Retro Interview: Stephen Mertz

Stephen Mertz died on Nov. 5, 2024. He was a friend of mine, and one that is missed very much. This interview was conducted in the Spring of 2016. I wish we had done another one since then, but this one is pretty good. Rest in peace, Steve.

Stephen Mertz has written under various pseudonyms, including Don Pendleton, The Executioner, Jack Buchanan, M.I.A. Hunter, Jim Case, Cody’s Army, Stephen Brett, Jon Sharpe, The Trailsman, and Cliff Banks, Tunnel Rats. His early work, as the pseudonyms suggest, was in the high flying men’s adventure genre of the 1980s, but his work has steadily moved from the formulaic action novels to an impressive, and varied, body of work stretching from historical to adventure to paranormal horror.

Mr. Mertz’s first published novel, Some Die Hard, was published as by Stephen Brett by the long ago Manor Books in 1979, and his most recent is an installment in his pulp western series Blaze! published earlier this year. In between, he created and wrote a few successful men’s adventure series: M.I.A. Hunter and Cody’s Army come to mind. He wrote twelve Mack Bolan books, including the pivotal, and still popular, Day of Mourning, and over the last 15 years he has hit his stride as a novelist writing about a fictional meeting between Hank Williams and Muddy Waters, Hank & Muddy, and an international thriller set in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Dragon Games.    

Mr. Mertz was kind enough to answer a few questions, and patient enough to keep answering when a few grew into more than twenty. The questions are in italics. The personal photographs are used courtesy of Stephen Mertz.

Your first professional sale was a short story, “The Busy Corpse,” to The Executioner Mystery Magazine.  Would you tell us a little about that experience?

Well, I guess every writer remembers the glorious day he sold his first story or she sold her novel and it’s a red letter day for sure. I was living in Denver at the time. I was running a second-hand record store. I was playing in a blues band, and I’d been writing unpublished (make that unpublishable) stories for years. In 1975, the magazine you mentioned bought that story. The funny thing about it is that I went on to become fairly well associated with the name of Mack Bolan, The Executioner, because about seven years later I ended up writing books for the Mack Bolan series. Actually, it was a coincidence that The Executioner Mystery Magazine bought that story. The editorial staff was out in LA and had nothing to do with Don [Pendleton] other than to use his name on the cover and he had nothing to do with them. The Table of Contents are interesting because it’s a mix of people that I never heard of again and then there are a few old hands like Talmage Powell who are placing some of their final work and there are a handful of new names like me and John Lutz and Margaret Maron who are just breaking in.

Your early career was spent writing men’s adventure fiction; The Executioner, and your own M.I.A. Hunter and Cody’s Army.  Were there any particular pleasures or displeasures of writing these types of books?

And let’s not forget The Tunnel Rats! The greatest pleasure was being able to practice the writing craft in anonymity while making money doing it. Because of course my name wasn’t on the Mack Bolan books; that was Don’s series. The other action/adventure books that I wrote were originally written under pen names. There are a variety of reasons that writers use pen names. You don’t want to be labeled in the popular or the editorial mind as a writer who only writes a certain type of novel, especially when you are as restless creatively as I am. It keeps you from being typecast. In a field like that, frankly, you are judged by the company you keep. There was Don Pendleton and one or two others but when I first broke into that field, even the established writers weren’t getting much respect. Not like today. So I thought it best to stay anonymous for that period of time. At the same time you’re delivering four to six books per year so you are honing your skills as a writer. It was a wonderful way to learn how to write. For instance, I wrote each of my first six action novels as a conscious nod to some writer who I felt influenced me and in that way I got it out of my system, to purge my writing of the sound of any other writer’s voice. I guess you could say that I arrived at my writing style through a process of exclusion. What was the displeasure? Having to meet deadlines.  Having to constantly work variations on the same formula. That generally applies to any sort of genre fiction. But all-in-all it was a good way to get started in the business.

Speaking of Don Pendleton, I know you are a great admirer of both him, as a person, and his work.  You have said his work was a direct descendent of what Mickey Spillane did with his hardboiled Mike Hammer novels and the pulp writer Carroll John Daly.  Would you expand on this idea?

I would refer anyone who’s interested in this subject to a book that came out back in the 1970’s called The Great American Detective, edited by William Kittredge and Steven M. Krauzer. It’s a collection of stories that trace the development of the fictional American Detective from the days of the dime novels and Carroll John Daly and it ends with the only Bolan short story that Don ever wrote. My point: the editors certainly saw Don in that tradition. The Introduction those guys wrote for that book presents the case more effectively than I could in an interview.

