THE QUAKING WIDOW by Robert Colby

A man can get into a lot of trouble if he’s lonely. If he’s just lonely enough and has time on his hands. That’s a combination made for trouble.

Burt Keating is from New York—just outside Buffalo—where he manages a small savings and loan branch. He is in his mid-thirties with a beautiful wife and a very comfortable life. That changes when his wife leaves on an icy night for some butter, and a few blocks from their house she is crushed between a Buick and a tree. Burt can’t seem to function anymore. He sells the house, takes a leave of absence from his job and purchases a new car—

I wanted to flee to a new world and I knew that short of some South Pacific island, southern Florida was as close as you could come. After a few restless days in Miami, I took an apartment on the beach at Ft. Lauderdale some twenty miles away. It was a place called the Tropic Moon Apartments.

Unfortunately the miles and warmer clime can’t set Burt’s mind right. The only thing that has any meaning is the memory of his dead wife and the life they had, but that is over and there is nothing he can do to change it. Then he meets Alicia Shafton. A woman who seems as lost and lonely as Burt, but she has a secret. Her husband, a gambler and shyster, died and left a lockbox with a note attached. It instructed her to sell the box to a man named Ralph Emory for $200,000. The only problem: Everything goes wrong and Burt can’t help but get involved.

The Quaking Widow is the first work by Robert Colby I have read and it won’t be the last. It hit a note with me—the story, setting, characters—that many works of fiction don’t. It opened with a blast—an immediate and drastic change for a protagonist with an uncertain future—and cruised forward into ever increasing peril. The characters were the expected: sleek, beautiful, mysterious, and good and bad in varying measures.

The setting is drawn marvelously. As I read, I mourned the Florida that was. The pre-Disney World and Miami Vice Florida that was one part hillbilly and another parts chic, wealthy and dangerous. A Florida that a person can get lost in. The same Florida that was painted in the novels of John D. MacDonald with his vivid and beautiful flashes of prose.

The plotline is the expected—the dangerous and unknown femme, murder, a wildcard nympho and mysterious opponents that will stop at nothing to get the prize. In this case the box and its contents. I guessed the major plot turns before they were revealed, but it didn’t bother me because the story, while plot-driven, is textured with enough humanity to keep it more than interesting. The pacing didn't hurt either. It is perfectly developed with a well-balanced mixture of action and suspense, with a dash of romance and mystery. The prose is hardboiled and, at times, clever and rich:

She turned around and walked briskly across the room, her high, firm buttocks waving an insolent goodbye.

The Quaking Widow is worth tracking down. It is fifty-three years old, but it is more than just nostalgia. Heck, I wasn't even on the radar when it was written. Instead it is a fine example of a linear and well-told tale that is both entertaining and exciting.

It was published by ACE (D-195) in 1956, and coupled with Owen Dudley’s The Deep End, and this review was originally published all the way back in 2009.

THE ACTION AT REDSTONE CREEK by Merle Constiner

I have been reading an unusually high number of westerns recently, and older westerns at that. I continued the trend with an ACE Double—one-half of an ACE Double—published in 1967; The Action at Redstone Creek by Merle Constiner (G-638). Mr Constiner’s work was unfamiliar to me—it was recommended by Ed Gorman—and I found it unusually literate, if not a bit odd, for an old genre western.

Mark Townsend is a gladly out of work tracker, but as the novel opens he is sitting at an ax-cut table in his rustic home staring at his final three silver quarters. He isn’t overly worried, but he is realistic—he doesn’t care for money, but he knows there are necessities only coin money can buy. His money problems only last a page or two until a dandy walks into his home and offers him a job.

The dandy, a man named Joe Teague, wants him to find his son who disappeared on his way to an engineering job at a mine in Idaho. The pay: one hundred dollars. Townsend takes the job, but quickly realizes Teague was less than honest with him, and the job is much more dangerous and involved than simply tracking a man. In fact, it isn’t too far into the story that he runs into a pair of toughs who have ill intentions towards Teague directly and Townsend indirectly.

The Action at Redstone Creek is vintage ACE. It starts with a bang and hurriedly moves from one scene to the next. There are gunfights, intrigues, cattle rustling, dueling ranchers, and lonely frontier dwelling men. The difference, or what separates it from most of the other ACE westerns, is the writing. It is fresh with a witty sense of humor. The prose and dialogue—not to mention a few of the situations and character relationships—is sharp, realistic and, at times, damn funny:

“It was midafternoon. He was staring at the quarters, trying to think of them in terms of cornmeal and fat pork, but thinking mainly what nice conchos they’d make, when the man stooped down and came through the door. 

