Saturday, October 30, 2010

Nick Carter in the Caribbean

Nick Carter was sent to Dominica to investigate "Operation Blast". The Terrible Ones is the name of the title and they were beautiful full bodied long legged women to wage revenge on their dead terrorist husbands. The Chinese Communists planned to ring the United States with the biggest funeral wreath. That and the hundred million dollars left over by Dictator Trujillo, buried somewhere on the island. Nick Carter had his hands full. The Terrible Ones is the 13th Killmaster novel and the only one (that I know of) to be published by two different publishing houses in the UK.

Award Books
May 1966 1st Printing                       January 1968 2nd Printing

1970 4th Printing

Mayflower Books

1968 1st Printing                                         1970 2nd Printing
Mayflower and Star Books

1974 4th Printing                                       1979 1st Printing

Printing History
Written by Valerie Moolman

1st Award (A172F) May 1966
2nd Award (A310X) January 1968
1st Mayflower (8619-8) 1968
4th Award (A310X) 1970
2nd Mayflower (583 11175-0-2) 1970
3rd Mayflower 1970
4th Mayflower (583 11175-0-3) 1974
1st Star (352 30421-9) 1979


The Terrible Ones Notes: There is either a phantom 3rd printing from 1969 or an error on the 4th printing fly sleeve.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Chorine Makes A Killing

Chorine Makes a Killing was published by Horwitz Publications in 1957. This title was the 48th in the Numbered  Series. The main character was police lieutenant Al Wheeler. The story goes, Al is fired from the Pine City police force and gets employed by Hammon, Irvine & Snooks, attorneys at law. His job is a special investigator and his first case involves a blonde. The police were holding a big shot financier for a murder of a chorus girl.


Al Wheeler does return throughout the series. In the United States he appears some 44 times. And he appears slightly more times in Australia.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Web Of Spies: Nick Carter #11

Published with Spy Castle, Web Of Spies was also published in January 1966. As with Spy Castle, Manning Lee Stokes was credited as writing Web Of Spies. Those are the only similarities between both titles. In the UK Web Of Spies was published by Mayflower Books in 1967.






Somewhere in Spain's Costa Brava a beautiful Englishwomen was being seduced. Alicia Todd was one of the world's scientific brains. She was being persuaded to defect to the East. Nick Carter was somewhere in the area. His orders were the same as the Soviets, win Alicia Todd over or kill her. But there was a third group in the Costa Brava. Die Spinne..The Spinners. They were notorious for smuggling ex-Nazis out of Germany. Alicia Todd  was the bait.









Publishing History
First Award Printing (A163F) January 1966
Second Award Printing (A288X) September 1967
First Mayflower Printing (9441-8)  1967
Second Mayflower Printing 1968
Third Mayflower Printing (583 11393 1 2)1969
Fourth Mayflower Printing (583 11393 1 2) 1970
Fifth Mayflower Printing (583 11393 1 2) 1974


Second Award Printing                     First Mayflower Printing
1969 Edition                                                1970 Edition
1974 Edition

Spy Castle: Nick Carter #12

Spy Castle was the first title published by Award Books in January 1966 and was written by Manning Lee Stokes. This title was concurrently published with Web Of Spies.

Publishing History
First Award Printing (A166F) January 1966
Second Award Printing (A289X) September 1967
First Tandem Printing  1966
Second Tandem Printing (T174) September 1967
Third Tandem Printing 1973
Fourth Tandem Printing 1975


Britain's top secret group has been infiltrated and subverted. When the bomb goes off, heads of state from around the world receive Pendragon's ultimatum. Nick assumes his cover and meets with Gwen Leith in the Scottish Moors. He meets notorious Lady Brett Hardesty as he breaks in and out of a fortress. Nick wages a one man war against Pendragon.



Second printings from Award and Tandem

  






Notes: There are probably more Award printings with the same book number A289X. Notably from 1969 and 1970. Award had a habit of reprinting titles with the same book number through out the series.

Long Story Magazine

In July 1959 Horwitz Publications started Carter Brown Long Story Magazine. Each month a full length novel was published. Long Story Magazine ran for 21 issues until April 1961.These titles were also published on their own under the Numbered Series. In my collection I possess 12 volumes of the 21.

