Now Available: "Heretic 2: More Stories" by Philip José Farmer

Available Now at Amazon for Kindle and in paperback!

Heretic 2: More Stories by Philip José Farmer   “Those polaroid glasses they give you  at the 3-D movies were the cause  of my downfall.”   This follow-up to Farmer’s popular Heretic: Stories is a blast of the serious, the humorous, and the satirical. Its three stories—two shorts and a novella—are brilliant examples of Farmer’s best work: thoughtful, critical of authority and religion, and downright fun to read. “The Wounded” (1954), which has one of the best first lines in popular literature, is an ironic tale about love and expectations. “Heel” (1960) is an alternate version of the Trojan War and while there is a touch of whimsy, it beautifully gives authority an elbow to the ribs. The final story, the novella “Rastignac the Devil” (1954), is a wacky science fantasy about an interstellar French settlement, New Gaul, lulled into joyless apathy by simply doing exactly what they are told. It is a brilliant send up of religion and political authority.   Cover designed by Karadraws.com

Click here for the Kindle edition and here of the paperback of Heretic 2: More Stories on Amazon

 

Stories: "Reputation" by Jim Kjelgaard (1945)

Reputation by Jim Kjelgaard   *     *     *     *     A COLD WIND SIGHED UP THE CANYON, and whirled bursts of snow before it. Satterlee, the city sport up here for an elk hunt, gathered his mackinaw a little tighter about his throat and shivered in the lee of a huge boulder. Louis Tremaine, Satterlee’s guide, knelt beside the boulder and with great patience built up a small pile of sticks. He struck a match, shielded it with his hands, and touched it to the sticks. Fire crawled slowly through them, and then leaped. Louis arose to blow on his hands, and his Gallic smile flashed. “It is very cold,” he said. “It is that,” Satterlee agreed. “Can you rustle enough wood to last the night, Louis?” “Oui. We shall pass a comfortable night. You are to be complimented on securing so fine an elk, M’sieu.” Satterlee nodded, half in regret. “He was a game old cuss. I didn’t think anything had the courage to go as far as he did with a 220 grain slug through his lungs.” The night shadow deepened. The leaping fire cast its ruddy glow against the rock, and into the pines on the other side. Satterlee dug a whiskey flask from his mackinaw, and drank. He passed it to Louis. The wind howled up the canyon, and snow flew thickly. Again Satterlee took the flask from his pocket and offered it to Louis. The swarthy little guide sat beside the fire, poking it with a stick. Presently the deep thoughts that occupied his mind found an outlet in words: “You spoke of courage, M’sieu. Would you like to hear a tale of courage?” Satterlee nodded. “Did you ever hear of Doc Morton?” “The gunman?” “The man,” Louis corrected. “The great man first and the great gunman second. I will tell you of him.” *          *          * “He was my friend,” Louis went on, “my bosom friend when friendship meant much. Of cold steel he was fashioned, and sheer nerve. Yet, within him beat a great heart, as I myself know and as he proved in the last gunfight he ever had. “I have seen him, M’sieu, draw his gun from the back of a rearing horse and shoot the head from a rattlesnake that lay in his path. You know that before he attained the age of thirty he had killed thirty-one men in gun fights? I witnessed several of those fights. I have seen Doc Morton approach one who meant to kill him, warn his adversary to draw and shoot, and actually wait until the other had his gun in hand before he himself drew. He was not merely swift. He was miraculous, with an almost perfect coordination of mind and muscle. I might add that all those he killed were bad men who themselves would have killed others if he had not killed them. He had a great talent, and always it was arrayed on the side of law and justice. “The last man he killed was a Mexican named Pablo Gonzales, himself a very streak of lightning with a gun. I witnessed that fight, and know about it what no one else does. But wait. “You can perceive, M’sieu, how a man of such stature could not help but gather unto himself great fame and renown. But you must also appreciate something else. The West then was not tame and secure, as it is now. It was full of adventurers of every type, and most of them had no principles or scruples whatever. The only law was that of the gun, and he who used a gun most effectively was most powerful. Thus you may understand why many gunmen envied Doc Morton, and longed to give him a try. Do I make myself evident? The man who bested Doc Morton in a gun fight would inherit all his laurels, become known and feared far and wide as the man who had killed Doc Morton. “But of all those who longed to pit themselves against him, there was only one who dared.” *          *          * “His name was Curley Jacks, and in his own right he was a very