Tuesday, December 25, 2007

The Big Book of Pulps

I got The Big Book of Pulps for Christmas. Glancing through the ToC, I failed to see the name of Robert Leslie Bellem. Maybe I just missed it. Anyway, here's the kind of thing that's missing. This is from "Dump the Jackpot," which appeared in Speed Detective in the September 1943 issue. It was reprinted in Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, edited by John Wooley:

A thunderous bellow flashed from Dave Donaldson's service .38, full the the prop man's elly-bay. Welch gasped like a leaky flue, hugged his punctured tripes, and slowly doubled over, fell flat on his smeller. A bullet can give a man a terrific case of indigestion.

2 comments:

James Reasoner said...

God, I love that stuff.

Anonymous said...

Bill: I'm a pretty good judge of good writing. Astounding as that may seem based on my own abilities. But that is befoulingly putrid, aurally acrid, stomach-grindingly abysmal. I had a cat, that when it died, sprayed a final, acidic insult onto the couch from its dying ass, the stain which, to a paranoid detective, spelled out in cursive linear reeking oil marks a better composition than the one just offered. I believe it was "fat car off deeky gaaky coil worm." See? I told you it was better. If that selection you tortured us with is in any way anything other than a bad parody of bad writing - and that is the best thing i could say about it - i want to hear that lecture.