“‘No offense meant,’ said the stranger, ‘but for a white man’s shack, this place has a sort of stink, a little like Indian smell.’ 

“‘Thank you,’ said Townsend. ‘Maybe some kindhearted Indian sometime will say as much for you.’”

The story doesn’t do the expected, and the characters are never typical; they dress and walk like the typical western character, but their actions, language, and responses tend to shy away from genre norms. An example is Townsend. He is far from the archetypal hero in both appearance and form. He is described as: “thirty-four, short, a little humped, big nosed, almost lizard eyed, and pretty ragged for the gaze of any white man.”

The Action at Redstone Creek is different, but its unusualness separates it from the herd. It is a story that will appeal to readers of traditional westerns, but its quirky nature will also appeal to others who are less inclined to read a western.

When I read Redstone Creek I did a little research on the author and I was saddened by what I learned. He died broke (the plight of many pulp writers) and alone. His life reminded me of Townsend's, particularly the opening scene when Townsend is staring at his final three quarters.

There is a detailed article at Pulp Rack about the life and work of Merle Constiner. It is titled “TheHunt for Merle Constiner” and written by Peter Ruber. Read the article, and then find one of Constiner's novels.

This is another repeat. It originally went live November 14, 2009. Since I wrote this post I have read several more Merle Constiner novels, and he has become one of my favorite writers of western pulp. I few years ago I reviewed his fine novel Death Waits at Dakins Station.

I will have some original content soon. I have a few posts started, but nothing finished, but with a little luck things will settle down at work and home and I will soon have a little more time for blogging. 

CALL ME HAZARD by Frank Wynne (Brian Garfield)

It has been a summer of great older stuff at my house, and one of the fascinations I developed is the work of Brian Garfield. I read a handful of his novels and reviewed two—Necessity and Fear in a Handful of Dust. My latest Garfield experience is a Western he wrote for the ACE Double line titled Call Me Hazard. It was published as by Frank Wynne in 1966 (M-138 with The Rincon Trap by Dean Owen), and while it isn’t the top of his work it is pretty damn good.

Jason Hazard is a hard case. He isn’t a bad man, nor is he the type who looks for trouble, but nonetheless he is hard, silent, and (when he needs to be) violent. He is also a mystery—the people around him respect and admire him, but Hazard always holds back. When he left his successful mine, and the town of Stinking Springs, Arizona, he didn’t tell many why. He just left and there were a few who took exception to his absence.

Hazard is back in Stinking Springs, but he doesn’t find a warm welcome. There is a new mine owner in town. A man named Vic Olsen who has a long history with Jason—it goes back to their teenage years—and his major ambition in life is ruining Jason’s. The other major mine owners in town are all having trouble too. The place seems jinxed. There have been an abundance of cave-ins and payroll robberies, and most of the owners are contemplating selling out and moving on.

The foreman of the largest operation has gone missing and the local law—a tiny man named Owney Nash, who is owned by the new player—thinks Hazard did it. Hazard hasn’t seen the foreman since he left years earlier, but as he walks into Stinking Springs all hell breaks loose and he will need the few friends he has left in town to survive.

Call Me Hazard is an early example of Garfield’s work. His trademarks are all there—the tight and controlled suspense, the crisp dialogue and competent and literate writing—but it isn’t as sharp or developed as his later work. The story is larger than the space allowed. The plot is tricky and Garfield does well at packing it in to 126 pages, but it would have worked better with more room and run time.

With that said, Call Me Hazard is really entertaining. It is a traditional Western with everything from hired guns, to nefariously beautiful women, and cold-blooded murder. It even has a few humorous names, of which Hazard and Stinking Springs are only two. The lead is a stolid and quiet man who isn’t a hired gun or even a loner. He left Stinking Springs for a reason and everyone who knows why he left is more than glad to see him back.

There is one particular scene—the first major showdown between the protagonist and the villain—that is as suspenseful as any scene in a successful suspense novel, which is Brian Garfield’s calling card. His work, no matter the genre, is plotted to ratchet the suspense from scene-to-scene and Call Me Hazard is no different. It is early and a little too short, but it is all entertainment and a fine example of how good—even at the age of 27—Brian Garfield is.

