Vintage Pulp

July 9 2025

TIME FOR A CAREER CHANGE

Maybe your talent isn't in legitimate medicine. I hear there's a good living these days in being a quack.

An angst tinged cover fronts Karen Miller’s 1962 medical drama-romance Hospital Crisis. This is from Horwitz Publications, the Australian imprint we like to focus on because of their celebrity covers. No celeb here, but the work is nice, if uncredited. Miller wrote other medical books such as Flying Doctor, Urgent Diagnosis, Call for the Flying Doctor, and Doctor Off-Track. She was a pseudonym, though there’s confusion over whose. Some say she was in reality Richard Wilkes-Hunter, while others say Ray Slattery. The facts will emerge in time, we’re sure.

Australia, Horwitz Publications, Karen Miller, Richard Wilkes-Hunter, Ray Slattery, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

October 9 2020

INSURE TO PLEASE

Well, your health coverage looks comprehensive, so I've decided to give you top notch care.

Yet another medical cover today, this one for 1967’s The Doctor’s Decision by Kerry Mitchell. The art is credited to someone named only Kalin. We think it’s safe to conclude that’s Victor Kalin, the veteran Dell Publications illustrator behind such classic fronts as Somerset Maugham’s Rain and John D. MacDonald’s Soft Touch. The author, Kerry Mitchell, was a pseudonym used by several writers, including Lee Pattinson, Ray Slattery, and Richard Wilkes-Hunter, and this tale deals with a plastic surgeon named David Barron who pioneers a radical new surgery, while simultaneously seeing his reputation threatened by scandal. We’ve run across Mitchell before. Remember Bush Nurse? That’s our fave.

Dell Publications, Kerry Mitchell, Lee Pattinson, Ray Slattery, Richard Wilkes-Hunter, Victor Kalin, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

October 6 2016

DIE BY THE SWORD

Wisdom, chivalry, serenity, honor—these are not those kind of samurai.

A different type of paperback today, an example of World War II sexploitation, in this case John Slater’s Women Under the Samurai, from Stag Modern Novels, which deals with, well… this is not the kind of book to be proudly displayed on a shelf. More like tucked in the back of a closet. The women here are nurses and are believed by the Japanese to know the location of Allied soldiers on the Pacific Island which they all inhabit. Pretty much every torture you can imagine is used, with the whole spectacle serving to both titillate and horrify the reader. Slater, who was a pseudonym used by Ray Slattery (as well as R.L. Taylor, and others) dipped into these murky waters regularly. Some of the titles that resulted: Island Slave, Brides of Terror, Women of Warsaw, Love Slave of Paris, The Captive Women. And so forth. More than eighty times. You can understand these selling during the war and post-war period, but the amazing thing about this genre of fiction is that it lasted until well into the 1970s. This example is from 1964.

Australia, Japan, World War II, Stag Modern Novels, John Slater, Ray Slattery, R.L. Taylor, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

January 19 2009

CUTTING IT CLOSE

Boy, are we glad you're finally here. Our women have gotten really hairy.

Bush Nurse, written by medical novel specialist Kerry Mitchell, aka Richard Wilkes-Hunter, Ray Slattery, and Lee Pattinson, has nothing to do with women’s bushes, but it’d be cooler if it did. What you actually get is the story of a pretty nurse who takes an assignment in the remote Aussie outback to heal from a broken heart, but finds herself in a love triangle with two doctors who have their own difficult histories. The action eventually centers on rains, floods, and a wave of medical cases that threaten to overwhelm the little clinic. The above paperback appeared in 1962 with uncredited art, and as you can see at right, there was another version, which is actually from two years earlier (and shows how the nurse’s horse was replaced by an automobile), also uncredited art-wise.

Australia, Horwitz Publications, Kerry Mitchell, Richard Wilkes-Hunter, Ray Slattery, Lee Pattinson, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 12

1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe

The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.

February 12

1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece

In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.

February 11

1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program

BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.

February 10

1962—Powers Is Traded for Abel

Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers, who had been shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960 while flying a U-2 high-altitude jet, is exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested in New York City in 1957.

February 9

1960—Woodward Gets First Star on Walk of Fame

Actress Joanne Woodward receives the first star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Los Angeles sidewalk at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that serves as an outdoor entertainment museum. Woodward was one of 1,558 honorees chosen by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1958, when the proposal to build the sidewalk was approved. Today the sidewalk contains more than 2,800 stars.

February 9

1971—Paige Enters Baseball Hall of Fame

Satchel Paige becomes the first player from America’s Negro Baseball League to be voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Paige, who was a pitcher, played for numerous Negro League teams, had brief stints in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Major Leagues, before finally retiring in his mid-fifties.