Whit Masterson

“She had come to Mazatlán to kill a man.”

She is Cay Morgan, and the man is The Trader. And she’s waited five years to kill him! But then...

“All she had ever wanted…Except that she wanted Walt more.” Yeah, well that kind of killed it for me. Cay went from a vengeful take-no-prisoners warrior type to a mushy, romantic, sentimental type in one night. It was such a drastic switch that it jarred me right out of the story. The stunning last sentence of the book was awesome, but having show more the main character change that dramatically, that quickly, just didn't work for me. show less

Wade Miller (the writing combo of Bob Wade and Bill Miller) may have succeeded better than they ever expected in writing "The Killer," a book that is kind of a cross between Hemingway and Gil Brewer. It is an excellent, brilliantly written, well-paced fifties novel. I highly recommend this for anyone who likes to read and, in particular, for those who have an appetite for crime novels.
Jacob Farrow is a big game hunter in Kenya, perhaps the greatest and most determined of all big game show more hunters. He is offered an impossible sum to track down and kill the most elusive and most dangerous quarry of all.

In a chase that takes him around the world, Farrow must track down the most feared bank robber in America. Through the swamps of the backwoods swamp, to the highest towers of the greatest cities, to the Great Plains, to the deserts, Farrow goes. Along the way, Farrow tangles with sexy swamp sirens whose every movement makes him sweat. He fights with big city toughs and finds himself on the wrong side of the law.

The book does an excellent job of capturing Farrow's moral quandaries as well as his laser-beam like focus on his job.

Not a word is misplaced in this book. It is expertly written.

The book opens with a rifle on the plains of Africa. It continues with a girl with thick blonde hair, "the tawny yellow color of a young lioness," but no dress on. The mere sight of her made him feel like an animal. He feels all of time slipping by him. But there is another femme fatale in this book, "sleek and sinuous as a python."

The book is filled with powerful emotions of revenge, of lust, of betrayal. It moves forward at breakneck speed. It's really good.

The second novel in this two-pack volume is by the same set of authors, but you wouldn't necessarily guess that as it is an entirely different type of book. This is a story about bookies and mobsters in San Diego with the organization facing investigation from the Department of Justice and concerns about an undercover operative in the organization and how to root him out. It is another well-written story, but nothing like "The Killer." show less

One of the stronger reissues of the original Hard Case Crime series, Branded Woman is one of those deceptively simple Fawcett Gold Medal-type crime / revenge thrillers that fly by when you read them; you have to slow down a little, or perhaps know a fair modicum of something about writing yourself, to see the work and skill that went into it.

Wade Miller was the pseudonym of Robert Allison “Bob” Wade and H. Bill Miller, the same team who wrote, under the name of Whit Masterson, the novel show more Badge of Evil, which was the basis of the 1958 Orson Welles movie Touch of Evil.

The authors tipped their hands a bit here by having their protagonist, Catherine ("Cay") Morgan -- an international jewel smuggler just past 30 who is waging a private vendetta against a fellow smuggler known only as The Trader, whose goons branded a letter "T" on her forehead five years ago when she didn't have the good sense to be warned off of a score that The Trader wanted -- recite, in English, a bit of Roman verse. (Since, at the time that I read this, I happened to have been trying to wrap my thoughts around the first five books of Livy that I had recently finished, began reading H.J. Rose's Ancient Roman Religion [1948] and resumed picking my way through H.L. Havell's Republican Rome, one may imagine that this bit of authorial grandstanding greatly appealed to me, and sold me on Cay's character more than her simple desire for revenge did.) The ending was a double-reveal -- I'd guessed the first revelation, but not the second -- and had a very realistic "revenge-from-beyond-the-grave" bit that does not bode well for Cay (the book is, at minimum, set in the early 1950s, if not the late 1940s) or her future offspring.

Branded Woman is a definite keeper. show less

Dead, She Was Beautiful is a terrific story. It is written with such a smooth and easygoing style that the pages just seem to turn themselves. It is not heavy on pulpy phrases, but it's filled with a classic pulp situation of a guy being played for a patsy as he is conveniently present when someone is murdered and, since the someone murdered is his ex-wife who had cheated on him and made a fool out of him, he's got a real neat motive. Might as well gift wrap this guy and plop him at the door show more to the nearest police station. Of course, Hagen claims he is innocent and no one believes him. Naturally, on his own, he goes out and tries to solve the thing on his own. Filled with bodies plummeting, femme fatales, vengeful relatives, and a pile of evidence that just keeps pointing to Hagen's guilt, this story is perfectly told all the way through. If you like to read classic pulp fiction from the fifties, don't pass this one up. show less