"Hell, Hurt, Blood and Rapture" at Los Angeles Review of Books

My most recent post at the Los Angeles Review of Books is called, "Hell, Hurt, Blood and Rapture." Check it out for reviews of Jake Hinkson's Hell on Church Street (New Pulp Press), Reed Farrel Coleman's latest Moe Prager book, Hurt Machine (Tyrus Books), John Rector's Already Gone (Thomas & Mercer), Alan Glynn's Bloodland (Picador), and a Harry Whittington anthology from Stark House Press that includes Rapture Alley, Winter Girl, and Strictly For the Boys.

Read the full article here.

Excerpts below:

Hell on Church Street is one of the rare novels that actually deserves the over-used comparison to Jim Thompson, not just because Webb follows in the footsteps of such crazed protagonists as Lou Ford (The Killer Inside Me) and Nick Corey (Pop. 1280), but because Hinkson takes a risk and deviates from Thompson’s iconic moulds.

Rector writes hardboiled noir with a rare poetic élan, tight, almost violently compressed action, and reticent melancholy... He’s already proven himself among the freshest and most stylistically austere voices working in the thriller field. In fact, labeling his books “thrillers” feels too limiting. There’s a tonal ambience and doleful vibe that permeates his work, which comes as a surprise, considering how action-packed and tense his narratives tend to be. Acutely visual, Already Gone pulses with cinematic urgency and visceral punch.

Reed Farrel Coleman’s Moe Prager saga, about a Brooklyn ex-cop turned reluctant wine merchant and occasional PI, is that rare series that improves with each new entry. Coleman is now up to the seventh book, Hurt Machine, and it’s not only the best one yet but also the darkest... Coleman’s novels, like Ed Gorman’s, impress not with distractingly complex plots (though they’re both certainly capable of spinning real page-turners) but with their profound clarity and expert simplicity. Coleman’s characters don’t need grand schemes or million dollar payoffs as motivations: as Moe too frequently discovers, there’s enough potential for lifetimes of pain in our everyday lives.

Alan Glynn’s Bloodland, a loosely related follow-up to 2009’s Winterland, is a stunningly intricate and timely piece of globalization noir... In its depiction of immoral business practices and the increasingly blurred lines between criminals and politicians, Bloodland is like an amped-up 21st-century version of Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key. From the exploitation of human labor through umpteen middlemen to who-knows-where, Bloodland captures the fragmentary and alienating mechanism of international affairs with prismatic clarity.

The real prize of the anthology, however, is Strictly For the Boys, originally published in 1959, and the only one of the three to bear Whittington’s own name. The story is about a battered wife attempting to flee an abusive husband who refuses to let her, her mother, and her new boyfriend alone. Downright disturbing in its realism and sobering depiction of domestic violence, Strictly For the Boys displays a social consciousness that was prescient for its time, and which continues to be relevant today... Editor and scholar David Laurence Wilson deserves special commendation for his tireless efforts to restore Whittington’s reputation (and, in the case of Winter Girl, to restore the text itself). Wilson and Stark House publisher Greg Shepard give their books scholarly attention on par with the Library of America. Meticulously researched and lovingly edited, Stark House presents these forgotten paperback novels not as pulp curios, but as real literature, and set the bar high for other reprint series.

"Dead Dolls Don't Talk / Hunt the Killer / Too Hot to Hold" by Day Keene (Stark House, 2011)

Stark House Press returns with one of their strongest collections yet, a triple-header of 1950s noir from the incomparable Day Keene: Dead Dolls Don’t Talk, Hunt the Killer, and Too Hot to Hold. These are sweaty, grimy, relentless thrillers that capture Keene at his zenith—masterfully concocted plots, breakneck pacing, and some of the sleaziest characters you’ll find in 50s paperbacks.

The protagonists in these stories are all “average joes” —Keene’s stock-in-trade—whom fate, or coincidence, has thrown for a deadly loop, but none of them are entirely innocent. Keene’s characters are remarkably mature in their self-awareness. They know they’re philandering dirtbags and no-good heels, and they don’t pretend for a moment they’re any good. But that’s what makes them so sympathetic and, oddly enough, relatable. It’s easy to see how they’re lead down the path, and how they engineered their own doom. Coincidence and bad luck play a big role in each of the plots, but the majority of the blame likes squarely with the protagonists themselves: guys who want sex and booze so bad they’d screw up everything right with their lives just for one wild fling. We’ve all known someone like that, and that’s one of Day Keene’s formulas for success. Everyday people in everyday situations gone massively out-of-hand—our craziest dreams turned into living, breathing nightmares.

Dead Dolls Don’t Talk (Crest, 1959) follows a juror who learns the hard way what it means to find yourself on the wrong side of the law. Hours after returning a verdict of “guilty” in a murder case, Doc Hart wakes up next to the condemned man’s wife…dead wife. On the run and wanted for murder, Hart’s only friend is Gerta, the young woman from his shop whose affections he turned down in the past. Together, the two of them head to Mexico to unravel an increasingly complicated scheme that looks harder and harder to prove.

