Savage Night by Jim Thompson

Video review here. Written review below.

Jim Thomspson was born James Myers Thompson in Oklahoma in 1906.

Oklahoma…1906…that would put him close in location and age to one of my favorite musicians and human beings of all time, Woody Guthrie.

I immediately stopped my basic author bio search and looked to see whether the two had ever crossed paths and sure enough they did. In fact if it wasn’t for Woody Guthrie, the world might not have know Jim Thompson. But more on that later.

This is a very dark and romantic background and the exact thing you want to be true after reading a Thompson book.

He was born in an apartment above the Caddo County Jail in 1906. His father “Big Jim” Thompson was a former teacher turned county sheriff. It didn’t last long though as after being accused of embezzlement he took off for Mexico until 1910 when he reunited with his family in Oklahoma City and then onto Fort Worth Texas.

At the age of 19 little Jim Thompson would sometimes work the oil rigs with his father. He was also a bellboy at the Hotel Texas where he would do shady side hustles for guests such as procuring prostitutes, drugs and liquor as this was during prohibition. Unfortunately, he got high on his own supply and joined the non-exclusive club of alcoholism by the time he was 19.

From here he hits the rails as a hobo, a vagrant rail rider. You were probably hoping that this was where he met Woody who did lots of train hopping himself but unfortunately, no.

At the age of 23 he enrolled at the University of Nebraska in 1929 but then dropped out in 1931 due to the Great Depression.

In 1935 he sold his first story, The Strange Death of Eugene Kling to True Detective for the November issue.

Also, around this time is when he joined the Communist Party.

And here is where he is introduced to the hard travelin’ man himself, Woody Guthrie. They had a similar…comrade by the name of Bill Cunningham. No, not our beloved Bill Cunnigham of Pulp 2.0 and Men’s Adventure Quarterly fame! This Bill Cunningham was a Marxist economics professor and fellow “true crime” writer.

He was the director of the Oklahoma Federal Writers Project (alongside Louis L’Amour) but due to his Communist affiliation he was fired.

In 1940 he moved his family to San Diego where he scraped plaster for an airplane manufacturer where he was again investigated for his communist ties.

In 1941 Thompson travels to New York City and meets up again with Woody. He tells the Woodster about a novel he is working on. Woody is intrigued and shows it off to some more of the leftist crew to where it will end up in the hands of the founder of Modern Age Books who in March 1942 would publish Thompsons debut novel Now and on Earth.

Now and on Earth (1942) was a semi-autobiographical novel about Thompson’s time during WW2 when he worked at the airplane manufacturer, alcoholism, family dynamic and the plights of the American worker.

His next novel, Heed the Thunder (1946) is similar in that it would be described as general fiction or the dreaded literature descriptor. The kind of books that say “A novel” on the cover. Which, too each their own but that’s usually an automatic pass for me.

Thankfully for us genre fiction fans here is where he starts writing the good old stuff. The gritty crime novels that he would be known and celebrated for. His next book is Nothing More than Murder (1949)

And that’s enough for this bio. There have been books written about Jim Thompson, his life, his books and his influence on popular culture so if you want to know more check out:

Savage Art: A biography of Jim Thompson (95) by Robert Polito

Jim Thompson: Sleep with the Devil (91) by Michael J McCauley

Difficult Lives (93) by James Sallis. This book was released on Gryphon Books who is owned by our Youtube comrade Gary Lovisi. The book also contained biographies on David Goodis and Chester Himes. It looks like it was rereleased in 2025 by Penguin Random House.

Savage Night by Jim Thomspon

Our protagonist is Carl Bigelow. He has just gotten off the bus at Perdale, a small town ninety-five miles from New York City. The story is told in first person narrative, so we get all of Carl’s inner monologue and The Man is on his mind. The Man, (Capital T, capital M) has hired Carl for a job. It appears that Carl is a hitman and he is in town to knock off Jake Winroy. Winroy was involved with some corrupt members of the government and some nefarious mobsters, including The Man, and he has been running his mouth. Carl’s job is to arrive in town undercover as a student at the local college. He is to rent a room at the Winroy’s house, who have recently opened it up for boarding. The murder should look like an accident, so Carl is to gain everyone’s trust, wait months before making the murder occur and then keep on living his life in Perdale after the “accident.”

This novel is so much more than it seems on the surface. While I was reading it I was like, this is cool, it reminds me of the Orrie Hitt Widow novel I just read; very sleazy with every character covered in moral grime.

