Grover Brinkman

When I was doing my ground-breaking first book, Pulpografia, the encyclopedia of over 300 American pulp and paperback crime writers published in Finland, I noticed that some of the books that came out here weren't always published in the US. The first one I could identify was Bruce Cassiday's The Heister (Vain viisi tuntia in Finnish), a solid cop novel that Cassiday and his agent couldn't sell to American publishers in the mid-sixties, so it landed only here (and other Nordic countries, if I remember correctly). It's not a bad book, someone like Gary Lovisi should reissue it.

Some other books that I had difficulties with were four PI novels by one Grover Brinkman. They featured a half-Indian private eye Colt Youngblood (dig that name, will you!), with broads and bullets. Nothing remarkable here, it's no wonder the books didn't sell in the US. But still interesting to know about them.

Going through some old files I spotted a Contemporary Authors entry for Brinkman I've received from someone (as usual, I believe it was Denny Lien). It mentions "a four-part detective novel series published in Scandinavia". Brinkman also had an erratic, but long career in pulps and other fictionmags. See here for more details. Attached are two covers of Brinkman's novels, the other two are Chubasco! (Hirmumyrsky in Finnish) and Thunderbird (Ukkoslinnut in Finnish).

Grover Brinkman

Personal Information: Family: Born February 27, 1903, in Illinois; died March 17, 1999, in Columbia, IL; son of John (a farmer) and Sarah Jane (Friend) Brinkman; married Leona May Stricker, July 21, 1925; children: Gene H., Shirley Jane Brinkman McDannold. Education: Attended
Belleville College of Business. Religion: Methodist. Memberships: Lions Club.

Education:

Career: Okawville Times, Okawville, IL, editor and publisher, 1925-47; free-lance writer and photographer, 1947--.

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

* Night of the Blood Moon, Independence Press (Independence, Mo.), 1976.

Also editor of This Is Washington County, 1968, and Grover Brinkman's Southern Illinois, 1976. Also author of a four-part detective novel series published in Scandinavia. Contributor to more than two hundred magazines and newspapers, including Life. Editor of Back Home in Illinois, a regional magazine.

"Sidelights"
Brinkman comments: "I work with my wife as a writing-photographic team; I sold my first piece of fiction to Grit at the age of sixteen; since then have been selling on the regional, national, and international level. I have more than a hundred thousand photographic negatives on file, the work of forty years behind the camera. In other words, I'm a working freelance and we make a living at it. I write fiction `just for fun.' "

New publisher in the works

A new Finnish publisher announced its first three books just before the holidays. I had something to do with all of them, so I'm a bit obliged to say something about them, even though the books are in Finnish. The new publisher is called Putki Kustannus (never mind the translation, it doesn't make much sense) and it works only via Lulu. The books are print-on-demand, which is still a novelty in the Finnish book industry, but it's a bit cumbersome to make the books in Lulu, since they don't offer Finnish ISBN codes (or any ISBN codes for that matter), so they are a bit invisible and won't automatically be catalogued in the Finnish National Library system.

But on to the books! Remember my 12-hour novel I wrote some years ago? I thought initially I wouldn't publish the book, but when Jukka-Pekka Kervinen e-mailed me about his idea to publish pulp-styled literature in print-on-demand and asked for help, I thought immediately about my manusript. It fits here perfectly, and the story was actually better than I remembered. The book is called Älä soita sinivuokoille, Joe Novak, which translates roughly as "Don't Call the Coppers, Joe Novak" (Novak being the private eye hero of my one previous novella and various short stories).

I also put together a small anthology of crime and horror stories, some of which were previously published, mostly in my fanzines Isku and others. Some of the stories were previously unpublished, though, for example Harri István Mäki's wonderful story about Edgar Allan Poe's relationship with Annabel Lee. The book is called The Last Shot according to Tuomas Saloranta's sleazy story of a revenge falling over a porn dealer. The first line: "Start jerking off."

The third book is Petri Hirvonen's short story collection Kuolevan jumalan yö ("The Night of the Dying God" in English) that I put together from the stories I've published in various mags through years. There are some western stories, a pirate story with horror overtones, some eighties-style action, some revenge stories, all told with energy and a good eye for violent action. Petri is a little-known pulp writer who's done some Finnish Jerry Cotton stories and the FinnWest western series. Putki Kustannus is also putting out his novella Kalmankylväjä ("Deathsower" or some such) that takes place somewhere in the Central America. The body count is massive in just 100 pages. Both Petri's and my book have forewords or afterwords that explain what's going on.

