Booked (and Printed): August 2024

 

Booked (and Printed) August 2024 While August’s temps were too hot, the days were noticeably shorter than those at summer’s height and a few even showed the promise of autumn. Heck, here and there leaves are shimmering red and gold. My reading volume was normal for August, but my eyes were sore all month and so much of my reading happened on Kindle to allow me to adjust the font size to “super old guy with angry peepers.” I read five books—two story collections, two novels, and a single nonfiction true crime—along with two individual short stories. You’ll notice, however, I’m only going to talk about one of those shorts because I don’t remember a thing about the other, besides the author’s name, and the magazine where I read it: a late-1980s Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM). Well, that issue went missing in what I think of as “The Case of the Missing EQMM” and it’s a true mystery because I’ve been looking for it for three weeks. Now, I’m wondering if a rascally poltergeist is playing tricks. But alas…onto that solitary story I wrote in my ledger and remember well. “THE SPY CAME D.O.A.,” by W. L. Fieldhouse, is a solid whodunit featuring Army CID investigator, Major Clifford Lansing, printed in the Feb. 1979 issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. When Lansing is called into investigate the murder of a colleague working undercover on a narcotics investigation in Nuremburg, Germany, he discovers a long line of criminality and treachery. Fieldhouse does an excellent job of shuffling suspects across the page and mixing action scenes into the narrative to keep things interesting. I guessed the culprit earlier than I should have, but that didn’t bother me a whit.

As for the books. Four of them are new—published in 2024—and the fifth is an old favorite. TIEBRAKER, by Jack M. Bickham (1989), is my version of comfort reading. It’s Bickham’s first mystery featuring aging professional tennis player and part-time spy, Brad Smith. In this one, Smith is sent to Yugoslavia to cover a new tournament, the Belgrade Open, for a tennis magazine. But his real assignment is to help the young tennis phenom, Danisa Lechova, defect to the United States. Tiebraker is a wild ride with a marvelous Cold War-era Eastern Bloc setting, a bunch of action, romance, and a brilliant dosing of tennis. I’ve read it five times (maybe more) and I’m sure I’ll read it again. You can read an old review I wrote for Tiebreaker here. Steve Hamilton’s AN HONORABLE ASSASSIN (2024), is a thriller that reads so fast it is easy to ignore the implausibility of the plot. It is Hamilton’s first solo job since 2018 and his first Nick Mason novel—there are three so far—since 2017. It should appeal to anyone who likes an adrenalin-rich and low-calorie thriller. Check out my full review of An Honorable Assassin here. LONG HAUL: HUNTING THE HIGHWAY SERIAL KILLERS, by Frank Figliuzzi (2024), is a scary but fascinating look at serial killers working America’s highways. It is centered around the FBI’s Highway Serial Killings initiative, which identifies and tracks these murders. After reading it, I’ll never look at truck stops with same innocence as I once did. My full review of Long Haul is here. Lee Child’s SAFE ENOUGH AND OTHER STORIES (2024), is a collection of 20 standalone tales without Jack Reacher anywhere in sight. The stories are thoughtful, exciting, mysterious, and…good! Check out my review of Safe Enough here. The final collection (and book) of the month, HERETIC 2: MORE STORIES, by Philip José Farmer (2024), is a cool collection of three of Farmer’s early stories—one novella and two shorts—from the 1950s. They, like pretty much everything Farmer wrote, question authority and religion in an entertaining and thought-provoking manner. I’ll have more to say about this one in the next few weeks. Last, and I suppose least, is Robert Littell’s A NASTY PIECE OF WORK (2013), because I gave up the fight a little more than halfway to the finish. I’ve enjoyed Littell’s spy fiction, including his extraordinary novel about the CIA, The Company (2002), but what appealed to me most about A Nasty Piece of Work—its P.I. status and New Mexico setting—wasn’t enough to overcome the longwinded narrative, including pages-long descriptions of women’s ankles and feet. I couldn’t pin down when the novel took place, either. It felt like it was written in the late-1980s—no cell phones, descriptions of an Afghanistan that seemed more Soviet Union-era than post-9/11—and then half-heartedly updated to give it a 21st Century feel. It didn’t work. On any level. Fin— Now on to next month…

Professional Tennis, Amateur Spying: Jack M. Bickham’s Brad Smith Thrillers

 Professional Tennis, Amateur Spying: Jack M. Bickham’s Brad Smith Thrillers

by Ben Boulden

The six Brad Smith espionage thrillers, published by Tor between 1989 and 1994, are Jack Bickham’s most mature work. The critics were enthusiastic. The New York Times’ thriller review columnist, Newgate Callendar, was a consistent champion. He compared the Smith books to Dick Francis’s mysteries: “Bickham is doing for tennis what Dick Francis has done for horse racing.” He called the books, “skillful,” “smooth,” “highly enjoyable,” and “exciting.” Wes Lukowsky, in Booklist, called the series “deftly plotted.” Publishers Weekly, in its review of The Davis Cup Conspiracy, said, “Bickham deftly flips from tennis lore to the spying game in his customary style, nailing another ace.”

