September 1, 2024 • 54 mins
On this thrilling NEW episode, Eric takes listeners on an extensive bookstore tour throughout New England, including a stop at one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books. In addition, Eric visits the resting places for two astounding authors. You can view the companion visual feature of this segment HERE. It's also a double-feature with a look at the vintage stories starring occult detective Simon Ark and an examination of a two-book 1960s series starring a California sheriff. Download the episode HERE. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Facebook, X, and YouTube. Check the Paperback Warrior blog daily for new reviews and articles.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's that time again. Oh, it's that sweet time again.
We're talking books galore right here on the Paperback Warrior podcast.
If you're new to our show, this podcast is an
offshoot of our blog at Paperbackwarrior dot com, where you'll
find thousands of reviews of vintage fiction and the archives.
(00:41):
To listen to the prior one hundred and three episodes
of this very show. You can follow us on Facebook
and x for daily post about books. Let me just
say I am so jacked up today. I'm so excited. Seriously,
this episode is completely packed with content. I've hinted about
my new England trip on the last episode, so I'm
going to kick things off today by talking about the
(01:03):
bookstores that I found, the items I bought, the items
I didn't buy, the graves that I visited, and my
visit to one of the largest buildings in the world
that houses books and manuscripts. You're going to love hearing
about all these places, but we can't forget about books, books, books, books, Baby.
(01:23):
This episode, I've got two massive features for you. The
first is all about Edward D. Hawk's extraordinary detective Simon
arc He's appeared in mid twentieth century Pulps and Digest,
and he's been featured prominently in many paperback anthologies and
digital content. Maybe some of you have ran into a
Simon Ark story somewhere out there, but I'm all about
(01:43):
some Assimon arc today. Also, I'm going to dig into
the Sheriff Joe Bain series that was published in the
nineteen sixties and written by a gentleman named John Holbrook Vance,
which some of you may know him as Jack Vance.
I'll also be reviewing both of the Joe Bain books
as part of my feature, and I also have a
separate book review for you as well, of a vintage
(02:06):
nineteen sixty paperback called Satan's Mate by George H. Smith.
I'm gonna skip story time this episode because we just
have so much content to get to, So no audio
story from me today, but we're going to talk a
little bit about housekeeping stuff. Well not really housekeeping, I guess,
but just sort of a disclaimer. I just thought about
(02:27):
this the other day and wanted to bring it up.
Tom and I like to talk about the bookstores we
find and the books we buy, but it isn't to
be boastful or to do things like you know, see
what I have that you don't have. Kind of thing.
I think we're all on the same page that we
talk about stores and books because we love both of them.
But by bringing these books up, it gives us and
you the ability to learn about a book's publication or
(02:48):
history or author, and it's really a gateway into that
sort of discussion. The purchase isn't really that important or
who has what, it's just the book talk. If you
kind of get what I mean. I hope you get
what we were doing with our trips, our book shopping,
and I would say maybe three fourths of our audience
probably digs this sort of thing, if not more. But
it was weighing on my mind, so I just wanted
(03:10):
to be clear on that. So first up on today's
content is New England. Now, from a personal standpoint, I've
had this running joke with my family that there's no
actual place called Connecticut. It's a mythical land. But my
wife was born and raised in Connecticut, and we've been
(03:31):
married five years. We've never traveled to her hometown. So
she can show me things like her childhood home, the
schools that she went to, the jobs that she worked,
and every time she would ask if we could go
to Connecticut for a visit. I just say, hey, you know,
there's no such place. Stop being childish. But I finally
committed to a week visit to Connecticut with the family,
(03:54):
and I take one week vacation every year, and it's
really only because I won this. I guess you could
call it a trip, But I won this trip through
hitting sales goals at work. That's the way the insurance
industry works. The vacation was visiting a few states in
the Northeast along with Connecticut. I haven't really been to
the Northeast other than New York City if that counts
(04:17):
in Pittsburgh, So I wanted to hit some bookstores and
graves up there. So I'm going to go chronologically here
of all the book related stuff, I'll leave all the
other stuff out. The first place I drugged my family
to was Rhode Island to visit HP Lovecraft's grave, just
on the outskirts of Providence. We arrived, and I'm telling you,
(04:37):
it's a beautiful, beautiful cemetery. His grave was really cool
because fans have staked pencils into the ground around his
grave marker. And if you check Facebook and X and
then also YouTube. I'm gonna have photos plus a slide
show on YouTube of everything we're talking about today on
places I went, so be sure to check that out.
(04:59):
I have photos on on the paperback Warrior page showing
me standing at the grave of HP Lovecraft. But from
there we went south. We parked, and then we ferried
over to a place called Block Island. The second day
of the vacation, I went to the island Bound Bookstore
and I can only guess, like the rent for this
(05:19):
place has to be like super super expensive. But it
was a cute little place, but nothing for folks like us,
like literally nothing, just new books with some reprints of
mysteries and classics. But Black Island itself is absolutely gorgeous
and I recommend it as a trip for anyone. It's
a beautiful place to be. The next day we went
(05:39):
to the legendary Salem, Massachusetts, and I found a bookstore
in Salem called Pyramid Books. And I went into Pyramid
Books and I immediately left. Not really, I guess you
could call it a bookstore, but it's just new age stuff,
missus stuff, you know, magnets, postcards, trinkets, and some books.
(06:06):
But it totally didn't interest me at all, so I
just left. The next day, we did some Massachusetts stuff
and that led me to one of the most unique
bookstores I've ever been to. The place is called the
Mana Hugh Book Mill. This store is two levels and
it's literally sitting on the Sawmill River, which is fed
(06:28):
by the larger Connecticut River. People were cozily inside, reading, studying,
and man the atmosphere was just so nice. They had
the windows open and he had the sound of the
roaring water. It was just really refreshing. It's kind of
like an outdoorsy feel. But inside, however, not much happening
(06:49):
in the way of our kind of books, Like nothing.
I'm starting to see the pattern and that New England
is really big on non fiction books and their stores
are packed with that kind of stuff. I'm mostly not
interested in anything of that genre, except, as you probably guessed,
books about books. I love books about books or music too.
(07:12):
I could do either one. But I did locate two
interesting books there that might appeal to some of you.
There were two Ace books on the shelf. This is
part of a science fiction trilogy starring an astronaut and
I guess pilot named Nicole Sha. The two books were
First Flight from nineteen eighty seven and Grounded from nineteen
(07:35):
ninety one. They look really cool and both were authored
by iconic X men and comic scribe Chris Claremont. They
also had a lancer paperback there by Ted White called
Phoenix Prime, which had a publishing date of nineteen sixty six,
and I didn't write it down. But the store also
(07:56):
had an issue of an old science fiction pulp but
I can't think of the name. I forgot to take
a picture of it. Next after that bookstore, we continued
to travel north up into Vermont, and we traveled to
a place called Brattleboro. And it's a weird place, Like
it's a really weird place. And we only stopped there
(08:18):
because on the map it's like literally the only city
that we came to after driving like twenty twenty five
miles into Vermont, that was the first place to pop up,
so we stopped there. I had looked and saw that
there was a couple of bookstores there, so I was
happy to stop in. But I don't know this. I
don't know if anyone has been to Brattleborough, but it's
(08:40):
a weird place. I just didn't get a good vibe
when I was there, and you kind of pull in
and there's all this political stuff, like all their agendas
and their opinions and which is fine, but I mean,
it is everywhere, and it's overdone. And there were a
couple people tweaking on drugs on the sidewalk. And keep
(09:01):
in mind, I've got my wife and they've got three
kids with us, and it wasn't a great place to be.
But I just I wanted to just check out the
bookstores real, real fast and then get the heck out
of there. So the first bookstore that I came to
which had good reviews online was Brattleborough Books, but it
just happened to be that they were closed that day,
so no luck there. It looked great. The next best
(09:23):
place for books was across the street, and it was
called Everyone's Books. Really weird that they're like staring at
each other on the street. It's kind of odd, maybe
the rivals of some kind. But the best used bookstores
are sometimes in bad areas, so I was kind of
hopeful that if I walked in there, I would find
some good stuff. I didn't feel great in the doorway
(09:47):
of this place, and they had to sign up stating
that mask were recommended, and you know, I haven't put
a mask on, you know, in a store like that
since like summer of twenty twenty, so it's weird for
me to but I was okay with them. I mean,
that's what they want to do. So I went over
asked if they had any mask, and the guy kind
of unfriendly, just pointed to someone on the counter and
(10:08):
he had like little specific instructions on where to place
this little baggy once you are opening your mask and
put it on. They have specific instructions that they want
the little baggy in this little container. Weird, weird place,
and it was tombstone cold, like tombstone cold in there.
(10:28):
They had nothing of interest other than just a lot
of books that were it looked like they were like
specifically organized by whatever political thing they were trying to emphasize. Anyway,
the store not good. Maybe someone out there has a
better experience with him, but mine was just awful. But
thankfully the trip to Brattleborough was saved by Twice upon
(10:53):
a Time Antiques. This store is massive, it's huge, it
has two levels, and I took some photos of the
books in there and I've added them to the slide
show and some of my photos. Normally, antique stores aren't good,
and we've talked about that before on this very podcast.
Antique stores are great places to hoarde cookbooks, and that's
(11:15):
normally all they have is cookbooks. But this place was
surprisingly a little different. The first thing I saw was
a bagged original hardcover of a vintage Hardy Boys book.
This one was called The Secret Warning. I used to
love Hardy Boys when I was growing up. It was
twenty bucks. I didn't need it. I passed. They had
a Dorothy Sayer's avon paperback called Lord Peter Views the Body.
(11:39):
They had hardcover vintage westerns by William McLeod rain and B. M. Bauer.
These were tagged for five bucks each. There was a
neat looking vintage hardcover by Franz Striker called The Hidden
Stone Mystery, which I think is an installment in the
Tom Quest Adventures series. It was five bucks. They also
(12:02):
had some of Franz Striker's Lone Ranger novels in there
as well. Browsing a little bit more, I found some
false At Gold Medals, I found science fiction paperbacks published
by the likes of Ace and Signet. I mean they
had some great stuff, like stuff by John D. MacDonald,
Andre Norton. I can't never remember the actual name, but
(12:22):
Andre Norton, Robert Silverberg. They had a Berkeley Medallion sci
fi paperback that looked pretty cool. It was called No
Man on Earth. And they also had a Curtis Books
paperback by Joe Poyer and I can't think of the
name of it. Maybe that was the same book. I
can't make sense of my own notes. But they also
(12:44):
had The Guns of Tara ten by the Executioner creator
writer Don Pendleton. It's always that's got a cool cover.
I see it out and about every now and then.
I saw a cool Ace book F three five three.
If you're keeping track at home, this was Avron Davidson's
Rogue Dragon. Also, they had a really cool collection of
(13:08):
audio CDs. Remember CDs. Remember CDs. I'm so old now
that CDs are outdated, but they had a collection of those.
