Top 5 Posts Of 2015

The Top Five Posts of 2015

 Presenting the top 5 for the blog for the whole year of 2015

 

#1

From October 18th 

The Pace That Kills by William Fuller

 The Pace That Kills by William Fuller

#2

From March 28th
The Black Hole (1979)

The Black Hole 1979

#3

From March 9th
1967 Book Signup

   

 1967 Book Signup

#4

From March 24th
More Double Trouble

 

 

 

More Double Trouble 

#5 

From January 9th

Bare Trap by Frank Kane 

Bare Trap by Frank Kane 

See you in 2016

Passport To Danger by Jessyca Paull

Terror prowls the streets of Paris, pursuing her everywhere, as she plunges into the nightmare of being mistaken for a spy

Tracy stared at the words. Where did the newspaper get that story? That cold report on her own murder in a dingy Paris hotel?

At first, Tracy Larrimore was too stunned to be frightened. Terror came slowly, with chilling, deliberate precision...

When she learned that her passport was found in the mysterious corpse's rigid hands - making it impossible for Tracy to prove who she was...

When the whispering voice demanded her return to America - offering a small fortune if she obeyed......

When the woman with the veil kidnapped her in broad daylight, her gun pointed straight at Tracy's head.

Nerve-chilling terror came slowly but relentlessly as Tracy became entanglesd in the intrigue of vicious espionage. With a ruthless enemy who wanted her dead for a sinister secret she did not realize she possessed... and her only ally a tall, young stranger she loved, but knew she could not trust.

Printing History

 Written by Julia Perceval and Rosaylmer Burger

Universal Publishing and Distributing Corp 

Award Books

#303  (1968)

#1250 (1973)

My Gun Is Quick by Mickey Spillane

Mike Hammer Mystery

Mike Hammer is meeting a red-headed prostitute in a diner. She is hassled by a man she appears to know and fear but Mike deals with him swiftly. Despite having little conversation, he gives her some money to get a real job and leaves. The next day she is found dead, the victim of an apparent hit-and-run accident. Mike does not believe this and proceeds to hunt down her murderers and in the process he uncovers a massive and powerful prostitution ring in New York.

 Printing History

Written by Frank Morrison Spillane (1918-2006)

E. P. Dutton

1950

The Film

1957

Directed by Phil Victor and George White

 Cast

Robert Bray as Mike Hammer
Whitney Blake as Nancy Williams
Donald Randolph as Colonel Holloway
Gina Core as Maria Teresa Garcia
Pamela Duncan as Velda
Booth Colman as Pat Chambers

Merry Christmas (2015)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

 

Miracle On 34th Street (1947)

Taking place between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day in New York City, this film focuses on the impact of a department store Santa Claus who claims to be the real Santa.

Kris Kringle, a bearded old gent who is the living image of Santa Claus, is serving as a last-minute replacement for the drunken Santa who was to have led Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, Kringle is offered a job as a Macy's toy-department Santa. The Supervisor soon begins having second thoughts about hiring Kris. It's bad enough that he is laboring under the delusion that he's the genuine Saint Nick. But when he begins advising customers to shop elsewhere for toys that they can't find at Macy's, he's gone too far!

 Based on the story by

Valentine Davies

Directed by

George Seaton

Cast

Maureen O'Hara as Doris Walker.
John Payne as Frederick M. "Fred" Gailey
Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle
Natalie Wood as Susan Walker
Porter Hall as Granville Sawyer
William Frawley as Charlie Halloran
Jerome Cowan as District Attorney Thomas Mara
 

Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS by Elizabeth McIntosh

The daring missions and cloak-and-dagger skullduggery of America's World War II intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), are well documented and have become the stuff of legend. Yet the contributions of the four thousand women who made up one-fifth of the OSS staff have gone largely unheralded.