[for the rest of the article click here to go to Dark City Underground…]

TIEBREAKER by Jack M. Bickham

In 1989 a midlist writer named Jack Bickham published the slim suspense novel Tiebreaker. It was the first of six novels featuring aging professional tennis player, current teaching pro, sometime magazine writer, and former CIA asset Brad Smith. Brad is a step beyond the tail of his career and, after investing his prime years’ winnings unwisely, earns a living as a teaching pro at a club in Richardson, Texas. The novel’s opening is too good not to share—

“The last thing I had on my mind was somebody breaking into my condominium and dragging me into the past.”

It wasn’t on his mind because he was playing the finals of his tennis club’s first annual Richardson Charity Tournament against a hotshot college player acting like John McEnroe and threatening to clean the court with Brad. A battle between age and arrogance. When Brad makes it home, so both he and the reader can discover who and what is going to drag him into the past, he finds his old agency contact, Collie Davis, watching a western on television with a beer in his hand.

The agency has an assignment requiring Brad’s specialized credentials; a young Yugoslavian tennis star named Danisa Lechova wants to defect to the west, but her passport has been confiscated, and the UDBA (Yugoslavia’s version of the KGB) is openly watching her. Brad agrees, reluctantly, to act as Danisa’s go-between for the defection, using his cover as a tennis writer. 

The Brad Smith novels rank as my favorite featuring a serial character. Brad is uniquely American. He does odd jobs for the agency due to a perceived debt he owes—

“ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”

—but he often doesn’t like the assignments, or the agency’s work overall. In a sense he is supporting the lesser of two evils—meaning the CIA against the KGB and the Soviet Union. He is a patriot, but it stops somewhere short of murder, coups, criminality, and E. Howard Hunt. He has a conscience and a well-defined ethical awareness that is unique to spy thrillers. He is also likable, admirable, mostly, and has more trouble with women than imaginable.

The novels, and Tiebreaker is no exception, are written in both first and third person. Brad’s perspective is in first, and an assortment of characters, including good guys and bad, are in third. The alternating perspectives give the novel a hybrid feel—Brad’s narration is more closely related to a private eye novel with social commentary making it more personal, and the third person expands it into a broader and larger suspense-spy story.

The tennis is an integral element to the story, and it is described so well it becomes a secondary character—

“Somehow I got my Prince composite on the yellow blur and bounced it down the line, hitting the back corner, close. He glided over to get it and I thought I saw the angle and guessed, chuffing up toward the net.”

The suspense is expertly designed around the story questions—a clue is identified, but its impact and relevance is not revealed for several pages. It is done without any annoying tricks or contrivance. The characters—both Brad Smith and the secondary folks—are well defined without any doubts about motivation or outcome. There are no crazy monsters, or unexplained actions. Everything is logical and smooth.

I like Tiebreaker and its five sequels so well that I re-read the entire series every few years, and if I was any more weak-willed I would probably read them more often.

MISSING AT TENOCLOCK by Arthur Williams (Jack M. Bickham)

Missing at Tenoclock (1994), as by Arthur Williams—a one-off pseudonym of the prolific and reliably good Jack M. Bickham—is the first of the two Jonelle “Johnny” Baker mysteries set in the fictional Colorado mountain town of Tenoclock. Tenoclock is a tourist boom town with enough celebrity landowners to make it a small and growing version of Vail. There ski lifts, daily old west-style shootouts on its hokey and touristy downtown streets, too, but for all its growth the Sheriff’s Office is still a small operation that usually closes its doors by midnight.