Are there any of Don Pendleton’s books you particularly admire?

Don’s major contribution is in creating the action adventure genre. Probably the most important lesson that I learned from Don was to consider yourself a serious novelist even if you are slanting your work for a genre market. I have tried to adhere to that and Don very much adhered to that in the sense that his Mack Bolan saga is character-driven, as in “serious” fiction. It’s character driven in the sense that Bolan is not the same person in the first book as he is in the last of Don’s original novels. It’s like one gigantic novel that came to us in a bunch of volumes. 

Then there’s one of Don’s last books, Copp in Shock; not his best, but one of my favorites. It’s a detective novel narrated by a private eye suffering from amnesia. Well, Don was enduring some challenging health issues at the time he wrote that one and in fact was suffering from severe memory loss. His wife, Linda, heroically assisted him. Of all the thrillers written about characters with amnesia, this is the only one I’m aware of that was written by an author recovering from amnesia while he wrote it!

Stephen Mertz (right) with Don Pendleton (left) and Richard S. Prather

I know you are a fan of the early pulp stories – your terrific short story “The Lizard Men of Blood River,” featured in The King of Horrors and Other Tales is an homage to the work of Lester Dent.  Are there any other pulp writers you particularly like?

There are writers who wrote for the pulps but aspired to greater things. There I am talking about Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and, for my money, Mickey Spillane. But then there were writers who only stayed in the pulp field. That’s all they wanted to do. That is what they did do. Those guys are mostly fun. That is the word you have to go with. If you measured them up against people I just named, most of them aren’t going to cut the mark…but then, who does? We’re in a Golden Age of pulp reprints so I don’t know what’s kept them from rediscovering Cleve F. Adams, a very funny hardboiled PI writer who wrote for the detective magazines in the 1930’s and ‘40’s. Of course, pulp writing is always with us. When the magazines faded away, pulp fiction just moved over to paperback novels. I’d have to go to the 1950s-60s for my second favorite unknown and that is Ennis Willie. I helped edit a collection of his work that Stark House published. It’s great hardboiled tough guy stuff.

Your later work, starting with Blood Red Sun (1989), is more ambitious than your earlier work. What, as you see it, is the major difference between writing the more formulaic adventure novels of your past, and these bigger and more robust novels you have been producing over the past few decades?

Well, they’re more fun to write for one thing and I hope that translates into the fact that they are more fun to read. I am not reinventing the wheel. I am falling back on things I learned writing pulp fiction when I write the more ambitious novels.

Blood Red Sun was published by Diamond Books, which was a publishing house started by Warren Murphy. Did you work directly with Mr. Murphy during its publication, and if so, what was the experience like?

No, I never had any contact with Warren. He was sort of the money guy there.  We did cross paths a couple of times years later. I worked with some editor. I forget his name. What I was trying to do with Blood Red Sun: that was my first book where I really stretched out and tried to say something and tell a tale that hadn’t been told before. I mentioned earlier, Hammett and Chandler. I was trying to do what they did and that was to take genre fiction and lift it into something that had broader scope and appeal. That is what I was trying to do with Blood Red Sun: take the tropes of action/adventure and honestly tell a story that could really have happened. 

Blood Red Sun, The Korean Intercept (2005), and Dragon Games (2010) are set in Asia; World War II Japan, North Korea, and China, respectively. Does the Asian continent hold any special interest for you?

Well yes, but no more so than, say, the Middle East. The primary engine for fiction has got to be conflict and normally that is personal conflict, but you take entire cultures in conflict and, man, you are really working with something there. If you look at the history of those regions you just named and the culture of those countries and you stack that up side by side with the American way of looking at things, rarely if ever will they connect or even brush into each other. So in terms of being a novelist, there’s a lot to work with. And plus, let's face it, Asian chicks are hot.

You have written two novels, Fade to Tomorrow (2004) and Hank & Muddy (2011), which are set in the music world. In the Afterword of The King of Horror & Other Stories, you wrote that you performed as a professional musician – vocals and harp (harmonica) – for seven years:  Do these titles hold any special meaning for you since they are centered around music and musicians?

Oh, very much so. I think Hank & Muddy is the best novel I’ve written thus far, although it is certainly not cool to admire one of your children more than another. But still, music just flows through me. In fact, most of the years I was writing my early pulp fiction I didn’t write with any photograph or icon of any writer near me for inspiration; I had a picture over my desk of Chuck Berry doing the duck walk. The music we listen to says so much about us. Just like the food we eat and the movies we watch and the clothes we buy.