And then I finished it.

Closed the cover.

Mouth agape.

This book is a mindfuck. Every time I hear someone talk about Jim Thompson, they say he was bleak, depressing, depraved and nihilistic. That’s what I was ready for and yeah, it was in here, but it wasn’t any different than other books from this genre and era. What got me was the oddness. Whenever I thought I understood the main character’s personality it would change. The reality in the story would become surreal but not dreamlike or trippy, just a little off.

Carl, our main character, is five feet tall. For perspective; 2 inches taller than Danny Devito but I imagine him more like Malcom in the Middle as people are always mistaking him for a kid. He also has woman falling over him. He low key brags at the beginning that the week prior he banged three ladies in a week and the lust continues into this new situation. And no offense to the smaller stature guys out there, I’m sure they can get it in, but I just don’t see that happening at that rate. He is also cold and hard but panics in a second. He is frightened often but can be mean and intimidating also. When an older couple invite him over for dinner, the woman tells him that she wishes they had a child just like him. This grown man, who is a hired killer, almost cries and then daydreams that they are his parents.

There is a woman in this story who is missing half of her leg. At the bottom of the partial leg is a baby sized ankle and foot. Ok, and?? Not a big deal, people are born with deformities. But it goes to a place that reminded me of the little man in the first King in Yellow story.

Those are just a few examples, but the book is littered with them. It’s weird!

It is going to be difficult to talk about without spoilers so if you haven’t read it yet and absolutely plan on it, don’t read any further because even the most minor spoiler would change your perception of the narrative.

Upon arriving at Winroy’s place we meet Jake Winroy’s wife Fay, who after about five min of talk is ready to fall into Carl’s bed.

Settled into his room at the house Carl Bigelow pulls out his copy of True Detective Magazine. There is an article all about a vile serial killer named Charlie Bigger. AKA Little Bigger because of his small stature. The novel isn’t vague about it either. Our main character is Little Bigger. The article is written in this fantastical and sensational way. Which is how those articles were written but what makes it odd is the man it’s about is reading it and basically saying, yep. All true. My opinion at this moment was that it was a little cheesy.

We also meet the other lodger, Mr. Kendall. He comes off as flamboyant and for a second I thought he might also have it for Charlie. He is older and works at the bakery across the street but he used to be a teacher at the college. Charlie’s first instinct about Kendall is that he works for The Man and was sent here to make sure Charlie is doing his job. Or maybe he is another hired killer from someone else. Or maybe the guy is just a guy. Charlie can never make up his mind. Either way the motives of the mysterious Mr. Kendall creates suspense.

Fay Winroy is so enamored with Charlie Bigger that she is willing to help him take her husband Jake out. Once again, this isn’t anything that hasn’t happened in hundreds of noir novels but what’s weird is that it’s never talked about. There is no build up to the decision. No scenes of Charlie talking her into it. It just is.

We have one scene with The Man. He is really built up to be this larger-than-life gangster. In bed with Senators, businessman, street tough hoods and hitmen. There is no escaping The Man. Before the man found out about Charlie Bigger no one knew who he really was. He was considered a crime folktale legend .

The bulk of the novel is Charlie being paranoid. He constantly flips on who to trust. He hooks up with Ruth and has actual feelings for her as he sees himself in her disabilities.

The climax comes out of nowhere and smacks you upside the head. While you are recuperating and trying to get your bearings someone sticks a tab of acid in your mouth, gets behind you and starts pushing you out the door.

Amazing.

https://flatwaterfreepress.org/nebraska-noir-legendary-crime-writer-forgotten-man-in-home-state/ https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=TH013 https://fwtx.com/culture/jim-thompson-lived-hard-and-wrote-even-harder/ https://nebraskapublicmedia.org/en/news/news-articles/nebraska-noir-crime-writing-giant-jim-thompson-forgotten-in-native-state/

A Killer's Kiss- Hal Ellson

 He pressed down on the gas. Night covered the desert in immense darkness. Thankful for its protection, he still didn't feel safe. Someone was following him, and he drove faster till the car began to shake. The feeling remained. Whoever was in back of him was gaining ground. No lights showed on the road behind, but that didn't matter.

 He pressed harder on the gas, and the whole structure of the car responded with a violent shudder. Behind him in the dimensionless blackness, the other car roared nearer. And then it happened. He couldn't say how. More, he was aware that the idea was completely irrational and unacceptable, but it stuck. He had no means of shaking, disassembling it.