Then Sheriff Jim Way has a gruesome accident with a train; the engineer doesn’t see him lying across the tracks until it is too late. Way’s clothes are saturated with whiskey—a high shelf bottle of Maker’s Mark was found on the front seat of his Bronco—and Tenoclock’s political leaders go into high gear to sell Way’s death as a side-effect of his heavy drinking. But Johnny, who is appointed acting-Sheriff as a publicity stunt by the county commissioners, believes Way’s death wasn’t an accident. She knew Way didn’t drink heavily enough to pass out on a cold autumn night, and he never drank expensive whiskey. In the background is a missing runaway girl, and as Johnny investigates she gets an uneasy feeling the missing girl and Way’s death are connected. 

Missing at Tenoclock is a traditional mystery with several beautifully crafted and suspenseful action scenes. There is a scene where a major player is trapped in an old mine that remains in the reader's mind long after the incident is resolved. The mystery is somewhat light since it is clear who the villain is early in the story, but Bickham does an exceptional job of ratcheting the suspense by slowly revealing the how and the why of both Way’s death and what happened to the missing woman. It doesn’t hurt that Johnnie gets in deeper trouble with every step she takes. The setting is perfectly small-town with oddball characters—a scholarly jailer and grumpy diner owner comes to mind—and small minded and greedy politicians. Missing at Tenoclock is a title to keep a lookout for in used book shops and thrift stores, especially if you enjoy a light mystery with a pleasant setting and likable characters.

The second (and final) Johnnie Baker mystery novel is titled Tenoclock Scholar (1995), and it, like Missing at Tenoclock was published by Walker & Company as a hardcover and neither book was ever published in paperback. An oddity between the two novels: Missing at Tenoclock, was published as by Arthur Williams and Tenoclock Scholar was published with another Bickham pseudonym, John Miles. 

DOUBLE FAULT by Jack M. Bickham

Double Fault is the fifth novel featuring Brad Smith. It was published in 1993 by Tor. It is Brad’s most personal adventure, focusing on his, and America’s, experience with Vietnam. It is less espionage and more suspense than the other titles and it is the best of the Brad Smith novels.

Arnie Tubb is a head case. He has been in and out of military mental hospitals since leaving Vietnam. After his transfer to the cancer ward of Walter Reed hospital, Arnie takes advantage of its lax security and escapes. During the war Arnie was involved in the massacre of a Vietnamese village, very much like My Lai, which the Army wants to keep secret and Arnie wants to avenge. His vengeance is focused on a group of soldiers who refused to participate in the slaughter and his final target is a helicopter pilot named Kevin Green. Kevin was Brad’s mentor on his college tennis team and he is officially listed as missing in action. His name appeared on a manifest of returning prisoners at the conclusion of the war, but he never came home.

Brad unknowingly gets involved when a member of Tubb’s group, disguised as an Army official, contacts him looking for Kevin and his copilot, Dave Wentworth. Brad insists, sincerely, Kevin Green is dead and he is unaware of Wentworth’s location. After the imposter leaves, Brad telephones Wentworth at his Kansas home and gets an odd reaction. Dave is frightened and abruptly ends the call. A few days and several dozen unanswered telephone calls later, Brad travels to Kansas where he finds Dave dead, his throat slashed, in his apartment. Brad, feeling responsible for Dave’s death, decides to start an amateur investigation and finds himself Arnie’s primary target and a useful tool of the U.S. Army.

Double Fault is a nicely developed suspense novel. The pacing creates something of a funnel. The early scenes rolling along the top, progressing deeper and deeper, narrower and faster until its climactic finale. Mr. Bickham expertly stalls the details of the Vietnam massacre, particularly Kevin Green’s role, until the final scenes, which keeps both Brad and the reader off balance. The unknown factors, Arnie’s motive, Kevin Green’s role, generate believable tension and allow Brad to be played by all sides—Tubb’s group and the government (Army, F.B.I. and to a lesser extent C.I.A.) But what separates this novel from the others is its rendering of Vietnam’s long term impact on the soldiers who fought, in a larger than life manner, and the consequence, or responsibility, of friendship. Brad’s friendship with Kevin Green and his C.I.A. pal Collie Davis at its center.

GOIN' by Jack M. Bickham

1971 was a big year for Jack M. Bickham.  He turned 41, published six novels, including his novel The Apple Dumpling Gang, and his much lesser known novel Goin’.  Goin’ is different than much of Mr Bickham’s work.  It is a mainstream novel.  Or at least something approaching a mainstream novel.  Perhaps a hybrid between a straight hippie novel and a modern western is more apt.   