I counted twelve Perry Mason audio CDs. They had a
couple of the Ellery Queen CDs, and they also had
Sherlock Holmes and a Max Allen Collins a CD in
there as well. I've got photos of all of them,
(13:30):
and I ended up just buying one thing, even though
I saw a lot of cool stuff, I just bought
one thing, which was really just a stack of Marvel's
Red Sonia comics. This was the nineteen eighty three series,
which I didn't have, and I was able to get
issues number two through twelve, which is cool because there
(13:50):
was only thirteen issues total, so I got almost the
majority of the series. I spent some money there, though
it cost me thirty five dollars to get that whole stack,
but money well spent. The next day we went to Boston.
I hit a bookstore there called Books and Old Prints,
and you can find the store at Commonwealth Books dot com.
(14:11):
Inside the store, I talked to the owner and he
told me the store has been around for about thirty
years or so. I mentioned that I had a Paperback
Warrior podcast and blog where I did book reviews and
shout outs to bookstores, and he didn't seem to care.
So a nice guy, but he wasn't interested in talking
that particular day. So I moved into the shelving area
(14:32):
and they had a hard case crime paperback by Donald E. Westlake.
They had an Ed McBain eighty seventh Precinct paperback, and
they also had a collection that I just I don't
know why I didn't buy it. I wish I had.
It was a hardcover by Arthur Morrison, collecting the best
Martin Hewitt detective stories. I don't know why I didn't
(14:53):
buy it. They had a robust collection of Doll books,
including the Gore series. They had in a glass case
a vintage paperback by Dornford Yates called Shoal Water, and
they also had a Barbara Michael's hardcover called The Dance
on the other side. Took photos of all this as well.
I only bought one book, and surprisingly it wasn't even
(15:15):
in the store. It was in a cart shoved outside,
advertised as a dollar a book. So I went out
there picked up a book called The Whisper of Shadows
by J. L. H. Whitney. J LH. Whitney, I'm not
sure who that is, but yeah, Whisper of Shadows. It's
an age Gothic from nineteen sixty four. While I was
(15:37):
in Boston, I also checked out a popular chain store
that I've never visited, called Newberry Comics. Maybe some of
you out there already have Newberry Comics stores in your area,
but Hey, this was the first time I'd ever been there.
They have a really large, two story Newberry Comics located
in the Quincy Market area, and that was a lot
of fun just browsing comics. And their trade collection had
(16:01):
cool vintage I shouldn't say vintage, but cool eighties themed
horror t shirts and rock t shirts and things like that.
Cool place. I didn't buy anything. The next day, I
drugged my family along for a long drive through western Connecticut.
I mean we drove and drove and drove into some
pretty darn rural areas. I mean, we're almost over into
(16:24):
New York at this point. But we went to a
place called Washington, Connecticut for one specific reason, and that
was to visit Edward S. Aaron's grave. Edward S. Aarons,
He's buried in Old Judaea Cemetery, and have a photo
of me standing by his grave, and I'll post that
as well. You know, it's kind of funny because when
(16:46):
you get to these authors that you love and that
you read and that you adore, it's kind of a
sad scenario when you go and visit their grave and
then you just realize that it's just a grave, nothing
there to end that they were a great writer, that
they had this excellent bibliography, that they had fans, that
(17:07):
some of these authors, like Edward S. Aaron's, for example,
had great contributions to crime noir, crime fiction in general,
spy fiction. Remember Aarons wrote the Assignment series also known
as Sam Durrell. And there's nothing there to suggest that
he was a great writer. And I was driving there
(17:27):
and I'm thinking to myself, you know, there's got probably
like some pencils staked out. Maybe somebody has left something
on his grave, kind of like what they did with
HP Lovecraft, But there's nothing. His grave is marked with
a military designation because he was in the US Coast Guard.
In fact, he was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed,
so they had the military designation there, so that was cool,
(17:49):
but nothing else to celebrate. Arguably one of my favorite
crime fiction writers, but argably one of the most popular
crime nor writers of the mid twentieth century anyway, or
early twentieth century. And when you think about it, Aaron's
he was published by the likes of Graphic Ace, he
was published by obviously Falset Gold Medal, and then he
(18:10):
always had great artists doing his cover. So he was
a big deal and his books had multiple printings for
a number of decades. But anyway, I felt really bad
when I was visiting his grave, but it took some
time to kind of give my spill on how great
he was as a writer and what great books that
he wrote. So I kind of told him that and
(18:30):
then I left. The same day, we drove to Yale
to visit one of the largest buildings in the world
housing rare books. It's called the Benecki Rare Book and
Manuscript Library. I hope I'm saying that name right, Bennicky
Benecki Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It's a huge indoor,
(18:53):
rectangular glass tower stacked with rare books. Above ground, this
thing is six stories high and has something like two
hundred thousand books in its tower. And then I'm not
sure if they have a million books in the underground
facility or just room for a million. But when you
(19:15):
walk in there, there's staircases on each side that you
walk up just to view the tower, and all the
books are in a controlled room, and I'm sure they
probably have some sort of air treatment inside. There's also
guards there that keep you from going nuts and trying
to break through and getting an expensive, valuable book. It
took me about twenty minutes to slowly walk completely around
(19:36):
the tower. It was a cool experience. I'm glad I went.
I posted photos as well that I also went to
Yale's historic Sterling Memorial Library, which was amazing. Just as
amazing there, they have a lot of old books as well,
which I think are barred from the Beneki Rare Book Library.
I saw a Moby Dick book in there in a case,
(19:59):
and it was printed Chicago's Lakeside Press with illustrations by
Rockwell and it was dated in nineteen thirty. So anyway,
I texted my dad right after I left there and
I told him I made it to Yale and it
didn't cost him a penny. It was also in the
Yale area that I found the absolute best bookstore that
I visited the whole trip. The store is called gray
(20:21):
Matter Books. I walked in and it seemed kind of small,
but I didn't realize how deep the store was. On
the first shelf I touched, I found a surplus of
Lawrence block paperbags, both from Avon and Signet. I found
Assault on Loveless by Alan Calou which was an installment
(20:42):
in his Kbocaine series. I found Return of the Saint
on coronet and the title was The Saint and the
Habsburg Necklace. I found a cool book by Paul Thurdo
called Saint Jack, which was later adapted into a film.
I had a great cover of the store. I also
had a copy of the High Adventure magazine. This one
sported a story called Arms for Ethiopia by George Fielding Elliott.
(21:06):
There was a vintage signet paperback by Kingsley Amos called
Take a Girl Like You Looked Awesome. I didn't buy
that one because it had a little bit of a
higher price tag, so I passed on it. Another vintage
paperback I saw there had an up close view of
a woman's torso and her clothed nether regions called The
(21:27):
Talking Jewels by Dennis Didero. I found a Bantam paperback
by Frederick Brown called The Mind Thing. It was a
good selection of books. Their sci fi section was really good.
I took a photo of one of their large bookshelves
with three tiers. And the pricing here was pretty affordable.
Most of the paperbacks were between a dollar and four dollars,
(21:49):
so to make up for my lack of purchases for
the week, I decided to buy a stack of books here.
So here's what I bought, and forgive me, I haven't
had time to research any of these authors or titles yet,
so I might be mentioning a pseudonym or something like that.
But the first ones I wanted to mention were the
Sleeze books. The Sleez books I bought were all the
way written by Michael Avaloni using the name Mike. It's
(22:12):
a Midwood paperback from nineteen sixty I paid three dollars.
Whistle Them Willing by Richard Geiss. This is a playtime
book from nineteen sixty four. It was in really great shape.
I did pay a little bit more for this one.
I've got six dollars written down. I don't remember it
being that high, but maybe I paid six bucks for it.
Make It on Temple Street by opal Lee Berryman on
(22:35):
Newstand Library. They were a popular publisher that produced Sleez
looking books, which we'll get into a little bit later.
But that one's from nineteen sixty one. I paid four dollars.
Another Newstand Library book called Sex Is Like Money by
Ta Mashki from nineteen thirty one four dollars. Another Newstand
(22:57):
Library book called Satan's Mate by G. H. Smith from
nineteen sixty. I chose to start reading this book at
the airport and I finished it, so I'm going to
review this book on this episode. And I found a
crime fiction book called The Cleanup by Joe Barry on
Handy Books, a publisher we discussed a few weeks ago,
(23:19):
and that one was from nineteen forty seven, and I
paid three dollars for it. The science fiction genre, I
picked up Killer Pine by Lindsay Guttrich, which was on
Panther Books from nineteen seventy three. This is part of
the Ace Microagent install series. It's an installment in that title.
(23:41):
I think I paid three dollars. October. The First is
Too Late by Fred Hoyle, that's a Falset Gold Medal
book nineteen seventy I paid a dollar fifty. Survival World
by Frank Belton at Long on Magnum nineteen seventy one
a buck fifty. And then in the Adventures The Beach
(24:01):
of Falasa by Dylan Thomas on Balantine Books in nineteen
sixty five two bucks. The Lost Europeans has a Great
Cover by Emmanuel Libanoff on Pyramid nineteen fifty nine. Three
Bucks and White Eagles over Serbia by Lawrence Durrell on
Avon Camelot from nineteen fifty seven. The Avon Camelot, I
(24:23):
do believe is their young adult series, so we'll check
that out. And the last day of the vacation, I
went to Manhattan. I tried my luck one more time
at a store called book Off. It's Bokoff book Off
use bookstore in Midtown East, nice place, two floors. They
(24:44):
sell tons of toys, manga, DVDs, records, books, that kind
of thing. It reminded me of a Second in Charles store.
And they just mostly they buy huge lots of discontinued
modern hardcovers and trades and they sell them for about
three dollars to seven dollars each. I mean, if you
want new books at a cheaper price, and I'm talking
(25:06):
about like your airport books, you know, the ones that
have the same font on every cover, this is probably
the place to go to get those. I didn't see
anything I needed, so I just bailed out really quick
and that was it. There you have it. A week
of New England and New York City book shopping. And
again I've made a post of the books some of
(25:27):
the stores, and I've got a slideshow video I'll post
on YouTube as well with the episode. Alright, so my
little segue tune here, play this for you, and then
we'll get into mister Simon Ark. Okay, hot tea is
(25:49):
on my desk, and I'm ready to talk about Simon Arc. Now.
This guy was created and authored solely by Edward W. Hoak.
He was one of the most prolific writers of the
twentieth century. This guy churned out nearly one thousand short
stories for the Pulps and Digest. He also wrote a
crime novel, he wrote three science fiction novels. He wrote
(26:13):
a book as Ellery Queen. But really, short stories were
his game, and he created a ton of characters over
his long and successful career. This feature isn't on Hope,
because he really deserves his own feature. I think it'll
be doing a disservice to him by just abbreviating everything
that he's accomplished with his literary career. So we're just
(26:35):
going to talk about Simon Arc today. And Simon Ark.
He appeared for the first time in the December nineteen
fifty five issue of Famous Detective Stories, which, if you
think about it, was sort of the last remnant of
the pulp market. It had dried up at this point.
