March 2, 2025 • 24 mins
It's another investigative Paperback Warrior episode! In this feature, Eric delves into the murky life and career of crime-fiction, science-fiction, and western writer Louis Trimble. The noir author wrote over 80 novels and dozens of stories for the pulp magazines in the 1940s, but was mostly known in Europe for a controversial book celebrated by the Soviets. Plus, Eric reviews a creepy 1959 Southern Gothic novel titled Annalisa and reviews one of his favorite YouTube channels.
Be sure to visit Paperback Warrior to read over 1,500 reviews of vintage fiction across multipe genres. Also, you can access the prior podcast episodes there as well as on our YouTube channel HERE.
Donations to the show can be made HERE.
Be sure to visit Paperback Warrior to read over 1,500 reviews of vintage fiction across multipe genres. Also, you can access the prior podcast episodes there as well as on our YouTube channel HERE.
Donations to the show can be made HERE.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's that time again. Hi, I'm Eric and I'm bringing
you another exciting episode of the Paperback Warrior podcast. You
can check out Paperbackwarrior dot com to hear the prior
one and fourteen episodes, as well as over fifteen hundred
reviews of vintage paperbacks and comics. Be sure to follow
us on Facebook, x, Instagram, and threads. In keeping to
(00:41):
the Paperback Warrior tradition of twentieth century crime fiction writers,
today's first feature is on author Lewis Preston Tremble, or
maybe it's Louis Lewis or Louis. I'm gonna go with Louis.
He wrote polp stories, science fiction, westerns, mysteries, and nonfiction.
He wrote around eighty nine and also serves as an
instructor and professor at the University of Washington. I'm excited
(01:05):
to delve into his career in books, and also a
brief history of his wife, Jacqueline, who is also an author. Also,
I'm presenting a second feature today. It's on a vintage
paperback publisher called Cardinal Editions. They were an imprint of
pocketbooks and published paperbacks between nineteen fifty one to nineteen
fifty nine. It's an interesting history. I'll also review a
(01:26):
vintage Gothic mystery hardcover titled Anna Lisa that was originally
published in nineteen fifty nine. The book is back in
print now thanks to Cutting Edge Books, complete with an
awesome cover. We've got a lot to get into today.
But first I'd like to offer another entry in a
segment I created on the last episode called Review the Reviewer.
(01:47):
I'm reviewing all of my favorite YouTube channels and presenting
their information here for you how to watch them, what
they cover, the format, and what puts them in my
daily watch list every single week. This episode's Review the
Reviewer is The Book Graveyard. I found out about this
channel from a listener that reached out to me from
North Carolina last year. He suggested I try the channel
(02:09):
out for vintage fiction reviews that are in the wheelhouse
a paperback warrior. Turned out he was exactly right. The
Book Graveyard is hosted by Nick Anderson. Nick originally lived
in Arizona. He just recently moved to Ohio. He likes
punk rock, has a record label and a great record collection,
but trumming all of that is his massive book collection.
(02:30):
He's got a lot of vintage paperbacks across a multitude
of genres. I think his favorites may be the monarch paperbacks.
I see those quite a bit. He typically has at
least one video up each week where he reviews two
to three books. He also has a monthly video where
he shows what books he acquired that month, either at
used bookstores or through trades or freebies. He also links
up to two other YouTube channels, which I'm going to
(02:53):
get to in future episodes. One is called Secret Firebooks
and the other is called Pulp Mortem. Together, those three
hosts do a show called The Elusive Exclusive Book Society
where they review a book on each episode. You can
type into YouTube the book Graveyard and his channel will
come up. He also has a blog where you can
read his cool reviews, and you can find it all
(03:14):
at the book Graveyard dot blogspot dot com. So go
check Nick out. He's a great guy. All right, So
how about we jump into today's feature. Since we're going
to be doing two, I'll jump into the first one. Now,
let me just key up some music, okay. As I
(03:38):
mentioned in my opener, today's feature is on author Louis
Preston Tremble. He was a prolific author that seemed to
excel in the science fiction genre, but honestly, he wrote
just about everything, including action, adventure in crime noir. This
feature was really difficult to research because Tremble's personal life, well,
it just isn't out there. Not a lot has been
written about him, but his books are seemingly everywhere. He's
(04:01):
been published by just about every company in terms of
vintage fiction. It makes it really hard to even drill
down to an exact bibliography because there's just so many
publishers involved. But let's try to at least get an overview.
Louis Tremble was born in Seattle, Washington, in nineteen seventeen.