The year is 1969.  Stan Pierce is 40, newly divorced—

“CONGRATULATIONS, STAN.  YOU’RE FREE.  BARBARA”   

—and going through a mid-life crisis.  His hair has grown to his collar, he purchased a little Honda 450 street bike, and as the novel opens Stan is headed for the road.  He has no clear destination, but he knows what is behind him; an ex-wife, a young daughter, and a seething personal unhappiness. 

Once on the road Stan joins two bikers who are short on cash, and he tags along to a farm outside the rural city of Kirkerville (likely Arizona, but it is never identified as such), and hires on as a fruit picker.  In Kirkerville he meets a young married woman named Elizabeth Faering.  She is everything he wants.  Young.  Beautiful.  Independent.  Free.  The two lovers concoct a future together, but the dream is interrupted by a fruit pickers’ strike.  A strike Stan agrees with, but a strike that is commandeered by a man who is less interested in getting the workers’ better pay and working conditions, and more interested in starting a revolution.

Goin’ is a pretty great novel.  It fits its time and place; think back to an age when motorcycle riders were considered hooligans, smoking reefer was an unconscionable sin, free love was the opposite of “up-tight”, and Eugene McCarthy was a saint of liberalism. 

The tension is generated both by plot—the strike and the population’s reaction to it—and Stan’s inner turmoil.  He is an everyman outsider.  He attempts to fit, but he is ostracized by Kirkerville’s residents as an outside agitator, it is not uncommon for him to be called a “pinko,” and the strikers, particularly his two friends, view him as a traitor.  His affair with Liz ends badly, although not unexpectedly, and it is written with a powerful simplicity, which makes Stan’s emotional pain visceral.

Goin’ was published as a paperback original by Paperback Library in July 1971, and to my knowledge it has never seen print again.  

This review originally went live April 4, 2014, and I've been thinking about it again the last few weeks. It is a very good novel that should have an audience.

BREAKFAST AT WIMBLEDON by Jack M. Bickham

Breakfast at Wimbledon is the fourth novel featuring aging tennis pro Brad Smith. It was published in 1991 by Tor, and it has a certain nostalgia for me since it was the first Brad Smith, and Jack Bickham, novel I read back in the long ago. It is also pretty good, and represents Brad Smith’s transition from cold war to post-cold war hero.

Brad is uneasy when his old pal and CIA contact Collie Davis makes an unannounced appearance at his Bitterroot Valley Resort—

“Collie Davis did not make casual visits.”

—with good reason, as it turns out. Collie wants Brad to accept an invitation to play at Wimbledon. A legitimate terrorist threat has been identified, and it centers around a young Irish tennis star named Sean Cork. Brad’s job: play tennis, ingratiate himself with Sean Cork, and collect information. All very hands-off with no expected direct danger. Unsurprisingly, it is more complicated than it is supposed to be, and the danger is very real, and very personal, to Brad.

This is one of my favorite of the Brad Smith novels, and for more reasons than mere nostalgia. It brings something new to the series—terrorists rather than communists—without losing the atmosphere and tone of the previous novels. It helps that Brad’s Soviet nemesis Sylvester remains a key player, and it includes more tennis action than any of the novels since Tiebreaker, which is good since Mr. Bickham writes it so well. It is the longest, and includes the largest cast, of any of the novels. There is a drug crazy American tennis star playing doubles with Brad, an Irish entrepreneur millionaire with a taste for both money and tennis, the very naïve Sean Cork, and a bunch of terrorists that run the gamut in both sophistication and psychopathy.

The most interesting character is an MI5 agent named Clarence Tune. Tune is assigned to liaise with Brad, and keep him safe, which is telling on the perceived importance—or lack thereof—of Smith’s mission. Tune is not given high priority or sensitive assignments, and he is considered less an agent and more a liability by his peers. His character is summed early by Brad—

“Science has not told me so, but I think there must be some other substance excreted by people whose lives have been marked by failure. Such people emit a sour, acidic smell, the work of a few molecules, perhaps, and so primitive that it communicates on a psychic level I cannot understand.”

—if only partially accurate since Tune’s presence, and assistance, is essential to defeating the underlying terrorist plot. A plot that is not made clear until the final pages of the novel. The action is plausible, and the pacing is superb. It has the highest level of characterization of all the novels, and—despite an aged plot—is as readable today as it was 25 years ago. 

OVERHEAD by Jack M. Bickham

Overhead is the third novel featuring Brad Smith. It was published in 1991 by Tor, and it is something of a transitional novel in the series. It is longer than the first two—as are the three that follow—and it permanently moves Brad from Richardson, Texas to the fictional Elk City, Montana.

