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EDITOR’S NOTE: Instead of writing my own preview of the latest issue of the MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY, which I co-edit with Bill Cunningham, I’m reprinting the review of MAQ #13 that author James Reasoner posted on his “Rough Edges” blog. It’s an excellent overview of the issue and I’m honored to get such a glowing review from James. He’s a NEW YORK TIMES best-selling author who has written more than 300 Western and action/adventure novels and scores of short stories. His recent books include the Western novel CALIFORNIA POWDERSMOKE and LAIR OF THE SERPENT QUEEN, the third novel in his Snakehaven sword and sorcery series. He’s also a pulp culture historian and a past contributor to the MAQ. (See his article about detective characters in Western novels in MAQ #12, the Privat e Eyes issue.)

In addition, James is founder of the Rough Edges Press, now part of Wolfpack Publishing, the leading publisher of novels in the the Western, action/adventure, men’s adventure, crime , mystery, and thriller genres. I’m very happy to be able to announce that he is also providing an exclusive introduction to the forthcoming third volume in ART OF RON LESSER book series that I co-edit with Ron and Bill Cunningham. Vol. 3 will feature Ron’s classic cover art for Western and action/adventure paperbacks published between 1980 and the 2020.

Here’s the review James wrote about MAQ #13, reprinted with his kind permission and illuminated with scans of pages from that issue…

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MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY #13: Fatal Femmes, a review by James Reasoner

The latest issue of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY is out, and as usual, it’s a breathtakingly exciting collection of stories and artwork from the men’s adventure magazines, expertly assembled by editors Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham, ably assisted this time by guest editor Eric Compton (co-host of the popular Paperback Warrior blog and podcast) and guest contributor Terrance Layhew (who is both a podcaster and an author).

The theme this time around: Fatal Femmes!

They lead off with “The Gun Moll Who Hated G-Men” from the July 1957 issue of SEE.

The author is David Mazroff, whose work I’ve been familiar with for a long time due to his true crime articles and occasional fiction in MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE.

I didn’t know until I read about it in issue #8 of the MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY, however, that Mazroff was a career criminal himself and was deeply involved with organized crime.

That certainly gives his work an air of authenticity. His story in this issue is a non-fiction piece about the notorious Ma Barker an d her sons, and he does a great job of capturing their bloody lives and deaths.

Donald Honig, a prolific contributor to the men’s adventure magazine whose work has been reprinted several times in this series, also wrote for the mystery digests.

His clever crime story “Mrs. Herman and Mrs. Kenmore” is from the May 1958 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. While AHMM isn’t exactly a men’s adventure magazine, I suspect there was a significant crossover with the readership of those magazines. A guy like me, for example.

W.J. Saber was really Warren Shanahan, and under his real name he wrote THE ISLAND OF DOGS, one of the novels featuring the comic strip hero The Phantom that were published originally by Avon back in the Seventies. I was an avid reader of those novels and read and enjoyed Shanahan’s entry back then.

Under the Saber pseudonym, he wrote extensively for the men’s adventure magazines, including “Rich Lovers Wanted—Apply Mme. Crielle, Champs Elysées” from the January 1960 issue of STAG, which is reprinted in MAQ #13. It’s a great, lurid yarn set in Paris in the 1920s about young men being murdered and their blood being drained from them, with a dogged police detective determined to get to the bottom of the crimes.

“Kiss Me and Die” by Hiram J. Herbert (TRUE ADVENTURES, December 1960) is another true-crime yarn about the killing spree of a couple of prostitutes and their henchman/fall guy, an AWOL GI.

Honestly, I’m not a big fan of true crime stories, but this one works very well and I enjoyed it.

Buz Rowan, like the author of the previous story, is an unknown quantity, likely a pseudonym. His noir crime yarn “Blood for a Nympho’s Flesh”, from the November 1962 issue of ALL MAN, is about crop-dusting, not a subject that comes up very often in such stories, I suspect.

But Rowan, whoever he really was, uses it to craft a gut-punch of a story that could have been a Gold Medal novel in miniature.

I’ve read several stories and a novel by Dean W. Ballenger, and his work never fails to entertain. “The Incredible Norwegian Ice Nymphs” (NEW MAN, September 1963) is a World War II yarn about Norwegian women who fight back against the Nazis and prove to be just as deadly as their men.

It’s a punchy, very entertaining tale, as you’d expect from Ballenger.

None other than the great pulp author Paul Chadwick, creator of Secret Agent X and Wade Hammond, shows up with “The Ever-Lovin’ Nude Who Watched Her Boyfriends Die” from the May 1969 issue of REAL MEN. This is the only story Chadwick wrote for the men’s adventure magazines, but it appeared three times under three different titles, in three different magazines, to boot!

It’s a good story about a serial murderess who uses poison to dispose of her victims, set in France like one of the earlier stories in this volume. You can always count on Chadwick to spin a good yarn, and this one is no exception.

“Vendetta on the Street of Lonely Frauleins” wraps up the fiction in this issue. It appeared originally in the March 1966 issue of MEN and is by “Mario Cleri,” a prolific contributor to the men’s adventure magazines who just happens to be better known by his real name: Mario Puzo, author of THE GODFATHER and many other bestselling novels. Taking its cue from the contemporary boom in espionage and secret agent fiction, this story features freelance American operative Scarlet Tracy and her partner Charlie Hunt. Scarlet and Charlie are in Berlin to hunt down a British defector with a briefcase full of top secret documents to sell to the Russians.

There seems to me to be a definite Modesty Blaise influence in this one, along with echoes of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., The Lady From L.U.S.T., and the other books, movies, and TV shows from that era that featured beautiful female protagonists. I am definitely the target audience for stories like this, and I loved it. If Puzo had turned this into a paperback series, I would have been right there at the spinner rack to pick up each new book as it came out. As far as I know, this is Scarlet Tracy’s only appearance, but it’s a good one.

Eric Compton contributes a fine article about fatal femmes in novels, and Terrance Layhew has assembled a wonderful photo gallery of some of the beautiful women from the James Bond films. Both are very worthy additions to one of the best issues of MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY so far. But let’s face it, all the issues have been great. If you’re a fan of great art and hard-hitting stories, this volume and all the previous ones get my highest recommendation. You can find the Fatal Femmes issue on Amazon worldwide.

Comments? Corrections? You can email them to me, or join the Men’s Adventure Magazines & Books Facebook Group or the MEN’S ADVENTURE QUARTERLY BRIGADE group and post them there.