There are other books coming out from Putki Kustannus: a criminous short story collection by Teemu Paarlahti, a collection of my Mikko Jarmo short stories that mix private eye genre with silly alternative history themes, a collection of flash fiction crime stories I ran in my mag, Ässä, and a collection of my reviews and articles on American hardboiled fiction. I've been also working on a small collection of obscure Finnish pulp short stories from the thirties and fourties, but there are some copyright problems I'll have to resolve. There's possibly also a western short story collection coming from Sami Myllymäki.

Here's more in Finnish on my other blog.

David/Day Keene: The Queens of Death?

I bought this old Finnish paperback (published in 1947) with three short stories in it several months ago, mainly because it has a Zorro story in it. If I'm right, this is the only real Zorro story by Johnston McCulley published in Finnish. It's probably one of the later Zorro stories that were published in pulp magazines, such as West. I believe these stories have never been reprinted.

I didn't read the Zorro story in the book, but I read the two preceding stories. The first one that also gives the book its title is written by "David Keene". The title reads as "The Queens of Death". Now, there's no David Keene who has written any kind of crime novels or stories that I can find. I can't find any trace of a story called "The Queens of Death". Of course it's possible that this story was published in a pulp magazine no one has ever indexed, but somehow I don't think that's right. I got to thinking it might be possible this is really by Day Keene. The Finnish publisher may have thought that "Day" is not a right name for an author and changed him to "David". These things happen. And Day Keene happens to have a pulp story called "Three Queens of the Mayhem", published in Detective Tales in February 1946, so it's entirely possible that this story found its way to Finland and got published as part of a three-story anthology.

There are three old women in David Keene's story. They are old ladies living together. They were once famous singers called The Beverly Sisters, but getting caught in a murder case ruined their career. Now one of the sisters asks private eye called Tom Doyle to try to find a girl one of the sisters was forced to give away to an orphanage. The story is fun, mildly parodist in tone and plot. It's written strictly in the zany school of hardboiled writing, reminiscent of Robert Bellem, Richard S. Prather and others. So, is it "Three Queens of Mayhem"? Anyone? Or is it some other story by Day Keene? Or is there a David Keene?

There's also another short story to stir up interest. It's called "Kadonnut sävel", which means "The Lost Tune" or some such. The hero of the story is troubleshooter of some sort called Hannibal Smith. He's a former sports coach, but now makes his living selling used stuff, giving loans and doing services to people. Hannibal Smith is a fat man, but he's also resourceful and intelligent and quick with his mouth. Now, there's a Hannibal Smith story called "Down Among the Dead Men" published in Dime Detective in 1945, written by C. William Harrison, who's best known for his paperback westerns. (I've read one, it was pretty good.) I'm pretty sure this story is by the same C. William Harrison. Can anyone confirm? The story is funny as Hannibal Smith is asked to take a photo of a cow somewhere in the fields. He does exactly that, but fast he realizes he maybe shouldn't have, since he's being suspected of a murder...

The great Finnish cover is by Poika Vesanto. Probably - I can't find his signature in the cover.

Ray Bradbury in Finland

As I promised, here are some of the Finnish covers for Ray Bradbury's books.

The Martian Chronicles as Marsin aikakirjat (literal translation). Otava 1953. I don't know the illustrator, could be foreign for all I know. This was the first Bradbury published in Finnish in book form; there were some earlier magazine publications, though.

The second edition of Marsin aikakirjat, also by Otava, this time in 1974. The translation is the same, and it's abridged, I'm afraid. Don't know even the illustrator for this. (Mind you, I have these books, but I don't really know where they are. It's easier to find the scans in the web than to scan my shelves.)

I believe this one is by one Piotr Tomaszewski (who was Polish originally, I think), since he did lots of covers for the Kirjayhtymä science fiction series in the seventies. I'm not actually sure, but I think this if from 1975.










Another one from the Kirjayhtymä publishers and also, I think, by Piotr  Tomaszewski. We've never really gone for outlandish pulpy covers here in Finland, have we? This is The October Country, the Finnish translation (and the only printing) is from 1985.

Something Wicked This Way Comes, my favourite from Bradbury's novels, was published here as Painajainen/Nightmare. The publisher was the high-literary Tajo that did lots of new novels and some poetry, Allen Ginsberg for example. There was a second edition of the novel, the same translation (by Jertta Roos) under the title Paha saapuu portin taa (which is almost literal). Did you know the film based on this, directed by Jack Clayton, was banned in Finland? It was shown for the first time in television in 1995.