famous killer. There were fourteen notches on the handle of his gun, and Curley Jacks had not fought with farmers or homesteaders. No, he had gone against men who themselves lived by the gun, and he had triumphed. It was the sixth of June when Curley Jacks rode into Steerhead, entered the saloon, and announced that he was going to kill Doc Morton. “I was in that saloon, M’sieu, and when I heard Curley Jacks boast in such a fashion I knew abject fear and terror. Doc Morton was my friend, and this Curley Jacks was as cold as a snake. He was a snake, though more deadly. And I knew that nothing could swerve him from his announced purpose of meeting Doc Morton. “So, as soon as it was feasible, I fled from that saloon. I went to Doc Morton’s office, he was then the marshal of Steerhead, and entreated him to flee. He had not had a gun fight or drawn a gun in two years, since he had killed Pablo Gonzales, and this Curley Jacks must have practiced intensely before coming in to fight Doc Morton. When I had finished my pleas, and as eloquently as I could, had beseeched Doc Morton to take himself to a place of safety, he laughed at me! That he did, laughed! “ ‘Louis,’ he said, ‘when this rip-snorter comes down the street I’ll be waiting for him.’ “There was nothing more I could do, though I thought of taking a rifle, lying in ambush, and myself shooting Curley Jacks when he came for Doc Morton. But to do that would have been to heap eternal shame upon the greatest man I had ever known. No, he must meet this man himself, and do the best he could when the time came to do something. I tried then to force myself to leave so that I would not be a witness. But it was as though I was rooted to the spot and could not leave. All I could do was crouch behind a freight wagon and wait. “I saw Curley Jacks leave the saloon. He was walking very loosely, but very slowly, his eyes darting into every window and cranny as he came to it. He saw me behind the freight wagon, but I turned my head away and he gave me no further notice. There was only one quarry he wanted. “Then I saw Doc Morton emerge from his office and, ah, M’sieu, he was magnificent! He stood very tall and very straight, both hands at his side and his gun in its holster. He seemed to be smiling as he stood there, and a great calmness sat upon him as he walked down the three steps that led from his office to the street. “He walked slowly toward Curley Jacks. A hundred yards separated them, and that became fifty. But even in that moment, in spite of my great terror, I had reason to be intensely proud. There was no jot of fear in Doc Morton, no hesitation. Like a knight of old he walked, going forward to he knew not what, but going. And I swear that something not of humanity or of earth went with him. It was an aura, M’sieu, a glow. As he unhesitatingly advanced, invincibility seemed to advance with him. Here, everything about him proclaimed, was a man who never had been and never would be defeated. “I looked at Curley Jacks, and my heart seemed to cease beating. M’sieu, he had stopped in the road and was sweating! Yes, sweating! I began to hope then because I knew that at last Curley Jacks was afraid. He had not been afraid when he came out of the saloon, or while the hundred yards that had separated them narrowed to forty feet. But now he was afraid, and it is like that with some men. For the first time he seemed to realize that he was facing Doc Morton, the greatest gunman of all. Doc Morton stopped before this frightened man, and his voice was very calm: “ ‘Are you looking for something, Curley?’ “It was then, M’sieu, that Curley Jacks broke completely. He began to tremble, sweat poured in rivulets from his face, and he tried to speak. But he could not speak. Doc Morton said: “ ‘You’ve got ten minutes to get out of town, Curley.’ “Then he deliberately turned his back on this man who had come to kill him and walked back to his office.” *          *          * The fire died a little, and Louis Tremaine threw a handful of sticks on it. He sat moodily staring into the leaping flame, his chin resting in his hands. Satterlee moved uncomfortably. “I don’t get the point,” he said finally. “Wasn’t this Jacks just a fundamentally yellow pup, backed down by Doc Morton’s reputation?” “Oui,” Louis Tremaine said dreamily. “But that is only part of it.” “Why?” “Pablo Gonzales,” the guide said. “He was a mighty gunman in his own right. What only Doc Morton and I knew when he faced Curley Jacks was that he could not have shot if he had wanted to. Two years before Pablo Gonzales’ bullet had paralyzed his right arm, and he hadn’t moved it since.” Fin
“Reputation” was originally published in the April 25, 1945, issue of the pulp magazine, Short Stories. It is available for the first time since its original publication in The Spell of the White Sturgeon / Dusky & Other Tales in both Kindle and as a trade paperback—click here to see it on Amazon.
© 1945 by Short Stories, Inc.