 Behind him, a dim image formed, a face with nebulous features. By some trick, the one who had been following him had gotten to the car, was sitting in back of him now, and waiting for him to turn. But he would not turn. Suddenly, he knew why. That was the object of the one behind him, to divert his attention from the road.

 A split second of negligence, and he'd be off of it, and mangled in the wreckage of the car. "He wants me to die," Luis told himself.

Written review below. Video review here:

 Today, I'm going to discuss a very odd noir, something that I was not, not expecting, and it is A Killer's Kiss by Hal Ellson. This was a Valentine's Day present from my wife. Get it? It's romantic. So, as you can see, it looks like a femme fatale noir. I'm going to read off the blurb here because I just wanted to show you that that's how it's marketed, and it's not what it is.

  “A woman's voice in the next room calling his name softly. A note slipped underneath the door. This was Luis' introduction to Francine. She was beautiful, lonely, and she wanted one night of fun in the little town with no questions asked."

 "Downstairs in the lobby, waiting, was the detective.

  “Luis knew that the escape he had planned so carefully in prison had reached a dead end. Still, one prison dream was now within his grasp. He opened the door to Francine's room."

 Killer's Kiss is a paperback original, originally published by Hillman Books in 1959, and I could not figure out who that cover artist is. I looked and I looked. If anyone out there knows put it in the comments because that artist should get credit; it is one hell of a beautiful cover. I would pick that up in a second if I saw it in the store.

 The author, Hal Ellison, was an American author, and he is 100% not Harlan Ellison.

 I, like many other people, many comments that I saw online, just assumed that it was a kind of working pseudonym of Harlan Ellison, and it is not. And interestingly enough, Harlan Ellison credits Hal Ellison as the inspiration for writing his very first novel, Web of the City. So, our author here, Hal Ellison, worked at Bellevue Hospital, Manhattan, New York City as a nurse's aide.

 He also spent time as a social worker and a recreational therapist. He worked with lots of misguided youth. He took their their tales of woe, their ne’er-do-well shenanigans, and he penned many juvenile delinquent novels. In fact, he is claimed to be one of the best to ever do it.

 And though Killer's Kiss is my first Hal Ellison penned book, I would surmise that those juvenile delinquent books have a very realistic and sympathetic viewpoint of the kids, and not the usual kind of exploitation of that genre, as A Killer's Kiss really explores the humanity of the “bad guy.”

 So, our protagonist, I guess, or the focus of the story here is Luis Santiago. He's on a bus. He was recently released from prison, and he just stabbed some guy a couple pages before the story starts. He's taking the bus to go to his brother's house. We are somewhere in Mexico.

 He gets to his brother's house. Luis' brother is not happy to see him. We hear a woman call from back in the house, "Jesus, who's there?"

 Jesus replies, "No one."

 Luis is gutted here.

 "That's who I am to you? I'm no one?" No one. To my family. His brother asks him why he needs the money, and Luis states that he wants to go to the US border. He hands him enough money for the bus and tells him to never come back. Back in town, Luis realizes that he is absolutely alone in the world.

 He was desperate before, but now it's almost as if he doesn't care what happens to him. He goes to a bar. He's paranoid. "Is that man staring at me?" Another man bumps into him. It's a man wearing a cowboy hat, and his eyes are drunk and blurry. He's friendly, though, or maybe he's just pretending to be friendly to gain Luis's trust.

 Right away, we see the inner workings of Luis's mind. He's constantly looking over his shoulder, seeing enemies in strangers' faces. He knows the police are after him. He wants to run, and he's in the process of running, but he also meanders. In his mind is the battle between giving into his inevitable fate and his will to survive.

 The man in the cowboy hat invites Luis to come join him and his friends, and Luis is sure that this will end in a lynching, but he has no one. He is nothing. He starts to walk out the door with the man and his friends, resigned to his fate, and the man simply turns around and states, "They won't let us gamble in here."

 A dozen men pile into the cars. At first, they're boisterous and drunk. They drive and drive. They drive out to the middle of nowhere, and all of a sudden, the further they get out of town, the less they start talking. Luis starts getting it into his mind these people are out to get him.

