Tag Archives: James Bond

The books that hooked me on crime fiction

Posted on September 2, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 15 Comments

The Neon rainDo you remember what books got you into crime fiction?

When it all comes down to it, I have to credit my late father. Dad loved writers like Carter Brown, Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming. He passed on his readings tastes to me, particularly his love of dark, pulp influenced crime fiction.

Here are the five books that began my love affair with crime fiction.

What are yours?

From Russia With Love – Ian Fleming I still have my father’s collection of James Bond novels published by Pan Books in the late fifties and sixties, which I saved from my mother’s frequent op shop culls. Published in 1957, From Russia With Love was the fifth Bond book but the first one I read.

It involves a complex plot by Soviet counter intelligence, SMERSH, to kill Bond and discredit British intelligence, using a beautiful Russian cipher clerk and a secret decoding machine as bait. Lashings of action and intrigue, evocative settings such as Istanbul and the Orient Express, characters including the SMERSH executioner, ‘Red Grant’, and the diabolical Colonel Rosa Klebb.

I can still remember reading this in my late teens and my mind going whoooosh with the possibilities.

The Neon Rain – James Lee Burke

The Neon Rain was another of my father’s books.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction, Ian Fleming, James Crumley, James Ellroy, Noir fiction, Peter Corris

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Pulp Friday: spy pulp part 2, Assignment Asia

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of James Bond, last week’s Pulp Friday was a selection of spy themed pulp covers.

This week’s post takes us to one of the main battlegrounds for pulp spies in the sixties and seventies – Asia.

The Cold War was in full swing and those Reds were getting up to all kinds of nefarious activity behind the bamboo curtain, everything from kidnapping, sabotaging America’s space program, developing bubonic plague, drug running, to assassination.

And secret agents like Mark Hood (The Bamboo Bomb) Butler (Chinese Roulette) Death Merchant (Chinese Conspiracy), Joe Gall (The Star Ruby Contract) and Drake (“The man with nobody’s face” in Operation Checkmate), Nick Carter (The Defector) and Sam Durell (the Assignment series, over 48 of which were written), were in the thick of it.

They usually committed a lot of violence, had a lot of sex, and travelled to exotic locations. The books below are set in China, Singapore, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan and Sri Lanka.

And, of course, there were some great covers. My favourite is the Robert Mcginnis illustration for Scott S Stone’s The Dragon’s Eye. But I’m also rather taken with the sleazy eighties feel of the photograph on the cover of Assignment Bangkok.… Read more

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Posted in Coronet Books, Crime fiction and film from China, Crime fiction and film from India, Crime fiction and film from Japan, Crime fiction and film from Singapore, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Spies, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: spy pulp part 1, death traps and dark duets

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

Over the next two weeks I’ll be commemorating the 50th anniversary of James Bond by posting some of the excellent spy themed pulp paperback covers I’ve collected over the years.

Intrigue and danger in exotic locations, sinister enemies, tough secret agents, beautiful women, the spy fiction of the fifties, sixties and early seventies had it all, as the following the collection of pulp paperback covers show.

You’ll find more spy fiction pulp covers over on my Pinterest site.

In the next week or so I’ll post part 2 of my spy pulp series, a selection of covers depicting spy fiction set in Asia.

… Read more

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Posted in Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Pan Books, Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Spies, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Books my father read

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 16 Comments

July 24 was the fourth anniversary of the death of my father, William Nette.

He died peacefully in hospital on the Queensland Gold Coast, where he had retired with my mother many years earlier. He was 86.

Like many father-son relationships, we didn’t always get on. That’s putting it mildly. But he brought a lot of positive influences to my life.

He turned me onto the joy of jazz, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Art Blakey and Dave Brubeck. He had a large collection of 78s wrapped in brown paper that he’d secreted out of Papua New Guinea, where he was an armed forces disc jockey during the war, along with cartons of cigarettes he later sold in Australia.

Only recently have I realised he’s also responsible for much of the delight I find in reading and my particular fondness of crime fiction.

I remember the pivotal moment quite clearly. I was thirteen. He came home from work one day and, to my complete horror, announced he was withholding my allowance until I started reading books (comics, which I loved, didn’t count).

He set the first two books, Robinson Crusoe, followed by Treasure Island. They were heavy looking volumes with no pictures that had belonged to my father when he was a boy.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Australian pulp fiction, Carter Brown, Crime fiction, Horwitz Publications, Larry Kent, Pan Books, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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