Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Good-Knife Sweetheart by Carter Brown

With a million bucks to gain and nothing to lose why would she remember old friends? So it was lights out and ...........

Cover by Bernard Blackburn

 Printing History
Alan G Yates (1922-1985)

Transport Publishing Company
for and on behalf of Horwitz Publications, Inc
 
 Novelette Series 1954
First Collectors' Series Volume 12 (1955)
w/Homicide Harem and Poison Ivy
as Goodknife Sweetheart


Second Collectors' Series Vol 1 #10 (1957)
w/Wreath For Rebecca and Perfumed Poison
as Good-Knife Sweetheart

Cover by Theo Batten
  Second Collectors Series Vol 2 #10 (July 1960)
w/Curves For A Coroner 
as Good-Knife, Sweetie

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

The Andropov File by Jack Garside

N3 Takes On A Wolf Pack Of KGB Agents 
In The Ultimate Power Play!

George Gross Cover
 Killmaster #233
The killing has already begun. A Spanish reporter is murdered on the streets of Moscow. And before it's over, many more will die. Because now the prize is the trump card in the ultimate Russian power play: The Andropov File. Premier Andropov is dead. But his legacy lives on. The microfilmed file holds the buried secrets of the Soviet power brokers. For a Russian, control of the file means political power beyond imagination. For AXE and Nick Carter, its explosive contents could shatter the dark Kremlin walls. Agent N3's job is to steal the Andropov file, no matter what it takes, or who has to die.

Printing History
Written by Jack Garside

Berkley Publishing Group
Jove Books
Published by arrangement with The Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
ISBN 515 09376
January 1988

Monday, December 2, 2013

2014 USA Fiction Challenge: Arkansas

Arkansas is the 4th stop in the 2014 USA Fiction Challenge

Dear Miss Demeanor by Joan Hess

At Faberville High, a journalism teacher is removed on suspicion of raiding petty cash. Next, a series of suggestive letters start appearing in Miss Demeanor's high school newspaper advice column. Finally, the principal is murdered by a poisonous peach compote made by the journalism teacher. As Claire takes over the journalism class, she starts snooping on the side.
 
 
Claire Mallory Mystery #3 
Who knows what evil lurks in the halls of Farberville's high school, or what blackmail is hidden in Miss Demeanor's Falcon Crier advice column? Certainly not bookstore owner and amateur sleuth Claire Malloy. Until her daughter persuades her to substitute for the disgraced column editor and journalism teacher Emily Parchester. Surely Miss Parchester cannot be guilty of embezzlement. But the petty charges  graduate to murder when Principal Weiss gets his last licks from Miss Parchester's peach compote. Miss Parchester herself, last seen at a local sanitarium, is suddenly missing. And now it's up to Claire to find someone who's been schooled in the fine art of murder... 
 
Printing History
Written by Joan Hess (1949- )

Copyright 1987

Sunday, December 1, 2013

The Gunsmith Series by J.R. Roberts


 
The Gunsmith (Clint Adams) was raised in the East and came West at an early age when he discovered he had an affinity for guns. Not only was he able to take them apart and put them together again, but he could hit anything he targeted, no matter how small or how far away it was. Once he put on a holster, he discovered he could also draw a gun with amazing speed. The series begins as Clint was driving a wagon around the West, plying his trade as a gunsmith. His big black gelding, Duke, would usually be tied to the back of the wagon. When Clint found that his help was needed, or he simply found a cause he chose to champion, he'd saddle Duke and ride him until the matter was settled.Throughout the series The Gunsmith meets Mark Twain, Teddy Roosevelt, P.T. Barnum, Annie Oakley, Lily Langtry, and many, many other famous personalities. He is close friends with Wild Bill Hickok before he died and is long time friend of Secret Service agent Jim West. The Gunsmith is not afraid to take on any man, or woman, and he'll ride until the day he dies. As one reads the series one will find that:

  • Clint was almost married once.
  • He has modified his own Colt, turning it from a single-action into a double-action weapon.
  • Best friends with legends of the West with whom he has something in common, most notably Bat Masterson and Luke Short.
  • Played in all the major gambling halls in the country, be it Denver, San Francisco, or New Orleans. 
  • Traveled to England, Australia, and South America. 
  • Duke (his gelding) was given to him by Jesse James. Later when he is put out to pasture when P.T. Barnum presents Clint with a Darley Arabian stallion. Clint's new horse is called Eclipse, because he's as black as Duke, but has a crescent moon-shaped flash of white on his nose.
  • Clint discovers he has a teenage daughter whose mother, bounty hunter Anne Archer, is dead.  


Series Created by
Robert J Randisi (1951- )

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Interjecting Valerie (Or, Legs Across The Sea) by John Colleton


For Bill Benton, Every Women Possessed Perfection

The delightfully wicked Amy, a voluptuous Southern deb whose sensuality was always winking from within her.

Lady Cloris, the titled treasure with an unquenchable thirst and insatiable hunger for more, for bigger, for better.

Melissa.....bellissima', the tauntingly shy, magnificently agile Italian Madonna, always ready and able for games of sport or chance.

And the lusciously outrageous Valerie, a rising opera constellation whose amazing virtuosity needs no back-up band.

