PULP FICTION REVIEWS AND THE RED REUNION

New Pulp Author Ron Fortier returns with another Pulp Fiction Review. This time out Ron takes a look at Stein and Candle Vol. III by Michael Panush.

STEIN AND CANDLE Vol III
By Michael Panush
Curiosity Quills Press
232 pages

From the talented imagination of writer Michael Panush comes this third volume in the adventures of Mort Candle, a grizzled ex-Sergeant and his ward, the teenage occult expert Weatherby Stein.  Panush continues to chronicle their post World War II exploits as paranormal investigators and within these pages you’ll find the duo’s newest exploits as they travel the globe encountering all manner of supernatural monsters.  There are a total of six cases set forth here and each is a well presented pulp actioner, all worthy of the 1930s classics.

The book kicks off with our guys in Japan in “Trouble in Tokyo.”  They are hired by a police detective discover who it is attacking rival Yakuza clans and in the process fomenting a gangland war that could severely hamper the city’s reconstruction efforts.  Soon Candle and Stein aren’t only dealing with sword wielding crooks but a secret ninja clan controlling ancient Japanese creatures of mythology to wipe out their foes.  This one is exotic wall to wall action without let up from beginning to end.

The X-Files meets Happy Days in “Teenage Wasteland” when Weatherby goes undercover in a suburban high school to investigate teenagers meddling with the occult.  Along the way he encounters ethnic prejudices, an athletic bully and a Sandra Dee like blonde beauty that turns his head and melts his heart.  Easily one of the weirder but most enjoyable stories in this series yet.

Then there is “Lounge Lizard” wherein our heroes head for Lake Tahoe to find a missing crooner who has run off with the his boss’ cash. This leads them into a deadly parallel world of dinosaurs and their lizard-men riders.  Exactly the mishmash Panush excels at.  Whereas in “Drac’s Back,” Castle, short on funds, accepts an assignment from a group of American vampires to help them travel to Transylvania and resurrect the greatest bloodsucker of them all, Count Dracula.  Stein is opposed to the idea and has good reason to be.  It doesn’t turn out well.

The fifth tale, “Stein Family Reunion,” has Mort and Weatherby in San Francisco encountering Adam, a monstrous individual created from parts of dead bodies by an earlier member of the Stein clan.  Thus do our heroes come to the aid of one of the most iconic monsters in English fiction.  After introducing Dracula to the series, we just knew “the monster” couldn’t be far behind.

The book wraps up with “Big City Showdown,” parts one and two and is the longest single Stein and Candle adventure yet.  And it deserves that extra space as it has a sense of climatic finality to it.  Dracula and the Stein’s twisted wizard ancestor, the Viscount Wagner Stein, team up in New York with an audacious plan to conquer America.  The challenges these two powerful entities posed singularly proved to be difficult to our heroes in past encounters.  Now combined, they are virtually unbeatable; unless that is, our two occult detectives can assemble their own team to battle them.  And this is exactly what transpires until almost every major supporting character in the series reappears for this one cataclysmic confrontation between the forces of good and evil.

There is a definitive air of closure by the story’s end that had this reader both pleased and sad.  If this is the end of the Stein and Candle Detective Agency, then they go out on a grand note that we applaud.  But we truly hope this isn’t the last chapter in one of New Pulp’s most imaginative series ever created.  Please, Michael Panush, we want more!

PULP FICTION REVIEWS EL MOSAICO

New Pulp Author Ron Fortier returns with another Pulp Fiction Review. This time out Ron takes a look at EL MOSAICO (Scarred Souls) by New Pulp Author Michael Panush.

EL MOSAICO
(Scarred Souls)
By Michael Panush
Curiosity Quills
201 pages

Sorry to sound like a broken record, but Michael Panush is rapidly becoming one of my favorite New Pulp writers.  Having discovered him via “Dinosaur Jazz,” a book we nominated for Best Pulp Novel of 2012, we then discovered his “Stein & Candle Detective Agency” series about two post-World War II occult detectives.  As if that isn’t enough to keep this prolific writer busy, now he’s launched as yet another series which can best be described as Frankenstein done western style.

During the Civil War, a Confederate doctor/occultist has the brilliant idea of stitching together body parts from dead soldiers and then animating them using black magic. His plan is to fill the rapidly diminishing ranks of Southern companies with these reanimated corpse soldiers.  He manages to create one such patchwork man before being killed by Union bombardment.  That one and only success is Clayton Cane.

Cane is a bounty hunter traveling the untamed west of the late 1860s and because his very nature is always encountering one fantastic monster after another in this first collection of adventures; there are eight total and each is a gem.

