I couldn’t find much about the author. He was born in 1936. He wrote The Liberty Corps series and several entries in The Penetrator series, Soldier for Hire series, and The Black Eagles series. Probably many more but this is all I could find.
The Six Gun Samurai series had 8 entries. The first six are under the title Six Gun Samurai and the last two are inexplicably changed to Six Gun Warrior. The series was adorably written under the, somewhat Asian-ambiguous, house name of Patrick Lee.
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Video review in case you don't feel like readin:
The basic premise: 12-year-old Tommy Fletcher is a midshipman in the United States Navy and is stationed in Japan. One night a group of ninjas attack and kill everyone at the base except Tommy who escapes into the streets of Japan. He remains there as a street urchin until a Samurai adopts him and teaches him the way of the Samurai. Years later he returns to the US to enact revenge upon the Union soldiers who killed his estranged Southern family.
The Civil War ended in 1865 and now a rogue Union Colonel and his criminal cavalry terrorize the West by violently stealing claims, money and even whole towns. Bad news for them though because Tanaka Tom is back in the US and out for blood.
We start in Washout, Nevada. Two white gunslingers are in town to rob the place. They're at the bar drinking when a strange man wearing Asian garb shows up. Dumb crackers are never a fan of foreigners, so they decide to have a little fun. They verbally berate him with racial slurs. He calmly states he is Tommy Fletcher, whips out his sword and starts chopping off body parts. Heads literally roll. It is explicitly described in wonderful bloody detail.
Instead of just stating what Tommy looks like, it’s clever the way the author used the outlaws insults to describe his appearance. Tommy is half Native American and half white, so everyone thinks he's...Japanese?? “Especially when he has a tan.”
At the end of the fight the bartender clunks Tommy over the head and he wakes up in jail. We get a reminiscing flashback to his time In Japan and what happened after the night of the ninja. With no way to get home and in a foreign land he survives on the streets doing what he has to to survive. He gets in a fight with some other street kids and runs into a samurai while chasing them. The Samurai learns he is an American and he was a survivor of the infamous massacre of the naval base. The Samurai wants him to testify at a hearing that will help the Shogun because people say it was the Samurai’s fault the US navy people were killed. Long story short Tommy goes to live with the childless Samurai and his wife and Tommy is adopted as their son.
It's a very convoluted back story but I appreciate that it was so complex and in depth. You usually don’t see such effort in foreigner-learns-a-form-of-martial-arts stories.
At the end of the flashback Tommy is released from jail as he was defending himself.
From here on out we get snippets of the bad guys being bad and holy shit, the author really goes all in. In one scene there is a group of families mining a claim. They strike gold. Two of the men go to town to get supplies and instantly the claim jumpers attack the family remaining at the claim. They beat the men to get them to sign over the claim. Still, they refuse. Among the gang of outlaws is a pedophile who takes the man’s son into the bushes and rapes him. The sounds of the boy screaming torment the father into signing. What?! Good Lord. I’ve seen some fucked up shit in these old books, but this was hands down the worst and it blindsided me. I did not see that coming. And after the men sign the papers, they execute them, and the leader tells his men to do whatever they want with the wives and children.
We jump right back to our hero Tanaka Tom and that's good because I’m ready for some more bloodshed. But unfortunately, we go into our first adult western style sex scene. Bad timing. Tom is now in Globe Arizona trying to get a clue about the Colonel’s whereabouts. At a bar he is approached by a prostitute. He is immediately all in and humps the ever-living shit out of her. And in case you were wondering, yes, he has a giant dong, yes, he can bang it out for over an hour and is ready to go again in a few minutes and yes, this is the best sex this hooker has ever had.
Bad guys do more bad things. Tommy catches up with a few of them and hacks them to pieces. He bangs another hooker. Another child is violated. Damn it. We get lots of Samurai moral code of ethics and the loophole that is vengeance. Tommy meets good local working men and families along the way who are sick of these outlaws and willing to help him in his journey.
One aspect I really liked is that Tommy pretty much sticks to his Samurai fighting style and weapons throughout most of the book. Unfortunately, he caves into the Western fighting style and even though he's been taught guns are without honor he all of a sudden realizes that they are actually really great and teaches himself to use them. Ha! First off, his rationalization about how guns are actually wonderful was corny and total propaganda. Second and to add to the first point, this author loves guns because we get four pages of the most descriptive gun shooting ever written. Don’t get me wrong, I love shootouts in Westerns, in fact, usually the more the merrier, but the fact he doesn’t use guns is what makes this stand out. He's a samurai fighting with a sword and throwing stars and other Asian stuff in a western world. If he uses guns, it's just another western.