Hunt the Killer (1951, Avon)—my favorite of the bunch—is about a Florida smuggler, Charlie White, who is released from prison only to walk immediately back into the same trap that put him there. Only this time it’s not smuggling he’s wanted for, it’s murder. If only he could figure out the identity of his mysterious employer, Señor Peso, he’s sure he could prove himself innocent.

Too Hot to Hold (1959, Gold Medal) is about a dissatisfied husband whose dull life takes an unexpectedly exciting turn when he steps into a Manhattan cab one rainy morning. In the back seat is a suitcase filled with more money than he’s ever seen before. There’s no identification tag, so he’s takes it, and soon finds himself a mob target. Meanwhile, back at home things are headed for disaster as his nympho daughter threatens to make a scene if he doesn’t sleep with her, and his spiteful wife is on the warpath about his obtuse behavior.

If you’ve never checked out Keene before, this is the perfect place to start. Not only are all three books top of the line noir, but David Laurence Wilson’s meticulously researched introduction is a must read. Keene, whose real name was Gunard Hjertstedt, is one of those writers who didn’t leave too many clues about his own life behind him, and Wilson’s essay sheds light onto one of the author’s biggest mysteries—himself. Exquisite literary taste and impeccable scholarship make Stark House not only one of my favorite contemporary publishers, but also one of the most reliable out there today.

One thing you can always count on Day Keene for: killer openings. He knows how to hook a reader from line one like nobody else, and the beginning paragraphs to each of these three novels are some of his best. Take a look and if you like what you read, check out Stark House Press’ website for more information.

From Dead Dolls Don’t Talk:
“There was no boy and girl business about it. Both of them knew what they were doing. It was a thoroughly adult and sordid affair involving proven lewd and licentious conduct, resulting, so the State alleged, in murder:

"The man’s name was Harry L. Cotton. He had been a professional aerial crop duster. He was big. He was young. He had a way with women.”

From Hunt the Killer:
“It was hot. It was dark. The cell block smelled of men sleeping with dreams. Men without women for years. Of fear and despair and frustration. Night after night, alone. Three walls, a high window, iron bars. A hard, narrow cot—and you. With disinfectant replacing affection. A small squirrel in a big cage. Staring hot-eyed into the dark. Wanting a drink. Wanting a woman. Trying not to blow your top. Hysteria building up inside you.”

From Too Hot to Hold:
“Although his actual physical death didn’t take place until two days later, Mike Scaffidi began to die the moment he picked up a fare in front of Grand Central Station at exactly 9:25 on the morning of November 3, 1958.”

Catching up with Greg Shepard and Stark House Press

Greg Shepard is like a literary archeologist, digging into depths of forgotten fiction and unearthing bookish treasures. Through Stark House Press, Greg shares his discoveries with readers around the world. Classic crime fiction is the Stark House forte, but they’re not afraid to branch out to sci-fi, fantasy, film scholarship, or original novels, as long as they’re well written. Stark House has superb taste. If you see their logo, you can bet it’s going to be well worth reading.

Back in Fall 2009, I interviewed Greg about the start of Stark House, as well as the Harry Whittington trio that had just come out. Almost two years later, Stark House is still going strong. 2011 has already seen the release of Peter Rabe’s The Silent Wall / The Return of Marvin Palaver and a collection of rarities by Don Elliott (an early pseudonym of Robert Silverberg), and there is more Day Keene, Harry Whittington, and Orrie Hitt to come. Greg was kind enough to answer a few more questions for Pulp Serenade about the recent Elliott/Silverberg publication, as well as what Stark House has in store for readers.

Pulp Serenade: How and when did you first encounter Nightstand/Midwood paperbacks?

Greg Shepard: As a collector, I’ve been aware of Nightstand/Midwood for a while. I’ve acquired a few of their books over the years, including some of the Elliotts. I never sought them out as such, but I’ve certainly been intrigued by them as publishing’s forbidden fruit for at least 25 years.

PS: What was it like working with the great Robert Silverberg?

GS: Bob is a pleasure to work with. There isn’t much else that needs to be said. He is one of the great gentlemen of the publishing world. And I hope to work with him again.

PS: Was it difficult to convince Silverberg to reprint these? Did he have any reservations?

GS: Curiously, I had contacted Bob about 3-4 years ago about reprinting some of the Elliott books, but he wasn’t interested. Polite but firm. Then out of the blue, he contacted me a year ago and asked if I were still interested. If he had any reservations, it was about how to market the books. He didn’t feel that he wanted the Silverberg name on the books as in “ROBERT SILVERBERG WRITING AS DON ELLIOTT.” He has a keen sense of his audience and didn’t want to confuse the sf readers with his erotica writings. Nor did he want them marketed as “Sleaze Classics” as many of these books are known today. He feels, quite rightly, that the books stand on their own, and that there is nothing inherently sleazy about them. So once we worked out the parameters, the project went very smoothly.

PS: Why Gang Girl and Sex Bum? Were there other titles you considered?

