Monday, July 26, 2004

Willeford; Whitehouse; Longarm

Today was spent running errands and shopping, so no work.  At Half Price Books I picked up several Charles Willeford novels in the No Exit Press editions.  I'm not a big Willeford fan, but I figured these were probably worth having.  Also got THE YEAR OF THE SKY KINGS, a non-fiction book about air combat in World War I by the old pulpster Arch Whitehouse.  They had a couple of shelves of vintage NF paperbacks about WWI and WWII.  I'll probably buy a few more of them here and there, if nobody else gets them first.  A while back I wrote a World War I aviation story for an as-yet-unpublished anthology and enjoyed it so much I'd like to do more.  Not a big market for such things these days, though.

Got back home to find that the latest mailing from PEAPS, the pulp apa I'm in, had arrived, along with my author copies of the new Longarm, LONGARM AND THE TALL TIMBER.  When I wrote this, it was LONGARM IN THE TALL TIMBER, but that's nothing to quibble about.

Still reading THE AVENGING GUN, but I should finish it tonight.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr. Reasoner-- Just discovered your blog a few days ago via the link from Bill Crider's page. I'm a big fan of TX Wind and am glad to hear it's apparently being reprinted at last. Good to see mention of many HB/noir writers on your blog, though I'm a big fan of Chas. Willeford myself. I have noticed your presence on other fan sites, e.g. rara avis and usually try to pick something up if you recommend it. What do you think of J. Flynn(Action Man) and Dan Marlowe, if I may ask? MTM

James Reasoner said...

I haven't read THE ACTION MAN or any of Flynn's McHugh series, only a few of his Ace Double novels and one house-name Western that may be by him, not completely sure about that. The Western, if it's Flynn's work, came late in his career and is pretty bad. The Ace Doubles, on the other hand, are competently written and fairly entertaining, if nothing really special. Everything I've read by Dan Marlowe has been excellent. Look for his early novels THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH and ONE ENDLESS HOUR. But really, you can't go wrong with just about anything by Marlowe.