Category Archives: Pulp fiction

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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Pulp Friday: The Country Club Set

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

“When married life started to bore her – Virginia turned to a teenager for kicks.”

Today’s Pulp Friday is a wonderful example of early sixties pulp sleaze, The Country Club Set by Elaine Dorian.

The story is about a devious middled aged woman who engages in an affair with a young male tennis player she picks up at the local country club. It was published by Beacon Books in 1963, the same year as the Charles Webb’s blockbuster, The Graduate, appeared, and was perhaps an attempt to cash in on its success.

‘Elaine Doran’ appears to have been a pen name for a writer called Isabel Moore, who wrote for a couple of decades, including penning a number of sleaze pulps for Beacon in the early sixties, titles like The Sex Cure, Second Time Wife and Double Trouble.

She appears to have made no secret of her writing activities and a November 2, 1962 article in the Schenectady Gazette, the local paper of Schenectady County in the US state of New York, reported, “obscene words and threats” where painted on her house after The Sex Cure appeared in print. The book was a take on the behind the scenes sexual activities of the upper strata of her local area, Cooperstown.”… Read more

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Posted in Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

Pulp Friday: The Hands of Orlac

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

The Hands of Orlac“Had a brilliant skin graft left him with a murderer’s hands? A tense and eerie film starring Mel Ferrer.”

French writer Maurice Renard’s 1920 novel The Hands of Orlac concerned a concert pianist called Paul Orlac who loses his hands in a terrible accident and is given new ones in a transplant. Unbeknownst to him, the donor was a recently deceased murderer. Not only is Orlac unable to play piano with his new hands, but he slowly starts to assume the deceased murderer’s predisposition for killing.

The Hands of Orlac was filmed as a movie three times. A silent movie, The Hands of Orlac, was made in 1924 by Austrian director Robert Weine. A US version appeared in 1935 as Mad Love. A British/French production starring Christopher Lee and Mel Ferrer was made in 1960.

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is the 1962 local Horwitz edition of the Four Square Books paperback tie in to the British/French movie.

The name of the author, which you might not be able to discern from the cover scan, was Robert Bateman. Bateman was a UK writer who worked in radio and TV. He also wrote a number of novels, including this one.

And please note, I will be giving an illustrated talk on Australian pulp fiction from the fifties, sixties and seventies as part of the upcoming Melbourne Writers Festival.… Read more

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Posted in Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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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Pulp Friday: Newton Thornburg’s heist novel, Knockover

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

Knockover

“The scheme was so perfect, the take was so big, you couldn’t ask for anything more-but one of them did.

I’ve got a little gem of a Pulp Friday today, the very rare Australian release of Newton Thornburg’s little known heist novel, Knockover.

Although he was a great success in the seventies, the peak period of his literary output, Thornburg kept a low profile in successive decades. So much so that when he died in 2011, it took a month before the first proper literary obituary appeared.

He is best known for the 1976 novel, Cutter and Bone. While I love the book and the 1981 movie version, Cutter’s Way (and which I reviewed on this site here), I have a preference for, To Die In California, a 1973 novel about a father’s investigation into the murder of his son in post-Summer of Love Los Angeles.

Knockover, Thornburg’s second book was originally published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1968. Thornburg said he wrote Knockover explicitly with the hope of a movie sale in mind. Apparently the rights were optioned but nothing ever came of it. The story revolves around a former advertising executive, Cross, who puts together a team of criminals to pull off an armoured car robbery.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Crime fiction, Neo Noir, Newton Thornburg, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art

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