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Monthly Archives: September 2014

September 2014 Book Round-Up

30 Tuesday Sep 2014

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209: FA: Bum Luck(A Crag Banyon Mystery)(ebook) – James Mullaney

210: WE: Piano Man(ebook) – Bill Crider

211: HR: The Last Infection: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller(ebook) – Michael W. Garza

212: CR: Russian Dope(ebook) – Steen Langstrup

213: SF: From the Shadows: The Complete Series(ebook) – K.B. Shaw

214: MY: The Tinseltown Murders – John Blumenthal

215: MY: Witherings(ebook) – A, R. Khan

216: MY: The Harlot(ebook) – Ernie Lindsey

217: GY: Thirteen O’Clock(ebook) – David Gerrold

218: WE: The Empty Badge(Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles Book 8)(ebook) – Wayne D. Dundee

219: AD: Roping A Planet(Jo Harper # 3)(ebook) – Richard Prosch

220: AD: featuring The Saint – Leslie Charteris

221: FA: Dragons Shall Weep(ebook) – L. B. Conahan

222: MY: Skeleton Trail – Kasey Riley

223: SF: Childhood Dreams(A Game of War pt. 1)(ebook) – Michael Cairns

224: PI: The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse(ebook) – Michael Avallone

225: TH: Watch Me Go – Keith Wisniewski

226: SP: The Walk On – John Feinstein

227: WE: Trail Revenge (The Westward Tide Book 2)(ebook) – Jack Tyree(Wayne D. Dundee)

228: SF: The Man With Two Legs(ebook) – Ernie Lindsey

229: CR: Duet: Two Novellas of Suspense – Ed McBain

230: CR: The Ploughmen – Kim Zupan

231: TH: The Threshing Circle(ebook) – Neil Neil Grimmett

232: HR: Flight 666 (Moment of Death Book 1)(ebook) – Drusilla Winters

The Ploughmen – Kim Zupan

30 Tuesday Sep 2014

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Author Kim Zupan, like most writers. worked at a great many things while he18465602 honed his skills, everything from carpentry to pro rodeo bareback riding to Salmon fisherman. He currently teaches carpentry at Missoula College.

Set in his native Montana, THE PLOUGHMEN gives us an unusual tale of a bond between two men.

Valentine Millimaki is low man at the Sheriff’s department. When killer John Gload is arrested and his trial begins for murder, Val gets the job of babysitting him at night. Gload is a bad man of seventy-seven years of age and is still feared by most. His trick on victims was to remove hands and heads to make identification tough. Those that were found anyway.

Val is a man who treats prisoners decently.

As things move along, the two men talk a lot, sharing all sorts of things from cigarettes to incidents in their lives. With similar backgrounds, both losing their parents fairly early to death or wandering. Val’s marriage is disintegrating right in front of him.

a bond grows between them that makes others in the department worry. The sheriff is afraid he might lose perspective, another deputy is jealous because he wants the glory of unfound bodies and the notoriety Val might get for solving them should the old man give him the info.

Wonderfully written novel due for release today.

Waterfront(1939)

30 Tuesday Sep 2014

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p7769_p_v7_aaWATERFRONT was Dennis Morgan’s first film with Warner Brothers. They were making a big push on his career and for fourteen years he starred in all sorts of films, including musicals because of his fine baritone voice. His co-star, Gloria Dickson(Amm Stacey) was another they were pushing, It didn’t work as well with her. She lasted only a few years, appearing in a succession of films with rising male stars(twice more with Morgan) before she began freelancing, She died in the mid-forties of a fire in her home. The clip below is from another of their films, a musical.

Morgan plays Jim Dolen, president of the Waterfront Club, a longshoremen’s union. His father had been president at one time. Dolen just been elected to a third term, beating out a rival, Mart Hendler(Ward Bond). Both are tough men with violent tempers. In one fight, Dolen accidentally injures a friend trying to break up the fight and gets arrested.

Ann Stacey loves him, but not the temper. She resolves to leave him if he can’twaterfront_1939_lc_01_1200_060420140347 get that temper under control. She enlists Father Dunn(Aldrich Bowker) to aid her and it seems to be working. Jim resigns from the union and they intend to head north to become ranchers. At a dance/party to appoint Jim’s successor, who recommends Hendler to replace. Hendler is drunk and attacks Dolen with a liquor bottle. Dolen’s kid brother, Dan(Arthur Gardner) steps in and takes the blow to the head, dying instantly. In the confusion, the girl friend and friends of Hendler get him out of there.