 They're going to take him out in the middle of nowhere, shoot him in the head. The scene is written beautifully. Ellson has us out in the endless night of the desert, the pitch blackness. Luis's character is very high-strung. He's very nervous. He doesn't seem to mind so much that he's already killed a man, but the stress of him getting caught for it overwhelms him.

 You feel at any moment that the smallest thing could set him off. He's on the sharp edge of a razor blade, slowly sliding to his ultimate demise. They arrive at the house. Everyone gets out. He's sitting in the car. Finally, the guys come up to him like, "What are you doing?"

 They go inside the house. They start gambling. Everyone's drinking, having a good time. Luis is winning and losing. In the final bet with the man with the cowboy hat, he pushes it all in for the final bet and Luis doesn't want to look weak in front of all these other guys, so he pushes it all in also.

 He loses. And the guy with the cowboy hat who's been so friendly to him the whole time is still just like, "Hey man, you win some, you lose some. But why don't you come back next time? Hey, maybe you'll win next time." The man gets up, goes out to the desert to take a leak. Luis follows him.

 You know he's going to kill him to get that money. He goes out there, and the man begs for his life. And you see the first moment where Luis is human. There are lots of comments in this book about what makes a killer, what makes people do what they do. Are they born this way? Or is it something that happened to them?

 The character of Luis is very complex. Here is this man who's been friendly to him the whole night, and you think he's just going to get it. But Luis spares his life. He does rob him though, so he's got all this money now. Then Luis just walks out into the desert. He knows that there is this mountain that he can go hide out in.

 And this is where it starts getting kind of weird. I mean, the desert at night scenes were kind of surreal, and being in Luis' head and the paranoia and just everywhere you go, everyone is looking at you. Are they watching you? While he's up in the mountain, he's in his cave hideout, he looks down, and it looks like there's a man down there in the middle of the night just staring up at him. He's already paranoid, but he's like, "All right, whatever, I'm just gonna go to sleep."

 He has nightmares of scorpions crawling all over his body, and they relate the scorpion to a creature just doing what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to be metaphoric, I believe. He wakes from this dream and looks straight forward to the entrance to the cave, and there's light out there now, and he can see that there's a shadow of a man standing at the entrance of the cave beckoning him.

 He panics, jumps up, and runs further on down inside the cave. He gets lost has this mental breakdown, and then finally finds his way back out. Down in the ravine is the wagon, and there's the man that he thinks saw last night. Or was it? Is this the same man who was standing outside of the cave?

 He offers the old man money for a ride into town on his wagon, and the old man just simply states that the ride is free. This part of the book and the way that these little scenarios happen, it reminded me of a very dark version of the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou movie.

 I know there's probably other examples, but that's just the first thing that came to mind. Where he meets these people, they're kind of off, and he has spiritual and philosophical encounters with them. So, we get this really surreal chapter of this old man taking him to his home where they meet up with his grandson, and neither say much of anything.

 The silence of the old man and the grandson makes an already secluded area feel even more empty. The boy takes him to a hotel that's really close. Now we're back in society though still remote. The hotel owner is not thrilled to see Luis show up with no bags and no car. Luis goes upstairs. The room is pitch black.

 He tries to sleep, but it makes him feel like he's back in prison. He dreams of footsteps outside of his door, the guard walking down the hallway, and then all of a sudden there's gunshots outside. He thinks it's part of the dream when he wakes up, but no, there's actually someone shooting off a gun outside.

 The hotel is isolated, but there is a tourist couple, an American tourist couple there, who basically just get annihilated down at the bar all night long. One night, Luis goes down to the bar, and the man is already passed out. He strikes up a conversation with the woman, and they end up going up to his room.

 But in the midst of getting it on he stops two minutes in and gets up. He's just not feeling it. He's a very detached human being. He looks down and sees she has passed out. He goes through her purse, grabs the keys, goes and steals her car, and drives out to the mountain.

 We get this very surreal highway trip. He thinks that someone is following him. He imagines someone in the back seat. It's very Twilight Zone. It's very David Lynch. He wrecks the car, and he starts walking towards the mountain.

 I don't want to tell you the whole book because that's no fun so hopefully that sells you on it. It does get even more weird. The next part is one of the weirder ones, where he is out in the desert and he finds this drinking hole. And he looks up, and there's a woman standing up in the rocks, but she's not moving. And then all of a sudden, there's a man who comes up to get water.