But before we talk about Simon Ark's publication history and
appearances and all that good stuff, I want to talk
(26:57):
about the character himself. So I'll give you the scoop
and the character. How the stories all work. The majority
of these stories are presented in first person narrative by
an unnamed narrator. The name of the narrator is never
provided throughout the entire series, which I think is kind
of cool. In the very beginning, the narrator is working
as a reporter and he meets Simon Ark while investigating
(27:20):
this bizarre mass suicide in nineteen fifty It's really cool
because Arc is described by the narrator upon this first
meeting as quote, the man called Simon Ark had advanced
closer now, and I could make out his features clearly
in the light from my flash. He was not old,
and yet his face had tiny lines of age to
(27:41):
be seen if one looked closely enough. In a way,
he was perhaps a very handsome man. Yet somehow I
cannot imagine women ever being attracted to him end quote
to me, that first impression left me feeling like there's
something just a little bit odd about this character, just
a weird vibe. By the third Simon Ar Dark Story,
the narrator catches up with Arc after a few years
(28:04):
and they have this cool little exchange where Arc responds
to the narrator when asked what he's been up to
the last few years, and Arc responds by saying, quote,
there's evil everywhere these days, and it's most difficult to
separate the man made from the more ancient type end quote.
The narrator then says to the reader quote that Arc
(28:25):
has been searching for the ultimate evil, searching for the
devil himself, and there were times when the look of
his face seemed to tell me that he's been searching
a long long time. So throughout the early part of
the series, the narrator and the reader gets hints that
Simon Ark may actually be over two thousand years old
(28:47):
and that he's been searching the earth for Satan. So
the series works like any kind of like Monster of
the Week television show you may have seen, like X
Files or Supernatural or Grim or Cultchet, the Nightstalker and
their hints that I'm referring to is that Simon Arc
has this vast knowledge of ancient history in a way
(29:07):
that suggests he lived during that time, like, for example,
Saint Augustine. The way Simon Arc discusses Saint Augustine makes
it sound like he actually knew him like personally. Arc
doesn't seem to show any aging throughout the series, and
the narrator often makes a note of this, and as
the stories go on, we're living the life of the narrator.
(29:29):
The narrator changes careers and gets married, and Simon Arc
just stays the same, and later stories, Art confesses to
the narrator that he's actually or he actually was I
guess I should say, a Coptic priest in Egypt nearly
two thousand years ago. But the narrator obviously doubts this,
but he even admits that Arc knows a great deal
(29:51):
about weird stuff like Satanism, voodoo, witchcraft, sacred text, archaic
religious ceremonies, and things like that, so Arc could be
sort of an occult detective. The narrator's publishing firm eventually
publishes a book about Simon Arc and his mysterious history
which creates sort of a cult following for simon Ark
(30:13):
as we get into the later stories. While I haven't
read this explanation and a simon Arch story yet, there's
a blog called TV tropes that says Simon Arc was
cursed by God because when Jesus was carrying the cross
to his crucifixion, he wanted to stop and rest, but
simon Ark, being a Roman soldier, refused him rest. So
(30:36):
now Simon Ark is doomed to wonder Earth forever, searching
for evil. In a way sort of loosely reminds me
of Barry Sadler's Casca series. If I'm not mistaken, I
think Caska. Maybe it was a Roman soldier and it
pierced the side of Jesus. Thus he was cursed to
time travel, I guess. So the way these stories will
(30:57):
begin is the narrator we'll recall it time in his
life where he investigated something bizarre or mysterious. The narrator
may start out by saying, there was a time in
nineteen fifty something when I ran into Simon Ark on
a train in London. I was there to interview an
author about a possible publication of their book. When I
ran into Arc, and he told me he was headed
(31:18):
to someplace called Mansfield to investigate a man who claims
he can walk on water. So, if you think about it,
Arc is there to find out if this supernatural thing
is affiliated in some way with an evil force or devil,
and the narrator is going along because, hey, this could
make for a really great book. So the two have
a reason for collaborating together on all these wild mysteries
(31:41):
that surface all over the globe. The way Hoak writes
the stories is that there's a logical, rational explanation for
solving the mysteries that Arc and the narrator investigate. It's
like a weird ministry where everything seems supernatural, but at
the end there's a rational explanation. However, the ending in
(32:03):
a way is subjective, because the resolutions often walk like
a balance beam, if you will, between explained and unexplained.
For example, a guy may show all signs of being
possessed by the devil when he's really just a raving
madman that likes to kill. But by the story's end
(32:25):
you get the impression that maybe Simon Ark did see
some sort of dark, demonic force within the man in
one story, the resolution seems rational, but at the end
the narrator questions that the case was really that easier simple,
and Arc responds coolly, there are some things better left unexplained,
(32:46):
at least in this world. For me personally, I like
to think of these stories as maybe half of them
being supernatural and the other half may be completely plausible,
but it's in the eye of the beholder, and that's
really the enjoyment of the Simon Arch series, looking at
the mystery from two different lenses. Now, I've read a
(33:07):
number of these stories, and I wanted to offer just
brief reviews for some of the first Simon Arch stories.
In fact, I think I'm doing the first three all right.
So the debut is a story called Village of the Dead,
and as we mentioned earlier, it's from Famous Detective Stories
December nineteen fifty five. In this one, as I mentioned earlier,
(33:29):
the narrator is working as a reporter and he goes
to a small town in the American Southwest where seventy
three people have committed mass suicide by plunging from a
cliff to their death. While he's there, he meets Simon
Ark for the very first time. So together, the two
team up to discover that this religious fanatic named Axodus
(33:52):
arrived in town two years earlier and began to transform
the community into a new sort of religion. This guy
Bench convinces the whole town to commit suicide, and the
only reason why is so he can gain the rights
to the town's mining industry and all the gold that
they've got hoarded in caves and underground. Kind of a
silly ending, but the ending does seem or the idea
(34:15):
of the story does seem rational, I guess, because if
you think about it, mass suicide, it's occurred repeatedly throughout history.
Yet there's a suggestion that Axiodus may have been centuries old,
and you know, it's up to the reader to decide
for themselves. The plot is I guess it's rather unique
in a way for nineteen fifty five because if you
(34:37):
think about it, the Jonestown massacre, it didn't occur until
nineteen seventy eight, and it's interesting when you look at
this from perspective. When describing this very story, Hoaks said
that the story was shopped around to a lot of
magazines and digest but the idea of a mass suicide
struck most publishers as being completely unbelievable. The story finally
(34:59):
reached the desk of Robert A. Lowndes, who at the
time was the editor for Famous Detective Stories and he
also edited I Think for other magazines from Columbia Publications.
Lowndes was an admir of psychic detectives like William Hope
Hodskins what was that one called William Hope Hodskins, Karnaki
(35:20):
and Seabury Quinn's Jules Day Grandon, and Hok assumed that
Lowndes saw something in Simon Ark that just reminded him
of those types of characters. This story again is called
Village of the Dead, and it was the very first
story that Edward Hoak was able to get published. This
launched his career. This is the story. The second story
(35:41):
is called hoofs of Satan and it was in Famous
Detective Stories February nineteen fifty six. This story takes place
in North Bradshire, on one of the main highways from
London to the coast, and it's there that these hoof
prints in the snow have been discovered, and this eventually
is linked to a murder investigation. The mystery is whether
(36:02):
some sort of devil, is the culpriate or a scorned lover,
and as you can imagine, love is in the air
and Arc finds the real answer. But again there's a
sense of some supernatural developments kind of behind the whole thing,
so you're left with half full, half empty kind of thing.
The third story is titled The Witch's Dead and it
was published in Famous Detective Stories in April nineteen fifty six.
(36:25):
In this one, the two of them they go to
this women's college in New York where all the students
have some sort of mysterious illness and some have died
from the surface. It appears to be a virus or
just a bacteria, but in the weeds of the investigation
it leads to a fortune teller named Mother Fortune, who
(36:46):
had this unfortunate incident occur at the college years ago.
So the question is, really twofold, does Mother Fortune really
have supernatural powers? And if so, why is she targeting
to college now. This was my least favorite story of
the simon Ark installments that I've read so far. It
just seemed to be a little bit shallow in the storytelling,
(37:08):
and it had a really silly ending. One of my
absolute favorites of the ARC stories I've read so far
is called The Wolves of Warclaw, which was featured in
the October nineteen fifty sixth issue of Famous Detective Stories.
In this story, the narrator is now serving as a
major New York publishing firm, and he journeys to Poland
(37:29):
to witness first hand the gradual lifting of the Iron curtain.
But in the town of Worklaw, the citizens are being
shredded by something big with razor sharp claws. Hand in
hand with the murders is a large pack of gray
wolves that's been spotted in town. The town's authority calls
in an expert on wolves, and sure enough, Simon Ark arrives.
(37:51):
ARC and the Narrator catch up like they often do,
and then they search out who or what's killing the people.
And I felt like in a way, Hook had a
lot to say about communism in the story. And there's
a central theme that soldiers are being honored in town
and it's like an anniversary because they held off a
large battalion of Nazi troops during World War Two, and
those soldiers become victims of the story. So it could
(38:14):
be a werewolf killing the soldiers or simply a communist
backed initiative to quell a future rebellion by killing off
those tremendous patriots. First, it was a great story. I
thought it was really clever. I loved the pacing of it.
It was cool. I love the story. Now there's a
weird era for the stories from nineteen fifty nine through
(38:34):
nineteen sixty. These stories have a strange private eye vibe
in these stories, which are all published in double action
detective and mystery stories. Ark and the narrator have formed
this swanky detective agency and they take on clients who
have just everyday problems like cheating husbands, embezzlement, missing persons.
(39:00):
The names of the stories, as you could tell, are
really easy to spot. These stories have names like the
Case of the Sexy Smugglers, the Case of the Naked Nie,
the Case of the Vanished Virgin, the Case of the
Ragged Rapist. You get the idea. For me personally, I'd
like to not consider these simon Arc stories as actually
(39:22):
being cannon for Simon Ark. They just don't fit. And
even the author himself, Hope, doesn't include any of these
stories in any of the compilation omnibus that we're going
to talk about in it just a little bit. None
of the collections feature those stories, and it didn't last long,
just those two years, and then it went back to normal.