The Other Heavens AKA Toiset taivaat was one of the short story collections Markku Sadelehto compiled in the nineties. The range of the book is from the old pulp stories to the science fiction classics of the sixties. This one has also "Lorelei of the Red Mist", collaborated with Leigh Brackett (and I, for one, happen to think Brackett does better than Bradbury). The cover is by a friend of mine, Jukka Murtosaari, and the book was published in 1992 by WSOY.










The Early Shadows is supposed to be Bradbury's own idea for another short story collection that came out in 1998, also compiled by Sadelehto. I didn't check the book, but I was told that this was also done by Jukka Murtosaari.

Death Is a Lonely Business, as Kuolema on yksinäinen juttu (very literal translation), was for long my favourite Bradbury. I haven't read it in years, but I just might, one of these days, to see if it will hold up. I'm not sure about the illustrator.

Finnish publisher Kari Lindgren dead

My friend, author Tapani Bagge notified me that one of the last large personalities in Finnish publishing, Kari Lindgren, died recently after suffering from a strange disease for three years. This is a big blow to Finnish publishing, since Kari Lindgren did lots of books the other publishers didn't want to touch or didn't know how to handle them. Without Lindgren it's possible we might've never had translations from Joe R. Lansdale, Gerald Petievich, Lawrence Block, Richard Stark... He also did lots of vintage noir and hardboiled crime: Dorothy B. Hughes, Marc Behm, Margaret Millar (whose Like an Angel, one of the best crime novels ever, was published by Lindgren), Dashiell Hammett, Fredric Brown, Ross Macdonald and others, with some classic cozies thrown in.

One of Macdonald's early novels, Blue City, was also one of the last books Lindgren published. It's sad to see him go, but unfortunately his demise was expected.

Lindgren started out in publishing in the middle eighties, with his company called Viihdeviikarit. He wasn't always very good to come up with good names for his outfits, as Viihdeviikarit means roughly "Entertainment Dudes". Viihdeviikarit was a strict paperback publisher, with lots of titles coming out each month. They did many Westerns, from the USA, the Great Britain and Germany (the Lassiter sex paperbacks). Some of the Westerns were Finnish in origin, i.e. the Hulkkonen series by Kari Nenonen, and some others. They also published war and crime paperbacks and some porn.  In the early nineties Lindgren changed the name to Book Studio and reformatted his line: the books became larger trade paperbacks and the lines got classier, with interesting new authors and well-chosen classics, alongside some more obscure titles. He also published lots of movie tie-ins, which the bigger publishers do very rarely.

In the early 2000s, the large publisher Gummerus bought Book Studio, which eventually caused Lindgren to leave and start a new business. This time it became BookKari, under which Lindgren worked out some interesting books, but it was clear his energy was fading. One of the books was Synnyimme lähtemään ("Born to Leave"), in 2006, by Pate Riikonen, who later turned out to be Tapani Bagge and Harri István Mäki, who later on collaborated on a book I commissioned for the Arktinen Banaani publishers.

We worked together on some books. I did my first short story collection for Lindgren. This was a collection of the Finnish singer-songwriter Reino Helismaa's early stories, called ..ja Reikärauta-Brown ("..and Six-Shooter-Brown" or some such). I also copied some short stories and serials by Mauri Sariola for Lindgren to be published as books, and I proposed my translation of Jason Starr's Fake ID for him. He was interested, but for some reason or another he passed. (The book is now coming out from Arktinen Banaani.) We talked about other books and I compiled another set of Helismaa's adventure and crime stories, but Lindgren didn't live long enough to do the book. I also compiled a huge collection of Finnish pulp fiction stories (with a good grant), but nothing came of it. This was sadder news to Tapani though than me, since Lindgren published Tapani's first adult crime novel, Puhaltaja (The Jack), in 2002, with some other books of his and always offered translation work for him. Tapani said he lost a friend.

Some Finnish Westlake covers

I decided to put up some scans of the covers for Finnish Westlakes and Starks as an homage to the deceased author. Some of these covers - well, maybe none of them are - are not a very good homage to Westlake and his cunning mastery of the genre.

First we have Westlake's first, The Mercenaries, under the Finnish title, "I Am a Hired Assassin". Wonder what Westlake would've thought of that - he didn't approve of the The Mercenaries title.









Then we have the first Parker, The Hunter, under the Richard Stark byline. The Finnish title: "Coffin Up That Parker!" or something along those lines. Is the photo from some film or what? Could it be from Point Blank?

