Vintage Pulp

May 7 2024

A HOT FLASH

I have a great idea. Since we met by chance on the same discount package tour, let's invite our travel agents to the wedding.

Above: an uncredited cover for Dale Wilmer’s 1954 novel Jungle Heat. As we mentioned last year, this was the original edition of the 1960 book of the same title, which was credited to Wade Miller, who was really a shared pseudonym for Bob Wade and Bill Miller. Got all that? You can learn a bit more about the book here.

Pyramid Books, Dale Wilmer, Wade Miller, Bob Wade, Bill Miller, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

October 13 2023

COLOR HER JEALOUS

That bimbo has no idea she can't get hair dye here. When her roots grow out we'll see if men still think she's so amazing.

We have other Wade Miller books to read, but we picked up this copy of 1960’s Jungle Heat and moved it to the head of the line because the story is set in Malaya (now Malaysia), and the last book we read that the authors (Bob Wade and Bill Miller writing together under a pseudonym) set in an exotic country was phenomenal. Jungle Heat was originally published in 1954 under the name Dale Wilmer, with this reattributed Pyramid edition coming a bit later, and it finds Miller taking on the unexpected challenge of writing in first person from a woman’s point-of-view. The lead character is Hollywood b-actress Roxy Powell, who is sent to Malaya with a small crew to shoot background footage for an upcoming jungle adventure. Never mind that a communist revolution is brewing. What Hollywood wants, Hollywood gets.

Plantation boss Llewelyn Kirk, under whose roof Roxy and the crew are residing, is one of those characters who’s colonial through-and-through but thinks that because he’s been in Malaya for twenty years he isn’t an invader and knows what’s best for locals. Since the authors agree with this paternalistic sentiment, the narrative is steered—to an almost ludicrous extent—toward Kirk being correct. We won’t get into any of it except to say that, generally, anti-communist fiction from the mid-century era was unavoidably propagandist. In this case the authors are basically correct in their regional political analysis, but gloss over important details and whiff on overarching points. For example, there’s an interesting scene where a Malayan tells Kirk that he’d heard blacks in America are unjustly killed by whites. Kirk assures him it isn’t true. We almost did a spit-take on that one.

Roxy first hates, then by a circuitous path, comes to adore Kirk. She’s initially driven by her need for “respect,” which here doesn’t mean respect as normally understood, but is instead code for sexual desirability. Because Kirk ignores her, she hates him. Therefore she embarks on a campaign to discover his humanity—i.e. his sexual attraction to her. Even if you didn’t know the author, that’s when you might suspect a guy—or two—was in the driver seat. Okay, so if the politics take liberties and the justification for romance is male fantasy in disguise, is the book any good? Well, sure. There’s a nice jungle setting, a fun Hollywood sidebar, a backdrop of war in which enemies circle ever closer, a traitor hiding in the fold, and love blossoming amid chaos. With all that going for it, the book has to be good. But that said, Wade/Miller definitely wrote better.

Malaysia, Pyramid Books, Wade Miller, Bob Wade, Bill Miller, cover art, literature, communism

Vintage Pulp

May 22 2023

DEVILISH ADVOCATE

If it helps to persuade you, when you're an old woman you'll look back on even your worst one night stands with nostalgia.

Vintage thrillers and films often used Mexico as a setting, and we very much enjoy when that happens, due to our own numerous trips to the country and the many fond memories they produced. Wade Miller’s 1950 novel Devil May Care takes readers to Mexico and does a better job of it than most books we’ve read. The trip happens when soldier of fortune Biggo Venn is sent to Ensenada on a mission that promises to profit him $10,000. Unfortunately, Biggo’s contact turns up murdered, and out of caution he decides the smartest move is to wait for the unknown killer or killers to reveal themselves. He lays low and plays the role of gringo tourist. While doing so he meets up with a hard luck American named Jinny and a beautiful local named Pabla, both of whom are romantic interests, though in Jinny’s case it’s a love-hate dynamic.

