Book Review: Lucinda

 January is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Lucinda' by Howard Rigsby

 

2 / 5 Stars

Howard Vechel Rigsby (1909 – 1975) wrote a number of novels and short stories in the gothic romance, suspense, and western genres in the 1950s and 1960s. ‘Lucinda’ was published in 1954 by Fawcett / Gold Medal books.

The novel is set in the late 1940s / early 1950s. Judson Hay is a young artist who travels the back roads of northern California, looking for painterly scenes. When his girlfriend Julia asks him to try and find her employer, a lawyer named Malloy, who was last located in the coastal town of Mussel Point, Hay somewhat reluctantly agrees. But Hay’s efforts to travel to Mussel Point are upended when a chance encounter in the unmapped wilderness of the mountains makes him a witness to the murder of a man in a corduroy hat.

Labeled a possible suspect, Hay winds up hiding out in the remote fastness of Squatter’s Valley, a strange and rustic collection of log cabins and hillbillies straight out of a ‘Lil’ Abner’ comic strip. 

However impressive the mountain scenery surrounding Squatter’s Valley, it pales in comparison to the beauty of the eponymous Lucinda Plumb, a stunning 17 year-old girl whose parents are seeking to marry her off in a ‘Dogpatch’ – style convocation of eligible bachelors. The convocation, to be held few days hence by Lucinda’s mercenary father, has drawn the interest of all of the Valley’s bachelors, an unsavory lot of rustics with bad hygiene, missing teeth, and unsatisfied erotic yearnings.

While preoccupied with trying to learn who killed the 'corduroy hat man,' someone who well  may be trying to kill Judson, too, our hero finds himself falling for the amazing Lucinda. But identifying himself as a suitor for Lucinda draws the ire of those others seeking her hand: hard men, desperate men, who have no problem with loosing rifle shots at any competitors, especially ones from outside the Valley……..

‘Lucinda’ is a competent Gold Medal novel. There are some plot twists and turns that at times get a little too complicated for their own good, and the ending relies overmuch on sentimentality. I can’t say it’s worth searching out, but those with a fondness for the ‘milder’ Gold Medal titles may find it interesting.

Book Review: Bad Day at Black Rock

 January is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Bad Day at Black Rock' by Michael Niall

2 / 5 Stars

'Bad Day at Black Rock' started life as a short story, titled 'Bad Time at Honda,' in The American Magazine in 1948. This Gold Medal Books paperback (No. 45, 143 pp.) was issued in December 1954, and was an expansion of the short story into a novel designed to tie-in with the 1955 film of the same name.  

'Michael Niall' was the pseudonym of writer Howard Breslin (1912 - 1964) who published a number of novels during the 1940s and 1950s.

The eponymous hamlet is located in the California desert, and rarely does the Streamliner passenger train make a stop. So, it's a source of considerable stir when one day in the summer of 1945 the train stops, and a passenger gets off: a man named John Macreedy. 

Macreedy's evaluation of Black Rock indicates he's here on a work trip, not for tourism:

A town like a thousand others, he thought, in this part of the country. Dust-plagued and shabby, with every flaw harshly revealed by the pitiless sun. Not attractive, but he'd seen worse, been pinned down in worse.

Save for a few exceptions, such as the veterinarian Doc Velie, and the young and attractive Liz Wirth, who operates the town garage, the townspeople of Black Rock are hostile towards Macreedy. Even before Macreedy reveals why he's come to town, Reno Smith, the local land baron who controls Black Rock, gives the command that the stranger is to be harassed and intimidated into leaving. But Macreedy, a veteran of World War Two, is not a man who scares easily. And when it comes to physical violence, he can handle his own......

The literary motif of the stranger who goes poking into the bad side of a bad town, has since become a mainstay of suspense and thriller fiction. Unfortunately, 'Bad Day' has all the strains of a novel constructed from the expansion of a short story: overly sedate pacing, padding in the form of regular conversations and interior monologues, and a denouement that goes on just a little too long. Well before the halfway point of the novel I was getting impatient with the way the narrative was dragging. The novel's ending didn't seem all that rewarding in terms of the effort I had to put in to get there.

The verdict ? 'Bad Day at Black Rock' is a Two-Star title. Those with a high level of patience may find it a rewarding read, but if the sharper, more fast-paced noir novels of the postwar era are your preference, then you'll want to examine other titles in the Gold Medal Book catalogue. 

K-Tel Collection

K-Tel Collection

I bought a few K-Tel albums back in the day. One of the best was Rock 80, a compilation of New Wave tracks from 1979 - 1980. Good stuff !