(39:45):
I think maybe it could have been a situation where
that magazine again double action detective and mystery stories. It
could have been a situation where they just wanted Hope
to provide a private eye series and he just stuck
Simon Ark in there. It doesn't make a whole lot
of sense why, but we'll never know. So winding down here,
(40:06):
the Simon Arc stories in the second half of the
twentieth century appear in publications like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, The Saint Mystery Magazine, Mike Shane
Mystery Magazine, Tightrope, and Keyhole Detective Story. The last Simon
Arch story was in winter two thousand and eight and
(40:27):
it was published in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. All Right,
the question you're probably asking right now is how on
earth do you read these Simon Arc stories, considering they're
all featured in magazines and digests that you may not
even have access to. Well, for free, you can read
many of the magazines at archive dot org. However, publishers
(40:47):
have done all the heavy lifting for you. And here's
the books that I'm aware of that collect the various
simon Arc stories. All right, So if you want vintage paperbacks,
you're going to get these books from Leisure ninth, teen
seventy one. The titles are The Judges of Hades and
Other simon Arc Stories. Next book, City of Brass and
(41:09):
Other simon Arc Stories. You can also get both of
those books as affordable reprints from Mysterious Press. Mysterious Press
also has another affordable collection called The Quest of simon
Arc and Other Stories, and in that introduction, Hoak states
that in nineteen seventy one there was a television option
(41:30):
for a simon Arch television show, and I think that
would have been really cool. The Quest of simon Ark
originally published in hardcover in nineteen eighty five, but again
you can get it as an affordable reprint. There's also
another collection called Funeral in the Fog. I love that title,
Funeral in the Fog. I'm not familiar with the publisher,
(41:51):
but you can again buy that affordably in both digital
and paperback. And I think we've covered all the bases
on Simon Ark by Edward D. Hokee. My references include
Galactic Central and the books that I referenced above. All right,
are you listeners ready for small town traditional crime in
(42:14):
rural California. We're talking today about the two book Sheriff
Joe Bain series, So sort of like how we kicked
off our last feature, these two books are by an
author that really should be receiving his own feature. We're
talking about John Holbrook Vance, which some of you may
recognize as Jack Vance. He was extremely prolific. He authored
(42:35):
at least from what I could count, nine different series
titles in genres of science fiction and fantasy. He also
wrote nine or ten standalone science fiction novels. He also
wrote mystery novels and stories using the name Peter Held
and Alan Wade, and he also wrote under ellery Queen
the kind of out of the Blue. He wrote this
(42:56):
two book series of crime novels, beginning with the nineteen
sixty six book called The Fox Valley Murders. The Fox
Valley Murders was published in hardcover by the Bobs Merrill
Company and then as a paperback by Ace. The book
is set in a fictitious California locale called Rodrigo County
no such place. The author gives readers a backstory on
(43:19):
the Joe Bain character. He was a hell raiser in
his younger days. He got into a ton of trouble
around town. He joins the US Army right after high school,
ends up in Korea fighting in the Korean War. After
the war, he's transferred to the military police. He ends
up becoming a sergeant and he uses his GI benefits
(43:40):
to attend the Chapman Institute of Criminology, which then resulted
in his position as a San Rodrigo County Deputy now Bain.
He also has an estranged wife somewhere that left him
for a musician. So Bain now lives in this small
house with his mom and his teenage daughter. So Bain
(44:01):
has some baggage at home. In both of the Joe
Bain books, there's always two plots happening in each novel.
So the Fox Valley Murders the primary plot, of course,
is a murder mystery. In a flashback sequence, readers learned
that sixteen years ago, a man named Ostley was sentenced
to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of a
(44:24):
middle school girl Now, during the murder trial, at least
a half dozen residents of the town testified that they
saw Ostley at the scene of the crime. Now, because
of good conduct, he's out of prison and he returns
back to town. Personally, I wouldn't have gone back to
my hometown. I'd start over with a clean slate. But
this dude's going right back to where he came from. Obviously,
(44:47):
nobody in town wants him there, so his appearance is
a little bit awkward. The people that testified at the trial, though,
they begin to die in all these freak accidents, and
everyone's pointing their finger at it Ostley as being the killer. However,
Ostley says he's completely innocent and murder back then and now,
and he's not murdering anyone, and he just wants to
(45:09):
continue on with his life and be carefree. So Bain
he's the man to investigate because he's the interim sheriff,
which brings us to the second plot happening in this book.
The county's long running sheriff dies in a swimming accident
at the very beginning of the book, so the county
makes Bain the interim sheriff until an election can occur
to elect a new sheriff. Bain throws his name in
(45:32):
the hat to run against this slick attorney that plans
on becoming a sheriff so he can transform the county
into a more advanced technology sort of a technology based
police station instead of the old fashioned small town approach.
Bain wants to keep things small town and simple, and
his opponent is eyeing grander things. So Bain is campaigning
(45:55):
throughout the book to win the election. And I really
I like the book, and I loved the Joe Bain
character because he's really unique. He's I hate to say dumb,
but he's sort of, for lack of a better term,
he's sort of dumb. He's down to earth. He has
street smarts, but he's a little bit lax on book smarts.
(46:16):
He's not a violent guy, but he can find and
he's kind of rough around the edges, and he just
doesn't have the best social skills. His approach to the
detective work doesn't really fall into the typical sleuth. He's
he's just different and I really like that about him.
So I was really pleased with this book. So I
read the second novel right after I finished the last
(46:36):
page of The Fox Valley Murders. So the second book
it's called The Pleasant Grove Murders, and it was once
again published in hardcover in nineteen sixty six and then
one year later in paperback by Ace. In this book,
the main plot is a young mailman named Ken and
he's murdered with a hammer while he's on his route
(46:57):
delivering mail. Yet the killer he doesn't steal any of
the male and it doesn't appear that he's taken anything
from the mail trunk other than just killing Ken. Now
Bain is the new sheriff. He's got a really cool
scenario that he's working on, and he's talking about it
to like a neighbor and he says something cool. He
says he has to determine if the killer murdered a
(47:20):
mailman who just happened to be Ken, or if he
killed a man who just happened to be a mailman.
But more people are killed by a hammer, so now
we've got like a serial killer thing going on. Bain
has to investigate several families in town and how they're
all connected each other through their children, and it was
intriguing mystery, and I again loved the Bain character, and
(47:43):
there's this, I mean this Bonker's romantic relationship. I mean,
this thing is crazy between Bain and this I don't
want to say hippie chick, but like hippie chick who
claims she's from another planet, Bain finds her kookie enough
to be adorable, and she really is. She's adorable, but
(48:06):
she says she's from another planet. She's got these buckets
of water on her front porch because she says through
the water her aliens back home can communicate with her telepathically.
She never breaks like, she never breaks character, like she
remains throughout the whole book, saying she's from another planet.
It kind of reminded me of a Carter Brown mystery
(48:27):
and some weird kookie stuff that went on in those books.
The second plot in the book is Bain purchasing this
old country hotel that the murder victim kN owned and
was remodeling. Bain purchases the place and has his wife
and daughter involved in restoring it. But it puts a
weird spin on things. But he's using his professional status
(48:49):
as sheriff to buy a murdered man's property. Did his
possession of insider information eliminate the chance of anyone else
in town who may want to buy the proput It's
a neat little debate that goes on in the book.
But anyway, The Pleasant Grove Murders just as good as
the first novel, The Fox Value Murders. Now, both books
(49:09):
are somewhat cozy in their delivery, but they just have
a uniqueness that makes them enjoyable. Both have been reprinted
as affordable physical and digital copies, and I think they're
both also in an omnibus by publisher called spatter Light
came out in twenty seventeen. I think I saw both
of them on Amazon, so you can buy them. Also,
(49:30):
interesting enough, there's a third Joe Bain installment that was
started by the author but never finished due to his death,
and it was to be called I can look it
up here. I don't even know if I'm saying this right,
the Genesee Slow Murders. And it's basically just a twenty
five page outline that ended up online years ago, and
(49:51):
this spatter Light Press puts that twenty five page outline
into the omnibus, so you can read that and kind
of see what the next book was going to look like.
I haven't read it, and I'm sure it's pretty cool
to see where he was going with Baine in that book.
All right, so features are done. I've got one more
thing on the stove to serve you, and it is
(50:13):
a swamp nor paperback called Satan's Mate by George Henry
Smith writing as G. H. Smith, published in nineteen sixty
by Newstan Library, which, again, like I mentioned at the
top of the episode, they typically published sleez or sleazy
looking books. But I will say, if you go online
(50:35):
and research this book, nine times out of ten, it's
going to come up as lesbian fiction. And I have
no earthly idea why because there's no lesbian stuff in
this book. There's not even anything on the cover that
would suggest that it's a lesbian novel. I don't know
where they're getting that from, but it's a typical crime
nor novel that just happens to be published by a
(50:55):
company with a reputation for sleeves. Satan's Mate is just
straight up crime noir. It does feature two hot women,
but it's simple. The book is said, in a small
backwoods town in the swamps of Louisiana, this guy Robert
has returned back to his hometown after years on the
road as a drifter. Now he had originally left the
(51:16):
town due to a small town crime of stealing a car,
but his brother remained in town and he became the
Baptist preacher. Now they've had a little riff or tiff,
so they haven't communicated in years. Also, one of the
reasons why Robert's out drifting as a vagabond is his
wife left him and now he's coming home. He wants
(51:40):
to make amends with his brother. He wants a new start.
This town is now ran by this wealthy, sleazy, landbearing
guy named Guy, a simply guy. Guy runs the show.
He controls the sheriff and deputies, and as the book begins,
he's just finished lynching this African American guy. It sort
(52:00):
of proves that there's no trials in the town. There's
just execution. And the man who was lynched has a
sister and she starts to put together a plot of revenge.
She wants to kill Guy and his cohorts. When Robert
gets to town, he just happens to meet Guy's hot wife, Velma,
and she's attractive sex pod begging, begging for a rom
(52:25):
He's happy to service her needs. So now Velma has
become in love with Robert. She's fallen head over hills
for him, and she sees him as her meal ticket
to try to get out of the town and away
from Guy. But Robert just wants to get away from her,
and Guy sees the arrival of Robert as the perfect
(52:45):
opportunity to kill his political rivals, one of which is
Robert's brother, the Preacher, so he can kill a few
other people that he doesn't like, and this time, in
case the FBI comes knocking, because we've got people being lynched, killed, missing,
he'll disblame it all on the newcomer Robert. Along the way,
(53:07):
there's more murder, and soon the narrative has Robert, Velma,
and this other tramp in the swamp trying to avoid
Guy and his posse of vigilantes, and they meet these
weird allies in the swamp. But mostly it's just a
moving story between the chaser and the chast and it's
only one hundred and twenty seven pages, so it's an easy,
breezy read, quite enjoyable if you're familiar with swamp noir
(53:30):
of that time, like even like Gothic plantation or slave
books written during that time. You're gonna enjoy this book,
but just beware of all the racial slurs of African
Americans and Hispanics, like literally every page. And it was
just a product of the times and in no way
is acceptable now. But unfortunately that's a part of vintage
(53:52):
twentieth century fiction that we have to navigate through and
live with. Again. This was Satan's Mate by George Henry
Smith as G. H. Smith, and you got to be
careful because there were three George Smith's writing fiction at
that time. This particular George H. Smith used a ton
of pseudonyms. I don't even have the time to decipher
all of them on this show. We could spend a
(54:13):
whole episode just trying to figure this dude out. But anyway,
that's it for this episode. I know it was a
lot as usual. Follow us on the blog at Paperbackwarrior
dot com. Check us out on YouTube. I'm trying to
do a video a week. We'll see how that goes,
But not just the podcast, but also videos about books
in my collection, just little tidbits about authors. I'm just
putting together video and slide shows things like that. You
(54:37):
can also Listen to us on Spotify, Amazon Music, Spreaker,
Facebook x I'll be back in two weeks with another
shopping trip that I'm planning to do and some awesome,
awesome features for you. Thanks for listening, and farewell for now,
It's that time again. Oh, it's that sweet time again.