Epic showdown. I was kind of disappointed to see the book’s main conflict wasn't going to be concluded in this one. I would rather have had each book be its own complete story than a huge series.
Take out the unnecessary brutal attitude towards children in this book and I found it to be a fun first entry. Very pulpy. Very men’s adventure. I especially loved the stranger in a strange land, East meets West, genre fiction mash up.
Jorge Saralegui was born in 1953 and is still alive, which we’re always happy to hear. He was born in Cuba and grew up in New York. He spent a little time in my neck of the woods, graduating from Antioch College along with Lawrence Block, Rod Serling and Leanord Nimoy. Though he wrote three novels, Last Rites in 85, Shadow Stalker in 87 and Looker in 1990, he is most well known as a film producer having a hand in such movies as Speed, Independence Day, Broken Arrow and Die Hard with a Vengeance. In 2005 he teamed up with Clive Barker to form the production company The Midnight Picture Show.
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(Video review if you don't feel like reading:)
The basic premise: Prison psychologist Jack Sanderson vouches for the early release of a convicted murderer named Daniel Doppler. Doppler’s wife is in the hospital due to an insulin mix-up that put her in a coma, and he wants her released back into his care. After a couple of conversations with the locals Jack gets doubts about Doppler’s rehabilitation. Jack stops the process. Turns out Doppler is a psychopath and vows vengeance. Stalking terror ensues.
What we have here is an 80s erotic thriller noir wherein a young middleclass couple have their lives turned upside down by a sadistic sociopath who uses and intimidates anyone who is unlucky enough to cross his path.
The setting is 1980s San Francisco tenderloin district. A wretched hive of scum and villainy. The story is peppered with a plethora of absolutely enjoyable unsavory characters. And it’s 80s as fuck so when someone is wearing a band shirt it’s something like Pere Ube. Punks are mentioned hanging outside the Mubuhay Gardens. This thing screams peep shows, neon lights, street drugs, hookers and the like. Hell, one of the main characters is a teenage runaway who works in a peep show, endlessly pops lipstick red Seconals, and daydreams of being in an all-female punk band.
The story is told in third person narration with the focus jumping from the point of view of all the main characters. I would say the main protagonist is Jack the psychologist though. He is a well-meaning liberal guy with a bumper sticker on his Volvo that says, “US out of Central America.” He wants to see the good in people and after many sessions with Daniel Doppler he believes he is someone worthy of that understanding so he vouches for him at his parole hearing. Also, he deeply loves his wife, Wendy.
Doppler was in prison because he accidently killed a man in a bar fight. The man insinuated Doppler was molesting his comatose wife. At first Doppler seems the way that Jack sees him. We are then let in on some shady background when Jack talks to the local doctor and realizes that Doppler might not have been truthful about everything. Red flags are popping up and Jack steps in and puts a halt to Doppler’s wife returning to his care. Doppler flips and sends Jack a letter telling him that in two months’ time Jack’s wife Wendy will be just like his and Jack will be dead.
And from there on we get Doppler toying with the couple. Sending letters, making phone calls. One night he sends some morticians to Jack’s house to “pick up the bodies.” Which I thought was pretty funny.
This book’s strength is its strong suspense element. You know it’s coming but you don’t know when. Doppler is a complete sociopath and every scene with him in it is completely off putting. He’s not a madman flying off the rails, he’s cool and calm with flat dead eyes. He’s always within arm’s reach of Jack, making his presence known. It really reminded me of Cape Fear. All the parts with Doppler tormenting Jack are great. They are subtly psychological and believable. I mean what would you do if someone was after you but never came directly for you? It would be a nightmare. Which I guess yeah, it’s what a stalker is and it happens every day. Mostly to women. I’m ashamed to say that it took a book with the perspective being a male for me to truly grasp the terror.
Other interesting characters are:
Wendy’s dad. A creepster himself. A sociopath on the right side of the law. He’s a reactionary right wing retired cop with a bleak and violent view on humanity. He was also a wife beater and mental abuser. And other stuff that we’re not going to spoil here but I loved all of his parts in the book. He’s a piece of shit but in this kind of story you need it to increase the sleazy atmosphere.