Plenty happens with Jinny and Pabla, but Biggo’s most portentous encounter is with fellow soldier of fortune Lew Hardesty, who’s not only a rival suitor for both women, but keeps trying to horn in on Biggo’s caper. The two eventually get into a vicious fight that settles nothing except that Biggo, who’s ten years older, is losing his edge (though he dislocates Hardesty’s jaw before the man pushes it back into place and comes at Biggo like a whirlwind). It’s a good scene in a fun book. In fact, we think Devil May Care is Wade Miller (a pseudonym for authors Bob Wade and Bill Miller) at his/their best. The story is well paced, exciting, sometimes sad, and often funny. The authors use the rough-edged mercenaries-at-large premise brilliantly, as in this exchange between Biggo and Hardesty:

Biggo growled, “I thought you were in Bolivia.” Just because he had met one of his own kind made the outlook no brighter. Hardesty was a comrade but something less than a friend. He had a knack for showing up where he wasn’t wanted.

“I was. Now I’m here.”

“What happened?”

“Have you ever spent a summer in Bolivia? Very hot.”

Biggo understood the old pattern. Hardesty had been on the wrong side, whichever side happened to be losing that year. “Yes, Lew, I was thinking about you only the other night.”

“I love you too.”

“I know that. I remember the time you let me go out after that tiger in the Malay with a jimmied gun.”

Hardesty laughed. “That was a fine joke. Those man-killers are always old tigers, anyway. You’ve got more teeth than he had. Was that any worse than shipping me that opium in Transjordan? I sat in that mud jail for two months until one of your shells knocked out a wall.”

Biggo laughed in turn. “That was the gunner’s fault. He’d promised me a direct hit.”

Much of the dialogue features similar banter, and not just between the soldiers. Hard luck Jinny can quip with the best of them:

Jinny said faintly, “I thought you went to jail.” She looked ready to be sick. She held a cracker halfway to her mouth, forgotten.

“Can’t keep a good man down, honey.”

“What’s that got to do with you?”

In the end the killers reveal themselves and Biggo—by now seeking revenge as well as a payoff—brings hell directly to their doorstep, or in this case to their yacht in the harbor. The climax brings a surprise or two, and Biggo’s fate hinges upon who to trust, and who not to. Devil May Care is a wide-open sort of tale about dangerous men, but its title proves to be contradictory. Biggo pretends not to care about anything except the next mission and the next exotic port of call, but his acceptance of his own aging and his slim hope for retirement and a restful old age matter—in the end—more than anything else. The book has some moments that might make modern readers quail, but all the portrayals and reactions make sense in context. We loved this one.

Mexico, Ensenada, Fawcett Publications, Gold Medal Books, Wade Miller, Bob Wade, Bill Miller, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

September 19 2022

STRIPPED OF HIS CASH

You paid the cover charge to get in. Now you have to pay the uncover charge or get out.

The brush behind this cover for Wade Miller’s 1946 debut thriller Deadly Weapon was paperback vet Bob Abbett, and it’s one of his better pieces in a portfolio filled with top efforts. The book is good too. It’s about an Atlanta detective who drives to San Diego to avenge the death of his partner, and as befits such a concept, features excellent Sam Spade-like repartee between main character Walter James and a local cop named Austin Clapp. Some of the action is centered around a burlesque theatre and its headlining peeler Shasta Lynn, but the deadly weapon isn’t a femme fatale, as implied by the art, but Walter James himself. The man is hell on wheels. He even uses his car to ram another auto and its occupants over a cliff. Overall, Deadly Weapon is well written, well paced, and well characterized (if a bit saccharine in the romantic subplot). Wade Miller—who was really Bob Wade and Bill Miller acting as one—started his/their career on a good note with this one.

