Category Archives: Pulp Friday

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: The Smashers

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

The smashers“A novel of The Organisation – girls, horses, dope, murder.”

Regular readers will be familiar by now with my admiration for the late Donald Westlake. Westlake was the hard boiled writer’s hard-boiled crime writer, having penned numerous books over his career, including the wonderful Parker novels under the pseudonym of Richard Stark.

Today’s Pulp Friday is one of Westlake’s early efforts, The Smashers, aka The Cutie, aka The Mercenaries. This edition is the first Dell publication in 1960.

The Smashers was Westlake’s official fiction debut under his real name. His previous fiction efforts, like those of his peer Lawrence Block, were soft porn paperbacks written under other names (here’s a nice post on one of these titles Back Stage Love – “The Shocking expose of what goes on behind the scenes at a summer stock theatre”).

The Smashers is the story of Clay, the right hand man of New York mob boss Ed Ganolese. Clay gets a late night call from a junkie with a dead woman on his hands and the police on his tail. The junkie claims he’s innocent and because he’s connected to Ganolese, Clay has to adopt the role of a PI and find out who the real killer is.

It’s an early and interesting take on the criminal as protagonist that Westlake was subsequently to perfect with his Parker books.… Read more

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Posted in Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark, Parker, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: Sinquake

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

sinquake

“Mike Brand’s most sinister adversary – Cyn Boudin, high priestess with a lust for power.” 

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is a wonderful piece of forgotten Australian pulp, Sinquake by Gene Janes.

Sinquake was produced by little known local pulp publisher and distributor, Calvert Publishing  After Horwitz Publications and Cleveland, Calvert may well have been one of Australia’s largest publisher of paper backs in the fifties and sixties. Calvert published the Carl Dekker ‘On the Spot’ mystery series, as well as a large number of Westerns, war and romance novels.

There’s no publication date for Sinquake but it was probably released some time in the early to mid-sixties, before the introduction of decimal currency in 1966. The cover was supplied to me courtesy of local pulp collector, Graeme Flanagan.

Sinquake features Mike Brand, an Australian trouble-shooter for the British secret service. I’ll let the back cover blurb explain the rest.

“The Soviet was using the enormous appeal of BLACK MAGIC, with its terrifying rites and orgies, together with the sensual and seductive beauty of “SIN” – Mademoiselle Cynbarra Boudin, the high priestess of the Cult’s British circle, to ensnare top political and diplomatic figures into compromising situations.

With recent scandals as a blue-print, the political stability of the Free World is threatened by moral chaos.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Horwitz Publications, 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 Third Street

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

The third street“The street where no questions were asked. The Street where few men were ever seen.”

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is a piece of vintage lesbian pulp fiction, Joan Ellis’s The Third Street. The version above is a 1974 reprint by Horwitz offshoot Scripts Publications of the Midwood Books edition published in 1964.

The author, Joan Ellis, wrote a large number of campus and lesbian sex pulp books in the sixties and has featured on this site previously.

Lesbian pulp fiction was actually a huge sub-genre of pulp in the late fifties and sixties. While some of it was written by women, many of the books were authored by men ghosting as women and were purely exploitative in nature.

Common plot themes included suburban housewives as illicit lesbian lovers, lesbians in prison and tortured lesbian lovers trying to hide their love in red neck small town American. Lesbian pulp fiction was also often closely associated black magic, witch craft and bondage. Similar strands of books existed featuring gay male men.

Interestingly, despite the sleazy nature of these books, a number of cultural commentators have commented on their subversive nature and the role they played to some women struggling to come out in the fifties and sixties.

Their very existence in fifties small town America was often a validation that alternative sexualities existed.… Read more

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

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