Natasha, the teenage runaway. She’s a punk rock girl. Druggy. Stripper. Her life becomes intertwined with Doppler and man you are rooting for her but she’s a fly unknowingly caught in the spider’s web and it’s not looking good.
There is a schizophrenic repressed transgender hotel manager where Doppler and Natasha live.
A tough but sympathetic detective who pops in every now and again.
And Wendy the wife who in one way is just kind of there for you to worry about but then in another she’s tough. She makes some hard points and insights of how men can abuse their partners in the veil of love.
The build and the climax were perfectly plotted and fucked up. The villain is diabolical but believable. This should have been an 80s thriller b-movie.
Bonus: some interesting tidbits,
The couple’s names are Wendy and Jack.
There is a character named Dr. Loomis and he has a pumpkin drawing on his wall.
In one part he mentions a Talking Heads song about trying to sleep while their beds are burning. But that’s a Midnight Oil song. This author knows music so it had to be on purpose. Why?
Michael Avallone was born in New York City in 1924 and died in Los Angeles in 1999. He published under his own name and seventeen pseudonyms cranking out over 200 novels. His first novel, The Tall Dolores was published in 1953 in hardcover by the Henry Holt Company and it is the first book in the Ed Noon series. He was a prolific author who wrote in many genres including, men’s adventure, crime, espionage, gothics, horror and TV and movie novelizations. He wrote the Man from UNCLE series and the novelization of Friday the 13th part 3. He is known and celebrated for his schlocky simple prose. He was a pure pulp writer, and his books are the power chord punk of action and suspense. When they hit the mark, that is.
The Satan Sleuth series had three entries.
The Fallen Angel 1974
The Werewolf Walks Tonight 1974
Devil, Devil 1975
This review is of The Werewolf Walks Tonight and it was published by Warner Paperback Library in 1974.
Cover art by Charles Sovek
Video Review Version:
The basic premise: In a small rural town called Fletcherville, on the edge of Tennessee and Kentucky bodies have been found with their throats ripped out. Rich vigilante do-gooder Phillip St George aka The Satan Sleuth knows when the devil is at work, so he hightails over in his private helicopter to solve the case of The Werewolf Walks Tonight.
The book starts with the local church deacon hanging upside down from a tree flayed to shreds. We then meet our hero, Phillip St. George, and get a quick backstory. You can probably guess but, his wife was killed by a cult gang. He got vengeance on them in the first book and now it’s his mission to rid the world of evil. He is super rich and good looking. He is described as having dark hair with wisps of white on the side ala Dr. Strange. He is a total pulp hero vigilante.
The prose reminds me of rural Americana literature that I would be assigned to read in 9th grade. It has a Southern Gothic feel to it. Early 1900s spooky. The first similar stylistic tale that came to mind is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. This unfortunately only lasts for the first chapter.
There have been legends about werewolves in Fletcherville for over a hundred years so when the killings start the local sheriff quickly claims it to be a werewolf. Phillip St George gets wind of this. He arrives and gets into his normal guy disguise so he can investigate. There are a few more killings. One of the killings happens on a farm where a beautiful and stupid young woman and her mother live. Like, yeah, she is described as dumb and extremely hot many times. In shock at the horrific scene the young woman runs off into the woods and is now missing. Unfortunately, a missed mystery opportunity as, we the reader, know she’s trapped in the cave with the beast but no one in town knows.
Phillip St George investigates at a turtle’s pace. It’s slooow. It has also has lots of filler of other people’s perspectives and them being scared or wondering what’s happening. There is a lot of talking and thinking in this.
The more I read the more I realized this was a Weird Menace type of tale. Or Scooby Doo to people of my era. The terror seems supernatural but it’s not. Phillip St George is adamant that it’s not a werewolf and it kind of sucks the fun out of it.
Overall, not very exciting and not at all what I was hoping it was going to be. Also, his purpose is so perplexing. It’s his self-appointed duty to put an end to evil doers.
He claims, “Those who use the devil to mask their enterprises would have to pay the piper for the dance they called for.”
So…he’s against people who use Satan as a cover for their nefarious deeds. What?! Satan is evil. How do you use evil to cover up your evil activities? Wouldn’t it make more sense to take people out who use Jesus as a cover for their nefarious deeds? It sounds like he’s sticking up for Satan’s good name. Also, he hunts down Satanism because he loves Jesus but also, he doesn’t believe that Satan or evil things are real. It’s baffling.