July 1959                                              August 1959




November 1959                                         December 1959
March 1960                                                May 1960
June 1960                                                July 1960
August 1960                                          September1960
October 1960                                           November 1960
All cover art was used on the original novels.

First Collectors Series

The First Collectors Series was published by Horowitz from December1954 until July 1955. There were  14 volumes, each consisting of three novelettes. The only volume I have is number 10.

First Collectors Series Volume 10

Notes: Chill on Chili and Butterfly Nett were published in 1953 as separate stories. Honky Tonk Homicide in 1954.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Carter Brown Second Collectors Series Volume 1

Horwitz began reissuing Carter Brown titles in December 1954 with 14 volumes, each with 3 novelettes. This first collectors series ran until July 1955. In 1957, Horwitz followed with a second collectors series with two volumes each with two regular sized novels. The second collectors series ran until 1960 and featured both novels and novelettes. The first editions correspond the original printing and the second editions are the Collectors Series printing.

Second Collectors Series Volume 1
                                     
Volume 1 No. 3  First Edition 1955 Second Edition 1957
Volume 1 No. 4  First Edition 1955 Second Edition 1957


Volume 1 No. 5  First Edition 1955 Second Edition 1957
Volume 1 No. 8  First Edition 1955 Second Edition 1957


Volume 1 No. 17  First Edition 1956 Second Edition 1958
Volume 1 No. 18  First Edition 1956 Second Edition 1958


 Volume 1 No. 21  First Edition 1956 Second Edition 1959




Notes:
Cyanide Sweeties was published under the title Cyanide Sweetheart in 1953.
Murder By Miss Take was published under the title Murder By Miss-Demeanour in 1956
Lady Is A Killer was published under the title The Lady Is Murder in 1951 (First Carter Brown Lovely Novelette).

Istanbul




The tenth Killmaster novel is Istanbul and was written by Manning Lee Stokes. Istanbul was published in October 1965. If it had been only opium smuggling across the Turkish Border or the savage murder of a girl named Mija at the notorious Cinema Blue. AXE would had never been involved. But the stakes were very high. Nothing less than the total destruction of the world in World War III. Nick's mission was to kill four men. These men were part of a local murder for hire for the largest drug syndicate in the world. The men, Maurice Defarge, Dr Joseph Six, Carlos Gonzalaz, and Johnny Ruthless. At the left is the cover scan of the first printing (A152F).




              Printing History
  1. First Award Oct 1965 (A152F)
  2. Second Award Aug 1966 (A152)
  3. Third Award 1968 (A384F)
  4. First Tandem 1968 (T244)
  5. Fourth Award 1970 (A640X) Error on flysleeve
  6. Second Tandem 1971 (426 5792 9)
  7. Fifth Award 1972 (AN1095) 12 Million mark
  8. Sixth Award 1974 (AN1095) 17 Million mark
  9. First Charter  January 1981 (441 37483 2) Large Print Edition.
                                         


Second and Third Award Printings




1970 and 1972 Award reprints

A 1974 Award Reprint and Charter First Printing from January 1981. Award book has the same cover design as the two previous editions. The only difference is the stated books in print.
 Tandem Printings



Notes: There is probably a 1969 printing out there with the Award book number of A384F. And maybe a stray or two Tandem  reprints.  Thanks for visiting.                                     

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Another Collection Find

I knew I had a copy of A Bullet For Fidel by Brown Watson Digit House.  Here it is, a 1965 first printing.


This copy is in very good condition for its age with the browning of the pages.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Swan Song For A Siren

Swan Song For A Siren was the second title in the Carter Brown Numbered Series published in September 1955 by Horwitz Publications Inc. The title was revised and reissued in 1963 as Charlie Sent Me! The main character was changed from Joe Dunne to Larry Baker. The original story has our hero as a TV show writer. Eddie Sackville is America's number one comedian, and his staff does not think he is even funny. Eddie gets a bright idea for his show to write in a gag private eye. It will be good for laughs with fake bullets. But somebody put the real bullets in and somebody gets killed right before 4 million viewers. Joe goes off to see the person who started it all, a guy named Charlie.

