Category Archives: Pulp fiction

Pulp Friday: more adventures behind the bamboo screen

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

The Turncoat

One of the most successful pulp fiction related posts to date on this site was a selection of Asian themed pulp fiction paperback covers I put up in 2011, Behind the bamboo screen: Asian pulp covers of the sixties and seventies.

For a while now I’ve been planning a follow up and here it is.

As was the case in the original post, the covers below portray the anti-communist hysteria created by the rise of the so-called ‘red menace’ as well the fate of innocent (and not so innocent) Westerners thrown into chaos and intrigue of the ‘Far east’, a place of intrigue, “notorious pleasure palaces” and “forbidden desire”.

Hong Kong was a popular setting of Asian themed pulp fiction, as evidenced by titles such as A Coffin From Hong Kong (“A seemingly innocent telephone call led him to the murder of a Chinese call-girl who had talked to much and into the teeming, sordid nightlife of colourful Hong Kong”).

Other locales portrayed below include, Korea (The Turncoat), China (Shanghai Incident – “I had two callers my first night in Shanghai – death and a honey blonde”), the “South Seas” (November Reef), India (Men and Angels), Burma (The House of Bamboo – “In a Burmese girl’s warm, seductive beauty he found escape from the flames of forbidden desire”), and Thailand (Port Orient).… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: The Deadly Prey

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

Deadly Prey

“A sadistic maniac was developing a deadly virus by using children as guinea pigs.”

Vigilantes were one of the key themes of the muscular over the top world of seventies pulp fiction. And one of the biggest, meanest and weirdest of them was John Yard aka The Hunter.

Published in 1975, The Deadly Prey is one of four books I know of in The Hunter series, the other titles being Scavenger Kill, Track of the Beast and A Taste for Blood. All of them were released by New York pulp publisher, Leisure Books. You’ll find the covers to the other three books here on my Pinterest site.

Yard is a former African game hunter who has changed professions and, along with his side kick, Moses Ngala, now works as a gun for hire.

The subject of his attentions in The Deadly Prey is a mad scientist who is testing a lethal super virus on the inhabitants of an Appalachian hippy commune. Unfortunately for the scientists and his backers in the military industrial complex, one of the kids he kills happens to be the son of one of Yard’s former hunting partners and, of course, a former Green Beret.

Whatever, the back cover blurb does much more justice to the story than I ever could.… Read more

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Posted in 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: Sin a la Carte

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

Sin a la carte 1“Loaded with money – starved for sex – and her favorite dish was Sin a l Carte. The story of a summer hotel that gave women what they wanted – for a price.”

When it comes to quality sleaze pulp the serious collector can’t go past the books produced Midwood in the late fifties and sixties.

I don’t know a lot about this New York based publishing outfit, except that they produced some classic sleaze pulp. Lesbians sex, trailer park trash, suburban infidelity, nyphomaniacs, illicit sexual on campus, in the office, in a remote swamp community. You name it, there was a Midwood book dealing with it, always accompanied by appropriately suggestive titles and lurid cover art.

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is a classic example, Sin a la Carte (formerly known as Another Night, Another Love), by Loren Beauchamp, published by Midwood in 1962.

There’s nothing I can say about this book that isn’t perfectly captured in the by the back cover below.

Sin a la carte 2

You can find second hand Midwood pulps on the web but, be warned, they are not cheap.

If you want to see more head over the excellent site Pulp International, which has a great selection of Midwood books (as well as just about every other type of pulp book and magazine imaginable).… Read more

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

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Pulp Friday: The Hustler

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

The Hustler

“A taunt, suspenseful novel of a strange smoke-filled world where drifters, sharks and lushes live by one rule that is a command: WIN!”

Today’s Pulp Friday needs no introduction, The Hustler, by Walter Tevis.

This cover is from the paperback version published by Dell Books in 1959.

I’m sure you’ll agree with me it’s a beautiful cover. The book is great and it was also a terrific movie starring Paul Newman. Indeed, just posting this image makes me want to see the movie again.

The back cover design below is also great.

Enjoy.

The Hustler back cover… Read more

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Posted in Paul Newman, Pulp fiction, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: Black Samurai

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

“The Black Samurai tangles with a human Satan in a hellish den of torrid sex and deadly violence.”

Today’s Pulp Friday is a series of covers featuring one of the best characters of US seventies pulp, Robert Sand aka Black Samurai.

Black Samurai was the creation of Black American writer Marc Olden. Olden wrote a total of seven books featuring Black Samurai, a US GI stationed in Japan who gets trained by a Japanese martial arts master and unleashed in to a series of bizarre adventures.

As was often the case with seventies pulp, Black Samurai’s plots were a mash up various hard boiled popular culture themes, including Eastern mysticism, the occult, organised crime, as well as lots of sex and bone breaking martial arts action.

My favourite of the covers featured in this post is The Warlock, in which Black Samurai tangles with an occult mastermind and his army of killer dwarfs.

Another of the releases featured in this post, The Katana sees Sand having to recover an ancient Samurai sword stolen by a army of thugs commanded by the Mafia and financed by Arab oil wealth.

The Black Samurai series were among the approximately 40 books, mainly suspense and thrillers, written by Olden, himself an expert in Akaido and Karate.… Read more

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Posted in Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp Friday

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