A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Will Murray on Lester Dent’s Lost Detective

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Will Murray on Lester Dent’s Lost Detective

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I’m always happy when my Pulp buddy Will Murray writes an A (Black) Gat in the  Hand essay. He tackles cool stuff that never even occurs to me. And often which I knew nothing about. Will is the leading authority on Lester Dent’s Travis McGee predecessor (and you KNOW I love me some John D. MacDonald), Oscar Sail. But I had never even heard of the the maritime PI who follwed Sail: Cyrus Peace. So I’m thrilled to give you Will’s essay on another Dent PI: who, unfortunately, never made it to print. Read on, MacDuff. 

An interesting sub-genre of modern detective fiction is the private detective who lives on and operates from a boat anchored somewhere along the Florida coast.

John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee is considered the most successful in this peculiar sub-genre. His houseboat, The Busted Flush, was moored off Fort Lauderdale.

(Editor’s Note – Click here for Black Gate’s John D. MacDonald coverage)

Others include the trio of troubleshooters who operated out of a Miami Beach houseboat in the 1960-62 Warner Bros. television show, Surfside 6––Dave Thorne, Sandy Winfield II, and attorney-turned PI Ken Madison.

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Into the Weird: Weird Times 1 — Architecture and Housing

Into the Weird: Weird Times 1 — Architecture and Housing

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The first issue of Weird Tales went on sale in late February of 1923. It was cover-dated March, but that was a sell-by date. The issue would have arrived in stores on or about February 18, roughly a week before the first issue of Time magazine. In writing about early Weird Tales, I found it useful to think about that kind of context, and to look into that moment in history.

Partly that was because some aspect of a story would occasionally become clear once I understood specific terms or references or background. Mostly, though, I found an immersion in the time helped themes become clearer and habits of thought more obvious. In the hope that exercise might be useful for anyone else reading early Weird Tales or other fiction of the 1920s, I’ll be putting up a series of posts looking at different aspects of the era, reflecting on things I’ve learned or think I’ve learned. I hope these posts will also be useful as references I can link to in my reviews, rather than having to take the time to explain some 1920s-specific detail in a story.

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Murder — What Is It Good For? Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

Murder — What Is It Good For? Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

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There’s nothing I love more than a good murder… but, before you summon the authorities, let me qualify that a bit. I love a fake murder, a fictional murder. I’ll follow Perry Mason, Lieutenant Columbo, and Jessica Fletcher anywhere.

The real thing, though? I have deeply conflicted feelings about books, movies, and especially television shows that deal with actual homicides, which puts me at odds with virtually the entire Entertainment Industrial Complex, with Prime and Netflix and all of the other streamers, because it seems like real murder is their bloody bread and butter; do any of them make anything other than true crime shows?

Immersing yourself in a fictional killing is one thing; I know that when the cameras stopped rolling, the victim got up from the floor, brushed himself off, and shared a smoke and a joke with Raymond Burr or Peter Falk. But an actual murder, where a real human being suffered and died? I don’t know — that just doesn’t seem like entertainment to me, but I’m clearly in the minority (even in my own house). I blame it all on Truman Capote and his 1966 smash bestseller (and the smash film version which followed a year later), In Cold Blood. Capote’s “nonfiction novel” has to be reckoned one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, as it virtually created the true crime genre that now dominates the media landscape to the tune of several billion dollars a year.

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Forgotten Authors: Chauncey Thomas

Forgotten Authors: Chauncey Thomas

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Chauncey Thomas

Chauncey Thomas was born in Maxfield, Maine to Prince and Mary (Née Webb) Thomas on May 1, 1822. Both of his parents claimed descent from the early Plymouth Colony settlers. Spending his early life helping out on his father’s farm, he only attended school intermittently and, when he was 15 years old was apprenticed to Whiton & Badger, a chaise carriage maker in Bangor, Maine. The terms of his apprenticeship meant he had to work 12 hours a day, in return for board and clothing and the occasional payment of a dollar. He also received one term at the Apprentices’ School in Bangor.

In 1844, Whiton and Badger procured a position for Thomas at the Boston firm of Slade & Whiton, a firm which dated back to 1813. Thomas was given the task of working on drawings for woodwork and blacksmithing departments, as well as creating renderings of finished products for clients.

Eventually, he was placed in charge of the construction of carriage bodies, but around that time he suffered a knee injury that required him to recuperate at home for nearly two years, during which time he studied astronomy, various types of mathematics, and surveying.  When he was able to return to work in 1851, he moved to West Newbury, Massachusetts and entered a partnership with Daniel P. Nichols to form Nichols & Thomas. He stayed with the Nichols family and fell in love with Nichols’ younger sister, Mary Jane.

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Dark Muse News: Mordschlag Sword and Sorcery Magazine

Dark Muse News: Mordschlag Sword and Sorcery Magazine

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One of the most fun, unique aspects of Goodman Games’ Tales from the Magician’s Skull was the blending of Sword & Sorcery with Dungeon Crawl Classics statistics for the stories.  That’s a wonderful recipe that has not been reproduced, despite many super-cool S&S periodicals being available (Dark Moon Quarterly, Battleborn, New Edge S&S, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Swords and Sorcery Magazine, Savage Realms, Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy, etc. plus loads of anthologies).

Well, this Dark Muse News post has a Press Release for The Arcanist: Fantasy Publishing’s Backerkit campaign showcasing Mordschlag Magazine! Once again, S&S adventure and RPG gaming are combined. Every pocket-sized issue of Mordschlag promises new short fiction, an article analyzing the genre, and monster stat-blocks pulled straight from the tales and ready-to-play in ShadowDark RPG.