All a cornucopia of pleasure to savor forever........
 

Interjecting Valerie is the fourteenth and final book of the Cloris and Amy sequence written by Robert W Marks under the pseudonym of John Colleton. It has a rather different air surrounding it compared with the earlier books, Uniquely, it makes many back-references to events and characters in the earlier books, and it even refers directly to some of these novels. It is here attributed to the book's narrator, Bill Benton. In this way, the book manages to tie up a few loose ends, although the plot is thereby made rather more meandering than usual. 'Valerie' here follows the general pattern of the series; she is a pulchritudinous actress to whom the screenwriter Bill Benton is directed for the twin purposes of her seduction and inveiglement into one of Cloris' movies. In this book, the two ends are very closely related, in that the resulting movie is apparently an explicit exposition of events in Benton's amorous exploits with the several women, including Melissa and the feminist politician Spagnola, who were introduced earlier. As Colleton's Cloris/Amy sequence has evolved, the machinations needed for Bill to achieve these two related ends can be observed to become increasingly protracted. Here, Benton's prowess in bed is reinforced prosthetically, to the considerable delight and admiration of his partners.


Printing History
written by Robert W Marks (1908-1993)

New American Library 
Signet Books
copyright 1986
January 1987
ISBN 451 14648

Friday, November 29, 2013

Ross Mcdonald's Lew Archer

Lew Archer is a fictional character created by Ross Macdonald. Archer was similar to Philip Marlowe. However, he eventually broke from that mold, Archer's principal difference is that he is much more openly sensitive and empathetic than the tough Marlowe. He also serves a different function from Marlowe. Raymond Chandler's books were studies of Marlowe's character and code of honor. Another small difference was that Marlowe prowled the city of Los Angeles during the 1940s, while Lew Archer primarily worked the suburbs in the 1950s. Like Marlowe, Archer observes growing dichotomies in the American society with visual snapshots. Archer's name pays homage to Dashiell Hammett. Miles Archer was the name of Sam Spade's murdered partner in The Maltese Falcon. 


The Novels
The Moving Target (1949)
The Drowning Pool (1950)
The Way Some People Die (1951)
The Ivory Grin (1952; aka Marked for Murder)
Find a Victim (1954)
The Barbarous Coast (1956)
The Doomsters (1958)
The Galton Case (1959)
The Wycherly Woman (1961)
The Zebra-Striped Hearse (1962)
The Chill (1964)
The Far Side of the Dollar (1965)
Black Money (1966)
The Instant Enemy (1968)
The Goodbye Look (1969)
The Underground Man (1971)
Sleeping Beauty (1973)
The Blue Hammer (1976)

The Films
The Moving Target (filmed with Paul Newman as Harper, 1966)
The Drowning Pool (also filmed with Paul Newman as "Lew Harper", 1975)


TV
The Underground Man (1974, dir Paul Wendkos, TV movie starring Peter Graves).
Archer, (1975 NBC TV series starring Brian Keith)
 
Ross Mcdonald
Kenneth Millar (December 13, 1915 – July 11, 1983)

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving 2013

Happy Thanksgiving


Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada as a day of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest and of the preceding year. Several other places around the world observe similar celebrations. It is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and on the second Monday of October in Canada. Thanksgiving has its historical roots in religious and cultural traditions, and has long been celebrated in a secular manner as well.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

The Mark Of A Circle by Nick Carter

Nick Carter Weekly

The Mark Of A Circle
or
Nick Carter's Seven Sworn Enemies


Evidently the men that inhabited the house had no fear of interruption from without. Nick raised the window and stepped into the room.

Printing History
Street & Smith Publishers
New Nick Carter Weekly
  No 737
February 11, 1911

as The Dead Accomplice
Street & Smith 
New Magnet Library
No 1294
August 1930

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Today in History

A look at past History
November 24, 1859
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin is published:
Most scientists quickly embraced the theory that solved so many puzzles of biological science, but orthodox Christians condemned the work as heresy. 
 

November 24, 1863
Union troops prevail at the Battle of Lookout Mountain:
Union troops capture Lookout Mountain southwest of Chattanooga, Tennessee
 November 24, 1963
Jack Ruby kills Lee Harvey Oswald:
In the basement of the Dallas police station, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is shot to death by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner.
November 24, 1971
D. B. Cooper parachutes into thunderstorm:
Cooper parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 into a raging thunderstorm over Washington State. He had $200,000 in ransom money in his possession.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Wheeler Fortune by Carter Brown

She Was Blonde, Beautiful, Naked....And Very Dead!


And it was Lieutenant Al Wheeler's job to find her killer. But first he had to find out who the dead doll really was. Which was how Al discovered that quiet, respectable Pine City was really a hotbed of freaky love triangles, neighborhood orgies, and industrial spies. Then the spies started peddling their secrets, and Al started getting invited to the classiest orgies in town. It was obviously too good to be true, until the love-ins turned to out and out hate.And All Wheeler found himself at a kill-in where he was everyone's most wanted target!

Other Covers
 France
Gallimard
1976

Denmark
Winther
1984

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

New American Library
Signet Books
T5795
February 1974

Note
This title was not published in Australia, nor was associated with Horwitz Publications, Inc.