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 the main character change that dramatically, that quickly, just didn't work for me.… (more)

Fun read- don't remember what brought it and the author to my attention, but read through Archive.org (Borrow for an hour at a time). Reads like a J. McDonald non Travis book. Poor David Patton is alone - his wife and daughter are out of town and it's mid 50 so cal and he thinks he'd like a little fun and adventure. By odd chance, a chancy teenage girl shows up (Jody) in his house and begins funning with him. She is an escapee from the local girls jail and is nothing but trouble! Quickly seducing him (the old demon alcohol), he winds up "trapped" into indulging her in various ways (she threatens to out him as a child rapist), until finally her hoodlum friends drop by to beat him up and force him to drive them to Mexico where worse tribulations occur. Quite a ride! but in the end it all works out and Jody has a heart of gold after all and frees him up as she is dying. But David Patton feels he must fess up to his good wife... and so begins the last sentence of the book....… (more)

Most people are only familiar with "Kitten With A Whip" (1959) because it later became a famous motion picture in 1964 starring Ann- Margret and was her first movie to feature her as an actress rather

than primarily as a singer doing duets with Elvis. However, it was first a terrific novel by the writing team of Wade a Miller. The plot is fairly simple. David Patton is a mild-mannered aerospace engineer, all alone in his ranch home in San Diego while his wife and daughter are in San Francisco visiting his mother-in-law. It is the middle of a Southern California heat wave: "a mammoth high pressure squatted like an octopus and sent its tentacles of scorching air groping for the Pacific." It is explained in the first chapter that: "The heat touched the people too, turning some of them a little wild. Some were awakening amorous, to snuggle against their perspiring mates. Others were awakening unrested and vengeful, looking for injustice and ready to snap angrily at it." The heat gets turned on when Patton awakens only to hear a teenage girl who had violently escaped from a juvenile detention camp in his home. Acting as a good Samaritan, Patton tries to help her and winds up with a big headache. She doesn't want to leave, puts on his wife's negligee and cologne, plops in his lap so dressed when he talks to his wife on the phone, and threatens to claim rape and assault if he calls the police. Eventually, she has a gang of juvenile youths join her in his home and the story rockets to a shocking conclusion. Although the idea of the teenage temptress in Patton's home, beguiling him and alternately threatening him, seems at first blush to be a bit corny, the team of Wade Miller manages to pull it off as a good thriller and gives these characters enough life and depth that it works. It is not quite as pulpy as you would expect until deep into the story, but it is a good story nonetheless.… (more)

Robert Wade and Bill Miller were one of the great pulp writing teams of the forties and fifties, sort of like the Rodgers & Hammerstein of pulp fiction. They first met in junior high in San Diego and featured the
greater San Diego area and Mexico in many of their books. Their best known books were published under the pen name Wade Miller, which is obviously a conglomeration of their last names. Under that name, they achieved pulp fame, writing the Max Thursday detective series, and terrific pulp works such as Branded Woman, Kitten with A Whip (that
became the Ann-Margaret movie), and, of course Badge of Evil, which later became a famed Orson Welles movie. They also wrote under the names of White Masterson, Dale Wilmer, and Will Daemer.

Dark Fantastic is a bit of a departure for the writing duo. It isn’t a pulp detective novel like the Max Thursday novels nor a pulpy decadent noir. The action in Dark Fantastic (1959) takes place in and around the Mexican border and most of the main characters work in one way or another with border security. Some of themes involved include a science fiction-type biological plague, border smuggling, cooperation
with Mexican authorities, as well as a love story and some nods to women’s lib (they were a bit before the curve with this in 1959). The action flips back and forth among a number of protagonists and feels
sometimes a bit disjointed. It is a race against time to catch the bad guys before something really bad happens, but that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. For me, it was just an okay read. Wade and Miller
have written better, more compelling, fare than this.

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