We're talking books galore right here on the Paperback Warrior podcast.
If you're new to our show, this podcast is an
offshoot of our blog at Paperbackwarrior dot com, where you'll
find thousands of reviews of vintage fiction and the archives.
(00:41):
To listen to the prior one hundred and three episodes
of this very show. You can follow us on Facebook
and x for daily post about books. Let me just
say I am so jacked up today. I'm so excited. Seriously,
this episode is completely packed with content. I've hinted about
my new England trip on the last episode, so I'm
going to kick things off today by talking about the
(01:03):
bookstores that I found, the items I bought, the items
I didn't buy, the graves that I visited, and my
visit to one of the largest buildings in the world
that houses books and manuscripts. You're going to love hearing
about all these places, but we can't forget about books, books, books, books, Baby.
(01:23):
This episode, I've got two massive features for you. The
first is all about Edward D. Hawk's extraordinary detective Simon
arc He's appeared in mid twentieth century Pulps and Digest,
and he's been featured prominently in many paperback anthologies and
digital content. Maybe some of you have ran into a
Simon Ark story somewhere out there, but I'm all about
(01:43):
some Assimon arc today. Also, I'm going to dig into
the Sheriff Joe Bain series that was published in the
nineteen sixties and written by a gentleman named John Holbrook Vance,
which some of you may know him as Jack Vance.
I'll also be reviewing both of the Joe Bain books
as part of my feature, and I also have a
separate book review for you as well, of a vintage
(02:06):
nineteen sixty paperback called Satan's Mate by George H. Smith.
I'm gonna skip story time this episode because we just
have so much content to get to, So no audio
story from me today, but we're going to talk a
little bit about housekeeping stuff. Well not really housekeeping, I guess,
but just sort of a disclaimer. I just thought about
(02:27):
this the other day and wanted to bring it up.
Tom and I like to talk about the bookstores we
find and the books we buy, but it isn't to
be boastful or to do things like you know, see
what I have that you don't have. Kind of thing.
I think we're all on the same page that we
talk about stores and books because we love both of them.
But by bringing these books up, it gives us and
you the ability to learn about a book's publication or
(02:48):
history or author, and it's really a gateway into that
sort of discussion. The purchase isn't really that important or
who has what, it's just the book talk. If you
kind of get what I mean. I hope you get
what we were doing with our trips, our book shopping,
and I would say maybe three fourths of our audience
probably digs this sort of thing, if not more. But
it was weighing on my mind, so I just wanted
(03:10):
to be clear on that. So first up on today's
content is New England. Now, from a personal standpoint, I've
had this running joke with my family that there's no
actual place called Connecticut. It's a mythical land. But my
wife was born and raised in Connecticut, and we've been
(03:31):
married five years. We've never traveled to her hometown. So
she can show me things like her childhood home, the
schools that she went to, the jobs that she worked,
and every time she would ask if we could go
to Connecticut for a visit. I just say, hey, you know,
there's no such place. Stop being childish. But I finally
committed to a week visit to Connecticut with the family,
(03:54):
and I take one week vacation every year, and it's
really only because I won this. I guess you could
call it a trip, But I won this trip through
hitting sales goals at work. That's the way the insurance
industry works. The vacation was visiting a few states in
the Northeast along with Connecticut. I haven't really been to
the Northeast other than New York City if that counts
(04:17):
in Pittsburgh, So I wanted to hit some bookstores and
graves up there. So I'm going to go chronologically here
of all the book related stuff, I'll leave all the
other stuff out. The first place I drugged my family
to was Rhode Island to visit HP Lovecraft's grave, just
on the outskirts of Providence. We arrived, and I'm telling you,
(04:37):
it's a beautiful, beautiful cemetery. His grave was really cool
because fans have staked pencils into the ground around his
grave marker. And if you check Facebook and X and
then also YouTube. I'm gonna have photos plus a slide
show on YouTube of everything we're talking about today on
places I went, so be sure to check that out.
(04:59):
I have photos on on the paperback Warrior page showing
me standing at the grave of HP Lovecraft. But from
there we went south. We parked, and then we ferried
over to a place called Block Island. The second day
of the vacation, I went to the island Bound Bookstore
and I can only guess, like the rent for this
(05:19):
place has to be like super super expensive. But it
was a cute little place, but nothing for folks like us,
like literally nothing, just new books with some reprints of
mysteries and classics. But Black Island itself is absolutely gorgeous
and I recommend it as a trip for anyone. It's
a beautiful place to be. The next day we went
(05:39):
to the legendary Salem, Massachusetts, and I found a bookstore
in Salem called Pyramid Books. And I went into Pyramid
Books and I immediately left. Not really, I guess you
could call it a bookstore, but it's just new age stuff,
missus stuff, you know, magnets, postcards, trinkets, and some books.
(06:06):
But it totally didn't interest me at all, so I
just left. The next day, we did some Massachusetts stuff
and that led me to one of the most unique
bookstores I've ever been to. The place is called the
Mana Hugh Book Mill. This store is two levels and
it's literally sitting on the Sawmill River, which is fed
(06:28):
by the larger Connecticut River. People were cozily inside, reading, studying,
and man the atmosphere was just so nice. They had
the windows open and he had the sound of the
roaring water. It was just really refreshing. It's kind of
like an outdoorsy feel. But inside, however, not much happening
(06:49):
in the way of our kind of books, Like nothing.
I'm starting to see the pattern and that New England
is really big on non fiction books and their stores
are packed with that kind of stuff. I'm mostly not
interested in anything of that genre, except, as you probably guessed,
books about books. I love books about books or music too.
(07:12):
I could do either one. But I did locate two
interesting books there that might appeal to some of you.
There were two Ace books on the shelf. This is
part of a science fiction trilogy starring an astronaut and
I guess pilot named Nicole Sha. The two books were
First Flight from nineteen eighty seven and Grounded from nineteen
(07:35):
ninety one. They look really cool and both were authored
by iconic X men and comic scribe Chris Claremont. They
also had a lancer paperback there by Ted White called
Phoenix Prime, which had a publishing date of nineteen sixty six,
and I didn't write it down. But the store also
(07:56):
had an issue of an old science fiction pulp but
I can't think of the name. I forgot to take
a picture of it. Next after that bookstore, we continued
to travel north up into Vermont, and we traveled to
a place called Brattleboro. And it's a weird place, Like
it's a really weird place. And we only stopped there
(08:18):
because on the map it's like literally the only city
that we came to after driving like twenty twenty five
miles into Vermont, that was the first place to pop up,
so we stopped there. I had looked and saw that
there was a couple of bookstores there, so I was
happy to stop in. But I don't know this. I
don't know if anyone has been to Brattleborough, but it's
(08:40):
a weird place. I just didn't get a good vibe
when I was there, and you kind of pull in
and there's all this political stuff, like all their agendas
and their opinions and which is fine, but I mean,
it is everywhere, and it's overdone. And there were a
couple people tweaking on drugs on the sidewalk. And keep
(09:01):
in mind, I've got my wife and they've got three
kids with us, and it wasn't a great place to be.
But I just I wanted to just check out the
bookstores real, real fast and then get the heck out
of there. So the first bookstore that I came to
which had good reviews online was Brattleborough Books, but it
just happened to be that they were closed that day,
so no luck there. It looked great. The next best
(09:23):
place for books was across the street, and it was
called Everyone's Books. Really weird that they're like staring at
each other on the street. It's kind of odd, maybe
the rivals of some kind. But the best used bookstores
are sometimes in bad areas, so I was kind of
hopeful that if I walked in there, I would find
some good stuff. I didn't feel great in the doorway
(09:47):
of this place, and they had to sign up stating
that mask were recommended, and you know, I haven't put
a mask on, you know, in a store like that
since like summer of twenty twenty, so it's weird for
me to but I was okay with them. I mean,
that's what they want to do. So I went over
asked if they had any mask, and the guy kind
of unfriendly, just pointed to someone on the counter and
(10:08):
he had like little specific instructions on where to place
this little baggy once you are opening your mask and
put it on. They have specific instructions that they want
the little baggy in this little container. Weird, weird place,
and it was tombstone cold, like tombstone cold in there.
(10:28):
They had nothing of interest other than just a lot
of books that were it looked like they were like
specifically organized by whatever political thing they were trying to emphasize. Anyway,
the store not good. Maybe someone out there has a
better experience with him, but mine was just awful. But
thankfully the trip to Brattleborough was saved by Twice upon
(10:53):
a Time Antiques. This store is massive, it's huge, it
has two levels, and I took some photos of the
books in there and I've added them to the slide
show and some of my photos. Normally, antique stores aren't good,
and we've talked about that before on this very podcast.
Antique stores are great places to hoarde cookbooks, and that's
(11:15):
normally all they have is cookbooks. But this place was
surprisingly a little different. The first thing I saw was
a bagged original hardcover of a vintage Hardy Boys book.
This one was called The Secret Warning. I used to
love Hardy Boys when I was growing up. It was
twenty bucks. I didn't need it. I passed. They had
a Dorothy Sayer's avon paperback called Lord Peter Views the Body.
(11:39):
They had hardcover vintage westerns by William McLeod rain and B. M. Bauer.
These were tagged for five bucks each. There was a
neat looking vintage hardcover by Franz Striker called The Hidden
Stone Mystery, which I think is an installment in the
Tom Quest Adventures series. It was five bucks. They also
(12:02):
had some of Franz Striker's Lone Ranger novels in there
as well. Browsing a little bit more, I found some
false At Gold Medals, I found science fiction paperbacks published
by the likes of Ace and Signet. I mean they
had some great stuff, like stuff by John D. MacDonald,
Andre Norton. I can't never remember the actual name, but
(12:22):
Andre Norton, Robert Silverberg. They had a Berkeley Medallion sci
fi paperback that looked pretty cool. It was called No
Man on Earth. And they also had a Curtis Books
paperback by Joe Poyer and I can't think of the
name of it. Maybe that was the same book. I
can't make sense of my own notes. But they also
(12:44):
had The Guns of Tara ten by the Executioner creator
writer Don Pendleton. It's always that's got a cool cover.
I see it out and about every now and then.
I saw a cool Ace book F three five three.
If you're keeping track at home, this was Avron Davidson's
Rogue Dragon. Also, they had a really cool collection of
(13:08):
audio CDs. Remember CDs. Remember CDs. I'm so old now
that CDs are outdated, but they had a collection of those.
I counted twelve Perry Mason audio CDs. They had a
couple of the Ellery Queen CDs, and they also had
Sherlock Holmes and a Max Allen Collins a CD in
there as well. I've got photos of all of them,
(13:30):
and I ended up just buying one thing, even though
I saw a lot of cool stuff, I just bought
one thing, which was really just a stack of Marvel's
Red Sonia comics. This was the nineteen eighty three series,
which I didn't have, and I was able to get
issues number two through twelve, which is cool because there
(13:50):
was only thirteen issues total, so I got almost the
majority of the series. I spent some money there, though
it cost me thirty five dollars to get that whole stack,
but money well spent. The next day we went to Boston.
