Category Archives: Pulp fiction

Pulp Friday: Island of Flames

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

Island of Flames

“Nine people were on the island, so conflict erupted into a conflagration of sex, jealously and death. Then there were seven.”

Here’s a quick Pulp Friday offering before I retreat to the bunker I’ve dug in the backyard to await the results of Saturday’s federal election.

Island of Flames was published by Horwitz Publications in 1967.

According to the Austlit database, Geoff Wyatt quit high school at 14 and joined the Royal Australian Navy at 17. He also worked as a labourer and factory worker before becoming a journalist.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s he published stories and articles in the skin magazines that had popped up in Sydney in the early sixties, before going on to write a dozen or so books for Horwitz.

The plot line for Island of Flames is a deranged, counter-cultural version of the hit show, Survivor, featuring every archetype in the arsenal of sixties pulp fiction. But the back cover blurb can explain it way better than I ever could.

“Nine men and woman isolated on a tropical island.

Kay Perry – a prostitute.

Miles Nash – an editor, fire from his job.

Leon Hudson and Arthur Fell – two petty criminals.

Rex Hamilton – a journalist with ambitions.

Eric Rigby – an artist from the Cross.… Read more

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

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Pulp Friday: The Flower People

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

The Flower people“Super-zap them all with love. That’s the Hippie slogan. And they mean you.”

The cover of this week’s Pulp Friday speaks for itself, The Flower People by James Holledge.

I mean, like, wow man, that is one far out cover.

The Flower People was published in 1967 by Scripts Publications, the outfit set up by Horwitz Publications in the late sixties to release its racier titles. Thanks to Melbourne pulp collector Brian Coffey for alerting me to this wonderful title and allowing me to copy it.

Holledge featured recently on this site as the author of Kings Cross Black Magic and Teenage Jungle. A former clerk who became part of the stable of in-house writers brought together by Horwitz in the early sixties, his specialty was salacious journalistic tracks parading as sociological expose.

He’s in fine form in The Flower People, billed as an “inside expose” of hippy culture, delving into everything from free love, their profligate use of contraception, rejection of “square society”, drug use and radical politics.

“Super-zap them all with love. That’s the Hippie slogan. And they mean you.” Readers must no doubt have found the idea hippies coming to get them, in their suburban homes, to turn them on, alarming and alluring, especially if the hippy concerned looked the one on the cover of this tome.… Read more

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

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Pulp Friday: The Girl From Las Vegas

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

The Girl from Las Vegas“Everything’s on the house – including homicide.”

I thought today’s pulp Friday would be a relatively straight forward affair.

The Girl From Las Vegas, by J.M.Flynn, is one of the many pulp paperbacks from the US and UK, reprinted in Australia in the early seventies by small, anonymous operations.

In this case it was an outfit called Universal Paperbacks. The book has no republication date and the only information about the publisher is that it was printed by Griffon Press, 262 Marion Road, Netley, South Australia.

I selected it because I like the cover and it has a great tag line: “Everything’s on the house – including homicide”.

The story concerns Matt Tara, a man who goes to the closing night party of his popular local saloon, only to wake up the next morning with a skull buster of a hung over and the realisation he got so drunk during the festivities, he actually bought the establishment. Tara’s troubles mount when he discovers the bar is worth a great deal of money to the some criminal inclined members of the local community.

Ace Paperbacks originally published The Girl From Las Vegas in 1961 (cover below). I often draw a blank in my efforts to track down more in-depth information about these knock off pulps.… Read more

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

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Pulp Friday: The Last Refuge

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

The Last RefugeToday’s Pulp Friday is a little known but interesting book, The Last Refuge by Edward Lindall, published in 1972.

It’s interesting for two reasons.

First, it was an attempt to set a spy thriller amid the radical student politics taking place in Australia in the early seventies.

The second reason is the publisher, a little known Melbourne-based pulp publishing outfit called Gold Star Publications.

The main character of The Last Refuge is Jay Landon, an Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation agent, assigned the mission of infiltrating and destabalising a group of Maoists, led by Peking agent, Clyde Mansell. The Maoists have left their inner city terraces for the wide expanse of the Australia’s north to wage guerrilla war against US multinationals stripping the country of its mineral wealth.

Lindall’s real name was Ernest Edward Smith, an Adelaide based journalist and writer who penned 13 books, mainly crime and thrillers, but also some science fiction. He died in 1979. The Last Refuge, the only of his books released by Gold Star Publications, taps into the very real politics of what was the most physically and politically aggressive of the radical student groups operating on Australian campuses in the early seventies.

Here’s the back cover blurb:

“There’s always two sides to any story.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Gold Star Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Spies, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: Kings Cross Black Magic

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Kings Cross Black MagicToday’s Pulp Friday is a great example of exploitative pulp dressed up as quasi-serious sociological inquiry, Kings Cross Black Magic by the wonderfully named, Attila Zohar.

It’s also one of the more unusual pieces of pulp fiction produced in the sixties and seventies in response to the real and imagined goings on in Sydney’s notorious vice strip, Kings Cross.

I just love the cover of this book. The minimal furnishings, the title font, the female model, who I presume is supposed to look ‘Satanic’ but comes across more as a sort of sullen drag queen. It speaks of things that just shouldn’t be talked about in polite company, which, in turn, only makes me more curious.

Kings Cross Black Magic was released by Horwitz publications in 1965. According to the University of Ortago’s wonderful pulp fiction website, Attila Zohar was a pseudonym for James Holledge. Holledge was a former clerk who became part of the stable of in-house writers brought together by Horwitz in the early sixties. He wrote approximately 45 books between 1961 and 1970, most of them salacious journalistic tracks parading as sociological expose.

His titles included Australia’s Wicked Women (1963), Crimes Which Shocked Australia (1963) and Women Who Sell Sex (1964) and What Makes a Call Girl (1964).… Read more

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Posted in Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp Friday, Rosaleen Norton, True crime, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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