To Even The Odds

The Equalizer #2: “To Even The Odds” by David Deutsch. Based on the television episodes “The Defector” and “Back Home”. In “The Defector” McCall is helping a minor Russian Trade Attaché to defect when Control’s man on the scene messes up and the defector is killed. Now, it’s up to McCall to protect the man’s daughter, and assist her in defecting. Control’s man is back on the case, and The Equalizer must make sure nothing goes wrong this time. McCall is also helping a young schoolboy learn to defend himself against a gang of boys. In “Back Home” elderly people in a tenement building are being forced out of their rentals by their landlord. Tough hoodlums are placed in the building with a mean dog to frighten them. McCall brings in tough Irishman, George Cook to protect them while he digs into the landlord’s background and dealings. Although I’ve seen all the episodes, it was still fun reading the book   

Introducing New Pulp Author Jeff Deischer

INTRODUCING NEW PULP AUTHORS: Jeff Deischer

         Once in a while I will be spotlighting one of our new pulp authors. These will just be short bios. The author is encouraged to add more information at any time, and since my data is a bit old (taken from the back of books we – or others – published) new information would be appreciated. This is not limited to just the authors of the FADING SHADOWS magazines. Other new pulp authors can be included. Just send me a short bio, and an illustration if you have one.

Jeff Deischer: Jeff is probably best known for his chronologically-minded essays, particularly the book-length The Man of Bronze: a Definitive Chronology, about the pulp DOC SAVAGE series. It is a definitive chronology, rather than the definitive chronology, he explains, because each chronologist of the DOC SAVAGE series has his own rules for constructing his own chronology. Jeff believes his own chronology to be the definitive one – using his rules, which were set down by Philip Jose Farmer in his book, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life.

Jeff was born in 1961, a few years too late, in his opinion. He missed out on the Beatles, the beginning of the Marvel Age of comic books and the early years of the Bantam reprints of the DOC SAVAGE series, the latter two of which he began reading when he was about ten years old (on the other hand, he was too young to go to Viet Nam ….).

Jeff had become enamored of Heroes – with a capital “H”, for these were not ordinary men – at a very young age. He grew up watching DANIEL BOONE (to whom he is distantly related, by marriage), TARZAN, BATMAN, THE LONE RANGER and ZORRO on television. There is a large “Z” carved into his mother’s sewing machine that can attest to this fact (as you might imagine, it did not impress her the way it always did the peasants and soldiers on ZORRO).

This genre of fiction made a lasting impression on his creative view, and everything he writes has Good Guys and Bad Guys – in capital letters. As an adult writer, he tries to make his characters human, as well.

Jeff began writing as a young teenager, and, predictably, all of it was bad. He started to write seriously while in college, but spent the next decade creating characters and universes and planning stories without seeing much of it to fruition. This wasted time is his biggest regret in life.

In the early 1990s, Jeff began a correspondence with noted pulp historian and novelist Will Murray, while he was writing both the DOC SAVAGE and THE DESTROYER series (THE DESTROYER #102 is actually dedicated to Jeff). Jeff currently consults on Will Murray’s DOC SAVAGE books (as evidenced by the acknowledgements pages in the novels of “The Wild Adventures of …” series), a privilege that he enjoys. Will Murray’s sage advice helped turn Jeff into a true author.

Producing few books over the next few years, Jeff’s writing finally attained professional grade, and, after being laid off from the auto industry in 2007, he was able to devote more time to writing. From 2008, he produced an average of three books a year, most of it fiction, and most of that pulp. Reading so much of the writing of Lester Dent, the first, most prolific and best of those using the DOC SAVAGE house name “Kenneth Robeson”, Jeff’s own natural style is similar to Dent’s. He “turns this up” when writing pulp, and “turns this down” when writing non-pulp fiction.

Jeff primarily writes fiction, and, combining his twin loves of superheroes and pulp, began THE GOLDEN AGE series in 2012. This resurrected, revamped and revitalized the largely forgotten characters of Ned Pines’ Standard, Better and Nedor publishing companies. These characters, drawn from superhero, pulp and mystic milieus, fill the “Auric Universe”, as Jeff calls it. In 2015, he started documenting his own Argentverse, filled with characters of his own creation. It is a nostalgic look back on the comic books he read as a young teenager.

Jeff’s webpage is jeffdeischer.blogspot.com, where he posts the first chapters of his novels, so that potential readers can peruse his work without having to spend several dollars on a trade paperback to find out if they like it or not.

The Black Bat Novel That Disappeared

THE BLACK BAT NOVEL THAT DISAPPEARED

At the end of 1951, there was probably a decision at the THRILLING GROUP to drop some of their titles. With the Winter 1952 issues of BLACK BOOK DETECTIVE and G-MEN DETECTIVE, chances are both titles were included in the shake up. The next story in the Dan Fowler series was advertised as Each Night I Die by C.K.M. Scanlon, while the next Black Bat story was advertised as The Eyes of Murder. Following is the announcement in BLACK BOOK DETECTIVE:

"Next issue's Novel: The Eyes of Murder by G. Wayman Jones. Plus - An all-star array of other crime and mystery stories!"