Hank & Muddy is a fictional imagining of Hank Williams and Muddy Waters meeting in Louisiana in 1952. The narrative is loaded with biographical information of both men. What type of research did you do?

This one pretty much ties into the last question. I’ve been listening to what they today call roots music since I was in high school. The Rolling Stones opened the door to a lot of us kids to what the blues was and soul music and everything else. So really the research for that book, I never really sat down and researched that one. I seem to remember almost every liner note and every musician’s biography that I’ve ever read. It was my long suffering mother who once observed that if I could only remember my multiplication tables as well as I remembered who played bass on Chuck Berry records, I’d be a brilliant mathematician. Mom, rest her soul, was right. I’ve been living music and writing since the day I found out about either one. I guess it’s inevitable that each would influence the other.

The title story in The King of Horror & Other Stories features a bitter writer who is no longer able to sell his work. In your Afterword you wrote it was an “open letter” to your friend Michael Avallone who had similar difficulties at the end of his writing career. Mr. Avallone had a wild reputation of self-promotion and an uncanny ability to bring others to anger. Do you have a story or two about Michael Avallone you would be willing to share?

I not only loved Michael Avallone but I also loved his wife, Fran, who was a great woman. She was everything that someone who loves a writer should be. I’ll always remember visiting them at 80 Hilltop Boulevard in East Brunswick, NJ. Fran cooked up a fantastic Italian dinner; this would have been 1983. Mike was pretty much in the state that you just mentioned.  He and I were sitting in his office which was within easy earshot although not within view of the kitchen where Fran was slaving over a hot stove. Mike went on about his travails, the challenges that were facing him and any number of complaints. He went on and he went on and he went on. I loved every word and I loved every minute of it. But I have a clear memory of Fran periodically calling up to us, “Michael, shut up and listen!” I am happy to report that Michael did not, could not, heed her advice. I walked away the richer for it.

Stephen Mertz (left) and Michael Avallone

Your more recent work has a quiet humor to it.  An example is Kim Jong-II using terrified prisoners as personal barbers in The Korean Intercept. Was this imaginary on your part, or is there some truth to it?

No, that was my sick imagination running rampant through my fingertips. By all accounts, the guy was totally bugfuck. You have two ways to look at that when you’re portraying it: you can either shake your head and let it happen or you can try to pull something out of it. It seems that if the guy was going to be crazy, he would be crazy in every department, not just in what he was doing to his own people but also getting a haircut. He was probably no fun to go shopping with. 

You wrote two dark suspense novels, Night Wind (2002) and Devil Creek (2004), which are different from anything else you’ve written. They both have significant elements of horror, suspense, and even a touch of romance. These novels, to me, showcase your range as a writer.  Would you tell us a little about these books?

Actually, when we get to the novels and stories published under my own name, nearly every one is different from anything else I’ve written. That’s my restless nature. I bore easily. I develop a story about people when I feel compelled to do so and when I’m finished writing that novel or story, I’m ready to move on; meet new people and write new stories. I think that is probably the overriding aspect of my work over the past fifteen years. Most of the novels are different from each other. The main similarity is that I wrote them. The idea for Night Wind had been in me since I moved to a remote rural area in Arizona. There’s no convenience store, no stop lights. The old joke is that Welcome and Come Again are on the same sign. When I first moved here thirty years ago, I was keenly aware that I was an outsider. Now I can spot an outsider right off. But feeling the way I first did, that if terrible crimes were suddenly committed right after I’d just moved here, good people would be well within the realm of reason to suspect that I, the unknown newcomer, had something to do with it . . . that’s the plot.

Funny story about Night Wind. One evening I had dinner with Joe Lansdale and a friend of his, Dean Koontz. Dean had just written a book, How to Write Best Selling Fiction. I had never read any Dean Koontz but after meeting him, I bought that book. It’s probably the best book about commercial writing that I’ve ever read. I perused that book meticulously. Then, still without reading any of Dean’s novels, I wrote Night Wind. People still come up to me after reading that one and say, “Hey, that reminds me of reading a Dean Koontz novel!"  Considering Dean’s enormous success, I’ve decided to interpret that as a compliment.

Do you have plans to write any other dark tales?

I will let you know when I get there.

You have been very prolific in the past few years. You have published a handful of novels, including creating a new adult western series called Blaze! Would you tell us a little about the series, and its genesis?