Cover photograph by Bernard Blackburn

New American Library Signet editions. Left is the November 1963 First Printing and on the right the 3rd Printing from September 1971. A note of such. The second printing was the same as the 3rd except printed in Canada.  Cover art by Robert McGinnis.


Horwitz reissued this title under the new title Charlie Sent Me! with book number 114 in the Numbered Series. Sorry no scan of yet.

Number 9: The Eyes of The Tiger

The Eyes of The Tiger was published in May 1965 and it introduced a more violent characterization of Nick Carter. More brutal and in a way lead to the birth of the mens adventure to be  forth coming with the Executioner Series in 1969. Manning Lee Stokes wrote this title as well as 17 others throughout the series until mid 1970. He in fact carried the series until other prolific writers could be published, like Jon Messman and George Synder. Now back to the story. Nick Carter is given the task of recovering some Nazi loot. This loot is from a Japanese temple that was presented to Adolph Hitler as a token of Axis partnership. As the story goes, the loot lay in a a Swiss bank account protected by a kill on sight order by two hand picked elite SS guards.

  Award First Printing Cover Scan.

Five desperate people schemed to steal it:
  1. Hermann Goering, Reichsmarschall.
  2. Max Rader, Hitler's personal aide.
  3. Shikoku Hondo, Colonel of Japanese Intelligence.
  4. Baroness Elspeth von Stadt, Voluptuous double agent.
  5. Nick Carter, AXE agent.



Award Books updated this title in 1973 to be written in 1st person. There were lots of errors and it was the only title to be written in third  and first person. First person point of view became stand for the series in 1969. There might be a fourth printing with book number A315 out there as I do not have that one. Awards reprinted a lot of titles in 1970 with the same book numbers while reissuing a few new book numbers.


Here are the cover scans from the second (A152F, August 1966) and third (A315X, 1969) printings.
This next cover is from the revised edition in 1973 and the Charter Books printing in January 1981.


Mayflower Books in the UK published five Killmaster title beginning in 1967. Here are the 1970 and 1974 reprint cover scans. The first cover scan is a second 1970 reprint and each has the same book cover.



    Monday, October 18, 2010

    Kiss and Kill

    Kiss and Kill was published in 1955 by Horwitz Publications Inc. This was the 6th entry into the Carter Brown numbered series. Our hero, Tod Gaynor is in the lingerie business in advertising. The story goes that Mr Gaynor seeks out an up and coming starlet by the name of Merrilee Maytime. In the meantime he makes a deal with Lamont Lingerie as the advertising manager and off he goes to secure the deal. There are people in his way, like Eustace Talcom and Duke Reinhart. It was all clean fun until there were three murders. 

    Killmaster #8 The 13th Spy

    The 13th Spy by Valerie Moolman
    An American agent in Moscow crashes into the huge GUM department store. His body is full of deadly poison, and his briefcase contains every secret of value to Russian Intelligence. The records were typed out on paper from the American embassy. Worse yet, some of the information has turned up in secret files in Peking. The Russians demand American aid and accuse them of the leak. Enter Nick Carter, disguised as Tom Slade, disguised as Ivan Kokoschka, a Russian novelist. Nick discovers a ring of Chinese agents operating as the Brothers Twelve. They use a miniaturized light-activated listening device literally drawn onto a painting, to gather the secrets. The 13th Spy also introduces a new secondary character that will appear down the road in The Weapon of Night. The new character is named Valentina Sichikova.

    The first (May 1965, A139F) and third (August 1966, A139F) printings have the same cover illustration. The only difference is the stated third big printing.


    This next scan is the fourth (A626X) printing from 1970. The book cover states the correct printing, but the fly sleeve states a third printing.  


    The next two state the same 5th printings but have different book numbers (A942S) and (AN1100). Looks like Award put stickers on some of the titles and reissued them. Awards did this one a few that I have in my collection. Fraulein Spy is one example. The left book cover was my second Nick Carter book purchase during a book sale in my hometown mall.