GS: Bob picked out the titles. Considering how many books he’s written as Elliott, not to mention his other adult pseudonyms, I thought I’d bow to his greater knowledge in this case. Once I read them, Gang Girl appealed to me because it was one of the first Elliotts, and Sex Bum because of its obvious crime angle. I’m not sure if there’s a perfect way to pick two titles out of 150 and come up with the ideal selection, so going with Bob’s choices seemed a good way to start.

PS: Did you hear from Earl Kemp (who originally published the Elliott books) at all while you were working on this reprint? If so, did he have anything to say about seeing these works in print again?

GS: Didn’t hear from Earl. I’d love to hear what he thinks about the reprints.

PS: What is the total amount of time it takes to put something like this Don Elliott anthology together, from conception to seeing the final bound product?

GS: That’s an interesting question. In this case, it took almost exactly a year between Bob’s initial email and the publishing of the book. It doesn’t have to take that long due to production, but because Stark House is only publishing four books a year, I have a schedule that is always at least two+ years out. I slotted the Elliott book in as soon as I could once the contract was signed, but if I were publishing more books a year, I probably could have had it out in less time--8-10 months easily. And if it ever becomes possible to publish Stark House full time, I probably will have the books out sooner.

PS: These two books were reprinted over fifty years ago. Do you think anyone involved thought they would be around today?

GS: Man, I seriously doubt it. I never asked Bob, but at the rate he was cranking them out back then, I can’t imagine he thought these books were going to have another shelf life 50 years on. I wouldn’t have.

PS: What is it about them that makes them still interest readers today?

GS: Bob Silverberg is just basically a great storyteller. You get caught up in his books. I recently re-read The World Inside. Completely different experience from the Elliott books. In the case of the Elliott books, story predominates. In the case of World Inside, theme is more important. But in both cases, the characters matter and the story propels you on. Gang Girl is the story of a woman who tries to manipulate her way into leadership of a gang. Sex Bum is about a guy who wants to be head of the mob. They both want power. They reach for it and fail. But in their reaching for it, they touch upon that basic instinct in us all to better ourselves, to strive, to achieve. I think they both have stories that are pertinent to today for the simple reason that they both involve the conflict between not having and wanting. It doesn’t get much more basic than that.

PS: And now for a couple questions about some upcoming Stark House Releases…You are working again with David Laurence Wilson on two collections: one of Day Keene and one of Harry Whittington. They both have so many great books out of print, how did you decide on these three?

GS: You can blame the Day Keene collection on me. I read a bunch of Keene books, and picked my three favorites. I’m not saying that there aren’t better Keene books—David is a big fan of Joy House, for example--just that these were my three picks from the books I read at the time. As for the Whittington collection, David and I discussed this back when we did the last Whittington book. I particularly like Rapture Alley and Strictly for the Boys, two of Harry’s social novels. David thought they’d work well with A Taste of Desire, one of the “lost” novels he wrote about earlier. So we put them together in one volume, another 3-in-1.

PS: I also see you have an Orrie Hitt collection coming up later this year. What can you tell us about the two novels that you are reprinting?

GS: The Cheaters is one of Orrie’s best noir novels, with a great crooked cop antagonist pitted against a guy who just wants to manage his bar while having his way with the previous owner’s wife. Dial M for Man has the distinction of having a TV repairman as noir hero Hitt’s characters are a bit larger than life, but they’re a lot of fun to read. I have no idea how well these books will do, but I’ve enjoyed working with Orrie’s daughters and some of the Hitt fans like Brian Ritt and Michael Hemmingson to produce the book.

PS: Lastly, does Stark House have any plans to offer ebooks in addition to print volumes in the future?

GS: I don't want to say anything against progress, but I'm not much interested in ebooks personally, and have a hard time getting excited about offering Stark House Books in this format generally. I could change my mind. It's not inconceivable. But at present, I don't have any plans to create an ebook line.

PS: Thank you very much for your time, Greg. It’s always a pleasure to have you at Pulp Serenade.

Harry Whittington Returns to Stark House Press

Just saw on the Stark House Press website that there will be a third volume of Harry Whittington's novels. The collection will include Rapture Alley, A Taste of Desire, and Strictly for the Boys. Scholar David Laurence Wilson will be providing an introduction. His past essays on Whittington and Fleischman have been spectacular, and I am greatly looking forward to reading more of his fine scholarship and criticism.

Stark House's website says the book will be released Winter 2011/2012. So, looks like we'll have to wait a little while longer. In the meantime, you can brush up on Whittington with either of their fine volumes. One includes A Night for Screaming and Any Woman He Wanted, and the other includes To Find Cora, Like Mink Like Murder, and Body & Passion. The latter collection I reviewed here.

Previously on Pulp Serenade, I interviewed David Laurence Wilson, as well as Stark House publisher Greg Shepard.

Check the Stark House Press for more updates.

Rapture Alley / A Taste of Desire / Strictly for the Boys
1-933586-36-2
$21.95
Three rare novels of death and desire.
“Plenty of twists, turns and complications.” Eric Peterson, The Restless Kind.
New introduction by David Laurence Wilson.
WINTER 2011/12

Stark House Press Newsletter

Greg Shepard just forwarded me the following Stark House Press Newsletter, which has some fantastic forthcoming titles, including Peter Rabe and Day Keene, as well as a Stark House Bookclub. Read on for more information.

