Introducing Dime Pulp Number Seven

In Dime Pulp, A Serial Fiction Magazine, Issue Seven, Helena Baron-Murdock’s Hard Boiled Myth featuring Weston County Sheriff’s Detective Jim Donovan, drops more clues than an Agatha Christie mystery to the Greek myth she’s adapted. Part two of The White Room finds Donovan looking into the mysterious restricted zone at the top of Mount Oly and almost being run off the road by ominous tinted window dreadnaughts as well as concluding that answers to the identity of the murder victim might be closer to sea level at the Sparta Creek Trailer Park.

The Last Resort continues the adventures of Lee Malone, former super model and now small town reporter for the Corkscrew County Grapevine, with a close call from a presumed friend now antagonist, and a deep dive into her kidnapping by the radical underground feminist group known as S.A.P.H.O.

The latest installment of A Detective Story finds our semi-hero with a chance to get a handful of uncut diamonds in exchange for an address book possibly belonging to a member of The Black Hand, get next to a good looking dolly all the while while teaching her the subtleties of American slang.

Dropping A Dime, News, Views, and Reviews in which yours truly, Perry O’Dickle, aka The Professor, offers up his considered and considerable opinion on the fine art of pulp fiction, reviews of crime fiction, old and new, as well as news of upcoming publications features another look at Max Allen Collins’ Nolan saga from Hard Case Crime with reviews of Two For The Money and Skim Deep.

Dime Pulp continues its crime spree with the serialization of two full length novels, The Last Resort and A Detective Story, as well as another short story based on Greek myths under the rubric of Hard Boiled Myth.

If you’ve made it this far, go ahead and follow the links below to reading entertainment with the serial contents of Volume One, Number Seven

  —Perry O’Dickle, chief scribe
and word accountant

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Deep in the redwood wilds along the Corkscrew River, someone is shooting neighborhood dogs. The year is 1985 and Lee Malone, former fashion model, queen of the runways from Paris to Milan, once dubbed the most beautiful woman in the world, now a part-time reporter for The Corkscrew County Grapevine, is looking for a story to sink her teeth into. When Lee finds the owner of Kelly’s Seaside Resort brutally murdered, it leads her on an adventure that includes a mysterious gray van, another murder, extortion, pornography, sex slavery, and a shadowy organization of militant feminists known as SAPHO.  In the process, Lee Malone’s notorious past catches up with her. 

The Last Resort, Chapters 1-3
The Last Resort, Chapters 4-6
The Last Resort, Chapters 7-10
The Last Resort, Chapters 11-13
The Last Resort, Chapters 14-20
The Last Resort, Chapters 21-23
The Last Resort, Chapters 24-25

Greek myth is rife with murder, mutilation, cannibalism, mayhem, and the ever popular incest.  Weston County Sheriff’s Detective Jim Donovan of the Violent Crimes Unit wouldn’t know a Greek myth from a Greek salad, but if he did he would find some troubling similarities to the cases he’s investigating.  Revisited as crime fiction are the strange death of Hippolytus, the agonizing death of Heracles, the slaughter of Penelope’s suitors, the Fall of Icarus,  the sparagamos of Orpheus, and the cursed lineage of Pelops.  Helene Baron-Murdock’s Hard Boiled Myth taps into the rich vein of classical literature to frame these ancient tales in a modern context.

Long Shot I
Long Shot II
Notification Of Kin
Valentine’s Day I
Valentine’s Day II
The White Room I
The White Room II

Lackland Ask is the name. ‘Lack’ to my friends, ‘Don’t’ to those who think they’re funny. You might have seen my portrait on the cover of Black Mask, the crime friction magazine. This is my story. It starts with a blonde. This kind of story always starts with a blonde. The brownstone was on the Westside and easy enough to find. So was the mug’s yellow roadster. It stuck out like a new shoe in a cobbler’s shop. I was being a sap again. I woke sitting straight up, sweat pouring out and over me, my undershirt drenched. I was going to have to change my shorts. Some dream. They worked me over, demons in dingy cable knit sweaters. They pumped my arms and peered in my face with eyes as black as eightballs. He handed me a hat. “The pièce de résistance.” He said it like he was serving me dessert. The gat fell from his hand and clattered across the marble floor. It looked like something that might have survived the battle at Ypres. I looked at him and back at the hand and then at the rabbi and his granddaughter who all seemed very pleased by what was being offered. “You’re offering me pebbles? Little gray rocks?”

“This kind of story always starts with a blonde“
“I was being a sap again.”
“Some dream”
“demons in dingy cable knit sweaters”
“He handed me a hat.”
“The gat fell from his hand” 
“You’re offering me pebbles? Little gray rocks?”

Once again from Hard Case Crime, the imprint that is doing it’s darndest  to resuscitate pulp nostalgia with it’s tantalizing cover art and reprints of  of crime fiction classics as well as original contemporary genre fiction comes Max Allen’s Collins’ continuing saga of master thief  Nolan and his young, comic book-loving partner, Jon, matching wits with mobsters while trying to hang on to their lives as well as their stash of bank heist loot. This installment of Dropping A Dime takes a look at the origins of the Nolan and Jon team in Bait Money as well as the contemporaneously penned wrap-up curtain call (but not “curtains”) for the duo in Skim Deep.  

Dime One
Dime Two: Come Back, Nolan, Come Back
Dime Three: He’s Back! (Nolan, that is)