Stark House Press

Devil May Care and Sinner Take All by Wade Miller (Introduction by Nicholas Litchfield)

Two Exhilarating Thrillers by Wade Miller

Among the novels I’ve read this year, Devil May Care and Sinner Take All rank as two of the very finest. Both were penned by the writing duo of Robert Allison Wade (1920–2012) and H. Bill Miller (1920 –1961), a couple of close friends who wrote a fair number of big-selling novels in the crime, mystery, and thriller genres during the 1950s and 60s. Without doubt, their most fruitful collaboration was Badge of Evil, a manuscript adapted for the screen as Touch of Evil, directed by Orson Welles and starring Welles, Charlton Heston, and Janet Leigh. Other novels by Wade and Miller were adapted to the screen, though, strangely, Devil May Care, considered by some as the duo’s best, didn’t become a movie (despite actor James Cagney’s efforts), and it hasn’t been reprinted since the Fawcett Gold Medal printings in the 1950s.

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The Tease and Sin For Me by Gil Brewer

Litchfield Reviews The Tease and Sin For Me by Gil Brewer

Stark House is responsible for publishing many of Gil Brewer’s (1922-1983) works—and not merely reprints. Numerous previously unpublished novels and short stories have found their way into print, and I’m hoping more will emerge in the future. Their most recent two-in-one crime noir reprint is something of a collector’s volume. Flaunting a nice adaption by Jeff Vorzimmer of Roger Kastel’s original cover illustration for The Tease, it comprises two nicely paired tales published in 1967 by the short-lived Banner Books, a paperback imprint acquired by the Hearst Corporation that mainly focused on crime and mystery novels.

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A Rage At Sea / A Party Every Night by Frederick Lorenz (Introduction by Nicholas Litchfield)

Reviews of A Rage At Sea and A Party Every Night in Paperback Warrior, Crime Time, and Bookgasm

Recently, the website Paperback Warrior, which posts vintage fiction reviews and features regarding the action-adventure, hardboiled crime, western, pulp, and espionage genres, included a review of the collection A Rage At Sea / A Party Every Night, which was published on May 25. Here’s a snippet of what they have to say of the author and these two long-forgotten crime stories: “Frederick Lorenz was the pseudonym used by Lorenz Heller (1911-????) for a handful of paperback crime novels released by Lion Books in the 1950s. The New Jersey native worked as a seaman on a freighter, so it’s only fitting that I’m introduced to his body of work through his shipwreck novel A Rage at Sea from June 1953. Best of all, the book has been reprinted by Stark House Crime Classics as a double along with Lorenz’s A Party Every Night and an informative introduction by Nicholas Litchfield. A Rage at Sea isn’t particularly action-packed, but the author’s excellent writing keep the pages flying by. Recommended.”

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The Tooth and The Nail and The Wife of the Red-Haired Man by Bill S. Ballinger

Two Superior Chill and Puzzle Thrillers From Bill S. Ballinger

A number of writers have been questioning me about my recent book introductions. They were under the impression I’m writing one a month. I can see why they would think that, looking at the listings on Amazon. As much as I’d love to be hammering out an intro every month, I’m not sure I’m entirely

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Two Stunning Excursions Into Terror From Dolores Hitchens

Over the past two years, I’ve been lucky to be involved in quite a few book projects with the excellent independent publisher Stark House Press. I’ve read and reviewed a large number of their books and am continually amazed by the sheer quantity of quality authors they publish. A lot of their catalog consists of

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Madball by Fredric Brown

Litchfield Reviews Fredric Brown’s Madball for the Lancashire Post

Nicholas Litchfield in the Lancashire Post: Fredric Brown, who died in 1972 at age 65, was an accomplished American mystery and science fiction author of more than 30 books and 300 short stories and vignettes. His debut novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint, won the Edgar Award, and a number of his stories were adapted for the screen, including Martians, Go Home, Madman’s Holiday (filmed as Crack-Up), and The Screaming Mimi, which was the basis of a 1958 movie by Columbia Pictures and also an enormously successful Italian film titled The Bird With The Crystal Plumage.

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The Hoods Take Over by Ovid Demaris

Litchfield Reviews Ovid Demaris’s The Hoods Take Over for the Lancashire Post

Nicholas Litchfield in the Lancashire Post: Reprinted from the late 1950s comes a tautly plotted, gritty tale of gang wars, racketeering, police corruption, and the dangers faced by a murder witness who risks his life to give testimony against powerful mobsters. Late American author Ovid E. Desmarais, better known as Ovid Demaris, was a journalist and bestselling author of thirty books. Praised for his investigative reporting on organized crime, political and business corruption, gambling and the underworld, several of his nonfiction books enjoyed a combined 64 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and have been translated and published in twenty-two countries.

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Lead With Your Left and The Best That Ever Did It by Ed Lacy

Litchfield Reviews Lead With Your Left and The Best That Ever Did It by Ed Lacy

Lancashire Post book review by Nicholas Litchfield: Using the pseudonym Ed Lacy, American novelist Len Zinberg achieved fame as a writer of critically successful mysteries in the 1950s and ’60s. Winner of an Edgar Award for best novel in 1957 for Room to Swing, a typically hard-hitting story featuring African-American private detective Toussaint Moore, Lacy’s thirty novels have sold more than 28 million copies. Lead With Your Left and The Best That Ever Did It, two of the author’s finest works, are a pair of taut, fast-paced detective stories that are noted for their gritty realism and sharply defined central characters.

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Litchfield Reviews The Action Man and Terror Tournament by Jay Flynn

A former US Army soldier and journalist, the late John M. Flynn was a prolific American author of crime and espionage novels, occasionally contributing Westerns using the house name Jack Slade.  In a career spanning from the late fifties to the late seventies, he penned somewhere in the region of thirty novels, mostly for Ace Books, Avon

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