Quick Shots: The Coffin Things by Michael Avallone

The cover of "The Coffin Things" by my man Michael Avallone promises that it'll soon to be a movie by François Truffaut. Damn. That's a shame that never happened. I'd give up a finger or two to see that movie. There's a lot of paperbacks claim "Soon to be a Motion Picture" on the cover, but this might be the first one I've come across that exclaims who the director was going to be. Hmmm. There's a story there that's probably lost to the sands of time. Anyway, last year I bought a box of Avallone books off eBay. I mostly was looking for the Ed Noon's that were in there, but "The Coffin Things" caught my eye. This edition has a great cover that it shares with a Len Deighton book. There's a lot going on with this novel and I haven't eve talked about what it's about.  

"The Coffin Things" is a carnival fun-house of a book. Once we bought our ticket and walk into the home of Dr. Stewart Garland, the world's finest mortician, the rug is constantly pulled out from underneath us. It's a full-tilt ride full of corpses, grisly murders, private eyes, local cops, nudity, ghosts (maybe),  lesbian sex in cars, missing plus found prostitutes, and interesting ways to spend the after-life. Being a Michael Avallone book there's Gary Cooper references, musical bits, James Bond name-drops with some spy-ish gadgets and a lot of old fashioned fun. Garland is the mortician to the rich in a small town and after a series of personal rejections and loss he looses his grip and begins to take his subtle revenge. Which he does in the nude in his basement mortuary, It's easy to imagine Boris Karloff in the part. It really has a feel of a classic 40's B-Horror-Movie. A spooky house film updated for the wild late-60's. Though hopefully Karloff would have remained clothed if the film was made. To top that off there are some "weird vengeance" pulp-vibes running through it, but like all of Avallone's work it really could only have came out of his typewriter. 

Man, I loved this book. "The Coffin Things" is top-shelf Avallone, so particular, fun-loving and spooky. It might be my favorite of his novels, but it's hard to top a couple of Noon's. It's easily my favorite of his non-series work. Now I'm on a quest to track down the Gothics he did as Edwina Noone (perfect) which seem like they might be similar. It's not the easiest (or cheapest) book to track down, all old horror books seem to go for a premium, but there was at least two editions of it so that helps. 

Quick Shots: Blaster #1: "The Girl with the Dynamite Bangs" by Lou Cameron

It says number 1 on the cover, but there was never a number too. This Lou Cameron novel taunted me for a year before I found a copy that was cheap-enough to justify a "one and done" series. I like Cameron's stuff, in fact one of the first things that ever saw print with my name on it was a review of a "Renegade" adult western in Justin Marriott's fantastic fan-zine "Hot Lead." Lou Cameron was a prolific writer with a lot of books under his belt, westerns, crime, ti-ins, even comics. For books like this he's got a nice professional blue-collar--room style that's pretty fun-loving at times. It's very much a modern (at the time) take on Dick Walker aka Captain Gringo in the Renegade series, it gives you the same thrills, sex and the tongue-in-the-cheek appeal.

The titular "Blaster" is Boomer Green. You can tell he's a demolition expert since both of his nicknames describe explosions. Actually he's never called Blaster, I wonder if Cameron wanted the series to be called "Boomer." They did this multiple nickname bit a lot in 70's Men's adventure books. Boomer is a colorful lead character, sarcastic, eager to bed the ladies, packs a .25 caliber Baby Browning in his shirt pocket, and blow shit up. He's down in Brazil to break up a massive log-jam for a drug-addicted Ex-Nazi, his maybe-Nazi daughter and his drunk son. Boomer finds himself at the estate of the said Nazi's when it becomes clear that all is not right. Forces conspire against him, questions are raised about motives, people try and kill him. But that's all in a days work for Boomer so he takes it in stride. Cameron builds the tension well, Boomer literally planting the bombs as the book builds to explosive climax.