This post originally went live August 26, 2009 in, with a few minor exceptions, the same form.

Visual Pulp: The Ace Double Titles of Jack Bickham

Jack Bickham died of lymphoma in July 1997 at the age of 66. He is best remembered as a teacher of writing. He wrote several successful, and still in print, how-to writing titles for Writer’s Digest and he lectured in the journalism department at the University of Oklahoma. While he is mostly remembered as a teacher, Mr Bickham was also a fine novelist. He wrote in several genres; mystery, suspense, Western, and science fiction. His most successful novels, stylistically, thematically and commercially, were his Brad Smith suspense novels. A series that featured an aging tennis pro who is also something of a semi-pro spy. The Brad Smith novels were published by Tor/Forge between 1989 and 1994. See the line up here.

The Brad Smith novels were written and published late in Mr Bickham’s career. A career that began in the pulp paperback era. It started with one the pulpiest producers of all: Ace Books. He wrote seven novels for Ace between 1958 and 1961; each as one-half of a double. Six Westerns and a lonesome mystery. The covers are lurid, and the writing is brief and stark. These titles are different than his later work, but also the same. They are certainly shorter (mostly running about 125 pages in mass market), and absolutely by the hand of a writer still learning his craft, but, much like his later work, each is strong on sensible plotting, reliable cause and effect action, and entertaining and likable characters. 

Below is a list of Mr Bickham’s work published by Ace. The pertinent information is all there: title,year published, Ace serial number, and the companion book. And, more importantly, a nice fresh, newly minted, scan of the cover—front and back—of each book. 

Gunman’s Gamble. Ace D-308. Published in 1958 with Draw and Die! By Roy Manning. The first sentence:

“The sky had already begun to streak with pink and purple of nightfall when he rode to town, but the townsfolk came alive when they saw him.” 

Feud Fury. Ace D-384. Published in 1959 with Mountain Ambush by Louis Trimble. The first sentence:

“‘Trouble’ Clayton Hartung muttered.”

Killer’s Paradise. Ace D-442. Published in 1960 with Rider of the Rincon by Rod Patterson. The first sentence:

“The eleven men stopped their steaming horses at the crest of the treeless hilltop and paused for just a moment, still in the driving, cruel July Kansas rain.”

The Useless Gun. Ace D-462. Published in 1960 with The Long Fuse by John A. Latham. Read the Gravetapping review. The first sentence:

“Four killers, honed to perfection in a series of raids and county seat wars, rode west out of Dallas County, Texas.”

Dally with a Deadly Doll. Ace D-489. Published in 1961 with Somebody’s Walking Over My Grave by Robert Arthur. The first sentence:

“‘Celery’ said Larry Crystal”

Hangman’s Territory. Ace D-510. Published in 1961 with The Searching Rider by Harry Whittington. The first sentence:

“The late spring storm was breaking.”

Gunmen Can’t Hide. Ace F-120. Published with Come in Shooting by John Callahan. The first sentence:

“The winter of 1880 had been cruel in Colorado.” 

This post originally went live January 17, 2010 in a very different form. The text was adjusted (hopefully for the better) and the book images were changed out for the bigger and better versions. I hope you enjoy.

THE QUAKING WIDOW by Robert Colby

“A man can get into a lot of trouble if he’s lonely. If he’s just lonely enough and has time on his hands. That’s a combination made for trouble.”

Burt Keating is from New York—just outside Buffalo—where he manages a small savings and loan branch. He is in his mid-thirties with a beautiful wife and a very comfortable life. That changes when his wife leaves on an icy night for some butter, and a few blocks from their house she is crushed between a Buick and a tree. Burt can’t seem to function anymore. He sells the house, takes a leave of absence from his job and purchases a new car—

“I wanted to flee to a new world and I knew that short of some South Pacific island, southern Florida was as close as you could come. After a few restless days in Miami, I took an apartment on the beach at Ft. Lauderdale some twenty miles away. It was a place called the Tropic Moon Apartments.”