He worked as a logger and a house painter. He
attended universities in Washington State and Pennsylvania. His first published
(04:26):
story was his Wooden Overcoat, published in ten Story Detective
Magazine in October of nineteen thirty eight. Tremble stayed active
in contributing to the pulps. In nineteen thirty nine, he
had three stories published in the Detective Pulps. He had
two more in nineteen forty, but then after that he
took a break from the pulp market for eight years
(04:47):
to develop his writing as a mystery novelist. And that's
really saying something because we're talking about the height of
the pulp era, the nineteen forties, and he pretty much
took that whole decade off to sort of craft his
novel career. Almost all of his first thirty books were
crime fiction and mysteries. I'm not going to go through
every one of his books and publishers, but just to
(05:08):
give you an idea of when his novelist's career began,
it was the nineteen forty one book Fit to Kill,
which was published by Phoenix and hardcover. He followed a
year later with another Phoenix published hardcover titled Tragedy in Turquois,
which was reviewed by The New York Times, who said,
quote a conventional story, certainly not astinguished one, but we've
(05:29):
read worseuote. Also in nineteen forty two was his first
paperback date for Murder. It was published by Mystery House
as a digest sized mystery of the month's selection. With
two books published in nineteen forty two under his real name,
he opted to create a pseudonym of Gary Travis to
publish another novel in nineteen forty two, titled Tarnished Love,
(05:52):
although I don't know who the publisher was. The Gary
Travis name is Gerry so Gary Travis. In nineteen forty
five was Designed for Dying, published as bart House Mystery,
with the blurb at the top stating that this is
a reprint of a Pat Durbin mystery. So it's a
mystery to me. I'm assuming that this was a private
(06:13):
eye character that Tremble had at some point, maybe in
the Pulps or something, but I know that the character
wasn't in any of the author's first three books, so
I'm not really sure who Pat Durbin is. Also in
nineteen forty five was Murder Trouble, published in paperback as
a black Cat detective series book. The author had two
books published in nineteen forty six, one as a dagger
(06:35):
House Mystery paperback and another as a hardback by Superior
Publishing Company. In nineteen forty eight, Trimble's first novel was
published under his pseudonym Stuart Brock. I've seen that name before.
The book was Death Is My Lover, published in paperback
by Red Seal. He followed that a year later with
another Brock written one titled Just Around the corner corner
(06:59):
like doing a topsies just around the corner as a
Dell paperback. Altogether, Tremble was published at least seven times
using the name Stuart Brock, and these were published by
the likes of Dell, Graphic, Ace, Pyramid and also there
were two Westerns or at least two Westerns in that
list as well written by Stuart Brock. By nineteen forty eight,
(07:19):
Tremble has authored eleven published novels, all mysteries in crime fiction.
He then goes back to the pulp market to write
those stories as well as full length novels. He started
delving into the sports story market. He authored five sports
stories in nineteen forty eight in magazines like Complete Sports
and Sports Action. In nineteen forty nine, he writes another
(07:39):
sports story, followed by two more in nineteen fifty and
six in nineteen fifty one. Keep in mind he's only
writing sports stories for the pulps during this three year period,
no other types of pulp stories, just sports only. It's interesting.
By the late nineteen forties, Tremble's beginning to delve into
the western market. His novel Valley of Violence was published
(08:02):
by Bantam in nineteen forty eight, which sort of kickstarted
his Western writing. In the nineteen fifties, it saw Trimble
publish at least fourteen novels across mysteries and westerns. However,
two of his novels during this decade are spy books
starring a guy named Paul Knox. The books were Stab
in the Dark, published in nineteen fifty six, and The
(08:22):
Big Bite in nineteen fifty seven, and he again used
the pseudonym of Gary Travis to write The Big Bite.
According to Spy Guys and Gals, which is the authority
on spy fiction, Paul Knox is an agent with the
World Circle Agency. This is just really a glorified private
eye firm with the ability to investigate cases worldwide. Spy
(08:45):
Guys and Gals gave the series a B, with both
books being just okay. Also, by the mid nineteen fifties,
Trimble is mostly out of his sports story phase and
now he's focusing on Western pulps. Beginning in nineteen fifty two,
Mbole has sixteen stories published in the Pulpse, of which
half of those are Westerns. Only four were crime fiction.
(09:07):
But of note is the first Tremble science fiction story.
It was titled probability and appeared in IF magazine in
April of nineteen fifty four. Now, in nineteen fifty two,
Tremble Mary's Jacqueline Whitney. Now she was born in Portland, Oregon,
in nineteen twenty seven, and she was educated at the
University of Washington, where she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees.
(09:28):
My guess is that Louis Tremble must have met her
while he was a student or maybe even teaching at
the University of Washington. They both attended there. In the
nineteen sixties. Trimble had at least ten books published, and
his wife, Jacqueline authored and published her first novel as well,
the nineteen sixty four Gothic romance book The Whisper of Shadows.
(09:49):
She wrote the book using the name J. L. H. Whitney,
and it was published by Ace and I. When I
was researching this, I could remember that title in I
looked back. I had bought that book last summer on
my New England book shopping tour, and I had it
in one of the videos, and I didn't realize who
the author was until I researched this feature. Now it's
(10:10):
Paul's here in the nineteen sixties, said just catch up
for a moment. On the mystery file dot com online
review for Trimble's first novel, there's a comment from a
man named Carl Drobnik, who claims he was good friends
with Louis Tremble. On Carl's website, he has an article
about Trimble's life. He quotes Tremble as stating this in
nineteen seventy seven quote, I wrote thirty mystery novels and
(10:34):
got bored, so I started writing westerns, and after thirty
of those, I switched to science fiction. End quote. So
his quote sort of sums up where we are right
now in this feature. In Trimble's career, he's authored crime
fiction and westerns, and as we learned earlier, he had
a sports story phase of his pulp career, and he
wrote stories in the pulps. Now he just wants something different,
(10:58):
so he jumps into the science fiction market. His first
science fiction novel is the nineteen sixty eight book Anthropoul,
published as an ACE double. He followed that in nineteen
seventy with another ACE titled The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy.
In nineteen seventy two, Louis Tremble and his wife Jacqueline
team up to write the science fiction novel Guardians of
(11:20):
the Gate, which was also published in Luna Monthly's December
nineteen seventy two issue. Trimble authored four more books in
the nineteen seventies, and they were all science fiction. Karl
Drobnik offers an interesting commentary on Trimble's novel The City Machine.