So yeah, not at all what I was expecting or wanting. How do you screw up a werewolf book where the main character is named The Satan Sleuth?? It’s all right though. We still get excited when we find Avallone books out and about because if nothing else you know it’s going to be ridiculous and usually pretty fun. Unfortunately this was not the case here.
Chester Himes was born in Missouri in 1909 and died in Spain in 1984. He grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and later went to the Ohio State University in Columbus. He was expelled for playing a prank and a couple years later was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to 20-25 years of hard labor at the Ohio Penitentiary. In prison he started writing. His first published story was in 1931. In 1936 he was paroled. He worked as a screen writer in LA but was pushed out because of his race. In the 1950s he moved to France and then in 1969 he moved to Spain where he died from Parkinson’s disease at the age of 75. He wrote some literary types of novels on his own experiences and issues relating to race and his time in prison. But he is mostly known for his hardboiled crime detective series featuring two black detectives operating in Harlem by the names of Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones. There were eight entries in the series from 1957 to 1969. All Shot Up was the fourth book in the series.
The basic premise: In 1950s Harlem, a sailor and his girlfriend try and recover their brand-new stolen Cadillac while two detectives try and figure out who, how and why the three men dressed as police, robbed an up-and-coming politician, and left a trail of bodies along the way.
It’s a freezing cold Groundhogs Day on the city streets of Harlem New York. A man stealing a tire witnesses a giant gold Cadillac hit an old lady crossing the street. The car is driven by a big man with a coonskin hat, a little pimp guy and a woman he thinks he recognizes. They drive off in a hurry. The woman gets up but then is run over by an unmarked police car with two black cops and one white cop inside.
The cops catch up with the Cadillac. They smack the little pimp guy with a blackjack and steal the Cadillac. The man in the coonskin hat is Roman, a hearty sailor who had saved up all his money to buy that Cadillac and he’ll be damned if anyone, even the cops are going to steal it. He and his girlfriend, Sassafras, and the unconscious pimp, Baron take off in the abandoned cop car and chase after.
Back at the police station the phone is ringing off the hook. There has been a shoot-out outside a local gay bar and it involves a prominent man in the community who is running for office. The case is given to two black detectives, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones.
This book starts up right away and never lets up. The writing is pulpy and hardboiled with lots of dark humor. Random events occur that you think are just for comic relief but come back later on to weigh in on the plot. An example: the thief stealing the wheels of the car continues his work even after he has seen the lady run over twice. He knows she’s dead and he just witnessed a murder, but he has to grab that last wheel. He gets it off and, in his haste, he is rolling it down the hill. It gets away from him and rolls down the street into two beat cops. He takes off. Later on, while the detectives are looking for a witness, it comes out that the cops who were hit by the tire were too embarrassed to report it. If they had reported it, they would have known earlier on that there was a witness and could have helped solve the case. It wasn’t any grand revelation in the main plot and might not have made a difference, but that Himes made this little event matter was notable. Every character and incident in this is tough and coarse with more going on than what’s on the surface.
Back at the gay bar Coffin Ed and Gravedigger enter the bar to talk to the witnesses. No one wants to talk. They go through the bar one by one and essentially smack the shit out of them. They pull their guns and start shooting, until someone starts talking. The bartender speaks up. Three men in cop uniforms had a shootout with a lone gunman. One of the dead men outside was a drag queen named, Snake Hips. The gunman was a private detective. The man stabbed was Casper Holmes, a local businessman who has an office above the bar. Sometimes he frequents the bar. He was carrying a satchel of money. How did the hoods know he had it? Was it all random?
The main characters, Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones reminded me of Denzel Washington’s character in the movie Training Day. They are violent and reckless, doing whatever needs to be done to get answers but unlike Washinton’s character, they aren’t crooked in the sense that they are monetarily profiting from the intimidation. All the people of Harlem refer to them as “the man.” They are of the people but separate. The other cops on the scene refer to them as cowboys. Two big dogs that make everyone they come across tense up when they are around. They are hard ex-military guys from the streets, driving around Harlem in an ice storm at 3am drinking a bottle of bourbon solving murder cases.
There is lots of brutality in this. A man is decapitated (in gory detail!) while driving a motorcycle in a police chase. But there is also humor. After the decapitation the body keeps on driving down the street. Simultaneously, across town, while having a conversation about the man, Sassafras states that he’s cool under pressure, and he won’t lose his head.
