Monday, August 13, 2007

Halo for Satan

Anyone know anything about this guy? When my local used bookstore didn't have Goodis, they sold me this. What do you think? Imagine four warehouse floors of books and not one Goodis (or any other other mid-century noir writers.
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's part of Howard Browne's most famous series of novels, under his JE pseudonym. Browne was the primary fiction editor at Ziff-Davis at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s--MAMMOTH DETECTIVE, MAMMOTH MYSTERY, AMAZING STORIES (the sf magazine), FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, FANTASTIC (his baby, a nearly-slick and handsome fantasy magazine with some sf that ran a Raymond Chandler obscurity in its first issue and a Browne-ghosted "Spillane" story in its third, that last probably the best-selling issue of any fantasy or sf magazine ever...a new Spillane in 1953, after all), briefly TALES OF THE SEA, and all. He jumped off in the early-mid 1950s to write full time and gravitated to Hollywood, turning the two surviving magazines over to Paul Fairman, who promptly turned them into a fiction factory (buying nearly all his contents from Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett, and Milton Lesser before he changed his name to Stephen Marlowe...then Fairman moved onto EQMM, leaving the magazines in the hands of Cele Goldsmith, who did wonderful things with them, "discovering" Ursula K. Le Guin and Thomas Disch among others)...among Browne's adaptations was a rather good, if a bit rushed, episode of THE ROCKFORD FILES. So, that's probably at least mid-century gray if not black...

6:20 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...

Thanks, Todd. The guy told me a bit of this, but I wasn't sure he just didn't want me to leave without a purchase. I love the cover and it's in good if not great shape. Maybe he did me a favor, steering me in a new direction. And you certainly did. You are a wealth of info on everything.

6:30 PM
Anonymous said...

Well, hey, you did me a favor, too, aside from showing that cover (and the egoboo)...I hadn't realized what a sustained scriptwriting career Browne had in television, for a couple of decades. Also, you got me to look at the NoirCon page. Kinda steep, but if I'm still in Philly next Feb...yeah, the Browne fiction I've read (including the Spillane ghosting, which was pretty expert if a bit spoofing) was worth the time.

6:35 PM
Graham Powell said...

Browne wrote three other books featuring detective Paul Pine. The only two I can remember are HALO IN BRASS and THE TASTE OF ASHES.

ASHES, in fact, is supposed to be the best Chandleresque novel that Chandler never wrote.

Browne once met Chandler, leading to the following (possibly apocryphal) exchange:

Browne: "It's nice to meet you, Mr. Chandler. I've been living off you for years."

Chandler: "So few have the grace to admit it."

6:48 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...

Hope you make it, Todd. The cost is awfully steep but I've never been to Laurel Hill Cemetery, where my whole family is buried and they're doing a trek there.
Plus the lure of the cheesesteak...
GP-The guy in the store said this guy was Chandler with a little less angst and a more cohesive plot.

7:07 PM

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