I hit a bookstore there called Books and Old Prints,
and you can find the store at Commonwealth Books dot com.
(14:11):
Inside the store, I talked to the owner and he
told me the store has been around for about thirty
years or so. I mentioned that I had a Paperback
Warrior podcast and blog where I did book reviews and
shout outs to bookstores, and he didn't seem to care.
So a nice guy, but he wasn't interested in talking
that particular day. So I moved into the shelving area
(14:32):
and they had a hard case crime paperback by Donald E. Westlake.
They had an Ed McBain eighty seventh Precinct paperback, and
they also had a collection that I just I don't
know why I didn't buy it. I wish I had.
It was a hardcover by Arthur Morrison, collecting the best
Martin Hewitt detective stories. I don't know why I didn't
(14:53):
buy it. They had a robust collection of Doll books,
including the Gore series. They had in a glass case
a vintage paperback by Dornford Yates called Shoal Water, and
they also had a Barbara Michael's hardcover called The Dance
on the other side. Took photos of all this as well.
I only bought one book, and surprisingly it wasn't even
(15:15):
in the store. It was in a cart shoved outside,
advertised as a dollar a book. So I went out
there picked up a book called The Whisper of Shadows
by J. L. H. Whitney. J LH. Whitney, I'm not
sure who that is, but yeah, Whisper of Shadows. It's
an age Gothic from nineteen sixty four. While I was
(15:37):
in Boston, I also checked out a popular chain store
that I've never visited, called Newberry Comics. Maybe some of
you out there already have Newberry Comics stores in your area,
but Hey, this was the first time I'd ever been there.
They have a really large, two story Newberry Comics located
in the Quincy Market area, and that was a lot
of fun just browsing comics. And their trade collection had
(16:01):
cool vintage I shouldn't say vintage, but cool eighties themed
horror t shirts and rock t shirts and things like that.
Cool place. I didn't buy anything. The next day, I
drugged my family along for a long drive through western Connecticut.
I mean we drove and drove and drove into some
pretty darn rural areas. I mean, we're almost over into
(16:24):
New York at this point. But we went to a
place called Washington, Connecticut for one specific reason, and that
was to visit Edward S. Aaron's grave. Edward S. Aarons,
He's buried in Old Judaea Cemetery, and have a photo
of me standing by his grave, and I'll post that
as well. You know, it's kind of funny because when
(16:46):
you get to these authors that you love and that
you read and that you adore, it's kind of a
sad scenario when you go and visit their grave and
then you just realize that it's just a grave, nothing
there to end that they were a great writer, that
they had this excellent bibliography, that they had fans, that
(17:07):
some of these authors, like Edward S. Aaron's, for example,
had great contributions to crime noir, crime fiction in general,
spy fiction. Remember Aarons wrote the Assignment series also known
as Sam Durrell. And there's nothing there to suggest that
he was a great writer. And I was driving there
(17:27):
and I'm thinking to myself, you know, there's got probably
like some pencils staked out. Maybe somebody has left something
on his grave, kind of like what they did with
HP Lovecraft, But there's nothing. His grave is marked with
a military designation because he was in the US Coast Guard.
In fact, he was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed,
so they had the military designation there, so that was cool,
(17:49):
but nothing else to celebrate. Arguably one of my favorite
crime fiction writers, but argably one of the most popular
crime nor writers of the mid twentieth century anyway, or
early twentieth century. And when you think about it, Aaron's
he was published by the likes of Graphic Ace, he
was published by obviously Falset Gold Medal, and then he
(18:10):
always had great artists doing his cover. So he was
a big deal and his books had multiple printings for
a number of decades. But anyway, I felt really bad
when I was visiting his grave, but it took some
time to kind of give my spill on how great
he was as a writer and what great books that
he wrote. So I kind of told him that and
(18:30):
then I left. The same day, we drove to Yale
to visit one of the largest buildings in the world
housing rare books. It's called the Benecki Rare Book and
Manuscript Library. I hope I'm saying that name right, Bennicky
Benecki Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It's a huge indoor,
(18:53):
rectangular glass tower stacked with rare books. Above ground, this
thing is six stories high and has something like two
hundred thousand books in its tower. And then I'm not
sure if they have a million books in the underground
facility or just room for a million. But when you
(19:15):
walk in there, there's staircases on each side that you
walk up just to view the tower, and all the
books are in a controlled room, and I'm sure they
probably have some sort of air treatment inside. There's also
guards there that keep you from going nuts and trying
to break through and getting an expensive, valuable book. It
took me about twenty minutes to slowly walk completely around
(19:36):
the tower. It was a cool experience. I'm glad I went.
I posted photos as well that I also went to
Yale's historic Sterling Memorial Library, which was amazing. Just as
amazing there, they have a lot of old books as well,
which I think are barred from the Beneki Rare Book Library.
I saw a Moby Dick book in there in a case,
(19:59):
and it was printed Chicago's Lakeside Press with illustrations by
Rockwell and it was dated in nineteen thirty. So anyway,
I texted my dad right after I left there and
I told him I made it to Yale and it
didn't cost him a penny. It was also in the
Yale area that I found the absolute best bookstore that
I visited the whole trip. The store is called gray
(20:21):
Matter Books. I walked in and it seemed kind of small,
but I didn't realize how deep the store was. On
the first shelf I touched, I found a surplus of
Lawrence block paperbags, both from Avon and Signet. I found
Assault on Loveless by Alan Calou which was an installment
(20:42):
in his Kbocaine series. I found Return of the Saint
on coronet and the title was The Saint and the
Habsburg Necklace. I found a cool book by Paul Thurdo
called Saint Jack, which was later adapted into a film.
I had a great cover of the store. I also
had a copy of the High Adventure magazine. This one
sported a story called Arms for Ethiopia by George Fielding Elliott.
(21:06):
There was a vintage signet paperback by Kingsley Amos called
Take a Girl Like You Looked Awesome. I didn't buy
that one because it had a little bit of a
higher price tag, so I passed on it. Another vintage
paperback I saw there had an up close view of
a woman's torso and her clothed nether regions called The
(21:27):
Talking Jewels by Dennis Didero. I found a Bantam paperback
by Frederick Brown called The Mind Thing. It was a
good selection of books. Their sci fi section was really good.
I took a photo of one of their large bookshelves
with three tiers. And the pricing here was pretty affordable.
Most of the paperbacks were between a dollar and four dollars,
(21:49):
so to make up for my lack of purchases for
the week, I decided to buy a stack of books here.
So here's what I bought, and forgive me, I haven't
had time to research any of these authors or titles yet,
so I might be mentioning a pseudonym or something like that.
But the first ones I wanted to mention were the
Sleeze books. The Sleez books I bought were all the
way written by Michael Avaloni using the name Mike. It's
(22:12):
a Midwood paperback from nineteen sixty I paid three dollars.
Whistle Them Willing by Richard Geiss. This is a playtime
book from nineteen sixty four. It was in really great shape.
I did pay a little bit more for this one.
I've got six dollars written down. I don't remember it
being that high, but maybe I paid six bucks for it.
Make It on Temple Street by opal Lee Berryman on
(22:35):
Newstand Library. They were a popular publisher that produced Sleez
looking books, which we'll get into a little bit later.
But that one's from nineteen sixty one. I paid four dollars.
Another Newstand Library book called Sex Is Like Money by
Ta Mashki from nineteen thirty one four dollars. Another Newstand
(22:57):
Library book called Satan's Mate by G. H. Smith from
nineteen sixty. I chose to start reading this book at
the airport and I finished it, so I'm going to
review this book on this episode. And I found a
crime fiction book called The Cleanup by Joe Barry on
Handy Books, a publisher we discussed a few weeks ago,
(23:19):
and that one was from nineteen forty seven, and I
paid three dollars for it. The science fiction genre, I
picked up Killer Pine by Lindsay Guttrich, which was on
Panther Books from nineteen seventy three. This is part of
the Ace Microagent install series. It's an installment in that title.
(23:41):
I think I paid three dollars. October. The First is
Too Late by Fred Hoyle, that's a Falset Gold Medal
book nineteen seventy I paid a dollar fifty. Survival World
by Frank Belton at Long on Magnum nineteen seventy one
a buck fifty. And then in the Adventures The Beach
(24:01):
of Falasa by Dylan Thomas on Balantine Books in nineteen
sixty five two bucks. The Lost Europeans has a Great
Cover by Emmanuel Libanoff on Pyramid nineteen fifty nine. Three
Bucks and White Eagles over Serbia by Lawrence Durrell on
Avon Camelot from nineteen fifty seven. The Avon Camelot, I
(24:23):
do believe is their young adult series, so we'll check
that out. And the last day of the vacation, I
went to Manhattan. I tried my luck one more time
at a store called book Off. It's Bokoff book Off
use bookstore in Midtown East, nice place, two floors. They
(24:44):
sell tons of toys, manga, DVDs, records, books, that kind
of thing. It reminded me of a Second in Charles store.
And they just mostly they buy huge lots of discontinued
modern hardcovers and trades and they sell them for about
three dollars to seven dollars each. I mean, if you
want new books at a cheaper price, and I'm talking
(25:06):
about like your airport books, you know, the ones that
have the same font on every cover, this is probably
the place to go to get those. I didn't see
anything I needed, so I just bailed out really quick
and that was it. There you have it. A week
of New England and New York City book shopping. And
again I've made a post of the books some of
(25:27):
the stores, and I've got a slideshow video I'll post
on YouTube as well with the episode. Alright, so my
little segue tune here, play this for you, and then
we'll get into mister Simon Ark. Okay, hot tea is
(25:49):
on my desk, and I'm ready to talk about Simon Arc. Now.
This guy was created and authored solely by Edward W. Hoak.
He was one of the most prolific writers of the
twentieth century. This guy churned out nearly one thousand short
stories for the Pulps and Digest. He also wrote a
crime novel, he wrote three science fiction novels. He wrote
(26:13):
a book as Ellery Queen. But really, short stories were
his game, and he created a ton of characters over
his long and successful career. This feature isn't on Hope,
because he really deserves his own feature. I think it'll
be doing a disservice to him by just abbreviating everything
that he's accomplished with his literary career. So we're just
(26:35):
going to talk about Simon Arc today. And Simon Ark.
He appeared for the first time in the December nineteen
fifty five issue of Famous Detective Stories, which, if you
think about it, was sort of the last remnant of
the pulp market. It had dried up at this point.
