STEEGER BOOKS/ALTUS PRESS SALE - Last Call!

Yeah, it's do-or-die time the Steeger Sale. Get your orders in by midnight! Publisher Matt Moring introduced 34 new books just for this event (boy, does he have eyestrain!) and below are some I can particularly recommend. See them all - and his hundreds of other great books at https://steegerbooks.com/

Need I say more?

Been itching for this to begin for a LONG time!

Great stories, with an Intro by me.

From the creator of Hashknife Hartley & Sleepy Stevens.

Have you read his Cellini Smith series?

The Master of Men strikes again.

The adventures of a hardboiled cab driver.

From the Tros of Samothrace guy.

Flynn was one of Cap Shaw's Black Mask Boys.

From the creator of Thibaut Corday.

A cool wannabe Kimosabe, with an Intro by James Reasoner.

Pulp Gallery: DETECTIVE FICTION WEEKLY

1937

1938

1940

1940

1939

YouTube Theater: Richard Sale's THE OSCAR (1966)

Yesterday we looked at Richard Sale's 1963 novel The Oscar. Here's the 1966 film version, with a screenplay by Harlan Ellison.

Forgotten Books: THE OSCAR by Richard Sale (1963)

This is the 32nd post I've done about Richard Sale. You may take that as a clue that he's one of my favorite writers. 

This is probably my first reading of The Oscar, but I’ve had the book so long I’m not sure. Along with For the President’s Eyes Only, I think it was one of those books I was saving to savor on a rainy day. Well, it rained here last week, so . . .

The Oscar was Sale’s third Hollywood novel. Or maybe it was number 3½. The mystery novel Lazarus #7 (HERE) involves a doctor freshly exposed to some eccentric and exotic Hollywood mania. The sort-of sequel Passing Strange (HERE) accounts for the ½, because though it takes place m ostly in New York, the Hollywood crazies from the first book have traveled there. Benefit Performance (HERE) is a stand-alone mystery where a star impersonates his stand-in while trying to learn who wants him dead.

Those 2½ books, though, were written while Sale’s Hollywood experience was young, mostly from some of his works adapted for the screen (including the novel Not Too Narrow . . . Not Too Deep (HERE) as “Strange Cargo”). Following Benefit Performance, he dived deep into the movie and TV scene, all but abandoning his fiction for the next 16 years. 

His first screenplay credit came in 1946, with “Rendezvous with Annie,” a WWII comedy starring Eddie Albert, based on one of his slick stories. He went on to rack up many more screenwriting credits, including the Frank Sinatra film Suddenly. He also directed a dozen films. On “A Ticket to Tomahawk” he was both writer and director, and on the Jane Russel film “Gentlemen Marry Brunettes” he was writer, director and producer. He even had a couple of acting parts, and wrote lyrics for some screen songs. In 1956 he and his wife Mary Loos created the TV series “Yancy Derringer,” which he produced and directed, along with writing many episodes.

The Oscar (1963) marked Sale’s return to fiction, dragging all of his Hollywood experience with him. When actor Frankie Fane is nominated for Best Actor, he embarks on an underhanded campaign to discredit or destroy the other four nominees. Fane is just that kind of guy, which he also demonstrates in his relationships with women, employees and the closest thing he has to friends.

Yeah, Fane is a mighty unpleasant character, but Sale’s prose is as compelling and entertaining as ever, and you just have to keep reading. Along the way, the author provides footnotes offering tidbits of Oscar history and his own interaction with actors and other Hollywood types. I was on the lookout for characters from his earlier works, but found only one. On a side trip to San Francisco, Fane encounters a sharp police captain named Hanley. Fans of Sale’s Daffy Dill series from Detective Fiction Weekly (like me) can’t fail to recognize “Poppa” Hanley, the cop who aided Daffy in many of his adventures. It would have been nice to see Daniel Webster, the detective from Lazarus #7 and Passing Strange, but he likely would have seen through Fane’s machinations a bit too soon and spoiled the game.

Anyway, The Oscar is a great read, and a fascinating look behind the scenes of Hollywood in the ‘ 60s. The novel was filmed in 1966 with Stephen Boyd as Fane, and starring Elke Sommer and Milton Berle. Sadly, Sale did not write the screenplay (but Harlan Ellison did, so it can't be too bad). Along with the other folks named on the poster, it also found roles for Walter Brennan, Broderick Crawford, Peter Lawford and Nancy Sinatra. Hedda Hopper even made an appearance. I'll post the film here tomorrow (via YouTube) so I'll get my chance, and so will you. 

Sale wrote two more novels - For the President's Eyes Only (aka The Man Who Raised Hell) and The White Buffalo (this one, about Wild Bill Hickok and Crazy Horse, was filmed in 1977 with Charles Bronson, and Sale wrote the screenplay). Those are the only Sale books I've yet to review. Stay tuned.

Overlooked TV: YANCY DERRINGER

Richard Sale (whose Daffy Dill/Candid Jones story "Flash!" appears in the June AHMM - details HERE, and about whom I have blabbed at length - HERE) created and produced this Desilu series with his wife May Loos. He also wrote some (if not many) of the 34 episodes that ran in 1958 and '59. Most of those episode are now on YouTube (that's cool), but they've been stripped of opening and closing credits (that's trash). Still, we can be pretty ding dang sure that Sale wrote this one. 