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“Hitch was with this great, high-heeled monster of a woman and the only reason I was along, I spoke Italian and Hitch did not. It turned out that the woman was not Italian at all, she was Sicilian, and her glue-voiced accent was so heavy that I understood almost as little as Hitch. Not that it mattered.”

Hello Everyone--

Stark House Press is happy to announce the long-awaited publication of the late, great Peter Rabe’s final manuscripts, The Silent Wall and The Return of Marvin Palaver. Along with a very rare Rabe short story, “Hard Case Redhead,” the books will appear in a single volume this coming January. The above passage is the opening from The Silent Wall, which Booklist calls “a claustrophobic noir, at times almost unbearably tense.” And it is certainly that. Matty Matheson has the run of an entire town but he is not allowed to leave, held captive by the Mafia for reasons he only thinks he knows.

The Return of Marvin Palaver is a darkly comic, highly complex short book about a swindle, payback and the incredible lengths one man will go to get his revenge against the man who ruined him. Rabe never wrote the same book twice and even with his talent for writing different kinds of crime fiction, the story will leave you breathless with its unique voice and dark sense of humor.

Shortly before his death in 1990, Rabe had sent these manuscripts to friend and author Ed Gorman, who’s had them in his possession until now. We’re ecstatic to be the ones who are finally bringing these books, along with the short story “Hard Case Redhead,” into the world. In “Redhead,” two thieves and their uninvited guest try to wait out the aftermath of a troublesome heist. It’s hard-boiled and noir and shows that Rabe could write just as well at shorter lengths.

Donald E. Westlake named Rabe and Hammett his two major genre influences, Bill Pronzini called him “a kind of fictional surgeon,” and Bill Crider said, “Few writers are Rabe’s equal in the field of the hardboiled gangster story.” If you’ve never read Peter Rabe, there’s no better time to start.

We’re also announcing the creation of the Stark House Book Club with a special offer of free shipping on all our books to everyone who signs up now. No minimum to buy, no obligation, just sign up and you’ll receive each new release, hassle free and with no shipping, as they are published. For a limited time, each new member can order as many backlist titles as they’d like for 15% off list price and again, free shipping. To sign up for the club, e-mail us at griffinskye3@sbcglobal.net. And to check out our list of authors and titles, visit our website at www.starkhousepress.com.

On tap for the near future are a two-in-one volume of vintage sleaze crime novels from the famous (under his real name) Don Elliott and a nice trio from Day Keene, and many other exciting titles. So sign up now and don’t miss a book!

To receive this newsletter automatically, please send your e-mail address. We look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,
Greg Shepard, publisher
Stark House Press

"Danger in Paradise/Malay Woman" by A.S. Fleischman (Stark House, 2010)

A.S. Fleischman may have passed away this past March at the age of 90, but Stark House Press is helping to preserve his legacy and ensure that future generations will remember the name and understand his success, importance, and artistry as a writer. Winner of the esteemed Newbery Medal in 1987 for The Whipping Boy, Fleischman had a long and prosperous career writing books for young readers. But his career is more varied than that: he was also a biographer, a screenwriter, a magician, and an Edgar-nominee.

Fleischman was also one of the original Gold Medal paperback novelists in the early 1950s. Two of these novels – Danger in Paradise (1953) and Malay Woman (1954) – are reprinted in the latest Stark House collection. Both are South Seas thrillers (Fleischman’s specialty for Gold Medal), filled with intimate first-hand knowledge of the areas stemming from the author’s first-hand experience in World War II. Accompanying the novels is a candid introduction by the author, as well as a moving, comprehensive tribute by David Laurence Wilson, one of the leading authorities of the unsung heroes of American literature, particularly the early paperback writers.

From page one, Danger in Paradise is a kinetic, epic adventure that moves fast and punches hard. Jeff Cape is an American oil engineer working in Indonesia. On his way back to the US, he stops for a drink and makes the mistake of noticing a mysterious, beautiful woman, Nicole Balashov. He then makes the bigger mistake of agreeing to carry a business card with a cryptic memo back to the states. The card belongs to Apollo Fry, President of Scrap Metals Export Co., and Fry would kill to get the secret message back.

Soon Cape finds himself on the run from Fry and his army of natives; Mr. Chu and his poisoned-talon bird Jong; a persistent stalker with a cane that doubles as a sword; and an alluring but deadly woman named Regina Williams. The only person that isn’t chasing him is the one he can’t find, and the one who can answer all his questions: Nicole Balashov.

The chases in Danger in Paradise are swift, the plotting succinct, and the twists plentiful. Like many of the best Gold Medalists, Fleischman didn’t waste words, and his precision with words is something to be admired.

Though it takes second billing, Malay Woman is one double feature worth sticking around to the end for, as it is even more enjoyable than Danger in Paradise. The main character in this one is Jock Hamilton, another American in the South Seas who this time works with rubber plantations. On the run and suspected of killing his wife, Jock hides as a stowaway on a boat that seemingly offers an escape. He couldn’t be more wrong.

