Tag Archives: Calvert Publishing Company

Pulp Friday: Nurse in Vietnam

Posted on September 26, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Nurse in Vietnam

While Sydney-based Horwitz Publications was Australia’s largest pulp publisher, it was not the only one. Cleveland Publishing Company, publisher of today’s Pulp Friday offering, Nurse in Vietnam, was another sizeable operation.

I’ve been able to find out virtually nothing about who was behind Calvert.

All we know about Shauna Marlowe, author of Nurse in Vietnam, is she (if it is actually a woman and not a man writing under a woman’s name) is credited with writing 41 books, nearly all of them for Calvert, from the late fifties to the early seventies.

On one level, Nurse in Vietnam, is just another nurse/doctor romance story (a hugely popular sub-genre of pulp in the fifties and sixties). The nurse in question and a handsome doctor have been captured by Viet Cong rebels. The doctor’s main pre-occupation is not escape but whether she’ll agree to his marriage proposal.

But the publication date, 1965, is significant. A small number of Australian military advisors had been stationed in Vietnam since 1962. We did not start to commit significant ground forces until 1965.

What was the first mainstream Australian novel to tackle the war in Vietnam? Perhaps William Nagle’s The Odd Angry Shot, published in 1975. Nurse in Vietnam shows pulp publishers were onto Vietnam as a setting for fiction straight away.… Read more

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Australian popular culture, Australian pulp fiction, Horwitz Publications, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art

Tagged , , , , , ,

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

→ 1 Comment

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

Tagged , , , , , ,