Johnny Cash sings "Bonanza"

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Lorne Greene stopped by to sing this for us some weeks back, and I mentioned the vocal version had also been recorded by Johnny Cash. Well, David Cranmer was (sort of) singing a Cash tune the other day, right here, and it reminded me this was still on the to-be-played list. So here he is, ladies and gents, The Man in Black crooning the ballad of the Ponderosa boys.

"Bonanza" by Johnny Cash

Forgotten Books: SINFUL WOMAN by James M. Cain

This book surprised me in two ways. First, that a James M. Cain novel had appeared as a paperback original. And second, that any Cain novel could be considered a Forgotten Book, even by someone with a memory as faulty as mine.

“A Brand New Novel”, the cover proclaims, and a little research showed this to be no lie. This saddle-stitched digest from 1947, also known as The Avon Monthly Novel No. 1, is indeed the true first edition. The first hardcover was a Tower Books cheapie issued soon after.

So why is it forgotten? Well, it can’t be called great Cain. But it is fast, entertaining and (to me) a thoroughly satisfying read. And it is, after all, Cain, whose worst is better than many writers’ best.

Most of the Cain I’ve read was in first person, at which he was a master. Sinful Woman is told in breezy third person by an almost omniscient narrator, and Cain was clearly having fun with it.

The title role belongs to movie starlet Sylvia Shoreham, whose soon-to-be-ex husband (a penniless, conniving Baron with a silly accent) threatens to marry her clinically insane sister to retain control of her film career. Sylvia is not really very sinful. True, it’s discovered she spent time in a variety of motels with a variety of men, but none of this happens onstage, and no one much cares.

The male lead is Sheriff Parker Lucas, who dresses like Tom Mix and talks like Gary Cooper. Other major players include Dmitri, the tasteless money-grubbing producer who controls Sylvia’s contract; Tony, a gambling house proprietor who dresses like an undertaker; and George M. Layton, a go-getter life insurance agent on fire to protect his company’s interests after Sylvia’s is “accidentally” shot and killed at the gambling house.

If you think this cast sounds a bit over the top, you’re right. Cain based the novel on a play he’d written in 1938 called 7-11, which was quite likely a farce. Near as I can tell, the book was never made into a movie, which is a shame, because it seems perfectly suited. Cain’s working titles for the novel were “At the Galloping Domino” and “Sierra Moon”, both of which are more appropriate to the story. I suspect the more marketable title, Sinful Woman, was Avon's idea.

Though the plot revolves around the Baron’s murder, I can't really call this a murder mystery. No one is too interested in discovering who did it. They’re all promoting whatever wacky explanation meets their own interests. Nearing the end, when a Grand Jury convenes at The Galloping Domino to determine cause of death, I was thinking we’d never learn what really happened, and decided it didn’t matter. Watching the twists and turns of the plot and characters was enough for me.

But Cain came through after all, delivering a surprising solution - and happy ending - to the case. In a long string of bizarre notes, perhaps the most bizarre of all comes on the last page, when our male and female leads both announce they're enlisting in the army. This was, after all, 1947, and even novelists and paperback publishers had to do their part.

Below: The 1948 rack-size Avon paperback, which I suspect sold even better than the digest.

DEATH COMES to The Story With No Name: Part 15 by James J. Griffin

This is it. The grisly demise of one of our beloved (or not so beloved) characters. Read on, and see what Ranger Jim Griffin has done to alter the landscape of this epic saga.

Previous installments, penned by the likes of I.J. Parnham, Jack Giles, Chuck Tyrell, Jack Martin, Joseph A. West, Robert S. Napier, Richard Prosch, Peter Averillo, Paul Dellinger and Evan Lewis, can be found here:
Parts 1-10 on The Culbin Trail
Part 11 on Open Range
Part 12 on Charlie's Tokyo West Blog
Part 13 on Broken Trails
Part 14 on Davy Crockett's Almanack

Who's next? Care to try your hand?

Part 15 by James J. Griffin

Arnside gave up the idea of using that rifle when at least twenty more Apaches topped the dunes, surrounding the erstwhile Camel Corps. In the Indians’ midst rode another figure, dark-eyed, with black hair and beard. A flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, with an enormous feather perched jauntily in the band, topped his head. The man’s appearance was almost exactly the same as an engraving of the pirate Jean Lafitte Walt had seen back in New Orleans.