 

Praise for "Casinos, Motels, Gators"

 

from Ben Boulden... I’ve been holding onto this bit of news for so long, three months for anyone counting, that it feels (almost) sacrilegious to post about it now. But I’ve never been one to let a little discomfort keep me from annoying my three loyal readers. So…I’m sharing this wonderful review novelist and blogger James Reasoner wrote for my collection, Casinos, Motels, Gators, all the way back on June 5. He liked it, and from his kind words I’m comfortable saying, he really liked it. Here’s a sampling of some of my favorite parts of James’s review: “I really like Ben Boulden’s writing. His prose is as terse and tough and hardboiled as any you’ll find these days.” “I’d previously referred to “121” as a Manhunt story for the 21st Century. Having reread it and read the other two Jimmy Ford stories, I’d say that not only would the series have worked in Manhunt, it would have been right at home in the late Seventies/early Eighties issues of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. With some adjustment to the trappings, they could have even been Black Mask stories in the early Thirties. Boulden’s writing has definite echoes of Paul Cain, Raoul Whitfield, and Frederick Nebel.” “Casinos, Motels, Gators is one of the best books I’ve read this year.” You can read James Reasoner’s entire review here. When you’re done reading the review, do yourself (and me) a favor and read Casinos, Motels, Gators.

Casinos, Motels, Gators is available in Kindle, including Kindle Unlimited, here and as a trade paperback here.