But before we talk about Simon Ark's publication history and
appearances and all that good stuff, I want to talk
(26:57):
about the character himself. So I'll give you the scoop
and the character. How the stories all work. The majority
of these stories are presented in first person narrative by
an unnamed narrator. The name of the narrator is never
provided throughout the entire series, which I think is kind
of cool. In the very beginning, the narrator is working
as a reporter and he meets Simon Ark while investigating
(27:20):
this bizarre mass suicide in nineteen fifty It's really cool
because Arc is described by the narrator upon this first
meeting as quote, the man called Simon Ark had advanced
closer now, and I could make out his features clearly
in the light from my flash. He was not old,
and yet his face had tiny lines of age to
(27:41):
be seen if one looked closely enough. In a way,
he was perhaps a very handsome man. Yet somehow I
cannot imagine women ever being attracted to him end quote
to me, that first impression left me feeling like there's
something just a little bit odd about this character, just
a weird vibe. By the third Simon Ar Dark Story,
the narrator catches up with Arc after a few years
(28:04):
and they have this cool little exchange where Arc responds
to the narrator when asked what he's been up to
the last few years, and Arc responds by saying, quote,
there's evil everywhere these days, and it's most difficult to
separate the man made from the more ancient type end quote.
The narrator then says to the reader quote that Arc
(28:25):
has been searching for the ultimate evil, searching for the
devil himself, and there were times when the look of
his face seemed to tell me that he's been searching
a long long time. So throughout the early part of
the series, the narrator and the reader gets hints that
Simon Ark may actually be over two thousand years old
(28:47):
and that he's been searching the earth for Satan. So
the series works like any kind of like Monster of
the Week television show you may have seen, like X
Files or Supernatural or Grim or Cultchet, the Nightstalker and
their hints that I'm referring to is that Simon Arc
has this vast knowledge of ancient history in a way
(29:07):
that suggests he lived during that time, like, for example,
Saint Augustine. The way Simon Arc discusses Saint Augustine makes
it sound like he actually knew him like personally. Arc
doesn't seem to show any aging throughout the series, and
the narrator often makes a note of this, and as
the stories go on, we're living the life of the narrator.
(29:29):
The narrator changes careers and gets married, and Simon Arc
just stays the same, and later stories, Art confesses to
the narrator that he's actually or he actually was I
guess I should say, a Coptic priest in Egypt nearly
two thousand years ago. But the narrator obviously doubts this,
but he even admits that Arc knows a great deal
(29:51):
about weird stuff like Satanism, voodoo, witchcraft, sacred text, archaic
religious ceremonies, and things like that, so Arc could be
sort of an occult detective. The narrator's publishing firm eventually
publishes a book about Simon Arc and his mysterious history
which creates sort of a cult following for simon Ark
(30:13):
as we get into the later stories. While I haven't
read this explanation and a simon Arch story yet, there's
a blog called TV tropes that says Simon Arc was
cursed by God because when Jesus was carrying the cross
to his crucifixion, he wanted to stop and rest, but
simon Ark, being a Roman soldier, refused him rest. So
(30:36):
now Simon Ark is doomed to wonder Earth forever, searching
for evil. In a way sort of loosely reminds me
of Barry Sadler's Casca series. If I'm not mistaken, I
think Caska. Maybe it was a Roman soldier and it
pierced the side of Jesus. Thus he was cursed to
time travel, I guess. So the way these stories will
(30:57):
begin is the narrator we'll recall it time in his
life where he investigated something bizarre or mysterious. The narrator
may start out by saying, there was a time in
nineteen fifty something when I ran into Simon Ark on
a train in London. I was there to interview an
author about a possible publication of their book. When I
ran into Arc, and he told me he was headed
(31:18):
to someplace called Mansfield to investigate a man who claims
he can walk on water. So, if you think about it,
Arc is there to find out if this supernatural thing
is affiliated in some way with an evil force or devil,
and the narrator is going along because, hey, this could
make for a really great book. So the two have
a reason for collaborating together on all these wild mysteries
(31:41):
that surface all over the globe. The way Hoak writes
the stories is that there's a logical, rational explanation for
solving the mysteries that Arc and the narrator investigate. It's
like a weird ministry where everything seems supernatural, but at
the end there's a rational explanation. However, the ending in
(32:03):
a way is subjective, because the resolutions often walk like
a balance beam, if you will, between explained and unexplained.
For example, a guy may show all signs of being
possessed by the devil when he's really just a raving
madman that likes to kill. But by the story's end
(32:25):
you get the impression that maybe Simon Ark did see
some sort of dark, demonic force within the man in
one story, the resolution seems rational, but at the end
the narrator questions that the case was really that easier simple,
and Arc responds coolly, there are some things better left unexplained,
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at least in this world. For me personally, I like
to think of these stories as maybe half of them
being supernatural and the other half may be completely plausible,
but it's in the eye of the beholder, and that's
really the enjoyment of the Simon Arch series, looking at
the mystery from two different lenses. Now, I've read a
(33:07):
number of these stories, and I wanted to offer just
brief reviews for some of the first Simon Arch stories.
In fact, I think I'm doing the first three all right.
So the debut is a story called Village of the Dead,
and as we mentioned earlier, it's from Famous Detective Stories
December nineteen fifty five. In this one, as I mentioned earlier,
(33:29):
the narrator is working as a reporter and he goes
to a small town in the American Southwest where seventy
three people have committed mass suicide by plunging from a
cliff to their death. While he's there, he meets Simon
Ark for the very first time. So together, the two
team up to discover that this religious fanatic named Axodus
(33:52):
arrived in town two years earlier and began to transform
the community into a new sort of religion. This guy
Bench convinces the whole town to commit suicide, and the
only reason why is so he can gain the rights
to the town's mining industry and all the gold that
they've got hoarded in caves and underground. Kind of a
silly ending, but the ending does seem or the idea
(34:15):
of the story does seem rational, I guess, because if
you think about it, mass suicide, it's occurred repeatedly throughout history.
Yet there's a suggestion that Axiodus may have been centuries old,
and you know, it's up to the reader to decide
for themselves. The plot is I guess it's rather unique
in a way for nineteen fifty five because if you
(34:37):
think about it, the Jonestown massacre, it didn't occur until
nineteen seventy eight, and it's interesting when you look at
this from perspective. When describing this very story, Hoaks said
that the story was shopped around to a lot of
magazines and digest but the idea of a mass suicide
struck most publishers as being completely unbelievable. The story finally
(34:59):
reached the desk of Robert A. Lowndes, who at the
time was the editor for Famous Detective Stories and he
also edited I Think for other magazines from Columbia Publications.
Lowndes was an admir of psychic detectives like William Hope
Hodskins what was that one called William Hope Hodskins, Karnaki
(35:20):
and Seabury Quinn's Jules Day Grandon, and Hok assumed that
Lowndes saw something in Simon Ark that just reminded him
of those types of characters. This story again is called
Village of the Dead, and it was the very first
story that Edward Hoak was able to get published. This
launched his career. This is the story. The second story
(35:41):
is called hoofs of Satan and it was in Famous
Detective Stories February nineteen fifty six. This story takes place
in North Bradshire, on one of the main highways from
London to the coast, and it's there that these hoof
prints in the snow have been discovered, and this eventually
is linked to a murder investigation. The mystery is whether
(36:02):
some sort of devil, is the culpriate or a scorned lover,
and as you can imagine, love is in the air
and Arc finds the real answer. But again there's a
sense of some supernatural developments kind of behind the whole thing,
so you're left with half full, half empty kind of thing.
The third story is titled The Witch's Dead and it
was published in Famous Detective Stories in April nineteen fifty six.
(36:25):
In this one, the two of them they go to
this women's college in New York where all the students
have some sort of mysterious illness and some have died
from the surface. It appears to be a virus or
just a bacteria, but in the weeds of the investigation
it leads to a fortune teller named Mother Fortune, who
(36:46):
had this unfortunate incident occur at the college years ago.
So the question is, really twofold, does Mother Fortune really
have supernatural powers? And if so, why is she targeting
to college now. This was my least favorite story of
the simon Ark installments that I've read so far. It
just seemed to be a little bit shallow in the storytelling,
(37:08):
and it had a really silly ending. One of my
absolute favorites of the ARC stories I've read so far
is called The Wolves of Warclaw, which was featured in
the October nineteen fifty sixth issue of Famous Detective Stories.
In this story, the narrator is now serving as a
major New York publishing firm, and he journeys to Poland
(37:29):
to witness first hand the gradual lifting of the Iron curtain.
But in the town of Worklaw, the citizens are being
shredded by something big with razor sharp claws. Hand in
hand with the murders is a large pack of gray
wolves that's been spotted in town. The town's authority calls
in an expert on wolves, and sure enough, Simon Ark arrives.
(37:51):
ARC and the Narrator catch up like they often do,
and then they search out who or what's killing the people.
And I felt like in a way, Hook had a
lot to say about communism in the story. And there's
a central theme that soldiers are being honored in town
and it's like an anniversary because they held off a
large battalion of Nazi troops during World War Two, and
those soldiers become victims of the story. So it could
(38:14):
be a werewolf killing the soldiers or simply a communist
backed initiative to quell a future rebellion by killing off
those tremendous patriots. First, it was a great story. I
thought it was really clever. I loved the pacing of it.
It was cool. I love the story. Now there's a
weird era for the stories from nineteen fifty nine through
(38:34):
nineteen sixty. These stories have a strange private eye vibe
in these stories, which are all published in double action
detective and mystery stories. Ark and the narrator have formed
this swanky detective agency and they take on clients who
have just everyday problems like cheating husbands, embezzlement, missing persons.
(39:00):
The names of the stories, as you could tell, are
really easy to spot. These stories have names like the
Case of the Sexy Smugglers, the Case of the Naked Nie,
the Case of the Vanished Virgin, the Case of the
Ragged Rapist. You get the idea. For me personally, I'd
like to not consider these simon Arc stories as actually
(39:22):
being cannon for Simon Ark. They just don't fit. And
even the author himself, Hope, doesn't include any of these
stories in any of the compilation omnibus that we're going
to talk about in it just a little bit. None
of the collections feature those stories, and it didn't last long,
just those two years, and then it went back to normal.
