Forgotten Books: Will Eisner + Pirates = Hawks of the Seas

Here's a cool one. Will Eisner's pre-Spirit Sunday comic strip that's sort of a cross between Treasure Island and Captain Blood. My 1986 Kitchen Sink Press edition of the book is BIG, measuring 10 1/4 by 14 1/2 inches. It was reprinted in 2002 by Dark Horse as an entry in the Will Eisner Library (with a new cover), but unfortunately shrunk down to 7 x 10 inches. Eisner was only 20 when this strip began in 1936, and used the pseudonym Willis Rensie, but there are many fine panels that hint at the wonders to come in The Spirit.

Some samples:

 

 

More Forgotten Books at pattinase!

Hank and Muddy: Mannish Boy & Got My Mojo Workin'

EMBARRASSING UPDATE: Hey, this was mean to be a reminder to check out Steve Mertz's fine novel, Hank & Muddy, but it was one of those future-scheduled posts that wasn't quite done. I was mighty surprised to see it turn up today. I meant to post a Hank Williams vid too. Sheesh. Still, you DO want to read Hank & Muddy. More on that HERE.

MANNISH BOY (WITH JOHNNY WINTER)


GOT MY MOJO WORKIN' (CANADA 1966)

Forgotten Books: STERANKO's Skaith Covers

I'm pretty sure Leigh Brackett's Eric John Stark books have not been forgotten. They're still in print, and pretty easy to find. But these Steranko cover editions from 1974 aren't seen much anymore.

Near as I can tell, Stark first appeared in a series of novellas in the pulp Planet Stories beginning in 1949. This 1974-1976 trilogy from Ballantine was a reintroduction of the character, leaning more toward fantasy than the earlier space operas. Geez, maybe I should read them one of these days.

 

Forgot some Books? Remember them each Friday via pattinase. 

Forgotten Books: Don Herron's Dashiell Hammett Tour guide

Until I met Don Herron, I thought maybe my old copy of the 1982 Dashiell Hammett Tour guide (above, with gray cover) was a rare first edition. Well… while it is a collector’s item, with a genuine circa-1982 Herron autograph, I now know it was the second of several incarnations of the guide, and if I did have a copy of the first, I’d really have something to crow about.

That first guide book (the red one) appeared in 1979, in an edition of only 313 copies, and is now mighty ding dang hard to come by. How much is it worth? Nobody knows, because apparently nobody who has one is willing to part with it.

My 1982 edition is 95 pages with wide margins and big type, with a lot of space devoted to maps and photographs. It’s great stuff, but looks pretty lean next to the book it has evolved into. The current edition, subtitled the Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook, is 214 pages of small type, with lots more photos, maps and info, and is infused with the insight Don has gleaned from his thirty-plus years of marching up and down the mean streets in the footsteps of old Dash.

Even if you never plan to visit San Francisco, if you’re a Hammett fan (and if you’re not, you should be), you should own this book. It offers a look at Hammett and his world that you just can’t get from a biography or critical study of his work. And through the wonders of Amazon, it can be yours for somewhere between $9.99 and $15.56. It's HERE. What are you waiting for?

Coming soon: Guidebook-like pics of my own Hammett tour and my encounter with Don Herron himself! 

Forgotten Books is a weekly feature (and and extremely cool one) of pattinase.

Overlooked Films: Three Little Pigskins (1934)

One of my favorite Three Stooges films, co-starring Lucille Ball . . .





More Overlooked Stuff at Sweet Freedom!

Forgotten Books: Dead Dolls Don't Talk, Hunt the Killer and Too Hot to Hold by Day Keene

To me, Day Keene was always just a name I’d see (A LOT) between Hammett and Latimer on second-hand paperback shelves. No more. Thanks to a new triple-threat reissue from Stark House Press, Day Keene is now a name I respect, and will be on the lookout for.

In the book’s introduction, David Laurence Wilson links Keene to Gil Brewer and Harry Whittington. Though Keene was older, the three men were friends and drinking buddies, and explored similar dark themes in their novels. I have a lot of books by those guys, along with other hardboiled non-detective writers like Jim Thompson and David Goodis, but just never got around to reading them. Now, thanks to Keene, I’ll be digging into them too.

These three novels comprise a great sampler of Keene’s talents. The first novel is in third person, almost exclusively from one point of view. The second is narrated in first person by the (perceived) bad guy. And the last is in third person, with POV alternating between several characters. The narration is smooth and tight, the dialogue sharp, and the suspense always mounting. These are stories that charge you up and keep you buzzing all the way to the end.

Dead Dolls Don’t Talk, a Crest Books original from 1959, opens with a guy awakening to find his bedmate missing and the room splattered with blood. I expected to see him on the lam for the rest of the book, trying to clear himself. Instead, Keene takes an unexpected turn. We cut to the murder trail, where one of the jurors, a respected Hollywood drug store owner, helps get the guy convicted. Then, before the druggist makes it home from the courtroom, he finds himself framed for the murder of the convicted guy’s wife. So the rest of the book finds him on the lam trying to clear himself - and, in the process, the guy he helped convict.

Hunt the Killer appeared in 1951 as both a Phantom Books digest (shown) and an Avon paperback. In this one we meet Charlie White, a fishing boat captain just being released from the joint after serving time (justly) for smuggling. Charlie’s conflicted. He wants to reconnect with wife if she’ll have him. But he has a yen for his mistress, a hot little number from Habana, and craves revenge on the guy he blames for his stretch in prison - a mysterious gent known only as Senor Peso. And he just can’t get a break. The hot little number is brutally murdered, and before he can clear his wits Charlie is being hunted by every lawman in the South, including his former best friend.