After the funeral, Dolen promises the police that if they don’t find Hendler first, he’ll take care of the problem.

downloadAnn is desperate to keep Jim from becoming a killer, even to the point of giving Hendler’s girl friend, Ruby Waters(Marie Wilson) money to get him out of the country.

I recognized other faces in the movie. Frank Faylon, better known as Dobie Gillis’s father, is the boy friend of Ann’s roommate. John Hamilton is the police chief. He was Perry White in the George reeves Superman show.

The Walk On – John Feinstein

29 Monday Sep 2014

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20262599When I was young, a long time ago, and just learning the joys of reading, sports books were an important part of my life. A lot of fiction and biographies for the young reader(mostly baseball legends if I remember correctly).

THE WALK ON looked like a good chance to get back some of those early feelings. It’s the opening volume in the Triple Threat trilogy. Volume two next year will have our young hero playing basketball. The third will be baseball.

Alex Myers is a freshman in a Philadelphia school. His parents had separated and mom wanted to move closer to family from their Boston area. His father had always been a supporter of his athletic abilities, but his job was keeping him away from family more often. Alex is a quarterback with a strong arm and tries out for the high school team. Only one problem. The head coach, though an accomplished teacher of his sport, is a hard-nosed man and his son, Matt Jr., is the starting QB.

Alex makes the team, third on the depth chart, and soon makes his mark when Matt is hurt in a game. As the team storms into the playoffs, Alex flunks a drug test for steroids and is suspended.

Knowing he’s innocent, Alex must prove it and find out who’s setting him up and why. A fellow freshman team mate and a young girl on the school newspaper are helping him.

John Feinstein doesn’t use stereotypical characters in his story. Matt Jr, for example,is not the puffed up jock, but a good guy and supportive of Alex, even insisting his dad use him more.

Really liked this one. http://www.amazon.com/Walk-Triple-Threat-1/dp/0385753462

New In The House

29 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by in Books

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1: My Father’s Wives(ARC) – Mike Greenberg: a novel from the co-host of Mike And Mike In The Morning on ESPN radio and television. A man’s search for some meaning in his absent, now dead, father.

2: The Sisters Brothers(ARC) – Patrick deWitt: a noir western with a pair of psycho brothers.

3: The Prisoner of Gun Hill – Owen G. Irons{ James reasoner reviewed this Black Horse western.

4: The October List – Jeffery Deaver: an odd book, it’s subtitled a novel in reverse. Begins with Chapter 36 backwards to 1. Even has th tilte pages in the back.

5: The Walk On(ARC) – John Feinstein: first in a young adult trilogy with the player on the football team. Future volumes have him doing basketball and baseball.

6: The Martian Child – David Gerrold: the story of a single man adopting a son.

7: The Ploughmen(ARC) – Kim Zupan; Set in Montana, a young night time deputy, his marriage in trouble, forges a relationship with a seventy-seven year old killer on trialfor murder.

8: Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy – Andy Briggs: first heard of these three from George Kelley; A twentieth century Tarzan peaked my interest.

9: Tarzan> The Jungle Warrior – Andy Briggs

10: Tarzan: The Savage Lands – Andy Briggs

and the ebooks:

11: The Outlaw Ranger – James Reasoner

12: The Westward Tide: Trail Revenge – Jack Tyree(Wayne D. Dundee)

13: Bad Rap(review copy) – William Byron Hillman: a Rollie Kemp mystery.

14: The Killing(review copy) – Lionel White: new release of the classic novel from CHALK LINE BOOKS. Made into a film by Stanley Kubrick.

15: Flawless(review copy) – Tom Kakonis: new release coming from Brash Books.

16: The Man With Two Legs(review copy) – Ernie Lindsey: a science fiction story previously published in a mulyi-author collection.

Trail Revenge (The Westward Tide Book 2) – Jack Tyree

27 Saturday Sep 2014

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91SK6+6bBmL._SL1500_Book 2 of THE WESTWARD TIDE series is again by Wayne D. Dundee. It takes up right after book 1 as the Healy wagon train continues toward their Oregon destination.