Now Available!: "The Fittest & Other Stories" by Katherine MacLean

The Fittest & Other Stories by Katherine MacLean A 3 Play Book, 2024     Introduction     The critic and author, Damon Knight wrote, “As a science fiction writer she [Katherine MacLean] has few peers; her work is not only technically brilliant but has a rare human warmth and richness.” An apt insight since Katherine MacLean’s speculative fiction had the grounding of hard science fiction—technically and scientifically accurate depictions of physics, mathematics, and engineering—mingled with the so-called “soft” sciences of culture and sociology. She specialized in exploring how the one impacted the other in near future worlds. As she explained in her essay, “The Expanding Mind”: “I write about the near future because I want an excuse to read science and economics and try to find out what is going to happen next. I don’t want to be in the surprised rocking chair set, trembling before an alien world.” MacLean excelled at this near future speculation. One example of her futuristic insight came in the story, “Syndrome Johnny” (Galaxy, July 1951, as by Charles Dye) where she predicted the potential use of DNA, which was still an emerging scientific idea at the time, as a tool to genetically improve humans. Her speculative writings, future technologies and all, were wrapped in a literate, unblemished style rare for the genre in the middle years of the Twentieth Century as the opening passage from “The Fittest” (Worlds Beyond, Jan. 1951) shows:   “Among the effects of Terry Shay was found a faded snapshot. It is a scene of desolation, a wasteland of sand and rock made vague by blowing dust, and to one side huddle some dim figures. “They might be Eskimos with their hoods pulled close, or they might be small brown bears. “It is the only record left of the great event, the event which came into the hands of Terry Shay. “Like all great events it started with trivial things.” MacLean’s work has been a regular in anthologies over the decades. Isaac Asimov selected “Defense Mechanism” (Astounding, Oct. 1949), “Pictures Don’t Lie” (Galaxy, Aug. 1951), “The Snowball Effect” (Galaxy, Sep. 1952), and “Unhuman Sacrifice” (Astounding Science Fiction, Nov. 1958) for inclusion in his The Great SF Stories series of anthologies. Her 1971 novella, “The Missing Man,” (Analog, Mar. 1971) won a Nebula Award and was later expanded into a novel of the same name. In a phrase, Katherine MacLean was a highly respected writer of science fiction with an interest in how humanity would cope with the future. Katherine MacLean was born on January 22, 1925 in Montclair, New Jersey, to Gordon—a chemical engineer—and Ruth MacLean (née Crawford). She received a B.A. in economics, and an M.S. in psychology. She worked various jobs, including as an English professor, a biochemist, an EKG technician, as an attendant in a vitamin store. She was married three times, and had one son. She died September 1, 2019.     The four tales included in The Fittest & Other Stories are a sampling of MacLean’s best work. “The Fittest” is a marvelous telling of first contact, moral dilemmas, and the violent nature of humanity. “Where or When?” is a love story that will ring true for anyone that has ever loved. “Carnivore” is a disturbing view of humanity’s sectarian and violent nature without, unfortunately, much redemption. “Contagion”—which is one of MacLean’s most popular tales—is about colonization, fear, and loss of self. Cover designed by Karadraws.com

Click here to purchase the paperback or here to purchase the Kindle edition at Amazon.

 

Now Available!: "Alternatives: Science Fiction Stories" by Stephen Marlowe

 