 Luis looks up, and he sees that the woman has moved. The man comments that it's a statue called The Lady of the Cave. And Luis says, "It can't be a statue. I just saw her move." And the man's like, "Yeah, she does that sometimes, and she also smiles at you." Then the man starts walking off into the desert, and Luis doesn't know what to do, so he just starts following.

 These scenarios are very minimal in dialogue. Luis is very paranoid and very conflicted on what to do with these situations. You don't know when he's going to kill one of these people or when he's just going to walk off.

 The climax happens at a new hotel. This one is in a small village. There is a man that Luis thinks is a police officer who's out to get him. There's a woman in this, but he doesn’t care about her whatsoever. She's not a femme fatale. She also has a very complex, depressing story going on. She's an American woman on vacation in Mexico.

 It gets very dreamlike where even Luis questions if any of this has really been happening. Heads up, it's not a dream, I'll just put that out there because if it was I would tell you because it-was-all-a-dream scenarios are the biggest rip off in storytelling.

 So, it's definitely real, but Luis wonders if he's dreaming. There are these psychological cat and mouse kind of conversations with him and the man that he thinks is a cop, and we also get perspective from this man. We get lots of philosophical musings on what it is that makes killers kill, what it is that makes people who they are, and then they relate it to how the scorpion is a killer, but it's just its natural instinct.

 When I was reading this, I was like, you know what this reminds me of? It's like The Stranger, by Albert Camus but for working class people. It's very noir in style. It could almost be an old 50s black and white movie but one of the rare and off the beaten path movies.

 It has so much feeling in it that is very unreality. I think if you like stuff like Lost Highway or any David Lynch really or if you’ve ever seen Daughter of Horror, it’s like that.

 It's smart. It's psychological and makes you question as to why people actually do the things that they do and if there's any control in it. So, I say yes, go check this out. They're available online for not too much. They're like $12 to $20. And now I'm really looking forward to reading one of his juvenile delinquent books.

The Rig by Ronald Wilcox

The Rig by Ronald Wilcox

Published by Leisure in 1978

Written review below. Video review here:

Ron Wilcox was born in Holladay Utah in 1934. He attended Brigham Young University and has a master’s degree in arts from Baylor University. He was an actor and a playwright. He wrote four plays and appeared in over sixty. He published one novel, this one, The Rig. He has been a consistent contributor to Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought since the 1960s which featured his poetry. Much of it of a religious nature including an epic poem apptly titled Mormon Epic and Mormon Epic II.

A great white Kenworth was gliding through the desert night. Easing the Roadranger transmission into high thirteen, the man inside lit up a cigarillo, settled in for the long haul.

He seemed sane enough, to himself- a good old boy, a trucker. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore. But something was wrong, terribly wrong. His eyes took on a kind of blankness, cold as the white Bonneville salt flats.

Cold as midnight.

The story starts on Interstate 80 just east of West Wendover Utah. An unnamed trucker is hauling is brand new rig, an acquisition courtesy of his deceased wife’s insurance policy. He sees a VW Bus broken down on the side of the road. He slows down. It’s a woman with a flat tire. Inside the van are her three kids.

The women is relieved to finally see some help out here. She asks the man for help but he only stares. She tells him that her husband is also a trucker and could he maybe radio in and tell him the situation. He ignores her again and pulls a shotgun up the edge of the window. She is now terrified and starts praying. The kids want to know what’s going on. She turns to try and change the tire herself.

Our protagonist, her trucker husband Larry Hatcher, CB handle: True Grit and his friend Axel are at a truck stop an hour down the road. Their rig broke down and they are waiting for mobile mechanic Attila the One to fix it.

Here we get set-up and back story through dialogue. It’s incredibly colorful and completely manly trashy trucker conversation which jumps back and forth from wholesome family talk like Larry’s relationship with his Mormon wife Jean and how he is thinking of converting for the kids and banging lot lizards and truck stop hookers like the one who happens to double as their waitress which his horny friend Axel and some other truckers indeed do take to the storage room and hire her services.

Hey Larry, come join in the fun!

No, no, I can’t. Jean will be here any moment. Plus it would be wrong.

Annnnd… gratuitous gangbang scene on a truck stop waitress hooker. It surprisingly has some detail to it. I had heard Ronald Wilcox was a practicing Mormon when he wrote this so I was really amazed at this graphic and very not-marital sex scene. It gets weirder also. Larry mentally justifies it, pros versus cons, and then dives right in. While he’s pounding away a call comes over on the CB, a pregnant roller-skate has been in a bad accident.

