Paperbacks 1047, 1048, and 1049: A Doc Savage trio (Bantam, 1969 (2) and 1976 (1))

Paperbacks 1047-49: Doc Savage 35, 38, and 83 (1969, 1969, 1976)

Titles: The Squeaking Goblin, Red Snow, The Red Terrors
Author: Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent, Lester Dent, Harold A. Davis)
Cover artists: James Bama, James Bama, Boris Vallejo

Condition: 7/10
Estimated value: $20 for the lot

[Gift to the collection from a Western NY Reader]

Best things about this cover:

• "It ain't me what's squeakin', it's me musket!" squeaked Goblin Davy Crockett

Best thing about this cover:

• It's like if Hawkman and Hulk had a pin-headed monster baby

Best thing about this cover:

• Doc Savage tried to start his life over as a crossing guard at Mystical Orb High School for Avian Cosplay, but it didn't take

Page 123~

One of the hired men pointed. "Red was a-meanderin' over thot way, last I seed a' him."

These books are all of astonishingly uniform length (~130pp.) and not at all badly written (at least on a basic grammatical level). They were originally published in the Doc Savage pulp magazine (in the '30s) and then were reprinted by Bantam roughly 30-40 years later, which puts them just before and toward the tail end of / just after the main time frame of my paperback collection (1939-69). Lester Dent (how wrote a ton of the "Kenneth Robeson" Doc Savage stories) was an accomplished crime fiction writer from the heydey of hardboild crime fiction. I covered one of his books back at Paperback 741.

Anyway, thanks to the lovely human who sent me these books in the mail today—individually wrapped! So thoughtful.

~RP

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Other Books, Other Covers: The Pulp Jungle / Frank Gruber (Sherbourne Press, 1967)

Title: The Pulp Jungle
Author: Frank Gruber
Cover artist: ["Jacket Design by Czeslaw Z. Banasiewicz"]

Estimated value: $40




Anecdotes from the pulp trenches. Invaluable. Dude knew everyone and wrote for everyone and comes across as a sane, no-nonsense, hard-working guy. Great portrait of a man trying to make it as a professional writer (mysteries and westerns) through the Depression and beyond. Main lesson: work harder. Write more. Write now. Write everything. Oh, and be honest. He's big on decency and honesty, even when the world around you is full of liars and chiselers. He's Marlowe-esque, that way.

Page 123~

We were just making talk. I was forty years old in 1944, not likely to be drafted, and Steve had varicose veins. So we encouraged Heinie and he talked about his novel. The next morning, cold sober, he would come in and shudder.

"What the hell was that nonsense we were talking about yesterday? Me go over to Italy? I'm fifty-two years old, I've got no business in a shooting war."

I don't know who Heinie Faust is, but several pages earlier, Gruber says of him: "Heinie was the most prolific writer of all time. He was also the biggest boozer I have ever known."

~RP

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