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David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part One

David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part One

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For the Witch of the Mists by David C. Smith & Richard Tierney (Zebra, January 1978) and The Witch of the Indies by David C. Smith (Zebra, June 1977). Covers by Doug Beekman and Stephen Fabian

I consider David C. Smith (1952) a friend. We’ve never met face to face but we’ve corresponded and have spoken on the phone. As with writers such as Karl Edward Wagner and Andy Offutt, I first became aware of David as an author through a connection to Robert E. Howard.

While in REHupa, the Robert E. Howard United Press Association, I routinely did reviews of Howard pastiches. And so I came upon The Witch of the Indies (Zebra, 1977, cover by Stephen Fabian). Shortly after I picked up For the Witch of the Mists by Smith & Richard Tierney (Zebra, 1978, Cover by Doug Beekman).

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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 3: Why Can’t Anyone (Except Darwyn Cooke) Get Him Right?

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 3: Why Can’t Anyone (Except Darwyn Cooke) Get Him Right?

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Payback (Paramount Pictures, February 5, 1999

In the first two installments of this series, we looked at the master criminal known as Parker, and at his creator, Richard Stark, the pseudonym Donald E. Westlake used when writing spare and stark but hard-hitting prose.

Now let’s look at some of the many attempts to bring Parker to a wider audience.

The novels are extremely popular with a segment of the population, and so studios and directors have come calling from time to time, with attempts to adapt the character and his stories to film.

But they never quite get Parker right.

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Emergency! – Randolph Mantooth Passes Away at 80

Emergency! – Randolph Mantooth Passes Away at 80

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I am in the midst of my annual re-listen to Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee Navajo Tribal Police mysteries. I have yet to tire of those (I do NOT include his daughter Anne’s continuations. Because they’re terrible and I quit reading them. You should need more qualification than your last name, to continue somebody else’s terrific series).

Anywhoo…I also decided to re-watch season one of Dark Winds, which I had some issues with. But then I saw that Randy DeRoy Mantooth passed away, and I decided to write about him a bit.

Randolph Mantooth was co-lead on Emergency!, which aired 131 episodes from 1972-1979. For kids of the seventies, this and Adam-12, were the foundations of a life-long love of police and medical dramas. They even had a bit of crossover.

First with Tubi, then RokuTV, I started re-watching Emergency! earlier this year. I did the first three seasons and moved on to other shows. Though I just watched the season four kickoff and immediately recognized Hall of Fame running back Larry Csonka.

Emergency! featured Julie London, a popular torch singer from the fifties and sixties, as well as musician Bobby Troup. And man, Robert Fuller had soap opera good looks. They handled the hospital side of the medical drama. But the show was really about paramedics Mantooth and Kevin Tighe.

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Into the Weird: Weird Tales, March 1923 (Volume 1, Number 1) Part 1

Into the Weird: Weird Tales, March 1923 (Volume 1, Number 1) Part 1

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Weird Tales March 1923. Cover by R. R. Epperly

The first issue of Weird Tales landed on newsstands in late February of 1923. 192 pages long, it measured about 6 inches by 9, a standard size for a pulp fiction magazine. There were two different versions of the cover, perhaps due to a printing error; the illustration’s the same, a man with knife and gun fighting a shadowy tentacled monster which has grabbed a nearby young lady, but the colouring’s different. Either way, the cover advertised “‘OOZE’ / An Extraordinary / Novelette / by Anthony M. Rud / The Tale of A / Thousand Thrills.” Perhaps most intriguing, though, was the subhead below the logo: “The Unique Magazine.”

Thanks to modern technology it’s possible for anyone with an internet connection to flip through issue 1 of Weird Tales, if in a virtual format. In a later post I’ll write about the fiction the issue holds, but today I want to consider the magazine as an object (to the extent that’s possible working from a PDF). What do we see as we page through it? What signs of its times stand out? And what can be deduced about the editorial team’s vision?

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A New Beginning: Bowling With Corpses by Mike Mignola & Dave Stewart

A New Beginning: Bowling With Corpses by Mike Mignola & Dave Stewart

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It all started because I wanted to draw a kid bowling with corpses

Mike Mignola

Maybe it was John Fultz who mentioned them on Facebook. He’s always mentioning things that lead me to acquiring more books. Maybe it came to me in a dream. I’m not really sure. Either way, I discovered that Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy, the World’s Greatest Paranormal Investigator ®, had drawn and written (colored exquisitely by Dave Stewart) two collections of dark fantasy stories; Bowling With Corpses (2025), and Uri Tupka and the Gods (2026). I bought them almost at once.

Bowling With Corpses is a collection of stories, some fairytale-inspired and some detailing the setting’s complex cosmogony, opens with the following dedication:

For all those who transported me to lands unknown way back when — Howard, Smith, Lovecraft, Dunsany, Leiber, Moorcock, Lee and Kirby. And so many others. I realized now this book was inevitable.

From the first page all those influences are apparent, though I think Dunsany’s dreamlike stories such as those I reviewed from At the Edge of the World. Some follow fairytale logic, and others, dream logic. Mignola’s dark and shadow-filled art brings them to life, or death, as the case might be. In the later years of Hellboy, Mignola’s art took on a very stylized look. His work here has stepped back from that towards the more detailed style of his older work. In the afterword, Mignola describes himself as semi-retired until he realized:

“The hell with this. I love drawing comics so I’ll just keep drawing comics.”

 

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