If you are under 50, it's going to be a little hard to explain what K-Tel was all about......you see, back in the vinyl / 8-track / cassette era, you couldn't hear a song on the radio and then promptly go to YouTube, or Spotify, or iTunes, and listen to it and download it if you were so inclined.

 

Back in those Old School days, you could buy the song as a single, if it was in fact out as a single; you could hunt for the album on which the song was featured; or, you could look to see if it had been included on the compilation records K-Tel issued on a regular basis during the 1970s and 1980s.

According to his obituary, K-Tel was the brainchild of Canadian salesman and huckster Philip Kives, who invented (among other things) the 'Veg-O-Matic.' In 1966, Kives released a country music compilation, the very first K-Tel record, which did well enough for Kives to pursue issuing further compilations.

 

K-Tel assembled 'greatest hits' compilations for all sorts of genres, such as pop, rock, country, disco, soul, and R & B. 

 

K-Tel even released compilations of TV show themes...... !

 

For some of these albums, along with the top 40 hits you'd occasionally get some more obscure songs, added to fill out the track listing. Some of these well are worth a listen. Take, for example, this Velour Soul, smoove groove song, 'Sad Sweet Dreamer,' by the U.K. band Sweet Sensation. It's off the1975 compilation K-Tel's Superhits of the Superstars, Volume One.

I've already highlighted a forgotten gem, 'Baby Come On,' from the soundtrack to a 1976 documentary, Sex O'Clock USA, made by French director François Reichenbach (?!). 

 

You can find 'Baby Come On' on 1977's Disco Rocket. What a funky groove ! DISCO-DYNA-MITE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Then there's Street Beat, from 1984, that has all the top 40 hits from the early 80s. 

If you are getting nostalgic thinking about those long-ago days of K-Tel records, or if you are a younger person curious about the music of 50 years ago, well, the 'K-Tel Collection' blog is a good place to see all the stuff issued by K-Tel from 1973 to 1984. Looking at the albums on display at the blog, there are quite a few songs that send me to YouTube for a listen. Or, you can check out Discogs and see what's available; many K-Tel LPs in Very Good or Like New condition are quite affordable. Go ahead, give it a try !

Book Review: The Death Cycle

 January is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'The Death Cycle' by Charles Runyon

3 / 5 Stars

‘The Death Cycle’ (159 pp.) was published by Fawcett’s Gold Medal imprint in January 1963, as number s1268.

Charles W. Runyon (1928-2015) wrote a sizeable number of short stories and novels in the mystery, private eye, and sf genres during the 60s and 70s. Some of these saw publication under the house name 'Ellery Queen'. I consider his 1971 novel ‘Pig World’ to be an interesting, overlooked example of proto-Cyberpunk, while ‘Soulmate’ (1974) is a reasonably effective horror novel.

As ‘The Death Cycle’ opens our protagonists, Brett Phelan and his wife Jeanne, and Carl Newsome and his wife Doris, are on motorcycles, and on the run. It turns out that they have stolen $65,000 and are fleeing Chicago, where a jeweler was shot dead in the course of a robbery, for Southern Mexico.

Brett is not the nicest of men, and there is a rivalry between he and Carl that goes back to the days when they served in the same unit during the Korean War. For his part, Carl dislikes and distrusts Brett, but realizes that until they reach safety in Mexico, the two are obliged to work together.

Doris and Jeanne are complete opposites. Doris is, in the parlance of early 60 pulp fiction, a ‘nympho’ who constantly craves attention, while Jeanne’s life as Brett’s spouse has left her steeped in misery……and bruises.

As the couples travel ever closer to their final destination, where the money is to be split and separate ways taken, the likelihood of a double-cross looms ever larger. And the man to deliver it will be a sadistic Mexican pistolero nicknamed ‘Trinidad’…………

‘The Death Cycle’ is a serviceable, if not particularly imaginative, example of early 60s noir fiction. The novel is suffused with hard-boiled language, and here are some examples:

His blue eyes measured the world from a face that was locked up tight, like a house shuttered from a storm.

****

Sometimes she looked at them with the shocked fascination of a girl caught up in a lynch mob on her way to Sunday school.

****

When Frieda’s husband was away, her mind roiled with sexual fantasies which would make a Ciudad Juarez puta squirm uncomfortably on her pallet.

****

I’ve got a nose for death, thought Brett. I can smell people who are about to die.

***

And I encountered, for the first time in my life, the noun (?) ‘asininity’ within the pages of ‘The Death Cycle.’

I won’t disclose any spoilers, save to say that the conflict between Brett and Carl is resolved in a satisfactory way.

The verdict ? Those who like crime and suspense novels from the Gold Medal catalogue probably will find ‘The Death Cycle’ rewarding. Those accustomed to more sophisticated styles of writing may be disappointed.