MysteryFile; Arnold Hano; Stark House; Gary Lovisi

GIL DODGE – Flint. Signet #1414, paperback original, 1957. Included in 3 Steps to Hell as by Arnold Hano, Stark House, softcover, October 2012, along with So I’m a Heel and The Big Out.

Ed here: Dan Stumpf writes numerous cool reviews for one of the coolest websites of all Steve Lewis Mysteryfile. Here's an example.  As for Arnold Hano, the featured author, Stark House was a brand new way cool three-fer of Hano novels including FLINT as noted above..

   Flint offers some fine Western characters and a terse, hard-boiled opening, but ultimately it’s more interesting for the story behind it than the story within.

   Arnold Hano, the editor-in-chief at Lion Books back in the 1950s ought to be legendary for the quality of the work he sustained. While not every Lion Book was a classic of its time, Hano gave work to writers like Jim Thompson, Robert Bloch, David Goodis and Richard Matheson when they needed it most. And he didn’t just give them work, he gave them free rein to indulge their pulpy passions on the printed page.

   Books like The Kidnaper, The Killer Inside Me, The Burglar and Someone Is Bleeding teem with genuine artistry inside their gaudy covers that would be admirable anywhere, and simply amazing inside a cheap paperback.

   So when I learned that Hano himself wrote a western based on Jim Thompson’s Savage Night (with Thompson’s blessing) I came to it with high expectations — maybe too high. It starts well, with Flint, a notorious Hired Gun, previously lung-shot and in hiding, making his painful way across barren countryside to keep a rendezvous with a mysterious cattle baron named Good who needs a job done right—very close to the same situation the tubercular Charlie Biggers walks into in Savage Night.

for the rest go here:,http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=20072


NOW AVAILABLE FROM STARK HOUSE

Arnold Hano's 3 Steps to Hell: So I'm a Heel / Flint / The Big Out. Hano was the editor of Lion Books when the one and only Jim Thompson was just getting started. A fine writer in his own right, Hano asked Thompson if he could take one of his themes and make a western out of it. It turned into a dark one, of course, and that's the second book, Flint, which Thompson himself praised. Each of these books are tales of tarnished heroes--a blackmailer, a hired gun, and a disgraced baseball player. Author of the definitive baseball memoir, A Day in the Bleachers, Hano writes hard and lean and doesn't shy away from the less pleasant side of human nature. Includes a new introduction by Gary Phillips as well as an interview with Hano by Dan Duling. Welcome back, Arnold.

  

-----------SHOUT OUT TO GARY LOVISI

Here's a letter from writer Terry Butler about our friend writer-piblisher-great guy-Gary Lovisi. Hang in there Gary. A lot of us are sending you our best.

Ed, Gary has been almost wiped out in the flood of Sandy. 

I was told he 
lost a lot of his books under three feet of water.
Some of his friends on Staten island were ruined also.
I emailed him yesterday and got this reply;
Hey, Terry,
    Those are very kind words, thank you for them. We were 

devastated 
here but will rebuild some time, all best,
Gary
Thought you might send him a hello and maybe a note 

on the blog.
He's a really good man and has helped a lot of people as 

you know.
Thanks, T