Pulp Books

As with many Radio series, Casey, Crime Photographer had its origins in pulp fiction. A new book by J. Randolph Cox and David S. Siegel covers the Casey character from the first stories in a pulp magazine, to novels and comic books, plays, motion pictures, Radio and television. The authors have uncovered much previously unpublished information and have presented it in a very readable format.

The Casey character was created by award-winning mystery writer George Harmon Coxe and premiered in a short story in a popular pulp magazine of the 1930s, Black Mask. Included in Flashgun Casey are that original short story, "Return Engagement," and a biography of Casey's creator, who was twice President of the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and recipient of the MWA Grand Master Award in recognition of his lifetime contribution to the mystery genre.

The non-Radio manifestations of Casey are thoroughly documented in the book. Background information is provided on the various literary, theatrical, motion picture and video productions involving the crime-fighting photographer. The authors trace how the Casey character and supporting cast changed with the demands of the different media. They also provide synopses of all 21 short stories and novelettes, six novels, four comic books, two films and a play. Additionally, there is a broadcast log for the 1945 and 1951-1952 television series.

The sections on the Radio series cover approximately 40 percent of the book. There are photographs and an illustration of all main cast and crew members. A variety of topics relating to the Radio series are elaborated on:
how Casey came to Radio;
an overview of Casey's Radio career; cast and crew information and program changes;
series title, times slot, and opening changes;
an assessment of Casey's popularity;
ratings; and
a sampling of plot summaries.
Radio scripts for two Casey episodes that are not in circulation, "Hanged by the Neck" and "The White Monster," also have been included by the authors.

The Radio log was compiled from many sources including CBS archives materials, the scripts of the primary writer, Alonzo Deen Cole, and information from a variety of newspapers and other sources. The log includes broadcast dates for all episodes, titles for all but 19 episodes, writer credits, broadcast days and times, and whether or not an episode is in circulation. The log also lists those episodes whose scripts were reused.

Flashgun Casey, Crime Photographer: From the Pulps to Radio and Beyond is well-written and researched and highly informative. David S. Siegel and J. Randolph Cox should be congratulated for bringing much new information into print. If you are a fan of this popular radio series and/or would like to learn more about the various incarnations of this character, this book is for you.

Gives a good overview of the pulp magazines, and gives profiles on the Shadow,his agents,enemies,supporting characters,etc. Provides an entertaining critique of the Shadow's multiple "secret identities".

It really is more of a booklet than a full book, so beware of sellers charging high prices.

I've read 30 books in the first 4 months of 2007 and this has been the only book so far in which I've read the entire thing in only one day! Needless to say from the above, I thought that the book was an excellent read for numerous reasons.

Firstly, I found the precarious positions that the characters were into very entertaining... titillating, as a matter of fact. From England to India and Hong Kong, all scenarios had me glued to the pages.

Secondly, the style of writing and the plot-line jumping held my attention as I begged for more throughout the day.

Lastly, the characters were down-to-earth and easy to relate to. This relationship with the characters makes the scenarios easier to experience through their eyes.

This book, finally reprinted in a better and clearer format with fewer mistakes, is quite possibly the greatest account of pulp magazine/fiction history. Don Hutchinson recounts the stories of some of the greatest pulp fiction heroes and villains, while sharing the history of the publishers, books, authors, and the evolutions of the genre. I learned things about pulp heroes that I never knew, and was re-introduced to things I did.

It's very interesting to read the similarities between the classic pulp heroes and the now-famous comic book heroes. It's great to see how much inspired the creators of and writers for Spiderman, Superman, Batman, and James Bond. Inspiration from these heroes of the pulp magazines, books, radio shows, comic books, and movies can be seen everywhere, it's amazing!

Whether it's an introduction to the pulp genre, or a new book for an old fan, I highly recommend to it anyone interested in the subject. I've already read it twice and now I use it as reference material, or pick it up every so often to re-read the history of The Shadow, Doc Savage, Operator #5, or G-8 and His Battle Aces. It's really a fantastic read!

Robert Hunter died May 2nd, 2005, shortly after this book was published. I have every book he ever published; every damn one of them is a trip to read, like you're sitting in a bar with this great storyteller and he cannot stop talking - and you don't want him to! Bob was a great storyteller, and this one about the first-ever Greenpeace voyage (indeed, before there even was a Greenpeace!) is as good as anything he ever wrote. Bob was as alive as any man who walked the earth. An incredibly insightful writer who knew how important "getting the story out" was to the cause. It has been said that without Bob Hunter there never would have been a Greenpeace. I agree totally. He wrote with an intensity and with great humor, but never as an outsider. He was totally engulfed in the great causes of early Greenpeace: the whales and seals, the nuclear testing. And the last book he wrote (2030, written in 2002) was all about global warming, also a great read. Bob will be missed! I was lucky to have met and worked with Bob back in the early Greenpeace days. We shared a sixpack of beer and talked about big-picture ecology, life, love - everything we really care about. That was Bob Hunter. With his passing I rededicate my life to what Bob was all about. A great guy, a great writer. I recommend all his books - most of which you'll have to find used by now. I treasure his books on my shelf much like I treasure my collection of Edward Abbey books. Those two guys go great together. Peace Bob! Godspeed!