Unfortunately the miles and warmer clime can’t set Burt’s mind right. The only thing that has any meaning is the memory of his dead wife and the life they had, but that is over and there is nothing he can do to change it. Then he meets Alicia Shafton. A woman who seems as lost and lonely as Burt, but she has a secret. Her husband, a gambler and shyster, died and left a lockbox with a note attached. It instructed her to sell the box to a man named Ralph Emory for $200,000. The only problem: Everything goes wrong and Burt can’t help but get involved.

The Quaking Widow is the first work by Robert Colby I have read and it won’t be the last. It hit a note with me—the story, setting, characters—that many works of fiction don’t. It opened with a blast—an immediate and drastic change for a protagonist with an uncertain future—and cruised forward into ever increasing peril. The characters were the expected: sleek, beautiful, mysterious, and good and bad in varying measures.

The setting is drawn marvelously. As I read, I mourned the Florida that was. The pre-Disneyland and Miami Vice Florida that was one part hillbilly and another parts chic, wealthy and dangerous. A Florida that a person can get lost in. The same Florida that was painted in the novels of John D. MacDonald with his vivid and beautiful flashes of prose.

The plotline is the expected—the dangerous and unknown femme, murder, a wildcard nympho and mysterious opponents that will stop at nothing to get the prize. In this case the box and its contents. I guessed the major plot turns before they were revealed, but it didn’t bother me because the story, while plot-driven, is textured with enough humanity to keep it more than interesting. The pacing didn't hurt either. It is perfectly developed with a well-balanced mixture of action and suspense, with a dash of romance and mystery. The prose is hardboiled and, at times, clever and rich:

“She turned around and walked briskly across the room, her high, firm buttocks waving an insolent goodbye.”

The Quaking Widow is worth tracking down. It is fifty-three years old, but it is more than just nostalgia. Heck, I wasn't even on the radar when it was written. Instead it is a fine example of a linear and well-told tale that is both entertaining and exciting.

It was published by ACE (D-195) in 1956, and coupled with Owen Dudley’s The Deep End.

This is a repost. It originally went live August 10, 2009. Since I wrote this review I have read several more Robert Colby novels, and he has become one of my favorite pulp writers.

DEATH WAITS AT DAKINS STATION by Merle Constiner

I discovered the work of Merle Constiner a few years ago, and while I haven’t read much outside the westerns he wrote for Ace in the 1960s and 70s, he has become one of my favorite pulp western writers.  I recently read his fine novel Death Waits at Dakins Station, and in my estimation it is the best novel he wrote for Ace.

Brady Willet is a young out of work cow puncher.  The novel opens with Willet standing in the rain outside the only saloon in a small Montana town.  He was paid off his last job in Wyoming, and he is making his way north to Canada for the winter.  He is approached by a man in a doe skin shirt who offers him $10 to take a simple message to a Mr Lustrell at Dakins Station. 

The message: “Shaw can’t make it.”    

It seems a simple enough task, and since Willet has only 35 cents to his name he readily agrees.  Unfortunately when he arrives at the long abandoned Dakins Station the task isn’t simple at all, and Brady’s involvement with Mr Lustrell causes him more than a few problems.  Lustrell has money trouble, and someone is trying to acquire his Box L ranch.  The interested party isn’t interested in “no” and Lustrell is worried for his own safety and that of his daughter.

Death Waits at Dakins Station is as much a mystery as a western.  It features a plot that keeps the reader guessing—and in my case mostly guessing wrong—and there is an unexpected, and very rewarding, climactic twist.  I was reminded of Ed Gorman’s westerns; particularly the deft weaving of a mystery plot into the trappings of a traditional western.  Not to mention the humor, which is the primary element that raises the novel above the ordinary— 

“‘I can’t abide this room,’ said Lustrell.  ‘I wish I was in my bedroom.’

“‘I wish I was in the Lucky Dollar Poolroom in Yuma,’ said Willet. ‘The smell was cerveza, chili, and sweat’

“They ran out of talk.”

Death Waits at Dakins Station is a premium western.  It is short, running 110 pages in mass market, and it is one of the most skilfully executed westerns I’ve read.  The plot is perfectly designed to satisfy both a western and a mystery.  The prose is stark, dry, and instilled with humor.  There is the requisite action.  Willet is bushwacked, beaten, and even chain whipped.  And at its best, it displays nearly all of these attributes at once—

“This one, the man in the hairy chaps, had his riflebutt almost to his armpit to draw his bead when Willet blasted him.  He shot twice.  Hip-shooting riflemen didn’t worry Willet too much, bead-drawing riflemen sure as hell did.”  