After he overhears a plot to kill a woman named Kay Allison, he tries to warn her but soon realizes that by saving her, he might compromise his own safety and anonymity. When they dock in Kuala Tang, Jock must figure out how to save Kay while hiding out from the police with an old friend, Gabriel Wing, and his wife, Monique. But can he trust Gabriel and, more importantly, can he trust himself around the seductive Monique?

A simple sentence like this exemplifies Fleischman’s expertise: “It was hot. It was hot and fatigue was beginning to catch up with me.” The repetition of the first three words conveys the sense of fatigue and strain felt by the main character even before he says it. The heat even seems to weigh down on the readers, slowing the eyes, and making the fatigue infectious. Fleischman brings the same immediacy to the action and chase sequences, of which there are many.

From ship to shore, Malay Woman is filled with powerful details about the local and landscape and culture that distinguish Fleischman’s writing as first rate. Despite the exotic setting, Fleischman doesn’t give in to colonialist clichés, and the book holds up very well over half a century later.

Thanks for publisher Greg Shepard and his cohorts at Stark House Press, forgotten classics like these are being preserved and made available for future generations.

As always, a few of my favorite passages from both books.

From Danger in Paradise:

“I had a couple of hundred dollars in my wallet and two suitcases on the ship. My worldly possessions. The memories don’t count, I decided bitterly.”

“She was in trouble, and she had passed it on to me like an infection and standing here in the rain I didn’t give a damn.”

From Malay Woman:

“The still water raced up for me. My feet shattered the surface, and the sea closed around me. I sank like a plummet and thrashed to stop myself. A shock of coolness swept over me and I floundered in a sort of violent slow motion. I rose along the monstrous white belly of the ship, almost luminous in the clean, deep water. I broke through the surface and gulped for air.”

“It came to me in a rush that murder had begun to cling to me like so many leeches.”

“It glinted off the kris handle that rose like a marker out of Ahmad’s young back. A monitor lizard as long as my arm scurried out of the light. A praying mantis was startled from the white streaked body and vanished in a green flutter. I bent down and saw streams of white ants ignoring the flesh and feeding at Ahmad’s sandals, his belt, his cheap watch band. The mantis had been lured by the ants, the lizard by the mantis. Death was always a nightmare in the jungle.”

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Danger in Paradise scan courtesy of Pop Sensation. Malay Woman scan from my own collection.

Interview with David Laurence Wilson

Previously on Pulp Serenade I reviewed Stark House Press’ latest trio of Harry Whittington titles (To Find Cora/Like Mink Like Murder/Body and Passion) and also interviewed Stark House editor and publisher Greg Shepard. Another of the pivotal figures in that collection was David Laurence Wilson, whose drive helped to uncover many of Whittington’s once-thought “lost” works. His essay that opens the collection, “Harry and His Bastard Children,” shows not only the depth of his knowledge about Whittington, but also an instinctive empathy with his working methods and thematic preoccupations.

Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing David about the story behind the book’s publication, as well as his other endeavors, including his rubber stamp company. You can see a couple of his designs peppered throughout the interview.

Pulp Serenade: You’ve spent a long time researching and writing about Harry Whittington, including working with Stark House Press to publish two anthologies, A Night for Screaming/Any Woman He Wanted, and most recently To Find Cora/Like Mink Like Murder/Body and Passion. How did this collaboration begin?

David Laurence Wilson: In the early eighties I contributed to the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Frontier and Western Fiction. Mostly I wrote about guys I considered friends or mentors, among them Niven Busch, Oakley Hall and Sid Fleischman. When it looked like there was going to be a revision of the encyclopedia, a chance to fix my mistakes, I also wanted to add Whittington because I really enjoyed his work. Later the encyclopedia became less likely, though I still wanted to publish the story on Whittington.

Ed Gorman responded to a comment I made on the Rara-Avis Internet discussion group. I told him there was a book I wanted to do, a collection of Whittington’s short stories, one of Harry's last, unsold efforts. Gorman put me in touch with Greg Shepard, at Stark House, who wanted two novels and an introduction. I suggested A Night For Screaming (because it's so good) and Any Woman He Wanted (mostly because it was a second Mike Ballard novel, after one of Harry's best, Brute In Brass). They were also two completely different types of stories, a good example of Whittington’s variety.

PS: How about this latest trio of Whittington titles? In your introduction, you mention that you have been tracking down his 38 lost books for quite some time, ones published under varying pseudonyms that were previously nothing more than a mysterious footnote to his career.

DLW: I was close to identifying these books as early as 2000, but I dropped the effort for two reasons. Harry's widow, Kathyrn, was uncomfortable with the packaging of the books and the way they were promoted. Also, I'd questioned the editor at Corinth, Earl Kemp, and he gave me an education: Harry had believed that the books were published by Ember. I figured that I knew Harry's style well enough to be able to identify his books from among the others (somewhere over 100 novels). Well, Kemp assured me that there was no such thing as a “writer” for Ember. Books came to the publisher, Corinth, and were released as a “Midnight Reader,” “Nightstand,” “Ember,” basically, any imprint that needed a story. That gave me thousands of possibilities for the Whittington novels. The margin of error was increased by a factor of twenty. I didn't want to make any mistakes in identifying these books and I didn't want to contribute to anyone else's misinformation. I felt that if I didn't have at least one book that I was sure had come from Harry I couldn't make the identifications. I had to start with something that I was sure about. As it turns out, none of the books I’d been reading were Whittingtons, and only one of the novels was published as an Ember Book. I found that one, mostly, by chance.