He states that this sci fi thriller brought the author
his greatest fame. The book was published during the deep
(11:43):
frieze of the Cold War, and the Eastern European readers
adopted this book as a type of symbolic example of
Marxism and what they perceived as the inevitable fall of
corrupt capitalism. The novel was translated into Polish, Zech, German,
Hungarian and sold throughout the Soviet Union, but during the
Cold War, royalties couldn't be transferred out of those countries,
(12:05):
so the money just piled up in frozen bank accounts.
Trimble became an instructor and professor at University of Washington,
and he rose in academic circles with his talent for linguistics.
According to Dromnik, the US State Department was searching for
cultural and educational missionaries into the Soviet countries, and Trimble
was able to get involved with that program, so he
(12:27):
traveled into the Soviet Bloc doing seminars on linguistics. He
told Dromnik, quote, I can spend as much of the
loot as I want while I'm in the country. That
take a few days vacation at the end of one
of the seminars, and I live well for a week.
When I'm there, they know me as the novelist Louis
Trimble and are surprised by my work in rhetoric. Here
(12:49):
in the US people knew me as a linguistic and
are surprised that I wrote novels. Quote. Louis Trimble died
in March of nineteen eighty eight. Now Mike Gross writes
on the GA Detection blog that Louis Trimble's crime fiction
mostly resembles the quality of a writer like Harold Q. Massour.
But you could easily find and read Louis Tremble today
(13:10):
to determine how you feel about the writer's work. Prolog Books, man,
they went all in on this author. Doing a quick
scan on Amazon, I see that Prolog has twenty four
of his novels available as cheap ebooks or even free
to read using Kendall Unlimited, so just be sure to
check those out to see if you like his writing.
(13:31):
A few of his westerns written as Stuart Brock are
available for free on archive dot Org. From what I
could gather, Trimble has been published by Red Seal, Black
Cat Detective Series, Graphic Ace, Pyramid, Prolog, Doll Phoenix, Gosh Barthouse,
Mystery Wonder Book, Thorndyke Press, Gunsmoke Westerns, Bantam, Sharon Publications,
(13:56):
Airmont Priori, and Resurrected Press and many of those that
I just mentioned are all reprints. So this guy is
readily available you can you can read his stuff. So
my references for this Louis Tremble feature was the aforementioned
Spy Guysangals, mystery file dot Com, Carl Drobnik's WordPress blog,
Archive dot Org, Fiction mag Index, the GA Detection Blog,
(14:20):
and the official paperback price Guide by John Warren, and
also the Internet Speculative of Fiction Database. So we're going
to turn the script page to the second feature of
today's episode. I promise you a second feature, and this
one isn't nearly as long. This is a quick, little
mini feature on cardinal editions. So in the early twentieth century,
(14:43):
a lot of publishing houses created specialty imprints so they
could charge a little extra for their paperbacks. For example,
Fawcet Gold Medal created Red Seal in nineteen fifty two.
The idea was that the extra dime or more on
the cover price meant more pages in the book. Graphic
press Us did it with their giant imprint Pocketbook, which
(15:03):
began publishing pocket sized paperback books in nineteen thirty nine,
did the same thing. In nineteen forty four, The founding
owners of Pockets sold the business to Marshall Field the Third,
who at the time was the owner of the Chicago
Sun newspaper. To help bolster the sales, they created the
idea of a more expensive thirty five cent paperback imprint
titled Cardinal Editions. This was a dime more than the
(15:27):
standard quarter price tag of the pocketbook. The spines of
these Cardinal Editions still had that familiar gold coloring, but
a bright red cardinal was affixed above the cover's price
tag with the wording Cardinal Edition. The top had a
serial number beginning with the letter C and then a
hyphen and then the number of the book the regular
twenty five cent pocketbooks, they switched to a silver spine
(15:49):
to just differentiate themselves between that and the Cardinals. The
first Cardinal Edition paperback was WILLIAMS. Shakespeare's Four Great Historical Plays,
which was Richard the Third, Henry the Fourth in two parts,
and Henry the Fifth. As an example, the top serial
number is see hyphen one. It was followed by King's
Row by Henry Bellaman and then In Tragic Life by
(16:11):
Vartis Fisher. According to John Warren in the Official Paperback
Price Guide, the most collectible of the Cardinal Editions was
Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, which was
released with a dust jacket. Other notable books was a
Marilyn Monroe expose. Now, the first Cardinal Editions consist of
four hundred and fifty eight total books, and that goes
(16:33):
see hyphen one all the way through see hyphen four
five eight. There's one additional book after book number four
hundred and fifty eight, which is oddly listed as c
DASH eleven thirty eight. It's the Case of the Fugitive
Nurse by Earl Stanley Gardner. The reason why is it
shares the same number as the pocketbook silver spine edition,
and I'm not sure why. Of these four hundred and
(16:55):
fifty eight books, here's just a few that call my
eye just quickly. On the list. A. B. Guthrie's Westerns
like The Big Sky and The Way West, Ernest Haycocks,
The earth Breakers and The Adventurers, Harold Robbins, A Stone
for Danny Fisher, which, if you'll remember, that was adapted
into a movie starring Elvis Blackboard Jungle by Evan Hunter,
(17:15):
Odds Against Tomorrow by William P. McGivern. And there's also
plenty of ellery Queen max Brand, Earl, Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie,
Zane Gray in the series as well. In nineteen fifty two,
Inflation created pocketbooks Cardinal Editions Giants, which sold for fifty cents.