    Last but not least are the UK editions from Brown Watson Digit House an April 1966 reprint and a 1970 Tandem edition reprint.

    The next Nick Carter adventure is The Eyes of The Tiger by Manning Lee Stokes

    Sunday, October 17, 2010

    Safari for Spies revisited

    Tonight I was looking through my book collection and spotted another copy of Safari for Spies. This one was published by Star Books (ISBN 352 30584 3) in 1979.

    A Bullet For Fidel


     
    The first title released by Award books in 1965 was A Bullet For Fidel. This entry in the Nick Carter Killmaster series was number seven and was written by Valerie Moolman and published in March 1965. AXE agent, David Trainor  posing as a returning refugee, is killed after attempting to sail from Florida to Cuba. As he was dying, he managed to daub the word 'star' on the floor in his own blood.  Nick Carter is sent to investigate, by posing as a British tobacco magnate, Lord Straven. Nick Carmela Estrella (Estrella is 'star’in Spanish) an owner of a casino/nightclub. Nick learns that her business associate, Carlos Ramon Y'Ortega, is building a secretive, luxury hotel resort in the mountains near the town of  Santiago de Cuba on the far southwest of the island of Cuba. Nick Carter sets out to investigate and learns that the Chinese communists are building a secret missile base. In the end the base is destroyed.

    Below are various covers published in the United States and United Kingdom.

    Second (July 1966) and third (August 1966) printings with the same original book number A130F.



    There might be a fourth printing but I do not have any evidence there existed with the same original book number. The next scan is the last printing published in the USA in around 1974 (AN1271) and the first one with Tandem Books in 1969 (SBN 4260 3914 9). Digit House did publish this title but I have not seen it yet.




    The last scans are from 1975 (SBN 426 12562 2) and 1979 (ISBN 352 30468 5) by Tandem and Star. W.H. Allen & Co. LTD published both Tandem and Star books as well as Universal Books. All three have seen Nick Carter covers.

    Saturday, October 9, 2010

    Nick Carter #6 Saigon

    Saigon was the sixth Nick Carter Killmaster book published by Award Books in December 1964. Both Micheal Avallone and Valerie Moolman were credited as being the author. My trusty Armchair Detective mentions that Ms Moolman took over when Mr Avallone was let go for writing as Mr Avallone would write not as the producers would like.  The story goes as Claire La Farge, a widow of a French intelligence officer, lives in a large rice and tea plantation in North Vietnam. She receives a coded message in the form of a knotted belt (quipu) from a former associate of her husband. She sends her trusted servant, Saito, to Saigon to place an advert in the personal column of the Times of Vietnam hoping to contact former colleagues of her late husband who can decode the message. Raoul Dupre, a former French intelligence officer and businessman in Saigon, reads the ad and makes contact with AXE. Nick Carter is sent to Saigon with orders to help Raoul Dupre contact Claire La Farge.



    Friday, October 8, 2010

    Fraulein Spy Nick Carter Killmaster #5

    The fifth installment of the Nick Carter Killmaster series is titled Fraulein Spy. Fraulein Spy was written by Valerie Moolman. Nick Carter is on the trail of Judas who first appeared in the first Killmaster adventure: Run, Spy, Run. Nick poses as an investigative journalist for a West German tabloid newspaper, he tracks Judas to Buenos Aires, Argentina. where he is living among the expatriate German community under the alias Hugo Bronson. An informant at his home reveals that Bronson is actually Martin Bormann, one of Adolf Hitler's closest aides. The informant is shot dead by a sniper before the the whereabouts can be passed along. Nick discovers a plot to kidnap five renowned German scientists living overseas from clues at Bronson's house in West Berlin. Communist China is financing the operation led by CLAW, an operation to kidnap the scientists and transport them to China. Four of the scientists are missing; the fifth, Dr Mark Gerber, a naturalized American, has been persuaded by his attractive secretary (Elena Darby) to join her on a round-the-world trip. In the end Judas escapes and the good guys win.

    Various covers through out the series. There are a few errors as with the stated printings not corresponding to the correct cover. It was common practice to reuse book numbers with each new printing.






    The following are the UK editions. These were published by Digit and Tandem Books.