Much as I enjoyed the first two novels, may favorite was Too Hot to Hold, a Gold Medal entry from 1959. What’s “too hot to hold” is a package containing $200,000 of mob money. A nineteen year old wanna-be actress lost it, an unhappily-married professional translator finds it, and Chicago’s top mobster - a holdover from the Capone era - will stop at nothing to get it back.

Near as I can tell, this is Stark House’s second Keene collection. Now I’ll have to track down the first, containing Framed in Guilt, My Flesh is Sweet and an intro by Ed Gorman.

Cullen Gallagher reviewed Dead Dolls Don’t Talk/Hunt the Killer/Too Hot to Hold a couple three weeks ago over at Pulp Serenade. You’ll find his take on it HERE.

For info on this and other fine books, visit the STARK HOUSE PRESS site.

And watch for a complete Day Keene pulp story, coming soon to the Almanack!

Forgotten Books is a PATTI ABBOTT production. 

Overlooked Films: The Thin Man TV series (1958-59)

While digging through boxes in my storage unit the other day, I came across tapes of a few old episodes of The Thin Man TV series. I remember recording these ten or so years ago, when TNT occasionally showed one in the middle of the night. Well, being in a Hammett frame of mind, I naturally hauled them home for another look-see.

After watching three episodes, all from early in the first season, I was ready to write them off as terrible. As Nick, Peter Lawford displayed all the humor and charm of a clothes dummy. He seemed to be sleep-walking through the part, delivering his lines in a dull monotone and never cracking a smile. Phyllis Kirk (whom I remember best as TV's first Lois Lane - Oops, my mistake. See comments.) seemed to be at least trying to display a personality, but she too fell flat. The only comic relief came from the antics of Asta, by far the best actor of the three.

But I had several more episodes, so I tried one more. And struck gold. (Well, maybe not gold, but at least silver.) The episode is called “The Cat Kicker,” and came from late in the second - and final - season, in 1959.

Somehow, Lawford and Kirk have grown personalities. They smile, they tell jokes, they make faces at each other, and Lawford ever does some William Powell-like physical gags. It’s as if the director forced them to watch one of the Powell-Loy Thin Man movies and said, “Now, do that!”

Lawford and Kirk are nowhere near as good as Powell and Loy, of course, but in this episode they’re trying hard, and for the first time I could actually think of them as Nick and Nora. It didn’t hurt that Don Rickles was one of the guest stars, playing a cabbie, but there was enough comedy without him. And I don’t remember Asta appearing at all.

As for the story, no cats are kicked. Rickles the cabbie delivers a babe wearing nothing but a nightgown and fur coat to the Charles’ apartment because she’s lost her memory, and he thinks Nick can help her (or at least pay the cab fee). She, naturally, gets flirty with Nick, and Nora gets jealous. A sub-plot, which of course dovetails with the amnesiac plot, involves Nick and Nora auctioning off a day of their services for charity.

So. I now know the entire series didn’t suck, and I’ll be watching the rest of my episodes hoping for another gem. What I want to know now is - why isn’t this series available on DVD? It ran for 72 episodes, and even at it’s worst, it’s good as some of the dreck now being reissued.

More Overlooked Films at SWEET FREEDOM.

A fan visits the Thin Man set.

Forgotten Books: High Priest of California by Charles Willeford

This was my first Charles Willeford book. And by no coincidence, it was also Charles Willeford’s first book. I’ve always identified more with authors than with their characters, so whenever possible I like to start at the beginning.

I had no idea what to expect. But I knew it was set in San Francisco, I knew I’d be meeting Willeford biographer Don Herron while visiting that burg, and knew I’d be spending a fair amount of time resting my feet and legs in the hotel room. And since I’d reread most of Hammett’s SF stuff in the weeks leading up to the trip, High Priest of California seemed the natural choice to take along.

Natural is a good word for it. The book is narrated in breezy, unaffected fashion by a sleazy car salesman named Russell Haxby. The title comes from a line of dialogue delivered by a supporting character.

     “I know all about guys like you, Russell. You’re the High-Priest of California. That isn’t original with me. It was a caption in Life about the used car salesmen of California. Did you see it?” 
     I shook my head. “I’m afraid not, but it makes a good caption.” 

     “And it fits.”

Russell’s one and only goal is a bed a reasonably good-looking babe who’s playing hard to get. The reason for the act, we soon discover, is that she’s hiding a mentally unbalance husband in her apartment. She wants to cheat on him, but struggling with guilt.

At that point, I thought I had the story figured. It was a James M. Cain thing, where the sleazy guy and sleazy gal conspire to murder the hubby and end up getting their just deserts. But nope, that wasn’t it at all.

I’m not going to tell you what happens, but I will say that Willeford fooled me. As a story, the novel wasn’t particularly satisfying, but I think was the point. It wasn’t meant to be satisfying, it was meant as a slice of sleazy life in California, circa 1953.

If that’s what Mr. W was really aiming for, he hit the bullseye.

If you’d like to see for yourself, the novel is available for free download, in a variety of electronic formats, at the Munsey’s site, munseys.com. Check it out. You’ll also find six other early Willeford works (Cockfighter, Honey Gal, Wild Wives, The Woman-Chaser, Pick-Up and Whip Hand) and a lot of other cool stuff. I am indebted to Ye Olde Cap’n Bob Napier for the tip.

More Forgotten Books, as usual, at pattinase.