They have the same look other than the serial number
at the top is GC and then the hyphen and
(17:37):
then the number, so GC hyphen one was the Cardinal
by Henry Morton Robinson. There are two hundred and thirty
eight of these with numbers GC DASH one through GC
DASH two three eight. Then there's ninety three more Cardinal
Edition Giant paperbacks released, but the serial numbers, they're just
all over the place. They don't make any sense. While
(18:00):
if the cardinal thirty five cent and fifty per cent
editions were being offered, Pocket also had a type of
hybrid book that they simply titled Pocket Cardinals. These were
the size of regular pocketbooks, but still had the same
price as a cardinal edition at thirty five cents. It
doesn't make any sense just from the dynamic of it.
It's a higher priced pocketbook with no extra pages. There
(18:22):
were twenty three of these books published, and again the
serial numbers, they don't make any sense. My references for
this was book scans dot com and the official paperback
price Guide by John Warren and the archived site Hyde
Park Books. And that is a wrap on those two features.
And I've got one more segment left in this episode,
(18:43):
which is a book review. All right, So today's book
review is a nineteen fifty nine mystery novel titled Anna Lisa. Now,
this was originally published as a hardcover with a terrible cover.
It then just went out of print for sixty three years.
This disappeared. Thankfully, Cutting Edge Books located the book and
resurrected it. You can now get the book in both
(19:04):
digital and paperback editions. And I must say I like
the book cover. This old mansion lit up and then
Analisa's face at the top. You can just see some
trees and shadows surrounding the mansion. I actually like this
one as a modern cover. Ana Lisa was authored by
Forbes Rideell, but this was actually two people, Dolores Stanton
(19:24):
Forbes and Helen b Rdell. The two had writing careers
on their own, but they also collaborated together on four
total novels between nineteen fifty nine and nineteen sixty three.
So with Analisa. The book's main character is Dana Hebert.
He takes a lead from the military to return to
his hometown in Louisiana. His younger brother Claude, is marrying
(19:47):
a childhood friend named Annalisa. It's Danis holpes that he
can convince Claude in the family to cancel the wedding
to secure his brother's safety and sanity. But at the
beginning of the book, we just I don't know why
he has this resentment for Analisa. The book's got an
excellent atmosphere. I mean, it's got the Southern Gothic a
(20:07):
vibe to it with a swaying Spanish moss. The large
mansion and it's got an old cemetery, and the book
gets somewhat spooky at times. Through murky flashbacks, readers learned
that Dana and Claude's parents were murdered by Analisa's mother
in a jealous rage. She basically just goes into the
family's library. She meets the parents there, she apparently confronts
(20:30):
the husband about an affair she's having with him. Then
she shoots both of them and kills herself. The two
brothers are taken by the county and shipped to he
won't believe this. They get shipped to Analisa's grandmother's house
in those days and in southern tradition. Then the grandmother
feels responsible that her daughter in law, which is again
(20:52):
Analisa's mother, killed Dana in Claude's parents, so she feels
obligated to raise their sons, which which is nice, But
if you're Dana and Claude, you got to be like,
we're living with the family that murdered our parents. Now,
Analisa's father he died a long time before all this,
so Analisa is also without parents, so it's here in
(21:13):
this half castle that the tu befriend young Analisa, and
the three of them grow up together. Dana's present day
reunion is met with stiff opposition from Claude. He's like
a frustrated young man. He's an artist, and he feels
like his brother is actually in love with Anna Lisa,
and that's why he doesn't want the wedding to happen,
which is really the case in a way. The grandmother
(21:35):
seems to know more about the brother's past, but she's
withholding murderous secrets from the family. Additionally, Grandma's sister, her
name is Celia. She warns Dana that a killer is
stalking the halls of this mansion that they're all living in.
She says that someone comes in the night and wiggles
her doorknob, and she asks the maintenance man to install
a new lock on the door to protect her. As
(21:55):
the wedding gets nearer, Dana goes over to his former
childhood home. This is the mansion where his parents were
murdered in the library. This mansion now lies empty, it's
crumbling down. There's a creepy atmosphere. As he's just walking
around over there, trying to get his head straight. There's
a lot of things going on in this book, but
the central basis is what really happened the night the
(22:16):
parents were murdered. Did Ana Lisa's mother really kill them?
Or did little Claude kill his parents or little Analisa.
What Dana really knows isn't revealed until the last few pages,
which is fine because that's the type of novel this is.
You want to be in the dark through most of
it so the mystery can unravel itself in an enjoyable way.
(22:37):
So what Dana knows, he keeps from the reader until
the end. I've got a written review of this book
going up later this month. This is what I wrote
at the bottom of that review. Annalisa is a well written,
patient Southern Gothic that dangles all the answers just a
few inches from the captivated readers. As the narrative unfolds,
The mysteries of Dana and Claude's family is unveiled in
(22:58):
a rewarding fashion. The old cemetery, cavernous mansion, and sweeping
Spanish moss provides just enough rainy day atmosphere to enhance
this enjoyable mystery. If you love Mignn g. Eberhart, Elizabeth
sanse Holding, and Elizabeth Fenwick, then Analisa is sure to
please and I'm pleased with this episode, if I do
(23:19):
say so myself. Put a lot of research into this one,
and I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll be back
in two weeks for another episode. At the time of
this recording, I still don't know what that one's going
to be about yet. I've mostly tried to stay true
to our roots this year with features on vintage authors,
mostly crime fiction and pulisters, but I'm going to dig
around and see what else i can come up with.