Alternatives: Science Fiction Stories by Stephen Marlowe A 3 PLAY Book   Introduction     Stephen Marlowe—born as Milton Lesser on August 7, 1928, to Norman and Syliva Lesser in Brooklyn, New York—purportedly said: “At the age of eight, I wanted to be a writer and I never changed my mind.” And was he ever a writer. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from William & Mary in 1949, with a referral from science fiction writer Damon Knight, Marlowe took a job with the famous Scott Meredith Literary Agency. The same place writers like Ed McBain, Donald E. Westlake, Lester del Rey, and Lawrence Block, started their careers. He sold his first story, a science fiction novelette titled “All Heroes Are Hated!,” to Amazing Stories in 1950. Marlowe, after that first sale, concentrated almost exclusively on science fiction throughout the first half of the decade; publishing dozens of stories in pulps and digests like Imagination, Marvel Science Stories, Galaxy, and Fantastic. His first novel, Earthbound, as by Milton Lesser, was a speculative young adult job for the John C. Winston Company. Earthbound was released the same day Marlowe, 23-years-old at the time, reported for his Korean War service in 1952. According to a 2007 interview with Ed Gorman, Marlowe had forgotten about contracting for a second book with Winston: “I was at a winter training exercise at Camp Drum [Western New York], where I was temporarily attached to the 82nd Airborne. I got a frantic call from my agent: How [are] you coming on the second Winston novel? I’d forgotten all about it and it was due in a week. I spent a weekend telling myself it was impossible. Then on Monday the colonel I worked for, on hearing of my plight, said, ‘Son, how much are they paying you to write that book?’ I told him the advance was a thousand bucks. ‘Son,’ he told me, ‘even the U.S. Army can’t stand between you and that kind of money. Go home and write that book.’ ” Marlowe wrote the book, The Star Seekers, in less than a week, delivered it, but “never had the courage to read it.” The Star Seekers hit bookshelves in 1953 and has been seldom seen ever since. In the mid-1950s, Marlowe shifted his focus from science fiction—although he continued to write speculative tales into the early-1960s—to suspense. He contributed to mystery pulps like Manhunt, Hunted, and Accused, and wrote novels for the paperback original market. His first suspense novel was Catch the Brass Ring, which was one-half of an Ace Double published in 1954. A year later, Marlowe introduced the character that made him famous: Chester Drum. Drum was a Washington, D.C. private eye specializing in international cases. An original idea in the mid-20th Century since the hardboiled dicks of the era were set in large American cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The international settings of Drum’s cases are vivid with an exotic realism that came from Marlowe’s real-life geography hopping. In an interview, Marlowe said, “[I’ve] lost count of how many places I’ve lived—surely more than a hundred in twenty-odd countries.” The series was a hit and Gold Medal, the premium paperback publisher of the day, sold millions of the books.  There were 20 Chester Drum novels between 1955, when The Second Longest Night appeared, and 1968 when Drum Beat—Marianne was published. The novels were accompanied by eight short stories published in Manhunt, Accused, Ed McBain’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The New York Times mystery critic, Anthony Boucher, wrote: “few writers of the tough private-eye story can tell it more accurately than Mr. Marlowe, or with such taut understatement of violence and sex.” After Gold Medal dropped Marlowe’s Chester Drum series, he turned to more ambitious hardcover suspense novels. These big books—longer and more complex than his earlier novels—had similar exotic settings as the Drum stories. This, along with Marlowe’s ability to tighten suspense, scene-by-scene, and what Boucher had earlier called his understated sex and violence gave these books punch. The first of these, Come Over, Red Rover—if one discounts Marlowe’s 1966 hardcover, The Search for Bruno Heidler—appeared in 1968. Others of note are Summit (1970), The Cawthorn Journals (1975), and The Valkyrie Encounter, which Marlowe called, in that same Ed Gorman interview, his favorite of his own hardcover suspense novels.    The 1980s saw Marlowe pivot again into biographical novels, which the mystery author and critic Bill Pronzini called “brilliantly conceived [and] meticulously researched.” The Memoirs of Christopher Columbus appeared in 1987; The Lighthouse at the End of the World, about Edgar Allan Poe, in 1995; and The Death and Life of Miguel de Cervantes—which, according to Pronzini, Marlowe considered his best novel and Ed Gorman called “his masterpiece”—was published in 1996. Over his long career, Stephen Marlowe received the Prix Gutenberg du Livre, a French literary award, in 1988 for The Memoirs of Christopher Columbus and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America in 1997. As we said earlier, Marlowe was born as Milton Lesser, but sometime in the late-1950s (after his Chester Drum novels had made a big splash) he legally changed his name to Stephen Marlowe. Shortly after graduating from William & Mary, Marlowe—then still known as Milton Lesser—married Leona Lang on June 2, 1950. Leona, who went by Leigh, was a trained psychologist. The couple had two daughters but divorced in the early-1960s. Marlowe then, in 1964, married Ann Humbert in Manhattan. The pair were married until Marlowe’s death from “myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone-marrow disorder” on February 22, 2008, in Williamsburg, Virginia. Alternatives: Science Fiction Stories features three of Marlowe’s best speculative tales—one novelette and two shorts. “Divvy Up,” Amazing Stories, 1960, is a dystopian treasure about one man’s survival in a world where death is a relief from a tortured and soulless world. Its dark themes would have made for a marvelous episode of the original The Twilight Zone. “Finders Keepers,” Fantastic Universe, 1953, is a light-hearted tale about time traveling historians and a search going all the way back to Adam and Eve. “The Passionate Pitchman,” Fantastic, 1956, is a slam-bang—read that as exciting—adventure novelette about gangsters, heists, and teleportation. Now on with the stories…   Cover by Karadraws.com

Click here to purchase the paperback or here to purchase the Kindle edition at Amazon