In “Bayou Bloodshed,” Cane is hired to find a black girl who has run off to a secluded island in the middle of the swamps.  The island is populated with two desperate clans; one of gatormen and the other of werewolves.  Needless to say, Cane’s mission is not an easy one.

Then Panush offers up “Red Blades of Whitechapel,” whereby his jigsaw hero end up in London to hunt down a serial killer with a royal pedigree.  Considering this story’s open-ended climax, the main villain could well return for a future encounter.

With “Dead Man’s Band,” Cane captures an outlaw alchemist named Black who leads a band of dead outlaws.  When these deceased desperados attack the hotel Cane is hold up in the pitched battle appears to be El Mosaico’s last stand.

“Monster Men of Malchite Falls” has the bizarre bounty hunter infiltrating a weird fortress laboratory in the middle of the dessert to rescue a little boy. What he discovers is another mad scientist much like the man who put him together.

In “Tomb of Kings” Clayton Cane is one again employed by the British Government to act as security for an archeological dig in Egypt. When the leader of the expedition unearths and revives the Nameless Pharaoh, Cane must ally himself with Arab dessert warriors to defeat an ancient army of monsters.

Back in the U.S. the man-made gunslinger is next hired by the cavalry to help down an old Indian shaman who may be unleashing an army of ghost braves to defend their land in the moving “Ghost Dances.”

In the seventh story, Cane travels south of the border hunting a gang of vicious stage coach robbers and teams up with a wily Mexican bandito named “Tarantula.”

Lastly Cane is hired by a foreign professor to help him track down the whereabouts of the Ragnorak Hammer before it can be used to destroy the world. When their hunt takes into a brutal Minnesota blizzard, they received unexpected aid from an immortal Viking legend.

“El Mosaico – Scarred Souls” is the epitome of New Pulp fun and originality.  It’s a dandy mash up of cowboys and creatures and the wise reader should saddle up and join Clayton Cane.  The ahead looks to be truly fantastic.

FORTIER TAKES ON 'STEIN AND CANDLE VOLUME 1'!

All Pulp Reviews by Ron Fortier

STEIN AND CANDLE

Detective Agency Vol. One

By Michael Panush

Curiosity Quill Press

250 pages

One of the finest pulp novels we enjoyed last year was Michael Panush’ “Dinosaur Jazz.” In fact this reviewer nominated it as Best Pulp Novel in 2012 for both the Pulp Factory Awards and the Pulp Ark Awards.  Yes, it is that good and if you haven’t read it yet you should certainly go out and do so immediately.

Of course having discovered Panush’s marvelous fiction, we went hunting up some of his earlier works.  We found two volumes of stories starring a duo of occult detectives operating in the years after World War Two known as Stein and Candle.  We’ve just finished reading the first collection and are thrilled to report Micael Panush is by no means a one-trick literary magician.  “Stein and Candle” features seven hair-raising, fast paced, pulp tales of the most unusual and original new occult heroes ever invented. 

Mort Candle was an army sergeant with the 101^st Airborne during the war and is one tough as nails character.  During the last days of the European campaign, he and his squad were sent on a mission to rescue a Jewish family, the Steins, being held captive in their Austrian castle by a group of sadistic Nazis SS unit.  Count Wolfgang Stein was a scientist who dabbled in arcane lore and the Germans wanted him to create a zombie army with which to stem the tide of the war and save the Third Reich.  When Stein refused, he and his wife Hannah, during a daring escape attempt, were killed and only their young eight year old son, Weatherby survived to be rescued by Sgt. Candle and his team.

This volume opens six years later as we learn Candle, now a civilian private investigator, has become the fourteen year old Weatherby’s legal guardian.  Together they take on weird cases tainted by the occult.  These pit them against all manner of horrific adversaries such as vampire bikers, a deadly ghost haunting a British movie company and a zombie plague in a Los Vegas like city in the California desert.  Each case is narrated by Candle in his rough, non-frills voice, and is a thrill ride this reviewer relished to the max.  Whereas the volume contains only one story presented in the third person style and it is the actual origin story of the young occultist, Weatherby Stein.  It is a most moving story and Panush deserves much credit for holding back towards the end of the volume.

Bottom line, dear readers, if you like hard-edged fantasy that combines both horror and pulp action, “Stein and Candle” is the book for you.  Panush continues to whip up fresh new ideas coupled with truly great characters establishing him as one of the best new writers in the New Pulp arena.  We fully expect his name and award titles are going to be synonymous all too soon.

Tags

Michael Panush, Curiosity Quills Press, Occult Detective, Pulp Fiction, Action, Adventure, Ron Fortier, Pulp Fiction Reviews