The characters all perfectly match the story, but Mr Constiner adds a quirky oddness to most, including a foul smelling hide-buyer named Meacham, who, when Willet meets him, explains in humorous detail how to recognize a good hide.  This is a title you should find and read, with no worry of regret.  

Death Wait at Dakins Station was published as Ace Double No. 14195 in 1970 with Ransome’s Debt by Kyle Hollingshead.

FUGITIVE OF THE STARS by Edmond Hamilton

The name Edmond Hamilton is legendary in the science fiction genre. He originated, or at least popularized, the space opera style story, and he wrote several classic tales including the short story “The Man Who Evolved”. He was a stable writer for the pulp magazine Weird Tales where he published 79 stories between 1926 and 1948¹. He was one of the most popular writers of science fiction for decades, but since his death in 1977 his work has nearly been forgotten.

I recently read his novel Fugitive of the Stars—an ACE Double (M-111) published in 1965 with Kenneth Bulmer’s Land Beyond the Map. It is, according to isfdb.org, Mr Hamilton’s second to last published novel. It is a scant 116 pages, but it is pure adventure from the opening sentence to the final page.

Horne is the First Pilot for the Federation freighter Vega Queen. He is on a leisurely cruise to the distant Fringe Worlds—a place where the Federation’s influence is only sporadic and rumors of slave ships and abduction has caused a good deal of unrest and fear. When the Vega Queen reaches its second port stop at the small world of Skereth the second pilot and Horne find trouble. Horne makes it out okay, but his second isn’t so lucky, so with a new second pilot the Vega Queen continues its scheduled route through the Fringe.

Unfortunately the trip goes awry in a hurry. The Vega Queen is smashed apart in an asteroid belt. There are only eighteen survivors, and Horne is accused of drunken negligence. He knows he was drugged, but the investigation taps him as the responsible party. He isn’t satisfied with the verdict—he escapes the detention center in search of the second pilot and the truth behind the crash.

Fugitive of the Stars is pure pulp. It captures the essence of adventure and awe that was science fiction in the 1940s and 50s. The intended market was twelve year-old boys, and it hits square. The only problem, it was written and published in the 1960s; an era when science fiction was changing from its escapist adventure roots to a more serious form. An era that introduced writers like Philip K. Dick, Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, and J.G. Ballard; Mr Hamilton was an old horse by then. His time and stories very probably viewed as archaic and trite by the genre elite.

But damn if it isn’t entertaining. The story is quick and competently written. The prose is smooth and clean, and surprisingly strong and attractive in places:

“To fall with a soundless scream through an empty chaos of contending forces, to be riven right out of your own dimensions and hurled quaking through alien continua…that was how it was, if you looked at it one way."

and

“The mountain was a skull and Horne walked within it, a micro-organism moving through the convoluted tunnels of the brain that filled its great domed hollowness.”

The bottom line: Fugitive of the Stars is entertaining. It is escapist and fun. It is competent—the prose, the plot, the characters—and very well designed. It is a novel that anyone who enjoys a quick and exciting story will enjoy. Don’t break the bank acquiring it, but if you run across a copy—buy it!

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Hamilton

THE QUAKING WIDOW by Robert Colby

“A man can get into a lot of trouble if he’s lonely. If he’s just lonely enough and has time on his hands. That’s a combination made for trouble.”

Burt Keating is from New York—just outside Buffalo—where he manages a small loan branch. He is mid-thirties with a beautiful wife and very comfortable life. That changes when his wife leaves on an icy night for some butter, and a few blocks from their house she is crushed between a Buick and a tree. Burt can’t seem to function anymore. He sells the house, takes a leave of absence from his job and purchases a new car—

“I wanted to flee to a new world and I knew that short of some South Pacific island, southern Florida was as close as you could come. After a few restless days in Miami, I took an apartment on the beach at Ft. Lauderdale some twenty miles away. It was a place called the Tropic Moon Apartments.”

Unfortunately the miles and warmer clime can’t set Burt’s mind right. The only thing that has any meaning is the memory of his dead wife and the life they had, but that is over and there is nothing he can do to change it. Then he meets Alicia Shafton. A woman who seems as lost and lonely as Burt, but she has a secret. Her husband, a gambler and shyster, died and left a lockbox with a note attached. It instructed her to sell the box to a man named Ralph Emory for $200,000. The only problem: Everything goes wrong and Burt can’t help but get involved.