(39:45):
I think maybe it could have been a situation where
that magazine again double action detective and mystery stories. It
could have been a situation where they just wanted Hope
to provide a private eye series and he just stuck
Simon Ark in there. It doesn't make a whole lot
of sense why, but we'll never know. So winding down here,
(40:06):
the Simon Arc stories in the second half of the
twentieth century appear in publications like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, The Saint Mystery Magazine, Mike Shane
Mystery Magazine, Tightrope, and Keyhole Detective Story. The last Simon
Arch story was in winter two thousand and eight and
(40:27):
it was published in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. All Right,
the question you're probably asking right now is how on
earth do you read these Simon Arc stories, considering they're
all featured in magazines and digests that you may not
even have access to. Well, for free, you can read
many of the magazines at archive dot org. However, publishers
(40:47):
have done all the heavy lifting for you. And here's
the books that I'm aware of that collect the various
simon Arc stories. All right, So if you want vintage paperbacks,
you're going to get these books from Leisure ninth, teen
seventy one. The titles are The Judges of Hades and
Other simon Arc Stories. Next book, City of Brass and
(41:09):
Other simon Arc Stories. You can also get both of
those books as affordable reprints from Mysterious Press. Mysterious Press
also has another affordable collection called The Quest of simon
Arc and Other Stories, and in that introduction, Hoak states
that in nineteen seventy one there was a television option
(41:30):
for a simon Arch television show, and I think that
would have been really cool. The Quest of simon Ark
originally published in hardcover in nineteen eighty five, but again
you can get it as an affordable reprint. There's also
another collection called Funeral in the Fog. I love that title,
Funeral in the Fog. I'm not familiar with the publisher,
(41:51):
but you can again buy that affordably in both digital
and paperback. And I think we've covered all the bases
on Simon Ark by Edward D. Hokee. My references include
Galactic Central and the books that I referenced above. All right,
are you listeners ready for small town traditional crime in
(42:14):
rural California. We're talking today about the two book Sheriff
Joe Bain series, So sort of like how we kicked
off our last feature, these two books are by an
author that really should be receiving his own feature. We're
talking about John Holbrook Vance, which some of you may
recognize as Jack Vance. He was extremely prolific. He authored
(42:35):
at least from what I could count, nine different series
titles in genres of science fiction and fantasy. He also
wrote nine or ten standalone science fiction novels. He also
wrote mystery novels and stories using the name Peter Held
and Alan Wade, and he also wrote under ellery Queen
the kind of out of the Blue. He wrote this
(42:56):
two book series of crime novels, beginning with the nineteen
sixty six book called The Fox Valley Murders. The Fox
Valley Murders was published in hardcover by the Bobs Merrill
Company and then as a paperback by Ace. The book
is set in a fictitious California locale called Rodrigo County
no such place. The author gives readers a backstory on
(43:19):
the Joe Bain character. He was a hell raiser in
his younger days. He got into a ton of trouble
around town. He joins the US Army right after high school,
ends up in Korea fighting in the Korean War. After
the war, he's transferred to the military police. He ends
up becoming a sergeant and he uses his GI benefits
(43:40):
to attend the Chapman Institute of Criminology, which then resulted
in his position as a San Rodrigo County Deputy now Bain.
He also has an estranged wife somewhere that left him
for a musician. So Bain now lives in this small
house with his mom and his teenage daughter. So Bain
(44:01):
has some baggage at home. In both of the Joe
Bain books, there's always two plots happening in each novel.
So the Fox Valley Murders the primary plot, of course,
is a murder mystery. In a flashback sequence, readers learned
that sixteen years ago, a man named Ostley was sentenced
to life imprisonment for the rape and murder of a
(44:24):
middle school girl Now, during the murder trial, at least
a half dozen residents of the town testified that they
saw Ostley at the scene of the crime. Now, because
of good conduct, he's out of prison and he returns
back to town. Personally, I wouldn't have gone back to
my hometown. I'd start over with a clean slate. But
this dude's going right back to where he came from. Obviously,
(44:47):
nobody in town wants him there, so his appearance is
a little bit awkward. The people that testified at the trial, though,
they begin to die in all these freak accidents, and
everyone's pointing their finger at it Ostley as being the killer. However,
Ostley says he's completely innocent and murder back then and now,
and he's not murdering anyone, and he just wants to
(45:09):
continue on with his life and be carefree. So Bain
he's the man to investigate because he's the interim sheriff,
which brings us to the second plot happening in this book.
The county's long running sheriff dies in a swimming accident
at the very beginning of the book, so the county
makes Bain the interim sheriff until an election can occur
to elect a new sheriff. Bain throws his name in
(45:32):
the hat to run against this slick attorney that plans
on becoming a sheriff so he can transform the county
into a more advanced technology sort of a technology based
police station instead of the old fashioned small town approach.
Bain wants to keep things small town and simple, and
his opponent is eyeing grander things. So Bain is campaigning
(45:55):
throughout the book to win the election. And I really
I like the book, and I loved the Joe Bain
character because he's really unique. He's I hate to say dumb,
but he's sort of, for lack of a better term,
he's sort of dumb. He's down to earth. He has
street smarts, but he's a little bit lax on book smarts.
(46:16):
He's not a violent guy, but he can find and
he's kind of rough around the edges, and he just
doesn't have the best social skills. His approach to the
detective work doesn't really fall into the typical sleuth. He's
he's just different and I really like that about him.
So I was really pleased with this book. So I
read the second novel right after I finished the last
(46:36):
page of The Fox Valley Murders. So the second book
it's called The Pleasant Grove Murders, and it was once
again published in hardcover in nineteen sixty six and then
one year later in paperback by Ace. In this book,
the main plot is a young mailman named Ken and
he's murdered with a hammer while he's on his route
(46:57):
delivering mail. Yet the killer he doesn't steal any of
the male and it doesn't appear that he's taken anything
from the mail trunk other than just killing Ken. Now
Bain is the new sheriff. He's got a really cool
scenario that he's working on, and he's talking about it
to like a neighbor and he says something cool. He
says he has to determine if the killer murdered a
(47:20):
mailman who just happened to be Ken, or if he
killed a man who just happened to be a mailman.
But more people are killed by a hammer, so now
we've got like a serial killer thing going on. Bain
has to investigate several families in town and how they're
all connected each other through their children, and it was
intriguing mystery, and I again loved the Bain character, and
(47:43):
there's this, I mean this Bonker's romantic relationship. I mean,
this thing is crazy between Bain and this I don't
want to say hippie chick, but like hippie chick who
claims she's from another planet, Bain finds her kookie enough
to be adorable, and she really is. She's adorable, but
(48:06):
she says she's from another planet. She's got these buckets
of water on her front porch because she says through
the water her aliens back home can communicate with her telepathically.
She never breaks like, she never breaks character, like she
remains throughout the whole book, saying she's from another planet.
It kind of reminded me of a Carter Brown mystery
(48:27):
and some weird kookie stuff that went on in those books.
The second plot in the book is Bain purchasing this
old country hotel that the murder victim kN owned and
was remodeling. Bain purchases the place and has his wife
and daughter involved in restoring it. But it puts a
weird spin on things. But he's using his professional status
(48:49):
as sheriff to buy a murdered man's property. Did his
possession of insider information eliminate the chance of anyone else
in town who may want to buy the proput It's
a neat little debate that goes on in the book.
But anyway, The Pleasant Grove Murders just as good as
the first novel, The Fox Value Murders. Now, both books
(49:09):
are somewhat cozy in their delivery, but they just have
a uniqueness that makes them enjoyable. Both have been reprinted
as affordable physical and digital copies, and I think they're
both also in an omnibus by publisher called spatter Light
came out in twenty seventeen. I think I saw both
of them on Amazon, so you can buy them. Also,
(49:30):
interesting enough, there's a third Joe Bain installment that was
started by the author but never finished due to his death,
and it was to be called I can look it
up here. I don't even know if I'm saying this right,
the Genesee Slow Murders. And it's basically just a twenty
five page outline that ended up online years ago, and
(49:51):
this spatter Light Press puts that twenty five page outline
into the omnibus, so you can read that and kind
of see what the next book was going to look like.
I haven't read it, and I'm sure it's pretty cool
to see where he was going with Baine in that book.
All right, so features are done. I've got one more
thing on the stove to serve you, and it is
(50:13):
a swamp nor paperback called Satan's Mate by George Henry
Smith writing as G. H. Smith, published in nineteen sixty
by Newstan Library, which, again, like I mentioned at the
top of the episode, they typically published sleez or sleazy
looking books. But I will say, if you go online
(50:35):
and research this book, nine times out of ten, it's
going to come up as lesbian fiction. And I have
no earthly idea why because there's no lesbian stuff in
this book. There's not even anything on the cover that
would suggest that it's a lesbian novel. I don't know
where they're getting that from, but it's a typical crime
nor novel that just happens to be published by a
(50:55):
company with a reputation for sleeves. Satan's Mate is just
straight up crime noir. It does feature two hot women,
but it's simple. The book is said, in a small
backwoods town in the swamps of Louisiana, this guy Robert
has returned back to his hometown after years on the
road as a drifter. Now he had originally left the
(51:16):
town due to a small town crime of stealing a car,
but his brother remained in town and he became the
Baptist preacher. Now they've had a little riff or tiff,
so they haven't communicated in years. Also, one of the
reasons why Robert's out drifting as a vagabond is his
wife left him and now he's coming home. He wants
(51:40):
to make amends with his brother. He wants a new start.
This town is now ran by this wealthy, sleazy, landbearing
guy named Guy, a simply guy. Guy runs the show.
He controls the sheriff and deputies, and as the book begins,
he's just finished lynching this African American guy. It sort
(52:00):
of proves that there's no trials in the town. There's
just execution. And the man who was lynched has a
sister and she starts to put together a plot of revenge.
She wants to kill Guy and his cohorts. When Robert
gets to town, he just happens to meet Guy's hot wife, Velma,
and she's attractive sex pod begging, begging for a rom
(52:25):
He's happy to service her needs. So now Velma has
become in love with Robert. She's fallen head over hills
for him, and she sees him as her meal ticket
to try to get out of the town and away
from Guy. But Robert just wants to get away from her,
and Guy sees the arrival of Robert as the perfect
(52:45):
opportunity to kill his political rivals, one of which is
Robert's brother, the Preacher, so he can kill a few
other people that he doesn't like, and this time, in
case the FBI comes knocking, because we've got people being lynched, killed, missing,
he'll disblame it all on the newcomer Robert. Along the way,
(53:07):
there's more murder, and soon the narrative has Robert, Velma,
and this other tramp in the swamp trying to avoid
Guy and his posse of vigilantes, and they meet these
weird allies in the swamp. But mostly it's just a
moving story between the chaser and the chast and it's
only one hundred and twenty seven pages, so it's an easy,
breezy read, quite enjoyable if you're familiar with swamp noir
(53:30):
of that time, like even like Gothic plantation or slave
books written during that time. You're gonna enjoy this book,
but just beware of all the racial slurs of African
Americans and Hispanics, like literally every page. And it was
just a product of the times and in no way
is acceptable now. But unfortunately that's a part of vintage
(53:52):
twentieth century fiction that we have to navigate through and
live with. Again. This was Satan's Mate by George Henry
Smith as G. H. Smith, and you got to be
careful because there were three George Smith's writing fiction at
that time. This particular George H. Smith used a ton
of pseudonyms. I don't even have the time to decipher
all of them on this show. We could spend a
(54:13):
whole episode just trying to figure this dude out. But anyway,
that's it for this episode. I know it was a
lot as usual. Follow us on the blog at Paperbackwarrior
dot com. Check us out on YouTube. I'm trying to
do a video a week. We'll see how that goes,
But not just the podcast, but also videos about books
in my collection, just little tidbits about authors. I'm just
putting together video and slide shows things like that. You
(54:37):
can also Listen to us on Spotify, Amazon Music, Spreaker,
Facebook x I'll be back in two weeks with another
shopping trip that I'm planning to do and some awesome,
awesome features for you. Thanks for listening, and farewell for now,
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