The characters are pulpy colorful with lots of great street names like Sassafras, Snake Hips, and Black Beauty, not to mention the main characters ghoulish nicknames of Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. The little pimp guy named Baron is described in a manner that it was hard not to picture Kat Williams. Casper the politician is slimy and crooked, making all kinds of backhanded deals in his quest for power. Roman the sailor is a simple straight man surrounded by crooks but even he stands out as a brute not to mess with.
I’m surprised this came out in 1960. If I had to guess I would have easily said this was a 1970s blaxploitation novel. It’s ahead of its time. There were only a few remarks on racism. The n-word shows up only three times. The first by a white cop. And then again by the same character. Until Coffin Ed threateningly says, “say it one more time,” and dude instantly shuts his mouth. Instead of mother fucker they say mother raper, which, is a hundred times worse. You can’t put the word “fuck” in a book, but the word rape is greenlit. Funny how society chooses what words are apprehensible and what are acceptable, eh? Also, the fact that a few of the characters are gay is never portrayed in a negative light. They just are. And that’s pretty cool.
This is one hell of a great crime book. The setting is dangerous, and the frozen weather just makes it even more bleak. It’s well thought out and all the strands tie up nicely at the end. You root for the main characters but in real life you wouldn’t want to run into them. And that’s how I like my heroes, terrifying.
For Black History Month this year I wanted to put together this little article featuring some black vintage genre fiction writers. The bulk of the output is from the pre-90s era though some of the writers continue to produce even to this day. I'm am in no way an expert and just like anything else on this blog I am just an amateur fan who wants to learn more about the fiction that I love.
I left off Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines as I intend to do a whole article/video about the publisher Holloway House and I will cover them in depth in that one. I am also posting a book review and bio of Chester Himes in the next post so go check that out.
There is a video version of this as usual, and it is right here:
Born 1947 and died in 2006. She grew up in Pasadena California and attended the Pasadena City College and then later would take writing classes through the UCLA and once attended a Writers Guild of America West workshop taught by Harlan Ellison who encouraged her to attend the six-week Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop.
Her first story was published in 1971 for the Clarion Workshop and she sold another for Harlan Ellison’s anthology The Last Dangerous Visions which was not published until 2024.
In the mid-1980s she won Hugo and Nebula awards for her body horror Novelette, Bloodchild.
She published 14 novels including the Patternist Series about a secret history continuing from the Ancient Egyptian period to the far future that involves telepathic mind control and an extraterrestrial plague.
She also wrote the Lilith’s Brood series, a post nuclear war has all but destroyed humanity and an alien races comes in to save the survivors but in order to do that the humans must mix their genetic makeup and become hybrids like the aliens, losing their humanity. the Parable series and two stand alones.
References:
Jessnevins.com
wikipedia
Born in 1946 in Pennsylvania and died in Nova Scotia Canada in 2020. He graduated from Lincoln University in 1968 with a degree in psychology. In 1969 he was drafted to fight in Vietnam but instead relocated to Canada.
He is most well-known for his character Imaro, a warrior of the plains of Nyumbani, a fictional version of Africa. Imaro is often compared to Conan and Saunders has said how he was influenced by Robert E Howard, but Imaro was also a reaction to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan. Saunders said in an interview published in the journal Black American Literature Forum published by John Hopkins University press, “I think he was born when I watched a Tarzan movie and fantasized a Black man jumping up and beating the hell out of (Tarzan actor) Johnny Weissmuller,”
Imaro was first published as short stories in Gene Day’s fanzine, Dark Fantasy. The first Iamro story was reprinted in DAW books first, Year’s Best Fantasy Stories edited by Lin Cater. DAW owner, Donald A Wollheim then encouraged Saunders to put together the short stories in a fix up that would become the first Imaro novel. There were 5 entries in the Imaro series, the first three published by DAW in the early to mid-80s and then he brought the character back in 2009 for one novel and another in 2017. The Imaro series is steeped in African locations, history, people, folklore and tribes, each with slight adjustments to add to the fantastical fiction world of Nyumbani. Unlike other characters and racial themes in this article/video, Imaro’s struggle is a personal one.