A seasoned journalist and veteran of sensitive OSS and CIA operations, Elizabeth McIntosh draws on her own experiences and interviews with more than a hundred other OSS women to reveal some of the most tantalizing stories and best-kept secrets of the war in Europe and Asia. McIntosh weaves intimate portraits of dozens of remarkable women into the storied development and operation of the OSS in the 1940s. Along with famous names like Julia Child and Marlene Dietrich, one will discover such intrepid agents as Amy Thorpe, who seduced a Vichy official and stole naval codes from the French embassy. And Virginia Hall, who earned a Distinguished Service Cross for her work with the French resistance running an underground railroad for downed fliers; and others who recruited double agents, pioneered propaganda and subversion techniques, and tracked the infamous Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny. 

Printing History

Written by Elizabeth P. McIntosh (1915-2015)

Random House Publishing Group

1999

The Vulture Is A Patient Bird by James Hadley Chase

Safari To Slaughter 

Cover by Beverly LeBarrow

  A brilliant but sadistic safe breaker

A beautiful professional seductress

An expert young white hunter

And an ace pilot with a shady past

This was the team undercover operator Armo Shalik assembled to steal the priceless Borgia ring from millionaire Max Kahlenberg's closely guarded fortress in the remote and deadly African bush. But Kahlenberg found out they were coming, and the gang's expedition turned into a strictly one way safari....to slaughter. 

Printing History

René Lodge Brabazon Raymond (1906-1985)

Robert Hale 1969

Granada Publishing

ISBN 586 03540 

copyright 1970

The Shankill Road Contract by Philip Atlee

Joe Gall Challenges A Bizarre Killer in Ireland

Gall’s assignment is to stop an assassin who was suspected of 50+ brutal eliminations in the political strife of Northern Ireland and was rumored to be upping the ante by killing a major official in the British government.  The assassin is an American. Worse, he is the son of a member of the U.S. Cabinet.

Printing History

Written by James Atlee Phillips (1915-1991)

Fawcett Gold Medal Books

  T2819

1973

Drum Beat:Madrid by Stephen Marlowe

In the city notorious for mystery and intrigue, 

Chester Drum tangles with a pair of flaming 

senoritas who have murder in their hearts.

Chester Drum accompanies a sometimes friend to Spain where the man was planning to get married. The fact that the man was Axel Spade, wanted in many countries including Spain just made it more interesting. And the fact that they learn about twenty million dollars in missing Spanish gold.

Printing History 

Written by Milton Lesser (1928-2008)

Fawcet Gold Medal

1966

Scary Halloween Week (Saturday)

Today we end our journey through the Scary Halloween Week. 

We started with the Carter Brown tale, So What killed The Vampire.

We will end with his tale, True Son of The Beast. 

True Son Of the Beast

by Carter Brown

Robert McGinnis Cover

then the moon merged from behind  a cloud bank and I could see level ground ahead of me, dotted with an occasional stunted brush. It figured I must be getting close to the river, so I managed to stop sobbing for breath and kept on walking. The next moment an owl hooted loudly close by, and almost put me into orbit........There was no reason to panic just because I was all on my own. lost in a strange country, and would probably never find civilization. And that flickering blue light...was strictly a figment of my imagination.......The next moment I was involved in a two sided conversation with myself....all the time I had been having that two way conversation with myself my idiot legs had gone walking all by themselves, and now I was too close not to see the thing lying on the ground directly in font of me....The closer I got the more it it looked like somebody was just lying there on the ground....The guy was stark naked on the ground with a aping hole in his throat.......

 A country house full of sexy, sultry swingers,

but one was a witch with murder on her mind!

 There was a curse on the house, and a corpse with its throat cut open in the marsh. Screenwriter Larry Baker came to the strange island estate to bring superstar Trudi Lambert back to Hollywood. But he did not count on a house full of devil worshipers. Before the week was over there were lewd satanic orgies, strange creatures lurking in the darkness. And an island strewn with dead bodies. Baker's script called for sex, but the question was survival!

Printing History
Written by Allen G Yates (1923-1985)

Horwitz Publications, Inc

Numbered Series #153 1970 (1971?)

ISBN 7255 0106

New American Library

Signet Books

P4268 June 1970

Y8050 1978