(23:41):
Hopefully I'll also have some more conversations with authors and publishers,
or maybe some more collaborations with other podcasts as well,
so hopefully you will you'll get on board with those
as well. In the meantime, be sure to check paperback
Warrior dot com often. Feel free to donate, and as always,
enjoy whatever it is your doing. I'm going to see
you next time.
It's that time again. Hi, I'm Eric and I'm bringing
you another exciting episode of the Paperback Warrior podcast. You
can check out Paperbackwarrior dot com to hear the prior
one and fourteen episodes, as well as over fifteen hundred
reviews of vintage paperbacks and comics. Be sure to follow
us on Facebook, x, Instagram, and threads. In keeping to
(00:41):
the Paperback Warrior tradition of twentieth century crime fiction writers,
today's first feature is on author Lewis Preston Tremble, or
maybe it's Louis Lewis or Louis. I'm gonna go with Louis.
He wrote polp stories, science fiction, westerns, mysteries, and nonfiction.
He wrote around eighty nine and also serves as an
instructor and professor at the University of Washington. I'm excited
(01:05):
to delve into his career in books, and also a
brief history of his wife, Jacqueline, who is also an author. Also,
I'm presenting a second feature today. It's on a vintage
paperback publisher called Cardinal Editions. They were an imprint of
pocketbooks and published paperbacks between nineteen fifty one to nineteen
fifty nine. It's an interesting history. I'll also review a
(01:26):
vintage Gothic mystery hardcover titled Anna Lisa that was originally
published in nineteen fifty nine. The book is back in
print now thanks to Cutting Edge Books, complete with an
awesome cover. We've got a lot to get into today.
But first I'd like to offer another entry in a
segment I created on the last episode called Review the Reviewer.
(01:47):
I'm reviewing all of my favorite YouTube channels and presenting
their information here for you how to watch them, what
they cover, the format, and what puts them in my
daily watch list every single week. This episode's Review the
Reviewer is The Book Graveyard. I found out about this
channel from a listener that reached out to me from
North Carolina last year. He suggested I try the channel
(02:09):
out for vintage fiction reviews that are in the wheelhouse
a paperback warrior. Turned out he was exactly right. The
Book Graveyard is hosted by Nick Anderson. Nick originally lived
in Arizona. He just recently moved to Ohio. He likes
punk rock, has a record label and a great record collection,
but trumming all of that is his massive book collection.
(02:30):
He's got a lot of vintage paperbacks across a multitude
of genres. I think his favorites may be the monarch paperbacks.
I see those quite a bit. He typically has at
least one video up each week where he reviews two
to three books. He also has a monthly video where
he shows what books he acquired that month, either at
used bookstores or through trades or freebies. He also links
up to two other YouTube channels, which I'm going to
(02:53):
get to in future episodes. One is called Secret Firebooks
and the other is called Pulp Mortem. Together, those three
hosts do a show called The Elusive Exclusive Book Society
where they review a book on each episode. You can
type into YouTube the book Graveyard and his channel will
come up. He also has a blog where you can
read his cool reviews, and you can find it all
(03:14):
at the book Graveyard dot blogspot dot com. So go
check Nick out. He's a great guy. All right, So
how about we jump into today's feature. Since we're going
to be doing two, I'll jump into the first one. Now,
let me just key up some music, okay. As I
(03:38):
mentioned in my opener, today's feature is on author Louis
Preston Tremble. He was a prolific author that seemed to
excel in the science fiction genre, but honestly, he wrote
just about everything, including action, adventure in crime noir. This
feature was really difficult to research because Tremble's personal life, well,
it just isn't out there. Not a lot has been
written about him, but his books are seemingly everywhere. He's
(04:01):
been published by just about every company in terms of
vintage fiction. It makes it really hard to even drill
down to an exact bibliography because there's just so many
publishers involved. But let's try to at least get an overview.
Louis Tremble was born in Seattle, Washington, in nineteen seventeen.
He worked as a logger and a house painter. He
attended universities in Washington State and Pennsylvania. His first published
(04:26):
story was his Wooden Overcoat, published in ten Story Detective
Magazine in October of nineteen thirty eight. Tremble stayed active
in contributing to the pulps. In nineteen thirty nine, he
had three stories published in the Detective Pulps. He had
two more in nineteen forty, but then after that he
took a break from the pulp market for eight years
(04:47):
to develop his writing as a mystery novelist. And that's
really saying something because we're talking about the height of
the pulp era, the nineteen forties, and he pretty much
took that whole decade off to sort of craft his
novel career. Almost all of his first thirty books were
crime fiction and mysteries. I'm not going to go through
every one of his books and publishers, but just to
(05:08):
give you an idea of when his novelist's career began,
it was the nineteen forty one book Fit to Kill,
which was published by Phoenix and hardcover. He followed a
year later with another Phoenix published hardcover titled Tragedy in Turquois,
which was reviewed by The New York Times, who said,
quote a conventional story, certainly not astinguished one, but we've
(05:29):
read worseuote. Also in nineteen forty two was his first
paperback date for Murder. It was published by Mystery House
as a digest sized mystery of the month's selection. With
two books published in nineteen forty two under his real name,
he opted to create a pseudonym of Gary Travis to
publish another novel in nineteen forty two, titled Tarnished Love,
(05:52):
although I don't know who the publisher was. The Gary
Travis name is Gerry so Gary Travis. In nineteen forty
five was Designed for Dying, published as bart House Mystery,
with the blurb at the top stating that this is
a reprint of a Pat Durbin mystery. So it's a
mystery to me. I'm assuming that this was a private
(06:13):
eye character that Tremble had at some point, maybe in
the Pulps or something, but I know that the character
wasn't in any of the author's first three books, so
I'm not really sure who Pat Durbin is. Also in
nineteen forty five was Murder Trouble, published in paperback as
a black Cat detective series book. The author had two
books published in nineteen forty six, one as a dagger
(06:35):
House Mystery paperback and another as a hardback by Superior
Publishing Company. In nineteen forty eight, Trimble's first novel was
published under his pseudonym Stuart Brock. I've seen that name before.