New Release: "Mixology: Science Fiction Stories" by William Campbell Gault

Mixology: Science Fiction Stories by William Campbell Gault 3 Play, 2024     Introduction   William Campbell Gault—born on March 9, 1910 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to John and Ella Hovde Gault—is one of the most critically acclaimed post-WW2 writers of genre fiction. He is best known as a mystery and juvenile sports writer for boys, but he successfully published in a variety of genres and in his early career wrote more than 300 stories for the pulps. The novelist Ed Gorman wrote, “[Gault] was a compelling short story writer who looked at the world honestly if sardonically and found a good deal of it to be depressingly hilarious.” Gault had the knack, as the Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia says, of combining “various motifs from the different pulp magazine genres—sports, mystery, science fiction—and blend them into a distinctive style of his own.” Another trait separating Gault’s fiction from that of his peers—it is about something. It is filled with ethical dilemmas, racial tensions, bigotry, and political tolerance. Gault’s writing career began in 1936 when he won a $50 prize in a short story competition sponsored by the Milwaukee Journal. His first professional sales were to the sex magazines of the 1930s, including Paris Nights and Scarlet Adventuress “where”—according to a 1979 interview with Bill Crider—“the dirtiest word we used was ‘curvaceous’.” Gault published those stories with the pseudonym Roney Scott, which he dusted off for his early crime novel, Shakedown (1953), published with Howard Fast’s The Darkness Within as an Ace Double. Shakedown introduced Gault’s popular series character, Joe Puma, but the Joe Puma of Shakedown is a different man from what he is in the later novels and most knowledgeable readers exclude Shakedown from the official Puma literary canon. In the late-1930s Gault began writing for the sports pulps and quickly moved into the mystery pulps “because the sports magazines came out so erratically, ten one month, four the next” that he needed a larger market to earn a living. Gault’s stories appeared in many of the better pulps, including Argosy, Black Mask, Adventure, Dime Detective, and Short Stories. As the popularity of the pulps waned in the late-1940s—which forced Gault to take outside work with McDonnell Douglas and then the U.S. Post Office—he cracked the hardcover and paperback original markets. With Don’t Cry for Me (Dutton, 1952), Gault won an Edgar Award for best first novel. Like most of Gault’s mysteries, Don’t Cry for Me is set in Southern California—Kirkus called it “California complicated”—and its mid-century timeframe is still vibrant with readers more than 70 years after its first publication. Gault wrote a string of standalone crime novels before introducing his first series character, Beverly Hills private eye Brock “The Rock” Callahan, in the 1956 novel, Ring Around Rosa (Dutton). Callahan is a former WW2 OSS operator and he played guard for the Los Angeles Rams. He is an ethical cuss and there is no doubt he will do the right thing every time out. In 1958, Gault’s other private eye, Joe Puma, hit the page in End of a Call Girl (Fawcett Crest). While Callahan is upright, Puma is a little shifty and, as the critic Jon L. Breen wrote, “Joe threatens to spin out of control.” While both the Callahan and Puma books have become cult favorites, Gault claimed he never made much money with any of them. His biggest commercial successes were his juvenile sports novels for boys. The first of these, Thunder Road (Dutton, 1952), remained in print for close to 30 years and was reprinted by two different paperback houses, which, according to his 1979 interview, “helped keep me in used golf balls through my dotage.” So in 1966, Gault quit writing mystery—and everything else—to focus on the more lucrative juvenile market. He wouldn’t return to mysteries again until the late-1970s. But our interest is with William Campbell Gault’s science fiction. A genre that represents only a tiny fraction of his total output, but he served the genre well with several high-quality and thoughtful stories that are as much about morality—and not the easy kind you find in the Bible—as they are about entertainment. Gault’s speculative stories are fine examples of his genre-mixing style. He combines the tension and precise plotting of the mystery with, at times, sports and sporting events, and the audacity of idea-driven science fiction. They are damn entertaining, too. Mixology: Science Fiction Stories, brings together three of Gault’s best speculative tales—two novelettes and one short—published in the 1950s. “Title Fight” (Fantastic Universe, 1956), which showcases Gault’s bona fides as sports story writer with its vivid setting in the boxing ring, is a marvelous story about freedom and equality. As a bonus, the main player is a robot. “I’ll See You in My Dreams” (Imagination, 1951) is a sardonic tale about marriage, longing, and disappointment. It is played out using the machinations of an unknown alien civilization, a squirrel, and Venus. The final story, “Made to Measure” (Galaxy, 1957), would have made a brilliant episode for the original The Twilight Zone television series. At its center is a theme of appreciating what you have without looking too closely at its faults. William Campbell Gault died on December 27, 1995, in Santa Barbara, California. He had been married twice and had two children—a son and a daughter. During WW2, Gault served with the 166th Infantry in Hawaii from 1943 until the end of the war. He was awarded The Private Eye Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He received a Shamus for his 1980 novel, The Cana Diversion—after returning to writing mysteries—and another Lifetime Achievement Award, this one from the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, in 1991.