Two things happened in 2005. Kathyrn Whittington passed away. Identifying the books, showing the world the fullness and endurance of Harry's career, would do nothing to trouble her now.

For my part, I was diagnosed with Stage Three Melanoma. I was entering a year and a half that I cannot completely account for. I received two surgeries and I spent a year in a clinical trial. To explain my attitude, I put aside a book I'd been working on for years, a history of stuntwork in American films, and I began assembling and shaping my interviews, essays and photographs of crime fiction writers like W.R. Burnett, Jonathan Latimer, Dorothy Hughes, and George Harmon Coxe. Before this I had no title for the project. Now I named this book Deathstyles and my idea was to introduce each of the writers by their means of death. I figured that I would be joining them soon enough. I wasn't expecting to finish it. I just wanted to get it into shape so that someone else could take over, and I was considering how I could do this.

I felt like everything was...now or never!

I also figured that I had a commitment to Harry and his family, whom I knew from my work on the essay in the A Night For Screaming collection. Kathyrn had been very supportive and enthusiastic about what I had written in the introduction. Though we never met in person, I have fond memories from our correspondence and phone calls.

PS: So how did things finally come together?

DLW: After Kathryn’s death, twenty-seven books were found in a cardboard box at Harry’s house. None of them were Embers but they were all published by Corinth. Once I got the titles I started hunting for the books, so I could see if they actually were 27 of Harry’s missing books.

Years before this I had obtained Howard Whittington's address from the writer and book dealer Lynn Munroe. Lynn knew I was writing about Harry and I’d used him as a resource. Among other things, Munroe is the authority on Corinth. It was awkward not to fill him in on the whole picture. Finally I shared my research in an email.

I had a handful of books using the pseudonym Curt Colman. There were just a couple more Colman books published by Corinth so we made the assumption that all the Colmans were Harry. I read them, and this was true. Lynn also came up with Passion Hangover, the American version of Like Mink Like Murder, and Flesh Snare, which was the rewrite of To Find Cora (or, alternately, Cora is a Nympho). It was a lot of fun to have someone else with whom I could discuss the search, and whenever I slowed, Lynn seemed to be there with new titles for me to consider. There were several “possible” Whittington novels that I rejected.

PS: How about those short stories Whittington wrote? Before this, I've never heard anyone mention them, only his novels, and the occasional reference to his True Crime pieces. Was he as prolific with short stories as he was with novels? Are they also crime- and noir-related?

DLW: I have 54 of Harry's shorter pieces, and there are probably another 20 or 30 pieces I don't have. This does not include the early, unpublished writing, which was destroyed. In the beginning Harry wrote private detective serials for King Features with the character Pat Raffigan. I have several stories but would like to find copies of the rest of them. It would be fun to put together a collection of the Raffigan stories but I have yet to find a market for it.

Harry wrote crime shorts and often he returned to them for the plots and themes of his novels. He also wrote in other fiction categories: western, romance, and true crime shorts. I've discovered a couple of the romance stories but they were usually published without a byline, so I can't even find a pseudonym for this group. I have several of the true detective stories but have yet to read them. I'm keeping the short stories at arm's length, for now, in case I have the opportunity to prepare them as a collection in the future. Harry’s title was going to be Why A Writer?

For Harry, “compulsive” may be a better description than “prolific,” and I don't think he was alone in this. Once his career got going Harry wrote almost all the time. Whatever the problems in his life – and most of them were economic – he looked to writing as the solution.

PS: That's a great title for a collection. And I'm sure it is a question Whittington must have asked himself many times. What are your thoughts on why he wasn't able to weather changes in the market in the 1960s like other crime writers (such as Ed McBain)? Did he ever try and publish outside the realm of paperback originals?

DLW: Harry was by no means unique in his difficulty surviving as a writer in the early sixties. It's just like today, in that everyone's personal finances are affected by the overall economy, and Harry had the added problem of having financed an unsuccessful film, Face of the Phantom, that put him into debt. Harry took his reverses personally. He wasn't really close enough to the marketplace or to a lot of other writers to be philosophical about it. He did, in fact, drop out of the writing scene for a while, but again, he was not unique in this. He was, however, near the top of the game, so when he fell, he had further to go. He adjusted in the same way that many others did: instead of writing suspense and adventure for an adult male audience he tried writing for children, including a hardback book for children based on the Bonanza series. He wrote several stories for the Man From U.N.C.L.E. digest. He wrote for women, with a female pseudonym, and he wrote the sexually themed novels. During this time he was also trying to write screenplays.

You use Evan Hunter as an example but he was writing for Corinth, just as Harry was, and using several pseudonyms. One strategy was to produce series characters, and this just did not work for Harry. He even tried this with Corinth, and was not successful.