The book was Death Is My Lover, published in paperback
by Red Seal. He followed that a year later with
another Brock written one titled Just Around the corner corner
(06:59):
like doing a topsies just around the corner as a
Dell paperback. Altogether, Tremble was published at least seven times
using the name Stuart Brock, and these were published by
the likes of Dell, Graphic, Ace, Pyramid and also there
were two Westerns or at least two Westerns in that
list as well written by Stuart Brock. By nineteen forty eight,
(07:19):
Tremble has authored eleven published novels, all mysteries in crime fiction.
He then goes back to the pulp market to write
those stories as well as full length novels. He started
delving into the sports story market. He authored five sports
stories in nineteen forty eight in magazines like Complete Sports
and Sports Action. In nineteen forty nine, he writes another
(07:39):
sports story, followed by two more in nineteen fifty and
six in nineteen fifty one. Keep in mind he's only
writing sports stories for the pulps during this three year period,
no other types of pulp stories, just sports only. It's interesting.
By the late nineteen forties, Tremble's beginning to delve into
the western market. His novel Valley of Violence was published
(08:02):
by Bantam in nineteen forty eight, which sort of kickstarted
his Western writing. In the nineteen fifties, it saw Trimble
publish at least fourteen novels across mysteries and westerns. However,
two of his novels during this decade are spy books
starring a guy named Paul Knox. The books were Stab
in the Dark, published in nineteen fifty six, and The
(08:22):
Big Bite in nineteen fifty seven, and he again used
the pseudonym of Gary Travis to write The Big Bite.
According to Spy Guys and Gals, which is the authority
on spy fiction, Paul Knox is an agent with the
World Circle Agency. This is just really a glorified private
eye firm with the ability to investigate cases worldwide. Spy
(08:45):
Guys and Gals gave the series a B, with both
books being just okay. Also, by the mid nineteen fifties,
Trimble is mostly out of his sports story phase and
now he's focusing on Western pulps. Beginning in nineteen fifty two,
Mbole has sixteen stories published in the Pulpse, of which
half of those are Westerns. Only four were crime fiction.
(09:07):
But of note is the first Tremble science fiction story.
It was titled probability and appeared in IF magazine in
April of nineteen fifty four. Now, in nineteen fifty two,
Tremble Mary's Jacqueline Whitney. Now she was born in Portland, Oregon,
in nineteen twenty seven, and she was educated at the
University of Washington, where she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees.
(09:28):
My guess is that Louis Tremble must have met her
while he was a student or maybe even teaching at
the University of Washington. They both attended there. In the
nineteen sixties. Trimble had at least ten books published, and
his wife, Jacqueline authored and published her first novel as well,
the nineteen sixty four Gothic romance book The Whisper of Shadows.
(09:49):
She wrote the book using the name J. L. H. Whitney,
and it was published by Ace and I. When I
was researching this, I could remember that title in I
looked back. I had bought that book last summer on
my New England book shopping tour, and I had it
in one of the videos, and I didn't realize who
the author was until I researched this feature. Now it's
(10:10):
Paul's here in the nineteen sixties, said just catch up
for a moment. On the mystery file dot com online
review for Trimble's first novel, there's a comment from a
man named Carl Drobnik, who claims he was good friends
with Louis Tremble. On Carl's website, he has an article
about Trimble's life. He quotes Tremble as stating this in
nineteen seventy seven quote, I wrote thirty mystery novels and
(10:34):
got bored, so I started writing westerns, and after thirty
of those, I switched to science fiction. End quote. So
his quote sort of sums up where we are right
now in this feature. In Trimble's career, he's authored crime
fiction and westerns, and as we learned earlier, he had
a sports story phase of his pulp career, and he
wrote stories in the pulps. Now he just wants something different,
(10:58):
so he jumps into the science fiction market. His first
science fiction novel is the nineteen sixty eight book Anthropoul,
published as an ACE double. He followed that in nineteen
seventy with another ACE titled The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy.
In nineteen seventy two, Louis Tremble and his wife Jacqueline
team up to write the science fiction novel Guardians of
(11:20):
the Gate, which was also published in Luna Monthly's December
nineteen seventy two issue. Trimble authored four more books in
the nineteen seventies, and they were all science fiction. Karl
Drobnik offers an interesting commentary on Trimble's novel The City Machine.
He states that this sci fi thriller brought the author
his greatest fame. The book was published during the deep
(11:43):
frieze of the Cold War, and the Eastern European readers
adopted this book as a type of symbolic example of
Marxism and what they perceived as the inevitable fall of
corrupt capitalism. The novel was translated into Polish, Zech, German,
Hungarian and sold throughout the Soviet Union, but during the
Cold War, royalties couldn't be transferred out of those countries,
(12:05):
so the money just piled up in frozen bank accounts.