Cameron's an old pro and this is a "good-time" book. It's got a pleasant south-of-the-border adventure vibe with great jungle scenes, a bit of a "plantation novel" vibe with the household and the servants, and the action is handled expertly. The mystery of the forces against Boomer are built up nicely and dispatched nicely. Sorry for the spoiler, but like is the main character going to die in a book with a #1 behind the title? Cameron was a step above a lot paperback writers of the era and it's a shame there wasn't anymore Blasters, I'd read 'em.

Baron (Bad Guy) Sinister by Joseph Milton

Going into this slim Lancer paperback I was fairly sure that the title character Baron Sinister was the bad guy. Spoiler, he was. Though sadly he was never identified as such which is a damned shame. The Baron-book is number five in a series of eight staring bored rich-guy turned super-spy Bart Gould which is a little lacking when it comes to super-spy names but Tiger Mann was taken I suppose.  Aside from the less then awesome handling of the names the book is all anyone would want from a 60's Spy-fi paperback.

Joseph Milton was Joseph Hilton Smyth and he started the series with one book "The President's Agent" in 1963 and Joseph Hilton after that Lancer had ghostwriters including the prolific Don Rico and the husband and wife team of Hal Jason Calin and Anne Calin (and possibly others) write the rest of the series under the Milton handle. But Hilton came back once and wrote under the Milton name because paperback publishing of the era was a screwy place. Apparently (if the internet is to be trusted AND its the same guy) in the 40's Hilton Smyth was arrested for being "unregistered agents of the Japanese government" by publishing a pro-Japanese stories in a magazine. So maybe spy-craft was in his veins. He also wrote some novelizations, some stand alone's, including "That French Girl" which got published by Gold Medal, Crest and a some other publishers along the way PLUS some book called "The Sex Probers," which makes me laugh.

Anywho. Bart Gould is a Bruce Wayne type only he doesn't wear the pointy ears instead he spies for the Prez. He gets roped into going to Germany to investigate the disappearances of mild-mannered government employees who hold no vital information, so they know it isn't the Ruskies. Gould was just palying with his grandfather's collection of Derringers so on a whim he packs up his suitcase and loads his trick-sleeve holster with a Williamson .41 single shot Derringer and flies to Vienna. Once there he meets up vile baddies, old flames, ropes in the tried and true reporter friend on the case, drinks, sexes, rents funky European cars, meets a slinky Nazi Femme-Fatale, shoots some dudes, gets his friend killed and goes on a mission of vengeance against a old Nazi dick-head. The climax builds and is particularly nice as it involves a snowed in castle high mountains with a dark history of witchcraft, dungeon escapes, sword fights and derring-doo. The whole package is a slim-wallop of adventure thrills that hearkens back to the classics of the Ruritanian genre like "Prisoner of Zenda"or other swashbucklers and at the same time being 60's modern. A pleasant mixture of Dumas and Fleming.

Gould comes off better then some of the heroes of the day. He's going through the spy-mill for the fun of it and is flippant in the face of  grave danger. No dour reflections on the nasty business of spying or dull inter-office politics of intelligence agencies, just plan old rock'em sock'em cliffhanger thrills. The books assumes you have read earlier entries which I had not, Gould's backstory wasn't filled out thoroughly but, eh, I didn't need it. Rich guy = spy is good enough. Gould not being a true agent gives the narrative a lot of wiggle room, the secondary characters aren't secret agents, mostly made up of his friends accumulated over years rich play-boying and he has to act more like a private eye to get his information with no government contacts abroad.  It's a nice mix of a lot of pulpy-genres.

This is pretty much what I want when I pick up a spy-fi book. It's not the absolute best iteration of
this genre, not as high as a Malko or a Man from W.A.R. book by Michael Kurland, those sorta of stand lone from the pack. "Baron Sinister" lagged a bit in the early pages but cranked up the juice rather quickly and could have had a bit more of the main villain and made him a bit more dastardly. But those are small quibbles in a book that can be read in a couple of hours. As a guy who's been buying secret agent books since he was a teenager, I think I've had this particular book for like fifteen-years and never read it until now which I can say about WAY too many books. I amassed several other of the series and I look forward to reading more Bart Gould adventures and of course buying the rest of the books. The thrill of the hunt.