Now we’re back to the latest medium for pulp fiction. I created that series to establish a presence in the digital reading world; a series was the best way to go, so I worked a twist on the western genre that I’d never encountered before. Its genesis is a short story I wrote called “Last Stand,” which introduces a pair of gunfighters who are the two fastest guns in the West…who just happen to be married to each other. Kate and J.D. Blaze. I couldn't get away from the idea that those two deserved more than one story. I am happy to say that Rough Edges Press felt the same way and, in fact, wanted to amp up with a bi-monthly publication schedule. I’m too slow a writer to accommodate that, so a handful of topnotch writers stepped in to maintain consistent scheduling. They’ve just published Book #10 and presently there are enough books in the pipeline to get us through the year. J.D. and Kate. She’s a little smarter than he is but dog-gone-it, J.D. is a standup gent. They banter back and forth in between shooting the bad guys and sorting out various marital issues. These are western tall tales for today’s audience.

J.D. stands for Jehoram Delfonso.  Where did you come up with such an awkwardly intriguing name?

Well, it’s method writing. You try to be the guy, y’know? Would you want to be called Jehoram Delfonso, or J.D.? I know I'd prefer J.D. Jehoram is a warrior king in the Old Testament. At least once per book, Kate gets so mad at J.D. about something that she’ll call him by his given name in public. She’s the only person alive who has ever called him that besides his mother.

Many of your early works have appeared in eBook format over the past few years and you have several new titles that are primarily available as eBooks – Sherlock Holmes:  Zombies Over London, the Blaze! series. EBooks have seemingly opened new markets for many writers. What are your thoughts about eBooks, and how have they impacted your career?

It doesn’t make sense not to write for the digital market. Writers write to be read and these days that’s where the action is. It’s an exciting time to be a writer. I’m reminded of the 1950s. From what I know of the history of those years in popular writing, between the invention of the paperback novel, the advent of television, and comic books, all of a sudden there were all of these new ways to make money writing but everyone was still trying to figure out just how.  It was a wild frontier. That’s the way it is now. The M.I.A. Hunter series has gotten a second life. The new novels like Dragon Games and Hank & Muddy are doing well as eBooks. It’s a mixed blessing. As a reader, I prefer to sit under a light with a real book in my hands but as a writer, I’d have to say that much of my writing income today comes from eBook sales. So, it’s hard to be less than happy about success.

Speaking of eBooks, you did an interview with the blog Glorious Trash in 2013 and hinted there may be new M.I.A. Hunter novels appearing as eBooks. Is this still a possibility, or have you moved away from the idea?

No, it’s actually already happening. I’ve written a new Mark Stone, a reboot set in the present. Also, years ago when we were both hungry young lads, Joe Lansdale and I collaborated on three M.I.A. Hunter books.  They’ve just sold out a Subterranean Press hardcover omnibus of those so they’re now available in eBook format and trade paperback. Bonus material is included in the new editions to take readers behind the scenes of the development of the novels.

I heard this question in an interview on a BBC program a few years ago. If you were stranded on an island and you had only one book, what would it be?

Well, of course, we all have our favorite novels but once read, the great ones are remembered.  I’d have to cheat. I snuck in two. If I was looking at eternity all by myself on a deserted island and wanted entertainment, wisdom, and to stay in touch with the universe beyond the end of my nose, reckon I’d pack along a Bible and The Collected Plays of Mr. Shakespeare.

 The opposite side of the coin. If you were allowed only to recommend one of your novels, or stories, which one would you want people to read?

Hank & Muddy. That one just has a life of its own. I love that book and I hope I write a few more that are as good.

Review: "Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop" ed. by Otto Penzler

 

Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop edited by Otto Penzler Mysterious Press, 2024     For more than thirty years, New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop has commissioned a Christmas story from the genre’s most talented writers. These stories are printed as pamphlets and given out to the Bookshop’s customers during the holiday season. The marvelous Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop collects twelve of the most recent tales—an eclectic cohort ranging from puzzler to hardboiled and whimsical to murderous and always with a good-natured attitude—into a single attractive volume. Lyndsay Faye’s “A Midnight Clear,” is a brilliant and surprising take on loss and vengeance with an ending that stings the reader just right. “Secret Santa,” by Ace Atkins—about a thriller writer long past his prime, visiting New York City for a book signing on Christmas Eve in 1985—is a pleasant stroll, with a little excitement and a touch of irony, down the mean streets of the mid-century mystery world. Rob Hart’s “The Gift of the Wiseguy,” is a slam-bang, atmospheric, and ironic tale about a father’s love and son’s forgiveness. And the ending is perfectly bleak in a heartwarming and Christmasy way. “Snowflake Time,” by Laura Lippman, is a comedic and satirical tale about a deceitful television personality fired for sexual harassment. Its first-person narration, which is from the unreliable tv host, is briming with wit and irony. And even better, everything turns out exactly as it should. Thomas Perry’s “Here We Come A-Wassailing,” is more whimsical than mysterious—although a couple thieves are working the neighborhood around the Mysterious Bookshop—but it is a delightful journey from that first page to the last. Better yet, the entire tale is centered around a bottle of 1962 Bertinollet XO Cognac, which I gather is quite expensive, and that thin line that separates fantasy from fact. “Sergeant Santa,” by David Gordon—the only writer in the collection I was unfamiliar with—is a joyful holiday jig in The City. There is a corrupt cop, an unlucky pick-pocket, and enough holiday cheer to enliven even the most jaded readers. Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop also includes excellent entries from Jason Starr, Loren D. Estleman, Jeffrey Deaver, Ragnar Jónasson, Tom Mead, and Martin Edwards.