Trimble became an instructor and professor at University of Washington,
and he rose in academic circles with his talent for linguistics.
According to Dromnik, the US State Department was searching for
cultural and educational missionaries into the Soviet countries, and Trimble
was able to get involved with that program, so he
(12:27):
traveled into the Soviet Bloc doing seminars on linguistics. He
told Dromnik, quote, I can spend as much of the
loot as I want while I'm in the country. That
take a few days vacation at the end of one
of the seminars, and I live well for a week.
When I'm there, they know me as the novelist Louis
Trimble and are surprised by my work in rhetoric. Here
(12:49):
in the US people knew me as a linguistic and
are surprised that I wrote novels. Quote. Louis Trimble died
in March of nineteen eighty eight. Now Mike Gross writes
on the GA Detection blog that Louis Trimble's crime fiction
mostly resembles the quality of a writer like Harold Q. Massour.
But you could easily find and read Louis Tremble today
(13:10):
to determine how you feel about the writer's work. Prolog Books, man,
they went all in on this author. Doing a quick
scan on Amazon, I see that Prolog has twenty four
of his novels available as cheap ebooks or even free
to read using Kendall Unlimited, so just be sure to
check those out to see if you like his writing.
(13:31):
A few of his westerns written as Stuart Brock are
available for free on archive dot Org. From what I
could gather, Trimble has been published by Red Seal, Black
Cat Detective Series, Graphic Ace, Pyramid, Prolog, Doll Phoenix, Gosh Barthouse,
Mystery Wonder Book, Thorndyke Press, Gunsmoke Westerns, Bantam, Sharon Publications,
(13:56):
Airmont Priori, and Resurrected Press and many of those that
I just mentioned are all reprints. So this guy is
readily available you can you can read his stuff. So
my references for this Louis Tremble feature was the aforementioned
Spy Guysangals, mystery file dot Com, Carl Drobnik's WordPress blog,
Archive dot Org, Fiction mag Index, the GA Detection Blog,
(14:20):
and the official paperback price Guide by John Warren, and
also the Internet Speculative of Fiction Database. So we're going
to turn the script page to the second feature of
today's episode. I promise you a second feature, and this
one isn't nearly as long. This is a quick, little
mini feature on cardinal editions. So in the early twentieth century,
(14:43):
a lot of publishing houses created specialty imprints so they
could charge a little extra for their paperbacks. For example,
Fawcet Gold Medal created Red Seal in nineteen fifty two.
The idea was that the extra dime or more on
the cover price meant more pages in the book. Graphic
press Us did it with their giant imprint Pocketbook, which
(15:03):
began publishing pocket sized paperback books in nineteen thirty nine,
did the same thing. In nineteen forty four, The founding
owners of Pockets sold the business to Marshall Field the Third,
who at the time was the owner of the Chicago
Sun newspaper. To help bolster the sales, they created the
idea of a more expensive thirty five cent paperback imprint
titled Cardinal Editions. This was a dime more than the
(15:27):
standard quarter price tag of the pocketbook. The spines of
these Cardinal Editions still had that familiar gold coloring, but
a bright red cardinal was affixed above the cover's price
tag with the wording Cardinal Edition. The top had a
serial number beginning with the letter C and then a
hyphen and then the number of the book the regular
twenty five cent pocketbooks, they switched to a silver spine
(15:49):
to just differentiate themselves between that and the Cardinals. The
first Cardinal Edition paperback was WILLIAMS. Shakespeare's Four Great Historical Plays,
which was Richard the Third, Henry the Fourth in two parts,
and Henry the Fifth. As an example, the top serial
number is see hyphen one. It was followed by King's
Row by Henry Bellaman and then In Tragic Life by
(16:11):
Vartis Fisher. According to John Warren in the Official Paperback
Price Guide, the most collectible of the Cardinal Editions was
Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, which was
released with a dust jacket. Other notable books was a
Marilyn Monroe expose. Now, the first Cardinal Editions consist of
four hundred and fifty eight total books, and that goes
(16:33):
see hyphen one all the way through see hyphen four
five eight. There's one additional book after book number four
hundred and fifty eight, which is oddly listed as c
DASH eleven thirty eight. It's the Case of the Fugitive
Nurse by Earl Stanley Gardner. The reason why is it
shares the same number as the pocketbook silver spine edition,
and I'm not sure why. Of these four hundred and
(16:55):
fifty eight books, here's just a few that call my
eye just quickly. On the list. A. B. Guthrie's Westerns
like The Big Sky and The Way West, Ernest Haycocks,
The earth Breakers and The Adventurers, Harold Robbins, A Stone
for Danny Fisher, which, if you'll remember, that was adapted
into a movie starring Elvis Blackboard Jungle by Evan Hunter,
(17:15):
Odds Against Tomorrow by William P. McGivern. And there's also
plenty of ellery Queen max Brand, Earl, Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie,
Zane Gray in the series as well. In nineteen fifty two,
Inflation created pocketbooks Cardinal Editions Giants, which sold for fifty cents.
They have the same look other than the serial number
at the top is GC and then the hyphen and
(17:37):
then the number, so GC hyphen one was the Cardinal
by Henry Morton Robinson. There are two hundred and thirty
eight of these with numbers GC DASH one through GC
DASH two three eight. Then there's ninety three more Cardinal
Edition Giant paperbacks released, but the serial numbers, they're just
all over the place. They don't make any sense. While
(18:00):
if the cardinal thirty five cent and fifty per cent
editions were being offered, Pocket also had a type of
hybrid book that they simply titled Pocket Cardinals. These were
the size of regular pocketbooks, but still had the same
price as a cardinal edition at thirty five cents. It
doesn't make any sense just from the dynamic of it.