He has another character named Dossouye who is a female warrior that appeared in a short story anthology called Amazons in 1979. Dossouye was based on the Dahomey Amazons which were an all female military regiment that protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey from the 17th century until the late 19th century. Three more stories followed in Marrion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies. In 1986 Saunders wrote the script for the movie Amazons based off of the Dossouye stories but in the movie the warriors were all blond, white ladies so, yeah, loose adaptation. In 2008 he resurrected the character with a fix up novel of the previous stories and a completely new novel in 2012.
He had a few non-fiction books centered around his home in Nova Scotia. One piquing my interest the most is a book called Sweat and Soul: The Saga of Black Boxers from the Halifax Forum to Caesars Palace released in 1990.
And while doing the research for this I stumbled upon another boxing related Saunders authored book, Damballa from 2011, which is a black vigilante pulp style hero. It’s 1938 in Harlem and there is a heavyweight championship fight between the US champion and a German challenger. Saunders based the fight off one of the most important fights in boxing history which was the rematch of the Joe Louis- Max Schmelling fight. In this book the Nazis are rigging the match for their guy to win but Damballa has figured it out and set to put a stop to them.
References:
Ny Times article by Neil Genzlinger
Blackgate.com
Airship27.com
Youtube:
Secret Fire Books
David Books and Comics
Was born in 1933 in Baltimore and died in 2003 in New York. He graduated from Queens College with a degree in creative writing and history. He had an affinity of Japanese culture and thus trained in martial arts earning advanced degree black belts in karate and aikido.
His first published works were two non-fiction books. One is a biography of Black Panther political activist Angela Davis and the other a study on cocaine in 1970s New York. Through his investigate work he was introduced to many real world DEA and CIA agents which led him to his first fiction series, Narc.
Narc was written under the pseudonym Robert Hawkes and was a nine-book series which lasted from 1973 to 1975. It was a Men’s Adventure crime series about a white Narcotics Agent named John Bolt who kicks ass, gets ladies and takes on drug dealers.
The books of his that I was most aware of before doing this article were the Black Samurai series. This time under his own name and with a black protagonist hero named Robert Sand, an American GI stationed in Japan. He gets shot while trying to stop some baddies from attacking an old man. Turns out the man was a Samurai master who kicks the shit out of the assailants as Sand is passing out. Sand goes under his wing for Samurai training and within seven years he is a force of nature and also the first black man to ever take the oath of the Samurai. The Black Samurai series had 8 entries from 1974 to 1975 and was even made into a movie starring Jim Kelly.
In 1976 he started his Harker series about an investigative journalist named Harker who takes on corruption and crime. The series only had four entries lasting from 1976 to 1978.
He also had 17 standalone novels many influenced by his love of Japanese culture.
Horror novels- Book of Shadows and Poe Must Die
References:
Marcolden.com
Paperbackwarrior.com
Youtube:
David Books and Comics
Born in 1944 and died from brain cancer at the age of 62 in 2006. He joined the Air Force in 1964 and went to fight in the Vietnam War. Afterward he was veteran with a bullet scar in his neck. He lived in LA in Watts, the Crenshaw District and Inglewood. Joe wrote over 60 novels mostly put out by Holloway House whom he was also an editor for. He was also editor of Players magazine, a nudie magazine featuring black ladies which was the first of its kind. He was more a follower of the ideologies of Martin Luther King Jr than the militant aspects of 60’s black militant activism.
Joseph Nazel wrote a few series characters. One of them being: Black Cop under the pseudonym Dom Grober. Black Cop had four entries from 1974 to 1976 and stars a Vietnam veteran named James Rhodes who works for the LAPD narcotics division. The series seems to be a basic police procedural but with a black lead who has to not only deal with nefarious crime lords but racism within the department and out on the streets.
Iceman is a total men’s adventure series about a pimp secret agent named Henry Highland West. In his entourage are ass kicking, smoking hot lady sidekicks. In pulp hero staple style, he is uber rich, owns a million-dollar pleasure haven called the Oasis and with his own personal helicopter, travels the world annihilating evil doers including the usual suspects of the syndicate, South African slavers, and a Canadian extremist group among others.
He also wrote a lot of unauthorized biographies including, Richard Pryor, BB King, Langston Hughes (poet), Paul Robeson (professional football player, actor and singer).
It was difficult to find many black horror authors from the pre 90s era but Nazel was a name that kept popping up, mostly for the infamous Black Exorcist novel. The Black Exorcist was published in 1974 and then re-published in 1983 as Satan’s Master. It is about a Christian Reverend and a satanic voodoo priest battling it out for the people in the black community. It has lots of racial politics of the time battling it out on whether the best path is violence or love. But it also delivers in the horror aspects. You get zombies, mafia, voodoo, Satan, crime, sex, cults, possession and just plain old good versus evil.