PS: Since you've spent so much time reading and writing about Whittington, what was it that initially attracted you to his writing?

DLW: I’d been doing stories for a news and crime-fiction digest called Mystery, interviews with Burnett, Latimer, and John Bright (the screenwriter of Public Enemy), with more planned. Then the magazine folded. I had faith in the effort, and I kept going. In 1983 my wife and I drove around the U.S. in a VW bus so I could interview crime fiction writers. I knew of Whittington – I wrote for “The West Coast Review of Books” (which had praised his later historical novels) but I had never read his books. Later, I began reading him and I really loved his work – the plotting, the pace, just the way he wrote a sentence – and I regretted that I had not tried to contact him in Florida. I had the feeling that he would have appreciated the attention, and it might have made a difference in how he felt about his career. To a degree, I'm trying to make up for that now.

PS: Has your research for this Stark House anthology changed your impression?

DLW: After working with Harry's manuscripts, looking through his papers, and getting to know his family, I feel no different about those words on the page. They just seem right to me. Maybe it's a guilty pleasure. Sometimes, I think, just because of the haste with which he wrote, there are what I would consider mistakes in his sentences. After revising Like Mink Like Murder I went back again and just looked at those sentences, and made little fixes wherever I thought I could make an improvement, to keep the flow of the words and the action going, taking out anything that would slow Harry’s narrative.

I figure I'm connected to Harry for the rest of my life, as an authority and a friend. This might include a documentary or a graphic novel, but at the least I want to complete one more essay that deals with Harry's efforts as a filmmaker. I'm an intuitive sort, and I feel that between Harry's writing and myself – we just sort of found one another. In a way, I feel that I got the cancer because I was not doing what I should have been doing with my life. I shouldn’t have been working in the sun as a house painter. I also had (and still have) a rubber stamp business, first Hard-Boiled Rubber and then Ready-Made Rubber. I had great collaborations and a wonderful base of customers, but I felt guilty about getting away from writing. Now I feel that working on these books is an antidote to the cancer that nearly killed me. I’m betting that submerging myself in crime fiction can be as healthful as laughter – so take that, Norman Cousins. Rational or irrational, however that sounds, I plan to keep going.

I’m four years out from my diagnosis and I’ve worked on six books for Stark House. Four years without a recurrence is considered to be a “cure”, but I continue my checkups, the next coming up soon. As you may guess, I get a little nervous when it’s time for my scans. I hope everyone reading this will use sun screen, wear hats, and have periodic skin checks with a dermatologist. Early detection is what can save your life. Melanoma used to be rare. Now the incidence of Melanoma is increasing faster than any other form of cancer.

Reading Harry today is just as exciting as when I read my first Whittington book. I get away from him, for other efforts, but I'm always happy to return. Harry left us a lot of stories.

Interview with Greg Shepard of Stark House Press

Stark House Press’ lineup is a veritable Who's Who of classic crime fiction. Harry Whittington, Gil Brewer, W.R. Burnett, Peter Rabe, Wade Miller – the list goes on, and thankfully continues to grow. Stark House is one of the most prominent advocates for pulp literature out there, keeping all your favorites in print and introducing you to a whole lot more. And their double- and triple- bills are easily some of the best deals around. Their new collection of three Harry Whittington novels – To Find Cora, Link Mink Like Murder, and Body and Passion (reviewed here) – is phenomenal, and it introduces American readers to a book previously only available in French.

Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing Greg Shepard, head editor and publisher over at Stark House, about the Whittington trio, how the company got started, and what directions it will be going in.

Pulp Serenade: To start things off, how did Stark House Press come into being?

Greg Shepard: Stark House Press began as a family affair back in 1998. We pooled our talents. My dad, Bill Shepard, is a retired editor, my mom, Joanne, a proofreader. My ex-wife is a painter and my brother Mark is a graphic design artist. And I had been a buyer, seller and distributor of books, and had the contacts. The initial concept was to specialize in genre fiction. Everyone but my brother dropped out, which left me to pursue what I wanted, which was mystery reprints, mostly hardboiled.



PS: What do you look for in prospective titles?

GS: I look for a good story, preferably one that I’ve read more than once that grabbed me as much the second time as the first. I also like to offer more obscure titles, as I did with Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and the new Harry Whittington. I have my favorites like Peter Rabe and Gil Brewer as well, and these are authors I keep coming back to for reprints.



PS: The recent collection of Harry Whittington titles – To Find Cora, Like Mink Like Murder, and Body and Passion – is like a treasure that most readers didn’t even know existed (particularly Like Mink Like Murder). From the introduction by David Laurence Wilson, it seems he and Lynn Munroe were researching these for quite some time. When did Stark House come on board in the project?

GS: David and I had talked about a follow-up to A Night for Screaming/Any Woman He Wanted even before that one was printed, so that would have been around three years ago. He had access to some of the rarer books like Cora is a Nympho, and somewhere along the line he tempted me with an English language version of a book he was then calling Mink, which had only been published in France. I was interested immediately.



PS: Were other Whittington titles considered? How did you all decide on these three particular titles out of the thirty-six recently rediscovered, or all the rest of his out-of-print work?

