Vintage Pulp

September 13 2023

THE DOCTOR IS ALMOST IN

I've studied organ rejection extensively. Trust me—mine is compatible with your body.

Yes, it’s still more medical sleaze—1968’s Second-Year Intern by Val Munroe, from Softcover Library with an uncredited cover. We told you we’ll never run out of these, nor of stupid shit to say about them. Munroe, aka Frank Castle, wrote one of the better sleaze books of the 1950s in Carnival of Passion, which we discussed here. And here, actually. We’d love to see what he can do in a hospital setting, but with more than a hundred books to read, well, sometimes you have to say no.

Softcover Library, Val Munroe, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

May 24 2022

LISETTE ON REPEAT

Is sex déjà-vu a thing? Because I feel like we've lived this before. Try not to finish so fast this time.

Above: a cover for Val Munroe’s Lisette, painted by Darcy, aka Ernest Chiriacka for Beacon Signal, 1962. We were surprised when we discovered this was Munroe’s Carnival of Passion under a different title. Since the name of the main character is Lisette rather than Liz, we didn’t guess it was the same book, and you’ll also notice the cover doesn’t mention a carnival. Luckily we didn’t pay for this because it was available for download on Archive.org. By the way, the story wasn’t the only thing repeated here. The art was later paired with Dee Winters’ 1965 sleazer The Swingers, as you see below.

Beacon Signal, Softcover Library, Val Munroe, Ernest Chiriacka, Darcy, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

August 5 2021

CARNY DESIRE

Dammit! First he goes after the sword swallower and now that contortionist. What do these women have that I don’t?

Years ago we wrote a two sentence blurb about Val Munroe’s 1952 novel Carnival of Passion, with its excellent cover art by George Gross, but we never got around to reading it. What can we say? It got lost in the shuffle. But we finally cracked it open and decided to move that old post to today, delete what we wrote before, and share our many impressions. This is a first. We pride ourselves on our thirteen years of new content every day, which is why we initially resisted doing this. We’d already used the cover. But we read it anyway, and we’re glad we did. There are many mid-century carnival novels. This one qualifies as ironic, because carnivals separated suckers from their money by any means necessary and rarely delivered as promised, while Carnival of Passion is the opposite—entertainment like this can only be considered a bargain.

The story centers on burlesque dancer Liz Danby—young, tough, beautiful, and carny to the core. When her swindler boyfriend cuts a vengeful townie and leaves her holding the bloody switchblade, she’s forced to flee the pursuing sheriff while clad in only a g-string. Stranded in a rainstorm in nowheresville and starting from nothing, she manages to find clothes, a bus east, a Nebraska carnival town, and a new stripping job. Something else that’s new is the hulking Swedish boxer Lars who she falls for in a big way. The two of them get together, sparks fly, and they plan to make a future together, but the violence and treachery of carny life presents obstacles, and of course there’s that old boyfriend, also on the run, who’ll never let Liz go. When he finally reappears it’s in the midst of multiple subplots of clashing carny tension, and his presence is the spark that’s liable to set the tinder ablaze.

Val Munroe, who was in reality an author named Frank Castle, will never be mistaken for a top talent, but his descriptive abilities are more than adequate to the task of detailing hard knock carny life, with its ballyhoos, hot kooch shows, and brutal cash boxing matches. He explains some terminology, but often doesn’t bother, and just plows ahead concerning Clems and clems (upper and lower case), blow-offs, 10-in-1s, tips (not money), and more. But the real value of his writing is in the swiftness and conciseness of his story, and how effectively he portrays his protagonist Liz. You know what else is a real value? We were lucky enough to buy this back when it was cheap. We checked today and some joker is trying to sell it for $105. Talk about carnivals separating suckers from their money. It’s a fun book, and it even has a couple of photos inside, but a hundred bucks? No. But if you happen to see it for twenty? Jump at it.

Rainbow Books, Val Munroe, Frank Castle, George Gross, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

July 11

1960—To Kill a Mockingbird Appears

Harper Lee’s racially charged novel To Kill a Mockingbird is published by J.B. Lippincott & Co. The book is hailed as a classic, becomes an international bestseller, and spawns a movie starring Gregory Peck, but is the only novel Lee would ever publish.

July 11

1962—Nuke Test on Xmas Island

As part of the nuclear tests codenamed Operation Dominic, the United States detonates a one megaton bomb on Australian controlled Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean. The island was a location for a series of American and British nuclear tests, and years later lawsuits claiming radiation damage to military personnel were filed, but none were settled in favor in the soldiers.

July 10

1940—The Battle of Britain Begins

The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.

July 9

1948—Paige Takes Mound in the Majors

Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.

July 8

1965—Biggs Escapes the Big House

Ronald Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escapes from Wandsworth Prison by scaling a 30-foot wall with three other prisoners, using a ladder thrown in from the outside. Biggs remained at large, mostly living in Brazil, for more than forty-five years before returning to the UK—and arrest—in 2001.

DON’T RIDE THE WHITE HORSE

Rafael DeSoto painted this excellent cover for David Hulburd's 1954 drug scare novel H Is for Heroin. We also have the original art without text.

BARN GIRLS

Two Spanish language digest novels from Argentine publishers Malinca Debora and Malinca Nueva Pandora.

Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.

LOVES OF A BLONDE