A pregnant roller-skate is trucker lingo for VW Bus. So yes, while cheating on his wife with a prostitute Larry gets the bad news. This thing is skanky already!

Thankfully we don’t get to watch our unnamed antagonist take out Larry’s family. What we do get though is a scene post-murder of our psycho killer; miles away he pulls off the side of the road, puts on an all-black cowboy outfit complete with six shooters, walks out to the pasture and shoots every cow in the field. Then he jerks off. Then he pulls out a knife and cuts off one of the udders. He then hangs it on a hook next to a woman’s severed breast in his frozen meat delivery trailer.

This is a nasty little introduction!

So, what IS the plot here?

After the death of his family Larry is stricken with not only sadness but guilt over what he was doing at the time of their death. He quits working, starts drinking heavily and puts his house up for sale. He doesn’t want to be alive anymore. His buddy Axel tries to talk him into doing a run with him by taking Larry out for some pick-me-up pancakes. A stranger comes and sits at Larry’s table while Axel is in the bathroom. The man says he is a trucker also and wants to join Larry and Axel. No thanks, dork. Stranger insults Axel and leaves.

Our protagonist and antagonist have now met but, number one Larry doesn’t know his family was murdered and number two he has no idea that this looney is the one who did it.

Down the line Larry takes on a job where he has to ride along with this guy who has a name now; Langley. He doesn’t remember him from the pancake house, but he can tell right away that he doesn’t like the guy. Larry assesses him as a wannabe. A poser. He is dressed like he thinks truckers should dress. He overuses trucker lingo. He notices that he is trim and fit probably from lifting weights which in Larry’s mind is for soft men who don’t have that natural masculinity. I’m paraphrasing but daaamnn.

Langley wants nothing more than to be Larry’s best friend. Or just be Larry in general. If you’ve seen the movie The Cable Guy it’s like that but with a serial killer and brutal violence.

This book in general is incredibly suspenseful. The writing is fluid and real, it’s working-class prose and dialogue which means, it’s accessible. Though I am generally the target range audience for this book, it is very specific to truckers. Lots of terminology and culture. In fact, the author almost has a Langley type worship about truckers. He talks about them in the same way people talk about war veterans. Like truckers are hardened soldiers out there on the front lines risking their lives for their country.

But at the same time, there is some very interesting psychological study into the serial killer mind here that predates a lot of the concepts that are now widely known in mainstream culture.

Even though he consciously commits these murders he is also detached. At one point he reads a newspaper article about Larry’s family being killed. He's upset that a fellow trucker whom he considers his brother has been so hurt. Even though, he's the one who did it. Not that he acknowledges that. He decides he's going to find him and help him out. In order to get Larry in a position to need his friendship he takes fiendishly prepared steps, and it works. The Langley character is like an actor playing the part of a regular person. His mind is in two places at once, one taking part in what is happening and the other watching from a distance.

I loved this book so much and though I want to talk about the third act I am just going to leave it completely untouched. The Rig is a book that needs to be re-issued. It’s trashy but clever at the same time. It never slows down or lulls in momentum. This is one of those rare moments where the book is rare and sought after AND it delivers. This is Cape Fear on eighteen wheels drenched in the height of the trucker culture exploitation era of the 70s. It’s filled with brutal violence. It’s a working-class psychological thriller that gives it a noir tone. The every-day-Joe takes on Silence of the Lambs.

My only complaint about this entire novel is the two main characters’ names both starting with the letter L; Larry and Langley. It’s a small gripe and one that doesn’t affect the enjoyment but it will make you stumble every once in awhile and have to reset.

The Squeeze by Gil Brewer

The Squeeze was originally published in 1955 as one half of an Ace Double. The other being Love Me to Death by Frank Diamond.

In this here 2025 reprint from Stark House The Squeeze is paired with another Gil Brewer noir, And the Girl Screamed.

Cover art for the original edition and the Stark House reprint by Harry Barton.

Gil Brewer was born in 1922 to an air adventure pulp fiction writer also named Gil Brewer. He was a World War 2 veteran who left the cold of upstate New York winters for sunny St. Petersburg, Florida. His first novel Gun the Dame Down was published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1951 which started him on his career of pulpy paperback royalty. He unfortunately was a lifelong alcoholic. He died in 1983.