They face all sorts of dangers from river crossings with a runaway arrow riddled wagon screwing things up. Basil St. John, Elwood Blake, and Healy deal with it, the incessant gossip, battles with other groups, and trailing outlaws bent on revenge. Not to mention loss on such a long, lonely venture through endless country.

Author Dundee writes with his usual concise prose, moving things along, never dull.

A fine story available here.

Sugar Colt(Rocco, der Mann mit den zwei Gesichtern)1967

26 Friday Sep 2014

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SUGAR COLT is somewhat of an odd film. It has a listing on Spaghetti WesternSColtjAGVh0sUKXPg1VRkXCDQHUVcYyj Database, but apparently was never released in Italy. At least that’s what the IMDb listing says. In most countries it used the SUGAR COLT title. The secondary title I have listed is the West German version. The Easy German was Kavallerie in Not for a TV showing.

Hunt Powers plays a fellow using the name Tom Cooper. He runs a school that teaches women how to shoot. He’s quite the expert and dresses like a dandy. He’s visited by an old man he hasn’t seen in two years. Listed in one spot as a Pinkerton man, another as Alan Pinkerton, he’s played by George Rigaud. Here’s where we see how different translations change a film. In one imagesreview, he’s referred to as Cooper’s boss, but Cooper constantly references him as uncle. That may be an oblique nod to the fact that Cooper’s a retired government agent that operated under the name Sugar Colt.

Uncle/boss/Pinkerton wants him to investigate the disappearance of a battalion the year before headed home from the war. They were going to Alamogordo when they just vanished. We’d already seen them at the beginning of the film sold out by their Colonel, a number separated from the rest, those left buried when the cliffs above their heads are exploded. Uncle/boss/Pinkerton has received a note demanding $10,000 ransom for his son and he realizes that if it’s not a hoax, the rest may still be alive. a branch of the trail the battalion had been following leads to a town called Snake Valley.

Cooper refuses, he’s making too much money from his school, only to see theSUGARCOLT old man shot down in the streets.

He soon appears in Snake Valley posing as Dr. Tom Cooper. He establishes himself as a mild mannered fellow easily pushed around, then a few scenes later comes dowstairs to the sallon wearing the bottom half of his long johns, suspenders, and socks to the laughter of all. Picking out two who’d harassed him earlier, he gives them a demonstration of ‘scientific’ boxing.

Colt is there to find out what’s going on and is aided by an old black man camped outside of town who’s looking around. He also blows a tune on a bugle every now and again to stir thoughts of ghosts.

images (1)A few observations: Colt mixes some sort of concoction comprised of chemicals and vegetation, wrapping it in a cloth and getting it into the stove on the sly, closing the cock on the smoke stack. He takes a pill and gives the same to the two women who run the saloon. The smoke spreads and causes everyone else to start laughing and hallucinating. The bugle starts up about then. He hears one reference to lighting a fuse that gives him a clue.

One bad deal was Colt and his gun belt. when he reveals himself, he’s only carrying a small doctor’s bag. The doctor ordered out of town, Colt sheds his disguise and is suddenly wearing a gun belt.Don’ know where he kept his bullets because the bely had not a single bullet loop.

Not a bad film, one not sure whether it was a comedy or straight film, but I’ve seen better.

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FFB: The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse – Michael Avallone

26 Friday Sep 2014

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16009823Ed Noon wouldn’t normally object when a woman asked him to take off his clothes. Especially a good-looking blonde. But when she’s pointing a .45 at him with an ugly esxpression on her face.

It started on the day Ed Noon was to get his P.I. license and back after a year of suspension. Noon’s friend, Captain Mike Monks had called him and said he had something he needed help with.

As he stepped onto the street of his office building. someone opened up with a Tommy gun. Noon goes down as does a blind man and the two little China dolls, daaughters of the laundry man next door and favorites of Noon, who constantly slipped them lollipops.

Noon took two in the chest and two glancing blows. The blind man was dead, as one was of the little Chinese girls. The other wound up with a permanently crippled arm.

Three weeks later when Noon gets out of the hospital, he’s mugged by that gorgeous blond who thinks he has something she wants. Noon can’t convince her or get her to say what it is. She just believes he’s stalling.

It’s all tied in with what Monks wanted help with: a murdered, unidentified body, a man horribly mutilated and left naked in a car.

We soon get a bomb in a laundry, more dead bodies, and Noon no closer to any sort of solution.

Another fine P.I. tale from Michael Avallone.

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