Now in AHMM: Daffy Dill and and Candid Jones in "FLASH!" by Richard Sale!

When AHMM Editor Linda Landrigan invited me to select and introduce a story for the magazine's Mystery Classic department, the choice was a no-brainer.

"Flash!" - from the May 29, 1937 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly, is one of my pulp favorites, and a great introduction to reporter Daffy Dill (one of my favorite pulp characters) and author Richard Sale (one of my favorite pulp writers). And as a bonus, it also features Sale's number two DFW hero, hardboiled photographer Candid Jones.

The storytelling itself is special because "Flash!" contains not a single word of ordinary prose. It's told entirely in the form of letters, telegrams, news reports, radio bulletins and one-sided telephone calls. And as those familiar with Daffy have come to expect, it's both funny and fun.

You'll find all this, plus my two-page Intro yapping about Richard Sale's life and career, in the just-out June 2015 issue of AHMM. Where can you get a copy? As you may recall when I was hyping "The Continental Opposite" (in the May issue), AHMM is carried by most Barnes and Noble stores, and is offered in a variety of eFormats by Amazon (HERE), B&N (HERE), Google Play (HERE) and Magzter (HERE).

And in case you missed it, I said a few words about Mr. Sale, along with Hammett, Cleve F. Adams, Lester Dent and others on the AHMM blog a while back. That's HERE.

Forgotten Books: HOME IS THE HANGMAN by Richard Sale (1949)

Richard Sale, the "Dumas of the Pulps" and the creator of Daffy Dill, authored ten novels, but this wasn't one of them. What is it is is a collection of two long magazine stories that have absolutely nothing to do with HOME and dang near nothing to do with a HANGMAN. Still, because Sale was such a great storyteller, I enjoyed this more than many novels written by lesser humans. 

 

 

The lead story, occupying 96 of the 160 pages, appeared in the August 31, 1940 issue of The Saturday Evening Post under the title "Sailor Take Warning." Near as I can tell, it was published under that title in Great Britain (and probably Australia) in paperback in 1942. For this Popular Library edition, though, the story was retitled "Home is the Hangman," and (I suspect) was given a slight makeover to update the text. It was also given a cover by the talented Rudy Belarski, no doubt recycled from one of the many Popular Publications pulps.

 

The story involves an American sent to Haiti to man a weather station after his predecessor is murdered. As you'd expect in a Sale story, he's caught up with a lot of weird and mysterious characters, and as you'd expect in the Saturday Evening Post, he has a little romance along the way. Much of the intrigue revolves around a sunken Nazi submarine, apparently the means by which a war criminal known as "The Hangman of Dachau" (not the historical Hangman, Emil Mahl, but a fictional one called Veilsen Reinhardt) escaped justice. And that's where the updating comes in. The story was originally published in 1940, but now takes place several years after the war, presumably 1949. One of these days I'll have hunt down that issue of the Post and confirm (or obliterate) my suspicions.

 

 

The rest of the book is a novelette called "Beam to Brazil," first published as a serial in the February, March and April 1943 issues of Country Gentleman. This one is firmly set during wartime, and features a radio operator sent to Peurto Rico to get a transmitting station up and running in time to direct an air convoy to Brazil, and then on to Africa. It's another crackling good yarn, and marginally more fun than the first, because the hero displays a touch of Daffy Dill-type attitude.

This week's other Forgotten Books are featured at pattinase. Next week, while Patti takes a well-deserved break, I'll be hosting the links right here.

Forgotten Books: DEATH AT SEA by Richard Sale

Unlike Richard Sale's best books, Lazarus #7, Passing Strange and Benefit Performance, Death at Sea is not a true novel. It was written as a five-part serial for Argosy, and it shows. That said, it's still a book-length story by Richard Sale - one of my pulp favorites - so it's a guaranteed good read.

It doesn't hurt at all that the book bears a great cover by Rudolph Belarski. The painting was recycled from a pulp mag, and I have a picture of it somewhere, but it's eluding me. On the pulp, I believe the sleeve on the left bears a swastika instead of a star.

Our hero in this one is Gabriel Adams, a stuffy ichthyologist whose thrill of a lifetime is getting  his hands on a fish believed extinct for fifty million years. But the Fates aren't making it easy for him. The Dutch oil tanker he's traveling on is beset with mysterious goings-on and grim-faced Germans. And this being 1940, Adams is pretty sure something sinister is afoot. He's right, of course, but though he has ample opportunity to take his fish and run, he chooses to stay and face the trouble.

The serial began in the August 17, 1940 issue of Argosy, under the title Destination Unknown. When Adams asks one of the bad guys where they're going, that's the answer he gets, and it turns out the guy is telling the truth. There is no connection to any of the several movies bearing that title.

DAFFY DILL in "The Murderous Mr. Coon" by Richard Sale (Read it HERE!)

Here's the wrap-up to our nine day tribute to Daffy Dill, coming to you straight from March 20, 1937. Are you hooked yet? I am!