The Quaking Widow is the first work by Robert Colby I have read and it won’t be the last. It hit a note with me—the story, setting, characters—that many works of fiction don’t. It opened with a blast—an immediate and drastic change for a protagonist with an uncertain future—and cruised forward into ever increasing peril. The characters were the expected: sleek, beautiful, mysterious, and good and bad in varying measures.

The setting is drawn marvelously. As I read, I mourned the Florida that was. The pre-Disneyland and Miami Vice Florida that was one part hillbilly and other parts chic, wealthy and dangerous. A Florida that a person can get lost in. The same Florida that was painted in the novels of John D. MacDonald with his vivid and beautiful flashes of prose.

The plotline is the expected—the dangerous and unknown femme, murder, a wildcard nympho and mysterious opponents that will stop at nothing to get the prize. In this case the box and its contents. I guessed the major plot turns before they were revealed, but it didn’t bother me because the story, while plot-driven, is textured with enough humanity to keep it more than interesting. The pacing didn't hurt either. It is perfectly developed with a well balanced mixture of action and suspense, with a dash of romance and mystery. The prose is hardboiled and, at times, clever and rich:

“She turned around and walked briskly across the room, her high, firm buttocks waving an insolent goodbye.”

The Quaking Widow is worth tracking down. It is fifty-three years old, but it is more than just nostalgia. Heck, I wasn't even on the radar when it was written. Instead it is a fine example of a linear and well-told tale that is both entertaining and exciting.

It was published by ACE (D-195) in 1956, and coupled with Owen Dudley’s The Deep End.

THE USELESS GUN by Jack M. Bickham

You wouldn’t know it from reading my blog—except for one lone post—but I’m a huge Jack M. Bickham fan. I first discovered his work when I read his fourth Brad Smith novel—Breakfast at Wimbledon—back in the mid-1990s and I have been reading his work ever since. I recently read an ACE Double Western titled The Useless Gun. It was paired with The Long Fuse by John H. Latham, and published in 1960. It is the fourth (of five) Western novels Bickham wrote for ACE, and it’s really pretty good.

Clayton Hartung is young and married. He is partner in a small ranch with his best friend—John Campbell—located just outside the small town of Barkerville, Texas. His life is just coming together after a rough childhood. He was an orphan and there is a hint of violence in his past, but that is all behind him until four hired gunmen come to town. It doesn’t take long for the four strangers to make their presence known: they gun down a Barkerville hardman in the hotel, and quickly thereafter dispatch the Marshal.

The Barkerville locals are scared and they look to Clay to make a stand against the men, which he does, and does alone. His partner has a game leg and the other townspeople have problems of their own. It’s too dangerous and they have families to think of after all. However, Clay is surprised by what he finds in the gang—something personal and unexpected, and the revelation changes everything.

The Useless Gun is the expected: competent action scenes, a tight and linear plot that is more familiar than unfamiliar, and crisp and plentiful dialogue. What elevates it above the ordinary is a narrow vain of emotion Mr Bickham expertly mines throughout the narrative. There is a particularly powerful lynching scene that has a drastic and deep impact on both the protagonist and reader alike. There is also the tragic sense of duty and betrayal that haunts Clay throughout.

The Useless Gun is a terrific example of the old ACE Western line—it is short, to the point, and very exciting. It has the feel of an episode of an old television series, less the bad color and strangely cool backdrops. The major plot twist is given away on the packaging—“My Brother, The Outlaw!”—although it really doesn’t diminish the entertainment value of the story. Mr Bickham’s work is a treasure chest of terrific fiction and this novel is a perfect example.

A NOTE. Jack M. Bickham wrote in multiple genres: suspense, mystery, Western, thrillers and science fiction. His work was translated into two films: The Apple Dumpling Gang, and Baker's Hawk. ACE published six of his early novels, including five Westerns--Gunman's Gamble (D-358; 1958), Feud Fury (D-384; 1959), Killer's Paradise (D-442; 1960), The Useless Gun (D-462; 1960), and Hangman's Territory (D-510; 1961)--and one mystery: Dally with a Deadly Doll (D-489; 1961) as by John Miles.