Reference:
Paperback Warrior Blog
LA Times article by Emory Holmes
Jethrowegener.com
Jessnevins.com
Like I said I had a hard time finding black horror authors from before the 90s which is mind blowing because the post Stephen King explosion had every writer hacking out their bloated horror novel, so just by sheer numbers you would figure there would be some black authors. Maybe there is and I just couldn’t find them?
I did find this very interesting Glenda Dumas book titled, The Rootworker. Along with Joseph Navel’s Black Exorcist these seem to be two of the few horror novels published by Holloway House. I intend to make a whole video on Holloway House and was going to save this entry for that but we need the horror genre represented here so I’ll go ahead and mention it now.
There isn’t a lot of information about her but I believe Glenda Dumas is still alive. She put out a book called Visions of the Rapture and Unseen Realm in 2016 which according to her Authors Den profile is, “a book that describes how the Lord chose me to give an important message to His people. I was transported into the future and showed the Rapture by an archangel. I believe he was Michael, because he was extremely huge and Michael appears to have a major role in the end times. I must admit that he did not tell me his name. He did, however, show me how the Rapture will happen and let me know that most people are not ready to go up. This is a message that I need to get out.”
As for her 1983 novel The Rootworker, according to the back synopsis, it appears to be about a young woman falling in love with a man and her bringing him back to her small town in North Carolina where everyone in town, including her parents are in a secret cult that worships Satan called the cult of The Rootworker. There aren’t any reviews of the book online, so it looks like I’m going to have to pick up this book and rectify that.
Born in 1952 in Los Angeles, California and is still alive! He actually has a decent online presence where he is happy to chat about his writing, teaching the craft and isn’t averse to interviews. His first published piece of fiction was a 1979 collaboration with Larry Niven called The Locusts which was a Hugo nominee. Along with author wife Tananarive Due, they teach a course at UCLA called, “The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival and Black Horror Aesthetic.” His latest book was a Star Wars novel titled: Mace Windu: The Glass Abyss released in 2024.
He started out writing a science-fiction series with Larry Niven called Dream Park which had four entries from 1981 to 2011. Dream Park is an amusement park set in 2051. In the park, people can become characters in a live action role playing game. Similar to Dungeons and Dragons but you are essentially in a virtual reality. The story morphs into cyber-punk territory where the games are cutting edge technology, morphed into televised games and real murder and corruption going on in the background. This book inspired fans to create real world LARPing games based on the concepts.
His next series is the Aubrey Knight series which has three entries from 1983 to 1993. It takes place in a futuristic Los Angeles where ex-Cartel thug Aubrey Knight has left the gang to try and achieve his goals of being the null-boxing world champion. Null boxing is like MMA. The cartel sets him up for murder and Aubrey is sent to the Death Valley Maximum Security Penitentiary. There he kicks ass and fights for survival and freedom to enact his revenge on those who wronged him.
From a 2003 interview in Locus Magazine:
“When I wrote Streetlethal with a black guy and they put a white guy on the cover. My editor at the time was utterly mortified. Her editor-in-chief told me it was an art department decision, and the art department said it was marketing, and the marketing department said the truck drivers who put the books on stands would think it was some kind of 'Get Whitey', 'Shaft in Space' thing and refuse to handle it. No one would take responsibility. That's happened to tons of writers, black and white -- publishers wouldn't put a black character on the cover. Especially not a man. For Octavia E. Butler, I remember clearly when they would change her characters' race, would put green people on the cover, but not black people.”
Barnes has written over 30 novels and some screen plays for television including the reboot Outer Limits and Twilight Zone, Stargate SG-1, Andromeda and….Baywatch.
He doesn’t just write about kicking ass, he has many degrees in the martial arts including, a black belt in Kenpo Karate and Kodokan Judo. A brown belt in Shoenji Jiu Jitsu and lower belts in Tae Kwon Do and Akido. He is an instructor in Wu Ming Ta, Wu-style tai chi and Filipino Kalit stick and knife fighting. He also enjoys self-defense pistol shooting and Jun Fan kickboxing. And when he’s done kicking your ass, he can help you find your center again as he’s a Hatha Yoga instructor.
References:
Michaelaventrella.com (interview with Steven Barnes)
