Category Archives: Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s

Pulp Friday: The Name of the Game is Death

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 11 Comments

The Name of the Game is Death

Today’s Pulp Friday offering will be familiar to fans of hardboiled crime fiction, the 1972 edition of The Name of the Game Is Death, by Dan J Marlowe, published by Fawcett Gold Medal.

Although Marlowe is not well known today, aficionados acknowledge he had a major impact on the genre. His books are often compared to Jim Thompson and he influenced writers such as Steven King, and no doubt many others.

I first heard of The Name of the Game is Death during an interview I conducted last year with New Jersey-based Wallace Stroby for issue 17 of Crime Factory (that interview is available in full here). I asked Stroby about some of the lesser-known sixties pulp paperback crime writers who had influenced him, and he nominated Marlowe and, in particular, this book.

Originally published in 1962, The Name of the Game Is Death begins with three criminals pulling a bank heist in Phoenix, Arizona. One of the team is killed in the attempted getaway, another flees to Florida with the money, while the third, the narrator, plans to meet up with him later when police attention has died down. When the accomplice breaks contact, the narrator suspects something is up and travels to the small town from which the accomplice last contacted him, to see for himself what has happened.… Read more

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Posted in Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers, Wallace Stroby

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Melbourne Writers Festival: Adrian McKinty & Australia’s pulp history

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

GoneThe Melbourne Writers Festival is upon us and I’ve got a a few slots in the program I wanted to pull on your coats about.

This coming Wednesday, August 27, I’ll be in conversation with crime writer, Adrian McKinty at St Kilda Library. I have written a bit about McKinty on this site, including reviews of his books Falling Glass, and his Shane Duffy trilogy, The Cold, Cold Ground, I Hear the Sirens in the Streets, and In the Morning I’ll Be Gone,  and his latest stand alone, The Sun Is God, and I’m looking forward to talking with him in person.

It’ll be a pretty relaxed affair and it is free. Proceedings will kick off at 6.30pm.

Also, join me on August 30 at the Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia, Federation Square, for a walk down the dimly lit back alleys of the lost world of Australian pulp paperback publishing.

For a few decades in the second half of last century, Australia’s pulp scene burned brightly with tales of jaded gumshoes, valiant servicemen and women, sexually bored housewives, jazzed up beatniks, daring spies, and violent youth gangs.

It was disposable fiction, designed for a coat pocket or bag, to be read quickly, and discarded.… Read more

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Melbourne Writers Festival, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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The lost world of Australian pulp paperback fiction at the Melbourne Writers Festival

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

Kings Cross Black Magic Horwitz Publications 1965

Part of the Melbourne Writers Festival, join me on August 30 at the Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia, Federation Square, for a walk down the dimly lit back alleys of the lost world of Australian pulp paperback publishing.

For a few decades in the second half of last century, Australia’s pulp scene burned brightly with tales of jaded gumshoes, valiant servicemen and women, sexually bored housewives, jazzed up beatniks, daring spies, and violent youth gangs.

It was disposable fiction, designed for a coat pocket or bag, to be read quickly, and discarded. But it also offers a fascinating keyhole glimpse into Australian society’s subconscious and not so subconscious desires, obsessions and fears in the fifties, sixties and seventies.

I’ll be talking about some of the authors, how they worked, what they wrote and why the era of pulp ended. Accompanying the talk will be a selection of covers from my personal collection. The lurid, the profane, the weird, I’ll be showcasing them all in glorious colour.

Tickets are $22/$19 and can be purchased from the MWF website here.

I hope to see you there.… Read more

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Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Melbourne Writers Festival, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Announcing Beat Girls, Love Tribes and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 – 1980

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

Happening At san Remo Pyramid Books 1967Regular Pulp Curry readers will be aware of my deep interest in pulp fiction. What you won’t know, is I’ve been working for a while now on a pulp fiction related book with another Melbourne writer called Iain McIntyre.

I’m thrilled to announce this book, currently titled Beat Girls, Love Tribes and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 – 1980, will be published by Verse Chorus Press in October 2015.

The book will be the definitive look at youth and counter cultural pulp fiction from Australia, the United States and the UK. It will feature contributions from over twenty writers and includes reviews, feature articles and author interviews. These will cover all aspects of youth and counter cultural related pulp fiction, starting with juvenile delinquency and gang pulp in the fifties, Beats and bohemians in the early sixties, to hippies, bikers, musicians, Mods, punks, and everything in between.

The book will also feature a large selection of covers from the books concerned.

Some of the pulp writers we cover you might know. But there’ll be a lot more you probably haven’t heard of. One thing we can guarantee is that the words “guilty pleasure” will not be mentioned once to describe their work.

This is a book about mainstream society’s obsession with the notion of out of control youth, and the pulp fiction that capitalised on the fascination, fears and desires associated with it.… Read more

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Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Beat culture, Horwitz Publications, Monarch Books, New English Library, Pan Books, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: The Tip

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Ray Slattery“A scorching novel of horse-racing and desperate men and exciting women and big gambler Johnny Broadway’s bid to parlay the killing of all time.”

Ray Slattery must rank as one of the most prolific of the in-house hacks employed by Australian pulp publisher Horwitz Publications in the sixties and early seventies.

He is also one about which the least is known. Despite his incredible output, very little information is available about him. Austlit credits him with 118 titles, including our featured book today, The Tip, published in 1965, but has no further biographic information about him.

His books cover all of Horwitz’s staple obsessions, including bikers, bondage, sleaze and sex books, war stories, surgeons and what I have seen referred to as “Nazi romance novels”, books with titles such as Camp of Terror (1963) and Women of Warsaw (1964), Buchenwald Hell (1967), Prisoner of Dachau (1967), Valley of Slaves (1967), to name but a few.

In addition to writing under his own name, he worked under at least six pseudonyms, including Roger Hunt, Frank O’Hara, Terry West, James Bent, Frank F Gunn and John Slater (the name he used for most of his sleaze and Nazi-themed pulp, of which he wrote 84).

There’s a little bit more information on Slattery here, as well as a full bibliography.… Read more

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Posted in Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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