Atlanta, San Diego, Signet Books, Wade Miller, Bob Wade, Bill Miller, Bob Abbett, cover art, literature, burlesque

Vintage Pulp

December 17 2021

CAT WITH A KITTEN

Ann-Margret starts small before moving up to larger playmates.

Above is a cover for Wade Miller’s Kitten with a Whip, put out on Fawcett Publications’ Gold Medal imprint as a tie-in with the 1964 film adaptation. That’s megababe Ann-Margret on the cover, who played the novel’s femme fatale Jody, a purely nuts underage sexpot who uses the threat of a statutory rape that never happened to turn a hapless everyman’s life upside down. It’s an unlikely tale, but certainly worth the time. At first glance the cover looks like Ann-Margret is playing with a stuffed cat, but a closer look shows it to be real—an ocelot kitten, seemingly. On that assumption we checked the internet and sure enough—the internet always provides. We have three more photos below.

Fawcett Publications, Gold Medal Books, Wade Miller, Bob Wade, Bill Miller, Ann-Margret, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

December 9 2021

SAMBA DO CRIME

It's a carnaval of mayhem in Brazil.

We wanted to call attention one last time to an interesting Facebook page dedicated to vintage crime paperbacks published in Brazil by Edições de Ouro and Editora Tecnoprint. We started our webpage in 2008 and back then we had a lot of company. Somehow or other, regretfully, we’ve outlasted many of them. Maybe in the age of Twitter and Instagram, blogs with actual words have died. But for that reason it’s exciting to see someone launch something new—especially dedicated to such an exotic (from our point of view) niche of paperback style. It was actually launched in 2017, but we saw it only recently. We can tell you this—we love Brazil, have been there for carnaval, and if we’d known these books were down there we’d have brought back more than just a long lasting cachaça hangover. We knew Brazil had produced some pulp style paperbacks—much of the art was repurposed from U.S. editions—but we didn’t know it was this extensive. Carnaval 2022? Well, probably not. But one day, return we will, to old Brazil.

Brazil, Tecnoprint, Edições de Ouro e Editora Tecnoprint, Bruno Fischer, Wade Miller, William Ard, Frank Kane, Rex Stout, Brett Halliday, Stephen J. Marlowe, cover art, cover collection, literature

Vintage Pulp

November 4 2019

KITTY LITTER

Stray cat makes a mess all over the place.

Above is the memorable U.S. promo poster for the drama Kitten with a Whip, with blatant example of Swedish perfection Ann-Margret striking a nice pose. The plot of the film basically follows that of Wade Miller’s hit novel of the same name. Ann-Margret plays a juvenile delinquent named Jody who turns up in the home of an unsuspecting man played by John Forsythe and proceeds to upend his day. Things go from bad to worse when three more delinquents show up and seem intent on wrecking Forsythe’s life permanently. Ann-Margret was cast to lift her from the ranks of musicals into serious cinema, but considering the film was skewered by Mystery Science Theater 3000 we don’t need to tell you the results were mixed. It’s worth a watch, though. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1964.

Kitten with a Whip, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Ann-Margret, John Forsythe, Wade Miller, poster art, cinema, movie review

Vintage Pulp

April 11 2018

PUSSY WHIPPED

She purrs but only when she's thinking about destroying you.

This edition of Wade Miller’s iconic sleazer teaser Kitten with a Whip is a rarity and it came from Gold Medal in 1963. There’s a moment early in the narrative when the hapless protagonist David turns on a news report about the seventeen-year-old sexpot invader occupying his home. Up until then the girl, whose name is Jody, has been in David’s house tormenting him only a few hours, but is threatening to ruin his life with lies that they’ve been shacked up having a grand old time, or that he tried to rape her. David is paralyzed with fear that his wife, neighbors, and employer will believe her. But in that moment when the entire city is told the girl is a violent psycho who escaped her confinement a mere twelve hours earlier by stabbing a matron, David doesn’t realize nobody will believe anything she says—not his employers, not his neighbors, and certainly not his wife—as long as he turns her in then and there. “I woke up, found her in my house, bought her some clothes because she had none, gave her money for a bus out of town—and instead of leaving she decided to stay and blackmail me.” He’d be believed, beyond a doubt. But he never makes the call. So he really deserves everything that happens afterward. But the book is a classic for a reason. It’s a fun, crazy read.

