Some people shouldn't be allowed behind the wheel. Others shouldn't be allowed behind the typewriter.
We always try to highlight nice art, but Duane Rimel's 1961 novel Carnal Psycho, with its cheap cover work, was an add-on to a group of other books we acquired. It went unread for a while, until a few days ago when we decided to take a shot in the dark. Set in a place called Layton, Idaho, the main character Mark Jason accidentally runs over a woman on a misty highway, killing her. A month later Jason is himself hit and injured by a car, and the driver escapes. That's all backstory.
As the book opens Jason is receiving threatening calls, with the voice on the other end promising to kill him, or failing that, kill his friends. And indeed, people around him are slain. One is run down by an automobile, and sabotage to Jason's car causes another death. All that makes the “carnal” of the title a pun, we suppose, since sex is not the focus of the book. Anyway, Jason puts on his amateur sleuth pants to try and solve the mystery of who wants to kill him.
The main issue with Carnal Psycho is that it isn't well written. There are a few interesting moments, and a few notable turns of phrase, such as when the killer is described as, “this sly loosener of bolts, this driver of cars, this deadly amanita,” but overall the book is inconsequential and unrecommendable. We haven't read Rimel's previous effort Carnal Orgy, but we can't help wondering if it's about cars too. We'll never find out, because we're never going to ride with him again. That's a guarantee.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison. 1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is "Kaputt." The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes. 1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
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