Enhanced with illustrations by Eve Corbel, Guests In Your Garden: Facts & Folklore About Bugs, Slugs, And Other Garden Creatures by experienced gardener Michele Davidson is a superbly organized and presented compendium of useful and descriptive information about all the insects that are a normal part of the gardening experience including: ants, bees, wasps, cockroaches, termites, beetles, moths, butterflies, caterpillars, damselflies, dragonflies, mayflies, praying mantids, grasshoppers, crickets, walking sticks, thrips, earwigs, fleas, flies, mosquitoes, craneflies, fruit flies, centipedes, millipedes, slugs, snails, earthworms, leeches, waterbugs, aphids, scale, spittlebugs, cicadas, mealybugs, sowbugs, spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks. Guests In Your Garden is an enthusiastically recommended and highly informative contribution to any personal or community library gardening and/or horticultural studies reference shelf.

Written by Victoria-based, award-winning journalist Ross Crockford, Victoria: The Unknown City is an in-depth guide to one of Canada's and the world's top tourist destinations. Packed with directions, recommendations, and tidbits of history regarding everything from popular bars to the remnants of the original Fort Victoria to local haunted locations and advice for avoiding long waits and bad seats on the BC Ferries, Victoria is the "go-to" guide for experiencing all the adventure and wonder the city has to offer. Black-and-white photographs and an index round out a solid guide to tourist activities from sports to dining to shopping, nightlife, and experiencing local media. Recommended as a supplemental resource for Victoria vacationers looking to get the most out of their visit.

In "Hard Boiled," Erin A Smith's study of detective fiction, she quotes a review of a book of ghost stories, written by an academic: "There is nothing of the usual professor's dullness about them." The same could be said of her witty, provocative book.

What began life as a doctoral dissertation about the so-called hard-boiled detective novels of the first half of this century (Hammett, Chandler, et. al.) has been turned into an entertaining, thoughtful look at who read potboilers and what they learned from them. Smith argues pursuasively that hard-boiled readers, most of them male and blue collar, unwittingly picked up lessons about culture, masculinity, even how to dress and talk to women, from the books they bought at the drug store because they cost a dime and had pictures of loose women on the cover.

For me, the best chapter is the one in which Smith compares a hard-boiled novel to a British let's-have-tea-on-the-lawn-shall-we? mystery. Both novels are set on trains, but they have little else in common and Smith's discussion of the class, sociological and stylistic differences between the two books almost convinced this lover of both kinds of mysteries that the hard-boiled ones are more fun (almost; I'll still take my murder in the drawing room, preferably with a snoopy old biddy in the house next door, just dying to solve it).

Smith is an engaging writer (her dry description of the almost impenetrable plot of "The Big Sleep" is hilarious and cogent), whose wit, enthusiasm and gift for spotting the revelatory detail is on every page of "Hard-Boiled." Her descriptions of the novels and stories she discusses are so vivid that you understand what they're about, even if you haven't read them. And her grasp of the technique of writing pulp fiction is so strong that some of the writers, especially "Perry Mason" creator Erle Stanley Gardner, emerge as characters (somebody really needs to write a book about him, based on the evidence here).

Near the end of "Hard-Boiled," Smith suggests how that genre of fiction continues to influence today's writers, who are broadening the scope of mysteries to investigate gender, race. Obviously, it's a genre that deserves more study and Smith's work is a convincing, eminently readable place to start.

The full title of this book is the Weinberg-McKinstry Hero Pulp Index (2nd Ed.) and I am Lohr McKinstry, the co-author with Bob Weinberg.
This is an index to most of the single-character hero pulp magazines of the 1930s and '40s, titles like The Shadow and Doc Savage. Bob and I compiled these indexes from dozens of sources and collected them between covers for the first time.
This is the 35th anniversary of the index, and a third, updated edition is planned. Most of what needs to be updated is who wrote what. Some of the authors we credited for various stories may not have been who we thought they were (for instance, Laurence Donovan, who wrote a few Doc Savage novels, wasn't a pen name, but Paul Chadwick, who wrote some Secrer Agent X novels, was). The books themselves appeared under house-names, Kenneth Robeson and Brant House, in these examples.
If you can find one of these, buy it.

No, it's not the UK basketball team, it's a collection of giant wildmen, under the control of a vicious master criminal, bent on -- Well, it's never exactly clear what they're bent on, but clear plots have never been part of THE SPIDER, nor are they that important. The important thing, as always, is slam-bang action. This has somew of the most intense action of any SPIDER story. Particularly impressive are Richard Wentworth's run through the mountains to spread the news about the wild-men, and his hand to hand battle at the farmhouse.