Fawcett Publications, Gold Medal Books, Kitten with a Whip, Wade Miller, Bob Wade, Bill Miller, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

March 13 2018

KILLER QUARRY

The ultimate hunt is one where the prey can shoot back.

The cover copy perhaps gives the impression Wade Miller’s The Killer is about a hunter who goes after human prey for sport, but it’s actually about a man who hires a professional big game hunter to track down and kill his son’s murderer. While the hero uses his unique skill set to lay a trap or two and make some interesting deductions, the story is a standard thriller. But a pretty good one, set in different locales in the U.S., with a few decent twists and a nice—if somewhat overwrought—love story. Both covers from Gold Medal were compelling, with art by C.C. Beall and an unknown, 1951 and 1958.

Fawcett Publications, Gold Medal Books, Bob Wade, Bill Miller, Wade Miller, C.C. Beall, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

August 10 2015

GONE GIRL

Beauty and the beasts.

Wade Miller was a shared pseudonym of Robert Wade and William Miller, and in Kiss Her Goodbye they tell the tale of a pair of siblings—a steady, responsible brother named Ed and his childlike but beautiful sister Emily. By childlike, we mean she’s fully grown but was stricken in her youth by some kind of brain ailment, maybe encephalitis, that stunted her mental development. She violently explodes when men make sexual advances toward her, something that happens constantly because, well, mainly because men are scum, but also because bombshell Emily is friendly toward strangers. You can imagine where this all leads. We’ve shared quite a few fronts from Corgi Books this year and this one from British artist Oliver Brabbins is especially nice with its color blocking and sprawled figure. Truly excellent work, and the book is good too. We have another piece from Brabbins here, and we’ll definitely have more later.

Britain, Corgi Books, Kiss Her Goodbye, Oliver Brabbins, Wade Miller, Robert Wade, William Miller, cover art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 10

1971—London Bridge Goes Up

After being sold, dismantled and moved to the United States, London Bridge reopens in the resort town of Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

October 10

1975—Burton and Taylor Marry Again

British actor Richard Burton and American screen star Elizabeth Taylor secretly remarry sixteen months after their divorce, then jet away to a second honeymoon in Chobe Game Park in Botswana.

October 9

1967—ChÃ© Executed in Bolivia

A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is executed in Bolivia. In an attempt to make it appear as though he had been killed resisting Bolivian troops, the executioner shoots Guevara with a machine gun, wounding him nine times in the legs, arm, shoulder, throat, and chest.

October 8

1918—Sgt. York Becomes a Hero

During World War I, in the Argonne Forest in France, America Corporal Alvin C. York leads an attack on a German machine gun nest that kills 25 and captures 132. He is a corporal during the event, but is promoted to sergeant as a result. He also earns Medal of Honor from the U.S., the Croix de Guerre from the French Republic, and the Croce di Guerra from Italy and Montenegro. Stateside, he is celebrated as a hero, and Hollywood even makes a movie entitled Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper.

October 8

1956—Larsen Pitches Perfect Game

The New York Yankees’ Don Larsen pitches a perfect game in the World Series against hated rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers. It is the only perfect game in World Series history, as well as the only no-hitter.

October 7

1959—Dark Side of Moon Revealed

The Soviet space probe Luna 3 transmits the first photographs of the far side of the moon. The photos generate great interest, and scientists are surprised to see mountainous terrain, very different from the near side, and only two seas, which the Soviets name Mare Moscovrae (Sea of Moscow) and Mare Desiderii (Sea of Desire).