Click here for the Kindle edition and here for the hardcover of Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop at Amazon.

Shorts: "Nambu Type B" by Ben Boulden

Nambu Type B Ben Boulden   *     *     *     *     TOM BOLLINGER HAD LIVED IN P—, UTAH, for 42 years. The only other place he had ever been was Iowa on a two-year proselytizing mission for the Church of the Martyr. He had been nineteen when he arrived in the Hawkeye state and anyone who knew anything about Tom knew he hated Iowa and Iowans. One reason for this hatred was because a missionary’s value is judged by the number of converts he baptized and Tom had only finagled one in two years—and that one had been a middle-aged woman with four cats and no hope of ever getting married or having children and so she didn’t count in Tom or the Lord’s eyes. The other reason is because Iowa was the first place Tom ever really saw the lives of other people. In Utah, Tom only saw the masquerade Martyrs’ put on at church every Sunday. All the men were patient, God-fearing, and hardworking capitalists and the women were pure, happy, and sweet. So Tom enjoyed telling the guys at the Patriarchal Quorum every Sunday that Iowa was a playground for fornicators, adulterers, drug users, and fags. Boy, did Tom like the word, “fag”—he used it as a substitute for “lame,” “stupid,” “feminine,” and of course as a derogatory term for gay men and drag queens. You should have heard him when a “gay family” moved into a house on the very same street where Tom lived. His “brothers”—as Martyrs’ call their male membership—in the Quorum never paid Tom much attention. Sure, he was off, a little weird, he made them uncomfortable but he was harmless. Everyone said so. He lived with his widowed mother, too, which provided his peers with a litany of tiresome jokes. Never when Tom was around, of course, because that would have hurt his feelings. Plus, in their quiet moments, Tom’s “brothers” knew he was right about the world’s dirty and sullen ills and they feared it would encroach upon their perfectly cultivated and inspired lifestyle as God’s chosen people. The thing is, Tom was mostly harmless. Sure, he had a strange obsession with his late-father’s gun collection. A collection that filled an entire room in the aging but well-kept house on Oak Summit Lane where Tom lived with his mother, but he never threatened anyone or even mentioned shooting animals. His favorite gun in that room had belonged to his grandfather. The benevolent and much loved, Lamar Bollinger. “Grandy Lamar,” as Tom had called him as a boy, had taken the little pistol from a dead Japanese soldier on Saipan in 1944. It was called a Nambu Type B and it looked like it had come off the set of a World War 2 movie. The round barrel nakedly sticking out of the blocky frame like an old-fashioned water pistol. And the grips, which were Tom’s favorite part of the pistol, were Philippine Mahogany and best of all Grandy Lamar had carved his initials into the wood so his tent mates wouldn’t get sticky fingers. “L” on one side and “B” on the other. It was a beautiful pistol but one nearly impossible to get ammunition for. It was an 8mm, which has never been popular in the United States. Tom’s mother, she could be a real bitch Tom often thought, wouldn’t let him use her credit card to order a box from a California dealer that specialized in rare ammunitions. She said it cost too much—in that squeaky high-pitched voice of hers that drove Tom crazy—so he had been forced to work extra hours at his job waxing floors at the local University to earn the $100 himself. Since Tom had ruined his credit a few years earlier he made a bargain with the dealer. He’d mail cash for the 8mm bullets, 20 came in every box, and upon receipt the dealer would mail the bullets to a gun store in Provo where Tom would pick it up. The actual cost went from $100 to $150 because of tax, shipping, and a handling fee that made Tom call the dealer a “fag” after he’d disconnected the call. That had been two years ago and Tom still hadn’t shot his grandfather’s old war trophy because he was saving those 20 bullets for something special. He didn’t know what, but he figured it would be obvious to him when the time came. It was even more obvious than Tom had thought it would be, because on September 21, 2020, an apostle of the Church of the Martyr gave a speech at the University where Tom worked. The gray old man said every believer should defend the Church against the gay mob threatening to knock down the walls and sodomize the faithful. He’d used the metaphor of a trowel for building the faith and a musket—which Tom knew was an old word for a gun—to defend it from its many enemies. Tom’s favorite line from the speech, or “talk” as the Martyrs liked to say, went, “a volley of fire is necessary to defend God’s Kingdom.” The speech’s underlying context was how the university’s faculty weren’t doing enough to suppress—and in some cases even supporting—the LGBTQ+ lifestyle on campus.    