It's a higher priced pocketbook with no extra pages. There
(18:22):
were twenty three of these books published, and again the
serial numbers, they don't make any sense. My references for
this was book scans dot com and the official paperback
price Guide by John Warren and the archived site Hyde
Park Books. And that is a wrap on those two features.
And I've got one more segment left in this episode,
(18:43):
which is a book review. All right, So today's book
review is a nineteen fifty nine mystery novel titled Anna Lisa. Now,
this was originally published as a hardcover with a terrible cover.
It then just went out of print for sixty three years.
This disappeared. Thankfully, Cutting Edge Books located the book and
resurrected it. You can now get the book in both
(19:04):
digital and paperback editions. And I must say I like
the book cover. This old mansion lit up and then
Analisa's face at the top. You can just see some
trees and shadows surrounding the mansion. I actually like this
one as a modern cover. Ana Lisa was authored by
Forbes Rideell, but this was actually two people, Dolores Stanton
(19:24):
Forbes and Helen b Rdell. The two had writing careers
on their own, but they also collaborated together on four
total novels between nineteen fifty nine and nineteen sixty three.
So with Analisa. The book's main character is Dana Hebert.
He takes a lead from the military to return to
his hometown in Louisiana. His younger brother Claude, is marrying
(19:47):
a childhood friend named Annalisa. It's Danis holpes that he
can convince Claude in the family to cancel the wedding
to secure his brother's safety and sanity. But at the
beginning of the book, we just I don't know why
he has this resentment for Analisa. The book's got an
excellent atmosphere. I mean, it's got the Southern Gothic a
(20:07):
vibe to it with a swaying Spanish moss. The large
mansion and it's got an old cemetery, and the book
gets somewhat spooky at times. Through murky flashbacks, readers learned
that Dana and Claude's parents were murdered by Analisa's mother
in a jealous rage. She basically just goes into the
family's library. She meets the parents there, she apparently confronts
(20:30):
the husband about an affair she's having with him. Then
she shoots both of them and kills herself. The two
brothers are taken by the county and shipped to he
won't believe this. They get shipped to Analisa's grandmother's house
in those days and in southern tradition. Then the grandmother
feels responsible that her daughter in law, which is again
(20:52):
Analisa's mother, killed Dana in Claude's parents, so she feels
obligated to raise their sons, which which is nice, But
if you're Dana and Claude, you got to be like,
we're living with the family that murdered our parents. Now,
Analisa's father he died a long time before all this,
so Analisa is also without parents, so it's here in
(21:13):
this half castle that the tu befriend young Analisa, and
the three of them grow up together. Dana's present day
reunion is met with stiff opposition from Claude. He's like
a frustrated young man. He's an artist, and he feels
like his brother is actually in love with Anna Lisa,
and that's why he doesn't want the wedding to happen,
which is really the case in a way. The grandmother
(21:35):
seems to know more about the brother's past, but she's
withholding murderous secrets from the family. Additionally, Grandma's sister, her
name is Celia. She warns Dana that a killer is
stalking the halls of this mansion that they're all living in.
She says that someone comes in the night and wiggles
her doorknob, and she asks the maintenance man to install
a new lock on the door to protect her. As
(21:55):
the wedding gets nearer, Dana goes over to his former
childhood home. This is the mansion where his parents were
murdered in the library. This mansion now lies empty, it's
crumbling down. There's a creepy atmosphere. As he's just walking
around over there, trying to get his head straight. There's
a lot of things going on in this book, but
the central basis is what really happened the night the
(22:16):
parents were murdered. Did Ana Lisa's mother really kill them?
Or did little Claude kill his parents or little Analisa.
What Dana really knows isn't revealed until the last few pages,
which is fine because that's the type of novel this is.
You want to be in the dark through most of
it so the mystery can unravel itself in an enjoyable way.
(22:37):
So what Dana knows, he keeps from the reader until
the end. I've got a written review of this book
going up later this month. This is what I wrote
at the bottom of that review. Annalisa is a well written,
patient Southern Gothic that dangles all the answers just a
few inches from the captivated readers. As the narrative unfolds,
The mysteries of Dana and Claude's family is unveiled in
(22:58):
a rewarding fashion. The old cemetery, cavernous mansion, and sweeping
Spanish moss provides just enough rainy day atmosphere to enhance
this enjoyable mystery. If you love Mignn g. Eberhart, Elizabeth
sanse Holding, and Elizabeth Fenwick, then Analisa is sure to
please and I'm pleased with this episode, if I do
(23:19):
say so myself. Put a lot of research into this one,
and I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll be back
in two weeks for another episode. At the time of
this recording, I still don't know what that one's going
to be about yet. I've mostly tried to stay true
to our roots this year with features on vintage authors,
mostly crime fiction and pulisters, but I'm going to dig
around and see what else i can come up with.
(23:41):
Hopefully I'll also have some more conversations with authors and publishers,
or maybe some more collaborations with other podcasts as well,
so hopefully you will you'll get on board with those
as well. In the meantime, be sure to check paperback
Warrior dot com often. Feel free to donate, and as always,
enjoy whatever it is your doing. I'm going to see
you next time.
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