Then we follow with another Parker, called "I Am Parker". That guy? No way, jose. "He's the underworld's lone wolf. He's feared, hated, ice cold. His name is Parker." Originally The Man with the Getaway Face.

After that another early Westlake, 361. I like this cover, which is probably by a Spanish artist (there's a signature beside the lady), but the text on the cover is bland and styleless. The ending of the Finnish translation ("Towards Death") is altered in a stupid and incomprehensible way, beware of it!

And last, but not least: The Jugger, from the Parker saga. This was the basis of Jean-Luc Godard's Made in U.S.A., which is probably the least comprehensible of his pre-Maoist films. You can recognize the story if you know what you're looking for. If I understood correctly, Westlake was never paid for the filming rights and later he bought the film's rights to himself and didn't allow it to be screened in the United States. I don't really think anyone misses anything here. But as for the cover, do you recognize Parker in the bunch? They are not from Godard's film either. ("The underworld's lone wolf strikes - hard!")

Westlake has had a a lot of Finnish publishers: first it was Valpas-Mainos (Olen palkattu murhaaja), then Vaasa (the Manhattan and Parker series), then Otava (Pankaa Parker lautoihin) and then Viihdeviikarit (The Jugger). Dortmunder and other humorous novels, along with a one-off or two (like Killing Time, as Tappoaikaa, some years ago) have been published in hardcover. There was also a collection of his short stories about a New York police officer Levine, with a not very criminous sounding title Matter of the Heart/Sydämenasia. For some reason, he's never been big in Finland. The Hot Rock seems to have had four printings (and an audio version), and Bank Shot two (as Ottakaa pankki kiinni/"Catch That Bank"), but that's about it. Some of the paperbacks have come out as two separate editions from different publishers, who may have not known the books had been previously published. Based on how readable Westlake is, you'd think he would've been huge everywhere.

The cover scans courtesy of Talvipäivänseisaus.

Edit: paperback expert and Harry Whittington scholar David Laurence Wilson has this to say (just came in e-mail) about The Jugger cover:

Dear Juri --
Thanks for your words, as we all gather around the internet to say goodbye to the Great One. He left enough words behind to keep us all reading for many many years. That Finnish cover of The Jugger is from the American edition of one of Max Collins' Nolan series, an appropriation that I think Max would consider a great honor.
Regards,
David Laurence Wilson

Cover by Paul Rader

Does anyone recognize in what book this cover by Paul Rader was originally published? In Finland it illustrated a rather forgotten hardboiled mystery by Aylwin Lee Martin. Mustat helmet started the famous Ilves (= Tomcat) series in 1960. Martin's novel was originally called The Crimson Frame (Fawcett Gold Medal 1952) and I seem to remember it was okay, mildly reminiscent of The Maltese Falcon. The hero is P.I. Matt Hughes. (And he's not mentioned in the Thrilling Detective listings!)

A pissed-off author

I reviewed a new Finnish crime novel by a first-time author recently. I didn't like the book a bit. It was purported to be funny and hardboiled and noirish, but I was only bored - the plot got on too slowly, the characters were a bunch of clichés and there were too many racial and sexual stereotypes in the mix, some even quite hateful. My review came out last Friday in the local newspaper.

The author wrote me back today on Monday saying that I'd understood the whole thing completely wrong. The book was a parody and it was based on reality, so it was nowhere near racist or sexist.

Okay. I've read some 2,000 books in my life (the number came strictly off top of my head) and should recognize parody when I see one. Nowhere in sight here. Okay, yeah, there were some overdone characters and overwritten prose, but still I couldn't see the book as parody. And, um, yeah, there were some awkward moments when there were actual characters with supposedly funny names such as "Don Heremy" (the book is about porn business), but I didn't laugh.

I'd made one mistake for which I asked the editor to publish a correction. The book was published by a publisher that has mainly been doing vanity books, i.e. books that the author paid for. It wasn't the case here. Which actually makes me feel more sorry - did someone pay someone to write this? However I sincerely think that the publisher should've notified about this somewhere in the book - maybe with changing the name of the imprint or with notifying the reviewer in a slip with the book.

I Am Legend in Finnish!

I heard some good news during the Turku Book Fair that was held the last weekend: Richard Matheson's vampire/zombie classic, I Am Legend, will be translated in Finnish and it will be out in November! More power to Vaskikirjat! [They are a new publishing house and their first book, a Lankhmar book by Fritz Leiber, is just out. With Matheson there will also be a translation of Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter.]