But what the apostle meant as metaphor Tom took as literal and that line about “a volley of fire” rang in his ears over and over. So Tom set to make the world a better and brighter place. He took Grandy Lamar’s Nambu Type B semi-automatic pistol from the gun room, cleaned it, loaded its narrow magazine to capacity with seven rounds, rammed it into the pistol’s grip, and pulled the slide back to load an 8mm round into the chamber. The slide slammed home with a satisfying clunk. Tom knew the gun was ready to shoot. He walked past his mother watching her absurd television game shows—the crowd applauding like lunatics—opened the front door and walked into the pleasant early-autumn afternoon. He didn’t bother responding when his mother asked where he was going. Instead he walked down the driveway, its crumbling surface crunching beneath his boots. The crisp air as unnoticed as the setting sun. He turned left at the sidewalk. Tom knew where he was going. He had known without understanding this was his destiny since the two “fags” had moved in three years before. But it had taken those carefully crafted words the apostle used for Tom to truly understand what the Lord wanted him to do. When he reached the family’s house, Tom paused a moment. He looked down at the pistol in his hand. He flexed his pointer finger and laid it against the trigger guard like his father had taught him so many years ago. A neighbor getting out of her car after a long day at work saw Tom with the gun in his hand. She squeaked and rushed to her own front door, the key shaking so badly it was impossible to get it into the lock. Tom’s hands were remarkably steady as he walked up Mark and Roger Dawson’s driveway and stepped over a short hedge of privet bushes onto the concrete porch. He saw there were lights blazing inside and from somewhere a piano played a simple and familiar tune. Tom stopped at the front door, which had been painted purple in the spring. He reached for the knob and twisted it—it was open, just like he hoped it would be. After all, no one locked their doors on Oak Summit Lane. A rich and delicious smell of cooking wafted across the threshold. Tom could see Roger in the kitchen, his back turned. On his left a girl whose name Tom thought was Rosie or Rachel looked up from the piano. Her hands frozen in mid-air, her mouth open in surprise. Tom stepped toward her. He raised his grandfather’s prized war souvenir with the same ease as if he were pointing a finger at her. He pulled the trigger. The Nambu’s sharp crack muted the girl’s shouts like they had been so much useless white noise. Tom couldn’t be sure, but he thought her last word had been, “Please.” From the kitchen Tom heard Roger shout. Tom turned as the man rushed toward him. A single phrase flashed in Tom’s mind: Kill the fag! And he did. The little Nambu pistol bucked with the trigger pull and Roger stumbled forward two steps before collapsing face down on the hardwood with a floor rattling thump. A shout came from the second floor. Tom ascended the stairs in three longs strides. At the top he followed a hallway into the rear of the house. The first door went into an empty bathroom. The second opened onto a bedroom and inside Mark Dawson was frantically trying to load a small black revolver. When he heard Tom at the door, Mark turned and threw the gun at him. It smacked against the door jamb and caromed to the floor with a bounce. Tom raised the Nambu Type B. His mouth razored into a tight smile. Mark said, “Why?” Tom pulled the trigger. The gun shimmied in his hands and Mark fell onto his back. In a beat of gleeful worship, Tom whispered, “Thy will be done.” Behind him a baby cried. Tom turned away from Mark’s bleeding form and walked towards the crying. At the back, in a tiny room, a toddler stood in its crib. The boy’s face was crimson with terror. A forgotten binky hung from a ribbon attached to a pocket of its blue pajamas. A mobile turning a parade of shapes—squares and circles and rainbows—glittered with the room’s overhead light. The toddler shook with emotion and if you listened, he was shouting, “Daddy, Daddy!” again and again. A chill ran down Tom’s back. His skin prickled with goosebumps. He drew the pistol up from his side and looked at it. He extended his arm and pointed the Nambu at the baby. He squeezed his finger on the trigger but his hand shook with the gun. He closed his eyes and breathed with a conscious effort. When he reopened them Tom saw the child—as the first responders would learn later the boy was named Colin—for what he was. A scared, hurting little boy. An orphan. In the distance Tom heard sirens. He knew they were coming for him and he began crying. For a beat he understood the monstrosity of what he had done. As the sirens grew closer, Tom raised his Grandy Lamar’s prize to his temple and pulled the trigger. He faded to blackness as Colin cried with pain. And Tom knew it was too late for redemption and he hoped there would be no God on the other side, waiting to judge him. Fin

Ben Boulden is the author of two novels, several short stories, and more than 400 articles, book reviews, and columns. His latest book, Casinos, Motels, Gators is available for Kindle, and as a paperback everywhere. Click here to see it at Amazon.