Surrounded by the Indians, he rode his Andalusian stallion up to the apprehensive group.

“Who are you, and what are you doin’ with these Apaches?” Walt demanded.

“I am Esteban Escobar Bourbon. These Apaches are my bodyguards,” he announced, his eyes glittering. “You seek the ship of my great-grandfather. My family has been bound to guard the ship and its secrets for three generations now, against all interlopers. You also shall not succeed where others have failed.”

One of the Apaches separated himself from the rest, approached Arnside, and clubbed him on the side of his head. Walt crumpled to the sand.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

                     
When Arnside came to, he was alone… alone, stripped naked, and staked out, rawhide thongs biting into his wrists and ankles. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, a rawhide strap ran across his hips, holding them firmly in place. He opened his eyes, blinking against the harsh sun.

“At least they didn’t slice off my eyelids,” he murmured. “Reckon they couldn’t find an anthill, neither. Not that it’s much comfort.”

As his vision cleared, Walt realized, to his horror, he wasn’t exactly alone. Silas Bartlett was also there. He’d been skewered through his belly by an Apache’s lance, which held him pinned to a giant cactus, ten yards beyond Arnside’s feet. Bartlett hung there like some macabre scarecrow, his eyes bulging with terror. Arnside’s old partner wouldn’t be coming back to life a second time. Walt’s guts roiled when a zopilote buzzard landed on the lance’s shaft, to pull a chunk of flesh from Bartlett’s face. Others joined it, tearing at the corpse. Bile rose in Arnside’s throat at the scavengers’ ghastly banquet. He forced his eyes shut and lay unmoving. One of the bolder buzzards dropped next to Walt and tore at his ribs. When Walt screamed, the ugly bird flapped away, squawking in protest.

Shortly, the zopilotes had reduced Bartlett’s body to the bones. They remained perched in the cactus, beady eyes watching Arnside with infinite patience.

The sun rose higher, baking Arnside’s flesh. An intense burning between his legs forced him to once again open his eyes. For the first time, he spotted the mirror angled into the cactus just above Bartlett’s skull, a lady’s mirror with an elaborately carved handle and frame. Walt recognized that mirror as belonging to Lola. Rays of sunlight reflected off the mirror, down to a magnifying glass stuck in a mound of sand. The magnifying glass concentrated the beams directly onto Arnside’s groin.

“No Apaches rigged up that contraption,” Arnside moaned. “Hadda be Bourbon’s doin’.”

He writhed in agony. Those rays were frying his balls like Rocky Mountain oysters. When he attempted to shift his groin, he couldn’t move it one inch. Now he understood the reason for the strap over his hips.

With a scream, Arnside tried to pull himself upright, knowing the effort was futile. A sharp pain stabbed into his left breast.

Preoccupied with the buzzards feasting on Silas, and the sun roasting him alive, Arnside hadn’t noticed the thing causing this pain, until now… A Texas Ranger’s badge, its pin driven deep into his skin.

Satan Hall 4: Satan's Kill

A word of advice. Don't ever sneak into Satan Hall's apartment and try to kill him in his sleep. Johnny tried it, here in this 1932 issue of DFW.

He stepped two spaces forward; he pressed the button of the flash; he laid the nose of the heavy automatic almost against Satan’s head. But he held the flash so that Satan would see the gun.

Green eyes opened and seemed to stare straight into Johnny’s eyes, and there was nothing of fear in them. Just the same cold, cruel, sinister eyes that had looked at Johnny down at Hickey Moran’s place. And for the first time in his life, Johnny knew fear. The hand that held the gun trembled. He thought only of firing that gun, killing Satan - blotting out those sinister deadly eyes and getting away.

His right hand moved; his right index finger flexed, and there was the single roar of the gun. A roar that vibrated through the room. But there was no sudden dart of orange blue flame; no smell of burning powder, just the roar of a heavy automatic. And a man died.

Guess who died? Guess who sleeps with a .45 under the covers?

More illustrated adventures of Satan Hall coming soon.

SOMEONE WILL DIE. GUARANTEED.