GS: If memory serves, I mentioned to David that I wanted to do Rapture Alley, the story of a woman’s descent into drug addiction. But he thought Cora and Body and Passion worked better with Mink, and suggested we pair Rapture up with another of Harry’s social mysteries down the line. Harry had written so many books, so many great stories, and David was right in the midst of researching them, I was more than willing to take his suggestion. And of the rediscovered books, we picked Passion Hangover — reverting to Harry’s original title, Like Mink Like Murder – for the simple reason of its complicated history and intriguing backstory. That and the fact that it was another great story.

PS: Since you specialize in pulp literature, where do you think its importance lies? Why are they continuing to survive and impact readers, when they were initially thought to be ephemeral, disposable books?

GS: For me the importance begins in the stripped-down simplicity of the story. Within that framework, there are so many marvelously unique voices – Thompson, Goodis, McCoy, Burnett, Williams, Rabe, Brewer, Packer, Williford, Chase, MacDonald, Woolrich, etc. — each with their own story to tell. And in revisiting these “disposable” books, we get to relive and experience the mores of another era, which by its very distance seems like a simpler, less complicated time — and that, too, has its appeal. But first and foremost, these are all great writers who continue to impact because of the quality of their work. 



PS: What was your initial foray into pulp fiction? Any particular titles or authors stand out that got you into the style?

GS: The first books that made a big impact on me were the young adult mysteries of Phyllis A. Whitney. Then for years I read mostly science fiction. Somewhere along the line I discovered Conan Doyle and Sax Rohmer. But probably the first real pulp I read were the Honey West books by G. G. Fickling. The show was on TV when I was a teenager, and I gobbled up the books in all their delightful risquéness. Same with the Man from U.N.C.L.E. books (so I guess my first Whittington book was U.N.C.L.E. #2 back in the mid-60’s).

But in the mid-80’s I discovered the Black Box Thrillers edited by Maxim Jakubowski from England. And that, ironically enough, is where I got hooked on Jim Thompson, David Goodis, W. R. Burnett and Horace McCoy. After that I started collecting old paperbacks - back when you could still find them for a buck or less at used book stores - and reading them like crazy. That really was the start of my mania.

PS: I see on your website that Stark House has several non-crime fiction titles available – Algernon Blackwood, Storm Constantine, and a collection of essays on Invasion of the Body Snatchers edited by Kevin McCarthy & Ed Gorman. Is Stark House planning to branch out into other genres or non-fiction?

GS: The idea behind Stark House Press was that it would be rooted in genre fiction but not restricted to any one category. So we always felt open to offer science fiction, fantasy, horror, even westerns. We started with Storm Constantine, who writes fantasy and sf, because I simply loved her books. I contacted her and she was happy to work with us. I reprinted the Blackwood books for the same reason. I love his mystical fiction. But except in a general sense, there are no plans to branch out from the mysteries we’re doing now. But no plans not to either. I like to stay flexible. 



PS: Have you ever considered publishing paperback originals yourself?

GS: I don’t really think of myself as an editor, and have resisted the notion of publishing originals until recently. I enjoy my niche. But a few months ago, Ed Gorman suggested I read Charlie Stella’s new book, Johnny Porno, and I couldn’t say no. It was too good to pass up. It’s a great story and Charlie is a helluva writer. So I will be publishing one original next year in April. Whether I publish more, I just don’t know. I don’t want to encourage anyone to send in manuscripts at this point, though, because the main emphasis of Stark House will continue to be classic reprints.



PS: How do you feel about digital publishing. Is this a direction Stark House might venture into in the future?

GS: I prefer hard copy books myself. I’m not personally interested in digital publishing. I could see making our books available on Kindle as a way to support the authors, but I’m not pursuing it at the moment. I’m a fairly retro guy, and I just can’t get away from the notion of a book as a physical object. I like the look of a book, the smell of a book. You mentioned ephemeral earlier. To me, digital publishing is just that.



PS: Lastly, any upcoming titles that you can hint at?

GS: Well, we’ve just updated the website where we’re promoting a few future titles. We’ve got two classic turn-of-the-century mysteries from E. Phillips Oppenheim, including his rarest book, The Amazing Judgment, of which there are only about three or four known copies in the world. We’ve got two more South Sea adventure mysteries by A. S. Fleischman, Danger in Paradise and Malay Woman. I love his stuff. I always seem to see Robert Mitchum as the main character as I’m reading them.

We’ll be publishing another standalone title next year called One for Hell by Jada M. Davis. This has got to be the penultimate bad cop story, and if I could find another good Davis story to pair with it, I would. This is a one-hit wonder, but it’s a killer.

I also just signed a contract to publish two of Peter Rabe’s unpublished manuscripts, The Silent Wall and The Return of Marvin Palaver. That’s pretty exciting. The one is a mafia tale set in Sicily, and the other a rollicking revenge story.

We’ll also be working with Ann Marlowe to publish Stephen Marlowe’s autobiography, Confessions of a Wandering Writer, hopefully late 2010. I’d publish more books a year if I could afford to, but I’m happy with the ones we’ve got coming up in the next year.