© 2024 by Ben Boulden

 

"Simon & Simon: Loser Turns Up Winner"

“Simon & Simon: Loser Turns Up Winner,” by Jerry Buck appeared in the May 8, 1983, issue of the Sunday Magazine in the Salt Lake Tribune. Essentially an interview with Simon & Simon (1981 – 89) creator, Philip DeGuere, Jr., it chronicles the series’ early years. My favorite part? Learning it started out life as Pirates Key—set on a mythical island in the Florida Keys.

 

Booked (and Printed): October 2024

 

Ah, my old friend October skated by with hardly saying hello; or so it felt because the entire month passed in a week. A windstorm stripped the trees of their coloring leaves and the nighttime lows plummeted from the 50s to near freezing. Brrr… But my reading—as it always does this time of year—improved over last month with five books, four novels and a story anthology, and three shorts. My first of the month is Gavin Lyall’s splendid aviation thriller, Shooting Script (1966). Lyall’s work is defined by his imaginative plotting, literate style, and Raymond Chandler-esque dialogue. And Shooting Script, which is Lyall’s fourth published novel, is amongst his best. Keith Carr—a Korean War RAF fighter pilot—operates a struggling one plane Caribbean air cargo service. After Carr is gray-listed by the U.S. Government for false rumors he is flying supplies to revolutionaries in the fictional Republic Libra, he is forced to take a gig flying a camera plane for an American movie crew filming in Jamaica. But as one would suspect there is more going on than meets the eye. There are echoes of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a bigger-than-life actor with a resemblance to John Wayne, right-wing politics and all, and a creative use for a rusting old B-25 bomber. Shooting Script is about as good as a mid-century thriller gets. Chuck Dixon’s vigilante tale, Levon’s Trade (2012), came next. I’d heard good things about Levon’s Trade and its eleven sequels. It is well-written and entertaining, but there’s not much original here. It’s the same book that has been written over and over since Don Pendleton introduced The Executioner in 1969, but if you like this stuff, you can do a lot worse than Levon’s Trade. Eight Very Bad Nights, edited by Tod Goldberg (2024), is a solidly entertaining anthology featuring eleven new crime and thriller stories set during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. In a phrase, it’s good fun—check my detailed review here. There was a time when I read horror; a lot of horror. And one of my favorite writers from that long ago era is Jack Ketchum. His most popular work tends to be gross-out, ultra-violent slasher stuff; e.g. Off Season (1980), Offspring (1991). But categorizing Ketchum’s writing, even at its most depraved, with the norm in the slasher and splatter-punk subgenres is like comparing a BMW with a Yugo. Ketchum wrote with vigor and style. His tales unfailingly revealed something about humanity; even if that revelation is uncomfortable. So for Halloween this season I reread Ketchum’s 1984 novel, Hide and Seek. I originally read it twenty years ago and I had forgotten almost everything except the climactic sequence and its Maine setting. It’s a demented haunted house tale about five kids playing a game of hide and seek in an abandoned house. It’s damn good, too, but only if you like horror and don’t mind a bit of graphic violence. Penance (1996) is David Housewright’s first novel. You’ve likely noticed—if you read the blog regularly—I’m a fan of Housewright’s Rushmore McKenzie mysteries. But Penance features a former St. Paul, Minnesota cop turned P.I. named Holland Taylor. It’s obviously a first novel. The voice isn’t as strong as Housewright’s subsequent books and the plot is overly complicated. But it’s fun watching Taylor spin around a murder investigation that takes him all the way to the State House. And Penance really is good (just not as good as Housewright has become in the decades since).