Written review below. Video review here:

Our protagonist is Joe Maule and he is an everyday Joe. He once had a good job and a good girl with a promising life ahead of him. Then one day he stopped by an illegal gambling house run by syndicate man Victor Jarnigan. In a four-night gambling binge Joe lost twelve thousand dollars. He had to sell his house. His lady left him. He lost his job and now lives in a shack on a Tampa beach.

One evening he is visited by Fritz, Jarnigan’s muscle and told his presence is requested at Jarnigan’s home.

Maule has no choice but to attend. He still owes the hood money. With interest.

Jarnigan lets him know there is only one way out of his financial predicament and that is to do what he’s told. He tells him a story of a career thief who accidently killed a guard on a job. He was caught and executed. The two hundred thousand that the thief saved is still out there. The only person who knows its whereabouts is the thief’s straight friend who lives with his wife and her sister. But the man lives a life of a shut-in, and the house has the latest high-tech security. Maule’s job? He is given the serendipitous task of seducing the sister Caroline to get her to lead them to the money. Lucky for him, she’s a smoking hot red head.

Joe stops by a bar she is known to frequent. He makes his moves but she has her guard up. Within a couple days has precured the much coveted single guy salvation, the phone number.

He calls Caroline up for a date. She wants to go swimming at 6am. A deal breaker for me but Joe doesn’t have much of a choice, he has to get into that house. Luckily for him, after the swim she invites him back to the house for breakfast. There he meets the married couple. The wife is an obnoxious drunk. The husband is edgy and not thrilled about seeing this strange man in his fortress.

A week goes by and the waves of love have washed them out to…love sea.

Without even being prompted she asks Joe to help her get the money away from her brother in-law.

Everything seems to be going well for Joe until Jarnigan’s hoods show up on his door. He’s taking too long and not following instructions. They pummel his face. Caroline stops by to see him and upon seeing Joe’s black and blue face wants to know what happened.

He comes clean about Jarnigan, his debts and what he has been tasked to do. Instead of being mad, she comes up with a plan.

Why can Joe trust? It’s a classic noir story. Is she a femme fatale leading Joe to even further detriment or is she true? Is she working for Jarnigan? Will Jarnigan even square up if Joe can recover the money? And that glorious stack of cash. There still is the obstacle of her brother in-law. This story was worthy of the black and white movie treatment. Or maybe even cooler, a story that would appear in EC Comics Crime series.

The writing style and storytelling here are incredibly smooth. It’s bare bones but not boring or bloated. All muscle, no fat. Punchy and clear. It’s a book where you can pick it up after a couple days and not need to skim the previous chapter for a refresher.

At times it can even be humorous but in a dark way. There is a scene in particular that reminded me of the episode of the Sopranos where Pauly and Chris are lost in the woods. Five stars.

Gang Rumble by Edward S Aarons

Originally published in 1958 by Avon under the pseudonym Edward Ronns

Edward S Aarons was from the mean streets of Philadelphia, born in 1916 and died in 1975. He graduated from Columbia University and was a World War 2 veteran. He wrote crime and detective stories but is most well-known for his long running, 42 entry espionage series, Assignment.

I read this beautiful reprint from Stark House Press. Available for purchase right here.

Video version here. Text version below.

The basic premise. Ne’er-do-well, Johnny Broom, warlord of the Philadelphia juvenile delinquent street gang, the Lancers, has dreams of being a big-time hood. He gets his first big assignment from local gangster, Comber, to help heist the very warehouse where his goody-two-shoe older brother Pete works security. Johnny enlists the help of his fellow Lancer, Stitch, and Mike, a sociopathic rich kid who is new in town. Things go horribly wrong during the heist and now Johnny, Stitch and Mike are on the run, being hunted down like dogs by a violent alcoholic cop named Vallera.

If you’ve ever read one of Aarons Assignment Series books you’ll know the man is a master of delivering exciting and tense situations. You never know what’s going to happen next and this book is no different but instead of being whisked off to an exotic foreign locale you are transported back to the 1950s slums of Philadelphia. A black and white world of greaser juvenile delinquents, violent drunk cops, hooch and smack, petty crime, socials, poodle skirts and the mean streets of the ghetto. It’s a bleak world with nary a pinhole of hope.