Yes, Mr. James J. Griffin, author of tomorrow's installment of The Story With No Name, promises that one of our main characters WILL DIE. But who? Slick gent Silas Barnett? Naughty-but-nice Lola? Sheriff-turned-vigilante Zack Roden? Our hero Walt Arnside? I don't know, but I'm itchin' to find out.

The deadly Part 15 of this round-robin adventure will appear right here on the Almanack. Come on back tomorrow, and bring a hankie.

To catch up on last week's installment, and find links to the previous 13, CLICK HERE.

NaNoWriMo: Hell Week or Honeymoon?

Week One was a little of each. Not quite as bad as Hell Week at the old Kappa Sigma fraternity house - sleep-deprived, starved, dehydrated, hectored, harangued and thoroughly mindf***ed. Not as good as the week my wife and I honeymooned in Great Britain, bouncing like pinballs from Portsmouth to Gretna Green to Hay-on-Wye and getting our first gawks at London. But it had some of the highs an lows of each, and left me almost as exhausted.

The first two days were the honeymoon, with the words flowing free and clear and well over quota. Then on Day 3 my Left Brain kicked in, yelling "Whoa!", and I spent a couple days in Hell, tossing out my original plot, adding and subtracting characters and scrounging for ways to raise the stakes. Finally came out of it when my wife and I went to dinner and I laid out the problems I'd yet to solve. The talking helped a lot and she had some great ideas, and next day I was burning the keyboard again.

It's easy to write 1700 words a day. The trick is writing words that advance the plot and build character and foreshadow events and all that other stuff necessary to turn them into a story. For inspiration, I have a post-it on my monitor reading WWJRD? And everytime I get lazy or discouraged or bewildered or braindead I glance at that and think What Would James Reasoner Do? And the answer is always pretty much the same: He'd plant his Levi's in the chair and pound the keys until he'd kicked the problem in the butt. So that's what I've been doing.

Other than my wife and JR, my only companion on this journey has been Booksteve, he of the always entertaining blog Booksteve's Library. Thanks, Steve! I made the mistake of going to the NaNoWriMo site and allowing emails from other participants in my region. Portland, it seems, has 2,457 participants and a good percentage of them spend their time dashing out vapid emails and planning late night write-ins instead of actually writing. My box was so clogged I longed for the good old days, when all I got were offers for Viagra and congratulations on winning the lottery in Lower Slobbovia.

So now it's Week Two, and though I know what dramatic events will take place at the Mid-Point, I have very little idea what will happen in the 12,500 words I'll need to get there. Luckily, I have that WWJRD? note telling me what to do about it.

Lust of the Lawless - a Complete SPICY WESTERN by Robert Leslie Bellem

Most readers of "Adult" westerns assume the concept was born back in the 70s with series like Slocum (think about it) and Longarm, the guy with the long erect cigar between his teeth. Truth is, they were around as early as 1936, when Spicy Western Stories was born. And Robert Leslie Bellem, creator of Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, was one of the mainstays of the field. "Lust of the Lawless" is from the eighth issue, of June 1937.

A note about the cover: "Lust of the Lawless" was not actually the cover story. That honor went to "Hero of Coffin Creek", one of the long-running series of Buckner Grimes stories by Robert E. Howard's pal E. Hoffman Price (and obviously inspired by, but vastly inferior to, REH's Breckenridge Elkins tales). Price's stories are not bad (well, not really really bad), but Bellem's are usually better.

Unless you're a world-class squinter, the best way to read these pages is probably to right click on each and open it larger-than-life-size in a new tab. Have a Spicy day.

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SAM SPADE: The Battles of Belvedere Caper

Last week's episode, you may recall, had echoes of The Maltese Falcon. Well, this one does too, with a character clearly inspired by Casper Gutman. "The Battles of Belvedere Caper" was originally broadcast May 1, 1949. Enjoy.

The Battles of Belvedere Caper Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

These episodes are still playing:
The Betrayal in Bumpuss Hell Caper
The Vaphio Cup Caper

And when you're done listening, please pay a visit to The Rap Sheet, the blog that helps you get ahead socially and on the job (and also cures dandruff). Sam swears it's the next best thing to Wildroot Cream-Oil.

(click to enlarge)