The number of short stories I read in October dropped from the previous month, but two of the three were novellas. The first is Ed Gorman’s post-apocalyptic, “Survival” (1995). A novella that was originally published in Gorman’s collection, Cages, “Survival” is a rare so-so tale from Ed. The idea is cool: Fascist religious terrorists demolish humanity with nuclear weapons and the survivors band together in hospitals where they are treated, without medicine, for the after-effects of the blasts. The plotting is a bit confusing, but the premise and characters are interesting enough to make it worthwhile. “Dracula Wine,” by David Housewright (2021)—the 22nd installment of the multi-author A Grifter’s Song series—is a satisfying caper about a con-woman taking a businessman to the cleaners. It’s good fun with a smooth twist. Jeremiah Healy’s “Battered Spouse” (1990) is my favorite of Healy’s John Francis Cuddy shorts. Cuddy is called in when a jogger is killed by a hit-and-run driver to drum up something the police may have missed, which he does, of course—read my detailed review here. Fin— Now on to next month…

1970s Western Splatterpunk: Six-Gun Samurai & Sloane

 

1970s Western Splatterpunk: Six-Gun Samurai: Bushido Vengeance & Sloane: The Man with the Iron Fists By Mike Baker     I’d finished the relentlessly dark Blood Meridian and then read Cormac McCarthy’s 3rd book, Child of God, which, while entertaining enough for a Cormac McCarthy book, gets progressively more f’d up as Lester Ballard becomes unmoored from his humanity, descending into the hell of his unchecked subconscious. I needed a break—which is why I grabbed Six-Gun Samurai: Bushido Vengeance, which is book #2 in that series by “Patrick Lee”. When Tom Fletcher was a 12-year-old midshipman on duty at the American mission in Tokyo, the mission was attacked by ninjas. Everyone is massacred but Tom who escapes, is taken in, and adopted, by a Samurai who raises Tom as his own son, training him to be a Samurai warrior. When his American family is butchered by renegade Union soldiers, led by notorious Colonel Edward Hollister, Tom heads back to the States to get his revenge. Each book in the series finds him hunting Hollister and his gang of murderous scum. This outing with Tanaka Tom is somehow more insane than the first go. Tom is hunting a man who took part in the murder of his family but is now acting as an Indian agent. The Indian agent is trying to get two rival bands of Apache to slaughter each other so that the Indian Agent can take their land for his boss, and Tom’s nemesis, Colonel Hollister who led the soldiers that murdered Tom’s family. First, Tom befriends one band of Apache and then he convinces the Indian Agent that he’s a bad guy, gets hired by the Indian Agent, gets his cover blown blah blah blah. He then rushes back to the Apaches and gets the two rival bands to unite based on the principles of bushido which they intuitively get as noble savages, and they all go to war against the US Cavalry. There’s a whole court case where Tanaka Tom defends his and the Apache’s slaughter of the US Cavalry which is pretty f’ing boring, but it leads to a climax on par with any spaghetti western/Shaw Brothers extravaganza in its over the top, batshit crazy mass blood and slaughter.     I’m a traditional guy when it comes to westerns. I, myself, started with Piccadilly Cowboy stuff but then migrated to Lewis Patten, Clifton Adams and Elmer Kelton because, and feel free to disagree, I need someone to root for and cheering on Edge or Crow was essentially cheering on all my rage and disappointment which I should have resolved in my 30’s. That said, the book is so bonkers that, the stupid, boring ass court scene aside, its infectious fun and the absolute absurdity of this book convinced me to buy book #3.

Still feeling Cormac McCarthy fatigue, I grabbed Sloane: The Man with the Iron Fists, by “Steven Lee”, and holy smokes, it is actually more ridiculous than Six-Gun Samurai. Sloane’s daddy is a sodbuster and one day a Conestoga wagon carrying a circus troupe, led by a rubber nose wearing clown, stops at the Sloane homestead asking for directions and water and ends up with Sloane’s daddy getting tortured to death as Sloane’s mama is raped, tortured and murdered. Sloane high tails it to the countryside to get away from the horror movie his family home has descended into—let me be clear—this shit is f’d up even by Picadilly standards. And Sloane doesn’t get away because, like most circus troupes, their evil Apache runs him down with a horse and stomps holy hell out of him with the horse and then leaves Sloane for dead. He is, of course, rescued by a Chinese family whose wife is a healer and whose father is a kung fu master which leads to Sloane living and becoming a kung fu master. They have a daughter who Sloane later screws because the 70’s had some real messed up Freudian whatever the hell that made David Hamilton ok for the American book buying public and those creepy Pia Zadora/Brooke Shields underaged movies not seem, at the time, creepy as hell. Sloane grows up and hunts the clown, and his clown posse, down. There’s lots and lots of ultra violence involving kung fu but also guns, acrobatics, knife throwing and yes, clowning.       The only bad thing about the books, other than the story etc., is that there were only two of them to make fun of.