Aarons sets us up gently. 17 year old, Johnny Broom is Warlord of the JD gang the Lancers. He is sitting on his roof contemplating the world. His dreams. His options. His place in the world and what the world has given him. It makes him bitter. His parents are dead. He lives on North Seventh street, which everyone calls the Jungle, with his older brother Pete. To young Johnny Broom, Pete is a sucker. He has a shit job working security on the overnight shift at a warehouse downtown. Pete is always trying to get Johnny to quit hanging around the gang and get a job but Johnny aint having it. He’s going to be somebody. And what Johnny wants to be is a gangster. Johnny is our protagonist and his own antagonist.

He recently made a deal with local “legitimate businessman” hood named Comber. Comber wants Johnny to exploit his relationship with his brother to let them in the warehouse so Comber’s crew can rob the place. Johnny has no problem using his brother or double crossing his own gang, the Lancers to come up in the ranks of crimedom. He enlists one other member of the Lancers to help him out; Stitch, a short, fat, smelly, red headed, yes man. As for the other members of the Lancers, he’s set them up to rumble with the neighbor JD street gang, the Violets to use as a distraction so the fuzz won’t interrupt the robbery. Johnny is their leader so what he says goes but there is some question as to why they are randomly hitting the Violets at their bowling alley HQ.

Johnny figures he needs one more man for the robbery crew so enlists new kid in town, Mike. Mike lives in the rich part of town. It’s never really said how the two meet so consider that an unplugged plot hole. Mike is a sociopath. A serial killer in his infant stages. We get a fun little scene with the older housekeeper woman who he is sleeping with. He psychologically belittles her and reminisces about the joy he felt the day that he dumped out her beloved fishbowl while she was in the bathroom, so he could watch the fish slowly suffocate, and then his favorite part of the moment was seeing how upset she was about the fish being dead.

Johnny and his little crew are being tracked by psychotic alcoholic cop Vallera who thinks the only way to deal with all of the JD gangs is to crack their skulls open. He literally wants to kill them. He has a more rational partner named Lew who he is not a fan of because Lew is a big pussy who doesn’t want to murder these kids. Also, Lew is dating Vallera’s angelic daughter Rose and he doesn’t like that either. Not because he thinks Lew isn’t good enough for Rose but because if Rose marries Lew than Vallera will be left all alone to his sad pathetic drunk life.

As you can see, like most JD books this thing is bleak. The whole story takes place in real time. From the afternoon sitting on the rooftop until the next morning. Nothing goes Johnny’s way and now he’s on the run with a hefty prison sentence hanging over his head. In tow on the lamb is the crew he put together helping him sink further into the hole; his junkie girlfriend, his useless yes man and worst off all is Mike always encouraging the worst, pushing him even further out on the plank while throwing chum to the sharks with a smile on his face.

It’s kind of an odd comparison but this reminds me of the movie Do the Right Thing. It’s the hottest night of the summer. Each chapter jumps from independent scenarios featuring the characters involved and each one is a step towards what you know will initially be the climax explosion. It’s exciting to have the story built this way.

Aarons writing is top notch of course and this may be the most expertly written JD book I’ve ever read. There is a scene where Vallera and Lew are sitting outside the bowling alley waiting for the rumble. They have a ride along guest of a do-gooder social worker in the back seat who wants to try and talk to the kids, to calm the situation. Vallera nastily retorts that the only thing these kids need is to be beaten into submission. Lew is silently listening to all of this, wishing to be anywhere else. Aarons writes, "He thought he heard the distant rolling of thunder but it could have been only the heavy, heated pulse of angry blood in his ears." Which is just an absolutely colorful foreshadowing metaphor intertwined in the angry reaction of the moment. The storm is coming, literally and figuratively.

I think Aarons has some interesting takes on why some people resort to desperate measures. Johnny lives in a neighborhood with little to no hope of escape. Even if he plays it straight like his brother he would only break even. Mike on the other hand comes from a well-to-do family. His criminal activity is psychological. The violent cop, Vallera lives across the street from Johnny. He’s in the slums too. His reaction to violence is more violence. On the other hand you have the upper-class social crusader who thinks everything can be handled with conversation and understanding. And what I really enjoy is both are right and both are wrong. Life is complex and this novel is a vortex decimating everyone involved. This book is literature from the gutter and the best JD novel I’ve ever read.

Shadow Stalker by Jorge Saralegui

Charter Books 1987

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?

All Shot Up by Chester Himes

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.

Video review at the end of this video...

Black Authors of Pulp Fiction

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)

Dar Kush – (Steven Barnes Blog)

Apexbookcompany.com (interview)

Wikipedia and goodreads for plot synopsis.