Brad’s old tennis pal, Ted Treacher—who helped Danisa escape Yugoslavia in Tiebreaker—purchased a tennis and golf resort outside of Elk City. There is local opposition, and he is leveraged to the eyeballs. Ted wants Brad’s help to set up a small professional tournament. He has $60,000 purse money and the tournament would bring welcome publicity. Collie wants Brad to do some snooping while he is there. A civilian employee of a nearby Air Force research facility was caught removing classified data, but murdered before she could talk. The FBI thinks the Soviets are behind both spying and murder. It also thinks the killer is Brad’s old nemesis Sylvester. A little loyalty—to Ted, mostly—and a quarrel with the new head tennis pro at the resort Brad works, persuades him to load his Bronco and go to Montana.

Overhead is the weakest of the Brad Smith novels. It is longer than the first two, and several subplots run through its length; specifically, a corporate corruption scandal and an unexplained high rate of child death in Elk City. It is busy, and all of the intrigue distracts from the main focus of the novel—Brad’s and Sylvester’s ever growing annoyance with each other. It isn’t a bad novel at all, but it isn’t quite as good as the other novels in the series.

The good stuff is the setting, characters, and suspense. Mr. Bickham develops the cloying small town atmosphere of Elk City nicely, and does an even better job with the resort. The characters are never without believable motivation. There is the bully-psychopath Elk City cop, Ted who is falling apart under the financial pressure of the resort, Ardis Allen, a cutthroat businesswoman, Sylvester, and Brad. It is also structured to achieve a high level of suspense. It is written in first—Brad’s perspective—and third person, and the alternating perspective allows the author to prolong suspenseful scenes across more than one chapter (and it works very well).

There is also a nice touch of social commentary, and something about the human experience. My favorite—

“Hemingway liked to talk about how life sometimes bent people, sometimes in such a way that they healed and went on, stronger because of the hurt. He said life sometimes broke people, too. But he never really came to terms with that. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe at the very end Hemingway understood being truly broken, beyond healing, and that was why he went down to the hallway that fine sunny morning outside of Ketchum and put both barrels of the shotgun to his forehead, just above the eyes, and pulled both triggers.”

Overhead may not be the best of Jack Bickham’s Brad Smith novels, but it is still an exciting, entertaining, and very worthwhile read.

DROPSHOT by Jack M. Bickham

Dropshot is Jack Bickham’s second novel featuring Brad Smith. It was published in 1990 by Tor, and it is one of the best titles in the series. It opens with Brad in a crazy grief; his wife, Danisa, died in a plane crash, and Brad has little to live for. He is doing leather work trying to forget, struggling to keep sanity enough to muddle through his zombie-like days. On an October afternoon he receives an invitation to Al Hesser’s Tennis College in St. Maarten—free room and board with no strings attached. Brad files it in the “too hard” category, and immediately throws it out.

A few days later Collie Davis, Brad’s CIA contact, arrives in Richardson. Collie wants Brad to accept the invitation and snoop around the resort. Brad rejects the idea outright. As he does again when his old friend and doubles partner Pat Reilly asks Brad to accompany him to the island. A decision Brad later regrets because Pat dies in a suspicious scuba accident after sending Brad a desperate letter and a signature card for bank safe deposit box. Brad goes to St. Maarten—off the radar of both the CIA and the tennis resort—to investigate Pat’s death. What he finds is much larger and more dangerous than he expected.

Dropshot is a clever, twisty suspense novel. One of its major themes is death. Brad’s wife is only one of the ghosts, and there are some powerful moments. An example is an early scene when two tennis hackers are preparing for a charity tournament, and one of the men tells Brad his wife died of cancer—

“There are times like that when you want to say you notice. I’ve never known how to say it in a way that will make sense. We walk around, making our social noises, and occasionally someone opens the shutters over his eyes and we see that glimpse, that we share something crucial. But it always seems to come out wrong, and everyone ends up being embarrassed, or mystified. And so we don’t try to say it.”   

It is also a novel of recovery. The investigation breaks Brad’s grief, and a new woman enters his life. But most importantly it is exciting, suspenseful, and exotic. There are a handful of distasteful villains including Sylvester—who acts as Brad’s Moriarty in three of the novels. There are also several well-designed characters; a predatory nymph, an overextended resort owner, an angry teenager whose body as outgrown his emotions, a gambling computer programmer. The plot is devised perfectly. There are seemingly small, almost inconsequential moments that payoff big in later chapters.