Click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback at Amazon. The cover was designed by Karadraws.com *            *            *

 

New from 3 PLAY: "Casinos, Motels, Gators" by Ben Boulden

 

Available For Pre-Order

Casinos, Motels, Gators by Ben Boulden 3 Play, 2024   Big news for the 3 Play imprint. The first contemporary collection is available for pre-order. Casinos, Motels, Gators is a collection of four crime stories by Ben Boulden. The release date is one week from today: May 28, 2024.   Here is the Author’s Note, which gives you a little insight into Casinos, Motels, Gators: The four short stories in Casinos, Motels, Gators were written between 2017 and 2020 in a broom closet-sized office in my former home in Salt Lake City, Utah. I worked fulltime and wrote in the early mornings and late at night. I conjured the character Jimmy Ford, appearing in the first three stories, during a long ago visit to the casinos of the Utah-Nevada border town of Wendover.      Wendover is a desert town nestled in a desolate valley about 120 miles west of Salt Lake City on I-80. It started life as a railroad town in the early-20th Century and boomed during World War Two when an Army Air Corps training base was built. The Enola Gay and the rest of the 509th Composite Group, which were responsible for dropping Fat Man and Little Boy on Japan, trained there. After the war, the old Air Corps base was largely left to rot and Las Vegas-style casinos came in, luring both the respectable and seamier residents of the City of Saints into their gambling pits.      These three Jimmy Ford stories—“121,” “No Chips, No Bonus,” and “Junkyard”—were all published in 2019. I think they work well as modern updates on the hardboiled detective genre, something like the old pulp Manhunt would publish if it was still around. Jimmy Ford as a character isn’t exactly likable—he is too violent, a bit smug, too easily manipulated by his unsavory boss, Jenkins—but he usually ends up doing the right thing even if it’s done the wrong way. These three stories are all of the Jimmy Ford’s misadventures, but who knows, Jimmy may rise from the page again. I should also tell you, the Wendover of my imagination and the real thing are different places. The Desert Diamond casino, where Jimmy is a security consultant, doesn’t exist, and as far as I know, no one like Jimmy Ford or his unscrupulous boss, Jenkins, exist, either.      The fourth and final story in the collection, “Asia Divine,” was written for a tribute anthology honoring the late-writer and all-around good guy, Bill Crider. It was published in 2021 with a table of contents filled with writers outside my weight class. There were stories by Joe R. Lansdale, William Kent Krueger, Charlaine Harris, Bill Pronzini, and Sara Paretsky. But—and I say this with all humility—I think “Asia Divine” held its own. “Asia Divine,” like the Jimmy Ford stories, is set in Utah’s West Desert but none of the action is as far west as Jimmy Ford’s Wendover.      Now, let’s get to the stories… *           *           * Oh, we should add. The New York Times bestselling author, James Reasoner, called “121” a “Manhunt story for the 21st Century.” A high accolade indeed!

Casinos, Motels, Gators is available for pre-order here as an ebook at Amazon. A paperback edition will drop either May 27 or 28 everywhere and the Kindle edition will be available on Kindle Unlimited with a subscription.