TRASHY TUESDAY: AUSSIE PULP PAPERBACK BOOK HAUL – HORWITZ

My recent trawling through bookstores and bookfairs has uncovered an interesting array of pulpy 1950s and 60s paperbacks from Australian publisher Horwitz. From war stories to faux American PI tales to Australian humour and James Bond spying clones, they reflects the some of the main revenue streams for the premier Australian paperback publisher.

In Australia one of the main rivals to Carter Brown was the series of Marc Brody books which appeared between 1955 and 1960.

Marc Brody was supposedly the author and main character in a series of tough novels written for Australia’s Horwitz Publishing. Like the Carter Brown and Larry Kent books, the Brody novels were inspired by the popular hardboiled American fiction of the time and were largely set in America. Brody was a crime reporter who managed to get himself in a wide range of troubles in the over 80 books he was featured in. In real life Marc Brody was W H (Bill) Williams an Australian novelist, journalist and editor of the tabloid newspaper Melbourne Truth.

The Brody books were initially published in unnumbered digest format with photos of models on the covers and an illustrated backdrop usually featuring violent encounters. When the books moved into numbered paperback format in 1958, they adopted an illustrated cover as shown on Write Off The Redhead. The cover does not reach any heights, but contains the usual Horowitz illustration staples of chesty female, weaponry (knife, not gun on this occasion) and a nightclub or street backdrop.

For more on the Brody books: https://murdermayhemandlongdogs.com/trashy-tuesday-movie-stars-femme-fatales-and-dames-more-marc-brody-covers/

War stories were an important part of Horwitz’s fictional output in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the involvement of Australians in the war against the Japanese being a particularly rich field. While J. E. Macdonnell was Horwitz’s king of the naval war novel, W. R. (William) Bennett, a former Royal Australian Air Force, was their main provider of air war stories.

Bennett produced 28 air war novels, most of which formed part of the ‘W. R. Bennett’ series, between 1960 to 1969. Bandits Above, number 19 in the series, was typical of his novels and features a nicely illustrated cover by an unidentified artist.

The prolific J. E. Macdonnell was Horwitz’s leading provider of war fiction, as well as spy stories and medical novels, and he produced 147 books in his Sea Adventure Series alone.

Frogman (1958) was number 11 in his Sea Adventures Series. The 1961 second edition (above) came adorned with a very nice action cover illustration, which unfortunately is uncredited.

Here is a link to some other J. E. Macdonell war books and covers:  https://murdermayhemandlongdogs.com/trashy-tuesday-july-book-haul/

While J. E. Macdonnell is best known for the multitude of war books he produced in the 1950s and 1960s, he also dabbled in other genres. Probably his most successful non-war books, were the Mark Hood spy series that he did in the 1960s (produced under the pseudonym of James Dark in the United States).

The Mark Hood books tried to capture feel of the James Bond novels, although they lacked the style and depth of writing of the original. In Australia Operation Octopus (1970) was the tenth book in the series (it was the ninth in the United States where it appeared two years earlier in January 1968).

The cover was spectacular and certainly quite eye-catching. Unfortunately, the artist is not credited.

For more on the Mark Hood novels: https://murdermayhemandlongdogs.com/trashy-tuesday-paperback-fanatic-48-and-the-mark-hood-novels-by-j-e-macdonnell/

Apart from Macdonnell’s Mark Hood novels, spy novels were not a large part of the Horwitz output, especially compared to paperback publishers in America and the United Kingdom who produced espionage novels in great numbers.

An exception was the four book Giancarlo Melrose series by the pseudonymous James Scott, who was in fact Marcia McEwan (Osterberg-Olsen). Marcia is probably best known for her historical books such as Pharaoh and The Centurion, but she also wrote romances and modern stories set in Sydney’s notorious Kings Cross.

The James Scott spy books featured Giancarlo Melrose, a CIA agent of Italian inheritance, who is based in Italy. Unfriendly Relations (1965) is the second book in the series and is largely set in the “Italian Riviera”.

The cover is rather bland for a sixties spy novel, although Horwitz do try to tie it to the popular James Bond movies and books at the time with a fake, uncredited blurb comparing it to Bond. A dubious connection which is further reinforced by the back cover – “A Bond With A New Look”.

Australian humour, especially ‘Digger’ humour, was also a steady Horwitz staple of the 1950s and 1960s, although none of it has aged well and most books have disappeared from sight.

Car-Razy Life With Dexter (Horwitz, 1962) is based on a popular radio show by Willie Fennell, which featured Fennell as the hapless family man Dexter Dutton. The twelve books in the series feature Dexter in various misadventures, with a strong emphasis on Australian slang – “‘ow are yer, mate” was Fennell’s tagline. Fennell went on to enjoy a long and successful career in Australian tv, appearing in many popular shows. The cover is by cartoonist and artist Frank Benier, who did some very good artwork for Horwitz, especially for their horror titles.

So some interesting finds. I have also come across some early Australian crime digests and stapled books from the 1940s, which I will be featuring shortly.