         But the Spring 1952 issue did not appear. Instead, the next issue was Stewart Sterling’s Hot, Willing – And Deadly, Winter 1953, one year later. The same thing happened over at G-MEN DETECTIVE, there was no Spring 1952 Dan Fowler story. Instead, Richard Foster’s The White Death appeared one year later, Winter 1953. Something happened the previous year. My guess is, both titles were canceled. Curiously, Stewart Sterling was brought in for the Phantom Detective in 1952, which makes me wonder if The Eyes Of Murder wasn’t his. Strangely, there is a 1941 Dan Fowler titled The Eyes of Death, and I had a suspicion that he might have planned on rewriting that into a Black Bat yarn.

It gets stranger. The Spring 1953 issue of 5 Detective Novels contains Sterling’s Model For Murder, a similar title to The Eyes of Murder. But let’s go back to 1952, and look at Sterling’s Phantom Detective entries. We have three stories, Candidate For Death, Fall 1952; The Staring Killer, Winter 1953; and Odds On Death, Spring 1953. However, it’s the Winter 1953 story we are concerned with. Here is the Blurb for The Staring Killer.

“It is Muriel Havens alone who has seen The Staring Killer committing a heinous crime. She knows he has pushed a man off a subway platform to death under the train wheels – and what’s more, The Staring Killer knows that she has witnessed the murder. For an instant, as he races past her, the killer gives her one glaring stare – a look she can never forget. It’s a peculiar, frightening stare that seems to bore straight through her hypnotically. A stare that spells death!

The killer’s staring eyes are a challenge that Muriel can’t disregard. At great personal danger, she drifts into the waterfront district, posing as one of the water front babes – determined to find The Staring Killer and help unearth his sinister machinations.”

         Sounds like “The Eyes of Murder” to me.  At the time he was writing The Phantom Detective, Sterling was also writing Myro Catin stories. When the Black Bat was suddenly resurrected, and they asked him for a quick story, he must have made a few changes to Hot, Willing – And Deadly, and it was accepted in place of The Eyes of Murder. They must have asked for more stories, so he turned the second Myro Catin story, The Lady of Death into a Black Bat. At the same time, Norman Daniels, who had moved to California, sent an outline for The Celebrity Murders, and those were the line up for Winter, Spring, and Summer, 1953. But only the Winter 1953 story was published. The Black Bat was canceled again. Sterling reverted The Lady of Death back to Myro Catin, and published it as The Lady’s Out For Blood, TRIPLE DETECTIVE 1953. That’s what I think happened.

There is a footnote to all this, as well. Back at The Phantom Detective, Norman Daniels’ Murder’s Agent was published in the Summer 1953 issue. The announcements listed the next story as The Merry Widow Murders by Robert Wallace, and the plot reads curiously similar to Sterling’s 1943 Spider novel, When Satan Came To Town. The Spider was about to become The Phantom Detective. There was also some similarity to that novel and Odds On Death, PHANTOM DETECTIVE, Spring 1953. Want to bet Sterling wasn’t rewriting some old novels? Nothing wrong with it, authors did it all the time in the pulps. I hope someone proves me wrong, and manuscripts are discovered for The Eyes of Murder and The Merry Widow Murders, but remember in Candidate of Death when the Phantom Detective became The Shadow? Think about it, if I’m right, the Black Bat became the Phantom Detective in The Staring Killer, and The Spider became the Phantom Detective in The Merry Widow Murders. Only in the pulps!   

The Ninja

The Ninja #1: “The Ninja” by Eric Van Lustbader. Nicholas Linnear is a master ninja, the son of a Chinese mother and British father. He has come to the US where he succeeded as an add man for a big corporation, but one day he just quits his position. He lives in the area of West Bay Bridge, where he meets the beautiful daughter of a man worth over 100 million dollars. Of course she hates her father and all his money. It’s not long before they’re in a sexual relationship. Meanwhile, there is a ninja killing people. So we know where the story is headed

Actually, I was surprised this novel was on the New York Best Seller List. The writing is wordy, the action sparse. The only thing that happens in the first hundred pages is what I mentioned in the above paragraph. The story jumps around too much, plus there is a big backstory right in the middle of the first 100 pages, which interfered with the flow. Heck, all the jumping from one scene to another interfered with the flow. The only action is in the bedroom with Nick and Justine. The story just rambles, going nowhere fast. Justine’s moods pop up every few pages until Nick takes her to bed. The book is 526-pages, so figure the reader has a long way to go before it reaches a climax. Good luck if you can last that long.

The Devil's Mirror

The Viking Cypher #5: “The Devil’s Mirror” by Rick Spencer. Big, muscular, handsome, bronzed, trained from age 14 in everything his uncle felt he needed, Eric Ivorsen may resemble Doc Savage, but he’s a mathematician, not a doctor. Flies planes, pilots boats, skis, climbs mountains, investigates caves, loves adventure. In this fifth and final novel he must use his high-tech talents to stop David Tallant, a power-hungry, charismatic anchorman from extending his control over the world with an innovative super-satellite. Croesus is again heading this attack on Viking Cypher, and targets Ivorson’s girlfriend, Maggie McCabe to bring the adventurer and Viking Cypher down. Sadly, following the fourth volume, this one was also slow and giving signs the series was coming to an end. Maybe the author was tiring of the series, or the publisher was. My copy is autographed to Peter and Clay from Rick Spencer, my guess is relatives of the author. A fun story, regardless.