to the centerfold, where Y'ggoth, Devourer of the Babies, is chained to a bed, and slathered in... oh, never mind. This a family blog. You'll have to read the issue for yourself.

Good times, good times. I highly recommend next year's show, if you're anywhere near New York. Just don't go finding $5 Charles Williams novels before I do, or I'll have to kick your ass.

Pulp For Lunch

Today, during lunch, I did a little browsing at the Borders at Broad and Chestnut. (Don't look at me that way. I support all bookstores, chain and indie. Plus, this Borders had The Blonde face-out on a special shelf for quite a long time.) Anyway, I picked up three books. (At this point, the Bride is probably reading this with her eyebrows raised, muttering, Oh you did, did you. To which I respond, after taking a moment to think about how breathtakingly radiant she looked this morning: But I had a coupon. Like, a 30% off coupon. Aren't you always encouraging me to use coupons?) One was a Dean Koontz reprint of Darkfall (I love the mini-essays at the back of his new editions; I'm telling you, I'm all about the extras). But the other two were huge helpings of glorious, lurid pulp.

First: a horror anthology called Summer Chills: Tales of Vacation Horror (edited by Stephen Jones; Carroll & Graf) which features a dead hand sticking out of the sand, hoisting a cocktail complete with umbrella and disembodied eyeball. Nearby, a little crab raises a claw as if to say, What the fuck, dude? It's incredibly cheesy, and I absolutely love it. Inside are stories by Clive Barker, Michael Marshall Smith, Harlan Ellison and Dennis Etchison, along with a host of other horror tales set in hot and/or exotic locales. Which is great. But I was already sold when I saw the floating eyeball.

And then I picked up a Warren Murphy/Richard Sapir omnibus of three Destroyer novels, which I first read about over at Lee Goldberg's blog. I'm new to the Destroyer series, though I'm slowly becoming a real fan of paperback men's action series. (Blame Bill Crider.) And this omnibus, The Best of the Destroyer (Forge Books) features three novels from the early 1970s, presumably that the prime of that era: Chinese Puzzle, Slave Safari, and Assassin's Playoff. Word of mouth hooked me, as did a quick look at the intro essay from Murphy. But the cover sealed the deal: Dude with a sword. Babe in a half-shirt. And some guy (yes, I know it's Remo Williams' partner, Chiun, but I'm trying to recreate my first impression here... deal with it) doing some serious kung-fu-looking shit. The cover's so pulpy and crazy, there's practically no room for a book club logo. Sorry, Oprah!