Dropshot is a cold war novel and it has held up well since its publication 25 years ago. The reason has less to do with the plot and setting than it does with Brad Smith’s narration. He is sympathetic, tough when he needs to be, and a proclaimed coward. He has a realistic view of the CIA—a necessary evil—and he is likable as hell.          

TIEBREAKER by Jack M. Bickham

In 1989 a midlist writer named Jack Bickham published the slim suspense novel Tiebreaker. It was the first of six novels featuring aging professional tennis player, current teaching pro, sometime magazine writer, and former CIA asset Brad Smith. Brad is a step beyond the tail of his career and, after investing his prime years’ winnings unwisely, earns a living as a teaching pro at a club in Richardson, Texas. The novel’s opening is too good not to share—

“The last thing I had on my mind was somebody breaking into my condominium and dragging me into the past.”

It wasn’t on his mind because he was playing the finals of his tennis club’s first annual Richardson Charity Tournament against a hotshot college player acting like John McEnroe and threatening to clean the court with Brad. A battle between age and arrogance. When Brad makes it home, so both he and the reader can discover who and what is going to drag him into the past, he finds his old agency contact, Collie Davis, watching a western on television with a beer in his hand.

The agency has an assignment requiring Brad’s specialized credentials; a young Yugoslavian tennis star named Danisa Lechova wants to defect to the west, but her passport has been confiscated, and the UDBA (Yugoslavia’s version of the KGB) is openly watching her. Brad agrees, reluctantly, to act as Danisa’s go-between for the defection, using his cover as a tennis writer.

The Brad Smith novels rank as my favorite featuring a serial character. Brad is uniquely American. He does odd jobs for the agency due to a perceived debt he owes—

“ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”

—but he often doesn’t like the assignments, or the agency’s work overall. In a sense he is supporting the lesser of two evils—meaning the CIA against the KGB and the Soviet Union. He is a patriot, but it stops somewhere short of murder, coups, criminality, and E. Howard Hunt. He has a conscience and a well-defined ethical awareness that is unique to spy thrillers. He is also likable, admirable, mostly, and has more trouble with women than imaginable.

The novels, and Tiebreaker is no exception, are written in both first and third person. Brad’s perspective is in first, and an assortment of characters, including good guys and bad, are in third. The alternating perspectives give the novel a hybrid feel—Brad’s narration is more closely related to a private eye novel with social commentary making it more personal, and the third person expands it into a broader and larger suspense-spy story.

The tennis is an integral element to the story, and it is described so well it becomes a secondary character—

“Somehow I got my Prince composite on the yellow blur and bounced it down the line, hitting the back corner, close. He glided over to get it and I thought I saw the angle and guessed, chuffing up toward the net.”

The suspense is expertly designed around the story questions—a clue is identified, but its impact and relevance is not revealed for several pages. It is done without any annoying tricks or contrivance. The characters—both Brad Smith and the secondary folks—are well defined without any doubts about motivation or outcome. There are no crazy monsters, or unexplained actions. Everything is logical and smooth.

I like Tiebreaker and its five sequels so well that I re-read the entire series every few years, and if I was any more weak-willed I would probably read them more often.

Thrift Shop Book Covers: "Killer's Choice"

Killer’s Choice was (I believe) a paperback original published by Berkley Medallion in 1965. The copyright date is listed as 1964, and it is possible there was an earlier edition. The edition that caught my eye is the 1972 mass market reprint—also published by Berkley Medallion. It features a wounded man—his back to the audience—drawing his revolver. The art is vivid in a muted and almost melancholy manner. The background is empty except for a lightening—as it climbs the cover—blush of sandy brown. It has the appearance of a dust storm, and effectively isolates the man from his surroundings. The artist: It is signed “Watson,” but an Internet search came up empty on additional details.

The opening paragraph:

“There was no moon. A warm wind moved steadily over the vast, tinder-dry prairie. The noise of the wind and lack of moonlight made it a perfect night for the killer’s work. The killer was anxious to get the job done since he had already been paid for it.”

“Jeff Clinton” was a pseudonym Jack M. Bickham used, primarily, for his Wildcat O’Shea Western novels. He also published a solitary science fiction novel titled Kane’s Odyssey as by Jeff Clinton for Laser Books in 1976.

This is the twelfth in a series of posts featuring the cover art ad miscellany of books I find at thrift stores and used bookshops. It is reserved for books I purchase as much for the cover art as the story or author.

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.